Far too early to declare a winner in the battle of Alberta’s reopening
Calgary restaurants, bars, hairstylists and barbershops can’t reopen their businesses until May 25, the provincial government has decreed.
The same will apply to Brooks, the only other area judged with serious enough COVID-19 outbreaks to require delays past the original May 14 target.
The decisions were made Tuesday
night at a meeting of cabinet’s emergency committee, with input from chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
Premier Jason Kenney announced the rules Wednesday afternoon, less than 12 hours before the target date.
In Calgary and Brooks, summer camps, summer schools and in-person post-secondary classes been also been put off to June 1.
In the rest of the province, including Edmonton, all the published categories for the first phase of reopening can go ahead on Thursday.
Despite the restaurant and salon delays, Calgary is still allowed to have many of the openings that will happen elsewhere.
Thursday opening is allowed for clothing, furniture and bookstores, including those in malls.
Museums and art galleries can open, subject to physical distancing and capacity rules.
Daycares and out-of-school care centres, with occupancy limits, are also allowed to restart Thursday. The government emphasized that no business or institution is required to open on any of the target dates.
In the past week, Kenney and Hinshaw began talking publicly about “regional” approaches to deal with different levels of outbreak.
Edmonton has barely 15 per cent of Calgary’s cases and deaths. Overall, the AHS Calgary zone has 70 per cent of provincial cases.
The government has been worried for weeks about how to handle the discrepancy, both medically and politically.
There was concern about raising hackles with different rules for the big cities.
But this isn’t hockey. The only rivalry is which city gets to zero first. And Calgary is a much more nervous city than Edmonton.
Without doubt, some Calgary business owners will be irritated by the delay. Restaurants and bars have ramped up hygiene measures and scheduled employees back to work Thursday. They have stocked up on perishable food that may go to waste.
But many Calgary restaurant owners weren’t going to immediately open anyway because of the hygiene requirements, inability to make money at only half-capacity, health concerns among staff — and the biggest fear of all, being shut down again because of another outbreak.
Hairstylists and barbers had even deeper worries because they can’t do their jobs without actually touching customers. There’s obviously no way to cut hair from six feet away.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi has repeatedly urged the government not to rush Calgary’s opening, noting that May 14 was always stated as a target, not a certainty.
“I’ve never heard from a single business owner who tells me, ‘I want to reopen and damn the consequences,’” he said when the targets were published.
The government will be criticized for pushing the decision right up against the Thursday target.
But they’re governed by the latest AHS calculations of risk: how many new cases are there, has COVID-19 levelled off, how many ICU beds are available?
Hinshaw insists on the very latest data before she makes any recommendation to cabinet.
One of her fears now, surely, is not that Calgary will be somewhat restricted, but whether the rest of Alberta is starting to open too soon.