The reviews are in

To date, coverage of Brad Wall by national media outlets has been almost uniformly fawning even as he's come under rightful criticism within Saskatchewan for his government's gross mismanagement. Now, Brian Topp takes reality to the national stage:

(T)he province is going to withdraw $564-million from a reserve fund, another $460-million from a Crown asset sale, is going to pocket some federal infrastructure funding (wasn’t that supposed to go to “shovel-ready” projects?) and will impose a budget freeze and a number of other spending measures to deal with the issue. This is what permits Premier Wall to claim that he is running a deficit while maintaining a balanced budget.

More evidence, if any was needed, that it is fiscal madness to rely on mercurial, one-time resource royalties to pay for tax cuts and spending increases.

A similar abuse of royalties collected from fossil fuels funds populist fraud next door(the “Alberta advantage”, allowing today’s citizens to pretend they live in a low-tax jurisdiction, fuelled by a bonfire of their children’s provincial inheritance). Stephen Harper is inching our national government into similar fiscal addictions, masked for a brief time by recession-driven stimulus spending.

These conservative fiscal ponzi schemes are unsustainable. Services that people want and need must be paid for.
...
Premier Wall has an oddly indulgent fan base among conservatives in both the federal Conservative and Liberal parties. He throws fundraisers for them in Toronto, to help cover the bills for his political party in Saskatchewan. Next time he works the Bay Street circuit, he’ll be able to boast that he is as good at running Saskatchewan’s budget as they are at running their finance companies.