COVID-19 and recommendations focus of first QP of new session

True to his word earlier this week, NDP Leader Ryan Meili didn’t let up on Premier Scott Moe in the first Question Period of the new legislative session.

On Thursday, all of the NDP’s questions came from Meili and revolved around the COVID-19 pandemic, modelling and what recommendations are being listened to.

Meili also revived a demand the NDP first made earlier this fall for the provincial government to release all of the recommendations chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab has made to the government.

Both in QP and speaking to media afterward, Moe parried the questions by talking about the current health orders and saying they’re working to bring numbers down.

Moe said there have been discussions around whether gathering limits should be raised from recommendations to the public up to orders.

“Given where we are today and the effectiveness of the measures that are in place, that hasn’t proceeded past that point … If our trajectory should change, we obviously would be having those conversations with Dr. Shahab to reassess all the tools that are ultimately keeping people safe and keeping people out of hospital,” said Moe.

Moe said the government is trying to provide all the tools to people to keep them safe, chief among them vaccines, while also preserving people’s personal freedoms.

Despite requests from the NDP, Moe did not commit to either releasing or not releasing the recommendations that Shahab has made to the province about health orders, contending that Shahab’s advice is only part of the decision-making process.

“There’s conversations and collaboration around where we land on the public health orders that we have and whether they go forward as a public health recommendation or as a public health order,” explained Moe.

When asked why the public isn’t able to see the process and information that goes into the public health decisions, Moe replied the public sees the information when it sees the decisions that are made.

“They’ve always been very collaborative conversations, trying to land not only on what is effective public health orders (and) effective public health recommendations here in the province but ensuring that they’re also operable,” said Moe.

Meili later said that stance is ridiculous.

“If he’s ignoring the advice of the chief medical health officer, the fact that he’s telling us what he chose to do after ignoring that advice is not transparency,” said Meili.

As he has said often the last few months, the NDP leader believes Moe is refusing to take responsibility for the severity of the fourth wave and is trying to distract from it. Meili said Moe is trying to hide the health recommendations that Meili said Moe has ignored.

“He wants us to continue down the path that’ll kill people. I want us to save people’s lives,” said Meili.

Meili said his party is going to push for a public inquiry into COVID-19 but for now he wants the information on recommendations made for the situation right now and back to the beginning of the pandemic.

“It is absolutely a case of who knew what when. And the premier is guilty of making choices that have cost people their lives and he should be held accountable for that,” said Meili.

COVID rules in the assembly

At the start of the proceedings Thursday, the assembly voted on the COVID-19 rules and protocols for the new session.

The NDP tried to amend the rules to take away the testing option for people who don’t have their shots in the proof-of-vaccination clause.

Every NDP member voted for the amendment, but government members voted it down.

The MLA for Saskatchewan Rivers, Nadine Wilson, began to speak when it was her time to vote but was cut off. She later explained she was trying to say, “I believe in democracy, and I don’t believe in coercion.”

She said she wasn’t voting, but rather was trying to make a point of order about coercion and bullying tactics she’d been experiencing.

Moe later said that the amendment was an example of where the NDP and Saskatchewan Party diverge in their thinking. He said the NDP tried to mandate vaccines to keep a duly elected member out of the house.

“We just don’t feel that’s right. We feel there should be the option for the negative test (and) the NDP don’t feel that way. They feel that people should be mandated to get a vaccine in order to keep their job,” said Moe.

Meili, however, said he was disappointed the amendment was voted down.

“This is a place where we could easily have that requirement and use that as a model for the rest of the province,” said Meili.

Wilson has refused to state what her vaccination status is, but she is now an independent MLA after leaving the Sask. Party caucus over vaccinations. The party said it accepted her resignation after she misrepresented her vaccination status.