As Manitoba budget day looms, Canada's most popular premier prepares to solve a financial riddle

For the federal Liberal government, it had to be disheartening to see Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew — the most popular provincial leader in Canada, according to a recent poll — smiling and shaking hands with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

The Opposition leader doesn't meet with many premiers. He doesn't have to. Poilievre's party is riding a wave of popularity, even as he appears to eschew political convention.

But the opportunity to rub shoulders with Kinew on Thursday at the Manitoba Legislative Building presented an opportunity for the Conservative leader.

By exchanging compliments with Kinew, one of the few left-of-centre premiers left in Canada, Poilievre got to present himself as a very statesmanlike prime minister in waiting. 

The last thing Justin Trudeau wanted to see going into the weekend was his political arch-nemesis making nice with one of the prime minister's few remaining ideological allies.

How this shakes out for Kinew and Trudeau over the remaining 18 months before the next federal election is expected is unclear. Manitoba's newish NDP premier has yet to do much governing of his own, at least in the form of consequential decision-making.

That is about to change.

On Tuesday, Kinew and his finance minister, Adrien Sala, will present their government's first budget, a spending plan that has to outline how the two leaders can fulfil a series of somewhat disparate NDP pledges.

On one hand, Kinew and Sala have promised to improve health care, upgrade Manitoba's energy grid and continue with some of the tax cuts brought in by the former PC government. Those are costly propositions.

On the other, they've promised to eliminate Manitoba's suddenly staggering deficit — can it top $2 billion by the end of the fiscal year, which happens to be today? — over the course of a single term.

"There's been a tremendous buildup to this event, because the actions of the still relatively new government six months into its life have been about mainly symbolic announcements," along with a few budget teases, said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

Expectations are high for the NDP government and especially for Sala, who has been asked to help Kinew fulfil his spending promises while cutting back on spending, said Thomas.

In purely logical terms, it doesn't seem possible for any government to do both. Sala doesn't agree, however.

"I think we're going to show that we can," Sala told reporters Thursday during a pre-budget photo op.