Letters: Health-care lotteries show Sask. system poorly funded

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Readers offer their opinions on health-care funding in Saskatchewan and the resistance to renewable energy to replace fossil fuels.

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I am totally perturbed and annoyed by the amount of hospital lotteries and donation requests occurring month after month in Saskatchewan aggressively seeking monies for health-related equipment and services. Obviously our health-care system is not adequately funded by the Saskatchewan government.

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The Saskatchewan government recently released its mid-term projected deficit for 2024/2025 at $735 million. The province currently has 25 operating mineral resource mines extracting 11 mineral varieties with seven more resources being developed.

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Canada’s recent critical minerals high-level overview report stated Saskatchewan has 23 of the 31 listed minerals. Saskatchewan is first in Canada and third in the world for mining investments and offers a safe and secure working environment compared to other regions of the world.

The province has some of the largest mineral reserves in the world. It provides a 10-year production royalty holiday for new mining operations and offers tax credits to mining companies for exploration and process equipment costs.

Considering the amount of present and future mining extraction, Saskatchewan requires a thorough independent royalty and tax credit audit to ensure fair and equitable monies are being paid or will be paid for our non-renewable resources compared to other jurisdictions.

Something is seriously wrong when the above referenced statistics don’t offer enough monies to help create a balanced Saskatchewan budget and excessive lotteries are required to fund health-care needs for a population of 1.25 million.

Darrell Zakreski, Saskatoon

Resistance to renewable energy bolsters case

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Re: Sask. wastes money, time to challenge climate action in court; Replacing fossil fuels with clean energy essential, SP, Jan. 2).

Beneath the well-formed arguments of Julia Boughner and Roxanne Buller lies an undeniable truth. Every time the government waters down, or the fossil fuel industry balks at, regulations or environmental assessments, they tacitly make the case for renewable energy initiatives even stronger.

If regulations and environmental assessments impair a particular industry’s economic viability, what they are actually claiming is the right to damage the environment with impunity.

The most outrageous example of this is the fact that the decommissioning costs of small-scale nuclear reactors are not even included in cost assessments. But does industry have this right? And why should taxpayers support it?

Everyone knows about the mounting cost of remediating orphan oil wells in the Prairie provinces and about the 37 abandoned uranium mines in northern Saskatchewan.

In addition to billions of dollars spent there, there are also the billions of taxpayers’ dollars spent on subsidizing these industries’ operations each year.

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In other words, the taxpayer is being asked not just to tolerate, but heavily subsidize industries that damage the environment and contribute to climate change, an event that is already underway and costing the nations of the world billions and billions of dollars each year with respect to natural disasters.

Wayne Turner, Saskatoon

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