REGINA — The opposition New Democrats turned to a report from the Fraser Institute in their latest attack on the Sask. Party government’s fiscal record.
“Their mismanagement is so bad that even their own friends are crying foul,” said NDP finance critic Trent Wotherspoon.
Wotherspoon was reacting to the Fraser Institute's recent study released July 31. He said the Fraser Institute, a “group that's historically been an ally of this government,” is pointing out that Premier Scott Moe is spending more money per person than any Saskatchewan premier in the last 60 years.
On its website, the Fraser Institute posted a graph showing Saskatchewan provincial spending since 1965. The report stated that under Moe, 2021, 2022 and 2023 have been the three highest years for per-person spending on record.
“They're openly advising him to take lessons from the fiscal record of the Saskatchewan NDP and premiers like Roy Romanow,” said Wotherspoon.
He pointed in particular to the numbers since 2018, saying the Sask. Party has increased its spending by 47 per cent since that time. He said they have done so while piling more taxes on Saskatchewan families.
The most egregious impacts, he said, were “what we're paying now on that ballooning debt.”
“The interest on the Sask. Party's debt is now costing us more than $1 billion each and every year and climbing big time over the next number of years. Think about that, $1 billion. Imagine what we could do in this province with that money. Imagine the doctors, the nurses, the long-term care beds that could be invested in. Imagine the investments that we could make in repairing and renovating, building our schools and making sure they have the supports in place to meet the needs of students.”
When asked if inflation had played a role, Wotherspoon said there were “no excuses for a government wasting the kind of money that they've wasted.”
“They've made choices that are costing Saskatchewan people now,” he said, pointing to more than a billion dollars in interest costs alone, spending 10 times more to send women from Saskatchewan to Calgary for mammograms, wasting millions on failed IT systems, and paying three times more for out-of-province contract nurses.
“But the fact is that Saskatchewan people who are paying the price, they know it. They know it in the taxes they're paying. They know it in the cost of living that they're facing.”
The Sask. Party government had a response ready even before Wotherspoon made his remarks. In a statement issued this morning, the government said they continue to “make investments that deliver on what the people of Saskatchewan have said is important to them – affordability, health care, education, community safety and fiscal responsibility.”
“Saskatchewan maintains the second-lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio and the highest combined credit rating in Canada, and remains a national leader in economic growth, with the province second in the country for real GDP growth in 2024.”
The government also returned to its recent messaging characterizing the NDP as “lost, reckless and dishonest.”
“After every budget over the past several years, the NDP has falsely claimed the budget contains 'cuts' to government programs and spending. Now they say the government is overspending. But it's not surprising that the NDP, a party that mixed up revenue and expense in their 2024 election platform, would dishonestly claim the government is both cutting spending and overspending.”
