MLA Nadine Wilson told the National Citizen Inquiry vaccine mandates prompted her resignation from the Saskatchewan Party and that citizens need an official apology to heal.Wilson, elected four times as a Saskatchewan Party MLA since 2007, testified to the NCI this week during hearings held in Regina. She was the first government official to ever testifity to the inquiry.The Saskatchewan Rivers MLA said Premier Scott Moe decided to impose a vaccine mandate for Sask Party caucus after talking to the prime minister, Jason Kenney, and Doug Ford in Ottawa.“I started arguing with House leadership. My last conversation with Premier Moe, after he said, ‘I'm going to make life uncomfortable for you, I'm going to make life comfortable for all the unvaccinated people in Saskatchewan,’ I said, ‘How could you do this?’” Wilson recalled.“I didn't feel that the premier was taking me seriously. I remember listening on the phone call, and he was chopping vegetables on a board, chop, chop, chop. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, why isn't he having a profound discussion, a very serious discussion?’...“I was a loyal hard worker. I thought, ‘Why isn't he debating? Why isn't he discussing anything with me regarding the pandemic?’ I'm an elected four term MLA.”Wilson said the premier was “making decisions for my bodily autonomy as well as everyone else who was elected” — and citizens,“People were already very frightened, very frightful, saying, ‘We're going to leave the country. Nadine, you've got to do something.’ And then talking with the premier, his mind was set up. His mind was bent to drill this. He forgot about who elected him. And the stage was set for this disaster and this chaos, which occurred.”Asked if caucus discussed school closures, she said, “Collectively, I think we might have gotten around the table, offering an opinion. But at the end of the day, the decision was made by someone else, not caucus,” she said.“Every province has an emergency management procedure or policy. And I believe our premiers all panicked and they didn't follow it.”Wilson said her decision to remain avaialble made her a sounding “board for a wide range of concerns."Thousands of people from across the province ended up reaching out to me, as their own elected officials turned off their phones, shut their offices and would not reply, they would not communicate with the people that elected them. They ignored the tsunami of phone calls. So consequently, they came by with all of these phone calls and emails, came to my little office, and I had to hire more staff.”A commissioner asked why other MLAs had made that decision.“That's something you'd have to ask them because I don't understand it either. I only know I felt empathy and compassion. And I swore that I would uphold my duty to do everything for my constituents. And it was fairly easy for me to do that, because I believed in what I was doing, I was helping people, bring them hope and some humanity.”Wilson said her decision to resign severed what she thought were deep and close relationships with her Sask Party colleagues. Wilson, who later helped found the Saskatchewan United Party, said division was common.“I saw lifelong friends and relatives turn their backs on one another. Our government policies created an overwhelming sense of loneliness and despair. I saw it crushed families, my community, my province of Saskatchewan. And people were so desperate for guidance, so desperate for leadership from their elected representatives. And yet they received none.”Wilson said the province won’t heal until the government issues an apology.“People have long memories when they are shaken and hurt and their loved ones are dying and their businesses go bankrupt. And they're losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages.“People need an acknowledgment of what happened during this pandemic. And I only truly believe that they could move on when someone says to them, ‘I hear you, I see you. And I understand what you're going through.’”
