Wpg Free Press: Balanced budget plans in jeopardy: academic

As the Winnipeg Free Press reports: 

The Pallister government’s hopes of balancing the provincial budget within the next four or five years could be in jeopardy if the Conference Board of Canada’s latest provincial economic forecast proves accurate, according to a prominent local academic….

Michael Benarroch, dean of the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, said the board’s growth forecast for the 2018-to-2021 period may be too pessimistic. “But I can tell you that if we go down to one per cent, that will be a disaster for Manitoba’s finances,” he added, “because the government has been assuming that if they can hold the line on expenditures to around three per cent and they can get economic growth of around two per cent, they can balance the budget in four or five years.”