Mandryk: Provincial budget won’t be balanced and won’t meet needs

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The 2024-25 budget under the hodge-podge theme of “classrooms, care and communities” was designed to be a low-risk, inoffensive plan to placate  Saskatchewan voters when they went to the polls six months later.

It was never a serious attempt at balancing the books, given that the $273.1-million deficit we started with when former finance minister Donna Harpauer presented it in March ballooned to a $743.5-million deficit at mid-year. (Since mid-year, we have seen cabinet spending orders-in-council totalling a billion dollars, so what the final 2024-25 deficit is remains anybody’s guess.)

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And last year’s budget surely wasn’t much of an effort to ease societal problems like overcrowded classrooms that striking teachers outside were picketing over on budget day. Their issues had to go to binding arbitration — some of that additional spending to meet contract agreements we saw in the orders.

Of course, pre-election budgets seldom reflect the reality of the day. Balancing the book tends to be an after-we-get-re-elected problem when re-elected governments get back to the nitty-gritty of getting the house back in order.

Unfortunately, in the course of government doing so, post-election budgets tend to also be simultaneously less generous in spending initiatives.

So, in other words, the prospects aren’t great for the 2025-26 budget to be delivered on March 19 by new Finance Minister Jim Reiter. Add in the current economic/political climate to where we are at the provincial budget cycle and assume the worse.

Don’t expect a balanced budget. And don’t expect this budget to come close to addressing all the societal issues, as was the presumed aim of last year’s “classrooms, care and communities” budget.

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Even if the Saskatchewan Party government could somewhere find the financial resources to do so, there’s the added problem of the governing party that’s coming out of campaign a bit lost on what its priorities should be and how those priorities should be addressed.

Let us quickly explore a few of those issues that surely touched on last year’s care and communities theme.

One such issue has to be menace of drug addiction — an issue in which the Saskatchewan Party government has been attempting a new drug policy that cracks down on handing out drug pipes and needles and refocuses on helping the addicted through  private treatment centres. (This week, we also heard from government that it is further cracking down on drug traffickers, but also getting tough with the addicted by determining that needles are a weapon.)

As for the treatment aspect, much controversy has centred around private care facilities like Willowview Recovery Centre in Lumsden — a facility under fire for failing to provide overnight care.

More recently, the NDP revealed emails obtained through freedom of information laws that suggest an additional $800,000 went to Willowview, the private operator of EHN Canada, to help get the centre going.

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While the Sask. Party government hasn’t exactly been forthright about these additional startup costs for its private facility solution, whether this turns into the scandal the NDP is suggesting it may be has yet to be determined.

High startup costs in health care or elsewhere — whether involving a private sector component or not — tend to be the reality.

However, what it really points to is the reality that any solution to deal with this blight in a meaningful way will require significant dollars that will be hard to find in the budget.

Another such issue is the cost of mammograms for early detection of breast cancer.

Again, it’s the same dilemma. Whether it’s the private sector fix advocated by this Sask. Party government or a public sector one involving ever-more-costly government contracts, it means a lot more cash that will be hard to find in the upcoming 2025-26 budget.

It will simply be hard to meet all the expectations that were either part of the Sask. Party campaign promises or simply the general expectations of the people.

And the government seems no more likely to meet these expectations than its to present a balanced budget in two weeks.

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

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