NDP claims Sask. gov’t didn’t have COVID-19 plan days before first case

The Saskatchewan NDP is claiming newly uncovered emails show the Saskatchewan Party government misled the public and wasn’t nearly as prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic as it claimed last spring.

On Thursday afternoon, the NDP released a document of more than 100 pages, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, filled with emails and drafts of a COVID-19 pandemic plan presentation from March 2020.

Vicki Mowat, the NDP’s health critic, claimed the emails show the government hadn’t even started working on a plan for COVID-19 until the evening after the NDP had asked about it in Question Period on March 10, 2020. That plan was released the next day.

That day in Question Period, then-Health Minister Jim Reiter was asked several times about whether the government was prepared. Reiter responded by saying there was a plan in place, an emergency preparedness plan that had been in place for some time.

“It’s tweaked for different types of emergencies, Mr. Speaker. They’re working on it for the coronavirus,” Reiter said in Question Period.

On Thursday, Mowat claimed those emails showed the first draft of the COVID-19 preparedness plan wasn’t distributed until 7:43 p.m. that night. She argued that any previous instances of the plan being sent around or discussed would have shown up in the Freedom of Information request.

“On the same day that Jim Reiter was accusing us of fear-mongering and Minister (Donna) Harpauer was calling us Dr. Doom and the whole caucus of gloom, spin doctors from the government were scrambling to figure out how to respond to questions about a plan that didn’t exist,” said Mowat.

Mowat said there’s an expectation people have that the government is there to protect them and that it has a responsibility to be planning for public safety, but Mowat said the government wasn’t in this case. She said the public needs accountability and answers from the government.

“They have to answer for why they’re saying one thing and doing something else — it’s not acceptable,” said Mowat.

In response to the NDP’s claims on Thursday, the government called the Opposition’s accusations false. It pointed to Reiter’s comments that day in 2020, and also to a line in the emails saying the province had a pandemic plan — the plan created in 2009 — and it was just in the process of being updated for COVID-19.

Mowat called it “dusting off” an H1N1 plan.

“It just shows that they hadn’t put the work into protecting us against COVID-19 and that they weren’t being upfront with us about what they had done,” said Mowat.

Mowat argued the “flurry” of emails that night shows the first plan was pulled together in a very rushed fashion.

“We have seen a reactionary approach rather than proactive approach from the government throughout the entire pandemic. It shows that they didn’t have a plan from the beginning, they haven’t taken the pandemic and the word of health-care workers as seriously since the beginning as they have in other provinces,” said Mowat.

Mowat maintains the province didn’t have a plan for COVID-19, and said it was a violation of trust to say otherwise.