So Much of Saskatchewan's Federal COVID-19 Funding Went Into a Black Hole (At Least a 3-Part Series)
What they did with K-12 education dollars, during one of the worst crises in provincial history, is stunning.
The Sask Party took at least a billion dollars of your money from Justin Trudeau’s federal government to facilitate our provincial government’s COVID-19 “response”.
In 2020, Justin Trudeau’s federal government’s Safe Restart Agreement included funding for Canadian provinces and territories to restart their economies after pandemic shutdowns wreaked havoc on them.
In a letter he signed in 2020, Premier Scott Moe initially agreed to take $341-mil of your federal tax dollars from Trudeau’s Safe Restart Agreement:
$93.4-mil to increase COVID-19 testing “from a baseline of 1,500 tests per day to 4,000 tests per day. Saskatchewan will continue to share information on testing, contact tracing and procurement with the federal government and remain accountable to residents of Saskatchewan.”
$37.4-mil to ensure Saskatchewan health care system had the “capacity to respond to the pandemic, prepare for surge capacity, and address wait times resulting from postponed elective procedures… mental health and other supports… community-based service delivery
$23-mil to “enhance supports for congregate care settings to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 among vulnerable populations… enhance supports for Indigenous and northern communities… additional spaces for children and youth and continuing hotel isolation…”
$62.3-mil + $8.1-mil to support “Saskatchewan municipalities to respond to COVID-19… replacing lost revenues due to declines in transit use, maintaining services and infrastructure and enhancing communications activities.”
$93.4-mil in cash and donations of Personal Protective Equipment;
$23-mil to “enhance supports for licensed child care facilities (e.g., grants to support additional costs like cleaning supplies, equipment and staff)”
In late August 2020 the federal government announced Safe Return To School funding, which meant another $74.9-mil for Saskatchewan’s restart efforts.
The Government of Saskatchewan reported COVID-19 funds received from the federal government like this:
Clear as mud, right?
Figure 1 shows that in 2020-21 the Ministry of Finance says it received $532.1-mil in COVID-19 funding for Saskatchewan from the federal government. (The feds also provided non-quantified, in-kind “donations”, including the vaccines.)
In 2021-22’s report (Figure 2), it seems the Ministry of Finance declassified the federal dollars for “accelerated reclamation of inactive oil and gas wells” as COVID-related, restating 2020-21’s COVID-19 overall funding as a reduced $466.2-mil, with an additional $203.6-mil received in 2021-22.
Interesting, given the Government of Saskatchewan’s own news release says $400 million total funding for orphan oil wells announced in May 2020 was part of the fed’s COVID economic response plan. Therefore, I’m going to include it as COVID-related funding, despite it being a project for which the Sask Party took great pleasure in claiming 99.9% of the credit.
That’s a total of $919.1-mil in federal COVID-19 dollars accepted from the Liberal government by the Sask Party government since April 1, 2020.
Remember, that’s on top of the standard annual multi-billion-dollar transfers for health and social services (see Figures 1 & 2) the Saskatchewan government receives from the federal government to facilitate that type of programming.
Figure 3 is the summary breakdown of Ministry of Finance’s 2020-21 expenses by subvote (category) in that year’s Public Accounts report.
$250-mil in pandemic-related funding went out as “Miscellaneous Payments” under subvote FI08.
Inside the red box in Figure 3 you see $109.8-mil went to “Emergency Pandemic Support for K-12 Education”.
Figure 4 reflects how the report breaks things down further. Under subvote FI08 “Emergency Pandemic Support for K-12 Education”, we can see how that $109.8-mil was paid by the Ministry of Finance to each school division.
All the way back in the summer of 2020, Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 numbers were still relatively low, but stress and tension was high. The Saskatchewan government had released back-to-school protocols in June of that year, part of its pathetic Safe School Plan. Then-Minister of Education Gord Wyant made it clear that beyond that and a paltry $40-mil bump in operating funding, school divisions were on their own.
In that light, $109-million spent on “Emergency Pandemic Support for K-12 Education” in 2021-21 sounds pretty good.
Perhaps would have been, had the Sask Party government’s 2020-21’s Non-Emergency Pandemic Support (AKA operating funds for K-12 schools) not been lower in the pandemic year of 2020-21 than 2018-19:
$109-million, or a five percent boost in school operating funds in 2021-21 would have been useful, had the overall education budget not only been a mere three percentage points higher than it was in 2018-19.
Ultimately, the Sask Party funded education during the pandemic far less than they already do in non-pandemic years.
Moving on, unlike the detailed school division numbers, everything inside the red box in Figure 4 (a total of $140-mil) is assigned to a slush fund bucket someone hastily scrawled “SK COVID-19 SUPPORT PROGRAM” on the side of with a Sharpie. Also unlike school divisions, which release financial reports, that bucket is where the federal money trails ends.
This means Harpauer’s Ministry of Finance paid school divisions $109-mil, and paid itself $140-mil in federal COVID-19 funding to administer programs such as the Temporary Wage Supplement, Small Business Emergency Payments and Tourism Sector Support, etc to Saskatchewan residents.
We should be able to find, with relative ease, precisely where and how Harpauer’s Ministry distributed that $140-mil - IOW, what Saskatchewan workers and businesses got those federal tax dollars - by looking at the Ministry of Finance’s 2020-21 annual report.
We should… but to the surprise of no one, we can’t.
The Ministry of Finance’s annual report, which contains financials, only restates the line items shown on Figure 3 and 4 under vote/category FI08. It provides no details on which Sask Party family members, friends and donors who got that money.
Small Business Emergency Payment Program
The Ministry of Finance’s 2020-21 annual report says the Saskatchewan Small Business Emergency Payment Program (SSBEP) handed out roughly 19,000 cheques over two phases with an average payment of $3400. The maximum payment was $5,000. That jives with the $63.9-mil Public Accounts reported the Finance Ministry paid to the program (see Figure 4 again). No report provides any information on which Sask Party family members, friends and donors who got a cheque, or whether businesses were eligible for more than one.
Sorry no, you don’t get to secretly take public funding for your business.
If the Sask Party claims it can’t release this information for commercial reasons, it’s lying. Rightly or not, businesses receive public funding all the time. From hundreds of millions of tax dollars provided for the benefit of mining projects (pretty sure shareholders don’t mind either though) to grants or rebates or credits for whatever trendy sector the hip-to-the-kids Sask Party has latched on to this week, it is all publicly-reported.
Don’t want the public to know your business took public funds? Don’t take public funds for your business.
Temporary Wage Supplement
The Ministry of Finance’s 2020-21 annual report says approximately 85,000 workers’ applications for the Saskatchewan Temporary Wage Supplement (STWS) top-up were approved for payment of $400 for a 4-week period up to 16 weeks. The report contains no details beyond that. Again, every Government of Saskatchewan-employed person’s salary is available publicly by name, so who got a top-up shouldn’t be a secret.
In a May 6, 2021 meeting in the Saskatchewan Legislature on the Ministry of Finance’s estimated expenses for the fiscal year, as per the provincial budget released just a few weeks prior, Harpauer’s deputy minister, Rupen Pandya, shared a bit more information on the SWTS. The following is a summation of the transcript.
Number of wage top-up payments (some workers would have qualified for more than one payment) per SHA facility by type:
28,876 special care homes (in Saskatchewan mainly seniors’ homes)
19,565 integrated facilities (predominantly rural, combining AKA integrating two+ services ie. the hospital and special care home)
8212 personal care homes (mainly adults with differing mental and physical abilities in a group residential setting)
1,760 licensed child care centres
1,546 CLSD [community living service delivery] group homes
1,210 home care
987 unlicensed assisted living
653 “private service homes or approved homes”
493 CFP [child and family programs] group homes
154 “It just says group homes so I’m not sure; they’re not labelled as to what type of group home” (that’s the quote from Harpauer’s deputy minister)
130 CFP short-term, community-based homes
116 crisis response, other specialized group homes
Etc.
For a total of 64,039 payments, which is a fair amount less than the 85,000 number used in that Ministry’s own annual report.
Today Rupen Pandya, who worked his way through the Sask Party government since he was Rob Norris’s ministerial assistant, is enjoying his brand new role as president and CEO of SaskPower. I’m sure the entire C-suite passed over to reward him for his service is thrilled.
But I digress.
Notice the glaring hole in the list of workers who got the wage top-up?
Urban hospitals. Wonder why?
Virtually every worker in rural Saskatchewan hospitals qualified for the wage top-up, by way of the seniors’ home attached to their workplace through a hallway and a set of locked double doors.
A wage top-up for the workers cleaning and containing COVID-19-soaked ERs and ICU departments in Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Regina and anywhere else in Saskatchewan where a hospital is just a hospital?
Nah. That’s where Donna Harpauer drew the line.
Think about what kind of person you’d have to be to actually consider the janitors, porters and other non-medical roles that were integral to keeping city hospitals running through COVID-19 surges, and then decide against rewarding them a measly extra $400 for their public service.
Mind-boggling.
Saskatchewan Tourism Sector Support Program
1350 payments were made with an average payment of $20,000 and maximum of $50,000 through the Saskatchewan Tourism Sector Support Program (STSSP).
In that May 6, 2021 committee meeting, Pandya said that the Ministry of Finance received roughly 1900 applications for the tourism payment and denied 300 of them, which would mean each of the remaining 1600 successful applicants would have received an average of $17,000.
Who got that tourism money and why?
Who knows.
Saskatchewan Strong Recovery Adaptation Rebate
How does this differ from the $64-million in Small Business Emergency Payments I just told you about?
Who knows.
According to the Ministry of Finance’s annual report, the Saskatchewan Strong Recovery Adaptation Rebate reimbursed small businesses that adapted to operate during the pandemic (so, all of them?). The report claims in 2020-21 there were 217 approved applications under this program, but provides no detail or dollar amounts.
Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance
The Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program provided forgivable loans to commercial property owners. “The program provided $26.2M in benefits to 1,071 Saskatchewan landlords in support of 1,837 small business tenants with 16,298 employees”. This program was controlled and financed almost exclusively by the feds. The province’s share was the $6.75-mil paid to CMHC as noted in Figure 4.
Saskatchewan Self Isolation Support Program
Finally, the Ministry of Finance’s annual report states 2135 applications were approved under the Saskatchewan Self Isolation Support Program (SISP), which was established as a temporary program in the five pandemic minutes prior to the federal Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program being implemented on April 6, 2020.
Harpauer provides no details regarding those 2135 payments.
To recap… the Sask Party government accounts, or doesn’t, for just over half of the $466-mil in federal COVID-19 funding it claims it received in 2020-21 by reporting:
$109-mil to school divisions and
$140-mil distributed secretly to a select number of Saskatchewan workers and businesses.
We don’t know how much each individual worker and business received; where those workers and businesses are located (which ridings?), how many businesses and workers were denied and where those are located; who approved or denied the applications based on what criteria, etc.
A black hole of private citizens and businesses into which Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Finance threw $140-million public dollars.
According to Public Accounts 2020-21 Vol 2, in addition to what the Ministry of Finance distributed, $45-mil went to a variety of Indigenous community-based organizations under the Emergency Pandemic Support for First Nations and Métis Organizations program, facilitated by the Ministry of Government Relations. This represents approximately half of the funds those Indigenous organizations would have received from Saskatchewan casino profits in 2020-21.
To me, the fact Indigenous community groups only received half of their normal funding, considering what I just told you was provided for other small businesses in Saskatchewan, means that $45-mil also represents systemic racism.
But maybe that’s just me.
(It’s not. It’s systemic racism.)
An “Emergency Pandemic Support for Community Initiatives Fund” got $5-mil to replace the Community Initiatives Fund typical annual allocation of $9-mil. No idea why the province felt it couldn’t fund that program as normal in 2020-21.
$4.4-mil was provided to school divisions for Emergency Pandemic Supplies for K-12 Education. Which is like pennies per student, but whatever.
That gets us to approximately $300-mil of the COVID-19 funding spent in 2020-21.
Where’s the other $166-mil of federal COVID-19 funds that the Saskatchewan government claims was received in 2020-21? And the additional $200-mil in 2021-22?
We have a full financial picture of Saskatchewan’s fiscal year 2020-21. We have only half the picture, or Public Accounts Volume 1, for 2021-22. Public Accounts 2021-22 Volume 2 will be released later this year, usually in December. So that’s part of it.
However as you’ve probably noticed, we’ve not touched 2020-21’s health care funding. Or that abandoned oil well cleanup program, for that matter.
Substack (and common sense) says I’ve written too much already 😇. So, I guess this is a multi-part series and we’ll do the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s financials next - they’re not any more comforting. Have a great week, Tammy.