Although not everyone has received their government affordability tax credit cheque yet, there is a push in the City of Saskatoon to have people donate them to charities.
In August 2022, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe promised small financial relief to the province to help Saskatchewan people with the rising costs of resources.
“This fall, we will be sending a $500 affordability tax credit cheque to everyone in Saskatchewan aged 18 and older,” Moe said. “Higher resource prices are driving our economy and they are creating thousands of new jobs.
“This has greatly improved our budget position from a deficit to a surplus. And that’s good news. But it also means the cost of almost everything that you buy has gone up.”
“Every adult in Saskatchewan being handed $500, that could be put to really good use,” Nicole Berg, co-founder of the 500 Club said in a previous interview with Global News.
“For some people that is paying the bills, buying the groceries, and that’s fantastic, and for others like me, it’s money I wasn’t missing, I wasn’t expecting and so I thought how can use this in a different way.”
The 500 Club is an organization working to have people donate cheques of any size to charity.
Global News checked in with Berg to see what kind of progress The 500 Club has made.
“When we first started out, we just cast the net to our friends and family and now we are far beyond that and throughout the province. We have raised over $37, 000 — $37,125 actually,” Berg said.
Their goal was to have around 2, 000 people donating all or part of their cheques, which would result in a total donation sum of $1,000,000. So far, 78 people have donated to a charity.
“Could we still hit the million? I don’t know, I would be very surprised and very pleased, but whatever we can do, of course, the charities have been so thankful and it’s great to be able to bless them and support them in this way.”
Berg said that as soon as the rest of the pledged affordability cheques land, she is hoping she can help the organizations continue their regular operations.
Saskatchewan Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said that the government plans to have all of the cheques sent out by the end of November.
Although there is still a week left according to the government’s rollout plan, Saskatchewan residents are starting to get anxious about not seeing their cheques in the mail.
Many users have commented that they have not received theirs yet, and they don’t understand what distribution logic the government is using to mail them. Suggestions had been made that it is by age or alphabetical, but other users are proving that might not be true.
Twitter user @reese_crispy said, “Yup, and it’s definitely not by age. The middle-aged person in our household got their’s day one. The oldest and youngest are still waiting.”
Some are claiming that they had relatives who filed their taxes last year and have recently passed, but still have affordability cheques addressed to them.
“My daughter hasn’t received hers yet, but my deceased mother received hers today,” said @MrsCharHop.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe confirmed at the Legislature Wednesday in Regina that 450,000 more affordability cheques have been sent today, marking them over halfway done.
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