Canadian Taxpayers Federation disappointed Sask. budget doesn't include tax relief for families

Thanks, Adam. This is Gage Holbrook with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Gage, what did you, what’s your response to this budget? Well, it’s extremely disappointing to see the Saskatchewan government once again fail to balance the budget. That means more debt, more money spent on interest payments. You know, I was here last year when the government set up and said there’s going to be a billion dollar deficit. That didn’t happen. Now this year, they’re at least telling us there’s going to be a deficit. And year after year they continue to spend more and not look for any places to find savings. Out of the main areas they spend on in this budget, only one is seeing a decrease from last budget. So they didn’t even put in that effort to find those savings. That becomes a problem because of that rising debt. We’re going to get to $21.1 billion by the end of this year and then spend 730 million on interest payments this year. $10 million a month, money that can’t be used for important programs, the government to spend on or tax relief any sort. It simply gets wasted on that interest and it’s disappointing to see that number keep climbing this year. What do you make about affordability? That was a large thing we heard from the NDP saying. You know, this budget doesn’t really address and making things more affordable for people. What do you think about affordability in this budget? Well, I think there wasn’t any affordability in this budget. Saskatchewan people are feeling the brunt of high inflation and even higher costs on everything and the government didn’t offer. The Saskatchewan family and the support of tax relief. That would have made it easier for them to make Mint ends meet this year. Thank you, Gage. So I guess if there is, you know, an increasing deficit, what do you, what do you have liked to see from the province in this budget? We would like to see at least any amount of effort. $273,000,000 is a lot of money when you’re talking to billions the government spend, it’s not too much. They would have just spent a couple extra days around that budget deliberations table to get that number down to balance. We could have seen the debt start to go down again, not seeing such a huge increase in interest payments. But the government refused to do that and now Saskatchewan taxpayers are going to be paying for it. What do you make of no cut to the the gas tax. It’s something that you and I have talked about before. It’s something you’ve called for, obviously not in this budget. What do you make of that? Well, it’s also disappointing. You know, Saskatchewan is a is a land of long roads and even longer Rd. trips. So getting that $0.15 a litre taken off our gas would have been great for the average family. Everyone drives to work, drives to hockey practice, drives to everything. It would have gone a long way to help people make ends meet and it’s kind of perplexing to see the government not move forward on something like this because. They rail so hard against the cost of the federal carbon tax. But they’re doing the same thing for drivers of Saskatchewan, so it’s very disappointing to see them not offer any of that relief.