Saying the province is on track and the tough decisions in 2017 have made a big impact, Finance Minister Donna Harpauer rose to present the budget Tuesday afternoon in Regina. The budget is several weeks late due to the leadership races of both the opposition NDP and the governing Saskatchewan Party earlier this year.

Highlighting an uptick in the economy, the budget included slight increases in spending in essential areas such as health care, education and social services while also curbing spending on wages to the tune of $35 million this year and a further $35 million next year. She was specific to say that there are no planned layoffs in the budget with a lot of savings coming through attrition, vacancy management and overtime management.

Harpauer said the decisions that have been made will solidify the path to a better financial situation. "The financial plan is on track to return Saskatchewan to balance with a steady improving outlook over the next four years. A deficit of $365 million is projected for this fiscal year and a return to balance is expected in 2019/20 with a modest projected surplus of $6 million."

The budget did include an increased funding level for policing in order to address rural crime, a new start up income tax incentive for new businesses in the province and a continuation of funding for Moose Jaw's Valley View.

The facility on the south side of the city was supposed to close in 2016 but has been kept open as moving clients into the community has proved to be more difficult than originally thought. A report released last year has suggested that the facility will close in 2019. In Tuesdays budget, $10 million was earmarked to help with the process and another $9 million to provide services to adults with intellectual disabilities whose needs have increased.

With all the positives that Harpauer mentioned, there are some negatives that will impact daily lives. PST won't be going up but it will be expanded to include light used vehicle sales over $5000 and the PST exemption for Energy Star appliances has been removed. The province has also eliminated a planned cut to income tax rates for next year and starting July 1st, they will no longer take applications for the Saskatchewan Rental Housing Supplement. Harpauer said a new partnership with Ottawa is being worked on and until then, no one currently receiving the supplement will lose it, they'll just stop taking new applicants.

2017 was one of the hardest budgets for municipalities to swallow in recent memory and sparked major push back across the province but Harpauer credited those decisions made for getting the province back on track.

"The shift away from our reliance on renewable resources is stabilizing our budget." said Harpauer. "I think we have a far more solid platform to keep us on track and to come to that balance, because of those difficult decisions."

One large piece of the future puzzle that was left out of the budget was cannabis sales and taxation. Harpauer says that was done on purpose because there are still too many variables in order to compile a reliable outlook. While the budget does include the outline for how cannabis will be taxed when it becomes legal, facing both a federal excise tax and PST, how much money the province is expecting to receive was not included. Potential expenses were not included either for establishing a sales network and the expected increase in policing.

With the estimates pushing legalization later and later into the year, Harpauer doesn't expect significant income of expenditures for this budget cycle and suggested that it would be a wash for 2018. They would then start inserting line items for the 2019 budget year as the industry becomes more established. Many analysts expect the legalization of cannabis to be a cash cow for the country and the provinces, based on what's happened in other areas that have already made the switch.