NDP calling for Crown bill deferral program to be extended

Case numbers may be going down but NDP MLA Aleana Young said people are still struggling because of the pandemic.

She said she spoke to a man while door-knocking and he told her he has a good job but is still finishing a little in the red every month.

“What I’m hearing from real people in Saskatchewan, is that this has been one of the most challenging times of their life – certainly economically, certainly for families, and certainly for business,” said Young, who is the NDP’s critic on SaskPower.

Which is why the NDP is calling on the provincial government to retroactively extend the bill deferral program for Crown Corporations.

When the pandemic hit, the Crowns offered people help by offering to defer payment of their bills, if needed. The program ended in Sept. 2020 and people who had deferred bills were given a year and a payment plan to pay their outstanding bills for those six months without any interest.

The Sask. NDP, however, believes that program should have gone on longer. The party, with Young and leader Ryan Meili at the forefront, is calling for the deferral program to be extended retroactively from Sept. 2020 to cover Crown bills that hadn’t been paid all the way up to, at least, July 11 this year – that would include not charging interest for those missed payments.

Meili said the pandemic didn’t end in September and, in fact, got worse over the winter, so the help provided by the government shouldn’t have ended.

Meili said the Crowns charging interest — adding up to almost 20 per cent a year — on families that are still hurting is not right.

“These are the very people that we should be using the Crowns to help, people who’re just trying to make ends meet,” said Meili.

Young said the Crowns are there to return money and value to the people of Saskatchewan, but she accused the provincial government of using them to profit from families.

“This is the last thing that families and businesses need right now, and this is not what our Crowns are designed to do,” said Young.

In response, Minister responsible for the Crown Investments Corporation Don Morgan felt government had done a lot to help people in the pandemic.

In an emailed statement, he pointed to the rebates from SaskPower and SGI and SaskTel waiving data overages three separate times for customers.

In the statement, Morgan also touted the Crown Utility Interest Waiver Program that allowed customers to defer payments.

“In total, this provides customers with a period of 18 months to recover from the rapid impacts of the pandemic. Saskatchewan people will still be benefiting from this program into September 2021,” Morgan wrote.