The opposition New Democrats say they plan to introduce legislation in the fall sitting of the Legislature which would require a formal public notification of all emergency room closures in the province.
NDP Rural and Remote Health critic Jared Clarke announced the party’s plans at the Legislature Wednesday. The NDP says this comes following testimonials from people unable to access emergency healthcare in rural communities.
The NDP bill comes following some highly publicized incidents involving hospital closures, including a recent incident in which a notice was posted for a closed ER in Outlook redirecting patients to Davidson — only for the Davidson ER to be closed at the same time.
Clarke told reporters they haven’t finalized what the legislation will look like.
“We’re consulting with a number of stakeholders and making sure that we get it right. But we know, again, that people need to know whether they should go to their local hospital to get that care, or if they should immediately go somewhere else. That’s the piece that’s really important.”
Whether the bill will get very far remains to be seen as the Sask Party government holds the majority and would call the shots.
“Well, the government controls,” Clarke acknowledged to reporters.
“This would be a private member’s bill, so the government controls if it goes into second reading or not. I would hope that they would do the right thing and let this legislation be debated and be voted on.”
Clarke added the most important piece is that “the government could do something today to fix this issue of people in this province not knowing whether their local emergency room is open or not.”
“They don’t need my private member’s bill to fix this problem. They could actually do something today. They could develop an app, they could put it on SHA’s website again, which they stopped doing. They could fix this now. Our legislation is going to try and force them to do that.”
As for whether they can get Sask Party support for the bill Clarke said their “house leaders are in regular communication about what legislation is going to look like and come forward. Those negotiations do happen behind the scenes.”
“That’s all I can say at this point on that.”
