While New Democratic Party Leader Ryan Meili focused on jobs lost during the pandemic in the April 9 question period, Premier Scott Moe of the Saskatchewan Party pointed out how many have been regained.
Meili said, “Saskatchewan families were struggling before COVID-19, with the province already in a recession. Those same families are paying the price, even more today, for the premier's failure to fight the pandemic and to protect Saskatchewan’s economy. The evidence is clear; you look at today's StatsCan jobs numbers, zero jobs created since February of this year, 23,000 jobs lost since February of 2020.
“From the beginning of the pandemic to today, we have the worst job creation record in the entire country. These are devastating numbers, and my heart goes out to all of the families were wondering how they're going to make it through without work. Does the premier care to explain, once again, why he wouldn't change a thing? Why he's satisfied with having failed to control the pandemic, or protect Saskatchewan jobs?”
Moe replied, “The leader of the opposition is correct in the fact that we have lost a number of jobs over the course of the last year. In fact, at the height of the economic impact of the measures that were put in place to address a COVID 19 pandemic, we were down about 70,000 jobs in this province.
“Saskatchewan businesses, Saskatchewan people have had the opportunity, in many cases, to get back to work. About 50,000 of those folks have had the opportunity to get back to work. There are still 20,000 jobs that we need to get back to work as soon as we exit this pandemic.
“We're fully aware that we are down, yet, still down those 20,000 jobs. We're going to do everything we can to ensure that we get them back, get them back very quickly.”
