The 2002 Manitoba budget is great news if you happen to live in Alberta. The spendthrift budget will only inspire more economic refugees to move west for lower taxes and greater job opportunities. Manitoba's brain drain will become Alberta's wealth gain.

More than 3,000 net Manitobans relocated to Alberta last year. Expect to see more of the same. Manitoba's dismal ranking in the inter-provincial tax comparisons has not improved one iota since Monday's budget.

Manitoba has become a taxation wasteland.

Income taxes are the highest west of Quebec. Real-estate-crushing property taxes are second to none. Driver registration fees also command top spot among the western provinces after the government slapped on the second $10 tax hike in less than a year.

Most offensive is the NDP's stubborn refusal not to kill bracket creep by annually indexing tax brackets and credits to inflation.

This is inexcusable budgeting.

No quarter should be spared for a purse-snatching government that deceives people into believing taxes are falling when all along it skims off millions of dollars through a non-indexed tax system.

Bracket creep erodes paycheques as inflation pushes incomes into higher taxed brackets.

Manitoba is the only province west of New Brunswick that will still collect income taxes through the stealth system of bracket creep.

This year alone, Manitoba will cream off an extra $10 million by not increasing the middle tax bracket by the same 3% rate applied to other non-refundable tax credits.

The government did, however, boost the top bracket to $65,000.

Good budgets strike a balance between affordable program spending and allowing for the wealth accumulation necessary to support those programs.

But this budget is all about spending and milking every cash cow for what its worth.

Were it not for a $93-million draw from the rainy-day fund, the $75 million take from Manitoba Hydro just in 2002, $45 million in new tobacco taxes and $1.5 billion in federal equalization payments, Manitoba would run a $1.7 billion deficit.

The only people left to tax in this province are the middle to low income earners. The wealthy have flown the coop.

There are just a few corporate headquarters left in Manitoba because high-earning executives prefer not to pay a top marginal income tax rate in Manitoba that's 74% higher than in Alberta.

To retain what's left of the go-getters or entrepreneurial class, the government has to bribe them with tax concessions and corporate-welfare handouts. MCI is the latest but surely not the last company to be bribed to stay in high tax Manitoba.

Without many entrepreneurs left to fleece, the government is forced to target low-income earners to support the annual spending spikes.

New cigarette taxes, high income and property taxes, the ad blitz for casino gambling, bracket creep, raiding Crown reserves, higher driver registration fees all have their sights set on the pockets of the middle class and the poor.

Fed up with the bleeding, able-bodied Manitobans silently slip away out west.

The Doer government should stop feeding the Alberta economy with Manitoba economic refugees. Wealth creation must become a provincial priority. Kick the spending addiction and commitment to competitive taxes.