The Government of Saskatchewan released its 2023-24 budget with the goal of supporting “Growth That Works for Everyone.”
The province is set to see a surplus of $1 billion with revenue of $19.7 billion with $18.7 billion of investments.
Premier Scott Moe said this budget sets the province up for a strong future.
“This is a budget that lays the platform for strong growth today and into the future, where everyone will have the opportunity to succeed in this province.”
The Government also paid down its operating debt by $1 billion, reducing interest costs by $44.0 million annually.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer defended the decision not to reinvest that money, as it was from one-time revenue.
“We have to be careful as a government not to take one-time revenue and incorporate and back it into our year-over-year operational costs. What happens when that one-time revenue falls,” she said. “We are very fortunate to have resource revenues, but they’re volatile. If you’ve baked it into your operating costs in the following, where do you find that money to continue the program or the expenditure?”
Moe said paying down the debt allows them to reinvest more money into the future.
“It was in the best interest of Saskatchewan people to pay down this operational debt to ensure that we aren’t paying that increased interest rate years into the future,” he said. “That will save us tens of millions of dollars years into the future; those are dollars that we can reinvest.”
After introducing new taxes last year, the Government didn’t remove any despite the surplus. Harpauer said she doesn’t believe the province is in a position just yet to remove taxes.
“I don’t think we’re in the position yet to do a major walk back. I have a lot of optimism we’re going to get there, though, because there is a large private sector commitment to growth here in our province, and as that comes to fruition, I’m very optimistic we can get there.”
For Harpauer, her two highlights from this year’s budget were the record investment in healthcare of $7 billion and a focus on helping the province’s most vulnerable and low-income.
For healthcare, she said it would take some time to see the results of this year’s investment.
“It’s not going to be immediate because a lot of it is training seats. We’re going to see the impact multi-year, but we’re going to see some immediate impact in the recruitment,” she said. “Those efforts are already underway. We need to do better in that in that area, and I hope the immediate we see some success stories, but there’s far more work that we need to do in building capacity in our rural hospitals, but then surgeries and acute care beds here in our major centers.”
She said another impactful investment was the increase of programs like the Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) program.
“For example, this is the second year of an increase. $30 a month last year, and it could be up as an additional $90 a month if that client qualifies for all three programs that we’re increasing by $30 each,” she said. “I think it’s important because right now we’re hearing that inflation is going to level out, but it’s still a pressure, and we’re well aware of that and very mindful of the pressures.”
