'Targeted' spending could come in Sask. budget this week, according to experts

The 2024-25 provincial budget will be unveiled in the Saskatchewan Legislature on Wednesday afternoon, outlining the government’s taxation and spending plans for the next fiscal year.

The 2024-25 provincial budget will be unveiled in the Saskatchewan Legislature on Wednesday afternoon, outlining the government’s taxation and spending plans for the next fiscal year.

While the fine details of the budget won’t be revealed until Finance Minister Donna Harpauer rises in the assembly around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, political and economic experts weighed in this past week on some possible directions the province could take with its budget.

Tom McIntosh, professor of politics and international studies at the University of Regina (U of R), said considering 2024 is an election year, the budget may look a little different than non-election years.

“They’re usually full of lots of little goodies for people, whether they’re tax rebates or reductions or special programs and the like. There’s been a tendency to do a lot of kind of targeted kinds of things like the home renovation tax credit that this government has had in the past,” he said.

“I think that’ll be the big thing is how much pre-election spending is there going to be.”

However, McIntosh said the government is not in as good fiscal shape as they hoped it would be, which may be a bit of a problem.

“It limits how much sort of big time spending they can do, given the fact that … we’ve gone from a surplus to a projected deficit,” he said.