REGINA: The latest provincial budget will not put the province back on fiscal track and will have a detrimental effect on public services in this province and on the lives of those who provide them, according to CUPE.
“The budget paints a clear picture of how poorly our province has been run over the last nine years, and it is not pretty,” said Tom Graham, president of CUPE Saskatchewan. “The Sask Party’s reckless decisions, like building P3 schools, embracing Lean contracts, and selling off public assets, got us into this mess. And now the only solution they have for a situation they created is to punish frontline workers and cut public services while decreasing taxes for their rich corporate donors.”
This budget included cuts to education funding, selling off the Saskatchewan Transportation Corporation, increases to long term care costs for families, reduction to regional parks funding, massive cuts for regional libraries, and funding decreases to post-secondary education.
Economic multipliers show that cuts to public spending are much worse for the economy than tax increases would be. Recent reports from the International Monetary Fund and Europe admit that austerity measures created economic hardship for the population but also increased their deficits and debts.