A prospering Saskatchewan is fast becoming a "have" province -- but it's no thanks to the province's NDP government, said Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday.
Speaking before a crowd of about 400 supporters at a Conservative Party event in Kenaston, Sask., Harper called the NDP government "ungrateful."
"Saskatchewan is rapidly moving from being a have-not province to being a have province,'' he said.
"It's not the government here -- certainly not -- it's the people of Saskatchewan who are making this happen.''
Disagreement over the issues of equalization payments and resource revenues has caused friction lately between the Harper's Conservatives and Premier Lorne Calvert's NDP government.
Calvert says reforms to equalization in the 2007 federal budget violate the constitutional requirement to apply federal programs equitably to all provinces. He also argues that the changes effectively rob his province of the fruits of its natural resources -- which are the sole property of the provinces under the Constitution.
Calvert says Harper promised to remove non-renewable natural resource revenues from the equalization formula, but instead capped the amount of funding a province can receive under the program. The premier has told his provincial Justice Department to sue the federal government to challenge the constitutionality of the reforms.
But Harper told the crowd last night that Saskatchewan came out a "big winner" in the 2007 budget.
"The government of Saskatchewan was the biggest single per capita winner of any the provincial governments in this year's budget," he said.
"But let me also assure you, friends, that not all of the money went to this ungrateful NDP government in this province. In fact, for every dollar that went to them, about two or three dollars went to the people of Saskatchewan.''
Earlier in the day, Harper spoke at a grain terminal in the south-central part of the province near the Gardiner Dam close to Strongfield. He touted his government's budget promise to provide $1.5 billion over seven years in incentives for producers to move towards renewable alternatives to gasoline and diesel, such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Calvert was in Iqaluit yesterday meeting with other Western premiers. He told The Globe and Mail earlier in the week that he was left completely out of the loop about the prime minister's Thursday announcement.
But Harper said yesterday he's not sure he would have expected Calvert at the announcement, even if the premier were in the province.
"It's a federal announcement,'' Harper said. "I'll be happy to do a federal-provincial announcement when we do some productive projects together with the government of Saskatchewan.''
Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams and Nova Scotia's Rodney MacDonald have also accused Harper of breaking equalization pledges he made during the election campaign last year.
With a report from The Canadian Press
