Manitoba Finance Minister Cameron Friesen was honoured to deliver his party's inaugural budget since forming government in April. Budget 2016 came down Tuesday afternoon and included no new taxes or tax increases. Friesen says the province will also not be drawing from the fiscal stabilization fund.
    
The budget calls for a $220 million increase in funding for health care, a $37 million increase in funding for education and $1.8 billion for strategic infrastructure funding for roads and bridges, flood protection, hospitals, schools, universities and colleges and municipal infrastructure.
    
Budget 2016 plans to reduce Manitoba's core deficit by $122 million and announces measures aimed at restoring our province to fiscal balance in eight years.Friesen is pleased to unveil a budget that he says will deliver for Manitobans.

"It's a budget that doesn't just speak a bunch of words but it indicates that we will accomplish real concrete measures to drive down taxation, to open up the economy but to continue to invest in the services that Manitobans rely on."

He adds that Tuesday's budget will serve as a starting point for the Tories as a new government.

"We believe that we are charting a new course. We think it's important, just like with Manitobans in their own household finances, our province has to be responsible with taxpayer money and that means we must arrest that out-of-control spending growth that our predecessors were responsible for and we must tie it to the increase in revenues."

Meantime, it's only been six short weeks since the Manitoba PCs were elected to government and only four weeks since Friesen was named Finance Minister. He doesn't think that a provincial budget has ever been delivered this quickly following an election win in Manitoba. Having said that, Friesen is pleased to have already identified the measures his party will take to get the province back on track.

He says it was also important to deliver this budget now, adding it gets government back into the habit of bringing a budget in the spring.

"This allows us to have ministers go into their roles, meet their senior teams, they can connect with the stakeholder groups and their partners and they will learn these roles and help us already to start preparing for the 2017 budget."