Catching up is actually a bad thing if the others are going in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, Saskatchewan is catching up much too quickly to other provinces that are way off track.

Three premiers remain from those who were originally elected in 2018: Quebec Premier François Legault, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.

Legault has increased Quebec’s provincial debt by about 30 per cent since 2018. Ford has increased Ontario’s by 36 per cent.

Moe has increased Saskatchewan’s debt by 113 per cent.

When Ford and Legault were first elected, their provinces already had mountains of debt and those premiers continued to pile more onto their taxpayers.

In terms of debt per person, both Ontario and Quebec taxpayers owe about $10,000 more per person than Saskatchewanians.

But this isn’t just about where these debts are today. It’s also about where they’re going. And it’s the growth in the debt per person that’s a fast-growing problem in Saskatchewan.

Since 2018, the debt per person in Ontario and Quebec has grown by 20 and 19 per cent respectively. In Saskatchewan it’s 96 per cent.

The growth of debt interest payments is the same story. While the governments of Ontario and Quebec have increased debt interest payments per person by 15 and two per cent, The Saskatchewan government has increased the debt interest payments per person, again, by 96 per cent.

So, while Saskatchewan isn’t dealing with as big a pile of debt as Ontario and Quebec, it’s catching up faster.

In total, the Moe government has added about $12.4 billion to the debt since first being elected.

The Saskatchewan government will likely blame the pandemic, but that’s not the full story. From 2019 to the beginning of 2022, the government increased the debt by $6.6 billion. But that doesn’t explain the other $5.8 billion the government racked up in debt before and after the pandemic.

In 2018, Saskatchewan’s debt was about $11 billion, or about $9,561 per person.

Now it’s set to climb to $23.5 billion and $18,753 per person.

Rising debt will put into jeopardy what the Saskatchewan government has been doing right. Under Moe’s leadership, there hasn’t been any major tax hikes. But the government did start charging PST on concert and event tickets.

And the government has cut taxes significantly. Recently, the government permanently cut the small business tax rate in half to one from two per cent. The government also recently cut income taxes by increasing the basic personal amount, the amount of money you can earn before paying income taxes, by $500.

The government is going to continue upping this amount for the next four years. After that, an extra 54,000 Saskatchewanians won’t be paying provincial income taxes, according to the government.

But these tax cuts are moot if the government doesn’t get spending under control and stop borrowing money. That’s because as debt interest charges eat up more and more of the budget, the government is going to look for more ways to pay for its spending and the first place it’s likely to look is inside taxpayer wallets.

That means tax hikes if the debt doesn’t start going down.

From years of borrowing money and racking up debt, Saskatchewan taxpayers are going to be handed an $878.4-million bill this year for government debt interest payments.

Put another way, those millions could have been used to pay the salaries of almost 8,800 new nurses.

Moe should feel good about Saskatchewan’s debt compared to other provinces and he should take pride in how he has cut taxes, but he needs to be concerned about how fast his government is increasing the debt and how much it's wasting on debt interest payments.

Because, if the government doesn’t start to solve this problem soon, taxpayers are going to be paying for it with their wallets.