March 30th, 2023
“Its a great news budget. Record revenue, 19.7 billion. We are putting 7.1 billion into health, 4 billion into education, 1.7 billion into social assistance. Municipal revenue sharing is 298 million dollars. We are paying down a billion dollars in debt and no new taxes or increases. It’s growth that works for everyone,” said MLA for Last Mountain Touchwood Travis Keisig.
Keisig said three years ago, the government had a project to hire an additional 300 care aids “across the province and this is the third installment of that project.” From the money allocated to health, 5.5 million will go to hiring 75 more continuing care aids. He is sure the care home in Strasbourg will benefit from some of that.
“We are working on finishing up the urgent care centre in Regina so that is going to benefit alot of people and it’s going to take alot of pressure off of our emergency rooms. I really think these urgent care centres are a really good addition to our health care team. There are so many people that go to the emergency room and it’s truly not an emergency. It’s urgent, it’s critical, but they don’t have any other choice.”
When asked about the health care worker shortage and the difficulty that people trained elsewhere are having trouble getting residencies to practice in the Province, Keisig said, “it's top of mind. Residencies are very competitive. There are alot of people who go overseas to get their medical degrees then are unable to get a residency. It’s something both of our health ministers are very aware of and it’s an issue that we are trying to address to the best of our abilities.”
When asked about the decision to allocate the one billion dollar surplus towards the debt rather than other areas suffering pressures, Keisig said allocating 1B towards debt reduction would save the province 44 million in interest every year, which can go back into services that people want. “This is the largest health care budget that we’ve had. Paying down debt allows us to be fiscally responsible and allow us to keep funding all of our services that everyone in Saskatchewan wants. So just as your agricultural business or any thing else you have a really good crop. You take that opportunity to pay down some debt and you still want to keep your operation functioning to the best of its abilities. So it’s always a balancing act. There’s tons of people asking for more money into infrastructure, health, social services, education. But we have to be fiscally prudent and these kinds of opportunities aren’t going to come along every day.”
Keisig noted they are fully funding crop insurance and that 38 million is going toward research and innovation. “Putting funding into research to help family farms is absolutely critical to allow us to stay on the cusp of all new seed and variety developments that’s going to help every saskatchewan agricultural producer.”
After the budget passes, Keisig will be moving into legislative committee work. He expects it to be a busy time as he serves on the intergovernmental affairs and justice committees before going back to the constituency for the summer. The government is in session until May 18th.
