Manitoba Budget Focuses on Health Care, Includes $800M Deficit

Manitoba’s new NDP government has unveiled its first budget under the leadership of Premier Wab Kinew. The budget has a major focus on health care, underlining promises made by the NDP during last fall’s provincial election to improve health care and make life more affordable. Those goals do come at a cost. The provincial government also announced it will run a deficit of nearly $800 million this year on overall spending of $24.1 billion. Meanwhile, the budget includes a commitment to balancing the books within the government’s four-year term. Health-care spending includes hiring 1,000 new front-line health-care workers. The budget also offers a variety of tax breaks to families and individuals and extends the gas tax cut, implemented on Jan. 1, by three months to the end of September....