The provincial government will outline its spending priorities for the coming year when it delivers its budget this afternoon.

Restoring fiscal responsibility to government operations will likely be an underlying theme for the financial plan.

Premier Brian Pallister says legislation, such as Bill 21, is part of the plan designed by hold government ministers accountable for their spending decisions.

"We're going to have penalties for all the cabinet ministers of 20 per cent if they run deficits and if they do it two years in a row it's going to be 40 per cent. We thing that's a real good start to bringing personal accountability and responsibility back into government," said Pallister.

The old balanced budget law required cabinet ministers to take a 20 per cent pay cut any time the government was in deficit.

The new bill only requires the government to run a lower deficit than the previous year to avoid the penalties.

It's all part of the PC government's efforts to bring Manitoba into fiscal balance by slowly reducing an 872-million dollar provincial deficit.

"Now, that's a big bill that will be sent forward to us when we are older and to our children and our grandchildren. Remember that it took 17 years to dig this big giant hole and it's going to take a few years to get us back to balance and we've said that we're going to do it responsibly while protecting the services that we must protect. That is what I call the road to recovery."