Sask. budget features big-ticket spending
REGINA — The Saskatchewan government is promising bigticket spending on health, education and communities along with no tax hikes and a $273-million deficit.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer introduced the 2024-25 budget Wednesday, saying that with a growing population and a strong export-focused resource sector, now is the time to invest.
“I would have loved to have ended my last budget as balanced and able to do a tax reduction,” Harpauer told reporters before introducing the document in the house.
“However, it is the budget I am comfortable with, because I do think the premier decided to prioritize in substantive increases.”
This is Harpauer’s last year in politics before she retires and the last budget from Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government before a fall election.
The budget promises more than $1 billion in additional spending in core areas, including to address classroom sizes and supports for learning, to shorten surgical wait lists and $340 million in its revenue sharing program with municipalities.
Total spending for the budget is pegged at just over $20 billion, and the debt is expected to rise to $34 billion by spring 2025.
Along with the deficit in the 2024-25 budget, there is also more red ink in the current budget. The projected deficit for the fiscal year ending in March is expected to almost double to $483 million.
Harpauer defended the deficit budgeting.
She said Saskatchewan has the second lowest net-debt-toGDP ratio in the country, and the province needs to keep pace with a growing economy and rising population.
The Opposition NDP said the budget is another exercise in bungled money management and missed opportunities from a government that can’t be trusted to keep its word.
NDP Leader Carla Beck said the Saskatchewan Party made promises before the 2016 election, then made cuts.
She said the budget offers no fuel tax relief for commuters and doesn’t bring forward innovation to transform the healthcare system.
“This province used to be a nation leader in health care,” Beck told reporters. “If there was ever a time to pop the hood on our health system and repair it from the ground up, this budget would have been it.”
Beck said it’s not always about spending more money, but how it’s managed. The province is spending millions more on contract nurses and overtime, when it could work with employees to find other solutions, she said.
Harpauer said life in Saskatchewan remains good, with residents enjoying one of the most affordable places to live in Canada while paying lower income taxes than in other jurisdictions.