The Saskatchewan NDP are once again calling on the province to not go ahead with a proposed rebrand of Saskatchewan’s Crown Corporations.
The rebrand would see the logos of Crowns like SGI and SaskTel resemble Sask. Party colours.
NDP Finance Critic Trent Wotherspoon says the last thing the government should be spending time and money on right now is an unnecessary rebrand.
“This is all about the Sask Party scheming and taking control of our Crowns for their political self-interest, not the best interest of Saskatchewan people,” said Wotherspoon. “They need to scrap this costly political project today.”
NDP Leader Ryan Meili says information they’ve received from SaskTel says this process has been a long time coming, and the government needs to tell residents how much has already been spent on the project.
“The Sask. Party needs to come clean today with the details of this vanity project, including the total amount of money wasted so far,” said Meili. “And they need to come clean with their true agenda when it comes to Saskatchewan’s Crown Corporations.”
Meili says the government has a bad history with Crowns, adding he believes the rebrand will lead to a sell-off.
“If it’s all one brand, all one colour, suddenly you can start selling off divisions of that without saying you’re actually privatizing,” said Meili. “I think there may be some ways in which they’re trying to lump everything together in order to continue to do what they’ve done, which is selling off pieces of SaskTel, selling off pieces and contracting out more and more, but still being able to say, don’t worry we still have the Crowns.”
Meili says rebrands are necessary as time goes on, but it has to be up to the Crown itself to do it, not the government.