City of Calgary under state of local emergency

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — After the province announced a state of public health emergency on Tuesday, the City of Calgary has followed suit.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi announced the city is under a state of local emergency on Wednesday.

Nenshi said this doesn’t come as a surprise given more than 5,000 active cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the city.

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While there are no additional local restrictions coming at this time, Nenshi said this is a necessary step to support the provincial restrictions also announced on Tuesday.

“It allows us the ability to supplement and the ability to work with the province to make sure that these issues are met. And for citizens, as of today it doesn’t really mean anything. We’re not anticipating any further orders or instructions or restrictions on how you live your life beyond what we’ve already been talking about,” he said.

Nenshi and Calgary Emergency Management Agency Chief Tom Sampson agreed that the measures announced by the province are positive, and there’s some hope that they will succeed in bringing down the skyrocketing infections numbers we have seen in the past few weeks.

“The province is headed down a path to drive the COVID numbers down and our job is to make that path as smooth as possible for our citizens, our communities, the businesses in our communities and in fact all of Alberta. We need to figure out how to make them work in a local context,” Sampson added.

The local state of emergency will help in that context by making it easier to procure necessary resources, especially to protect the most vulnerable, and there’s optimism around the ability to more strictly enforce the measures that were announced.

Previously, there was less ability for peace officers to issue tickets relating to the public health orders and that will be changing.

“Once we have enforcement authority with our peace officers, 311 can dispatch the peace officers. The (police) non-emergency line can dispatch police officers,” Nenshi said. “This is nothing brand new, the police are well used to dealing with this sort of thing. They’re busy, they’ve got other things to do but they’re well used to this as well, so don’t even feel shy about it for a second.”

Nenshi does encourage Calgarians to report any problems that they see and this doesn’t mean 311 is now a snitch line, but you should not feel discouraged about calling for enforcement.

In a statement, the Calgary Police Service said it was continuing to work to enforce all the restrictions when possible.

“We have reengaged our Public Health Compliance Team who are responding to calls regarding contravention to the recent government restrictions. We have also bolstered the number of Patrol Response Teams by redeploying several school resource officers following the provincial suspension of in-class learning in junior and senior high schools. These officers will enhance our response to COVID-19 enforcement. We will make every effort to play our part in enforcement, however, our primary objective is to ask for voluntary compliance and to educate the public and business owners on the restrictions. We know everyone is struggling right now and we will use discretion as we do in many aspects of our job,” a spokesperson for the police told 660 NEWS.

To this point, the focus has been on educating people who are not following the rules, but Nenshi added that most people should have received the message by now.

“If you’re going to be flagrantly putting people’s health at risk, expect to get a big ticket,” Nenshi said. “If you don’t know by now, there’s no point in educating you anymore. It’s been nine months. Everybody knows what the rules are.”

Nenshi was also asked how he feels about anti-mask protests that have begun popping up, such as one this past weekend which drew hundreds of people to downtown Calgary, and he said any future demonstrations may have to be strictly enforced as even outdoor gathering limits have been restricted. Plus, if people are directly interfering with people’s lives then there should be the expectation of enforcement.

When asked if he really felt like the rules announced on Tuesday were sufficient and if he was looking for anything more stringent, Nenshi was diplomatic with his answer but did offer a couple of suggestions, such as lowering gathering limits overall.

“I’ll tell you, I don’t understand why casinos are open. That one doesn’t make any sense to me,” Nenshi said. “But it’s not our place to be able to push that right now. As I’ve said many, many times, if the health and safety of Calgarians are at risk, I am not going to stop.”

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The mayor also added that while this may be an extremely stressful time for people, there are resources available for mental health such as by dialing 211. In addition, there are also significant needs in the community and hopes people will donate to the food bank to help during the holidays.

Nenshi said as time goes on and hopefully we emerge from the pandemic, he does not want to look back and have regrets that he did not take further action when he still has the ability to do so.

A common message heard from the local government since the pandemic began was also repeated on Wednesday, including how people need to tackle this together and take a moment to seriously think if their actions put their own safety, and the safety of others, top of mind.

“I’m encouraging everyone to bring their risk tolerance lower than they might be comfortable with. It’s a cliche, but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Nenshi said.

Sampson, who is retiring at the end of the day Monday, reiterated that sentiment and said there is a tinge of positivity that the holiday season can be preserved, if the rapid rise in infections can finally be brought under control.

“It’s all of us against the virus, not against each other.”