SOS Crowns is a broad-based coalition aimed at educating the people of Saskatchewan on the importance of preserving and growing the Crowns, by ensuring all aspects of the Crowns remain in the hands of the public. It includes individuals, community groups, small businesses, and the greater labour movement.

SOS Crowns has the following mandate:

1. Educate our members and the public on the dangers of privatization and public-private partnerships (P3’s).                                                                                                    
2. Demand accountability from the Government by informing them that continuing to pursue P3’s and privatization of Crown Corporations will be a politically dangerous environment.
3. Remind Saskatchewan citizens of the benefits of public control and ownership of the Crowns including affordable utilities, accessible goods and services, and revenues which are re-invested in the province.
4. Create a representative and diverse Steering Committee to represent all Coalition Partners

Crown Corporations are organizations that are owned and operated by the government. Income that is generated by Crowns is returned in the form of dividends to the government's general revenue fund, which is then redistributed to a variety of areas including Saskatchewan libraries, highways, hospitals, schools, and many more.

The operations of publicly owned enterprises is part of our Saskatchewan identity and in fact, have been around longer than Saskatchewan has even been an official province.  Beginning in 1901 with hail insurance, and evolving to over 20 different organizations today, Crowns affect every citizen of the province every single day.

Whether it be a major centre, a town, village, hamlet, or First Nation settlement, the Crowns were formed with four guiding principles; to assure that essential services are reliable, high quality, reasonably affordable, and most importantly, universal. We may take for granted the government mandates that assure we have services like clean water, power, energy, communication services, and public transportation.

In late 2008, the Saskatchewan government announced the Sask First Policy framework. This policy restricts the investments and growth of Crown Corporations. It requires Crowns to divest of any arms of business that extend outside the province of Saskatchewan, while also restricting growth within the province if it competes with any private business.

The Save Our Saskatchewan Crowns (SOS Crowns) Campaign was initially launched in early 2009 by citizens from various Crown Corporations throughout the province following the identification of a number of serious concerns regarding the future of our Saskatchewan Crown Corporations.

Since the Brad Wall government began piecing away our Crown Corporations, we have attacks at various levels of our organizations. This process began 2008 with the introduction of the Sask First Policy. Although it is not even a formal policy, but rather four bullet points on a news release, this framework determines investment restrictions for all of our Crowns.

In 2009 we began to see the dismantling of Crown Corporations in the form of selling off our organizations piece by piece. Significant sales included:

• Heritage Gas
• Navigata
• DirectWest Canada

By 2010 our current government became very comfortable with the process of taking apart our Crowns. Last year we saw a number of attacks on Crowns including:

• Northland Income Trust Power Purchase Agreement (Privatizing nearly 10% of our power in SK)
• Sale AgDealer
• Sale of Saskatoon Square (real estate)
• Sale of the Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN)
• Crown Dividend Policy - stripping 100% of dividends from Crowns (all except SaskPower)
• Contracting out SGI General License Plates
• Closure of more than 20% of SaskPower offices (for walk-in customers)
• SaskPower, SaskEnergy and SaskTel line locates contracted out
• Significant changes to SGI Canada policies affecting local brokers
• SaskTel Operator Services contracted out to a direct competitor (Telus)
• SGI Canada sale of shares in Charlie Cook Insurance
• SaskTel Max Television Service Installations contracted out to direct competitor (Jump.ca)
• SaskTel Satellite High Speed Internet Service contracted out to two private companies
• Sale of the Hospitality Network
• SGI Canada sale of shares in Atlantic Adjusting and Appraisals Ltd. (AAA) and Maritime Finance and Acceptance Corporation (MFAC)

Yes, here they are:

Mission - The SOS Crowns Coalition works to educate the people of Saskatchewan on the importance of preserving and growing the Crowns, by ensuring all aspects of the Crowns remain in the hands of the public.

Vision - The SOS Crowns Campaign is a leader in proactively supporting the growth and preservation of Saskatchewan Crown Corporations as publicly owned organizations.

Values - The actions of the SOS Crowns Coalition will be based on the following core values:  

• Integrity
• Education
• Accountability

For more than one hundred years, Saskatchewan has thrived on the affordable and accessible services offered by Crown Corporations. To this day, Saskatchewan residents continue to benefit from our Crown Corporations investing millions of dollars back into our towns, cities, schools, charity organizations and community events.

Thousands of people and families in Saskatchewan prosper directly from the employment and benefits provided by our Crowns.

But if we want to keep reaping these benefits, it is vital to keep these organizations 100 percent publicly-owned. Unfortunately, we’re seeing a growing trend of piece-meal privatization as profitable parts of Crown corporations are sold off for political reasons.

Currently in Saskatchewan there are a set of Crown Corporations and a set of Treasury Board Crowns.

Currently the government states there are 18 Crown Corporations in Saskatchewan, which include:

·         Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan (CIC)

·         Global Transportation Hub Authority

·         Information Services Corporation of Saskatchewan (ISC)

·         Municipal Financing Corporation of Saskatchewan (MFC)

·         Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN)

·         Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation

·         Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation

·         Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI)

·         Saskatchewan Housing Corporation

·         Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority

·         Saskatchewan Opportunities Corporation (SOCO)

·         Saskatchewan Research Council

·         Saskatchewan Transportation Company

·         Saskatchewan Watershed Authority

·         SaskEnergy Incorporated

·         SaskPower

·         SaskTel

·         SaskWater

In February of 2010, SaskPower entered into a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Ontario-based Northland Power Income Fund. Construction began on the plant in July 2010 and is scheduled to begin operations in 2013. Once fully operational Northland Power will produce 347 megawatts of base load power, representing nearly 10% of the power generated in Saskatchewan.

According to a Northland Power news release, the agreement "provides protection against changes in the market price of natural gas, as fuel costs are passed through SaskPower."

So Northland Power is protected against the changes in the price of natural gas, but the people of Saskatchewan are being told to expect annual rate increases by our current government.

Public-private partnerships (P3's) of this nature remove any risk for Northland Power and put it all on the backs of the people of Saskatchewan. Where residents of Saskatchewan should benefit from the success of SaskPower, we now assume the risk of a contract "designed to ensure predictable, stable, and sustainable cash flows over the entire 20-year term," for Northland Power.

This is a perfect example of how our current government is setting private companies up for success, while setting the hard working people of Saskatchewan up for failure. SaskPower is more than capable of building and successfully operating this type of facility, while ensuring the people of this province benefit from the economic returns.

It is very clear that the government direction to SaskPower is stifling business opportunities for our Crown Corporations while letting companies from outside Saskatchewan thrive without the risk of market pressures.

When the current Saskatchewan government came into power they hired an independent firm, Meyers Norris Penny, to do a review of SaskWater. The recommendations of this report included to “focus on growing industrial revenues” as a high priority. Currently, SaskWater’s existing industrial customers represent approximately 2/3 of their revenue which is a substantial portion.

With full knowledge of this report, Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan (CIC) made a decision in early 2009 to mandate SaskWater against pursuing any new industrial customers. These customers usually have high volume demand which helps the smaller users. If SaskWater is not allowed to pursue these industrial customers, residential and small business customers will be required to make up for the loss of income.

The government has lead the people of this province to believe that growth of the Crowns will keep them safe, while using backdoor tactics to ensure SaskWater does not remain profitable.