NDP wonders if gov’t is favouring rural areas
The Saskatchewan government’s decision to strip $33 million in grants from more than 100 cities and towns while preserving funds earmarked for rural municipalities reflects its “profound” hostility to the interests of larger centres, according to the Saskatchewan NDP.
The Sask. Party did not display a “principled approach” when it cut grants-in-lieu of taxes paid by SaskPower, SaskEnergy and TransGas but not SaskTel, the only major Crown corporation to pay RMs, said Opposition House Leader Warren McCall.
“It’s just sort of mind-blowing,” McCall said of the decision to redirect into government coffers funds that would otherwise have been paid to the province’s largest cities.
Government Relations Minister Donna Harpauer said the province has no intention of reinstating the “inequitable” grants-in-lieu of taxes paid by the large Crown corporations, which “probably should have been looked at 40 years ago.”
The grants program was introduced in the mid-20th century as a way of compensating municipalities for the value of assets and revenue lost as a result of their inability to set up independent power and energy distribution services.
Crown corporations other than SaskPower and SaskEnergy pay grants-in-lieu of municipal taxes based on the assessed value of their properties and assets in communities across the province.
Data for the 2016-17 fiscal year is not yet available, but Crown corporation disclosures for the 12 months ended March 31, 2016, show about 93 per cent of the $44 million in grants paid by SaskPower, SaskEnergy and TransGas went to the province’s large cities.
Together, Saskatoon and Regina were home to 42 per cent of the provincial population and received about 65 per cent of the now-eliminated grants-in-lieu of taxes. That equates to an annual per capital loss of $43 in Saskatoon and $84 in Regina.
SaskTel, meanwhile, paid a combined total of $6.6 million in grants over the same period; slightly less than $3 million of that was split between dozens of RMs. SGI paid $6.1 million in grants during the 2015-16 fiscal year, all of which went to towns and cities.
Shortly after releasing its 201718 budget, the government announced plans to cap reductions to grants-in-lieu at 30 per cent of a given municipality’s revenue sharing, reducing the cuts to $33 million from $36 million.