A luncheon crowd at Moose Jaws Grant Hall Hotel got to hear more about the provinces recent budget as Finance Minister Donna Harpauer made a stop in the friendly city on Tuesday.

Among the areas addressed by the minister was the importance of sticking to the plan of reaching a balanced provincial budget by the year 2019.

"It's important to our province that we don't have deficits year, over year, over year, with no plan to get back to balance.  The future wears the debt of that, and we don't want to see our province have a future generation that has this deficit build up every year".

That philosophy is in contrast to other provinces in the country that are running large annual deficits with plans to reach balance much further down the road.  The minister reacted this way.

"You know it's interesting to the west (Alberta) for sure.  It's almost a parallel, the impact the oil industry has had, and we have definitely made different decisions on the path forward and what is going to stimulate the economy.  I'm sure a lot of economists are going to be watching the two decisions very closely, but we believe a balance allows us to have a stability within our province to allow us to continue investing in people and keep our taxes low".

"Eventually if you keep running deficits, somethings gotta' give".

Education, health care and social services were three areas of special emphasis in the latest budget.  The minister explained why the Saskatchewan Party sees those as  critical to our province.

"These are services that are expected within our province.  We've made a lot of improvements in all three areas, and we want to continue that going forward.  I think that's another reason why we need to get back to balance and be stable because these are services that are important to Saskatchewan".

In terms of revenue sharing with urban and rural municipalities the overall pool of money is a bit smaller, based on the formula that ties the amount of money to overall PST revenue in the province.  However, urban municipalities do seem pleased with one adjustment the government made.

"They are happy that we have reinstated the money from what was called grants in lieu.  We have now made it a surcharge, named it more appropriately, and cities will realize those funds back.  And some communities that never had the opportunity to be participants in the program now can be participants".

And there is hope that more money could come to municipalities through talks that are underway between our province and the federal government.

"We are in negotiations with what will be the federal governments next infrastructure project". 

However there are stipulations as to where the money is to be used, and that is where our provinces needs might not match up with what the federal government is pitching as a priority.

"Where we are disappointed is there is over $300 million allocated to Saskatchewan for public transit", Harpauer said.   "Now we don't have subways here in our province and although our cities value their public transit it may not be their priority right now.  We have a lot of aging infrastructure in water and sewer.  So we are trying to get some flexibility in that deal before we sign it with the federal government so that we can move that into the priority's of our communities in Saskatchewan".