Sask. Party budget plan is solid

In his Jan. 3 column, Murray Mandryk stated that our party “subscribes to Wall’s wing-and-a-prayer approach of all will be well when oil and other resources recover.”

The 2017/18 budget proves the opposite is true.

Premier Wall has stated explicitly on numerous occasions that resource prices will not recover to the levels we have seen in recent years, and that’s why we need to reduce our dependency on resource revenues.

By contrast, Alberta’s New Democrat government did subscribe to a “wing-and-aprayer approach” to budgeting.

Writing in Maclean’s last year, economists Trevor Tombe and Blake Shaffer noted that “in dealing with low oil prices, Alberta and Saskatchewan provide a strong contrast. In one, debt is buying time. In the other difficult choices are being made.”

A month ago, credit agency DBRS downgraded Alberta’s credit rating from AA (high) to AA with all trends negative “because the Province has yet to demonstrate any real willingness to address the weakest budget outlook among all provinces.”

DBRS is concerned Alberta’s plan to return to balance relies on a recovery in resource revenues, rather than on fundamental adjustments to the budget.

DBRS, meanwhile, did not change Saskatchewan’s credit rating after our budget because the agency believes our three-year plan to return to balance “is credible and coherent.”

Mandryk is right: there is a provincial government riding on a wing and prayer. He just has the wrong government. Donna Harpauer, Minister of Finance