Premier Scott Moe expressed disappointment with the federal budget, saying Ottawa has given up even trying to balance it."A $40 billion federal deficit would equate to about a $1.2 billion deficit for Saskatchewan residents. That's just a little bit more than I think we're willing to bear," Moe said."And it's very unfortunate that this is a government that just won't even try to at least get close to balancing the books federally."Saskatchewan wanted two things from the budget and got neither."We had two asks yesterday. One was to increase municipal infrastructure funding; we see none of that. And we asked them to remove the carbon tax and we see that actually increasing. So, a swing and a miss on both of those fronts, I'd say."The premier welcomed one development in the budget. The New Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses would return more than $2.5 billion collected from 2019 to 2020 through 2023/24 to an estimated 600,000 businesses. The new refundable tax credit would include companies with fewer than 500 employees in provinces where the federal carbon tax has been applied.Moe said the government was only giving back without interest what it never should have taken in the first place."They're going to give some of their money back that they had essentially taken over the course of not only the last five years, but took it all the time during a global pandemic. And those businesses certainly could have used those dollars," Moe said.During the 2015 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposed modest deficits to build infrastructure because interest rates were low. Although the interest rates are now high, the deficits continue, and not towards infrastructure in a traditional approach."We understand housing is a priority, but not at the cost of municipal infrastructure funding. A house being built with no water, sewer services and garbage services is not that valuable to a municipality. So they need to remove the strings or open up the opportunities for that funding to apply to municipal infrastructure in the traditional way that we have had," Moe said."There's very little for our urban municipalities in Saskatchewan and I'd say even less for the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipal members."Moe said the failure to balance the budget is not just due to high spending, but to creating an uncertain atmosphere for investment that diminishes tax revenues."That's the tack that we're taking in Saskatchewan and for keeping our spending in check and increasing the economy and increasing the tax base in Saskatchewan, which ultimately is increasing the amount that we're able to invest, and invest with a very close to or balanced budget in the province."We're seeing no restrictions on the investments at the federal level."Moe said the consumer carbon tax was one problem, as were other "fairly extreme policy decisions" such as the clean fuel standard, clean electricity standard, methane emissions cap and caps on emissions from oil and possibly fertilizer."All of that is making for an uncertainty investment environment, which is really challenging the opportunity for us to attract private investment into our nation. And I say 'our nation' because we need a strong investment climate in our nation."
