Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at 4:40 PM on the trout pond just east of Tisdale
Spring arrived this week and so did the provincial budget
Tisdale - Saturday,March 24, 2012
The longer days are welcomed by us all and as you can some last chance ice fishing is still possible. The little Dog Hide River is barely within its banks but is snaking along through the golf course without flooding.
Just south of the bridge on highway #3 the banks are not very deep and the little stream has expanded into the pasture and the geese are just fine with that.
The Canada geese like to get up here as quickly as possible each year because the sooner this year’s eggs are hatched the longer the goslings of 2012 have to get really for the flight back south in the fall.
Creating a provincial budget is a difficult task and the newly re-elected government wants to make sure that it does not fall into the trap that the Devine Conservative government stepped into just over a decade and a half or so ago. With a solid mandate from the electorate Grant Devine’s government, which included the present premier Brad Wall, who was working in the premier’s office, decided to make the rural folks of the province smile and it built hospital after hospital, care homes and handed out money to just about any business that would accept subsidies. By the end of their term in office the province of Saskatchewan was chronically in debt and it took really tough measures by the Romanow government to get the budget back in line with what was being raised through taxes and transfer payments.
The problem for the Wall government was to keep a balanced budget and try to reclaim some of the damage from the legacy of the Devine government so many years ago. This produced this year’s mixed bag budget. Spending in health care and education showing positive growth with the province’s economy while revamping the basic structure of education funding in the province. A fair amount of money is going back into the rainy day fund and a modest increase in spending toward highways. Two notable cuts have puzzled everyone.
With a budget in the billions the two things that stand out as just plain odd were each about $8,000,000,000. Not a lot of money but one really angers me and the other is just plain short sighted and perhaps a bit on the stupid side.
Saskatchewan has a fairly large population of people over 65 years of age and they have the benefit of a special programme to reduce the burden of prescriptive drugs on their limited fixed incomes. Up until the budget we paid $15 for a prescription. But, a lot of us over 65 have medical conditions that require a lot of pharmaceuticals, this government has raised that fee by a whopping 33% to $20 a prescription. For me as a diabetic that amounts to $45 more a month or $540 a year increase. So that little change in the provincial budget changes my cost of medication and supplies from $1,620 a year to $2,160. Just where is that money suppose to come from? My pension is not going up by 33% but this discriminatory cost increase is just plain mean. I am certain that this will cost lives.
There will be people who do not have the pension I have and they will cut back on their medication and Brad Wall’s government will save $8 million dollars at the cost of health impairment and perhaps worse to many senior Saskatchewan residents. Be sure to sent the premier a thank you card for his budget on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
The talent, skill and equipment will go to the provinces where the work is and those jobs and the revenue that would have otherwise been spent in Saskatchewan will put bread on the table for production workers in Manitoba where the tax incentive is steadily bringing work to the province. Three movies are in production this month in Winnipeg.
The thing is when we elect politicians and government we do not take the time or have the ability to do any intelligence testing on the candidates and smiles and back slapping with a little corporate funding can get a dummy elected.
We had a bit of snow last night. Downtown Tisdale is a mess because street cleaning is not a priority in this community. But in the coming days the sun will shine, the snow will melt and folks will step out on the street with short sleeves, perhaps even in shorts. Things are looking up.
