REGINA, Sask. — The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is criticizing municipal spending in Saskatchewan following the release Thursday of a report comparing how much municipalities spend per person.
According to the report, Saskatoon spent $3,254 per person in 2024, compared with $3,011 for Regina.
The CTF also reports that since 2020, Saskatoon has increased per-person spending by about four per cent, up from $3,124 in 2020. Regina increased its per-person spending by 15 per cent, up from $2,623.
As for smaller cities, the CTF's news release points to Swift Current having spent the most at $3,777 per person, while Warman spent the least at $1,858.
Among towns, Gravelbourg spent the most at $4,367 per person, while Ponteix spent the least at $1,570.
“The point of this report is to kind of get that information out to taxpayers,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie director.
“Because taxpayers across the province are paying the bills for all these municipalities and sometimes they don't have the tools to hold their mayor and council. As a council, we see the rankings of the different cities, the rankings of the different towns, so now taxpayers can go and say, okay, my town is spending way more than everyone else around us. What's going on there? I'm going to ask mayor and council about that and hopefully we can get that spending number down.”
As for the numbers from Saskatoon and Regina, Haubrich was particularly alarmed that spending was continuing to go up — especially in Regina.
“If you just look at the Saskatoon numbers, it's always kind of been around that $3,100, $3,200 mark for the past couple of years, whereas Regina has jumped a lot from $2,600 per person-ish in 2020 all the way to now more than $3,000. So Regina is playing catch-up to Saskatoon, but not in a good way for its taxpayers…
“Of course, there are priorities that the city government has to be spending on, but it begs the question, why Saskatoon only increased its per-person spending by about four per cent since 2020, where Regina increased it by 15 per cent. There's a huge gap there, and Regina has to explain it.”
He also isn’t impressed with the numbers for Swift Current and says that where the city should look for advice “is in Martensville and Warman, where they're both under the average, spending $2,000 or $1,800-ish per person, respectively, right?”
“So they're still having services in those communities, but they're delivering them at much lower costs than is happening in Swift Current.”
He also points to lower spending in Martensville and Warman as standing in contrast to nearby Saskatoon.
“And that's another big part of this report. We're seeing, okay, they're spending less, they're likely taxing their taxpayers less, so people looking at it that way can then move to where they're getting the best value for their dollar and paying the least amount of tax while still getting the things they need, and we hope this report helps them out that way as well.”
SaskToday has reached out to the cities of Regina and Saskatoon for comment and will provide an update once responses are received.
