Politics and other pressing matters dampen reaction to budget

There are reasons why the 201819 Saskatchewan budget is likely going over better with the public than it should.

One reason is that sometimes life events put budgets — or at least, the usual grousing about budget content — into perspective. The Humboldt Broncos bus crash has now killed 16 people. Some things just don’t matter as much right now.

But perhaps it simply comes down to the fact that this budget wasn’t as atrocious as the 2017-18 budget that was not only unkind, but ill-conceived.

Or maybe, better put, the things in the 2018-19 budget that are most atrocious aren’t the things we normally complain about, anyway.

The atrocious thing is the escalating Saskatchewan public debt — currently at $17.7 billion — will be $20 billion by March 31, 2019, $21.5 billion by 2020, $22.3 billion by 2021 and $23.1 billion by 2022.

Perhaps the most underplayed figure in the 2018-19 budget is the $655 million in debt charges. What we like to call the equivalent to your monthly credit card charges has now returned to a level unseen in Saskatchewan since the days of the Grant Devine Progressive Conservative government and the recovery years after.

Moreover, we aren’t likely anywhere as close to balancing the budget as the government claims. The $366-million deficit figure is remarkably arbitrary, having everything to do with utilizing the accrual adjustments to pension liabilities to one’s accounting advantage

— a $352-million calculation windfall from the Saskatchewan teachers’ pension plan alone.

But the cynical nature of politics is such that Premier Scott Moe’s government knows full well debt is hardly ever a top-ofmind issue with the public. It’s never even much discussed until a government experiences a credit-rating downgrade, which hasn’t happened to Saskatchewan ... yet.

And in the interim, the Sask. Party government can rightly highlight to its critics — especially those on the left — its new-found Keynesian economic view that all the public money it is pumping into the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon or the Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford or the Regina bypass and Global Transportation Hub is getting us through the decline in oil, potash, natural gas and other resource revenues.

There is validity to this argument — especially when everyone knows that enhancing both Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital and the old North Battleford hospital are long overdue.

While the Saskatchewan Builds Capital Plan that peaked at a whopping $1.8 billion last year and will remain at $1.6 billion this budget year and next is the thing most fuelling the worrisome public debt, the Sask. Party government knows full well debt is never that worrisome.

In fact, favoured stakeholders like the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce and Canadian Federation of Independent Business essentially support this budget-day debt increase if it means economic activity being provided by a government they favour.

Even though some of their own members are affected by the budget decision to reapply the PST on used cars — one of the very first things the Wall/Sask. Party government eliminated in 2007 — don’t expect to hear many complaints from such stakeholders.

And on budget day, it’s almost always loud voices like these that drown out those with concerns on other issues like the elimination of the low-income housing supplement or the lack of money to fight the opioid crisis or shortfalls in funding for mental health.

However, let’s acknowledge the 2018-19 budget just didn’t have the funding shortfalls or nasty little cuts to libraries or funeral services to the poor or big-ticket tax hikes like the one-percentage increase to the PST we saw last year. When you stop getting hit over the head, it feels better.

Or at the very least this year, Moe isn’t having to spend all his time justifying his budget and can more quickly move the political agenda back to his issues, like opposing the carbon tax or advocating the Trans Mountain pipeline.

It is a better budget, but the simple reality is that its worst aspects aren’t what we normally complain about.