REGINA – After months of talk and discussion the government has agreed to create a new provincial medal to honour those public safety personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty.
They announced Tuesday the creation of a new provincial award, the Saskatchewan Memorial Emblem. According to the province, it will comprise of a medallion, a scroll, and a pin that can be worn by a family member or designated recipient of the fallen.
As well the names of those being honoured will be recorded in a register and placed on the Saskatchewan Protective Services Memorial adjacent to the Legislature.
The design of the emblem will be unveiled later, and the province says it will consult those in the public safety sector on what the nomination process and eligibility criteria should be.
Earlier this fall the province had unveiled the Saskatchewan Protective Services Memorial to honour fallen members of the protective service. At the legislature Tuesday Corrections, Policing and Public Safety Minister Tim McLeod said to reporters this would be the next phase, to "have an emblem that the family members can have that they can honour their fallen loved one, but also a memento that’s that they can wear so that it signifies that they have a loved one who died in the line of duty."
As for why it took until now for the medal to be announcement, McLeod said the province wanted to get it right.
"This is the first of its kind in Canada, and we wanted to make sure that if we’re leading the nation on this we want to get it right. And so we’ve been doing research to make sure that as we unveil this program that it’s gonna be consistent with what’s happening in other jurisdictions."
He said this memorial emblem for Saskatchewan is consistent with what is done in the Canadian Armed Forces, and is also consistent with what happens in the United Kingdom with the Elizabeth emblem. "So we wanted to make sure that we were consistent, so that when other jurisdictions follow our lead, everybody’s kind of doing a similar thing."
The timing of this announcement came on the same day that the provincial NDP had scheduled a news conference alongside several members of the first responder community to call on the government again to have a provincial medal for fallen first responders. The news that the government had decided to come through on that request came as a surprise.
"This is news for all of us," was the reaction of Nicole Sarauer, NDP Justice critic and House leader. She said they still had a lot of questions on what this will look like, and pledged the NDP would hold the government's feet to the fire to make sure the medal happens.
"We are glad that the government has now changed their position on this issue and agreed to do a provincial emblem," said Sarauer. "We’ve been asking the government to reconsider this decision for months. It shouldn’t have taken so long to get real action on this file, but we are very glad that we have. Saskatchewan first responders and their families deserve nothing less."
David Reed, an advanced care paramedic and regional sergeant-major for Emergency Medical Services, had been working and lobbying for a provincial medal for four years.
"This is a historic day for Saskatchewan and first responders," said Reed, He said they had met Minister McLeod that morning in which they learned of the announcement.
As for the long effort to get a provincial medal, Reed said "talking to Minister McLeod it’s always been good productive meetings, but it's always been a little bit slow in the progression of things, and in my community as first responders we like to see tangible action now, and that's what we're used to. So it's been four years and it's in the last year, with Nicole's guidance and help, that it's really come forward. We're quite excited about this, and again, this is a first in Canada. there is no other province in Canada that recognizes the fallen of first responders, and again Saskatchewan will be a leader for the first responders. So it's very exciting."
As for the Sask Party government announcing what had initially been an NDP proposal, Sarauer said "we’ve got some strong ideas. We’re a strong opposition. We get those strong ideas from listening to the public."
"This isn’t something I came up with on my own.This is something that David brought to my office and sounded like a fantastic idea. The trade issue was a similar one. We wish the government would do their job and do their stakeholder outreach and listen to the community, but in their absence, we will continue to do this, and we will continue to push forward for practical proposals that we think the government should be doing."
