Article content

Budgets are about choices. And leading up to this year’s provincial budget, CBC’s Jason Warick has shone a spotlight on some of the choices which make clear that Brad Wall and his Saskatchewan Party aren’t even within shouting distance of basic competence in government.

Our health care system is spending up to $1.6 billion every year in unnecessary care driven by a combination of poor management and ill-advised incentives. And that waste is only getting worse due to the Saskatchewan Party’s push toward even more for-profit medicine which makes it lucrative for providers to encourage the overuse of facilities.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or New budget doesn't change Wall's ideology Back to video

Our province is pouring up to $368 million into tax giveaways for an agricultural industry which is doing just fine on its own — which is of course separate from the crop insurance funding which actually serves to protect farmers from hard times.

And buried in the Saskatchewan Party’s bragging about infrastructure spending are millions of dollars being shovelled annually into roads which handle roughly as much traffic as AntiCensusMingle.com. (“Don’t share your private information with the government, share it with us! All fields mandatory.”)

Yet the most important fact recognized in Warick’s series is one which he himself treats as an afterthought.