Manitoba Eco-Network Budget Consultation – What We Heard from Our Members

Manitoba Eco-Network Budget Consultation – What We Heard from Our Members

The Manitoba Eco-Network (MbEN) strives to create more opportunities for meaningful public participation in environmental governance. 

To foster better engagement within our network with respect to the Manitoba Budget we conducted a survey of our membership with respect to budget engagement and priorities.  

The survey and the subsequent report was completed by Simran Kaur (student) as part of the Labour Studies Field Placement program at the University of Manitoba. Responses were collected over a span of 5 weeks (12th Dec,2025-19thJan,2026). The survey was organized by three themes: participation, budget priorities, and engagement.

You can read the full report here, and we summarize our key findings below.

Priorities:

  • Respondents identified taxing polluters, environmental monitoring and compliance of industry, transitioning to more sustainable energy, Indigenous conservation and mass public transportation as top priorities for future budgets.
  • Additional priorities included education, public awareness of environmental issues, wetland protection and restoration, lowering carbon emissions for agriculture, natural disasters and public emergencies, climate informed health policy, investing in the creation and maintenance of protected areas, resources (staffing,etc.) for different departments, job training for the needed industries (e.g. building retrofit industry), and active transportation.
  • Respondents raised concerns about the lack of enforcement of existing regulations. In particular, the politics around clean water are of top concern.

Revenue:

  • Respondents want corporate taxes, corporate income tax, fuel taxes, minerals and petroleum royalties, tobacco tax, fines and costs and other legal fees to increase as sources of revenue in the provincial budget.
  • Respondents want to decrease tuition fees as a source of revenue.
  • Respondents were evenly divided on whether individual income tax should increase, decrease, stay the same, unsure as a source of revenue.

Expenses:

  • All respondents want to see an increase in funding for the Environment, and Climate change ministry. 
  • Respondents also wanted Advanced Education and Training, Education and Early Childhood Learning, Families, Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care, Housing, Addictions and Homelessness, Innovation and New Technology, Justice, Municipal and Northern Relations, Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures, and Transportation and Infrastructure ministries to receive more funding.

Participation & Engagement:

  • Respondents were split between those who had participated in budget engagement processes organized by the government in prior years, and those who had not.
  • The main barriers to participation was a lack of knowhow and limited organizations capacity.
  • The majority of respondents are interested in advocacy work for budget 2026-2027, as well as future budgets.
    • Budget coalition is the most favoured method of budget advocacy.
    • Followed by letters and petitions.