Although the promises have been coming in fairly steadily over the past few months, it has now been officially announced. The Lieutenant Governor was asked to dissolve the 29th legislature and this morning (Mon) in Saskatoon, the Leader of the Saskatchewan Party announced voting day will be Monday, October 28th.
While making that announcement, Scott Moe made the first official election promises of the campaign, saying that if the Saskatchewan Party is re-elected, they promise to lower personal income taxes by raising the personal income tax exemption amount, meaning more people won’t have to pay because their income wouldn’t reach the threshold. “Taking a further 54,000 people off the provincial tax rolls all together, a total now of 166,000 people.” The Saskatchewan Party also promises to raise the personal, spousal and child income tax exemption and the seniors supplement by $500 each year for the next four years. Combined with the government’s indexation of personal tax rates, Moe says a family of four will save more than $3400 over four years and a senior couple will save more than $3100.
When asked why the invite last week to healthcare provider unions to join a nursing task force and not previously when urged to do so by health care unions, to get their take on how to deal with the lack of staff, long wait lists, and overcrowded hospitals, Moe didn’t specifically answer that question. He said, “We want all of the nursing designations to be at that table. That’s what the discussion has centered on over the last number of months and we will most certainly be moving forward with that if we have the honour to form government.” He added they wanted to include all the credentialed nursing designations to focus on a patient-first nursing task force.
Brad Wall retired as Premier in 2018, and Scott Moe was elected by his peers as Leader of the Saskatchewan Party and then therefore he became Premier. His first election as Leader was in 2020.
The Saskatchewan Party began the term with 48 MLAs and ended with 42, with 16 not running again. The Saskatchewan NDP ended with 14 seats, the Saskatchewan United Party had one seat and there were three independents, and one seat was vacant, for a total of 61 seats in the legislature.
