Sale of SaskTel may not be a sure thing

So, after years of trying to prove he wasn’t ideologically bent on privatizing major Saskatchewan Crown corporations, Premier Brad Wall is now hell-bent on selling SaskTel for an unfathomable price to deal with a debt he’s insisted is manageable?

Let that one sink in for a minute.

And if you are still of the mind that this is a wolf-insheep’s-clothing Brad Wall fulfilling Grant Devine’s long-held secret privatization agenda, maybe let it sink in a minute more.

This is not to say Wall is beyond doing goofy things just to appease his red-meat Tory base, or even that he wouldn’t sell SaskTel if someone actually met his seeming $4.1-billion asking price.

But let’s step back and take a closer look at both those points as well.

Consider how much rural conservatives — the backbone of Wall’s Saskatchewan Party government who now afford him 30 of his 51 seats — have relied on SaskTel for cell, satellite TV and Internet services that private providers find less economical to provide in remote regions.

Is it more than a myth — or propaganda, as proprivatizers would like to call it — that both Saskatchewan and Manitoba (at least, before the sale of MTS to BCE for $3.1 billion) have had cheaper cellular rates and better bandwidth-per-dollar coverage because of the competition they offered Bell, Rogers and Shaw?

Wall’s own conservative base likes competition and cheap rates, too.

But he’s desperate to get the money — “maybe enough to eliminate our operating debt” — you say? Well, little this government has done in the way of added spending suggests it is “desperate” to curb debt. But let’s explore what Wall is saying here.

That “operating debt” (the old general revenue fund “credit-card debt” from past accumulated deficits) is $4.1 billion. According to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in 2013, SaskTel had a book value of about $2.1 billion, with perhaps an added intrinsic value of between $662 million and $883 million.

Of course, the $3.1-billion sale of MTS will have some arguing SaskTel is worth much more because it was always a far better-run company. It has been better run than MTS, but would any eager buyer look at the slightly smaller Saskatchewan market yet still pay a billion dollars more? If Wall were serious about selling, why would he attach a price that’s about $1 billion over SaskTel’s market value? And why would he further scare off any potential buyer by adding that any sale might be contingent on a possible referendum, which he might lose?

Why would Wall want something like this accompanying the Sask. Party’s next election, which would surely give something for his political opponents to rally around?

Well, maybe it’s because Wall is not as serious about selling SaskTel as some have assumed. Let us further parse the words on this matter from Wall after his cabinet shuffle Friday. “We may get an offer.” “If we get an offer and we think it’s one that generates a significant amount of money for the province, maybe enough to eliminate our operating debt ...”

“If it’s the right deal, (we’d) be advocating it, I expect.”

That’s a lot of “ifs” and qualifiers. Add a further condition from Wall, “if it takes care of the jobs question in Regina, if it provides the opportunity for better coverage, we’re at least going to take it to the people.”

The “we’re going to take it to the people” part only sounds definitive if you exclude all his other qualifiers.

So why would Wall say this at all?

Well, a $4.1-billion offer would be hard to turn down. But since he’s unlikely to get it, Wall can claim he was being fiscally prudent and not ideologically driven.

In the meantime, he’s now framed the next budget conversation as a choice between cuts or doing something people want even less, like selling SaskTel.

SaskTel for sale? Maybe, but maybe not.