On inexplicable delays

Yes, the positive media response signals how important the impending debate over the NDP's Bright Futures Fund proposal figures to be in the lead-up to Saskatchewan's November election. But the even more significant bit of fallout looks to be part of Bill Boyd's panicked response which has less to do with the fund than its source of revenue:

A review of resource revenues would “make some sense” after the incentives in place to grow the mining industry wind down in 2014 or 2015, Boyd said.

Keep in mind that to date, the Sask Party's usual position has been that any review of resource royalties to make sure Saskatchewan's citizens receive a fair price for their shared resources would be absolutely intolerable at any time and under any circumstances. Which is at least a logically coherent position, if not likely to be a popular one.

But in his response to the NDP's proposal for a resource revenue fund, Boyd has effectively given the game away on royalty rates as well.

After all, it surely can't escape notice that the royalty rates applied over the next few years - before any new development is actually finished - have nothing at all to do with incentives to promote that development. In fact, any argument actually based on certainty for new investments would work in the opposite direction: better to review royalties now and set up a structure that will last in the longer term, rather than opening up a window for some future review which would affect new projects just as they begin production.

Meanwhile, the obvious beneficiaries in the absence of a royalty review are...resource extractors who have existing operations that don't require further investment. After all, they can take advantage of what are generally acknowledged to be unduly low rates by seeking to extract as much as possible over the next few years and skim off the profits - without any reason to think that the temporary windfall will result in any additional development whatsoever.

So the difference between the NDP and the Sask Party on a royalty review is now merely whether one should be carried out 8 years after the previous one or 11 years afterward - when there's nothing even faintly approaching a reasonable economic argument for the latter.

In effect, Boyd is declaring on behalf of the Wall government that the province needs to put up with three or four more years of handing hundreds of millions of dollars in undeserved free money to his party's corporate benefactors - while simultaneously arguing that the prospect of a review when the Saskatchewan Party deigns to get around to it won't affect investment which will be subject entirely to the new rates. And the combination of abandonment of principle and glaringly flawed logic in the Sask Party's new position should do nothing but help the NDP make the case for an immediate royalty rate review as a matter of fairness to Saskatchewan's residents.

[Edit: fixed wording.]