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After provincial finance minister Ken Krawetz delivered the 2013-14 Saskatchewan budget yesterday, it’s finance minister Jim Flaherty’s turn to drop the 2013-14 federal budget today.

In the run-up to our March 21 issue, I did an interview with the head of the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Simon Enoch about the Alternative Federal Budget that the CCPA releases each year in advance of the federal budget that outlines priorities that it thinks the feds should focus on. The news brief ended up getting bumped for space. So I’m posting it after the jump for anyone who cares to read it. And you can find more about the CCPA budget proposal here.

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That’s the slogan the Saskatchewan Party chose to describe its 2013-14 provincial budget.

With projected revenues of $11.61 billion, the government plans to spend $11.54 billion for a General Revenue Fund pre-transfer surplus of $64.8 million and a Summary Financial Statement surplus of $149.8 million whatever those numbers mean.

I’ve done the budget thing three or four times now so I kind of have a handle on how it works. If you want to dig out specific kernels of information, there’s the official Estimates. It’s a 190 page plus document that provides a reasonably detailed breakdown of government expenditures. But for handy reference in the embargoed copies that are handed out the day before the budget is released there’s always a few summary documents that provide key facts and figures.

One table on a special green sheet that’s distributed every year, in fact, is titled “Key Economic Assumptions For [insert year]“. That’s where the provincial government provides estimates for vital economic indicators like Canada’s Real GDP Growth (1.7 per cent in 2013), US GDP (1.9 per cent), the Canadian dollar (98.80US), Oil ($92.50/barrel), Potash ($388.99/tonne) and Perogies ($6 per dozen, $7.20 for ones with ground meat in them).

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I should canvas Murray Mandryk or Steffani Langenegger on this, but I’d be interested in knowing how many times the Sask. Party has employed the Friday afternoon news dump dodge when they want to disclose something that reflects negatively on them.

They did it again on Feb. 15 (the day after Valentine’s Day, and heading into a long weekend) when they released a third quarter budget update. Because of overly optimistic revenue projections for oil and potash, the government, in the words of the NDP opposition, had “raided the Crowns, drained the rainy day fund and made cuts to programs in order to manipulate its books”.

Today at 2 p.m. Saskatchewan Finance Minister Ken Krawetz will rise in the Legislature to deliver the 2013-14 provincial budget.  Will this be the year when health spending breaks the $5 billion barrier, I wonder? What will be the increase for cash-strapped universities? They’ve been advised to prepare budgets for two and zero per cent scenarios. Will the province revise the revenue sharing formula that currently sees rural areas, with 46 per cent of the population, receive 60 per cent of the funding? (actually, the government answered that one a little early with sort of a 50-50 compromise with more money per capita for cities but still some extra allocated to RMs for transportation infrastructure and whatnot).  How much coin will the government provide to Creative Saskatchewan, the agency that it’s proposing to establish to provide marketing and production support to the creative industries?

All these and many other scintillating questions will be answered by Krawetz in his budget address. Once the embargo lifts at 2:15 p.m. we’ll provide some coverage of what the government’s plans are.

To play us out here’s video of AC/DC performing “Money Talks”: