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Despite claims to the contrary from the NDP, Saskatchewan’s finance minister said the province’s deficit for the year remains unchanged from the figure presented in the mid-year update last week.
The Saskatchewan NDP has claimed the province’s deficit will rise by nearly $1 billion after $813 million of more spending was approved for SaskPower.
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On Thursday, Finance Minister Jim Reiter said the province’s current forecast for the deficit — $427 million — will not be affected by the supplementary estimates. He said the money was already included in the mid-year report.
“There’s the spending that you saw in there. There’s also the revenue that was up. There’s also the changes to crop insurance. That’s all impacted. That’s all already accounted for,” said Reiter.
He said the mid-year update is meant to provide transparency to the public on government finances, while the votes on the supplementary estimates are held to approve money that wasn’t included in the spring budget.
“The supplementaries you see, this is an annual occurrence. This happens all the time,” said Reiter.
During the mid-year update, Reiter said the revised deficit included the cost of not collecting the industrial carbon tax. The report also noted the province’s debt was set to rise by $962 million, and SaskPower’s portion of that was related to “lower net income and accelerated capital spending.”
The NDP was upset Crowns Minister Jeremy Harrison didn’t attend the committee meeting Tuesday evening to answer questions about where the money was going.
Harrison spoke to media on Wednesday, explaining the extra money would go to covering the expense of not collecting the industrial carbon tax from SaskPower customers, the cost of refurbishing and bringing coal-fired power plants back online and expanding the province’s power transmission system.
He did not give specific numbers, and the Sask. government didn’t provide a clear breakdown of how much money would be going where by publication time.
