Happy Monday to Everyone Except Saskatchewan's Overpaid MLAs
And any minute now, expect the architects of the worst minimum wage in Canada to complain their latest raise doesn't cover inflation.
Happy Monday!
I can’t believe how many of you there are this week, even just over last week. It’s humbling and slightly terrifying that anyone wants to hear what I have to say… but you know I’m going to say it anyway, so I’m glad you’re here for it. 😏
This week Saskatchewan’s MLAs haul their 2.6%-increased-salaried selves back to the Legislature, where they’ll resume doing absolutely nothing of value for their brand new hundred-and-three-thousand dollar salaries.
Think about that for a minute. What has your provincial MLA, regardless of party, done in your riding to earn a six-figure salary? What is your MLA doing on a daily basis to earn more (of YOUR) money than the principal of your kids’ school? More than the vast majority of Saskatchewan’s health care workers?
True, their federal MP counterparts - pictured below grinning in front of our provincial flag at an event that concluded with multiple charges and jail for its organizers - are bringing in over $185,000 annually. I refuse to even acknowledge our absurd “senator” earning over $150,000 to embarrass Saskatchewan regularly on the national stage.
Anyway, back in Saskatchewan, Question Period has devolved into a dumpster fire that I don’t believe will ever be rectified, unless and until voters demand change from both parties. There’s no way we should be paying grownups, who we select ourselves, to turn around once they’ve got the job and act in ways that Kindergarteners don’t get to in their classroom without consequences.
With few exceptions, mostly in Opposition, in my opinion not a single Saskatchewan MLA deserves that kind of salary. Government MLAs, never mind the cabinet ministers getting an additional $53K on top of their hundred-large, have made it clear that they will do pretty much anything to avoid doing their jobs.
My god, this is insane.
We’ve seen this farce play out again and again and again and again over the last two years.
Where’s your tipping point, Saskatchewan?
How many times are you going to let these guys lie to your face?
Do we do that because we don’t respect them, or because we don’t respect ourselves?
Do you believe Merriman believed himself on March 2, 2022, when, for at least the fifteenth time since it started, he and his government declared Saskatchewan victorious over the COVID-19 pandemic?
“We don’t have the capacity to care for emergencies anymore.” - Dr Brian Geller, primary care and ER physician in Regina, CBC Sask
Well that’s fun.
Godspeed, Regina.
What exactly are we waiting for? Another mass-casualty trauma, but one where the survivors end up dead anyway from waiting in the Regina General’s parking lot for emergency medical treatment? From not enough STARS helicopters to transport survivors to emergency rooms in another province?
Sometimes I wonder if Saskatchewan thinks it’s infallible. Hundreds of billions of people on earth live with risk(s) Saskatchewan people don’t even fathom. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides and mass gun violence are not even on our radar.
If you live in northern Saskatchewan, wildfires are a risk. Other regions face the risk of flooding (PSA: don’t your cabin on a flood plain) (yes I know, not everybody, but come on). We get a few tornados, but given our wide open space, that risk is less. Blizzards can be rough, though not as rough as they were on our Saskatchewan grandparents.
In Saskatchewan, especially if you live in an urban centre, the majority of us aren’t worried about external forces destroying our lives.
So why not blow up Saskatchewan’s health care system, right? Why not play fast and loose with life-saving surgeries, organ donations, emergency responses and those pesky, frail seniors?
“(Dr Paul) Olszynski said the department is suffering from a staffing shortage, partially because kids are bringing COVID-19 from school and keeping physicians at home with illness. That opens shifts up and often pulls people who could be at home regenerating from their own shifts back to the hospital.” - CBC Saskatchewan
Meanwhile, we’ve got the Minister of Education actively banning Saskatchewan schools from implementing any public health and safety measures. There’s not a damn reason on earth, for example, that all kids aren’t still wearing masks inside schools.
Not a single reason, besides maybe that Dustin Duncan is nuts, or we are for blindly following him and our kids off this cliff. Myself included, as both my boys are sick with it. My fully-vaxxed 17 year-old has had it for a week and is still more sick than any mom would be super comfortable with if it was her kid.
“We’ve had students that have not had a normal high school experience and we know that this has had a big impact on mental health,” - Dustin Duncan, CJME
Just sit down Dustin.,
As of April 2021, there were almost 500 kids with “moderate” mental health needs waiting to see a specialist. That number hadn’t budged from two years earlier and I guarantee it isn’t lower today. In fact the Children’s Advocate, expertly ignored by the Sask Party for years, just released a report on it.
“…children and youth are at a crisis point in trying to access and receive mental health and addictions services.” Lisa Broda, Saskatchewan Children’s Advocate, April 2022
“…gaps and deficiencies in mental health and addiction services have been known for a long time, with past recommendations from the Saskatchewan Advocate. These issues persist despite promises to address them.”
So Saskatchewan’s unskilled Minister of Education dangles childhood mental health as the reason he won’t do his job when it’s hard, at the same time as he, Merriman, Moe and the rest continue to actively ignore the longtime, extensive crisis in childhood mental health.
Put another way:
to avoid the potential of an escalation of the childhood mental health crisis the Saskatchewan government is ignoring…
the Sask Party government is deliberately, drastically escalating the actual number of kids contracting a real (and possibly deadly), highly contagious virus…
during a global pandemic…
resulting in hundreds, if not thousands, of sick Saskatchewan kids…
leaving many of them with unknown, long-term, complex, future health care needs…
a presently overflowing Children’s Hospital…
and dangerous, inconvenient staff shortages & rural service closures in health care facilities province-wide, because sick kids mean sick health care employee-parents…
Honest to god, this is batshit crazy.
And the thing is, there’s not even a debate:
This.
Is.
Unsustainable.
Saskatchewan people are dying already from lack of access to timely medical intervention or from inadequate in-patient care (which is absolutely not the fault of the burnt out HCW who manage to get in for a shift). Many of you are already experiencing this or have heard stories, but we’ll undoubtedly bear witness to more as they pile up - meaning so does the body count.
Are we now numb to that too?
If you had told me at the beginning of the pandemic that the Sask Party would willingly put Saskatchewan kids in front of an infection while also enforcing a ban on protecting kids from that infection - even I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s stunning.
I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what a completely collapsed Saskatchewan health care system looks like, but I will say it’s inevitable and we will suffer greatly economically when it does.
I believe Saskatchewan could very well end up the Flint, Michigan of Canada.
I’ve been loathed to make the comparison as I don’t want to appear to be minimizing the deep-rooted racism behind what happened to Flint. Racism has been a factor in Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 response, but I don’t believe to the extent it impacted Flint, so I need to acknowledge that first.
The rest, though?
A corrupt, authoritarian politician flexed absolute power over Flint to financially benefit his friends and donors, but killed residents, or left them with long-term, complex health needs, including hundreds of children.
That corrupt politician got away with it for as long as he did because Flint is too small and too isolated from the rest of the US to hold public attention, including that of the media or movie stars, for long enough to make a difference. He also went unchecked by his own political party.
Sound familiar?
The end result was an economically and mentally devastated city that Flint citizens couldn’t leave, because when nobody wants to live where you do, your house is no longer worth what you paid for it, your job opportunities are non-existent, rendering you and your neighbours too broke to move away.
As of this morning, Monday April 25, 2022, the Pattison Children’s Hospital is again overcapacity, as are all Saskatoon hospitals. I’m guessing Regina isn’t different.
We see Saskatchewan health care and education buildings fully-engulfed in flames. We hear the desperate cries from people trapped inside. Thinking we’re unequipped to do anything about it, we stand by as the people we elected to protect our buildings from fire stand around watching them burn to the ground.
In fact, the people we elected to protect those buildings lit the fires, because some guy with a history degree* (and/or no degree), decided watching those buildings burn to the ground would somehow protect a totally separate burning building they’ve been ignoring, located miles away from these ones.
*Education Minister and career-politician Dustin Duncan has a history degree. You’d think from that he’d recognize his own legacy, if he doesn’t get it together, is going to embarrass his kids and grandkids forevermore.
But you’re not unequipped, Saskatchewan. I’m not going to tell you to call your MLA, because the futility of that exercise is well-known (also a problem, btw). Instead, talk to your friends, family and neighbours. Ask them why they’re cool standing around watching the province burn. You don’t need to tell them how to vote, but a reminder to think critically wouldn’t hurt. Pointing out the uselessness, if not destructive tendencies of a tiny Opposition caucus might not be a bad idea either.
Even if you believe they’re awesome and the Sask Party is going to reign forever, why does that also mean giving them a free pass to hurt people, directly or indirectly?
It just doesn’t make sense. There’s always a tipping point.
Anyway, in the meantime I’ve got some fun stuff coming for you in the next few weeks, though I have to lawyer some of it first. These are stories that are not being told by understaffed newsrooms because they are complex, but I suspect also because the people involved are infamous for suing anyone who writes about them. This is another sick and massive problem in Saskatchewan and has been for years under the Sask Party: silencing dissenting voices.
Ahem.
But there are stories that you need to know about some of the worst government grifts, happening right now, I’ve ever seen - and I saw the Regina bypass and GTH clearly.
I’m also working on something on the NDP leadership race and why, if/(likely) when Carla Beck wins, absolutely nothing will change for that party, meaning nothing changes in Opposition, meaning nothing changes in Saskatchewan. Expect to hear a lot more from me on that between now and the vote.
I’ll leave you there. I’m sorry it’s not a more cheerful Monday morning note, but that’s not my schtick. The province is in existential crisis, even if not visible yet to everyone’s eye. The big picture of what the hell just happened is going to emerge eventually. It won’t be pretty, in fact it will be traumatic as we’re forced to relive the pandemic through new revelations. So, you may as well be prepared.
These Monday posts won’t be open to everyone as of next week. If you have a free subscription and can’t upgrade because you don’t have a credit card, need every penny, or whatever the reason - trust me, I’ve been there and I don’t want your money (I’ll take everybody else’s, TIA 😉). I will upgrade you, no questions asked, just email me at tammyrobert@live.ca.
I also really appreciate shares of this site on Twitter. That’s where my main community is. I need to and will rejoin it, but I’m just not there yet.
Here’s to a week of no more snow and no more spiking viral loads in our wastewater (what a time to be alive),
