Kinew is picking a fight Manitoba can’t afford

Attacks on Trump needlessly put Manitobans’ economic well-being at risk

NOTE: This is a spinoff from the bees’ exploration that I wrote for the Winnipeg Sun.

The authority that a first minister exercises carries an obligation of dignity and composure, especially in adversity. It is not a question of style but of discipline.

That discipline matters most when a leader’s words carry consequences for the people he represents. Manitoba’s hard-working beekeepers are a prime example.

Manitoba beekeepers are among the most productive in the country. The province’s roughly 1,015 beekeepers ran about 119,000 colonies in 2025 and produced 17.85 million pounds of honey, second only to Alberta’s 34.2 million. Each colony averaged about 150 pounds of honey that year, among the best per-hive returns in the country.

The operations are typically family farms. Some started with four hives in a back field. It’s a hard business. Hives sit in wintering rooms for nearly six months, with winter losses running near 20 per cent on average. Spring and fall go to building colonies up and settling them down, leaving only about two full months for producing honey. That narrow window carries the income hopes for a whole year.

Manitoba’s honey industry is worth about $50 million, less than what the province’s civil servants spend in one afternoon. It is not a flashy, billion-dollar industry. But it ships nearly two-thirds of its production abroad and accounts, by volume, for 54.5 per cent of Canadian honey exports, compared with Alberta’s 20 per cent and Saskatchewan’s less than eight per cent.

Those shipments were worth $28.79 million to Manitoba last year. That is a genuine export success built on decades of patient, quiet work. Most of it goes south, which is why honey’s appearance on Washington’s list of goods facing 50 per cent tariffs is not an abstraction. It hits this industry directly.

On Aug. 20, as Ottawa weighed concessions to smooth a deal, Premier Wab Kinew called President Trump “erratic,” “irresponsible” and “not to be trusted,” adding “you can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”

Two days later, once talks collapsed, Kinew backed Prime Minister Mark Carney’s walkout. He told Manitobans, “History will not be kind to Donald Trump,” and “we should never appease him, and we should fight back.” Such personal retaliation comes with consequences.

The premier is perfectly entitled to his opinion of President Trump, and plenty of Manitobans may share it. That is not the issue. The issue is prudence: a premier owes his province the discipline to know that livelihoods sit downstream of his words.

Washington’s list falls hardest on British Columbia and Quebec, whose premiers have gone further than Kinew, and lightest on Alberta and Saskatchewan, whose premiers exercised greater restraint. Manitoba can least afford to find out whether needless political provocation carries an economic price.

Federal subsidies are not the answer. This is a have-not province that already draws roughly $5 billion in equalization for 2026-27 and has run deficits in all but two of the last 17 years. A credit-rating agency has recently warned that trade turmoil could push this year’s shortfall toward $900 million, a hole that affects every Manitoban, beekeeper or not. With finances already this weak, Manitoba can hardly afford another economic blow. More subsidies only weaken Manitoba’s economic health.

Dealing with a tough trading counterpart in the U.S. administration is not easy. But dignity and discipline matter, especially when others may suffer for their absence. A premier’s words should shield the people he represents, not leave them paying for a fight they did not choose.

Manitoba’s beekeepers earned their export success through patience and hard work. Their premier owes every Manitoban the same discipline.

Dr. Marco Navarro-Génie is vice-president of research and policy at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, which will host Reclaiming the North in Winnipeg on Sept. 14 and 15, featuring retired lieutenant-general Michel Maisonneuve, former Norway House Cree Nation chief Ron Evans and Frontier president David Leis. Marco is the author of three books, including the 2023 release Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic, co-authored with Barry Cooper.

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