Premier Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party may well have secured a place in the provincial history books after delivering what has to be seen as one of the most austere budgets in the last half century.
Awash in red ink after missing the mark on resource sector revenues through its 2016-17 budget the Wall government set about making a dint in its expected $1.3 billion, plus or minus a few hundred grand, deficit from last year.
The path taken by the Saskatchewan Party might best be described as massive offloading to just about everybody.
The huge deficit is clearly a result of missing the mark in terms of the last provincial budget, but this time around the Wall government has hedged its bets by making mass cuts to grants, leaving other bodies to figure out what services to cut, or taxes to raise.
The cuts begin with urban municipalities.
The losses to the City of Yorkton from the budget changes will be near $2.3 million, with already recognized reductions in transfers from the municipal share of PST factored in.
The biggest cut comes from a change which will see the SaskPower and SaskEnergy ‘payments-in-lieu’ to municipalities now go to provincial general revenue instead of municipalities.
That is $1.657 million cut to Yorkton and other cities will be hit too. Melville will lose $334,267, with some $36 million across the province.
Yorkton Mayor Bob Maloney is clearly frustrated by the move, and rightfully so.
“Who’s paying? It’s urbans. There’s a bill to be paid and they’re looking to urban municipalities to pay it,” he said, in an interview with this newspaper.
“The shake out for this, it’s going to be very difficult … This is unprecedented. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a budget like this.”
Maloney said 58 per cent of the dollars received last year from the province “are being clawed back.”
It is a total that is simply ridiculous for the province to spring on a municipality three-months into the year, especially knowing municipal governments cannot deficit budget to spread the hurt into years moving forward.
But the tough decision of services cuts goes farther than a hand-off to municipalities.
Seven of eight regional library systems, including the Parkland Regional Library, will have a reduction of $3.5 million (58 per cent) to $2.5 million in operating funding.
And the provincial cuts include the local Parkland College taking a cut of “13 per cent in government funding year-to-year,” said Dwayne Reeve, president of Parkland College.
Regional parks are also on the hit list with a reduction in their provincial grant dollars as well, necessitating those boards to decide on what services, or capital projects to delay, or scrap.
Forcing another level or government, or appointed boards to explain service cuts to their constituents, is an obvious effort to deflect the blame for the root cause, the province’s huge deficit.
To not provide reasonable lead time for the municipalities and boards to plan how to deal with the massive cuts shows a lack of respect. The deficit might be a reality we all need to take some responsibility to deal with, but a collaborative approach would have been a far better approach than what we saw hit the province with last week’s budget.
