The budget, is it about people or pavement?

This Thursday is budget day in Manitoba and to say that the NDP has a lot to manage is an understatement.

It's been two years since the PST was hiked to eight percent, kicking off months of turmoil in the party which nearly saw Premier Greg Selinger lose his job after five key cabinet ministers resigned. In part, they 
cited the upped PST as an issue. In part, they cited Selinger's lack of consultation on some key decisions saying that they didn't feel like their concerns were being heard.

Selinger, however, won a critical leadership vote last month. He survived to see another day... and another budget.

The question is, what will we see in that budget?

Will it be about people or will it be about pavement? 

Let's start with the pavement

Thursday is the day when we should be seeing the payoff for what we paid in. That PST hike is supposed to improve our infrastructure so you get to work faster and our highways are less embarrassing. Those promises, however, cost a lot of dough.

For example, let's look at the Waverley underpass, it has been identified as a top priority for funding. The head of Public Works says it's estimated to cost $175 million to get it fixed up. That cost would be split among three levels of government so the province's piece would be about $58 million.  

It could be argued of course, that the NDP would get a lot of bang for those bucks – 30,000 vehicles go through the area daily and they would no longer be delayed by 30 to 40 trains each day.

Improved infrastructure is a visible reminder that your money was spent to make things better. You can quantify it, take a photo of it, or tweet out how the new underpass cured your train headache.

It's popular, even trendy, to talk about improving the roads right now. Who will argue that we couldn't use a facelift? 

You could, however, take that money and spend it on people.

How about those people?

Improving the lives of people, however, is much trickier than pavement. People are more complicated to fix and by government cost benefit analysis standards... not as reliable.

If you put money into a drug rehabilitation program and the people don't kick their addictions, was it still money well spent?

If you fund a safe house for sexually-exploited teenage girls, is it worth it in the long run?

I have some experience with that last example. I recently went to rural Manitoba to a secretly located healing lodge called Hands of Mother Earth – or HOME.

• Teen girls who faced sexual exploitation find safety at HOME

Six young girls between the ages of 13 and 16 live there, all are in CFS care and have been sexually exploited. Some of these children had been forced to sleep with up to 10 men per day since they were just 10 years old.

HOME gave them a chance to break free of the predators in the city and give them a chance to be kids, to go to school, to heal if they could find a way.

When I was there, the girls were looking forward to going to the playground and jumping on the trampoline. The place was full of little hand-drawn posters with roses and hearts containing self-affirming messages like, "forgiveness is one thing everyone deserves."

So people or pavement?

Let's get back to our premise.

What is the possibility of saving one of those girls worth to us as a society?

Diane Redsky, the Executive Director of the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre says the provincial funding for HOME is $800,000 per year... or $133,000 per girl.  

If you used the Waverley underpass funding you could reach 436 girls instead of six.  

That value can't be quantified on a spreadsheet.

We have to find the value in our money being spent to prevent those girls from having to crawl up a riverbank after a beating or having to be pulled out of the water lifeless. At least we hope that they will survive – but people, as I said, are complicated. 

I personally have always been a big supporter of pavement spending. I get it. I want it. I think we need it.

However, at this particular time in our community, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how a pothole trumps a person in Manitoba. 

We'll see how it all adds up on Thursday. We can only hope that our government has seriously considered how to spend each and every one of our hard-earned dollars. 

How do you hope the money flows? Let me know on Twitter @cbcmarcy @cbcinforad or on Information Radio's Facebook page.