WESTLOCK - Premier Jason Kenney’s pledge to change the Municipal Government Act to ban municipalities from enacting mask mandates is “beyond disgraceful” says Town of Westlock mayor Ralph Leriger, pointing to the summer of 2020 when the province said mask mandates should be the jurisdiction of municipal leaders.
Kenney said March 1 the government will amend the MGA as early as this coming week and remove the abilities of municipalities to impose their own separate public health restrictions as a “patchwork of separate policies across the province could just lead to greater division, confusion, (and) enforcement difficulty with no compelling public health rationale.” Although the province lifted its mask mandate March 1 as part of its general easing of COVID-19 restrictions, some municipalities, most notably the City of Edmonton, has kept theirs in place — Edmonton city councillors are slated to hold a March 8 meeting to discuss their mask bylaw.
While Leriger doesn’t agree with the city keeping its bylaw in place as it’ll continue to fuel “hyper-partisan tribalism”, he called Kenney’s promise to amend the MGA “offensive.” In July 2020, Kenney claimed that local mask rules made more sense than a provincial law because "this is a very, very big and diverse province."
“As to his sudden reversal and the proposed action to change the MGA, it’s beyond disgraceful. It’s disrespectful to municipal leaders who stepped to the plate when the premier didn’t have the courage to do so himself,” said Leriger March 4. “And now to accuse municipalities of politicizing the issues … that isn’t laughable, it’s offensive. It’s political theatre and gamesmanship at its very worst.”
Town of Westlock councillors first began talking about a face covering bylaw in the summer of 2020, before passing one at their Oct. 26, 2020 meeting, a move in direct response to rising COVID-19 numbers as the community had been placed on the Alberta Health Services Watch List. Ultimately the town’s bylaw, which was formally rescinded in June 2021, was superseded when the province “finally showed some leadership and accountability for what is primarily their responsibility” and introduced a host of COVID-19 measures in late 2020, including mandatory face coverings at all businesses and public facilities.
“We took at that time what we thought was a thoughtful and measured approach. And by that I mean we consulted with the officials and most credible sources of information to inform our decision making. We put in some measures and triggers and went out and delivered packages of information, signage, Q&As and all that stuff to help our business community communicate with their patrons,” said Leriger.
“We really, really tried our best to put the wellbeing of our citizens at the forefront. And that wasn’t easy, having to enact a state of local emergency … how many times did we have to redo that legislation in order to navigate the political quagmire that they had created? It was not something our council took lightly at all.”
Municipal leaders across the province have been quick to jump on Kenney, with St. Albert mayor and Alberta Municipalities president Cathy Heron calling the province’s “top-down approach to be heavy-handed and unnecessary” and Edmonton mayor Amarjeet Sohi saying it’s "deeply disappointing" and that amending the MGA could affect the way the city responds to the pandemic and other operations.
“It just seems to me that our governments and opposition parties at the federal and provincial levels have completely lost sight of why they’re there. It has become about winning and in my opinion, the end does not justify the means,” Leriger continued. “To me it’s because they don’t have a vision of what leadership is. Leadership isn’t about power, or control, or authority. Principled leadership is about servitude and they need to do better.
“Leaders need to think about how to heal their communities and bring people together. That is what our council intends to do going forward and I would advise the other levels of governments to think and do the same.”
