Groups representing a cross-section of Manitobans — from city dwellers to business owners to parents — crowded into the rotunda of the legislative building Wednesday afternoon to give their reaction to the finance minister's plan for Manitobans' money.

While the budget touts its "tax savings for all Manitobans," it actually offers little to the average Manitoban, said Adrienne Batra, spokeswoman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

"All they have done is put maybe $30 back into our pockets," she said. "All the hard-working Manitobans out there aren't really going to save very much. That doesn't even buy you a tank of gas. Coupled with that, they have not indexed tax brackets to the rate of inflation, so we really aren't going to be saving much."

Several groups have been calling on the government to index personal tax rates to inflation to end "bracket creep," which occurs when inflation and cost-of-living pay raises push workers into higher tax brackets, even though their real incomes have not risen.

The 2007 budget raised the income threshold for the middle income-tax rate to $66,000 in 2008, which the government said was the first step in a multi-year plan to increase the threshold to $70,000.

The budget also mentioned plans to lower the lowest income-tax rate over four years and raise its income threshold to $35,000, but that won't happen until January 2009 — if the NDP maintains its hold on power in the next election.

Police increase pleases

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz said that overall he's pleased with the budget.

Katz welcomed a boost in the number of police officers in the city — the province is funding 14 new officers, including five already announced for the city's auto-theft unit — and several million dollars for affordable housing.

"There is some very positive things done today and over the past three or four months," Katz said. "I think everybody is always looking for more, but you know, there is only so much money to go around."

There's also money in the budget for public transit, roads and bridges, and the city's water treatment plant, but Katz said most of that funding had already been announced. There were no big surprises for Winnipeg, in the budget, he said, but he will gladly take whatever the province is offering.

Lorne Shenkel, president of the Winnipeg Police Association, said he was not surprised by the funding for new officers.

Winnipeg already has more officers per capita that most major Canadian cities, but Shenkel said more are always welcome.

"Certainly from the perspective of the association, the provincial government has been very supportive of public safety, whether it's the street-crimes unit, where they funded an additional 45 members, [and] they've stepped up repeatedly through the years here, and that's positive from the perspective of front-line policing that there's an additional nine members in the budget."

The budget also included money for two new police officers in Brandon and 14 new RCMP officers.

Shenkel said there is a shortage of police officers generally across the province, and the additional funding is a move in the right direction.

Student groups were also pleased with what the budget offered. The province increased funding to post-secondary institutions, and confirmed a previously announced 60 per cent income-tax rebate for tuition fees.

"It's a real positive step that the government has increased funding for universities and colleges by seven per cent," said Rachel Gotthilf with the Canadian Federation of Students at the University of Manitoba.

"They also decided to continue the tuition freeze, which is definitely a step towards accessibility to universities and colleges."

Poverty initiatives 'small'

While the budget offered some relief for low-income Manitobans, it's not nearly enough, according to people who deal with poverty in the province.

Sid Frankel of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg said he was pleased to see more money in the budget for job training for people who receive social assistance, but the government could have invested a lot more money in low-income families.

"We're sorry to see that the initiatives are so small," he said.

"The new child benefit is only $5 more a month than the existing benefit.  We're sorry to see that almost nothing is being done to improve the labour market for low-income earners. No promised increases for mininum wage. No good job creation."

David Northcott, spokesman for the Winnipeg Harvest food bank, said he also found the budget disappointing.

"We were looking for more of a unified, organized thought process that said, 'Let's wrestle this poverty issue once and for all,'" he said.

"Newfoundland and Labrador has just gone and announced a … program to reduce poverty, and they've got action plans attached to it. The government has done that. So we were partly expecting that would be in the budget language, to say, 'Here's the overall plan and here's how we'll fund it.' We didn't see that. And we're nervous about the future long-term plans for us."

Business, child-care groups unimpressed

The president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce gave the provincial budget a grade of C+, saying it included some positive changes, but he was mostly disappointed.

"With all of the revenue coming from the federal government through equalization — about $117 million altogether — we thought what a great opportunity to really have dramatic tax cuts that would be the talk of the country, that would get the attention of businesses even internationally," he said.

"Our position has been clear: we want to be in the top three competitive tax rates of all taxes across the board, and we're not close to that, and we won't be close even over the long term."

Angus said he was happy to see the payroll-tax threshold raised to $1.25 million, which will exempt about 200 businesses from the tax.

He also expressed appreciation for the new "green energy manufacturing credit," which provides a 10 per cent credit against the costs a manufacturer incurs to make a system more environmentally friendly.

"I think that companies are going to require some financial help in order to invest in new technologies around the environment," he said.

While the budget included $14 million in new provincial money for child-care, Pat Wege of the Manitoba Child Care Association was not impressed.

The new money replaces federal funding lost when the Conservative government cancelled the child-care plan of the previous federal Liberals.

The end result, Wege said, is that day cares have the same amount of money to spend as last year.

"It's backfilled money, it's not new money," she said. "Really, it's money that was spent in 2005, and I'm not seeing anything here that is new."

In the end, in an election year, the reaction from lobbyists in the rotunda likely matters less to the provincial government than the reaction on the doorsteps of voters.

It will take the coming election, widely expected this spring, to determine if the "building budget" delivers what the NDP set out to achieve: a third mandate.