The Saskatchewan Party government has been promising a balanced budget for years. In 2019, the government says they have met that goal. Donna Harpauer, Minister of Finance, was in Yorkton to talk budget at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
The headline for the budget is a return to balance, something that the government has been promising for the past several years. The problem has been making the province less reliant on resource revenue, which also involved expanding the scope of the PST.
“The surplus is very, very fine, and it has been a three year journey to get here. That’s shifting our reliance on resource revenue. Three years ago resource revenue fell $1.3 billion, and in a $14 million that’s quite significant. So we had to make structural changes and very hard choices,” said Harpauer.
A primary focus of this year’s budget was mental health, and increasing funding for services. Greg Ottenbreit, Yorkton MLA and Minister of Rural and Remote Health, said that the funding increase will largely go through existing agencies, boosting funding for walk-in mental health and addictions services, using SIGN, for example. Funds will also be used to establish new programs, or expand existing ones, and Ottenbreit points to the Police and Crisis Team (PACT) and the recently established Community Recovery Team as examples of how mental health funding will be used in the area, and how they will take different approaches to reach people who need help. Yorkton will also benefit from the introduction of the First Links program for Alzheimer’s patients and their families to Yorkton.
“Basically, we’re building on what’s already there.”
It’s a bit of a mixed bag for education in the area. The Parkland College will be getting a funding increase. The college will receive $3.6 million in total operating and capital maintenance funding, an increase of $0.16 million, or 5.5 per cent. The operating budget of both the Good Spirit School Division and the Christ the Teacher School Division have decreased, going down due to decreased enrolment. The GSSD will have $68.2 million in school operating funding, down $433,000, or 0.6 per cent.
CTTCS went to $18.1 million, a decrease of 130,000, or 0.7 per cent.
Both school divisions have an increase in their maintenance and capital budget. The budget will go up to $2.1 million for the Good Spirit School Division, an increase of $0.3 million, or 14.7 per cent. The CTTCS will get an increase to $0.4 million, an increase of $0.1 million, or 14.4 per cent.
The budget commitment that will be noticed in this area will be road construction. Yorkton will be in the middle of a project to install passing lanes. Highway 9, to Canora, will see a three passing lanes installed. Highway 10 between Yorkton and Melville, will also three passing lanes installed. The two highways will also see repaving. Highway 10, Highway 52 and Broadway Street West will see cross section improvements as part of the Urban Highway Connector Program.
Another main highway project will be the effort to improve safety at intersections, to the tune of $14 million a year for five years. That would include rumble strips and other warnings to help prevent collisions at intersections.
There will also be a reduction in incentives for potash production, and an overall simplification of the potash taxing program. While the incentives were designed to encourage development, Harpauer said they think that with a strong market the incentives no longer served the purpose. Potash will now
“We feel that the industry is strong, we have been there for that industry any time they have needed our government, we have been behind this industry. Right now we feel the industry is doing well... We feel that the people of Saskatchewan who own the resource, we own the potash, should have a fair return for that. With that change that will bring the effective tax rate to 9.3 per cent, a little under what it averaged in the early 2000s.”
One thing that was not announced in this year’s budget was a hospital for Yorkton, though two hospitals were announced, one in Prince Albert and the other in Weyburn.
Ottenbreit said that a hospital for the area is still something they want to do, and when it came to priorities, Yorkton is still near the top of the list.
“If we look back in history with the Yorkton facility, we had some planning money about eight or nine years ago for a facility. Back then, the former Sunrise Health Region, working with the tools that they had, basically came up with a $250-300 million facility that was a little bit over scope of what we needed for this area, so we put it back in the planning stages.
“In the mean time, we moved ahead with the Saskatchewan Hospital in North Battleford, which is a facility for the whole province, and the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital, which is a facility for the whole province, some of the projects that had to move ahead were the Moose Jaw hospital, the Humboldt hospital, 14 long-term care facilities across the province that were basically falling in on themselves, all got down the road of construction and coming to completion.”
Ottenbreit said that going with Prince Albert first is due to its function serving the north of the province, as well as how it will take pressure off of Saskatoon. Weyburn is next because it has also needed replacement for quite some time, and the hospital there is both smaller and older than Yorkton.
“When we looked at the regional hospitals that needed replacement, priority would have been Prince Albert, Weyburn and Yorkton. Yorkton didn’t make the cut this time because of all the commitments that we made, but as the local MLA I have advocated for that project for the 12 years since I’ve been elected, and as Minister for Rural and Remote Health I continue to put it on my budget considerations every year. It will be going back into my considerations for next year.”
While he won’t commit to when it would get replaced, he’s optimistic that there will be announcements relatively soon.
“It’s not a matter if it is getting replaced, but when.”
