Last week, the press releases from the provincial government came in, bragging about the success of the province’s crown corporations.
SGI saw $65.2 million in profits.
SaskTel saw $134.8 million.
Yet, despite this success, the provincial government has admitted it's having high-level, preliminary talks with investors to sell off parts of SGI.
You see, the government can do this because it has recently passed a law stating that if less than 50 per cent of a crown corporation is sold off, it doesn’t count as privatizing, meaning they don’t have to ask the people what they think about such a sale in an election or referendum.
I find it hard to see what we’d gain by selling off portions of our crowns. There’d be a big pay day for sure, quite useful for a government that didn’t save during the oil boom and is now desperate to balance the budget.
What we have to lose is much more obvious. If part of the crowns are sold off, the province will receive less of those profits into its general revenues because the investors expect a return on their investment.
Speaking of the investors, because they want to see a return, expect pressure on the crowns to raise our cheap telephone and insurance rates to generate more money, meaning there’s less money in our pockets.
The province needs to fix the deficit budget that they’ve created, but they shouldn’t be selling off stuff that generates a profit and provides a benefit to the people of the province to do so.
