Yesterday, the Saskatchewan government revealed its plan to “re-open the Saskatchewan economy.” I will leave critiques about whether the plan adequately addresses testing and the public health needs of the province to those more qualified to make them. Suffice it to say I, like many others, was relieved just to…
Read more
Today, the Saskatchewan government was supposed to release its annual budget. Instead it will release only its spending plans, recognizing that its revenue numbers are—in the words of the Premier—”no longer relevant today.” This decision was somewhat overdue: the opposition NDP requested a delay in the budget more than a…
Read more
Today the Leader-Post published my response to Minister Gord Wyant’s recent op-ed that argued the Saskatchewan government would continue to use the P3 model for certain new public infrastructure. In that response, I noted that “politicians have fallen in love with the P3 model because it allows them to push…
Read more
First, the good news. The release of the government’s first climate resilience report finally gives the Saskatchewan public a series of goals and targets that can allow us to measure and assess the government’s progress towards climate adaptation and mitigation. Moreover, the release of the report further demonstrates that the government…
Read more
If there was any silver lining for those concerned with climate change in yesterday’s carbon tax/monster truck rally that rolled through Regina, it was the degree to which Premier Scott Moe and even some of the demonstrators went out of their way to concede the realities of climate change and…
Read more
Yesterday’s Saskatchewan budget didn’t hold many surprises and that was probably to be expected. Scott Moe’s government has yet to face the electorate and has no real public mandate to make any significant changes. Because of this lack of democratic legitimacy, a cautious, incremental approach, that hewed to the path…
Read more
The most recent IPCC report further underlines the necessity of urgent action on climate change if we are to limit the most devastating effects of a warming planet. As the report states, we now have a mere 12 years now to implement aggressive carbon reductions in order to…
Read more
It is becoming increasingly evident that Canada and most of the world will not come anywhere close to meeting the Paris climate targets meant to avoid the danger of global warming of more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial period. More urgently, the recent IPCC report warns that we have a…
Read more
With Greyhound Canada’s announcement that it will suspend all bus service in Western Canada, the Saskatchewan government’s insistence that the private sector can effectively provide inter-city transportation is looking more and more like wishful thinking. In the wake of the Saskatchewan government’s decision to wind down the Saskatchewan Transportation Company…
Read more
Premier Scott Moe tweeted this graphic on equalization yesterday. The tweet continues the Saskatchewan government’s long record of misrepresenting how equalization works in the hopes of ginning up anti-Quebec and anti-Ottawa sentiment among the Saskatchewan electorate. However, this time the misrepresentation goes one further, as it implies the graph is…
Read more