Rent reduced for riders, early budget items approved by Regina Council
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Regina's city council covered a lot of ground in a three-hour meeting on Wednesday. With all members in attendance, coun...
By the time the Saskatchewan Legislature resumes sitting June 15, it will have been almost three months since the sitting was suspended for the pandemic.
On Tuesday, the government and official opposition announced their house leaders had reached a deal, and the two sides would sit for three weeks between June 15 and July 3 — except on Canada Day.
An updated version of the province’s budget will be tabled on June 15 and 60 hours of debate will follow.
“This will be, by far, the most extensive scrutiny of any budget in any House in this nation since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Premier Scott Moe said Tuesday.
In a statement released Tuesday, NDP Leader Ryan Meili said the deal to get back into the assembly came after weeks of pressure from the NDP and the public.
“We look forward to returning to the Legislature to push for an economic recovery plan that puts people first. And we’ll continue to push for accountability and answers to the government’s handling of COVID-19 and its economic fallout,” Meili said in the statement.
“Before COVID-19, far too many people in Saskatchewan were struggling to make ends meet — many more families are struggling now. That’s why we need a plan for our economic recovery.”
The government was set to table its budget March 18, but at the last minute decided to table only spending estimates and work off special warrants for a while. It was explained that the pandemic was making revenues too difficult to predict.
In April, the province gave a fiscal update and predicted that revenues would be down.
Moe said Tuesday the budget would be in a deficit.
“We will have a deficit this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That deficit will largely be attributed to a lowering of the revenues and that has been indicated and communicated by our minister of finance already,” said Moe.
Moe said the budget will, for the most part, be based on the spending estimates that were tabled in March, plus the initiatives that have been undertaken as part of the pandemic response.
“Our ministries have done a very good job of ensuring that the investment that they were allocated, the 5/12ths of the year that was allocated to them through the special warrant, they are remaining projected to operate, including health, to operate within the estimates that they have been granted,” the premier said.
Moe’s confidence in the budget remains and he echoed sentiments on Tuesday that he’d had before the pandemic, saying the budget is strong and gets the province on the path set out in the plan for growth.