Canada’s wildfire season is off to an intense start and winter is barely over. More than 100 fires are burning across British Columbia. Several communities in northern Alberta are under evacuation alert already. Climate scientists have been warning us about this for decades, of course. Our weirdly warm winter produced hardly any snow, and left drought conditions right across the prairies to B.C. So, right now, the conditions are already more conducive to generating wildfires than they were at this time last year, and the federal government has now officially warned us that this wildfire season could indeed be worse than in 2023.

It is hard to look forward to another summer of toxic smoke and brutal, deathly heat. Despite all this, the SaskParty government released a budget that didn’t mention the “climate crisis” once.

At this time last year, the government was projecting a $ 208 million surplus for 2024-25.

Provincial Finance Minster Donna Harpaeur has gotten her projections wrong before; in all likelihood, she has again. This year, she said the government is projecting a return to balance by 2025-26, with a projected $18-million surplus for the next fiscal year. What this budget boils down to is $31.8 billion this year or a provincial debt of $14,090 for every person in the province. No premier in Saskatchewan’s history has ever increased provincial debt at the rate Premier Scott Moe has.

Dear Fellow Greens,

I have been out doorknocking and doing a listening campaign in Saskatoon Riversdale over the last year. The same 3 issues kept coming up over and over: affordability, problems with our healthcare system and climate instability. People are suffering financially right now because the cost of everything has gone up, and finding housing is harder than ever because its cost, too, has risen at an unprecedented rate. 

Saskatchewan people are struggling to find a family doctor. My own mother experienced two strokes this year and is struggling to pay for her portion of all the medications she now needs. Speaking often with youth, I see the climate anxiety they are living with. And for those living on the streets near 20th Street in Saskatoon, an arctic front in winter or a heat wave in summer can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Dear Fellow Greens,

Our Healthcare System in Saskatchewan is in freefall. It has reached an absolute crisis point because the SaskParty is allowing it to crumble, on purpose, to pave the way for more private healthcare. They have always favoured moving anything they can currently in the public system over to privately run options.

Yesterday a judge granted an injunction on Premier Scott Moe's unconstitutional pronoun policy in schools. Almost immediately, he announced his intention to use The Notwithstanding Clause to override kids' rights. Because he couldn't win in court,  Scott Moe intends to suspend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a horrifying precedent for all of Canada. He called the injunction "judicial overreach", but what he is actually saying is that he thinks he is above our court system and doesn't need to listen to the law.

I'm seeing people on social media claim that this year's "Summer of Fire" is "arson, not climate change". Climate Change is the result of a long series of actions. For example, our watersheds are being drained, so there are no natural barriers left to protect animals and birds. The Sask Party plans to greatly increase irrigation from the Saskatchewan River, which will progressively deplete that unique and critical source of moisture. The conditions leading to our devastating fires are directly caused by decades of inaction by politicians.

Beyond a certain temperature humans overheat and die, we are essentially fragile. Despite this, those in government continue fuelling the climate crisis. Research has found that even the slightest leaks can make natural gas as bad as coal for the climate. “It takes as little as 0.2 per cent of gas to leak to make natural gas as big a driver of climate change as coal,” reports The New York Times. “That’s a tiny margin of error for a gas that is notorious for leaking from drill sites, processing plants and the pipes that transport it into power stations or homes and kitchens.” Despite this, in Saskatchewan, Methane Moe is building big new methane gas power plants. 

I'm writing from my family orchard up at Birch Hills. Our farm is experiencing the results of climate change firsthand. 

Due to the unusual spring and then massive forest fires across Canada, the jungle-style conditions pushed the haskap berries our orchard grows to an excessively early ripeness. Not only that, but all 5 varieties of haskap we grow are ripe at the same time, even though they have always ripened one after another.

Our province has never needed the Green Party more than now. The climate crisis has reached a point where daily heat records are being surpassed in different places all around the planet. Here in Canada, much of Alberta and Saskatchewan have been suffering deadly forest fires lately, especially in the north.

Despite all this, Scott Moe and the president of SaskPower Rupen Pandya both spent much of a recent press conference insisting that Saskatchewan cannot meet the federal goal of net zero target emissions by 2035 and that 2050 is the only thing feasible for SK. This, despite the fact that clear pathways have been shown for how to get there in this province.

The 1960s was a time period when people marched and rallied in the streets on a variety of issues from the civil rights movement to the movement against the Vietnam War. The decade also saw the beginning of wide-spread environmental awareness and concern.

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