NDP outlines concerns to ombudsman over wildfire response

The Saskatchewan NDP has filed a complaint with the provincial ombudsman over incorrect SaskAlert updates sent during this year’s wildfire evacuations, as well as delays in emergency funds and mental health support.

One incident involved an evacuation notice for the Weyakwin area, where the alert map mistakenly included the entire city of Prince Albert, causing unnecessary stress.

“(The SaskParty) failed from hour one of the crisis to this day,” said NDP’s Northern Affairs Critic Jordan McPhail.

Last month, Saskatchewan Ombudsman Sharon Pratchler raised concerns about how the province had been handling the wildfire evacuations.

Pratchler said at the time that evacuees weren’t getting their basic human needs met, with some sleeping in cars, going hungry, or running out of funds due to delays in payment. A message that McPhail said remains accurate a month later.

“I still don’t believe things have improved for so many,” he said. “We hear from people who haven’t received a single dime of financial support from the government.”

Read more:

McPhail said that with everything going on in the lives of evacuees, this is something the Saskatchewan Government can do to make their lives easier.

“(The evacuees) didn’t know what was going to happen to their homes, to their small businesses as they evacuated,” he said. “It was chaos and these people deserved a government that had their backs.”

As a result the Saskatchewan NDP has sent a letter outlining concerns with the province’s wildfire response to the ombudsman.

The letter specified issues related to income and mental health support for evacuees and errors with the Emergency Alert System.

Pratchler said that she is looking into the NDP’s complaint.

An aerial view of a wildfire burning near Weyakwin in northern Saskatchewan. (Jay Are En/Facebook)

“We always listen to what anybody wants to share with us,” she said. “So that we know what particular concerns people have that are impacted by the situations that we’re dealing with.”

“What we’re looking for is to ensure that our investigation covers those matters that come to us as complaints from the people.”

While Pratchler can’t get into specifics when it comes to her investigation, she did say there are some factors that will affect the length of this inquiry.

“It depends on the number of people we feel we need to interview,” she said. “Response time from when we actually have to go through the procedural fairness, we have to share the finding and receive commentary back from the public entity… so all of those things can affect timing.”

It is still early into the investigation, but Pratchler was able to shed some light on when she hopes the investigation is complete.

“Our office is known for its timeliness generally, because 98 per cent of our cases are resolved within 180 days,” she said. “Investigations can take longer, but our office is very much focused on timeliness because we know that people’s access to solutions depends on our timeliness.”