Hot sauce, moose hats and yoga pants, oh my! | Canadian Taxpayers Federation

SK: Hot sauce, moose hats and yoga pants, oh my! | Canadian Taxpayers Federation

I would like to thank Mr. Craig for unearthing this spending, but I have to slightly disagree with his larger point...

His larger point seems to be that the spending is inappropriate in a year with a deficit.

My point is that some of this spending seems to be inappropriate in ANY year.

Want proof? The Ministry of Health, which holds a complete monopoly over health care services in the province, spent $60,000 on promotion items. Keeping in mind, this isn't the health regions themselves, this is the governing body which really has no specific purpose other than to give money to the health regions.

Or how about Sask Power, which has a monopoly over electrical generation and transmission throughout the province (except for some pockets where another local owned utility has a monopoly) and yet sees the need to spend over $400,000 on promotional items to show the citizens of the province what a great job that government run monopoly is doing. Ditto Sasktel, although given that Sasktel competes in the long distance, cellular, cable and home security markets, it's actually understandable that one.

The one that really gets my goat though, is the Enterprise Saskatchewan bill. Enterprise Saskatchewan is a governing body for 13 Enterprise regions throughout the province. It has no promotional responsibilities that I am aware of. Yet, it felt the need to spend money on promotional items rather than flow more revenue to the regions where it might do more good. I can't wait to see how much is spent during the current fiscal year on promotional items after the funding to the regions was cut by 25% across the board. Granted, $60,000 is a drop in the bucket, but it's still worth about $5,000 in extra funding for each region.

To make a long story short, promotional items are the low hanging fruit - the items that should be reduced or eliminated when the government is in a deficit. I applaud the CTF in bringing this information to light in order to ensure that these organizations tighten their belts as much as the population is expected to.