The recent provincial budget was one forcing some tough decisions on the Saskatchewan Party government.
But the effort was one which held with some key elements including being balanced, containing no tax increases, and maintaining key investments in infrastructure and people, Minister of Finance Ken Krawetz told those attending a Yorkton Chamber of Commerce luncheon Friday.
"I'm sure many of you have heard a lot about the budget the last little while," he began.
Since much of the detail of the budget had been in the press for more than a week, Krawetz said he wanted to take people behind the scenes of creating the budget.
Krawetz said the process starts almost a year ahead of delivery, noting the Treasury Board begins meeting on the 2015-16 budget next week.
Over a year of deliberations, Krawetz said many options were looked at.
"We were considering tax increases," he said, "because 'the ask' was significant."
Krawetz said while budget spending is more than $14 billion in the recent budget, it started out with "a $15 billion
ask."
Krawetz said there was probably even some wiggle room in terms of being able to hike taxes, had the government went that direction. He pointed to the education portion of property tax noting since 2005 the mill rate has declined from 11 to 5:03 today on
