The Manitoba government will present its 2022-23 budget on Tuesday April 12.
MHCA will attend the budget speech in the legislature and will be analyzing the details of the core and trade infrastructure investment programs, to deliver a summary of the details for MHCA members Tuesday afternoon.
“We expect that the highways capital and water-control structures programs will both see increases in this year and that, strategically, the province is moving to present multi-year budget programs,” MHCA President Chris Lorenc said. Lorenc will be seated as a guest in the legislature for the budget speech, upon invitation from the Cabinet.
“Multi-year budgets are critical to strategic investment, allowing the most efficient use of public funds for greatest return on investment to the provincial GDP,” Lorenc said. “We need to move beyond the short-term, annual view of investing in highways and water structures, so industry can plan and, in turn, provide the most competitive pricing for construction projects.”
The issue of investment planning is core to the provincial vision for trade growth, to enable economic prosperity, and how the provincial infrastructure assets – such as water-control structures – will be upgraded to protect communities and the economy from the impact of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as floods.
MHCA is also looking for evidence in this year’s budget that unexpended budgeted dollars will be rolled over to successive years, as is the commitment of the provincial government. Only $22.5 million of some $60 million in under-expenditure in 2020-21 was carried forward to the 2021-22 budget.
Members can see the history of budgeted and actual expenditures in highways capital and water-control structures here, and posted on the MHCA website.