The Kenney government introduced legislation this week to prevent Alberta municipalities from imposing their own mask requirements and proof of vaccination rules to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, in particular, COVID-19.
By doing so, Premier Jason Kenney has flip-flopped about as much as you can flip-flop on what he was saying not so long ago when rural municipalities were opposed to masking and vaccination mandates.
Back then, as the premier used to say, “we think a one-size-fits-all approach for a huge vast, diverse, province like this doesn’t make sense.”
But that was then and this is now.
So, yesterday, municipal affairs minister Ric McIver introduced Bill 4, the Municipal Government (Face Mask and Proof of COVID-19 Vaccination Bylaws) Amendment Act, 2022, by saying, “Alberta needs one clear public health policy. The best way to do this is to make sure the rules are clear, specific and the same for all Albertans.”
This isn’t really about public health policy at all, of course. It’s about saying #$%& you to Edmonton, the only city in the province that hadn’t already lifted its mask mandate when Bill 4 was cobbled together.
The bill is also intended to support Kenney’s desperate attempt to hang onto his job as premier at his UCP leadership review in Red Deer next month.
As any student of Alberta politics will understand, those two objectives are closely related—Edmonton being a hotbed of NDP support, and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, both facts inspire deep paranoia in Kenney’s inner circle about the motives for anything that happens inside the city’s boundaries.
Despite the premier’s consistently weak response throughout the pandemic—dragging his heels on introducing COVID mitigation measures and hurrying to lift them, sometimes with deadly results—he is ironically in trouble with his party’s Q-adjacent anti-vaccine base for taking any measures at all to prevent the spread of the disease.
Indeed, he may be in enough trouble now that even the temporary gift of a free radio program from Corus Entertainment, kindly provided to pump a little air back into his rapidly deflating tires, may not be enough to save him.
Anyway, Edmonton City Council dropped the mask mandate yesterday, eliminating any need for the bill. The UCP, presumably, will press ahead and pass it out of spite.
NDP municipal affairs critic Joe Ceci called the bill “a direct attack on local democracy.”
That this is not a legitimate public health policy intended to solve a real problem is suggested by the extremely narrow scope of Bill 4, focused strictly on stopping Edmonton from having a mask mandate for a few days or weeks longer than the rest of the province.
Thus, for example, the legislation cannot be used to override the policy of refusing to do business with companies that require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Mackenzie County, way up in Alberta’s northwest corner.
That kind of municipal overreach is actually dangerous and makes considerably less sense from a public health perspective than a lingering local mask mandate, but it’s beyond the purview of the legislation because anything less would likely rebound to Kenney’s detriment in Red Deer on April 9.
Another sign Bill 4 was drafted in haste without a legitimate purpose is its apparent conflict with the spirit of the Public Health Act’s provision allowing the minister of health to “require a public body to make, in accordance with any regulations, a public health plan in respect of a specific issue or geographic area.”
Thankfully, because of its narrow scope, the capacity for real harm from this bill is limited.
The potential for harm caused by health minister Jason Copping’s announcement that Alberta Health Services is being forced to stop requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination by employees is far greater, allowing right-wing culture wars to undermine the safe operation of health care facilities.
As NDP health critic David Shepherd observed yesterday, “clinical decisions should be made by health care professionals, not desperate politicians.”
Still, Bill 4 will need to be cleaned up—that is to say, eliminated—during some future Alberta government’s summer of repeal.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
