Throne speeches are not budgets, but they can set the tone for budgets.
If the speech delivered by Lieutenant Governor Vaughn Solomon May 17 to open the first session of the 28th legislature is an indication the budget scheduled for release June 1 will be one of austerity.
Greg Ottenbreit, the newly re-elected MLA for Yorkton, who ended the last session as Minister of Rural and Remote Health, confirmed belt-tightening is coming.
“I think the throne speech was pretty indicative of that,” Ottenbreit said while flipping hot dogs at a cancer fundraising event Friday. “Our [election] platform was pretty quiet, there wasn’t a whole lot of extra promises. What you will see is a lot of what we’ve done, the investments we’ve made up until this point, are still not completed, that’s why there’s not a whole lot of new spending.”
To that end, he said, they will be continuing with highways and other infrastructure spending.
Specifically, the throne speech mentioned $2.7 billion in highways and transportation capital over the next four years. It also talked about $3.6 billion this year for schools, hospitals, long-term care facilities and the Regina Bypass.
Ottenbreit talked a lot about finding efficiencies, specifically in the areas of health care, education, social services and public safety. Speculation is the government intends to consolidate the province’s 13 health regions into a smaller number, possibly a single one such as Alberta did in 2008. Ottenbreit would not commit to that, saying consultation is in order.
“There’s no definitive decision yet,” he said. “What we’re looking at is getting some outside help to look at the options; what would make the most sense to deliver the best service, but also have the most efficient system.
“We will have to look at the other jurisdictions. For example, Alberta went to one region with a super-board and they ran into a whole lot of troubles. I think for the most part they’ve worked through those, so we’re going to have to look at what other jurisdictions have done and learn from their mistakes and try and do something, not only learning from their mistakes, but actually doing something that’s good for Saskatchewan.”
The other big news surrounding the throne speech was fear about selling off of Crown corporations. The speech did confirm the Saskatchewan Party intends to make good on its promise to remove the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority from the Crown Corporations Public Ownership Act, paving the way to convert 40 government stores to private ownership and creating 12 new ones.
The government claims this move is in the best interest of the province and consumers saying in the speech it will “create a level playing field for liquor retailers in order to provide more choice, more convenience and more competitive pricing for Saskatchewan consumers.”
The Opposition NDP believes SLGA is only the beginning saying the Sask Party is ideologically bent on privatization. They point to the recently announced government plan to do a risk assessment on Sasktel in light of the recent sale of Manitoba’s telecommunications Crown, MTS, to Bell.
Ottenbreit said Sasktel is in no danger of privatization, at least not without a public mandate.
“The Crown Corporations [Public Ownership] Act is pretty definitive in that can’t happen,” he said. “I think what’s raised a little bit of attention in the past week or so has been the sale of the Manitoba company, the telco, and the [Saskatchewan] premier is specific in wanting to get a risk assessment on what that means for Sasktel. It doesn’t mean we’re looking at selling it. We want to make sure we know what this means for Sasktel being the last government-owned and regional telephone company I think in all of North America.
“We made a pretty clear commitment if there’s going to be any change in that regard it is going to have to be through a public vote whether a plebiscite or a platform commitment through an [election] campaign.”
