We could build a nuclear plant with money from SaskTel sale

It is good we can speak openly about the possible sale of SaskTel. This is healthy, whether SaskTel is sold or not.

There was a time, not so long ago, that even to mention the possible sale of a Crown corporation was verboten. The NDP under Lorne Calvert won a provincial election in 2003 by claiming the Sask Party secretly planned to “sell off” the sacrosanct Crowns. Always “sell off,” never just “sell,” as if the Crowns were priceless family heirlooms, like great grandma’s butter churn.

After winning that election, Calvert’s New Democrats set the stage for the next one with legislation that actually made it against the law for any future government to sell any of the four big Crowns. Never mind that any future government could just change the law. The Sask. Party, by then under Brad Wall, was reduced to supporting that legislation, conceding it reflected public opinion, but in the ensuing campaign again was accused by New Democrats of secretly planning to “sell off” the Crowns. Voters by then were fed up with the feckless NDP and prepared to risk it.

The Sask. Party since has pretty much avoided the subject of privatization, until now. What changed, among other things, was the sale this spring of Manitoba Telecom to BCE, a Quebec-based corporate conglomerate, for $3.9 billion. The price provoked a Pavlovian drooling response as far away as Regina.

We would have to be crazy not to at least consider a similar offer for SaskTel. The alternative to looking at a serious offer is to maintain the absurd position that no Crown can ever be sold, that we must keep them all, forever, even if the purpose for doing so no longer applies. This is the same pathological mentality we see on Hoarders. Whether in an apartment or a provincial investment portfolio, you can’t let stuff you don’t need pile up.

This is not to endorse the sale of SaskTel. It depends on the offer. It depends on what we do with the money.

There is no merit in selling a profitable asset to pay for ongoing expenses. That’s like eating your seed corn. Wall suggests the proceeds could help pay down the provincial debt. This has more appeal, but the debt mostly was amassed by excessive spending in the past. Selling Crowns to pay for excessive spending, past or present, only works until we run out of Crowns to sell. What do we sell then to keep it going? The furniture?

Better that money from such a monumental sale is invested in capital projects that add value to the province, a nuclear power plant, say. We then would have something durable to show for the windfall while preventing future governments from pissing it away to get re-elected.

It’s not as if keeping SaskTel is without risk. An independent review this summer projected diminishing profits for SaskTel’s shareholders, namely us. The corporation’s past is brighter than its future as a small-time player competing with giants, the review found. Who wants to hang on like grim death to diminishing profits? That’s what suckers do.

But SaskTel has never been all about profits. The corporation attracts and keeps here a lot of capable people who otherwise would be working elsewhere. It provides services, especially in rural and remote areas, the private sector might otherwise overlook. It contributes more to community projects in the province than all its competitors put together. This is the added value of a head office in Regina instead of Toronto or Montreal.

Some say SaskTel provides cheaper service than the competition, but that is a better argument for higher prices than for never selling SaskTel. Wall has promised that any offer on SaskTel would be put to a referendum or election campaign. He didn’t say this, but if it means he can talk about Crowns during the campaign instead of, say, runaway deficits, so much the better.