Manitoba Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen says he is pleased with what his government has accomplished when it comes to reducing the province's deficit. The government announced Friday it had a deficit of $695 million in the last fiscal year. Goertzen says that is $145 million lower than budgeted and way down from where it would have been if the government had not taken action. He notes the work can be overwhelming at times.

"You get into government and you start looking at the mess. You find different things that you weren't expecting like the fact the FleetNet system, which is important for communications for firefighters and first responders, needed to be fixed and it was a $300 million fix, or the stadium (Investor's Group Field) debacle where it was basically a house of cards and you had to figure out how you are going to pay for that. You wonder sometimes whether you can turn this ship around. Now, about two-and-a-half years in, we're seeing the results. The deficit is less than half of what it would have been had the NDP stayed in government. Not only are we reducing the deficit, but we are beating our own expectations."

Goertzen says a lot of savings have been achieved by finding better ways to operate with fewer resources and he gives a lot of the credit to the civil service.

"It's not about always cutting. What it's about is looking at efficiencies. We continue to look at: How do you do things better? In many ways, we're achieving better results with less resources and I've got to give credit to the professional civil service that we have. The men and women within our public service, they are coming forward with very creative ideas about how to deliver the same amount of services in different ways that are more efficient. They have been a huge part of this and I think we will continue to look for those efficiencies."

As the MLA for Steinbach, Goertzen says he is proud to report back to his constituents about the government's achievements in deficit reduction.

"I heard, going into the last election, people of the Steinbach constituency saying, you know you can't continue to live beyond your means year after year. They wanted us to get the deficit in order and get back to balance and we're doing what we promised we would do. We're on our way and we're on track and we may even be a little ahead of schedule."