Policy 21 — Funding the Future: A Fully Costed 25-Year Fiscal Framework for the Saskatchewan 21 Policies

We all pay our fair share to share in a fair society.

Part I — The Fiscal Philosophy

The Saskatchewan 21 Policies represent one of the most ambitious provincial platforms in Canadian history. They demand an equally ambitious and transparent funding model. This policy is the keystone that holds the other twenty together. The costs identified below are matched to funding lanes, modelled offsets, explicit tax measures, borrowing instruments, or clearly stated areas of uncertainty. Where long-run feedback effects are plausible but not yet bankable enough for the base case, they are discussed openly rather than quietly counted as hard revenue. Where uncertainty remains, it is presented as a range, not hidden behind a single confident number.

The fiscal philosophy of the NCP rests on five principles:

1. Honesty. The public deserves to see every assumption, every risk, and every trade-off. This document hides nothing. It uses low, base, and high scenarios because no honest 25-year model produces one exact number.
2. Investment, not Expense. More than half of this platform's net cost sits in productive capital and public asset buildout — housing, energy systems, factories, infrastructure, and resilience. These are not consumption items. They are assets that last, lower future costs, and build the province's durable productive capacity. We are planting trees whose shade we will sit in.
3. Local Circulation and Value Retention. Money that stays and circulates in Saskatchewan generates more local wealth than money extracted to distant shareholders. The SFG, credit unions, Crown Corporations, and SaskBonds are designed to keep more of that circulation within our borders. Lower household costs leave people with more disposable income, and stronger public and local ownership helps keep more of that income working inside Saskatchewan.
4. Intergenerational Equity. The Saskatchewan Sovereignty Fund ensures that resource wealth is saved and invested for future generations, not consumed today. Bond-funded capital projects spread costs across the decades of benefit they deliver. The SSF principal is not a political reserve account to be raided when costs become inconvenient.
5. Fiscal Sustainability. The platform phases in over its first decade. Early years carry the heaviest costs as institutions are created, capital is mobilized, and services expand. By Years 16–25, the system matures: capital intensity drops, recovery channels deepen, and the province settles into a more sustainable long-run operating profile. The peak year is not the permanent year.

Baseline Context

Saskatchewan's 2025-26 fiscal position is already large. The provincial operating budget is roughly a C$21 billion state, and the Crown sector is already carrying a multi-billion-dollar annual utility capital program. That matters because Policy 21 is not being proposed as a one-year bolt-on to a tiny baseline. It is being proposed against a province that already manages large operating systems, large Crown balance sheets, and long-horizon infrastructure commitments.

The correct comparison, then, is not between "normal government" and "suddenly huge government." It is between the current structure of Saskatchewan's public spending and a different 25-year structure that shifts more of that spending into housing, health, energy sovereignty, education, public assets, and household cost reduction.

The Revenue Package, Up Front

Yes. This framework includes explicit tax increases. They are not left as vague future budget choices. The cost model itself is not reliant on them. What it does effect is the balance model: Policy 21 layers a calibrated provincial revenue package on top of the existing policy costs and policy-specific offsets.

The package is legislated in Year 1. The 2.5% Energy Veterans levy begins in Year 1. The Provincial Services Tax (PST), Personal Income Taxes (PIT), and Corporate Income Taxes (CIT) changes take effect in Year 2 for the first full tax year after implementation.

PIT and CIT thresholds are CPI-indexed in real terms inside this constant-2026-dollar model. No separate PST relief package is modelled here; if a future government wants one, it should be costed openly against this framework.

Note: Component rows are rounded to two decimals. Totals may not sum exactly at that level of display.

New Personal Income Tax (PIT) Schedule

New Corporate Income Tax (CIT) Schedule

This is a broad revenue package because the platform it funds is broad. The largest single lever is the PST. That is deliberate. The trade being offered is not higher tax for nothing. It is higher tax in exchange for durable public systems, lower household cost pressures throughout the platform, and a more self-sufficient provincial economy. For once, your taxes will buy you a better life.

What the Platform Costs

On the current model, the Saskatchewan 21 Policies carry a 25-year net cost of approximately C$181.89 billion in the base case. The low case is approximately C$120.71 billion. The high case is approximately C$282.72 billion. Annual net cost peaks around Year 10 at roughly C$8.94 billion in the base case before declining to about C$6.47 billion by Year 25.

Those numbers need to be read carefully. They do not describe a permanent annual operating increase of C$8.94 billion. They describe a long-horizon mix of one-time setup costs, gross capital buildout, gross operating expansion, and substantial built-in offsets and recoveries already modelled into the platform.

The platform cannot be described as one giant undifferentiated call on the General Revenue Fund. A large share of the fiscal weight is tied to assets, systems, and recoveries that have to be understood on their own terms. These are cost totals after policy-specific offsets but before the broader PIT, CIT, PST, and Energy Veterans revenue package above is layered into the balance model.

Modeling Rules

All figures are expressed in constant 2026 Canadian dollars over a 25-year horizon. The model uses low, base, and high scenarios to reflect real uncertainty around uptake, construction costs, delivery pace, workforce constraints, and revenue recovery.

The core cost tables include direct policy costs and hard policy-specific offsets only — explicit levies, rents, rates, royalties, contract recovery, vendor savings, and conservative cost-sharing where the policy design already provides for them. Separate revenue-integrated balance tables later in this document then layer on the explicit PST, PIT, CIT, and Energy Veterans levy package. The model does not depend on major lawsuit winnings, aggressive export upside, or sweeping assumptions about GDP growth. Where the political case for the platform includes plausible-but-not-yet-bankable returns, those appear later as upside scenarios rather than being smuggled into the core math. We are going to be as honest and upfront as we possible can be.

Part II — The Fiscal Character of the Platform

Government cannot pretend that all spending is the same.

There is a meaningful difference between routine operating spending, social stabilization, and long-lived productive public capital. A government that borrows to cover recurring shortfalls with no structural reform is engaging in fiscally corrosive borrowing. A government that borrows to build housing stock, grid capacity, thermal systems, digital infrastructure, factories, and resilience assets is doing something fundamentally different. Those assets last. They lower future costs, generate recoveries, or increase the province's durable productive capacity.

More than half of the platform's net 25-year cost sits in productive capital and public asset buildout. That distinction matters. Not every public asset becomes a profit centre — some investments are justified because they reduce long-run harm, stabilize households, and make the province more governable, productive, and a genuinely great place to live over time. That said, universal healthcare, anti-poverty policy, reconciliation, and democratic renewal cannot be forced into a crude "cash return" frame to be defensible.

The fiscal goal of the platform is explicitly anti-austerity. That is to say, our goal here is to build a province with lower recurring social harm, stronger public capacity, more in-province ownership, and a larger share of long-run value retained in Saskatchewan. We will sit in the shade of the trees we plant.

Part III — Cost Concentration: Where the Real Argument Is

Most of the platform's cost is concentrated in a relatively small number of major projects. That concentration is politically useful as well as fiscally important. It means the platform is not 21 random spending commitments piled on top of each other. It is a smaller number of very large state-building projects, surrounded by a broader set of moderate reforms, institutional changes, and targeted supports.

Major Cost Drivers

Housing alone accounts for roughly 22.5% of the platform's base 25-year cost. Universal Health accounts for about 18.8%. Resource and Energy Sovereignty accounts for about 17%. Lifelong Learning accounts for about 13.1%. Together, those four policies make up over 70% of the fiscal picture.

That tells the public where the real argument is. The debate is should not be mainly about whether a small agency should cost a few million dollars more or less. The debate should be about whether Saskatchewan is willing to build public housing at scale, expand health coverage, remake its energy system, rebuild education, and modernize core infrastructure over a generation. The question is: what kind of society do we want to live in?

Full Policy Cost Summary

Notes:

• Policy 02 goes slightly negative in the low case because modelled replacement of current provincial programs outweighs new expansion costs under low uptake assumptions.
• These are net policy totals, not gross program totals. Modelled offsets and recoveries are already subtracted.
• The low, base, and high cases are cost scenarios reflecting real uncertainty. The low case is not a promise of effortless affordability. The high case is not a prediction of failure.
• Rounded policy rows may not sum exactly to the platform totals shown elsewhere in the document.

Part IV — Policy-by-Policy Context

The following sections provide context for each policy's fiscal weight. Detailed component-level costing lives within each policy document. What follows here is the fiscal logic: what drives the cost, what offsets are already built in, and what the money builds.

Policy 1 — Human Dignity Act

Base 25-year net cost: C$0.08B. Minimal ongoing cost. The Human Dignity Act is a legislative framework, not a spending program. Costs are limited to expanding the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission's capacity and funding legal expertise for Act drafting. Democracy and rights are foundational public goods.

Policy 2 — Saskatchewan Social Security

Base 25-year net cost: C$2.73B | Low: (C$0.44B) | High: C$8.77B. The SSS replaces a substantial share of existing provincial income support programs. The offset from those replaced programs — approximately C$17.30B over 25 years — is already modelled in the base case. At full implementation, gross SSS payments are large, but the net fiscal cost is substantially reduced by program replacement and the graduated tax clawback.

The SSS should have a strong local-demand effect because lower-income households tend to spend additional income quickly on necessities inside the real economy. But the base case does not rely on multiplier effects to close the gap — those belong in the conservative feedback or upside scenarios.

METR Safeguard: The Minister of Finance must annually publish combined Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) curves. METR must not exceed 55% across the SSS phase-out range. If METR exceeds 55%, corrective measures must be tabled within 60 days and published with the annual budget.

Policy 3 — Universal Health

Base 25-year net cost: C$34.15B | Low: C$29.66B | High: C$50.68B. This is the second-largest policy by cost. The main drivers are the workforce compensation reset (bringing health worker wages to competitive and well deserved levels), phased coverage expansion (pharmacare, dental, vision, mental health, hearing, home and community care), and long-term care conversion.

The Universal Health Levy — a new payroll tax replacing existing private health insurance premiums — is modelled as a C$13.33B offset over 25 years.

The UHL is the single largest dedicated revenue source in the platform. Its purpose is to replace costs many workers and employers are already bearing privately, with those funds redirected into the provincial health system. Employers are prohibited by law from clawing back the levy through wage cuts or benefit reductions.

Economic Returns: Universal pharmacare, mental-health expansion, dental care, and earlier intervention should reduce downstream emergency, justice, and employer cost pressures over time. But those savings are lagged and unevenly timed — they belong in the conservative feedback case, not the hard base case.

Policy 4 — Reconciliation

Base 25-year net cost: C$1.05B | Low: C$0.58B | High: C$1.83B. This covers the Reconciliation Commissioner Office, MMIWG2S Office, consent-process capacity funding, TRC and UNDRIP implementation capacity across government, Crown land right-of-first-refusal administration, and the public-sector cost of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Reconciliation is a foundational public good and is defended on its merits, not on its cash return.

Policy 5 — Housing Crisis

Base 25-year net cost: C$40.95B | Low: C$29.32B | High: C$56.37B. The largest single policy in the platform. The main cost drivers are the SaskHomes capital build, housing operations and maintenance, the Rapid Rebuild program, and retrofit support. The large-scale public housing build is bond-funded through SaskBonds (see Part VII). Rental revenue retained within the housing system is modelled as a C$13.50B offset over 25 years.

The housing buildout is spread across the full 25-year horizon rather than front-loaded unrealistically. Each phase proves the asset before the next tranche of bonds is issued. Rental revenue is retained inside the public housing system, and the SSS is designed to reduce arrears risk by maintaining a social-income floor.

Policy 6 — 21st Century Connected Communities

Base 25-year net cost: C$9.18B | Low: C$5.43B | High: C$14.84B. Covers STC operations, municipal grants for transit and walkability, HSR planning, and thermal utility network operations. Geothermal ambient loop capital, SaskTel fibre deployment, and STC depot construction are bond-funded and Crown-financed. Thermal-service and on-bill capital recovery (C$2.48B) and municipal/federal infrastructure cost-sharing (C$1.01B) are already modelled as offsets.

Operating costs for SaskEnergy thermal and SaskTel fibre are offset by customer tariffs and service revenues. The thermal networks and municipal buildout proceed in phases tied to readiness, not political calendars.

Policy 7 — Public Safety

Base 25-year net cost: C$2.63B | Low: C$1.55B | High: C$4.92B. Community Crisis Officers and 24/7 Addictions Centres are the main cost drivers. The redirected Saskatchewan Marshals budget (C$0.50B over 25 years) is already modelled as an offset. Similar alternative-response programs elsewhere suggest real downstream savings are possible, but those savings belong in the conservative feedback case rather than the hard base case.

Policy 8 — Co-operative Development

Base 25-year net cost: C$0.51B | Low: C$0.27B | High: C$0.94B. Low-cost, high-return. SCDA operations net of brokerage fee revenue. Every worker co-op created broadens the tax base and keeps profit local. The fiscal weight here is small relative to the rest of the platform.

Policy 9 — Fair Labour

Base 25-year net cost: C$6.46B | Low: C$3.96B | High: C$11.67B. The main drivers are the provincial sick-day tax credit, SME transition grants (temporary and deliberately front-loaded), Fair Work Authority operations, SaskJobs expansion, and apprenticeship and employer-support incentives.

The 30-hour work week does not have a direct government cost but has substantial economic implications. The SME transition grants are temporary — they sunset by design and do not silently become permanent entitlements. The provincial sick-day share costs real money but reduces workplace illness transmission, improves productivity, and prevents the economic losses from presenteeism.

Policy 10 — Energy Veterans

Base 25-year net cost: C$1.64B | Low: C$1.00B | High: C$2.72B. Policy 10's own costing already includes a conservative C$0.70B levy allowance inside the net total shown here. Separately, the whole-platform balance model counts the full 2.5% Energy Veterans sector transition levy, which raises roughly C$3.72B gross over the 15-year sunset. To avoid counting the same levy twice, only the revenue above that policy-level allowance is added again in the platform-wide balance tables. The program covers bonuses, debt shield, pension bridge payments, retraining, wage top-ups, and EVA operations. It sunsets after 15 years. Its primary fiscal purpose is to fund the worker transition itself, not to serve as the main solvency engine for the wider platform.

Policy 11 — Saskatchewan Century Corps

Base 25-year net cost: C$2.10B | Low: C$1.11B | High: C$3.11B. The SCC is both a spending program and a revenue generator. Its contract work — ambient loop installation, SaskHomes construction, grid modernization, fibre deployment — would otherwise be contracted to private firms at higher cost. SCC contract revenue from Standing Master Agreements is modelled as a C$3.45B offset over 25 years. Workers who leave the Corps with recognized skills, trade hours, and stable work histories strengthen the province's long-run tax base well beyond the direct contract recovery already counted here.

Policy 12 — Lifelong Learning

Base 25-year net cost: C$23.75B | Low: C$15.38B | High: C$38.02B. The fourth-largest policy. Cost drivers include K-12 per-student operating uplift, universal pre-K, school meals, educator compensation, post-secondary statutory increase, SARPA research, arts funding, SaskDLC, library expansion, and capacity expansion. The long-run justification is stronger workforce quality, lower remediation pressure, and higher lifetime productivity. But those returns arrive slowly and diffusely — they are too long-horizon for aggressive early counting in the base case.

Policy 13 — Climate Crossroads

Base 25-year net cost: C$0.46B | Low: C$0.32B | High: C$0.65B. Covers the SEEA, Climate Lawsuit legal costs, cleanup-bond enforcement, and related climate-accountability administration. The fossil-fuel subsidy and incentive termination savings (C$0.60B) are already modelled as an offset. The Climate Lawsuit is a speculative but potentially transformative revenue source. If successful, proceeds flow to the SSF. This projection does not include lawsuit proceeds in the revenue baseline — they are treated as non-core upside. If the lawsuit produces nothing, nothing changes. If it produces anything, it is all upside.

Policy 14 — Food Sovereignty

Base 25-year net cost: C$7.59B | Low: C$3.89B | High: C$14.82B. Covers SAB operations, margin insurance, SaskGrocery operations, Farmland Trust, and logistics buildout. Capital costs for hopper cars, inland terminals, grocery rollout, and related logistics assets are bond-funded. SaskGrocery approaches system-wide break-even in the medium term but retains a geographic parity subsidy to ensure identical Essential Basket pricing province-wide. Grocery margins, lease repayments, and logistics recovery reduce the net cost over time.

Policy 15 — Resource and Energy Sovereignty

Base 25-year net cost: C$30.90B | Low: C$18.29B | High: C$42.69B. The third-largest policy by cost and the most capital-intensive. Covers SNRC operations, SaskPower expansion, grid modernization, reactor buildout, renewable expansion, public equity participation, and EV charging infrastructure.

Incremental royalty, windfall levy, dormant lease, and value-add revenues are modelled as a C$13.50B offset. Expanded electricity sales and rate-backed recovery add another C$2.85B. Early public-ownership dividends and equity earnings add C$2.70B. These are already in the base case.

Reactors, grid expansion, and major energy buildout must be phased and gated through decision stages. The biggest commitments proceed through readiness gates rather than being treated as all-or-nothing instant obligations. By the platform's later years, SNRC and SaskPower operations generate substantial revenue — but the base case remains conservative about when that revenue materializes.

Policy 16 — Digital Sovereignty

Base 25-year net cost: C$4.01B | Low: C$2.41B | High: C$6.90B. Covers SDS operations, SaskStack development, and digital migration. Reduced external vendor spend and platform consolidation savings (C$1.00B) are already modelled. Digital sovereignty is a cost-reduction strategy in the medium term: eliminating vendor lock-in, licence fees, and American cloud hosting saves real money. Migration should be paced to avoid disruption and duplicate spend.

Policy 17 — Financial Sovereignty

Base 25-year net cost: C$2.68B | Low: C$1.78B | High: C$4.28B. The SSF seed capital and SFG operations. SFG treasury income, wholesale spreads, and service-fee recovery (C$0.66B) are already modelled. The SSF and SFG are not ordinary spending programs. They reshape the province's treasury and wealth architecture. The SSF principal generates compounding returns for generations. The SFG operates from its own capital and investment returns.

Policy 18 — Democratic Renewal

Base 25-year net cost: C$1.53B | Low: C$0.77B | High: C$2.70B. This covers MMP implementation, Elections Saskatchewan expansion, election-week delivery costs, mandatory-voting administration, ethics and political-finance enforcement, CodeShare Civics, legislative digitization, and civic outreach. Democratic renewal is fiscally modest relative to the largest social and capital planks in the platform, and it is defended as a foundational public good. You can't have a strong economy without an equally strong democracy.

Policy 19 — Manufacturing

Base 25-year net cost: C$5.34B | Low: C$3.15B | High: C$9.02B. SMC operations net of factory revenue. Factories should be sequenced by supply-chain readiness and public demand. As factories reach full production — SaskHomes modules, heat pump assemblies, food processing, uranium fuel fabrication — revenue covers a growing share of costs. Third-party sales, processing margins, and internal Crown demand provide recovery channels.

Policy 20 — Disaster Resilience

Base 25-year net cost: C$4.16B | Low: C$2.21B | High: C$7.67B. Resilience hub upgrades, islandable power for critical sites, and SPSA operations. Federal resilience and mitigation cost-sharing (C$0.84B) is already modelled. This is front-loaded investment that declines as hardening is completed. Its fiscal logic is avoided loss: lower disaster disruption, lower emergency-response pressure, and lower rebuilding costs over time. Retrofit and backup-power rollout is staged by risk and facility type.

Part V — Time Phasing: When the Money Flows

The time profile of the platform matters just as much as the total number. This is one of the most important interpretive points in the whole document. The peak year is not the permanent year. Early rollout costs are not the mature-state costs. A platform that builds housing stock, energy systems, public factories, resilience infrastructure, and healthcare capacity should not be judged as if its construction years and its mature operating years are fiscally identical.

The first decade will be hard. The costs are real. But so are the homes, the hospitals, the factories, the geothermal loops, the nuclear reactors, the schools, the grocery stores, and the thousands of families with a stable place to live.

The phasing also makes clear why optimism has to be disciplined. The best long-run case for the platform depends on surviving the heavy middle years without pretending they are easy. If Policy 21 is honest about that, it becomes stronger, not weaker.

Part VI — Funding Lanes

Because the platform is not one kind of spending, it cannot be funded through one kind of revenue. Policy 21 uses separate funding lanes, each matched to the fiscal character of what it funds.

A. Core GRF and Tax-Supported Operating State

What it funds: Income security, health operations, education operations, public administration, labour enforcement, democracy, reconciliation, safety. Policies: 02, 03, 04, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 18. Instruments: Income taxes, PST, federal transfers, ordinary provincial revenue. Why it fits: These are core public functions and should be financed as core public functions.

General Revenue Approach

Policy 21 sets out an explicit general-revenue package: PST at 8%, a new five-bracket PIT schedule, a stepped CIT schedule that keeps the 1% small-business rate while raising rates on larger taxable-income bands, and a 2.5% Energy Veterans sector transition levy. Gross 25-year revenue from that package is C$47.58B. Because Policy 10's own net cost already includes a conservative C$0.70B levy allowance, the additional revenue counted in the whole-platform balance model is C$46.88B.

PIT and CIT thresholds are CPI-indexed in real terms. PST and the Energy Veterans levy are not. The package is legislated in Year 1, with PIT, PST, and CIT taking effect in Year 2 and the Energy Veterans levy in Year 1. This is a broad tax package because the platform it funds is broad.

The NCP is not pretending universal systems can be financed by wishful thinking, one-time windfalls, or hidden cuts somewhere else. You can't cut taxes forever and expect the same level of service. If we want better service, we must accept stronger taxes. The NCP will make sure we get our money's worth.

B. Dedicated Levies and Earmarked Revenue

What it funds: Policy-linked recurring revenue streams tied to the sector or system being expanded. Policies: 03, 10, 15, parts of 17. Instruments: Universal Health Levy, transition levies, resource royalties, windfall levies, dormant lease taxes, value-add levies. Why it fits: These revenues are more credible than vague future growth because they are explicitly tied to policy design.

Universal Health Levy (UHL): See Policy 03. A new payroll tax replacing existing private health insurance premiums. Modelled 25-year recovery: C$13.33B. Contribution rates set by an independent, arm's-length board within actuarial corridors.

Resource Royalties and Levies — Complete Redesign: The current royalty regime is opaque, riddled with holidays and deductions, and fails to capture fair value for Saskatchewan residents. Policy 15 assumes a materially stronger royalty, windfall levy, dormant-lease, and value-add framework than exists today. The model carries C$13.50B in incremental 25-year resource revenue from those reforms. The exact legal design should be set transparently in the Resource Sovereignty Act rather than hidden in ad hoc incentive programs and deductions.

Energy Veterans Transition Levy: See Policy 10. An explicit 2.5% levy on specified Saskatchewan oil and gas revenues, designed primarily to fund the Energy Veterans transition itself during the 15-year fossil sunset. Modelled 25-year gross recovery: C$3.72B. Because Policy 10's own net cost already carries a C$0.70B levy allowance, the platform-wide balance tables count only the additional revenue above that amount.

C. Crown / Utility Borrowing with Rate-Backed Recovery

What it funds: Utility systems, thermal networks, grid expansion, digital hosting infrastructure. Policies: 06, 15, parts of 16. Instruments: Crown borrowing, utility debt, on-bill recovery, electricity sales, service charges. Why it fits: These are long-lived assets with recoverable revenue streams and should not be treated as ordinary GRF spending.

The base case models Crown and utility recoveries conservatively through specific channels already identified in the policy cost model: thermal-service recovery, electricity sales, rate-backed utility recovery, vendor savings, and limited treasury earnings. It does not assume automatic excess-dividend formulas from every Crown, and it does not rely on aggressive early profitability from new public enterprises.

D. SaskBonds and Long-Dated Public Capital Borrowing

What it funds: Public housing, factories, resilience retrofits, logistics assets, grocery infrastructure. Policies: 05, 14, 19, 20. Instruments: SaskBonds, long-term capital borrowing, project-based public debt. Why it fits: This is the clearest case for productive debt — long-lived public assets delivering benefits for decades.

See Part VII for the full SaskBonds structure.

E. Enterprise Revenues and User Recoveries

What it funds: Internal recoveries and retained revenue from public systems. Policies: 05, 06, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19. Instruments: Rents, thermal-service charges, contract revenue, vendor savings, public-enterprise sales, utility revenue. Why it fits: These lower the long-run net cost of the platform without pretending the systems are free.

F. Intergenerational Wealth Architecture

What it funds: Wealth preservation, treasury retention, long-run financial resilience. Policy: 17. Instruments: SSF contributions, SFG treasury retention, later SSF payout capacity. Why it fits: This is balance-sheet architecture, not ordinary day-to-day program financing.

G. Federal Transfers

Federal transfers remain a major standing revenue source for Saskatchewan, and the NCP will pursue expanded Canada Health Transfers and additional infrastructure, resilience, and reconciliation support where available. But the current model is deliberately conservative about additional federal participation. Only explicit cost-sharing already attached to specific policies is counted in the base case.

Part VII — The Capital Budget: SaskBonds

The capital budget should be treated separately from the operating budget. Capital investments are funded through SaskBonds and related long-dated public capital instruments sold to Saskatchewan residents, pension funds, institutional investors, and aligned long-horizon buyers. These instruments fund productive assets that either generate recoverable revenue, lower future costs, or expand the province's durable productive capacity.

SaskBonds Structure

SaskBonds are long-dated public capital bonds issued in ring-fenced use-of-proceeds series for eligible project classes. Depending on the asset type, a series may be Province-backed, Crown-backed, or structured around specific project cash flows. What matters is not one universal template. What matters is transparent use of proceeds, staged issuance, and clear separation between operating borrowing and asset-building capital.

Early series may be straightforward Province-backed or Crown-backed issues. Later series, especially housing or utility-linked series, can rely increasingly on proven revenue streams and established operating histories. The base model does not assume SSF first-loss tranches, guaranteed rating outcomes, or a single identical bond structure across every class of project.

Reporting: Annual allocation reports, clear project eligibility rules, and full public transparency on every dollar spent.

Capital-Heavy Policies and Financing Logic

SaskHousing Bonds — Public Housing Bond Cycle

The SaskHousing Bonds deserve special attention. They are best understood as a staged housing bond program built around the rental cash flows of the public housing stock.

The sequence:

1. Foundation Phase (Years 1–3): Province-backed borrowing used to build the first units and prove the model.
2. Prove the Asset (Years 2–5): Once units are built, tenanted, and generating stable rental cash flow for 24 months, you have a proven cash-flowing public asset.
3. Scale (Year 3+): That proven revenue stream supports larger SaskHousing Bond series, with stronger cash-flow visibility and continued public credit support.
4. Repeat: Each tranche of bonds funds the next batch of units. Each batch's rental revenue is added to the broader housing system, strengthening the operating base over time.

SaskHousing Bonds are public housing finance, not developer speculation — a way to build homes at cost, retain rental revenue inside the system, and recycle that revenue into further housing supply.

Not all capital commitments happen at once. Major buildouts must be staged. Reactors, major grid expansion, public factories, and large-scale housing programs proceed in phases tied to readiness, workforce capacity, supply chains, business cases, and public need. Announcing a long-term program is not the same as issuing an irrevocable cheque for every future phase on day one.

Debt Service, Revenue, and the Real Budget Pressure

The platform should be read in two ways at once.

The first is the direct-capital model used throughout this document so far. That model counts capital commitments when they are made. It is the correct way to show the full scale of what the platform is actually building.

The second is a debt-service model. That model converts eligible long-lived capital into annual borrowing costs instead of treating every capital dollar as if it were paid in cash immediately. This is closer to the annual budget pressure a government would actually face.

For the debt-service model, eligible capital is financed on different horizons depending on the asset class: long public infrastructure at roughly 2.0% real over 30 years, utility and energy capital at roughly 2.25% real over 35 years, industrial and logistics assets at roughly 2.5% real over 25 years, and digital capital at roughly 1.75% real over 10 years. Using those assumptions, about C$106.13B of capital issuance is financed rather than expensed up front.

This is the tradeoff debt financing creates. It lowers the first-25-year cash burden materially, but it does not make the platform cheap. It replaces large early capital outlays with a long financing tail. In this model, the later years do not become effortless. They carry a substantial operating state plus accumulated debt service from the buildout years.

The cost views above still matter, but they do not tell the whole story on their own. Policy 21 also includes an explicit general-revenue package. Gross revenue from that package totals C$47.58B over 25 years. Because Policy 10's own net cost already includes a C$0.70B levy allowance, the additional revenue counted in the whole-platform balance math is C$46.88B. The package raises about C$2.22B in Year 2, its first full tax year, and about C$1.83B in Year 25, all in constant 2026 dollars.

Does It Balance?

With the explicit tax package included, the answer becomes more nuanced. The package materially narrows the gap, but it does not fully close it on the platform-only case. Once broader growth and feedback assumptions are added, annual balance returns materially earlier than under the tax-free platform-only case.

Here, "real fiscal-capacity growth" means growth in provincial revenue capacity above ordinary inflation and baseline service pressure, not just nominal GDP getting bigger on paper.

That does not mean the platform suddenly pays for itself. It means the balance picture improves sharply once the tax side is modelled honestly. In the direct-capital view, the platform-only case is still materially in the red in 2051. In the debt-service view, the moderate and transformation paths reach annual balance almost immediately because the revenue package arrives faster than the debt-service tail. But cumulative payback still takes much longer.

Note: Direct-model cumulative payback beyond 2051 assumes the Year-25 mature-state platform cost is carried forward in real terms. Debt-service cumulative payback uses the full extended debt-service schedule.

Part VIII — Direct Offsets Already in the Model

One of the easiest ways to misread this platform is to treat its gross costs as if there were no recoveries already built in. That would be wrong. The current base case already includes approximately C$76.79 billion in modelled offsets and recoveries over the 25-year horizon.

These offsets are not fantasy numbers pulled from general optimism. They come from explicit policy mechanisms already written into the platform. Critics will often cite the largest gross numbers and ignore the fact that major offsets are already embedded in the base-case math. The platform is not being sold on pure gross expansion. It is already modelled as a net fiscal program with substantial recoveries.

One clarification matters here. The Policy 10 row above is a conservative levy allowance already counted inside Policy 10's own net cost. The whole-platform balance tables therefore count only the additional revenue from the 2.5% Energy Veterans levy above that built-in allowance, rather than counting the same money twice.

At the same time, the document does not oversell these offsets. Some are very hard and explicit — levy revenue, vendor savings. Others are more operational — rent recovery, contract recovery. They reduce net cost, but they do not erase the need for large upfront capital and operating commitments.

Part IX — Secondary Returns and Feedback Channels

Beyond the direct offsets already in the model, the platform also reduces long-run fiscal pressure in ways that are real but harder to time precisely. These savings are described clearly, but they remain secondary to the base case rather than carrying it.

Conservative Feedback Effects (Not Relied On in Base Case)

The strongest candidates are concentrated in a handful of policies. Saskatchewan Social Security should reduce shelter demand and crisis-income churn. Universal Health should reduce avoidable acute care and lower vacancy costs. Housing should reduce homelessness-response costs and the expensive cycling of people through unstable housing, hospitals, and crisis systems.

These savings are politically important because they show that poverty, instability, and institutional failure are already expensive. Saskatchewan is already paying for unmanaged social harm. It is simply paying for it in the most reactive and inefficient way possible.

To repeat: When all is accounted for, we are already spending the money. It is being spent inefficiently, without any upsides except for the few who benefit from the system as it stands. The NCP chooses to be upfront about the costs so that we may spend efficiently, uplift people and businesses, and reap the rewards of proper investment in society.

But the platform remains disciplined here. A large anti-poverty or preventive-health investment does not instantly return dollar-for-dollar to the Treasury in the same year. Most of these effects arrive slowly, unevenly, and across multiple systems. That is why they belong in a conservative feedback case rather than the hard base case.

Household Cost Compression

A large part of the platform's economic logic is not captured by ordinary budget language. Several major policies are designed to lower the unavoidable monthly costs that make households poor, unstable, and unable to participate fully in the province's economic life.

Saskatchewan Social Security lowers income insecurity. Public housing lowers rent burdens. Connected Communities lowers long-run heating and connectivity costs. Universal Health reduces direct household exposure to care costs. Food Sovereignty lowers food costs and stabilizes access. Fair Labour improves wages, paid leave, and income stability. Taken together, these policies compress the cost structure of ordinary life.

Lower unavoidable costs do not just improve dignity. They also leave people with more disposable income — income that is more likely to be spent in the real local economy than income concentrated at the top end of the distribution. The correct economic claim is not simply that "money moves faster." It is that lower household cost structures increase local consumer demand, reduce arrears and financial precarity, and allow more income to circulate through Saskatchewan households, businesses, and communities.

Saskatchewan Value Capture

The platform's economic argument is not only about demand. It is also about ownership.

A major share of the Saskatchewan 21 Policies is designed to reduce the amount of wealth that leaves the province through outside ownership, outside procurement, outside finance, outside data hosting, and the export of raw value with little local processing. Co-operative Development, Food Sovereignty, Resource and Energy Sovereignty, Digital Sovereignty, Financial Sovereignty, and Manufacturing all work in this direction.

Saskatchewan should not have to export raw value and then buy back dependency at a premium. It should retain more ownership, more margins, more processing, more data control, more financing capacity, and more public revenue inside the province.

That does not mean every local or public structure automatically outperforms every private one. The platform does not make that blanket claim. It argues instead that the current model leaks too much value out of Saskatchewan and that these policies are designed to reduce that leakage deliberately.

Upside Scenarios (Not Included in Core Projections)

Part X — Fiscal Guardrails and Safeguards

Because the platform is large, ambitious, and long-running, it must also be governed by rules that prevent drift, overclaiming, and fiscal disorder.

1. Climate Lawsuit Independence

The platform does not rely on climate lawsuit winnings to make the core math work. Any recovery under Climate Crossroads is treated as non-core upside, not as an assumed balancing item.

2. SSF Supermajority Lock

The SSF principal cannot be accessed, and the disbursement formula cannot be changed, without a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Legislature. The SSF exists to preserve intergenerational wealth, not to serve as a political reserve account.

3. METR Cap

The combined Marginal Effective Tax Rate across all programs (PIT, SSS phase-out, UHL, benefit clawbacks) must not exceed 55% at any income level. Annual publication required.

4. Bond Transparency

Every SaskBond series must publish annual allocation reports showing exactly where every dollar was spent. Second-party opinions required for each series.

5. Crown Corporation Performance

Each new Crown Corporation must publish quarterly financial dashboards and face annual independent performance reviews. Any Crown operating at a loss for more than five consecutive years must submit a restructuring plan to the Legislature.

6. Reporting Discipline

GRF operating expansion, Crown capital investment, utility borrowing, rate-backed recovery systems, and intergenerational wealth architecture must always be reported separately. A government that blurs those categories will make the platform less legible and easier to attack.

7. Sunset Provisions

The SME Transition Grants, Energy Veterans Transition Levy, and Oil & Gas operational licences automatically sunset as specified in their respective policies. Temporary transition supports remain temporary — they do not silently become permanent entitlements without explicit political approval and public costing.

8. Staged Approval of Major Capital

The biggest commitments proceed through decision gates rather than being treated as all-or-nothing instant obligations. This is especially important for reactors, major grid works, large factory buildouts, and other complex infrastructure.

9. Debt and Borrowing Discipline

Policy 21 does not rely on an arbitrary single debt ceiling divorced from asset quality, debt-service burden, and recoverable Crown and utility revenues. Instead, the Minister of Finance must publish annual debt-to-GDP, debt-service-to-revenue, and capital-borrowing trajectories, along with a corrective plan whenever the Province materially departs from the platform's published path.

10. Annual Budget Publication and Five-Year Refresh

A full PBO-style fiscal update must be published annually, including updated 25-year projections, METR analysis, Crown Corporation performance, SSF statements, and bond allocation reports. A full model refresh must occur every five years. The numbers hide nothing.

Part XI — Risk Assessment

No honest 25-year fiscal framework should pretend that uncertainty is minor. The low, base, and high scenarios exist because the future will not follow one exact path.

Fiscal Risks (High Impact)

Economic Risks

These risks do not invalidate the platform. They are the reason the document uses ranges, phased buildout, multiple funding lanes, and a conservative base case. Uncertainty is not evidence of failure. It is evidence that the costing model is trying to be real.

The Funding

Every number above is a range. Every assumption is stated. Every risk is acknowledged.

The honest truth is this: the Saskatchewan 21 Policies cost a great deal of money. They also build a great deal of wealth — human, social, and financial — that compounds over decades. The question is not whether we can afford to do this. The question is whether we can afford not to. We already pay for the system we have now, and receive very little in return.

Saskatchewan currently exports raw resources, imports finished goods, and watches its young people leave for opportunities elsewhere. The S21P aims to reverse that flow: we process our own resources, build our own goods, train our own people, and create an economy so attractive that the brain-drain becomes a brain-gain.

The first decade will be hard. The costs are real. The debt is real. But so are the homes, the hospitals, the factories, the geothermal loops, the nuclear reactors, the schools, the grocery stores, and the families with a stable place to live.

The platform is not sold as cheap. It is not sold as risk-free. It is not sold as instantly self-financing. Policy 21 says openly that broad public systems require broad public revenue. That means an 8% PST, higher PIT rates, higher CIT on larger firms, and a 2.5% Energy Veterans levy alongside the existing dedicated health and resource revenue measures. Even with that package, the platform-only case does not fully balance within 25 years. It is sold as ambitious, difficult, costly, and coherent. It is a 25-year program to build a more stable, more sovereign, less extractive Saskatchewan.

That is the real choice before the province: not between spending and not spending, but between planned reconstruction and continued unmanaged cost escalation. Policy 21 exists to show that this reconstruction has been costed, phased, and tied to a real fiscal framework rather than to wishful thinking.

By Year 25, Saskatchewan will have:

• Public housing at a scale that fundamentally changes the housing market.
• Universal health coverage with dramatically lower out-of-pocket costs.
• A far better-funded education system than Saskatchewan has today.
• Clean, abundant nuclear and renewable energy.
• A connected, walkable, transit-linked province.
• Full digital sovereignty.
• A thriving manufacturing sector.
• Meaningful reconciliation backed by real money.
• An intergenerational Sovereignty Fund building wealth for future generations.
• And a permanent Saskatchewan Social Security floor available to every resident who needs it.

Some of those outcomes will arrive faster than projected. Some will arrive slower. Some will cost more than the base case. Some will cost less. But the direction is clear, the funding lanes are honest, and the guardrails are real.

We all pay our fair share to share in a fair society.

See Policy 17 — Financial Sovereignty for more on the SSF and SFG. See all other policies for their specific implementation details.

What It Means For You

It means the major costs, offsets, and risks are accounted for.

It means the tax increases are named up front rather than hidden in footnotes or vague future budgets.

It means fewer hidden assumptions, fewer fiscal illusions, and no fake precision.

It means the dignity of an honest government.

FAQ

• How can you afford all of this?

  • Partly by taxing more, and saying so openly. Policy 21 explicitly models an 8% PST, a new five-bracket PIT schedule, higher CIT rates on larger firms while preserving the 1% small-business rate, and a 2.5% Energy Veterans levy, alongside the Universal Health Levy, stronger resource revenue capture, long-dated capital borrowing, and conservative public-system recoveries. Over 25 years that package adds about C$47.58B gross, or C$46.88B of additional whole-platform revenue after accounting for the levy allowance already built into Policy 10's own net cost. This is a long-horizon restructuring program, not a one-year budget trick.

• Won't this drive businesses out of Saskatchewan?

  • We are building a healthier, better-educated, better-housed workforce, connected by stronger infrastructure, powered by abundant energy, and backed by public and local financial institutions that keep more capital circulating here. Some employers will face higher costs in the short term, but the transition grants, stronger consumer demand, better worker retention, and improved infrastructure are designed to make Saskatchewan a more attractive place to invest over time.

• What if the Climate Lawsuit fails?

  • The entire fiscal model is built without a single dollar of lawsuit proceeds. If the lawsuit produces nothing, nothing changes. If it produces anything, it's all upside flowing directly to the SSF.

• Isn't all this bond debt too much?

  • Saskatchewan's capital borrowing funds homes, factories, nuclear reactors, and infrastructure that build real public assets. Unlike consumption debt, productive debt finances systems that lower future costs, create recoveries, or expand the province's long-run productive capacity. SaskBonds are meant to be transparent, staged, and tied to specific asset classes rather than treated as a blank cheque. Annual debt and debt-service reporting is what keeps that borrowing disciplined.

• Does the platform balance within 25 years?

  • Even with the explicit tax package, not on the platform-only case. By 2051 the remaining gap is about C$4.64B in the direct-capital view and about C$5.53B in the debt-service view. Once broader growth and feedback assumptions are layered in, annual balance returns in 2047 on the moderate direct path and 2043 on the transformation direct path. In the debt-service view, annual balance returns as early as 2028 on both the moderate and transformation paths because the new revenue package arrives faster than the debt-service tail. Cumulative payback still takes longer.

• What if resource prices crash?

  • The base case is already conservative about long-run resource revenue, and the platform deliberately diversifies both its revenue base and its economic base. It does not depend on one commodity or one price window to stay viable. Phased capital commitments and diversified public revenue streams are the main protection against commodity volatility.

• Why does the document use ranges instead of exact numbers?

  • Because no honest 25-year projection produces one exact number. The low, base, and high cases exist because construction costs, uptake rates, delivery pace, workforce constraints, and revenue recovery are genuinely uncertain. Ranges are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign that the costing model is trying to be real rather than pretending to know what it cannot.

Notes:

• All figures are in constant 2026 Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.
• 25-year horizon (2027–2051).
• Low, base, and high scenarios reflect uncertainty in construction costs, uptake, delivery pace, workforce constraints, and revenue recovery.
• The core cost tables include direct costs and hard policy-specific offsets only. Separate revenue-integrated balance tables then layer on the explicit PST, PIT, CIT, and 2.5% Energy Veterans levy package.
• PST, PIT, and CIT are legislated in Year 1 and take effect in Year 2. The Energy Veterans levy begins in Year 1.
• PIT and CIT thresholds are CPI-indexed in real terms inside the constant-2026-dollar model. No separate PST relief package is modelled here.
• The model does not depend on lawsuit winnings, aggressive export upside, or sweeping GDP growth assumptions.
• This document includes a stylized debt-service model for financed capital, but formal government budgets would still require instrument-specific debt-service and amortization schedules for GRF-backed, Crown-backed, rate-backed, and bond-funded capital streams.
• Climate Lawsuit proceeds are excluded from all projections.
• All projections are estimates and will be updated annually, with a full model refresh every five years.

References:

• Saskatchewan Provincial Budget 2025-26
• Saskatchewan Personal Income Tax Structure
• Saskatchewan Corporation Income Tax
• Saskatchewan Provincial Sales Tax
• Parliamentary Budget Officer — Costing Methodology
• IMF Fiscal Monitor — Fiscal Multiplier Estimates
• OECD — Revenue Statistics
• Bank of Canada — Inflation Target
• Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation — Annual Reports
• Norway Government Pension Fund Global — Annual Reports
• CRA Individual Tax Statistics by Bracket — Saskatchewan
• CRA T2 Corporate Statistics
• Saskatchewan Public Accounts 2024-25, Volume 1
• Statistics Canada — Saskatchewan Economic Accounts
• Saskatchewan Bureau of Statistics — Population Projections