Opposition leader feels Saskatchewan NDP raised real concerns during fall legislative session
Saskatchewan NDP leader Carla Beck feels the party was effective in raising issues of real concern for provincial residents during the fall sitting of the Saskatchewan legislature.
This was her first sitting as leader of the Official Opposition since being elected as party leader in late June.
“I think this really was a session about priorities,” she said. “It’s almost been six months since I became leader of the NDP and from the start we have really been focusing on outreach and connecting with the issues that people and communities right across this province is facing.”
It was clear from what she heard that affordability is top of mind for people across the province. The NDP called on the government during the fall sitting to do more to assist provincial residents to deal with the higher cost of living.
“When the government had the opportunity to provide some relief, sitting on $2 billion of additional windfall revenue, they actually chose to increase fees and taxes on people from rodeos to movies and then the energy and SaskPower increases,” she said.
Concern over health care services was another clear issue that emerged from her interaction with people around the province.
“At one point this summer there were 37 communities that had closures and service disruptions, often due to labour force issues, the lack of healthcare workers,” she said.
The NDP criticized the government’s plan to recruit more health care workers as insufficient and came up with its own proposal, the Grow Your Own initiative, to retain local nurses and doctors.
“The Grow Your Own strategy that we have been promoting is connected to the very real things that we were hearing from communities and from health care workers around the province,” she said. “Communities do have ideas about what it would take to retain health care workers instead of the current situation where we’ve lost 600 health care workers year over year net. … Recruitment is important, but if we continue to lose more healthcare workers than we recruit, it’s going to continue to stress our healthcare system.”
The issue of good full-time jobs in communities was another concern raised by people during her travels around the province.
“That was really highlighted during the session when we found Statistics Canada came out with 10-year data showing that Saskatchewan had actually created fewer full-time jobs over the last decade than any other province with the exception of Newfoundland and Labrador, a province that is losing population,” she noted.
Beck felt the Saskatchewan Party’s legislative agenda during the fall session reflected a very different set of priorities from those of the NDP.
“The priorities we brought forward were the things we were hearing from people in the province they were concerned about,” she said. “On the other hand, you saw the government who had their own tour with a definite different focus described as a separation tour with closed door meetings. What we saw coming out of that appeared to come without consultation.”
She referred to several examples of legislation introduced by the government during the fall sitting. Proposed amendments to the Police Act will make it possible to create a new police service, the Saskatchewan Marshals Service.
The Saskatchewan Revenue Agency Act will create a new agency to give the province more autonomy in tax collection.
“That has been met with surprise and concern by individuals and certainly the business community,” she said.
The government also introduced the Saskatchewan
First Act during the fall sitting to confirm provincial autonomy and jurisdiction over natural resources.
“The Saskatchewan First Act, by the government’s own admission, is reasserting rights that already exist, but they came without any consultation, in particular with Indigenous communities across the province,” she said. “So I think there was a real contrast in priorities. We put a lot of effort into bringing people’s voices to the legislature, but also physically bringing people here to tell their stories. Whereas on the government side, I would suggest we saw a government showing that their priorities are not necessarily the priorities of people in the province.”
NDP MLAs did not oppose a motion in the legislature on the second reading of the bill to establish the Saskatchewan First Act. The government viewed that as an expression of support from the Opposition for the bill, but Beck said NDP MLAs were simply supporting the second reading in order to send the bill to committee for further scrutiny and they clearly expressed their concerns.
“So around that issue of jurisdictional rights, the rights of the provinces to assert jurisdiction over natural resources, of course we agree with that,” she noted. “Where we disagree is with the wholesale lack of consultation and in particular lack of consultation with First Nations and Métis communities, their no talk of duty to consult or Treaty rights. Those are things that we’ve consistently put on the record during second reading. We look forward to being in committee on this bill. We look forward to the government correcting that lack of consultation.”
The NDP continues to have concerns over the government’s chronic and longterm underfunding of the public education system in the province.
“We were at the Saskatchewan School Board Association meetings this fall in Regina and a lot of those concerns are still present coming out of the pandemic,” she said. “A lot of kids need extra support. There simply isn’t funding to hire those professionals in many cases and again back to a government that makes decisions that seem to be divorced of consultation or even conversations with stakeholders.”
Beck felt the government’s decision to establish a new treasury board crown corporation to oversee centralized online education in the province was a surprise to the education sector. The government previously mentioned in the spring that it was taking a look at online education, but the creation of the Saskatchewan Distance Learning Corporation was unexpected.
“I don’t have a window into why this decision was made, because it was really sprung on divisions, teachers and communities, and has left us with more questions than answers,” she said. “This pattern of tabling legislation by this government and then asking the questions later perhaps, providing details after the fact, is really troubling.”
The NDP won the Saskatoon Meewasin provincial by-election in early October and started this sitting of the legislature with 12 MLAs, but Beck acknowledged the party still faces a difficult task as Opposition against the 48 Saskatchewan Party MLAs.
“We have to compete with a government that has resources, has the majority on bills when they want to force that through,” she said. “That’s why it’s ever more important for us to really be connected, to be out connecting with people in their communities. I observed very early on that in too many places the only thing that people knew about us or thought they knew about us were messages that they’ve heard from the Sask. Party government and that’s one of the ways that we can get through that majority stacked against us. We’re not just speaking for ourselves. We’re connecting with the very real concerns that people are experiencing. We’re reflecting their voices when we’re asking questions in the legislature.”