Saskatchewan’s Finance Minister delivered the province’s 2026 budget on March 18, 2026. The budget anticipates a $1.2 billion deficit for 2025-26 and projects deficits of $819 million for 2026-27 and $608 million for 2027-28.
Below are highlights pertinent to our members.
Tax changes
No changes have been announced to personal or corporate tax rates. This means members should not see any immediate change to take-home pay or incorporated practice tax planning in 2026-27.
Health
Saskatchewan announced a record $8.5 billion investment in health to improve access to care across the province. This includes approximately about 5.15 billion dollars for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, representing roughly a 5% increase aimed at protecting and improving access to primary care, hospital care, surgery, and diagnostics.
Funding will expand mental health and addictions services, strengthen primary and emergency care, and modernize facilities and technology. For speech-language pathologists (S-LPs), audiologists and communication health assistants, this may translate into new or reconfigured roles in primary care teams, emergency and critical care, and mental health and addictions programs as the government implements its “Patients First” access targets.
The Government of Saskatchewan has also recently announced the Patients First Health Care Plan. The plan includes priorities such as:
- expanding access to care;
- improving recruitment, retention, and training;
- modernizing care delivery and scope of practice;
- improving safe and quality care; and
- and improving facilities and equipment.
Under modernizing care delivery and scope of practice, the plan explicitly notes that the next steps are to “identify new opportunities to broaden the roles of nurse practitioners and allied health professionals, including occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech-language pathologists, province-wide,” which creates a formal opening to advocate for speech-language pathology and audiology presence in community clinics, primary care, and virtual models of care.
The Saskatchewan government also plans to significantly expand nurse practitioners and other primary care providers, with the stated goal that “every resident will have a primary care provider by the end of 2028”, which could influence how interprofessional primary care teams are designed, and raise questions of where communication and dysphagia services fit into these models.
Education
The government will invest 3.6 billion dollars in pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 education, early learning, child care, and libraries. This includes continued support for 10-dollar-per-day childcare and additional childcare spaces, which may further increase demand for early years speech, language, and hearing services in already pressured preschool and school-based systems.
A 9.9 billion dollar commitment was announced to finalize respiratory therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology post-secondary programs launching this fall, according to a provincial news release. This commitment aims to support recruitment, retention, and training, aligned with the “Patient First” initiatives, representing an important step toward growing the provincial pipeline of S-LPs and other allied health professionals. Further details on clinical placements, long-term funding, and clinical educator resources and supports will be important for our professions.
