The University College of the North's new Thompson campus will go ahead as planned, according to NDP Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk's first provincial budget delivered in the legislative assembly this afternoon.
The budget is a big picture look at where the NDP is going, while more dollars and cents specifics for projects will be rolled out in the weeks ahead, particularly in terms of capital infrastructure announcements.
Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton, who is also Thompson MLA, told the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News in a dial-in-press conference call from Winnipeg at 5 p.m. that specific capital budget dollars will be spelled out shortly and the project in Thompson is on track for completion by 2013.
Ashton, Manitoba's longest serving MLA, first elected in 1981, is second in order of precedence in the cabinet, or executive council as it is formally known, behind Premier Greg Selinger. In addition to being infrastructure and transportation minister, he is also the minister responsible for emergency measures and the minister charged with the administration of the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation Act.
Ashton also said specific announcements about additional capital expenditures for Highway 6, which is now formally part of the national highway system, he noted, between Thompson and Winnipeg, are forthcoming.
Deputy premier and Minister of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Eric Robinson, who is also MLA for Rupertsland, took part in the telephone press conference also and said as a result of today's budget the Northern Healthy Foods Initiative is being expanded into 17 more Northern communities, which include Fox Lake, Split Lake, Lac Brochet, York Factory First Nation, Cross Lake community, Cross Lake First Nation, Grand Rapids community, Town of Grand Rapids, Pine Creek First Nation, Rockridge, Norway House First Nation, Meadow Portage, Spence Lake, Princess Harbour, God's Lake First Nation, God's Lake Narrows and Chemawawin Cree Nation.
Ashton and Robinson are the only two Northern Manitobans currently in the provincial cabinet.
Robinson, a former CBC broadcast journalist, is also the minister charged with the administration of the Community Economic Development Fund Act and responsible for sport, aboriginal education and the East Side Road Authority.
The government is boosting user fees and delaying planned corporate and personal income tax cuts while increasing health and education spending over the next year.
It is also going to amend the province's balanced budget law to give it more flexibility to cope with the economic downturn. The amendments will allow the government to run deficits for four years before it is required to post a surplus in 2014. Wowchuk said that without changing the balanced budget law - which now requires the province to balance the books on a four-year rolling average - the government would be forced to lay off workers, cut services and increase income taxes.
The projected deficit for the coming fiscal year beginning April 1 is $545 million, compared to a projected $555 million for the year just ending in a few days.
Spending will be reduced in half of all government departments, while 90 per cent of all new spending will go to health care, education and training, family services and justice.
Cabinet ministers will take a 20 per cent pay cut while MLAs and political staffers and senior bureaucrats will be asked to accept a two-year wage freeze. At the same time, the province plans to negotiate a "pause" in wage increases for rank-and-file civil servants.
The province plans to partially offset declining revenues by hiking a number of service fees. The fee to file a petition for a divorce will go up $15 to $150. Camping fees will also rise, although the province will carry through with a second year of free passes to provincial parks.
