Calgary council votes for plan to repeal mask bylaw

The mask bylaw will be repealed within a couple of weeks at the earliest in Calgary.

On Tuesday, councillors voted in favour of a plan that would see the face covering mandate removed when the province calls off its mask rules, which on the current schedule is set to happen on March 1.

It also means, effective immediately, the bylaw does not apply to children under 13 to fit with changes from the province which took effect on Monday.

“I’m happy that we’ve moved our city’s policies in alignment with the province, a lot less confusion,” said Ward 13 Councillor Dan McLean, who introduced the motion to amend the bylaw.

There was no set end date on the bylaw, even though the vaccine passport bylaw was tied directly to the provincial mandate which ended last week.

McLean initially moved to have the bylaw repealed on March 1 no matter what, but after some discussion in the council chambers, the majority of councillors agreed to make it contingent on when the province ends its mandate, just in case the law ends up getting extended at the last minute.

“In the end, what council voted on is to make sure that when the province deems that mask mandate should be lifted, our bylaw is in accordance with that,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek. “It took us a long time to get there because everybody had things that they needed to say, but I’m impressed with how respectful that debate was.”

The initial proposal from McLean passed by only a tight margin, as various concerns were raised. Namely, there is still very little data coming directly from the province that justifies the science behind the change.

“Without information, I would tend to err on the side of caution,” said Ward 6 Councillor Richard Pootmans. “We had administration recommending in the absence of information, we should be pragmatic. I struggled with that, quite frankly and I still struggle with that.

“Before we lurch into the absolute de-masking of the population, I crave the information and look forward to that information from the province as soon as possible.”

Part of what was approved by council includes the mayor getting more data from the Chief Medical Officer of Health around masking, and Pootmans said it is good there is still some time before the bylaw is fully repealed.

As he mentioned, staff with the city and Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) Chief Sue Henry recommended in favour of repealing the bylaw in line with the province to help streamline operations and prevent any enforcement challenges that may arise.

Even though there is a chance something could change in the next couple of weeks, there was optimism around council.

The final vote to pass three readings of the bylaw was more lopsided, ending in a vote of 13-2, but Councillors Gian-Carlo Carra and Kourtney Penner maintained their opposition to bringing an end to the bylaw right now.

“Let kids be kids is not science,” said Penner, in response to what Premier Jason Kenney had said around justifying the end of mask rules in schools.

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Carra added in his debate that we are still in the “dizzying heights” of this latest wave in the pandemic, and there should be some more time taken to evaluate the impact of the removal of public health measures before acting.

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Councillor Jennifer Wyness also suggested pushing the end date of the bylaw to March 31, to also allow more time to see what happens between now and the end of next month with case counts of hospitalizations, but that move ended up being rejected.

Councillor Terry Wong brought up some concerns he had heard from business owners, particularly those who may want to maintain masking rules for customers, but administration said there isn’t much extra they can do to help enforce these individual policies but police can help if people become unruly.

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PRESSURE FROM THE PROVINCE

Last week, when a committee at city hall started discussions on what to do about local health measures in the pandemic, there was discussion about Calgary possibly bringing in some of its own rules to cancel out the changes made by Premier Jason Kenney’s government.

But in the end, an attempt to start examining the possibility of a made-in-Calgary vaccine passport was shot down but there was still lots of scepticism around ending the local mask bylaw at the same time as the province.

This seemed to irk the premier, who suggested previously that he might change the Municipal Government Act to prevent municipalities from going their own way on health measures.

He echoed this the day before council met, saying the city shouldn’t try to go against the grain.

“Public health is not a primary responsibility of municipal governments, it is a primary responsibility of the province. Our policy is informed by the data,” Kenney said on Monday.

Gondek noted that they were put in a tough spot due to what the province was saying, and in the end she also agreed with the majority to get rid of the bylaw.

“We’ve been thrown into an environment by our provincial government where they’ve handed something down that if we don’t agree with, that personal responsibility they wanted us to take is all we have left now.”

Gondek said if the bylaw does have to be brought in again, either in specific circumstances or across the city, it would most likely have to come back to a full council meeting and could not rule out the possibility of this happening again based on the ebb and flow of the whole pandemic.

Kenney said he is hopeful people can move beyond these health measures, and there’s also some hope from those in council that there won’t be any division in the city as well once the bylaw is repealed.

“I would say to people that if you are wearing a mask, please continue to do so,” Gondek said. “You will see a lot of people who are out in public with their mask on, you will see a lot of businesses who stick to the goals of a restrictions exemption program.”

“Calgarians, we’re just a great bunch of people,” said McLean. “If you want to wear a mask, then you can wear a mask. If you don’t then you don’t.”