REGINA – Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck announced a fiscal plan Friday that would see some cuts, no tax hikes and a path to balance should she be elected premier, which the Saskatchewan Party criticized as “dishonest.”
On the fourth day of the provincial election campaign, Beck said she would cut $58 million in spending by axing the incumbent Saskatchewan Party’s marshal service, slashing government advertising and cutting administration at the province’s Crown Investments Corporation and Executive Council.
She said she would also restructure Saskatchewan’s trade offices and do away with consultants.
“Saskatchewan doesn’t have a revenue problem. Saskatchewan has a management problem, a fiscal mismanagement problem,” Beck told reporters in Regina.
“We’re going to start by cutting Sask. Party waste.”
Beck’s plan would see an NDP government spend more than $390 million in the first year to pay for promises, mostly on education and health care.
It also would forgo $164 million in revenue to pay for suspending the gas tax, removing provincial sales tax on children’s clothes and some grocery items, and other measures.
Beck said her plan is based on the government’s budgetary numbers and predicts revenues of $20.6 billion and expenses of $20.8 billion in 2025. Government estimates for that year show both revenues and expenses at roughly $20.6 billion.
The NDP’s plan forecasts deficits in the first three years with a small surplus in the fourth year.
“This is a plan for change. Now, I’m sure that Scott Moe and the Sask. Party are going to tell you that this can’t be done. But that’s a choice,” Beck said.
Donna Harpauer, the Saskatchewan Party campaign co-chair who served as Moe’s finance minister while in government, said the public shouldn’t trust Beck’s numbers.
Harpauer told reporters in Regina that the NDP has promised $2 billion in education, but its NDP plan shows $800 million over four years.
Harpauer, who is not running for re-election, said Beck has also not accounted for the NDP promises to fund a school lunch program and to renovate vacant government housing units.
She added that Beck also didn’t include the entire cost for the six-month gas-tax freeze.
“I think that this is a document that is fantasy and fiction and nothing more,” Harpauer said.
The NDP shot back, saying the Saskatchewan Party is misrepresenting Beck’s numbers.
It said the $2 billion in education money is accounted for through “accumulated funding.”
It also said Moe, as premier, missed his own budget projections by $9.3 billion in the last four years and has added $14 billion to the debt in six years.
“We won’t take lessons on fiscal management from Scott Moe and the Sask. Party,” the NDP said in a statement.
Moe has promised widespread tax relief for families, which he has said would save a family of four more than $3,400 over four years.
He also pledged to increase benefits for families looking to put their kids in sports and arts, along with a pair of tax credits to help current and prospective homeowners. Those promises would cost $725 million over four years, said Harpauer.
She said more promises are coming and the party would provide a costed platform. She said it won’t commit to making “nitpicky little cuts.”
Both the NDP and the Sask. Party have ruled out tinkering with potash royalties to bring in more revenue.
Beck has said she would undertake a review of the province’s plans to expand irrigation and build a small modular nuclear reactor, which are estimated to cost billions of dollars.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2024.
