YORKTON - Recently the Saskatchewan government presented its mid-year financial report, and the province has slipped back into red.
The forecast is for a deficit of $250-million this fiscal year due to higher expenses related to the summer drought and lower projected resource revenues – in particular potash.
The mid-year financial report also forecasts Saskatchewan is to spend about $1.3 billion more than it had budgeted.
Where to start on such news?
It would be easy to point to the problems forecasting resource revenue but then again this government has often missed its mark in estimating what those revenues might be – particularly in the case of potash.
Now Finance Minister Donna Harpauer did suggest no one was able to accurately predict how Russia's invasion of Ukraine would affect commodity prices and production levels, but of course that invasion began in February 2022, 22-months ago, so you probably wanted to be ultra conservative on forecasts to start with this year.
As for the drought, no one can blame the government for that one, although given Premier Scott Moe’s recent penchant for blaming all ills on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government it’s like Moe wondered how he might spin the drought as an Ottawa problem.
Perhaps more importantly we should be questioning spending of late in the light of running in the red, and scrutinizing what this government is doing in terms of planning.
For example not long after announcing the deficit another government release introduced the Chief Marshal of the new Saskatchewan Marshals Service.
When you are in the red was a Marshals Service a good place to spend money? Was it even needed when one considers we live in a country with a national police force (the RCMP), with one of the best reputations in the world?
And, if the Marshal Service is so badly needed we might ask why now when the Saskatchewan Party has been in power since 2007, or 16 years in power to have created the service.
Of course right now we seem to be seeing the Saskatchewan Party rolling out a number of things which seem money ill spent.
Take the Saskatchewan First Act’s Economic Assessment Tribunal and its first referral for economic analysis and consideration, the federal Clean Electricity Regulations (CER), as exhibit one.
Does anyone think this effort will come up with anything that is not pro Saskatchewan Party point-of-view and that the villain won’t be Trudeau? The perception is a rather self-serving effort paid for with taxpayer dollars.
Then there are programs and legislation rolling out which beg the question why did it take 16 years?
Why all these years into your run in power does this government launch a program promoting the importance of firearms safety and licensing through a new safety campaign that will be broadcast on radio, billboards and social media?
Or, why now does the Government pass Bill 139, The Saskatchewan Remembrance Observance Act, as a way to ensure that employees are able to wear a poppy recognized by the Royal Canadian Legion in the workplace if they choose, unless it poses a danger to health, safety or welfare of the worker or others? Was this suddenly an oft occurring issue, or simply a way to put a little shine on the government by doing something related to veterans more than a decade and a half into their run?
Ultimately, the mid-term deficit might just be a tired government focusing on cosmetic legislation rather than finding solutions to the bad bottom line.
