NDP plans tour to review legislation

Morgan says Opposition playing politics

REGINA — The provincial NDP plans to hold a “consultation tour” about labour laws this fall, saying the Saskatchewan Party government’s process for reviewing the legislation is inadequate.

But Labour Minister Don Morgan said the exercise is “politics” on the part of the Opposition, noting the ministry had received more than 2,000 written submissions by Tuesday, the last day of its 90-day consultation process.

Labour critic David Forbes announced Tuesday that nine “roundtable and town-hall style open consultations” will be held throughout the province in September. After those events, Forbes said he will provide a report on the sessions to the government.

The NDP MLA criticized the length of the 90-day period allotted by the government to review the laws, saying more thorough consultations were conducted during reviews of areas such as minor football and math curricula.

“The process is flawed and it’s incomplete,” Forbes told reporters Tuesday in Regina. “For this kind of overhaul of 15 pieces of legislation, the government needed to do much more. It needs to be open and transparent and clearly they didn’t do that.”

“I think it’s politics on the part of the Opposition,” Morgan told reporters on Tuesday, noting the government was clear about its plans for the consultation process from the start.

“If they wanted it to be meaningful, they should have done it last month or the month before or the month before that. To wait until two months after the consultation period closing to complete it — what do you say to somebody who goes to one of those meetings and wants to submit something? They would have been better off to submit something in writing earlier.”

Morgan said the government doesn’t hold public meetings “on most things that we do.” Because this discussion is complex, written submissions were preferred, he said, noting he thinks “the number of submissions indicates that the timeline and the process was adequate.”

Saskatchewan Union of Nurses president Rosalee Longmoore said in a news release Tuesday the organization also doesn’t consider the government’s consultation process to be sufficient.

“We have grave concerns about the potential negative impacts on our members and all working residents of this province,” she said.

“We need to examine the full picture to truly understand the implications of the proposed changes; most notably, how they will affect the underlying health of our society.”

Other unions have been critical about the government’s process, including the Saskatchewan Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council, which in a news release questioned the need to make any changes to labour laws.

Morgan announced Tuesday that contrary to what the government had previously indicated, the names of organizations that submitted to the process and the content of the submissions will be released publicly because of freedom of information legislation. Content of submissions from individuals will also be released, but the names of the submitters will be redacted, he said.