Manitoba tabs $500K to build Saskatchewan, Alberta connections

A slice of Manitoba’s 2026 budget will go to courting trade opportunities from businesses in the other Prairie provinces.

At an event Wednesday morning in Winnipeg to discuss the province’s latest budget, Finance Minister Adrien Sala told business leaders $500,000 would be distributed to the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce over two years to work with its fellow chambers in Saskatchewan and Alberta to pursue leads and invest in interprovincial trade opportunities.

“This is about building on the work we’ve done to reduce interprovincial trade barriers,” Sala told the Free Press.

“We’ve made advancements and signed (memorandums of understanding) with neighbouring provinces to help ensure that we can move more of our products and people to create more economic growth opportunities in Manitoba, but this is that next step in actually helping businesses to get to Saskatchewan, get to Alberta, and bring those businesses to Manitoba.”

The Manitoba chambers has connected businesses to trade opportunities within the province since 2018, but the funding gives it the opportunity to expand nationally, said president and CEO Chuck Davidson.

Around 20 to 30 business leaders will go on four delegation trips — two to Alberta and two to Saskatchewan — and will host two trips in Manitoba.

“We’ve talked so much about getting rid of internal trade barriers in this country … it’s all great to get rid of the barriers, but if nobody takes advantage of it, then who cares?” Davidson said.

“This is what this is really meant to do, to start developing some of those relationships across provincial boundaries.”

In December, Manitoba hosted a delegation of businesses from Alberta, and those meetings have already resulted in new contracts between companies in the respective provinces, Davidson said.

“What we’re really trying to do is (ask): how can we lessen that reliance on the U.S. and start looking at other partners within our own country?”

As of the third-quarter update, the province has reduced its procurement from the United States by nearly 30 per cent.

Bringing business owners from outside of Manitoba to the northern town of Churchill to see that community’s deep water port firsthand is one of the organization’s first goals, he said.

The provincial government’s budget includes $10 million for building private-sector interest in the Churchill rail and port trade corridor.

“If I think about the biggest economy growth opportunity we have ahead of us, there’s no question that it’s Churchill,” Sala said Wednesday.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca