YORKTON – Energy and Resources Shadow Minister Sally Housser held a media availability in Yorkton Monday on the NDP’s Grid and Growth Plan and the future of power for the province.
“This month, the NDP put forward a plan for reliable and affordable power for the people of Yorkton and right across Saskatchewan,” says Houser.
When asked what jobs and infrastructure the plan will mean for Yorkton and the surrounding area, Housser said, “We crush more canola in Yorkton than anywhere else. In order for those investments to continue, these major industries need affordable and reliable power. The biggest users, the biggest rate payers of electricity in the province are our major industries. In order to develop more and attract more investment, having affordable and reliable power means more investment in those industries right here in Yorkton.”
The NDP’s Grid and Growth plan promises lower electricity rates for families, farms and small businesses, to lower emissions and initiate investment and generate $33 billion in economic activity, while reducing reliance on imports.
Additionally, the plan promises to reduce the risks associated with the Sask. Party’s electrical generation plan. In the near term, the plan phases out coal while growing the province’s natural gas, new transmission, and an expansion of supportive wind, solar, and battery storage.
Over the medium term, the energy sector would see sustained growth in renewables, expanded natural gas capacity, and modernized transmission and distribution infrastructure
Large-scale nuclear expansion is planned for the 2040s, dependent on supply chain, workforce, and regulatory timelines. Collaborative ventures, including Indigenous and industry stakeholders, will drive growth and protect ratepayers.
Based on independent modelling, the Grid and Growth Plan accelerates the distribution of new generation and transmission infrastructure, mitigating risks from uncertain nuclear timelines and providing fallback flexibility. The strategy ensures reliability through heightened natural gas capacity while employing private sector investment for renewable energy development.
“Currently the Sask Party power plan puts taxpayers on the hook for $25 to $35 billion in SaskPower debt at the same time the Sask Party wants to spend $2.6 billion to keep their aging coal plants alive. This nearly triples the costs that the ministry said it would cost, just a year ago,” Hauser went on to say, “That is before work even gets started. We know it will cost significantly more than $2.6 billion,” said Housser.
Houser said, “The NDP government under Carla Beck, takes a different approach by adding reliable natural gas, expanding lower cost renewables right away and looking to nuclear energy when it makes sense for Saskatchewan, we will build a strong and growing community like Yorkton – creating good jobs is at the centre of this plan.”
Harrison criticizes NDP plan
Crown Investments Corporation Minister Jeremy Harrison has criticized the announcement saying, “It does not include any actual costing, it is based on an unrealistic reliance on wind and solar, and most significantly for SaskPower households, it contains no commitment to keep the carbon tax off your power bills.”
Harrison also criticized the NDP’s plans for wind and solar power, saying the plan would dismantle nearly one-third of the province’s baseload generation and “replace it with intermittent sources that simply cannot do the same job.”
Housser said in response to the Sask Party’s disparagement of the plan that the NDP team has “been agnostic about this. We got independent modeling done and we went and said, here are all the different options available for how we develop our power grid. Come back to us with the most reliable and most affordable plan.”
She went on to say what “emerged from the work that they did was that Sask Party’s current plan is the most expensive possible. What that’s going to mean for power bills for people in this province, not just individual households, but industry, small business and farmers, is astronomical.”
Housser said, “When Minister Harrison first announced the retrofitting of the coal plants, in January of last year, it was news to everybody – they didn’t do the work, so what we said is that we are going to take the politics out of power, we are going to the math and do the work that the government hasn’t done.”
When asked if the NDP team had any insight into the motivation behind the Sask Party’s decision to retrofit coal plants, Housser replied she was “not entirely sure, because the plan does not make sense in any way and is consistent with this government” and their “back of the napkin planning – we don’t see them doing the planning and the work.”
Houser closed by stating, “We cannot think of electricity generation in this province in four-year election cycles, we have to be thinking about it for generations to come.”
