Next week's budget will boost child care funding, Manitoba finance minister says

Finance Minister Adrein Sala confirmed childcare spending in next week’s Manitoba budget while buying new shoes for children at a Winnipeg daycare.

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba budget, set to be delivered Tuesday, will include more money for child care and a smaller deficit, Finance Minister Adrien Sala said Friday.

The spending plan is to include funding for a 2.9 per cent wage increase for early childhood education workers and 2,000 new child care spaces, Sala told reporters at a media photo opportunity.

He handed out running shoes at a child care centre in his St. James constituency.

“I think this focuses on the importance of early childhood education in our province,” Sala said.

The government has dropped broad hints in recent days at new spending in the budget for nurse training, cardiac care, police and corrections officers.

Sala said the NDP government can afford the new spending and still produce a balanced budget before the next election, slated for October 2027.

On the revenue side, the government has promised some sort of relief to help people with the rising cost of living.

Premier Wab Kinew told CBC this month that the budget may require the “top one per cent” to pay more education property taxes. He didn’t provide specifics.

Manitoba has run deficits in every year but two since 2009.

The forecast deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends at the end of March, has jumped to $1.6 billion from $794 million predicted last spring, driven largely by the cost of fighting wildfires last summer and lower revenues at Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro.

The economic uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs has added to concerns about government revenues. TD, in a forecast this week, said Manitoba is among the provinces hit hardest by the trade friction, and activity in Manitoba’s manufacturing sector is expected to be subdued.

Recent Manitoba finance department figures show the government has fallen well behind its initial path to phase out annual deficits, laid out in the 2024 budget.

The deficit this year is forecast to be triple the $532-million figure originally planned in the government’s path to balance. Expenditures are running roughly $1.5 billion more than first planned.

Sala said the balanced budget will be achieved.

“We committed to balancing the budget in ’27-’28, and so this upcoming year, ’26-’27, we’re going to show Manitobans the next step we’re taking in getting to that balanced budget target,” Sala said.

Manitobans will likely go to the polls before knowing whether the balanced-budget promise has been fulfilled.

While the government plans to put forward a balanced-budget plan in 2027, the final results for that year won’t be available until the summer of 2028. That’s the case every year, as it takes months after a fiscal year ends to tally up the money actually spent and received by the government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 20, 2026.

Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press