Today’s Op-Ed pages took note of the dramatic role reversal of Saskatchewan’s political parties in the wake of yesterday’s provincial budget. Months ago, who was predicting the Sask Party would deliver a budget with such significant hikes in program spending with the Opposition NDP knocking the Government for minimal tax cuts? Does anyone still remember those early ‘dire’ warning by the Sask Partiers about the state of our finances?
In its editorial, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix concludes the Government has opted for the status quo, saying it “covered its political promises without delivering a significant change in direction that one comfortably could believe would prepare this province not only for growth but any economic eventuality.”
The Regina Leader-Post applauded the budget’s sizeable investment in ‘infrastructure’, saying the Government is off to a solid start.
Columnist Murray Mandryk mused that “the student may have now actually supplanted the master with its capital infrastructure initiative.” What, asked Mandryk, is there for New Democrats to criticize? His counterpart at the Star Phoenix, Randy Burton, observed that spending is no longer a dirty word for the Sask Party. Burton offered the following, “…while the NDP can’t do it, in some ways this is a budget that could be more easily attacked from the right than the left.”
The Prince Albert Herald commented that the Government seems “to have forgotten its pledge to aid staggering education education property taxes.” But on balance, the paper said the budget seemed to craft a good direction.
The Moose Jaw Times Herald hailed the budget as a “pretty good one” for Saskatchewan. In particular, the paper noted the budget’s reference to a renovation plan at the Moose Jaw Union Hospital. Even though there are few details, the paper said “Brad Wall had kept his word.”
And in a final strange twist, the news aggregator National Newswatch, carried a story headlined “Saskatchewan Party goes on spending spree.” The source for the story: The Victoria Times Colonist. Huh?
1 response so far ↓
Will Chabun // March 20, 2008 at 6:38 pm |
Technically speaking, this was a “Saskatchewan Party budget”, but in the great scheme of things, it was not. The party had only a few months in which to puts it “spin” on the budget, which was mainly drafted under the NDP. That said, this easily could have been a Saskatchewan NDP government’s budget: modestly expansionist and continuing the tradition of understating assumed income from oil and natural gas. Good … better to be too cautious than too irresponsible on this front ’cause you never knew when things will go into the crapperoo, q.v., the late 1980s, when oil prices collapsed to about $10 per barrel.
The big question for Saskatchewan is whether the economic world is fundamentally different from 20 years ago, with the economies of India and China holding out the prospect of an indefinite, Alberta-style boom for us — or whether resource prices will someday fall again. In other words, the classic boom-and-bust Prairie economy.
Next year’s budget will give a much clearer picture of what the SaskParty is all about. Right now, I am a little worried that it is blindly headed for a cataclysmic showdown with organized labour that will be so ruinous as to wreck our reputation as a place to invest — a general strike or a series of rotating public sector strikes that give the impression of a place on the verge of civil war.
I hope I’m wrong, but…