Tariff situation making provincial budgeting difficult

The back-and-forth threat of American tariffs and uncertainty around how much, where and when has made building the Government of Saskatchewan’s budget “very difficult” according to provincial Finance Minister Jim Reiter.

“It’s a work in progress is all I can tell you,” he said.

The government is expected to deliver its 2025-26 spring budget on March 19 but begins work months before.

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Premier Scott Moe said the challenge of this is knowing what will happen.

“What length of time, at what rate, will the other two tariffs actually stack onto this? This is the utter chaos that we are dealing with,” said Moe.

On March 5, Reiter said the 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods and 10 per cent on energy into the U.S. would have a $4.9 billion and 5.8 per cent impact on the province’s GDP, and reduce provincial revenue by $1.4 billion if they were in place for one year.

“Hopefully, that would be a worst-case scenario… we’re hoping it would be significantly better than that,” said Reiter.

Moe said all levels of government have been trying to work around these problems. He said he’d recently had a conversation with a municipal leader about their budget and being worried about capital projects getting more expensive.

Moe wasn’t giving away much about what would be in the provincial budget.

“Saskatchewan will be in a strong financial situation and in a position to support Saskatchewan people, should they need it, through a prolonged tariff,” he said.

The premier declined to say whether a contingency fund will be included in the budget to try to buffer the effects of tariffs like some other provinces have.

“If you have one or don’t have one and you make one throughout the year, if it’s needed, there’s really no difference,” said Moe.