“It’s one of those budgets where they talk about the money, but they don’t really have plans for it.”

Weyburn Mayor Marcel Roy’s description of the federal budget, which was delivered in the House of Commons Tuesday afternoon.

“It is all really nice words, but is Weyburn going to actually get anything out of it? Who knows, because every time you put in money for a grant, it is chance, and a shake of the dice as to what’s going to happen,” Roy elaborated.

The federal government is setting aside $2.2 billion through the federal Gas Tax Fund for municipalities and First Nations across Canada to access for short-term priorities. This is above the $81.2 billion which was announced in the 2017 budget for infrastructure spending across the country.

Weyburn has received some money from the program, in particular for the new reservoir and upgrades at the Water Treatment Plant. The top-up money from the federal government is to be used for things such as local roads and bridges, highways, broadband, water treatment as well as sports and recreation.

Changes to home ownership were also announced, as the federal government increased the amount first-time home buyers would be able to pull from their RSP’s to use towards the purchase of a new house. The amount was increased from $25,000 to $35,000.

“It’s good on one hand that they’re allowing more money out of the RSP’s, but at the same time, does this really help a lot of the younger people, because maybe a lot of the younger people, by the time they’re ready to buy a house, don’t have a lot put into their RSP’s,” Roy said.

Roy also brought up the new money announced for skills training which was included in the budget.

In the budget, Canadians would be able to put $250 a year towards upgrading their skills through a refundable tax credit. The money would be available to those earning between $10,000 and $150,000 a year and expected to cost $170 million over five years.

“Again, we’re afraid of what it’s going to do. Are they consistently going to shut down the oil industry and just hope people can retrain and go into other jobs?” Roy asked. “I mean, they have to be productive jobs and they have to be things that are going to help Canada and help Canada grow.”

“I would like to see some concrete plans, good or bad. I want to see some plans so then at least we have a starting point to discuss things, but nobody seems to have plans.”