Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili flanked by Labour Critic Carla Beck and Justice Critic Nicole Sarauer. At a news conference outside the Regina General Hospital on Sept. 14, the party called for protests to be outlawed outside health-care facilities to protect workers from harassment and intimidation. (Joseph Ho/980 CJME)

By Joseph Ho/CJME News staff

NDP demands measures to protect health-care workers from harassment, intimidation

Sep 14, 2021 | 6:06 PM

The Saskatchewan NDP is calling on the provincial government to bar protests outside health-care facilities including hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.

At a news conference outside the Regina General Hospital on Tuesday, the party urged the government to enact a public health order to create “safe zones” to protect health-care workers from harassment and intimidation from people opposing public health orders and mandatory vaccinations.

Such demonstrations have happened outside hospitals across Canada. The NDP says the protests should be located outside the legislature, directed at the politicians making the decisions.

NDP Leader Ryan Meili blamed the Saskatchewan Party’s “total surrender” to the pandemic for fuelling the protests.

“It creates space for the kind of idiotic nonsense that we’re seeing today with hospitals around the country facing protests,” Meili said.

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“(They involve) people picketing against the very health-care workers, the very health-care heroes working so hard to keep them safe and take care of us when we’re sick.”

The size of the buffer zone would be up to the government, which has a wide range of powers under the Public Health Act, said NDP Justice Critic Nicole Sarauer.

She recognized Canadians have a constitutional right to protest but says protecting health-care workers from harassment by protesters in the middle of a pandemic is a reasonable limit.

“Let’s show our health-care workers that we have their back. It’s time for us to have leadership that does more than just finger wag, that leads with action, not with empty words,” Sarauer said.

While behaviours like harassment or uttering threats already violate the Criminal Code, Sarauer said the purpose of safe zones would be to prevent the occurrence of crimes in the first place.

“We shouldn’t have to get to the point where the police have to be laying charges because (those against public health measures) shouldn’t be here protesting to begin with,” she said.

Meili recalled his father being in the intensive care unit during the spring (not COVID-related) when patients were being double-bunked. His mother was visiting him and would pass by protesters who would deny COVID’s existence.

Meili said the rallies impact patients visiting loved ones and workers experiencing burnout and low morale.

“I can only imagine how discouraging that is. There was a period at the beginning of the pandemic when we were all with one voice, thanking our health-care heroes,” he said.

“I want to get us back to that point. Get rid of this nonsense of people criticizing folks who are working so hard to help us.”