‘Austerity budgets’ in Sask. part of four-year fiscal plan
REGINA Saskatchewan is expecting a $2.1-billion deficit for the current fiscal year and plans to balance the budget by 2024-25, according to the first-quarter fiscal update released Thursday.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said Saskatchewan residents can expect “austerity” but not cuts over the next four years, as the government looks to hold expenses flat next fiscal year and keep spending growth to just 1.5 per cent thereafter. That’s lower than the target of two per cent the Bank of Canada usually sets for inflation, and well below spending growth in the past two budgets.
She said people in the province expect the government to live within its means.
“We fully recognize that we’re going to, yes, have austerity budgets, but that doesn’t mean cutting,” she said. “That just means minding spending. So can we have any large grandiose announcement, probably, for the next couple of years? I’m going to say not, unless it’s going to stimulate further growth.
“We have proven in the past that we can manage with austerity budgets and not necessarily cuts.”
She said the path set out in the plan, which foresees progressively shrinking deficits and a $125-million surplus in 2024-25, will form the basis for the Saskatchewan Party’s re-election platform. Any commitments will not diverge significantly from those strictures.
“It will be costed based on the numbers that you see today,” she said. Harpauer did not entirely rule out tax increases but said they are “not likely,” and not part of the four-year projections. Nor are any public sector layoffs in the offing, though she warned that the government will have to look “very carefully” at future salary increases beyond current contracts.