Taxpayers federation wants Sask. to use expected budget surplus to pay down debt

Saskatchewan is expected to be rolling in the dough after its budget is unveiled at the Legislature on Wednesday afternoon.

Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said Tuesday there will be a “substantive” surplus and many people are questioning how that surplus should be used.

Gage Haubrich, the prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said on Gormley on Wednesday the government needs to work towards paying down its debt, adding the budget hasn’t been balanced in the last eight years.

“Every farmer around the province knows that when (they) find a bumper crop, the right thing to do is not to go and finance a bunch of new equipment. It’s to pay back any of those lingering bills that have been hanging around for the last bit,” Haubrich said.

According to Haubrich, the province’s debt will be up to $17.1 billion by the end of 2022, but it was only $4.15 billion in 2009.

“Under this government’s watch, the debt has grown about 312 per cent and now it’s up to $14,000 per Saskatchewanian,” he said. “When we’re talking about interest, it’s getting up over … $600 million. That’s enough more to pay for two new children’s hospitals in Saskatoon.”

Although the director acknowledged COVID increased government spending, he said overspending has been one of the government’s problems for a while.

“In the last budget, the government increased spending on basically every single department that we have. This year, they could try and do the same,” he said. “But we’ve been through this cycle before in Saskatchewan. Every couple (of) years, resource revenues go up, we make a bunch more money than we thought we would and the government decides to spend.”

Haubrich said his main concern is that the government needs to realize that good times don’t last forever and should put money away in savings.

“So when we do hit another rainy day, like COVID, we don’t have to dive into deficit and increase the debt on the backs of Saskatchewan taxpayers,” he added.

However, many people are calling for the government to spend more money in areas like health care.

In response to that, Haubrich said any spending does not need to come at the cost of another deficit.

“We can’t keep kicking the debt can down the road in this province. If the government wants to spend, that’s fine, but they need to make sure they do that in a responsible way that doesn’t keep putting more debt on taxpayers,” he added.

The finance minister had previously said the government is planning more targeted supports to help some people deal with inflation.

“They can’t open up the corporate welfare credit card and start giving money to corporations just because it has a little more money lying around,” Haubrich said. “Recently, the government announced they’re going to be subsidizing WestJet possibly up to $2.2 million for one route (between Saskatoon and Minneapolis). That’s not a good use of total taxpayer dollars.”

He also said money that is spent should be spent on taxpayers themselves or be given back to them in the form of tax relief.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick