Sask Environemnt Cuts

[The Beachcomber]

Heard today that budgets for fisheries management (population monitoring, stocking, disease surveillance, enforcement) will be cut for 2012/2013.  Nice to see during the strong economic times that these services are looked upon as non essential.  I think there should be more CO's out patrolling and more funding more stocking and monitoring of lakes in this province.  With the increase in population and more demand and pressure on the natural resources, you would think the government would not do this, guess not.   

[Tee Tot]

Yeah...It's kind of a sad state of affairs right now and it is about to get worse. For the last 3 years the sask. gov. has been trimming 4% off it's environment staff. This year they will be trimming another 4%. They are already short staffed in fire protection and enforcement.   

[mcnix]

SMITH AND WESSON TIME

[emt]

It is quite obvious to me over the years that they don't really give two S@#t's about our environment-they wait until the disaster occurs before they will listen to anyone and usually it is too late-look at the crisis they had in the north saskatchewan river years back-believe me, they were warned about that far in advance and did not listen to people.  i am not saying anything bad about the field staff, it is the people right up at the top that are to blame.  These cut-backs are just another way they are telling us that they really don't care about the fisheries/wildlife in this province.
I got a good idea-why don't we slightly increase all the fishing licences/tag licenses and then we can afford to put more CO's out there-a buck or two a licence-that should generate lots of revenue.  Or, (nothing against out of province hunters or fishers), why don't we increase our licence rates for hunting and fishing for out of province/non-residents.  We pay thirty a year and we live here and canadian residents pay 60-why not bump that up 20 bucks??? I would  pay 50 bucks a year for a licence if I knew that some of that money went directly to hiring CO's for enforcement.
Just my thoughts
EMT

[ran7ger]

problem is only 30% of the money we spend on licenses ends up going towards fisheries.   not sure how that makes sense, but that's govt for ya..

[pawlukja]

I have worked for the feds for 12 years now and I can tell you that when it comes time to find money in the budget they do some really weird things especially when it comes to job cuts. It's like there is no rhyme or reason to it and it seems to be the same with the province too. When it comes to job cuts I think they should start looking more at the top of the food chain and less at the front line staff that are in the feild. It would be nice if they could increase everyones fishing license/hunting license and have that money go directly to hiring more CO's but like ran7ger said I don't think the increase would really help. I agree with emt, they wait until the disaster has happened before they listen or respond and by then it's too late.

[bite-me7]

Yeah! They probrably eliminated 4% of the COs and hired 8% more office staff!

[emt]

they usually eliminate from the bottom when they make cuts-the choices come from the top and they are not going to get rid of their gravy jobs!!!LOL
emt

[Husser]

I guess if you voted for the current gov, one really can't complain. It was part of their platform that they were cutting gov union jobs. 70% of us voted for them. Mean while the Prov Gov war room has a record # of non- union highly paid employees. SaskaBoom!!!

[TJG]

Heard today that budgets for fisheries management (population monitoring, stocking, disease surveillance, enforcement) will be cut for 2012/2013.  Nice to see during the strong economic times that these services are looked upon as non essential.  I think there should be more CO's out patrolling and more funding more stocking and monitoring of lakes in this province.  With the increase in population and more demand and pressure on the natural resources, you would think the government would not do this, guess not.

Look at Alberta, one of the richest prov, cant pay for gas in the trucks of the co's!