REGINA — With the Sask. Party government due to release annual reports for the Crown corporations next week, the Opposition NDP is accusing it of a lack of accountability.
At a news conference at the legislature, Opposition Energy critic Sally Housser accused the government of ducking public scrutiny. This week, the NDP had particularly pointed to Provincial Auditor Tara Clemett having noted that the Standing Committee on Crown and Central Agencies had not met since Dec. 2022 to review several years of annual reports from the Crown Investments Corporation.
“For four years they have avoided accountability. And during that same period they were developing and concealing what we now know is a $26-billion coal plan,” Housser told reporters, again using the $26-billion figure to characterize the plan to extend the life of coal plants to 2050.
“The provincial auditor has repeatedly called on this government to reconvene the committee. The auditor has been clear, the legislature must be allowed to do its job. Yet (Premier) Scott Moe and (Minister of Crown Investments Corporation) Jeremy Harrison continue to ignore these warnings. They have deliberately chosen to keep Saskatchewan people in the dark. We now see why they've gone to such extraordinary lengths to avoid accountability. Because public scrutiny would have exposed this disastrous plan much earlier. Public scrutiny would have revealed the risk.”
Housser called on the government to “immediately reconvene the Standing Committee on Crown and Central Agencies. And we're calling for a public hearing specifically focused on this now exposed coal catastrophe. Open the books, answer the questions, tell the people of Saskatchewan the truth.”
Housser made her comments soon after the government had confirmed it would be releasing the annual reports of the Crowns, including SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SGI and several others, at an announcement Tuesday in Saskatoon.
This is the second year in a row that the Crown annual reports are being released all in one day in Saskatoon, after previous years of annual reports for each Crown corporation being released individually over several days at the legislature in Regina.
“I think this is part of the pattern with this government,” Housser said of the upcoming announcement.
“They try to move past things, you know, whistle past the graveyard, move as quickly as possible, quite deliberately to avoid that public scrutiny. Dump everything out there. There's a lot of money and a lot of public interest that come out in those Crown annual reports, you know, and they're hoping that if they put them all out on the one day that somehow people will just move past it.”
While the NDP was holding its news conference in Regina, Minister Harrison was in Meadow Lake, where he and leaders from the province’s Crown corporations were paying tribute to achievements of employees in the sector over the last year, including work during the 2025 wildfire season.
"There is more to our Crown sector than just critical infrastructure like power poles and pipelines, there is also people who make incredibly meaningful impacts every single day," Harrison said in a statement. "With more than 11,000 employees employed in our commercial Crown sector, there is no shortage of inspiring work."
