Supporting Families & Our Community

Real Support for Families and Communities

1. Tax Reform

• increase the Saskatchewan Basic Personal Amount an individual can earn before starting to pay income from $16,065 to a number commensurate with a current full time minimum wage position in the province
• increase the Saskatchewan Low-Income Tax Credit (SLITC) to double its current amount
• eliminate the Education portion of property tax
• implement PST exemptions for all basic/essential goods
• allow for input tax credits for businesses which will ensure it is applied only when a final product or service is provided to the consumer
• eliminate PST from all insurance products sold in Saskatchewan

2. Affordable Housing

• expand existing support for assisted home ownership programs which achieve the goal of home ownership and increase the set of life skills in maintaining a home
• create a roundtable on sustainable communities, bringing together the policy and resources of the three levels of government, the business community, NGO’s, not-for-profit groups, and co-operatives to develop a strategy to provide affordable housing in Saskatchewan communities
• work in partnership with aboriginal leadership and communities and with the federal government to invest in affordable housing for our growing urban Aboriginal population
• develop tax incentives to encourage private sector, organizations, and individual involvement in affordable housing initiatives

3. Towards Gender Equality

• implement Mainstreaming, which ensures a gendered lens is applied to policies, resource allocation, research, and legislation, and allocate increased budgeting and resources towards this process
• invest at the community level, through increased funding and support, towards expanding social services and programs which are necessary to promote gender self-determination in the private and public sectors
• improve the province’s childcare system to align with the OECD’s benchmarks on childcare
• the SLP is committed to promoting educational awareness of gender issues
• the SLP is committed to increasing gender diversity within our ranks

4. Double the Value of Recycling Deposits

• implement a 100% increase in the value of all container deposits

5. Taking Care of our Seniors: Home Care

• invest substantially in homecare infrastructure
• create minimum care standards for seniors in long term care
• appoint a Seniors Advisor for the Province to represent and advocate for Seniors at the governmental level

6. Health Related Income Support

• provide the same financial support and health benefits to all individuals unable to work due to health reasons, regardless of formal status of disability
• support programs that provide additional support and aids to assist individuals to improve health and possibly regain independence

7. Social Assistance Benefits

• implement the following:

1. a) Social Assistance be redesigned from the ground up, writing a new, simpler Act
2. b) Scrap Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) and replace with a more effective benefit

    package

• reinstate the Rental Supplement including the following:

1. all Social Assistance clients will receive the Rental Supplement
2. the Rental Supplement will subsidize rents to the cost of the average rent in Saskatchewan
3. any resident who pays more than 40% of gross income towards rent will qualify; clients will be subsidized from 40% of income up to average rent or actual, whichever is less

• Social Assistance rates will be indexed to inflation
• Social Assistance clients will have actual cost of utilities paid directly
• Social Assistance clients will receive enough assistance such that they are no longer having to sacrifice food or rent
• simplify rules for Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID) whereby any client with a disability, who needs any type of assistance and whose quality of life is affected by the disability, qualifies for SAID. This includes ensuring SAID applications no longer assume that a permanent disability has suddenly, miraculously been healed.

8. Increase Funding Allocated to Saskatchewan Urban Police Forces

• provide our Saskatchewan urban police forces with an agreed upon funding increase to serve its raison d’être to serve and protect.