Murray Mandryk: Sask. needs answers on $747M in closed-door spending

It’s an attempt to bury this mess on budget day because going from a billion-dollar surplus to a billion-dollar deficit is unexplainable.

Published Feb 26, 2024 • Last updated 4 hours ago • 3 minute read

Finance Minister Donna Harpauer needs to explain why her 2023-24 budget went from a billion0dollar surplus to a billion-dollar deficit … or whether that’s even the case. Photo by TROY FLEECE /Regina Leader-Post

It’s hard to say what’s more unbelievable.

That we might have gone from the billion-dollar surplus predicted when the 2023-24 budget was presented 11 months ago to a billion-dollar deficit now.

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Or that we actually don’t know whether this is the case because the Saskatchewan Party government won’t deign to address this trifling little matter.

Let’s begin with the great unknown that is the recent $747,495,000 of closed-door cabinet spending — potentially, enough to drive this year’s deficit well past the billion-dollar mark.

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It’s not unusual to see such special warrant-use by Saskatchewan governments as the fiscal year draws to a close and departments scramble to contend with overspending.

But, at worst, spring special warrants usually amount to $100 million or so — a rounding error in a $19-billion provincial budget. Budgeting, after all, is something less than an exact science.

However, spending nearly three-quarters of a billion at this time of year is, as NDP finance critic Trent Wotherspoon put it, “wild.”

One might think government would at least try to explain why such unprecedented and unscrutinized spending is necessary. From what little we know, it may not be completely frivolous. Unfortunately, details remain scant, requiring a lot of speculation to fill in the blanks.

The $450.1-million lion’s share of the special warrants is going to health, including $215.4 million to the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), $22 million to the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency and $20.7 million for physician services that’s separate from the $154.2 million to address the new four-year contract with the Saskatchewan Medical Association.

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There is an unexplained $120 million for “out-of-province” at a time when we are picking up the hotel and travel expense costs so women can drive to private Calgary clinics for mammograms and “$132 million for human resource compensation pressures” as we pay outrageous sums for travelling nurses.

There is also “$73.6 million for medical and surgical supplies” because Saskatchewan’s surgical teams are now experiencing “the highest volumes ever recorded in the first six months of the fiscal year from April 1 to September 30,” according to one government response to reporters’ inquiries.

The Ministry of Energy spending $94 million for “the continued cleanup of the abandoned northern uranium mine sites of Gunnar and Lorado” plus the Ministry of Environment shelling out $20.2 million for remediation work and monitoring/maintaining the Anglo-Rouyn mine site is good news in an area where government constantly draws criticism.

Similarly, $22.7 million is going to social services for “pressures related to intensive third-party residential services required for the care of children and youth in the ministry’s care” and pressures related to the Autism Spectrum Disorder Individualized Funding program.

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Spending $86.3 million for “appropriation for AgriStability program payments” or $23.4 million for “higher-than-budgeted activities” in highway winter road maintenance usually produce reams of press releases to remind rural voters in an election hear why they should keep voting Saskatchewan Party.

Yet, curiously, for a government that employs hundreds of communicators to grind out such press releases, we only see the brief special warrant summaries.

Worse, government has no interest explaining the impact, claiming we will have to wait until 2024-25 budget day for the 2023-24 third-quarter update because that is the protocol. (This is untrue. Government used to put out third-quarter budget updates separate from budget day.)

But why nothing? Why not a single news release? Why not make Finance Minister Donna Harpauer available to assure us not to worry because there’s a revenue windfall to balance out this spending?

Not so much as tweet? Nothing from our high-flying premier in India — ironically, rolling up more government spending costs?

Well, when governments tell us we have to wait for busy budget day for answers, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is it’s an attempt to bury this mess on budget day because going from a billion-dollar surplus to a billion-dollar deficit boggles the mind.

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After all, the more time we spend dwelling on how unbelievable the 2023-24 budget has been, the more likely we are to suspect the Sask. Party government’s 2024-25 election budget will be equally unbelievable.

Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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