‘It is criminal, it is negligent’: NDP react to back to school planning

With the school season around the corner, the New Democratic Party (NDP) of Saskatchewan feels the lack of plan for kids returning to be worrying, and a moment of deja-vu.

“The Saskatchewan Party took the summer off, and now they seem perfectly content to take the school year off as well,” Carla Beck with the NDP said. “They have left the heavy lifting to divisions… Our kids deserve better.”

Saskatchewan NDP Leader, Ryan Meili, explained we are heading into a fourth wave and still, Premier Scott Moe has not taken action.

“Listening to the Education Minister this (Monday) morning  was was just a surreal experience,” Meili said. “This is a government that’s on-the-air telling people that they have no plan, and worse that they have deliberately ignored the plan put forward by medical experts within the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

“What we heard from Dustin Duncan today isn’t a plan to learn to live with COVID – That’s what he said – This isn’t a plan to learn to live with it. It’s a plan for more people to die from it. And this time, I fear that those people will be more children.”

A year ago on this exact day of Aug. 23, there were three new cases and 5 people in hospital. Today, there are 176 new cases and nearly 100 in hospital.

“The majority of children in our schools are still unvaccinated,” Meili said. “It is absolute madness for this government to have no plan. It is criminal, it is negligent. There is no contingency for outbreaks, no plan for rapid testing, no guidance on isolating when a kid or a staff person is sick, and there’s so much anxiety out there and Scott Moe? Nowhere to be found. Completely missing in action. This Premiers truancy has failed everyone.”

Last week the NDP made calls for vaccine mandates for all teachers and staff before October 1, masking, testing and remote learning protocols and thresholds, vaccine eligibility for 11-year olds in school vaccination clinics and clear and consistent information and direction from public health experts.

“The only one of these things that the government went along with was something that should have happened weeks ago, allowing kids born in 2009 to get their vaccine,” Meili said. “But now it’s happening only a week before school. They won’t be protected in time for school, they’ll barely be fully protected by Halloween, and there is so much more than that that needs to be done.

“Today, I’m speaking directly to Premier Moe. Get to work. Do your job. Families are counting on you. You were elected to serve our province and to protect us. Our kids are counting on you. It’s time to get to work on behalf of Saskatchewan people. It’s time for some leadership. We don’t want the fourth wave in Saskatchewan to be the wave that hurts our children. Stand up. Take action. Give our kids a safe September.”