Moe facing long list of issues in COVID-19 fight
The number of new and active COVID-19 cases in Saskatchewan is again slowing — even in the far north, where four of the five new cases in the province on Thursday were located.
Too bad the same thing can’t be said for Premier Scott Moe’s problems stemming from the worldwide pandemic.
And as we drift past the two-month mark and enter the Victoria Day long weekend, which will be followed by the implementation of Phase 2 of Moe’s Re-open Saskatchewan Plan, expect Moe’s list of problems to only grow.
How much sympathy you have for Moe’s dilemma depends on about as many factors as there are problems — not the least of which are your own thinning patience, how directly you feel you have been affected by any one of the myriad of problems, and maybe even your own politics, which often dictates how many people react to politicians and their decisions.
While the recent Innovative Research poll offering Moe a 64 per cent approval rating for his handling of the pandemic indicates most Saskatchewan people have generally been sympathetic and forgiving, there is no doubt that Moe has occasionally been his own worst enemy during this crisis.
Asked on Wednesday for his own self-assessment of the strengths in his performance that led to his relatively favourable ranking, Moe suggested it was his willingness to listen to a wide variety of people.
Moe and his government have avoided input from mayors and the Opposition and continue to avoid presenting a budget or most forms of legislative scrutiny. Listening has sometimes been something less than the government’s strength.
That said, when addressing the things he thought his government could do better, Moe acknowledged the need for more testing and tracing in what surely is a litany of things that can be approved.
The dilemma isn’t just Moe’s long “to-do” list this May long weekend. It’s also the reality that his list of problems keeps getting longer:
Northerners are questioning the discriminatory nature of banning travel in the entire northern half of the province when an admittedly disproportionate number of northern cases are in and around La Loche.
“We are mothers. We are children. We are fathers and teachers and doctors and cousins and hunters and many things,” said Cole Bay resident Alexandra Maclean in an article by the CBC’S Guy Quenneville. “Caged animals should not be one of them.”
Meanwhile, what’s going on in the north is already added to the mental health challenges many face.
Just as farmers are hitting the field to seed, 12 rural hospital emergency rooms were temporary closed with less than 48 hours’ notice, to accommodate the SHA’S COVID -19 pandemic plan.
“I’m not impressed with it whatsoever. I’m quite shocked that they would do that,” Davidson Mayor Tyler Alexander told The Canadian Press’s Stephanie Taylor. Can you imagine the outrage from the Saskatchewan Party, were an NDP government doing the same thing in rural
Saskatchewan?
A single case on Thursday at Regina’s Pasqua Hospital involving a patient who was in a NON-COVID ward for five days before a positive test result is now somehow not deemed an outbreak, even though a similar single case at Prince Albert’s Victoria Hospital received such a designation.
“This is becoming more and more like the theatre of the absurd,” Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Tracy Zambory told the Leader-post’s Ashley Martin. “What’s even more serious … is that it’s not being reported in the same way.”
Add in the unforeseen problems bound to accompany the opening of stores and barbershops on Tuesday and — as Moe noted — the likely increase in interprovincial traffic, and you get the sense this list is endless.
For Moe, it’s a clarion call to not just pay lip service to the notion of listening, but to sincerely seek out solutions.
For the rest of is, maybe it’s a reminder that we all need to take a breath and try to be a little more patient. We are all going to be in this for awhile. Mandryk is political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.