Health a Leading Spending Category in the Saskatchewan Budget

 

March 20, 2025 – On March 19, 2025, Saskatchewan tabled its 2025-2026 budget with a projected spend of $21 billion this fiscal year, an increase of $909 million from last year’s budget, and debt projected to increase by $2.5 billion to $38.3 billion. Health was a leading spending area with an investment of approximately $8 billion. Other top funding areas included education, social services, agriculture, and protection of persons and property.

Insights

• Health a Key Priority: Saskatchewan made health its top funding priority, investing in everything from acute and primary care, to preventative care and health infrastructure. This investment represents a record high of $8.1 billion into the health care system for the province. 
• Health Human Resources a Continuing Concern: Even with targeted investments in health human resources, including more permanent full-time nursing positions, the government is facing some criticism from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses and other health care unions, who feel the investments are not enough to address staffing issues and keep registered nurses in the province. 
• Tariff Threat Not Factored In: The provincial government opted not to project potential impacts of the ongoing tariff war with the U.S. into their budget, indicating that the fluid nature and uncertainty made it difficult to do so. They instead chose to try and prioritize responsible spending to help weather any potential impact, which could see the province’s revenue reduced by as much as $1.4 billion.

Health Care Highlights

Saskatchewan’s budget demonstrates a significant investment in health in the province, spanning from acute care to preventative care and health infrastructure. The Ministry of Health will see its budget boosted by $485 million, for a total of $8.1 billion.

Improving Access to Acute Care 

The province has committed $88 million to provide better acute care access for safer, more responsive patient care. Investments include a $15 million increase to reduce surgical wait times, including an innovative robot-assisted surgery program at Regina’s Pasqua Hospital. 

Other key initiatives include opening more than 100 acute medicine and specialized beds in Saskatoon, continuing to create approximately 170 new paramedic positions in rural communities, and accommodating more medical imaging services to help reduce waitlists. 

The government has also committed to enhancing and expanding pediatric care and programs, improving kidney health and dialysis programs so patients can get care closer to home, and expanding HealthLine 811’s Virtual ER Physician Program to improve access to care in rural and remote areas. 

Better Primary and Preventative Care

This budget commits to improved and timely patient access to team-based primary care settings and preventative care initiatives, including investments in programs that will connect all residents to a primary health care provider.

The province has committed to enhancing primary care services through five new Patient Medical Home sites, allowing clinics to care for additional patients due to the extra capacity the team creates, with each provider working to their full scope. The province will also support the addition of 27 new nurse practitioners to improve access to primary care services in rural, regional and remote communities. 

The Saskatchewan Cancer Agency will receive an increase of $30 million, while the Saskatchewan Health Authority will see a budget increase of 5.6% for a total of $4.9 billion. This boost is in response to the growing criticism of long wait lists in breast imaging and diagnostics. The province is currently paying a private clinic in Calgary to perform mammograms and biopsies for patients with urgent cases, who would otherwise face months-long waiting times in Saskatchewan. 

The budget highlights increasing support for cancer care by:

• Supporting the transition to human papillomavirus (HPV) self-screening for cervical cancer; 
• Progressing on a provincial lung cancer screening program; 
• Lowering breast cancer screening eligibility to age 43; and 
• Adding a second mobile mammography bus to increase capacity for women in rural and northern Saskatchewan.

The budget also highlights enhancements to immunizations programs, including HPV immunization for males, shingles vaccinations for adult transplant patients and a single-dose respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) antibody for high-risk infants. 

The province also looks to expand the Glucose Monitoring Program by providing 100% coverage of Continuous and Flash Glucose Monitoring Systems for young adults aged 18 to 25 and seniors aged 65 and over. This investment will deliver benefits to nearly 10,000 Saskatchewan patients with diabetes by improving their quality of life and easing their financial burden.

Health Human Resources Action Plan 

The budget delivers on commitments to accelerate the hiring and growth of health care professionals with a $156 million investment in the Health Human Resources Action Plan (HHR Action Plan). 

The commitments include:

• Adding 10 more physician training seats for family medicine, anaesthesia, plastic surgery and other specialities as well as more full-time academic physician positions and expanding skills programs to regional sites; 
• Supports for 65 enhanced permanent full-time nursing positions in 30 rural and northern locations across the province – building on 250 positions that were hired over the past few years – to improve nursing stability and reduce the reliance on contract nurses; 
• Investments to support the province’s efforts to recruit and retain doctors, including funding for negotiated Saskatchewan Medical Association fee increases, increased utilization of services and additional physicians; and 
• Supporting incentives for recruitment of specialist physicians in areas of high demand.

Mental Health and Addictions Supports – Boosting Recovery and Treatment 

Saskatchewan has committed an investment of $624 million, including a targeted increase of $20 million, to enhance access to mental health and addictions services in the province, representing 7.7%  of the overall health budget. 

This investment centers on the transition to a recovery-oriented system of care model that focuses on treatment and recovery. The province is prioritizing the addition of 500 treatment spaces to the public system to address the addictions crisis, and has not allocated funding for safe consumption sites in this budget. 

Other key initiatives include increasing access to addiction medicine across the province by implementing a new Virtual Access to Addictions Medicine Program, supporting the development of a central intake and navigation system that patients can contact directly to self-refer for treatment, and increasing funding for the Bridgepoint Centre for Eating Disorder Recovery.

Strengthening Continuing Care Support

The province has also demonstrated a commitment to supporting residents to remain at home and in their communities as long as possible through a $7 million investment in support for patients of all ages in the most appropriate care setting, additional programming to improve coordination of home care services, and in operations and staffing of 115 established long-term care and convalescent beds to assist with patient flow in the health care system. 

Health Care Infrastructure 

The budget delivers a capital investment of $657 million, a $140 million increase over last year, for multiple infrastructure projects, such as new hospitals and long-term care facilities. 

Some of the projects include construction of:

• Prince Albert Victoria Hospital; 
• The Regina specialized long-term care facility; 
• The Saskatoon Urgent Care Centre; 
• La Ronge Long-Term Care facility; 
• Weyburn General Hospital; and 
• Grenfell Long-Term Care facility.

Saskatchewan’s Finance Minister Jim Reiter confirmed that planning has also begun for an additional urgent care centre each in Regina and Saskatoon.

Tariff Threat Not A Factor

Minister Reiter indicated the unknown nature of the ongoing tariff threats from the U.S. made it difficult to project the effects into this year’s budget. Instead, the province chose to emphasize responsible spending to weather the potential tariff impacts. The province has assessed the potential effect of U.S. tariffs and found that the value of Saskatchewan exports to the U.S. could drop by 30.4% or $8.2 billion, and the province’s revenue could be reduced by as much as $1.4 billion. 

America is Saskatchewan’s largest trading partner, with approximately $27 billion worth of exports crossing the border every year. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has also recently called for urgent federal action on the potential 100% tariffs on canola threatened by China.