'Historic mismanagement': Official Opposition demands accountability from Sask. government on Crown profit

Saskatchewan's Official Opposition is looking for answers about why the provinces' Crown corporations saw a dramatic drop in collective revenue.

NDP Leader Carla Beck, and Crown Investments Corporation Critic, Erika Richie, raised the issue at a press conference on Friday.

“It’s now been a full week since Scott Moe and the Sask Party tried to quietly release their Crown Annual Reports,” Beck said. “Those reports revealed record losses under Sask Party management.”

Last week, the government released a huge stack of documents to the opposition and media without the usual technical briefing. The reports showed a $353 million decrease in overall Crown profits compared to the year prior. SaskPower reported a net loss of $172 million for the past year, and the consolidated net earnings of all Crowns was $7.4 million.

“I understand why the government doesn’t want to talk about its historic mismanagement of our Crowns, but I do know the public deserves transparency, and they deserve accountability when it comes to their tax dollars,” Beck said on Friday.

Beck said the government's mismanagement of Crowns led to three power hikes in the last year.

“Why did Scott Moe take $237 million from the Crowns and put it into the general revenue fund, forcing families to pick up the tab,” she asked.

She said the government’s solution to their mismanagement is hiking peoples’ taxes and power bills.

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Richie echoed Beck’s statements, saying Saskatchewan people deserve answers as to why they’re being asked to pay more in utilities.

“Scott Moe hiked power rates three times this past year, and somehow, SaskPower still lost $172 million,” she said. “A historic loss.”

“We’ve already seen an increase of $1,608 to families’ taxes and utilities over the past five years.”

In a statement from the province on Friday, Saskatchewan’s Minister of Crown Investments said the annual reports weren’t ready to be tabled until after three Regina area byelections were already underway and cannot conduct media events during the election process.

The statement also said that the higher expenses recorded at SaskPower are all expenses that the NDP support.

“They support a carbon tax designed to make fuel more expensive, with the intention of forcing people to use less power, and they've routinely called for the expansion of more expensive renewables, to the point of making our power grid unreliable,” the statement read.

In SaskPower’s Annual Report, the Crown said a number of factors contributed to the net loss of $172 million, including “increased fuel and purchased power costs and operating, maintenance and administration expenses."