The President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour considers the Sask Party government using the notwithstanding clause to bypass a judge’s ruling against the pronoun policy and recalling the Legislative session early a distraction ploy.

Lori Johb questions the timing. Premier Scott Moe has said the pronoun policy where students need consent to change their names or pronouns is about parental rights. Johb suggests there was no talk of it in the last school year and then the Sask Party lost two out of three recent by-elections.

The President of SEIU-West, Barbara Cape calls what is happening in the Legislature a circus when the government’s focus should instead be on issues like affordability, not enough funding for the growing class sizes and complexity in schools and the number of unfilled jobs in healthcare.

Cape and Johb spoke to reporters in front of Minister of Advanced Education, Gord Wyant’s office. They explained that Wyant was Justice Minister in 2014 when legislation was passed which clarified Saskatchewan’s human rights code, to protect gender identity under law. Johb and Cape consider it hypocritical that he would now vote for the pronoun policy.