Today’s Saskatoon Star Phoenix editorial takes the provincial government to task for presiding over the only province that uses fund accounting rather than summary statements to express its financial position.
Withdrawals from the government’s “growth and financial security fund” announced in the annual budget are sometimes cancelled or changed, money allocated to one purpose is redirected to another (as with the nuclear centre), and “special dividends” are taken from Crowns, all of which contribute to a kind of shell-game with public money where interested taxpayers, and even MLAs, find it difficult to keep track of what’s going on.
Well done to the Star Phoenix and time for some principled action from the Government. The way that the have been able to evade proper fiscal accountability in recent times has been very disappointing.
