Yes, the Sask Party Is Lying To You About Sask Power

They don't even need to charge you the carbon tax on your bill anymore, but they're still doing it. Even better - instead of turning it over to Justin Trudeau, the Sask Party is keeping the money.

Sorry this one is later than usual. I moved out of my condo yesterday and forgot what a headache that is, especially when it’s minus 50.

You’ve read this in my previous posts, but in case you missed it, I’m leaving Saskatchewan. I can’t live and work here anymore. I’ve been blacklisted by both the Saskatchewan NDP and the Sask Party for doing what I do, along with their peripheral stakeholders and supporters.

Who I am has been defined for me by power-hungry, desperate and angry people in ways that I can’t seem to overcome. I have had my skills, personality, professionalism and existence degraded, particularly from the province’s only conservative talk radio show, for not conforming to their narrative.

I would like to come back to Saskatchewan when the lease on my house in the Caribbean is up in six months, but the point of going away is to determine if I can ever live here again. You can subscribe here if you’d like to follow along on that journey.

I’m the only media in this province who has focused on the sharing the complete truth with you in recent years and now I have to leave it for doing so. Good things don’t happen when you live in a tiny backwater and you are the only person in it who will tell the whole political story, regardless of who doesn’t want you to or why.

In that vein, you may have heard at some point that I am a “paid NDP hack”, but I’ve never been paid by or worked for the Saskatchewan NDP.

I did get paid by you, however, Saskatchewan taxpayer.

To get around the Saskatchewan NDP’s petty anti-Meili bullshit, from 2017 until she decided to retire in 2020 I conducted research independently for Saskatoon Nutana MLA Cathy Sproule (and at times, Danielle Chartier) on their Opposition critic files. I was paid by the Government of Saskatchewan.

Your Majesty’s Official Opposition’s job is to hold democracy together by holding the government accountable. It’s rather important; just look around you for evidence of what happens when it falls apart.

With a tiny Opposition caucus comes tiny government accountability, so Sproule and I hauled ass to try to get to as many issues as we could. She was often assigned the more complex files and SaskPower was a big part of her portfolio.

What is SaskPower, I hear no one asking?

Sure, it’s where you get your lights, but it’s more complicated than that.

SaskPower is a multi-billion dollar carbon capture facility, the carbon capture “Knowledge Centre”, billions of dollars in assets, and of course, the carbon tax. It is arguably the province’s most complex Crown corporation, dealing with crucial issues like the environment and our emissions profile, the province’s financial position and our future with renewable energy.

It’s a cash cow for the Saskatchewan government, highly profitable and constantly sucked clean of any spare cash it has lying around.

Last week the Minister responsible for SaskPower, Don Morgan, rolled out the company’s 2022-23 second-quarter financial update (meaning April 1 through September 30, 2022).

For only the second time in at least as many decades, SaskPower recorded a deficit.

Not a small one either, it’s out $100mil.

In statements to reporters on the subject, Morgan muttered something about the deficit being attributed to system maintenance and the increased price of natural gas, then repeatedly shouted from the rooftops that it was really the carbon tax.

"We've had significant increases in some of our supply costs: 38 per cent increase to natural gas, 36 per cent increase to coal, [plus] both coal and natural gas attract carbon tax, which is a significant expense as well," Don Morgan, January 16, 2023

“… we had to use natural gas, which is more expensive and had triggered carbon tax on it.” - Don Morgan, CKOM, January 16, 2023

Attributing an operational deficit at SaskPower to the carbon tax is ludicrous. Don Morgan knows damn well he’s misleading ratepayers by implying it has anything to do with the fact the company lost $100-million in six months.