Imagine what Manitobans could do with an extra $250 million in their wallets.

You can stop day-dreaming, because that’s how much money Premier Wab Kinew’s fuel tax cut will save Manitobans by the time it’s set to end in September. Folks will save about $256 million by the time kids go back to school.

Because of the premier’s 14-cent-per-litre tax cut, Manitobans have the lowest fuel tax burden and lowest gas prices in the country. No where else in Canada is seeing the savings that Manitobans are.

And it’s a big help for families balancing their own budgets every month.

Imagine a typical two-car family with a minivan and a light duty pick-up truck. If they fill up each vehicle once every two weeks, they have likely saved about $300 over the course of the cut so far. By the end of September, they can expect to save more than $440.

But keeping the savings going is key. Ontario initially cut its gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre in July 2022. Since that initial cut, which is less than half of what Kinew cut for Manitobans, Ontarians are set to save more than $3 billion by Christmas.

That’s a whole lot of money and it only happened because Ontario taxpayers kept letting Premier Doug Ford know that they like saving money.

Kinew said that he’ll never let the gas tax get as high as it was under the previous government. Taxpayers need to hold him to that promise. And get him to go further.

A permanent partial reduction in the gas tax would be good and help Manitobans keep saving money but cancelling it permanently would mean more savings.

And it’s what Manitobans want. Polling from before the government announced the gas tax cut extension showed that 77 per cent of Manitobans wanted the government to extend the cut. And 71 per cent of Manitobans want the government to get rid of the tax permanently.

One of the NDP’s main platform points was to make life more affordable for Manitobans. It has a duty to find a way to afford this cut to keep costs low for taxpayers. Luckily, finding a way won’t take that much effort as all the government has to do is cut down on some of its wasteful spending.

In its latest budget, the government announced millions in corporate welfare. It’s planning to hand over $10 million to a bus company and set up a new so-called Strategic Innovation Fund to hand out $50 million to corporations.

Cutting only those two handouts would be enough for the government to extend the gas tax cut for a further two months.

But when it comes to waste and the government, where there is a little, there is usually a lot.

In its latest budget, the government also announced it is going to start to subsidize electric vehicle buyers this year. A new electric car purchase will come with a $4,000 cheque and there’s $2,500 for a used one.

Instead of subsidizing the well-to-do who can afford to buy a brand-new electric car, the government should scrap this program and use the savings to keep extending the gas tax cut.

Overall, the money that the government usually collects from the fuel tax is about 1.4 per cent of total government revenue. It is not an onerous request for the government to find 1.4 per cent in savings so it can continue to provide tax relief to Manitoba families that need it.

Manitobans have been saving at the pumps for six months. But with the end of the cut looming, taxpayers need to make sure that premier knows that Manitobans like saving money. And he can afford to keep the cut going with only a little fiscal discipline.