Last week, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall announced that the provincial deficit has grown to $1.2 billion.
The government originally projected the deficit would be $434 million when they introduced the budget in June and in November that number had grown by more than double that amount. And now a couple of months later it is another $200 million higher.
How does this happen?
How can someone spend almost $1 billion dollars more than they originally planned when they already know that they do not have the money to begin with?
If a Chief Financial Officer at a major corporation showed those kinds of numbers one of two things would happen to him; either he would be out of a job or the business would be bankrupt, in which case he would be out of a job anyway.
How is it that our government can produce these kinds of numbers and we just accept it and move on?
To combat this deficit Wall announced a hiring freeze within the government and said one of the scenarios that is being looked at is tax increases, as well as job cuts in the health care sector as well as layoff in education and reduced support for vulnerable people.
That makes no sense to me.
How can we possibly think that cutting jobs to health care and education is the appropriate course of action?
Why is it that every time we see a deficit, the government’s answer is to cut jobs to the sector that is grooming our future and to the sector that is responsible for our care when we are injured or ill?
The late Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, used to say he wanted to “stop the gravy train” and while his personal conduct was highly questionable this idea is much less so.
Instead of funding to education and health care why not reduce the amount of money spent on various benefits for government employees?
What seems to get lost on the government is that by reducing jobs there are now more people out of work, making it difficult for them to pay their bills and now the government also wants to increase taxes?
How are these people, or the rest of the province who are not receiving a raise every year supposed to cover the cost of these increased bills, especially when they have lost their job?
In 2016 Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan employees received a 1.6 per cent increase in pay pushing salaries to a minimum of nearly $100,000 to upwards of more than $165,000, according to legassembly.sk.ca.
While I understand that Wall has stated that they are looking at wage increases I also have to ask why it is so important that those in the assembly make a minimum of over six figures?
So as Rob Ford said, let us “stop the gravy train,” instead of looking at cutting our education staff and health care support.
