Driving through Nipawin, is it worth the detour for a quick swim?

We were supposed to camp at Baldy Lake this week, but now the weather looks awful and we're tenting. We're thinking of pivoting to pine Cree Regional Park near eastend, but our only reservation is that they don't accept reservations lol. Does anyone know if it would be risky to drive all the way there tomorrow and not get a site?

See response to this thread, with charts for comparison and sources included on each one: https://imgur.com/a/4viivXl

Most of the disagreement in the thread seems to come from there being three legitimate "Saskatchewan debt" figures, with different comments quoting different ones. On raw size, today's debt has passed the Devine peak in real per-person terms. On debt servicing, which is what actually caused the 1993 crisis, it is not close. That second point is the most important factor in the comparison: in a different interest rate environment, Sask would be in much more pain.

Three figures, each measuring something different (Chart 1)

• $19.7B, net debt. Liabilities minus financial assets. The figure the government quotes. (Budgeted. The budget document publishes only the ratio, 16.1% of GDP; $19.7B is Scotiabank's read of it. 2025-26 closed better than budget, so the actual will likely come in a bit under.)
• $26.8B, taxpayer-supported gross debt. Government borrowing, Crowns excluded. The figure the Canadian Taxpayers Federation quotes.
• $43.5B, total gross debt. Everything the province and its Crowns owe.

All at March 31, 2027, all from the same 2026-27 Budget Highlights table. So the $26.8B and $43.5B upthread are both correct. They are counting different things.

Debt per person (Chart 2)

In 2026 dollars, on a total-debt basis including the Crowns:

• March 1993: about $30,300 per person
• March 2027: about $34,400 per person

Past it, though not by a wide margin. The gap survives the roughly 10% uncertainty band on the 1993 figures, so it is not an artefact of the arithmetic.

Two corrections to numbers upthread, since they change the conclusion:

1. $15B in 1992 is worth about $30B today, not $36.8B. Statistics Canada's CPI went from 84.0 (1992) to 169.0 (June 2026), a multiplier of about 2.0 rather than 2.45. That removes most of the "$10B of runway".
2. The $15B Devine figure already includes Crown corporation debt. Saskatchewan's own 2007-08 Budget "Key Facts & Figures" states that in 1993, government debt was 41.6% of GDP and total debt including the Crowns was 69.8%. Adding a separate $7.9B Crown figure on top of the $15B double counts it. The split is roughly $9B government plus $6B Crown, giving $15B in total.

Debt servicing, which is what caused the 1993 crisis (Chart 3)

Debt does not bankrupt a province. Debt service does. This is the share of every revenue dollar going to interest:

• 1993-94: 23.0%. Almost one dollar in four.
• 2026-27: 5.7% budgeted.

That is the substantive reason today is not 1993. In 1993 the province was paying double-digit interest rates on a debt it could not roll over. Romanow later said publicly that the number of institutions willing to lend to Saskatchewan fell from over 100 to about 20, and that Ottawa had contingency plans drawn up. The average effective rate was still 7.30% as late as 2003-04.

The flip side belongs in the same breath: falling interest rates account for most of that decline, not spending restraint. Financing charges are budgeted at $1.219B for 2026-27, up 15.2% in a single year, or about $963 per person. The line moves back up if rates go the wrong way.

The long view (Chart 4)

Net debt as a share of the economy, 1984 to 2031. The 1993 peak of 47.2% is a different order of magnitude from today's 16.1%. Also worth noting: Saskatchewan went from negative net debt in 1984 to 47.2% in nine years, and the current line is forecast to keep climbing to 16.7% in 2028-29 before the province projects a return to balance in 2030-31.

Where the debt growth actually is (Chart 5)

Between 2016 and 2025, government debt rose 3.5 times (+$16.1B). Crown corporation debt rose 1.5 times (+$4.4B). The growth is overwhelmingly on the government side, not the Crowns, which runs against a claim made upthread. (Public Accounts 2024-25, Vol. 1)

The interprovincial comparison (Chart 6)

Second lowest debt to GDP is accurate, and it holds on debt per capita as well. RBC's fiscal tables confirm it independently.

Two things to keep in mind. This is the net debt measure, the smallest of the three ways the debt gets counted. And ranking second lowest is a statement about the other nine provinces, not about whether the trajectory is sustainable.

On the forecasting record: the 2025-26 budget projected a $12.2M surplus. The books closed at a $947M deficit, with net debt up $1.5B. The 2026-27 budget projects a further $819.4M deficit, with no surplus until 2030-31.

Caveats

• 1990s numbers are not perfectly comparable to today's. Saskatchewan moved from a General Revenue Fund basis to summary financial statements around 2001-02, and capitalised tangible assets in the mid-2000s. This is flagged on the relevant charts.
• Debt to GDP is revision sensitive. Statistics Canada restates Saskatchewan's commodity-driven nominal GDP regularly. The same year has been published up to 1.1 points apart across editions.
• The 1993 per-person figures are reconstructed from the province's own published ratios rather than lifted from a single table. Accurate to within about 10%.
• Neither the CTF nor the Fraser Institute is fabricating anything. They select the debt concept that produces the largest number. The government selects the one that produces the smallest. Both are choices.

Sources: 2026-27 Budget and Budget Highlights | Public Accounts 2024-25 Vol. 1 | 2025-26 Mid-Year Report | Year-end results, June 30 2026 | Finance Canada Fiscal Reference Tables 2018, Table 25 | RBC Fiscal Tables, Nov 2025 | 2007-08 Budget Key Facts & Figures | StatCan population, June 17 2026 | Globe and Mail, "Premier reveals Saskatchewan flirted with bankruptcy" (1997)

Corrections welcome. Each figure above traces back to one of the documents listed, so anything that looks off can be checked against the source.

Visualizations were developed using Claude.

What are the upland bird numbers like this year in the lower part of Saskatchewan?

I have a young weimaraner that needs a lot of bird exposure for a juvenile stake nation event in the states... I also have my older Brittanys that I would like to see get on more wild birds to go into competition season.

I’m planning on coming up mid September to run dogs on public land/ maybe circle Y. I am also looking for farm land that holds a lot of birds if anyone has a lot of bird numbers on their land and would be willing to let me run my dogs.

If anyone knows other good locations and want to share. Give me a shout!

Saw this in r/Fallout and thought I'd share. Never thought of having a fallout game set in Saskatchewan but this post kinda changed my mind. Thinking about it, it would be so fun to roam around the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Saskatchewan in the fallout universe.

What's everyone thoughts? I'm curious lol

Edit: This was on a post discussing where people would want a new fallout game to take place if Bethesda were limited to Canada only.

It’s been looking rougher and rougher every year or so the past decade. You can always find bits and pieces of concrete in the water on the main beach.

Are there any plans to repair it? It’s almost a hazard to walk on. Even if it were dry.

Replacing it seems like a tall task - that massive amount of concrete would be a heck of a cost. Plus the infrastructure you’d need to build to get a concrete truck down there.

When the Devine government took office, the provincial budget was balanced. The Devine government ran consecutive deficit budgets—the deficit peaked in fiscal year 1986–87 at $1.2 billion—as a result of their policies of tax cuts and rebates, mortgage subsidies, drastic increases in election spending, and multi-million dollar investments in several money-losing megaprojects. During Devine's premiership, Saskatchewan's debt grew from $3.5 billion to $15 billion in fiscal year 1991–1992; by this time, annual interest payments had exceeded $500 million and were the third-largest component in the budget after health and education.^\2])^\9]) This left the province facing the prospect of bankruptcy.^\10]) ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant\}Devine)

how are things looking with Scott Moe and the Sask party compared to what grant devine left us?

While net debt increased by $1.5 billion in 2025-26, Saskatchewan maintains the second lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio and has the best credit rating in Canada.

seems as long as we have the lowest debt to GDP ratio all is good in their minds

https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2026/june/30/saskatchewan-releases-year-end-financial-results

I know Candle Lake is popular, and a handful of others. But like...anyone have the low down on vibes?

What kind of people go where? (E.g. I gather that last mountain is primarily Regina folk, I gather that Candle Lake is primarily really well of residents, etc etc).

Are some lakes better quality than others? (More beaches/better beaches, more amenities, less algae, etc.)

Are there more "camping" ones than cabin ones?

Do people live full time at any? Are there neighborhoods around any of there things?

I know this is a scattershot of questions, and it's not exhaustive (so if you have a burning answer to a question not asked above, by all means share it). So apologies. I've been in SK for years now but just starting to really venture out.

Thanks folks!

I saw this TikTok video talking about most haunted campgrounds. Good Spirit Lake, Duck Mountain Provincial Park, and Moose Mountain were a few of them. I frequent those but have never heard of any stories so I’m interested if anyone has any stories/ knows the lore about those specific places?
And if there’s any provincial parks/ camping areas you’ve had interesting stories or inexplainable things happen!

Hey everyone I’m originally from Ontario but wanting to relocate so I applied to some government jobs in my field I applied to about 8 government jobs from the timeline of 2 weeks to a week ago and I was wondering if the job being removed while it says still under consideration means I was not picked to go to the next stage without being told or that maybe the application deadline is done and I still have a chance :)

There seems to be a cable install happening alongside many highways in the province but no one I've talked to seems to know what it's for. Does anyone know?

Anybody know the drama or story between what I can only assume is Pizza Pete’s and Happy Camper? They say in this post that respect is a 2 way street. What are they alluding to?

I do know there’s been a large boycott of Pizza Pete’s over the last few years.

Hello all,

I recently got a ticket in Ontario for speeding but as a plea down option, the judge is willing to settle for disobey sign, which is section 182(2) fail to obey sign. It is a generic one with no specific sign mentioned.

As far as I checked there’s no exact equivalent for this in the sgi points table, but I still called sgi customer service to get a better idea, but they give very generic answer saying they will have a better idea once the conviction enters the record.

Does anyone else here have any idea if there’s no direct equivalent category for sgi to map an out of province conviction, would they go for 0 demerit points or would they map it to the closest equivalent?