HAUBRICH: Moe needs to get his government back to principles

Premier Scott Moe needs to get his government back to its roots.The Saskatchewan Party says it believes in “steady, gradual reduction in government spending and taxation while maintaining a firm commitment to balanced budgets,” and “economic growth and job creation through the private sector, not government,” according to the party’s guiding principles.After first being elected in 2007, the government was on track to make good on those beliefs. It balanced its first two budgets and introduced one of Saskatchewan’s largest income tax cuts and debt repayments.And then things started to go off the rails.Since being first elected, the Sask Party has overseen 17 budgets and only balanced 7 of them. The government has only balanced two budgets in the last 10 years.Deficits mean the government is borrowing money and adding to the provincial debt. The debt was $6.8 billion in 2007. By the end of this year the debt will be $21 billion. That’s a 210 per cent increase. And it means the government is wasting millions of dollars every year on debt interest payments.Interest charges on the debt will cost taxpayers $728 million this year. That’s enough money to completely cut the fuel tax with $200 million left to spare.Former premier Brad Wall recognized the costs of debt interest, “Every single dollar you send to a bank to pay interest on debt, you lose an opportunity to do something else,” he said. This year the government is losing $728 million worth of opportunity because the government has let its principles slip.All that debt and deficits comes from years of the government overspending. The government spent an inflation-adjusted $13.9 billion in 2007, this year it’s spending $20.3 billion. That’s not the “gradual reduction in government spending” the Sask Party says it believes in.The government’s spending spree has gotten so out of control that Saskatchewan is now spending more per person than any other province in Western Canada. That includes the big-spending NDP in B.C.And a large portion of that spending comes from the government trying to manage the economy through corporate welfare. From 2008 to 2021, the government spent $15.6 billion handing out taxpayers’ money to corporations, according to the Fraser Institute.While the government has cut taxes in the past, recent memory has seen nothing but tax hikes. The government hiked the PST from five to six per cent in 2017 and stuck it on children’s clothes and restaurant meals. The government did it again in 2022 when it started charging PST on event tickets like Rider games.A Saskatchewan family making $75,000 per year is paying almost $300 more in PST this year than they did in 2017. That’s not a gradual reduction in taxation.To his credit, Moe has been a leader in fighting the costly federal carbon tax, but it's not enough to call out another politician for hiking taxes when his government is raising taxes.Moe committed to an income tax cut during the election and keeping the small business tax rate at one per cent. That’s a good first step and the income tax cut needs to happen as soon possible.But that’s not enough. The government needs to go further by providing even more tax relief and balancing the budget by slashing corporate welfare.The most recent election saw the Sask Party reduced to its lowest number of seats since 2007. The government’s guiding principles promise tax relief and balanced budgets. But all that taxpayers have seen recently is higher spending, higher debt and higher taxes.In four years, taxpayers will go back to the voting booth and give their answer to a simple question: “Is my life better than it was four years ago?” To get a yes, taxes need to be lower. And to lower taxes, Moe needs to get back to his party’s principles of lower spending and lower debt.Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

HAUBRICH: Moe needs to get his government back to principles

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