Among SaskForward’s coalition partners are Renters of Saskatoon and Area, the Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism, and a research project focused on migrant labour in Saskatchewan’s global economic ties. Together, they represent a strand of the coalition’s work focused specifically on inclusion, on making sure Saskatchewan’s prosperity is actually shared by everyone who lives and works here.

A province’s economic health is often measured through aggregate indicators: GDP growth, employment rates, resource revenue. These measures can mask significant disparities in how different groups of Saskatchewan residents actually experience the provincial economy, particularly renters, migrant workers, newcomers, and racialized communities who often face structural barriers that aggregate statistics do not capture.

The renter’s experience of a tightening market

Saskatchewan’s two largest cities have experienced significant rental market pressure over the past decade, with vacancy rates tightening and rents rising faster than incomes for many renter households. Renters of Saskatoon and Area has documented how this pressure affects tenants directly, from difficulty finding affordable units to inadequate tenant protections when facing unfair rent increases or substandard housing conditions.

Unlike homeowners, renters have limited ability to build equity or protect themselves from market volatility. A rent increase that outpaces wage growth represents a direct reduction in a renter household’s disposable income, with no corresponding asset appreciation to offset the loss. Strengthening tenant protections and increasing the supply of genuinely affordable rental housing are two of the clearest policy levers available to address this imbalance.

Migrant labour and Saskatchewan’s economy

Saskatchewan’s economy, particularly in agriculture and resource-adjacent sectors, has become increasingly reliant on migrant labour, often through temporary foreign worker programs that can leave workers in precarious legal and economic positions. Research into Saskatchewan’s place within the global division of migrant labour, one of SaskForward’s coalition initiatives, has examined how these employment structures shape both the experience of migrant workers themselves and the broader labour market conditions for all Saskatchewan workers.

Migrant workers under temporary work permits often face significant power imbalances relative to employers, including limited ability to change jobs without jeopardizing their immigration status. Addressing these imbalances is not only a matter of fairness to migrant workers themselves. It also affects overall labour standards, since employers able to rely on a workforce with limited bargaining power face less pressure to improve wages and conditions across the board.

SaskForward is a broad coalition of civil society organizations and individuals. We believe that there are solutions for creating a prosperous, sustainable, and just future for all.

Confronting racism as an economic barrier

The Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism’s work within the broader SaskForward coalition reflects a recognition that racism functions as a direct economic barrier, not simply a social or interpersonal issue disconnected from budget and labour policy. Racialized Saskatchewan residents, including Indigenous people and newcomers of colour, frequently face discrimination in hiring, unequal access to housing, and disproportionate barriers to advancement in the workplace.

These barriers compound with the other pressures discussed throughout SaskForward’s coalition work. A racialized renter facing housing discrimination, a migrant worker with limited job mobility, and a newcomer facing hiring bias are not experiencing three unrelated problems. They are experiencing overlapping structural barriers that a genuinely inclusive provincial economic strategy needs to address together, rather than treating each as an isolated issue.

Newcomer settlement and the role of public services

Newcomers to Saskatchewan, whether arriving through economic immigration, family reunification, or as refugees, often rely heavily on public settlement services during their first years in the province, from language training to employment support to help navigating the health care and education systems. These services intersect directly with the public service funding debates discussed elsewhere in SaskForward’s work.

Cuts to library funding, for example, disproportionately affect newcomers who rely on library-based settlement programming. Health care funding pressure affects newcomers who may already face barriers navigating an unfamiliar system, even before considering the added strain of a system facing service reductions.

What genuine inclusion requires

Building an economy where prosperity is genuinely shared requires more than avoiding explicit discrimination. It requires actively identifying the structural barriers, in housing, employment, and public service access, that leave renters, migrant workers, and racialized communities disproportionately vulnerable to economic instability, and designing policy specifically to address those barriers.

SaskForward’s coalition structure, bringing together organizations focused on tenant rights, anti-racism, and migrant labour alongside organizations focused on budget policy and public services, reflects an understanding that these issues cannot be effectively addressed in isolation from one another. A province genuinely committed to shared prosperity has to be willing to look directly at who is currently being left out of that prosperity, and why.