Saskatchewan’s debt is ticking ever upwards – and Todd MacKay, with the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, wants the citizens of the province to know.
MacKay, the federation’s prairie director, was travelling around Saskatchewan with a debt clock Nov. 2 to 6. He stopped in around 15 communities across the province and was in Humboldt on Nov. 5.
The clock showed people that Saskatchewan’s debt was going up by about $2.7 million a day. MacKay said they were doing this in order to make that amount of money more real to the people in Saskatchewan.
“It’s hard for people to imagine $2.7 million. That’s an amount of money you and I probably don’t deal with, ever. So when you bring the clock around it gives them a chance to see the debt happening in real time. They can watch those numbers go up and they go up very, very quickly,” said MacKay.
MacKay said although the debt is going up, he did commend the government for what it has done up to this point.
“Saskatchewan has a really strong tradition of paying down debt and particularly this current government did a spectacular job of paying down debt earlier,” he said. “The problem is the debt is starting to creep back up again.”
MacKay said he had had two responses from people who saw the debt clock in their community.
“The first is sort of a double take when they see the numbers and realize what they are and then feel how fast they’re going up,” said MacKay. “The second response is, honestly, disappointment. This is the new Saskatchewan, our economy is so strong and we’ve done so well here in the last little while, why is the debt going up? People are disappointed to see that.”
Kevin Doherty, the provincial finance minister, said this clock is showing a certain part of the province’s debt.
“Mr. MacKay is going around the province with the debt clock that shows the province’s debt going up by $2.7 million a day... and that’s just false. What’s he’s showing there is the interest payments on our provincial debt and our province’s debt as a percentage of our GDP [gross domestic product],” said Doherty.
Doherty said prior to the current government coming into office, the province’s debt as a percentage of GDP was 24 per cent. Today it’s 14 per cent. He said they’ve brought the debt down in two ways.
“[We’ve paid] down operational debt by $3 billion,” he said. “Secondly, we’ve grown the economy. There’s more people living here now, there are more jobs in this province now [and] there’s more economic activity in this province now.”
Doherty also said Saskatchewan is the second best with respect to our debt as a percentage of GDP. Only Alberta is better.
Although the province’s debt is going up, Doherty said it is manageable. Saskatchewan also has an AAA credit rating from agencies such as Standard and Poor’s.
Doherty said this credit rating and low interests gives the province opportunity to invest in assets that improve the balance sheet such as new schools, hospitals and highways.
The opposition New Democrats said they agree with the federation that Saskatchewan’s debt is climbing fast, but they said they are using the wrong number. While the clock said the debt is around $5.3 billion, the NDP said the government’s documents show the debt is actually around $13.3 billion.
MacKay believes things are going fairly well, but the province needs to get a hold of things before they get bad.
“Our economy is strong and we can get on top of this. It’s going to take some hard choices. We need to trim spending, but if we do it now we can start getting the debt going back down again,” said MacKay.
