Pared-down legislature will sit for 14 days

Premier says budget being presented June 15 will include a ‘pandemic deficit’

The NDP cast a joint plan to reopen the legislature for 14 sitting days as a victory achieved through public pressure, but Premier Scott Moe said he’s comfortable with the deal to scrutinize a budget that will include a “pandemic deficit.”

Saskatchewan’s two major parties released the arrangement simultaneously Tuesday at noon. It foresees a budget tabled on June 15, with estimates studied for 60 hours in committee. The Monday to Friday sittings will include a break for Canada Day and conclude July 3, one day after a final vote on the budget.

The two parties have agreed to limit the number of MLAS in the chamber, with just 10 government and five NDP members present.

“This will be, by far, the most extensive scrutiny of any budget in any house in this nation since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moe told reporters on Tuesday.

He said the budget will be “based largely” on the $14-billion spending estimates revealed on March 18, with additional funding for support and stimulus programs announced in the months since.

Moe said the deal could have come sooner if the NDP didn’t negotiate through the media. But Opposition Leader Ryan Meili argued that his party’s persistent campaign won the day for accountability.

“After weeks of pressure from the NDP Opposition, the public and the media, today we won an important victory for democracy,” Meili said in a statement.

He said his party will push for an economic recovery plan that helps struggling families, as well as “accountability and answers to the government’s handling of COVID-19 and its economic fallout.”

The legislative assembly adjourned on March 18, with the government citing the COVID-19 pandemic just as cases began to ramp up in Saskatchewan. On that day, Finance Minister Donna Harpauer announced the government’s spending plans, but did not table them in the house. MLAS have not met since.

By late April, the NDP was demanding a resumption of legislative debate and a budget. It faulted the government for spending through cabinet order without legislative oversight.

The NDP initially asked for a budget on June 15 followed by a 28-day sitting. Moe shot down that idea, saying no provincial legislature anywhere in Canada was meeting for that long during the pandemic.

On May 21, the government proposed an eight-day sitting with five question periods. Meili called it “an insult.”

Jim Farney, head of the politics and international studies department at the University of Regina, had been among the voices calling for a sitting, which will be the last before a provincial election slated for October.

“We need something like a full sitting,” Farney reiterated Tuesday. “I think that’s really important. I would hope that part of it for the government is recognizing that, hey, this type of scrutiny is uncomfortable for government to go to, maybe it feels like a distraction from our real business right now, but it’s really important to democracy’s functioning.”

He said the government may have had “strategic calculation” for choosing dates in late June.

“The COVID situation is pretty good. You’re able to wipe the slate clean of these concerns around process and democracy that might have built up over the spring,” said Farney.

“If you kind of fight and quibble and drag it out it just becomes this drip, drip, drip of questions around what you’re hiding.”

Finance officials have pegged the revenue hit facing the province at somewhere between $1.3 billion and $3.3 billion, depending on average oil prices and how quickly the province recovers after a crisis that has already cost tens of thousands of jobs.

Moe confirmed on Tuesday that the government will be tabling a deficit, which he called a “pandemic deficit” connected to plunging revenue.

But he said it will still build a “strong Saskatchewan,” a slogan that has appeared on Saskatchewan Party billboards.

He said the budget will help take the first steps toward the government’s growth plan targets, which was the centrepiece of the fall sitting.

Farney expects the sitting next month will be more focused than usual, and could become especially partisan given the looming election. He said it will likely provide “the clips that we’ll see in the fall campaign ads.”

He wonders how much the past two months of pandemic politics will shake up how Moe and Meili position themselves on the floor.

“This should be the two weeks in which they really both trial and establish what their core messaging is going to be for the fall campaign,” he said.

“To me, the interesting bit will be how they perform on the floor of the house, but also, do they seem kind of changed in their positioning by the experience.”

This will be, by far, the most extensive scrutiny of any budget in any house in this nation since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.