REGINA – The Saskatchewan government’s piggy bank could be tougher to crack open in the spring.
Premier Brad Wall said Wednesday he’s asking cabinet ministers to act with more fiscal restraint. He ordered a hiring freeze and delivered the message to any group receiving government money: you might not get an increase.
“When you talk about transfers to municipalities, he has our attention now,” said Regina Mayor Michael Fougere.
Fougere said he’ll be keeping a close eye on the municipal operating grant, which has traditionally been one per cent of provincial sales tax revenues.
Wall did say major infrastructure projects will still go ahead, such as the Regina bypass.
Universities are watching closely, as the price of providing an education tends to rise as much as three per cent each year.
“In some cases, it’s more than that,” said University of Regina spokesperson Costa Maragos. “Our costs are always rising on an annual basis and we’re simply looking for efficiencies to make sure it has the least amount of impact on students.”
So as we’re cautioned there may not be as much money to go around, some people are asking: is the “boom” over?
“It’s been ending for awhile,” said U of R political scientist Jim Farney. “It’s not the crash that sometimes happens because we’ve got three or four resource sectors, but this (boom) is over.”
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The price of oil has plummeted – and it’s worth about 11 per cent of Saskatchewan’s revenues.
Farney believes the SaskParty government will begin changing its message to the public.
“They’ve had two sides. ‘We’ll take responsibility when things are great,’ and then (a message saying) they’re being very prudent,” Farney said. “So they’ll ramp up the ‘prudent’ and dial back on the ‘things are great.’ ”
Opposition critics said any plan to dial back funding would be a knee-jerk reaction.
“Government has been sort of hands-off, sort of in a cheerleading mode, at a time they should have been more active in focusing on strength within our economy, diversifying our economy,” said deputy NDP leader Trent Wotherspoon.
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