WINNIPEG -- Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government is expected to deliver another dose of fiscal medicine Tuesday afternoon in a provincial budget likely to include the privatization of some government services and cuts to tax credits.
Finance Minister Cameron Friesen, who introduced legislation to freeze public-sector wages last month, said more spending restraint will be featured in the budget as the government tackles an $846-million deficit left by the former NDP government.
Friesen confirmed a CBC report Monday that the province was exploring the possibility of privatizing its fixed-wing air-ambulance service, and left the door open to other privatization.
"We're going to ask a lot of questions about what we should be in the business of doing, what others can do for us on a contract basis," Friesen told reporters Monday.
"Good governments ask these questions."
Friesen also said some provincial tax credits will be cut, although he did not specify whether they would include two raised as possible targets by the Opposition New Democrats -- tax credits for film and television productions and income-tax rebates for post-secondary graduates who stay and work in Manitoba.
"We want to build tax credits that really work ... so there will be some changes."
The Tories were elected last year on a promise to end a string of deficits under the former NDP government and balance the books by 2024. Friesen said that can be done by controlling the growth in spending every year rather than by imposing deep cuts.
But the New Democrats say Manitobans are already paying a price for the government's fiscal agenda. The province has recently moved to allow for tuition hikes of more than five per cent a year. It has also paused a program of grants for community economic development called Neighbourhoods Alive.
Last week, the government announced it would close three of Winnipeg's six hospital emergency rooms and convert them to centres of less-urgent care.
"They've already dropped some pretty significant bombs on the people of Manitoba," NDP finance critic James Allum said.
