Don't get distracted on budget day
Pay attention to revenue and estimates, not election promises
In a weird and ironic way, events driven by the distrust of the Saskatchewan Party government are overshadowing this week's budget that a lot of people already don't much trust anyway.
Of course, there's ample reason to distrust any government's budgets ... especially under today's circumstances.
This isn't just Budget Day — this is Election Year Budget Day.
Under the Sask. Party regime, billion-dollar surplus/deficit swings have become far too common.
(We won't get a third-quarter update on the 2023-24 budget until budget day, but many are predicting a $2-billion swing from a predicted billion-dollar surplus expected a year ago to a billion-dollar deficit.)
Even if this were a normal budget year, adjusting to fluctuating resource prices and unpredictable weather would be problematic.
On budget day, watch for the government's revenue and price estimates for both potash and oil and also watch for contingency funding for both forest fire and added crop insurance costs.
But this in an election year in which governing parties are even more liberal with their spending and exceedingly generous with revenue predictions. And then there's the far-too-much-ignored debt issue.
In his last campaign in 2020, Premier Scott Moe made hay of the fact that his party was spending far less. It's more than opposition political spin to suggest Moe's government hasn't exactly lived up to the spirit of that commitment.
As noted by NDP Opposition Leader Carla Beck on Monday, in his six-year tenure as premier, public debt in Saskatchewan (according to public accounts) has increased by $14.8 billion — double the $7.4-billion public debt increase during his predecessor premier Brad Wall's 10-year tenure and even exceeding the $8.7-billion increase in Saskatchewan public debt in the 1980s under former Progressive Conservative premier Grant Devine.
While Beck is correct about Moe's debt record, she wouldn't exactly commit her party to a fall campaign platform that would be spending less. In fact, Beck's first question in Monday's question period was about removing the tax on fuel as a form of relief from inflation.
Saskatchewan collects
$500 million annually from the fuel tax. Wouldn't such measures only add to the public debt Beck cited an hour earlier as one of the province's biggest problems since Moe became premier?
Right now, we are accumulating public debt at an unprecedented rate with no mechanism to reduce it ... other than the bizarre hope that income from taxes and resources will magically exceed service needs and demand from the public.
That never works out. In the rare year when the stars align and that happens, what kicks in is what we saw last year when it initially looked like we were heading for a second straight billion-dollar surplus — and an immediate public demand that government cut taxes.
This is one of the reasons we all need to pay attention on budget day — particularly, on those budget days that happen to be the last ones before a general election.
Will the Sask. Party set up the fall campaign with a big-spending budget and maybe even tax cuts? It's quite possible, but can we afford that without further substantial increases in public debt?
Avoiding distractions on budget day this year will be more important ever. Alas, this year, there appears to be more distractions than ever.
As MLAS and their guests arrive to hear Finance Minister Donna Harpauer deliver her seventh and final budget Wednesday, they will have to run a gauntlet of teachers and supporters who have picked budget day for a full-scale, one-day walkout.
Add to this the news that Hoopla — the annual provincial high school championship tournament — may now be cancelled.
This teachers' contract dispute lingers because teachers already don't trust the solutions for classroom composition and complexity that will be proposed in today's budget. It's a lot of distraction.
Yet it is this distrust that will be one of the many distractions from a 202425 budget — a budget that will require our undivided attention.