Laliberte said his call comes following a series of ongoing discussions with community leaders and frontline responders who have stayed behind to defend communities like Beauval, which is threatened on three sides by the Muskeg fire, now more than 200,000 hectares in size.
“The Sask. Party either doesn’t know how to fight these fires or doesn’t care,” Laliberte said Friday. “Either way, the people I’ve been talking to for a week now aren’t getting the resources and relief firefighters they need. They’re working around the clock, they’re exhausted and, frankly, they believe the provincial government has abandoned them.
“The people I’m hearing from are telling me that the federal government might be willing to actually help but they have to wait for a call from the province — so today I’m demanding the call be made before communities are lost.”
More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from communities like Beauval over the past week. Laliberte’s office has been flooded with calls from evacuees unable to access financial support that was promised to them.
The Sask. Party is already facing a formal investigation from the Provincial Ombudsman amid overwhelming reports of not providing financial support, shelter and clear communication for thousands of evacuees forced from their homes by fires in late May and early June.
“People are scared, they’re desperate and they don’t see anything getting better,” Laliberte said. “The Sask. Party has yet again failed to respond to the wildfire crisis. They’ve learned nothing from their failures over the past several weeks.
“The people of the North — all Saskatchewan people for that matter — deserve better leadership. They deserve a government that will be there for them in their hours of greatest need.”
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