Fall sitting ends with different takes by government, Opposition

The legislative building may be all decked out with Christmas trees and nutcrackers for the season, but MLAs won’t be there much longer.

Many will turn around and head home soon, as the fall sitting ended Thursday.

Talking about the end of the sitting, Premier Scott Moe and NDP Leader Ryan Meili’s thoughts on the past seven weeks seemed to differ.

Meili talked about COVID-19 and what he said was the mismanagement of the provincial government.

Throughout the sitting, the NDP brought several people to stand in front of the government — people who were waiting for life-saving surgeries or procedures and health-care workers who were frustrated with or burned out from the fourth wave of COVID-19.

“(They were) the stories of patients (and) the stories of health-care workers that have really exemplified the damage that Scott Moe and his decision to let the fourth wave run wild have done,” said Meili.

Meili said the legislative building is about serving the people of the province, and he once again accused Moe of putting politics ahead of people.

“That’s why we felt it was so important to share those stories (and) to put those people in front of the premier, so that maybe — just maybe — he’d change his ways (and) he’d acknowledge his failures, and more importantly so that we can get to a place where we’ve got a government that does care about Saskatchewan people,” said Meili.

Meili also talked about the messaging from the Saskatchewan Party government this fall, calling it a disaster and saying it amounted to the government trying to gaslight the people of Saskatchewan.

“His choices, his deliberate decisions when he had the information in front of him, cost people their lives and cost thousands more access to essential care,” said Meili.

The premier, while admitting the province was in a difficult situation at the start of the sitting with high daily case counts and a faltering health-care system, said it’s a different story with the province in a much stronger position at the end of the sitting.

“And that, most certainly, was first and foremost the goal, the effort of the whole of government,” Moe said. “As well, I think as you look at the results, it was the effort of the whole of people across this province.”

Many of the legislative priorities were around supporting the economic opportunities, according to Moe. He said there were bills that put investments into continuing to attract investment into Saskatchewan’s industries.

He also pointed to investments in the Indigenous Finance Corporation.

“As we look ahead, we see pieces of legislation that are put in this legislature not only to ensure that we can continue to attract that wealth in our communities, pieces of legislation that are put in this legislature that are going to ensure that as many as possible across this province are going to be able to participate in that growth,” said Moe.

The MLAs will be back in the legislative building for the spring session on March 7.