By Roger White

Budget falls short of addressing province’s issues: Feist

Apr 11, 2018 | 12:00 PM

While reaction to yesterday’s provincial budget has been mixed, a local member of the provincial NDP executive feels the budget fell far short of addressing many issues the province is facing.

Rob Feist told battlefordsNOW he saw very few positives with the document tabled by Finance Minister Donna Harpauer Tuesday in the legislature.

“I guess if I can take anything positive out of the budget, [it] was that the SaskParty did not double down on tax increases from 2018,” he said. “We are still in a province where they shifted the tax burden from out-of-province corporations and the wealthy onto the working and middle class.”

In the upcoming fiscal year, the province is projecting a $2.3 billion deficit, which Feist said totally unacceptable.

“There is a significant issue with overall public debt,” he said. “The deficit is now going up to a record $20 billion, which wasn’t even that high when Grant Devine was premier.”

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When you look at the Sask. Party’s track record, Feist said it’s not hard to see where the deficit came from.

“There’s $30 million in the budget slated for the Regina Bypass, which is one third of the total highway spending this year,” Feist said. “There’s $1 billion spent on the GTH, billions spent on that failed carbon capture project, so that public debt was avoidable.”

Feist said he was glad to see the province lived up to its promise of investing $30 million dollars into education after slashing its budget by $54 million last year,  though he feels it’s still not enough.

“Education funding is something that we should not be reducing to deal with a deficit,” Feist said. “I have a close friend who is a teacher and we have spoken about that $54 million cut last year and it was big.”

The increased investment will help, Feist said, but it will not do enough to relieve the stress on Saskatchewan teachers.

“It’s very difficult for teachers right now, with the sizes in our classrooms in Saskatchewan and the lack of educational assistants, so if the SaskParty thinks that giving back $30 million after taking $54 million is acceptable, well it’s not.”

roger.white@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW