On deferrals

One final post on the Sask Party's budget for now, as there's one item in the list of "savings" which bears watching despite having received relatively little attention so far:

Enterprise Saskatchewan
- $5.1 million in savings for a one-time deferral of funding for the Western Economic Partnership Agreement (WEPA), which will be provided in future years as projects require funding.

Remember that last anybody bothered to inform the public, the WEPA (read: the TILMA by another name would smell as foul) was still a matter of ongoing back-room dealing between B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan rather than a full binding agreement. So it's rather remarkable that the Sask Party already had millions of dollars budgeted for it.

But the deferral raises issues about what costs the agreement is expected to impose, as well as what the lack of funding means for the negotiations which are apparently still in progress. And the fact that the funding is obviously seen as less than essential for this year may well call into question whether even the Sask Party thinks the WEPA will result in any actual benefits for the province.