“You can’t schedule an emergency. On the worst day of your life, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether your local ER is open.” That from NDP MLA for Churchill-Wildwood, Keith Jorgenson, who says cutting hours temporarily at ERs across the province puts patients in danger because access to emergency medicine makes the difference between life and death. The latest hours to be cut are Saskatoon City Hospital’s Emergency Room which is open from 9am to 6pm through Sunday. It’s usually open until 8:30pm. The Saskatchewan NDP is calling for City Hospital to be open 24/7 to help with the backlog of patients waiting at Royal University and St. Paul’s Hospitals, which sometimes run at 200 to 350 per cent capacity.

Jorgenson says the Official Opposition has a strategy where part-time and casual positions would be transitioned to full-time, using the money currently being spent on overtime. He cites the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses which has estimated the money paid in overtime would create 720 full-time positions. The NDP MLA says, “We have, I think it’s 330 fewer full-time nursing positions this year versus last year, but more time and casual positions, so part of that is converting those part-time and casual positions into full-time that are more attractive jobs for somebody to apply for and kind of build a career, buy a home, start a family, and so on.” He suggests that if we are planning for a growing province, the services need to be there, from ERs to long term care facilities to schools along side the front line workers.