Moe nixes Meili demand to hold debate on back-to-school plan

Premier Scott Moe has emphatically turned down an NDP demand to recall the legislature to debate the Saskatchewan government’s Safe Schools Plan.

According to a media release Friday from the NDP, Leader Ryan Meili sent a letter to Moe saying the Opposition wanted an emergency debate on the plan.

“Everywhere I go, every family I speak to is extremely worried about the safety of their kids and their families this fall,” Meili said in the release. “People are tired of a government that just keeps ignoring their concerns, and keeps refusing to put a real plan in place.

“And if the premier believes he has a plan that meets the needs of Saskatchewan families, he should be prepared to defend that plan on the floor of the Legislature.”

Concerns have been raised from the NDP, parents and others about the government’s plan to reopen schools on Sept. 8. Moe repeatedly has defended the strategy and did so again in a statement responding to Meili’s request.

“Our government remains confident in Saskatchewan’s Safe Schools Plan,” the premier’s office said in the statement. “We will continue to implement and assess this plan with Saskatchewan’s Chief Medical Health Officer, the Ministries of Health and Education, the Education Response Planning Team … and Saskatchewan’s 27 locally elected school divisions.

“This work will continue without recalling the Legislature.”

The statement reiterated the government’s plans — offering $40 million in application-based funding to the school divisions, ordering masks for students and staff to use if they so desire, increasing testing for students and staff members and so on – that Moe laid out during a media conference Monday.

Meili remained unimpressed with the plan.

“It’s clear that the premier was hoping that if he ignored this problem for long enough, it would just go away,” Meili said in the NDP’s release. “Everyone in the province knew that with overcrowded classrooms and overstretched school budgets, getting kids back to school safely would be a challenge.

“But instead of stepping up and finding a solution, this government wasted so much time they had to delay the return to school. With all of this confusion, it’s time for families, teachers, school staff and school divisions to get real answers from this government.”

Meili also said recalling the legislature would provide the government with a chance to pass legislation on suicide prevention and to provide an update on the province’s fiscal health.

Moe’s statement didn’t address the first of those notions, but did offer an answer to the second.

The premier’s office said Finance Minister Donna Harpauer is to release a first-quarter fiscal update on Thursday to address the 2020-21 pandemic deficit as well as the province’s financial picture through to 2024-25.

“This fiscal update will also include the latest pandemic budget figures for the Ministry of Health and the $40 million designated to support the safe return to schools,” the statement said.

“With the release of this fiscal update, Saskatchewan will become the first jurisdiction in Canada to provide detailed medium-term outlooks and future year projections factoring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”