Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.Saskatchewan’s government is sending taxpayers a billion-dollar bill for debt interest and calling it a plan.That’s the real story in this year’s budget.Finance Minister Jim Reiter claims tariffs and global uncertainty forced a choice: raise taxes, cut services, or protect Saskatchewan.He says the government chose to protect Saskatchewan.In this case, “protect Saskatchewan” means keep overspending and keep piling debt onto taxpayers.Government borrowing in this budget isn’t a fluke caused by world events. It’s a consistent pattern of reckless overspending by the government. The provincial government has more than doubled the debt since 2017. Now the government is planning to increase the taxpayer-supported debt by another $3.4 billion this year. The debt will reach $26.8 billion by year-end. That’s more than $21,000 per Saskatchewanian.That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because, year after year, the Saskatchewan government chooses to increase spending and balloon the debt instead of doing the hard work of finding savings..Saskatchewan families understand that’s a recipe for disaster. If you run up your credit card, the interest starts to eat into your paycheque. The government is doing the same thing. And taxpayers are stuck making the payments.The government will waste about $1 billion on debt interest payments this year. That works out to about $821 for every person in Saskatchewan.And the government has no plan to stop piling on debt. The government is increasing the debt to $33 billion by 2029. That’s a 23% increase in just three years.That’s because the government is increasing spending on basically everything this year. The budget is increasing spending in all but one of its departments. Are taxpayers seriously supposed to believe that there is zero wasteful spending to cut in any of the legislature’s halls?There is waste to cut, but the government hasn’t conducted a comprehensive spending review to find it.Instead, the government is increasing spending by $1.2 billion compared to last year, while revenue is only rising by $361 million..When spending grows three times faster than revenue, debt grows. That is basic math. The government of Saskatchewan is spending about $17,565 per person this year. That is more than the per-person spending of both Alberta and British Columbia.British Columbia’s NDP government is infamous for high spending and piling on debt. Yet Saskatchewan now spends more per person. That signals a clear problem.The budget offered no new tax relief to cash-strapped taxpayers.The Saskatchewan NDP has been calling on the government to cut the gas tax to ease the cost of rising fuel prices.The Saskatchewan government charges drivers a 15-cent-per-litre gas tax. That costs a Saskatchewan family about $11 every time they fill up a minivan and about $15 when they fill up a pickup truck. The Saskatchewan government also charges the highest provincial gas tax in Western Canada. Cutting that tax would have given families a much-needed break at the pumps..The Saskatchewan Party says one of its guiding principles is a “steady, gradual reduction in government spending and taxation while maintaining a firm commitment to balanced budgets.” This budget delivers none of that.When Saskatchewanians face a tough year, they cancel vacations or delay big purchases. They cut back where they can.The government did the opposite. It opened the chequebook and spent more. The longer the government avoids fixing its spending problem, the worse it gets. Debt interest payments crowd out everything else. That leaves less room for tax relief and core services.Taxpayers can’t afford any more reckless borrowing. The government needs to stop acting like the credit card bill never comes due. It needs to control spending and start paying down the debt now.Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
