(File photo/CKOM News Staff)

By Ben Tompkins

2023-24 Budget

Northeast organizations, officials react to new Sask budget

Mar 23, 2023 | 3:44 PM

After the province released their yearly budget, healthcare and education were some of the biggest focuses.

As far as education was concerned, this year’s budget included more than $4 billion for Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 and post-secondary education.

Around $3.1 billion of that came from the Ministry of Education, a record investment, as it was a 6.7 per cent increase from last year.

According to the North East School Division (NESD), that increase is related to a rise from budget to budget and enrollment.

“For us, we would consider this a status quo budget,” said NESD director of education, Stacy Lair. “Budget to budget, we’re in very similar positions as we were last year, at the same time, and so what that means for the northeast is just considerations for everything in that inflation area that families are feeling.”

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For now, the Division said covering these inflationary costs continues to e a responsibility and a stretch for them, as transportation and facilities costs especially have been hit by inflation.

For example, in 2013, the replacement budget for the school buses was $500,000, and now for that same work, is about $950,000.

“Creativity is necessary when we think about doing that with the same amount of budget dollars, from the Division perspective,” added Lair. “I think the other thing too that we’re aware of is families are feeling that inflationary spend as well, so are our employees, and we have to still think about how we handle the increase for any locally negotiated agreements and the difficulties we have with that.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Saskatchewan also had some input, as they stated, “it was disappointing to see a billion dollar surplus, with not much done for public services.”

“Healthcare is still going to be in a crisis because there seems to be a refusal to talk to frontline workers as to how to address some of the issues,” said CUPE Saskatchewan president, Judy Henley. “Education is definitely short of funding, and we’re quite concerned as to what services will then come on the cost of either parents or cut from education.”

Henley referred to an issue this past summer in Canora and Kamsack, where there were bypass posters on each door, sending them to the other hospital, which was closed.

She added, especially in rural Saskatchewan, that she’s seen services cut to emergencies.

“It’s definitely an issue because the rural areas are farming communities, there could be mining, there’s a lot of industrial that can happen in the rural area, so we do need the services to be there, no different than with education or childcare or anything like that.”

As far as education, they were hoping for funding to be back to where it was prior to 2017, ‘as it’s been in a downward spiral ever since.’

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