The opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) has been pushing the province to commit additional funds for COVID-19 response throughout the length of this fall legislative session. Tuesday, Dec. 8, was no different, with NDP Leader Ryan Meili asking Premier Scott Moe, “Does he agree that it's time to commit emergency funding to get the increasingly deadly situation and Saskatchewan long term care, under control?”
Meili pointed out, “Nine seniors lost their lives in two different health facilities in a single day.”
Moe said, “First and foremost I would offer my condolences to those families that have lost a family member over the course of the last few days or whether it’s over the course of the entire time that we have been responding to the outbreak of COVID-19 here in Saskatchewan, across the nation, and around the world.”
He said the province acted early to put a number of measures in place with long-term care and health care facilities. This included provided personal protective equipment and limiting visitation. But he acknowledged, “Recently we have had a couple of outbreaks, with the higher numbers that we have in community transmission. And we’re going to continue to work with those facilities individually or as a group to ensure that we’re providing the safest environments possible.”
Meili pointed out some long-term care facilities have four residents to a room, sharing a single bathroom which itself does not have a door. “We called on this government then, as we have so many times, to fix the problems in long-term care to address these unacceptable conditions. They didn’t act. This was predictable. This was preventable. But this government chose not to act. So will the Premier acknowledge today that we have a serious long-term problem in long-term care and that it’s his job to fix it?” Meili asked.
Moe said, “We took action. We took action very early. We took the action based on the advice that was provided by Dr. Shahab with respect to our long-term care homes to ensure that the operating environment that we have is as safe as it can possibly be.”
He added over the last 13 years the province has built 50 new long-term care homes across the province.
Moe continued, “Throughout the COVID, in our response to COVID-19 this summer leading into this fall, as I said, we have been cohorting staff in our long-term care facilities, worked very closely with our organized labour leaders to ensure that that can occur so that staff are not moving between facilities here in the province. We have ensured that we had the funding in place to provide the proper and appropriate personal protective equipment for all of those involved. And we’ve made some significant changes in the access that families have into those care homes … ultimately to see their family members. As we move forward, we’re going to continue to prioritize those long-term care residents and the staff. They are first in line to receive the vaccine as that becomes available from the federal government.
“We’ve taken action very early and we continue to take action as we start to distribute the vaccines here in the province.”
In response to Meili’s call for more resources to be spent, Moe said during the election, “We committed resources for hundreds of continuing care assistants to go into long-term care homes, to go into our home care service here in the province. We have expedited the hiring process for those individuals and they’re actively being searched out as we speak and the funding has been provided.”
