REGINA - Saskatchewan's newly elected premier continued to lay the groundwork Tuesday for scrapping the province's constitutional challenge of the federal equalization program, calling the court action "dubious'' at first blush.
Brad Wall told reporters that he is looking forward to evaluating the legal case more thoroughly in the weeks ahead, but added he has concerns about what the province will gain by taking the federal government to court.
"I have not gone through it in detail -- I want to do that,'' Wall said. "So far it is pretty dubious.''
Opposition NDP leader Lorne Calvert, who launched the court action while in government, said Wall's comments sandbag the province's case.
"That takes the legs right from under it,'' Calvert said. "The courts are going to hear those words very quickly.''
Calvert accused Wall, whose "small-c'' conservative Saskatchewan Party has many ties to the federal Conservatives, of planning all along to back away from the court challenge once in power.
"He's offered up already to the federal government all they needed to hear,'' Calvert said.
Saskatchewan has long maintained that it is shortchanged by the way the equalization transfer formula treats natural resource revenues, such as those from oil and gas.
While other provinces have deals that allow their oil and gas revenues to flow without impacting the amount of money they get from Ottawa, Saskatchewan doesn't, the province has argued.
At stake is about $800 million in federal transfers annually, according to provincial calculations.
During the last federal election, the Conservatives promised to remove non-renewable resource revenues from the equalization formula. But in the budget, they put a cap on the amount a province can receive under the program, angering Calvert's government.
Before the recent provincial election campaign, the NDP asked the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal to rule on whether the province has a case.
Wall supported the notion of a court action over equalization when the Liberals were in power in 2005, but became suspicious when the New Democrats waited to file their challenge until right before an election.
Wall said his government will evaluate the legal opinions the NDP sought and then decide whether the case is winnable. On Tuesday he raised the bar, saying the case would not only have to be winnable, but it would have to lead to the province getting some money after a victory.
"The prime consideration is: Can we win this case? The second consideration is: If we can win this case, what does that mean?'' Wall said.
