REGINA - The budget dominated the week in Saskatchewan politics and saw contrasting reactions from the two major parties.
For the Sask Party government, they pointed to the budget as delivering on the four priority themes heard during the election campaign on healthcare, affordability, education and community safety.
“This budget is delivering on all of those fronts on behalf of families across Saskatchewan,” Premier Scott Moe said at an embargoed news conference Wednesday.
“This is unlike what we see in some other areas of the nation right now where we have provincial governments that are walking away from commitments that they may have made in the campaign or walking away from commitments that they may have made over the course of the past year in the name of tariffs and other reasons that they may be faced with.
“Those challenges are in no way diminished as they are the most significant economic challenges that we have faced for some period of time.
We are not walking away from the commitments that we made to Saskatchewan people. We most certainly are delivering on each and every commitment that we made in the campaign, subsequent to the campaign, through the speech of the throne. And delivering on them because that is what we heard was the priority of the people of this province.”
During that news conference Moe defended the decision to not include a contingency to deal with impacts of tariffs.
“The contingency levels that have been put in place in other provinces are all deficit financing, so they're loaning money to have those dollars sitting there if they should need it,” said Moe.
“Second to that, what amount, and we've seen varying amounts across the nation, which tells you nobody quite knows what the impact of the tariffs might be. And we don't even know what that will look like even in the near term. We don't know how long they'll be, what rate they'll be at, and whether or not they'll even be implemented.”
The opposition New Democrats had a far different view, slamming the budget as a “work of fiction." Opposition Leader Carla Beck at a news conference dismissed the budget as one that "pretends that the last three months haven't even happened."
Beck accused the the government of having no measures in the budget to provide protections from tariffs. The NDP believed a contingency should have been included and also railed against what they saw as spending cuts.
In particular they pointed to page 27 of the budget document which compared the numbers allocated for health and education in 2025-26 to the actual spends for the previous year in 2024-25.
In health, the budget called for $8.004 billion, compared to an actual spend of $8.022 million the year earlier after the budget had projected $7.639.8 million. In education, it was $4.428.1 million compared to a $4.454.8 million actual spend, after the budget had projected $4.414.5 million.
“Only cuts to healthcare and to education,” said Beck. “I mean, honestly, at a time when our healthcare workers are already operating like they're in a field hospital in a war zone, this government chooses to offer cuts for healthcare. It's quite a choice.”
The NDP continued to hammer that theme of "Cuts" at media events in Moose Jaw and Saskatoon Friday. In an emailed response the government stated that the NDP were "cherry picking" numbers to suit their own political narrative.
"Budget increases or decreases are always based on the previous year’s budget allocation," their statement read. "When comparing budget-to-budget, the 2024-25 Budget allocated $7.640 billion in funding for the Health expense theme, whereas the 2025-26 Budget allocated $8.004 billion in funding for the Health expense theme. This is an increase of $365.1 million."
Unions, school divisions react
Union representatives were also slamming the budget on Wednesday in scrums with reporters.
“They're on track to spend less this year than they did in last year's budget. I'm not seeing enough for retention. We're very frustrated,” said Linda Renkas, vice president of CUPE Local 5430 representing 14,000 health care workers within Saskatchewan Health Authority.
“We're at the bargaining table. We've been at the bargaining table for 18 months with an expired contract of two years as of March 30th. Our health care workers are so far behind. We took many years of zero, zero and one (per cent) and now we can't catch up. We can't sustain living in a province where the CPI continues to rise, the minimum wage is going up, and yet our wages are not.”
“The funding is so far behind, and they're budgeted less than what they actually spent last year,” said Karla Sastaunik of CUPE Saskatchewan, speaking on behalf of education support workers.
“That means reductions in staffing, in hours, usually for CUPE members. It impacts kids. Kids aren't getting the supports that they need. There's not enough staff in place to make sure that their specialized programs can actually be carried out day-to-day.”
On the other hand Samantha Becotte, President of Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, called the budget an “initial step forward” to address per-student funding.
“So, the numbers we're really looking at and focused on is that $186 million increase to the operating funds, which is about 8.4 per cent,” said Becotte.
“It's questionable whether or not that's enough. And I know we heard some challenge on the numbers from the Opposition, and we're definitely going to continue going through the analysis. We’ve heard that there was about $130 million allocated to our provincial collective agreement process that's just kind of wrapping up. We have some uncertainty of whether that's enough, but we did hear the commitment that the agreement will be fully funded, and we'll make sure that we keep government accountable to that commitment.”
Dr. Shawn Davidson, President of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association representing school boards in the province, thought the budget “has addressed the key cost drivers that boards across the province have identified on the operating side.
“So what we're seeing is this budget will fund the costs of the provincial collective agreement, as well as other collective agreements around the province. It funds some of the key inflationary pressures that we've talked about around costs of buses and costs of fuel and things like that. And it also recognizes enrollment growth, which is something that we've long talked about as well.”
Davidson was also happy to see the government investing in some new schools. “We know that there is a need for some infrastructure, obviously, around the province.
There's always more fence than paint, so we would certainly love to see more built, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.”
