Saskatchewan may be administering itself into bankruptcy.
The Sask Party seems to recognize many aspects of Saskatchewan governance suffer from top-heavy bureaucracy including health care and education.
Although newly-elected Saskatchewan Party government would not commit to amalgamation of health regions following the throne speech, the premier strongly hinted this will be the direction his government is going. Fewer health regions, or even one, as is now the case in our much more populous western neighbour Alberta, is certainly on the table according to the premier.
Another area amalgamation should be considered is municipalities. Obviously, Wall recognizes bringing that up may be the political equivalent of filling a warehouse next to a match factory with dynamite because he said the Province will encourage change, but not force it.
“We won’t be coming with a stick, rather a carrot in this case,” he said.
He definitely wants municipalities to crunch the numbers and while the financial impact is not clear and there is no indication what the carrot might be, we can, at least, look at the demographic statistics.
Of the 10 Canadian provinces, Saskatchewan has fifth lowest population (1.1 million), but the second highest number of municipalities (742). The only province with more is Quebec at 1,134. But Quebec has eight million people, which means they have one municipality for every 6,969 people compared to one for 1,321 in Saskatchewan.
The province resembling Saskatchewan most in terms of geographic size, location, population, and even history, is Manitoba. Our neighbour to the east has only 197 municipalities for 1.2 million population or one municipality for every 6,133 people.
Not to put too fine a point on it, including the territories, Saskatchewan makes up 3.1 per cent of the Canadian population, but has 21.4 per cent of the municipalities.
There is just no way to justify that level of bureaucracy in the 21st century.
To take only one example from just down Hwy 10, there is the Village of Abernethy and Rural Municipality of Abernethy. The most recent census data (2011) indicates a population of 196 for the village and 387 for the R.M. To take care of those 583 souls, they have two elected councils with a mayor for the village and a reeve for the R.M. plus four and six councillors respectively.
Both have their own building with all the inherent physical costs and those buildings are basically right across the street from each other. Each has its own administrator.
No offence intended to the Abernethys, but that is just ridiculous. And all of the cost of that governance is not just borne by local ratepayers and it is a scenario that is played out in places across the province. It adds up.
It is not just about money, though, and this is where the arguments against amalgamation generally come from. The erosion of democracy is frequently cited. Communities, after all, are not necessarily defined by geography so much as shared interests.
This is most amply demonstrated in the amalgamations of big cities such as Toronto with Scarborough, East York, Etobicoke, North York and York in 1998. The Fraser Institute has argued that merger made the city administration both more unwieldy and more financially costly to taxpayers.
It also possibly had political stability costs in pitting the blue-collar suburbs against the white collar downtown. The former mayor, Rob Ford, and all the baggage that came with him was a product of that conflict.
There may, of course, be economies of scale at work there. With its population of close to three million and its diversity, the amalgamated City of Toronto bears little resemblance to rural Saskatchewan, which is both far less populous and far more homogenous from McNutt to Alsask.
The recent throne speech talked about transformational change for Saskatchewan. Despite what will undoubtedly be a bunch of jurisdictions kicking and screaming bloody murder, Wall and the Sask Party need to set aside political expediency and do the right thing.
If history is any indication, it is bound to get ugly, but it is time to forget about carrots and bring out the stick. Preferably a big one.
