Premier Moe reflects on pandemic choices in a challenging year

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe called 2021 a "challenging" year. He sat down with CBC provincial affairs reporter Adam Hunter for a year-end interview.

Moe discussed the pandemic, Bill 70 and what lies ahead in 2022.

This interview was conducted on Dec. 14, two days before the government introduced an expansion of its COVID-19 third dose eligibility. The interview has been edited for clarity. 

Q: How would you sum up the last year?

A: Challenging, in fairness, for myself and the government members, it's been a very challenging year. We've had to make decisions that, quite frankly, we didn't want to be making. We didn't want to face some of the decisions that we had to. And I think that's fair of governments across the nation. I think it's been a challenging year for all Saskatchewan residents as well, as we've all changed how we function in our everyday life. I think we're in a pretty good place today. As we head into the Christmas season, we're in a much better place than we were 12 months ago. 

We were just delivering our very first vaccine in the middle of December last year. This year, we have almost two million doses that have been taken by Saskatchewan people. Our active case count is the lowest west of Nova Scotia as we currently sit. We're going into this Christmas in a much stronger position than we were last year. 

Q: What lessons have you learned about your handling of the pandemic and some of the decisions you made over the last few months?

A: The first thing I've learned is just how resilient Saskatchewan people are. We had to make some decisions this fall with respect to trying to push down on some of the hospitalizations that we had, in particular, the ICU patients that we had in our hospitals due to COVID-19. An inordinate number of those were unvaccinated individuals. We had to move with masking, as well as proof of vaccination and of negative test policies. Saskatchewan people responded very well to that. The proof is in where we are. Just a couple of short months after those policies were put in place, we've pushed our numbers down substantially and our hospitalizations, in turn, have dropped as well. 

What I've learned yet again is whether you're pulled over on the side of the road with a flat tire, or approaching a global pandemic, there's no one that you'd want by your side more than Saskatchewan people. 

Q: You've mentioned that the government should have moved sooner on those measures. Is there a reason why it took longer?

A: I said we should have moved a couple of weeks sooner with the public health measures that we did move on. If we have a regret that would be the regret that we have. There are other things that I don't think are directly a regret of the government, but are somewhat regrettable. And that's some of the divisions that we see — not across society, but in small segments and smaller groups. There's stigmatization or conversation around whether you're vaccinated, unvaccinated and I see it in families, I see it in communities. That's something that is just not the Saskatchewan way. We most certainly are an accepting community here in this province. 

We had to move on (policies) and we had to push our vaccination rates up in order to keep our health-care system operable. But that policy has proven to be quite divisive, and I think as a community, as a province, we need to move beyond looking inward at one another and start to look outward as to how are we going to provide the goods to the world as the world starts to rev its economic engine. That's what we do best. That's when we're most unified, is when we are looking outside of the borders of Saskatchewan and how we're going to provide the goods that we do.

Q: What are you looking at right now as far as the new variant, and how is the government going to respond to that quickly?

A: Well, what you're seeing are the responses that are already in place. The public health measures that we have — the masking, the proof of vaccination, proof of negative test policy. We have the offensive strategy of providing rapid tests to virtually all households right across this province.