As the area of the province most responsible for our prosperity, one can hardly fault rural Saskatchewan for thinking it should have done better in the past decade.
There again, sometimes it's hard to take stock of how well we've actually done until it's over. And there is reason to believe that the good times for rural Saskatchewan - and the province as a whole - may soon be taking a turn for the worse.
It was approximately 10 years ago that the great oil boom started.
The first signal of economic success came on Nov. 16, 2004 when then-NDP finance minister Harry Van Mulligen announced the mid-year budget update for the 2004-05 budget. That revealed an $899-million increase in projected revenues.
The ongoing war in Iraq and other factors had pushed oil prices to $50 US a barrel - half of what we have grown accustom to seeing in recent years but well about the finance department's 2004 budget projects of $25 to $26 US a barrel.
The government set aside $110 million for the new Regina jail and paid down $179.3-million worth of debt.
It also "transferred" $171.1 million to its on-paper-only Fiscal Stabilization Fund. However, rather than a rainy day fund as might have been implied, that money was largely used for cost-of-living increase to unionized government employees who'd accepted less-than-generous contract settlements to its unionized civil service. The thinking of the time for the NDP was that it had better pay its debt - both political and actual debt - while it had the opportunity to do so.
But the true significance of this event was that it was anything but a one-year windfall. What few would have predicted at the time was the decade of such windfall for the NDP government and the Saskatchewan Party governments that would follow.
"Non-renewable resource" revenue that include everything from oil to gas to uranium to potash which would rise from $707 million in the March 2004-05 budget to $1.35 billion by that November 2004-05 update. And it really has kept increasing since - now $2.69 billion in the 2004-15 Saskatchewan budget released last March.
It's success we have taken for granted, but maybe we shouldn't.
For starters, while not every town or smaller city has benefited equally from the boom, the economic growth in places like Estevan, Weyburn, North Battleford, Kindersley, Swift Current, Moosomin, Warman, Rosthern, Humboldt, Radville, Assiniboia, Canora, Melville, Yorkton, Langenburg is certainly apparent.
Whether immediately within the oil/gas/potash boom or not, many communities are clearly better off than a decade ago.
And while one can argue the government should have and could have done more, new schools or nursing homes and hospitals, better roads, reductions on property taxes and the provincewide drug plan for seniors and children under 14 years have benefited us all.
Unfortunately, there are legitimate signals that it may now be coming to end.
While the Sask. Party government has pegged oil at $95 a barrel this year, current prices are $20 a barrel lower. That will make it very difficult for the government to reach that $2.69 million in resource revenue.
Admittedly, the lost revenue many not be all that dramatic We can still expect $2-billion-plus in resource revenue which is nothing to sneeze at - especially when other revenue sources like income tax have also doubled in the past government.
But government spending has also nearly doubled to $12 billion this year from $6.9 billion 10 years ago. Such spending increases may be hard to sustain if these oil prices remain low for a prolonged period.
We just may have to tighten our belts a little .. and appreciate the good times that we had.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
