Saskatchewan needs to stop running up debt and interest charges.
But so far, provincial politicians are refusing to act and it’s costing taxpayers.
The government has only balanced the budget twice in the last 10 years. The debt has more than doubled during that time and Saskatchewanians are paying the cost with rising debt interest payments.
The debt was $6.4 billion and the interest payments taxpayers $275 million 10 years ago. By the end of this year, the debt will be $21 billion and the interest will cost $728 million.
That means that everyone in Saskatchewan is on the hook for $582 in interest payments this year.
That’s money that could have been used for important services or providing tax relief to families, but it’s being wasted because of the government’s fiscal failure. The money being wasted on debt interest this year is enough to hire more than 7,000 nurses or police officers, about 25 new K-12 schools or cut the fuel tax entirely with $200 million to spare.
With days left before Saskatchewanians head to the polls, neither of Saskatchewan’s biggest political parties are taking the debt issue seriously this election.
Both the provincial NDP and the Saskatchewan Party have recently released their full platforms with costs. The NDP says it would back to balance in four years and the Saskatchewan Party says it will get there in three.
Saskatchewan doesn’t have time to wait. The time to balance the budget is now.
These projections are done by the parties themselves and that means these numbers are the best-case scenario. Trusting politicians to clean up the budget years from now is like parents trusting their teenagers to clean up their rooms next weekend.
For years, the NDP under leader Carla Beck has called out the current government for ballooning the debt but, will let it grow for another four years if she wins the election.
The Saskatchewan Party platform the budget a year earlier, but its 2020 platform a balanced budget in 2024. This year the deficit is to be $354 million.
This is because both parties lack the guts to find savings and cut wasteful spending and instead are relying on economic growth and taking more from the taxpayer piggy bank to try and balance the budget.
The NDP says they will taxpayers $58.3 million next year through cuts to “Sask Party waste/mismanagement,” while planning to spend $3.7 billion more over the next four years.
The Saskatchewan Party has no mention of money in its platform.
Both Beck and Premier Scott Moe need to find savings to get the budget balanced. The NDP says the right thing in their platform, that “Saskatchewan doesn’t have a revenue problem. Saskatchewan has a money management problem.”
The NDP is right, the Saskatchewan government is already spending per person than any other province in Western Canada, including the NDP governments of Manitoba and British Columbia.
Alberta is spending much less per person than Saskatchewan, but beats or ties Saskatchewan in both health-care and performance.
It’s not that there isn’t enough money to spend on priorities, it’s that it’s being wasted.
The Saskatchewan government spends about $1 billion per year in corporate welfare on average, according to the . Scrapping these handouts would allow each party to balance the budget next, year according to their plans, without impacting spending on either health care or education.
The government needs to get the debt under control because families need tax relief instead of interest payments. A Saskatchewan family making $75,000 a year has a provincial tax bill that’s $1,342 than a similar family in Calgary and $1,461 higher than a family in Vancouver.
Both parties need to present a serious plan to deal with the deficit and balance the budget. Taxpayers can’t afford years of increasing debt and debt interest payments.
Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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