Why I didn’t know that sooner ?
Is there any Saskatchewanean (???) in the room that could give me a « on the ground » critic of their services ?
Why I didn’t know that sooner ?
Is there any Saskatchewanean (???) in the room that could give me a « on the ground » critic of their services ?
I work for SaskTel so make of these statements what you will.
SaskTel is not perfect. We do what we can to ensure good coverage for the people of Saskatchewan at decent prices. Unfortunately the SaskParty has been chipping away at us via underfunding and headcount mandates. This makes it much harder to keep services supported as well as they should be.
SaskTel is under attack. Quietly. Stealthily. All in an attempt to prove that it would be better to sell to private interest. If anyone else is here from SK, please don’t vote SaskParty. They are quietly killing our crown corps (SGI, SaskPower, and SaskEnergy too).
I’m not surprised it’s being attacked. Conservatives and neoliberals alike are terrified of how successful a model it is. We should be doing Sasktel style companies nationwide, for everything where simply nationalizing it doesn’t make more sense. It’s proof that there are ways of keeping consumer prices down without getting into the politically fraught territory of price controls. We should all be pushing for more of Sasktel, everywhere.
I sense that these Crown Corps need to evolve to be insulated against basically unregulated politicians. Perhaps there’s a more aggressive model where the Crown Corps can become a fully private entity with strict obligations of reporting to the public, and consistent obligations of stakeholder consults. But hard baked restrictions - like the judicial branch - requiring the Corps staff to fully disassociate from political parties: fully recorded communications, no donations, no public support of any political party.
Unleash them with the sole objective of providing a whatever public good they’re supposed to, but without the political interference and the risk of politicians being captured by lobbyists.
The reason politicians are afraid of crown corps is that the final responsibility for them lies with politicians, and they aren’t designed to be profitable.
Which means every crown corp is leverage against the in-power politicians.
If that could be fixed, they probably wouldn’t hate them so much.