This year, Saskatchewan's major Crown corporations spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on annual reports that have little or no strategic value. Most of the major Crowns, including SaskEnergy, SaskPower, and the nebulous Crown Investments Corporation distributed incredibly expensive, glossy full-colour reports that cost as much as a coffee table book to produce.

What do taxpayers get in return for this investment Absolutely nothing.

In the private sector, annual reports are one of the most important documents a corporation produces. If the company is publicly traded, each and every shareholder has a right to a copy. Any member of the public can call up a publicly traded company and request a copy of the report. Even privately-owned companies produce annual reports that help document the company's worth, and communicate to media and the general public its corporate philosophy and how it is performing.

For our Crowns, annual reports are nothing more than a very expensive paperweight decorated with original photography and artwork. Take SaskEnergy for example. They produced 1,750 copies of their report for nearly $80,000. They spent $21,000 on graphic design and nearly $60,000 to print it in full colour. That's $80,000 spent to produce 1,750 reports for an organization with no competition and no shareholders (except for taxpayers, who never read the document).

For comparison, let's look at $12.5 billion oil and gas producer Suncor Energy (NYSE: SU) -- one of Canada's largest publicly traded companies. Suncor's 3,400 employees produce 215,000 barrels of crude oil and 190 thousand cubic feet of natural gas per day. Their annual report is a cornerstone of their investor relations strategy. These guys live and die by the contents of their annual reports.

How much did Suncor spend on graphic design for their report this year They spent around $50,000. Compare that to the $77,000 that government-owned monopoly SaskPower spent on the 3,800 copies they distributed for employee coffee tables. That works out to be $1,600 per page - and that doesn't include the $30,000 they spent on printing. Suncor's per-page graphic design costs came in at $560.

Something just isn't right here. All together, the major Saskatchewan Crowns, including SaskEnergy, SGI Autofund, SaskTel, Crown Investment Corporation, SGI Canada, and SaskPower spent nearly $300,000 on annual reports. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) requested information on the cost of the beleaguered Information Services Corporation's report, but were told to issue a formal request through the province's access to information laws. So much for openness and accountability.

Responding to criticism in the Regina Leader Post for the excessive costs, Crown Investments Corporation Minister Maynard Sonntag said: "If you want them [the Crowns] to operate like a private sector business you can't interfere and say they can't do this and they can't do that."

That's exactly right Minister Sonntag - we DO want the Crowns to operate like a business. We want them to spend our tax dollars responsibly, and be transparent and accountable to the taxpayers who own them.

The bottom line is our Crown Corporations operate under a veil of secrecy, and their elaborate annual reports do nothing to shed light on their operations. In his recent report, Provincial Auditor Fred Wendel criticized the Crowns for their lack of accessibility: "Crown corporations need to give more disclosure on who receives money from them and the amount they receive. Crown corporations represent 40 per cent of all government spending yet they disclose less information than the rest of government."

It's time we sent a clear message to our crown corporations: The people want in. Stop wasting our money on glossy annual reports and give us the real goods.