Saskatchewan’s Highways and Infrastructure Minister believes the budget, released on Monday, is a solid one that provide’s short and long-term recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In this budget, you see some significant investments and increases in healthcare, education, social services and other areas, but specifically in infrastructure investment.” said Greg Ottenbreit, who is also the SaskParty MLA for the Yorkton constituency.

“We already had a 5.5-billion dollar plan going into the next couple of years. This 2-billion dollar stimulus injection that’s going to also inject money into those infrastructure projects is going to give us that capacity to not only to focus on some of those projects but also get people back to work quicker as well.” Ottenbreit added, referencing the two-year, $7.5-billion capital plan. The provincial government is investing $3.1-billion into infrastructure this fiscal year of 2020-21.

He eluded to some investments and projects in the Yorkton area.

“Locally with the money coming to the hug renovation of the Yorkton Regional High School – $750-thousand now for planning and engineering and then three years of approximately 6-million dollars a year for the total renovation of the Regional…the half-million dollar ($500-thousand) planning and scoping money for our new healthcare facility that we’re looking at in a few years.”

Revenues were forecast at $13.6-billion, down $1.2-billion, while expenses were forecast at $16.1-billion, in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic along with lower oil prices.

It also had a deficit of $2.4-billion, which the provincial government called a “pandemic deficit”. However, the Yorkton MLA believes the deficit can be trimmed down through economic growth, again pointing back to various investments mentioned in the financial document.