UCP bill would keep some COVID rules through 2021
Extended orders would cover care-home workers, isolation plans for visitors
EDMONTON The Alberta government introduced legislation Thursday that could allow some COVID -19 rules and restrictions to remain in place throughout 2021.
Bill 24, the Pandemic Response Statutes Amendment Act, would extend some existing ministerial orders and give the government powers to continue to act now that the province’s state of public health emergency has expired.
All current public health orders put in place by the chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, such as the one that requires self-isolation for people with symptoms of the virus, remain in force but many related ministerial orders made by Health Minister Tyler Shandro are set to expire Aug. 14.
If passed, the bill would allow some of Shandro’s orders to continue either until Hinshaw’s orders expire or Dec. 31, 2021 at the latest.
The extended ministerial orders include requiring continuing care home employees to only work at one facility, requiring international visitors arriving at the airports and border crossing to provide an isolation plan and making it illegal to fire someone if they are forced to miss work to self-isolate.
Shandro said the proposed amendments will give the government the tools necessary for phase three of the relaunch.
“The COVID-19 virus will be with us for a while. So it doesn’t make sense to keep the public health emergency in place indefinitely,” Shandro said Thursday prior to the bill being tabled.
In all, the bill makes amendments to 15 acts across seven ministries.
The rule that allows employees to take unpaid leave to care for a child due to school or daycare closures or to care for an ill or self-isolating family member without losing their job has been extended until August 2021.
Childcare facilities themselves will be allowed to expand the size of their classes from 10 to 30 staff and children.
“Many of us in cabinet are parents ourselves,” Shandro said. “I think we knew the difficulties that parents of the province are going to have to be able to comply with the physical distancing that we as Albertans are going to have to implement in our daily lives to be able to slow the spread of the virus.”
NDP children’s services critic Rakhi Pancholi said she was glad the unpaid protection for parents was staying in place. She said only approximately 30 per cent of childcare facilities are open.
“Many Albertans, especially women, have jobs to go back to but are not able to go because this government has ignored childcare as a key component of economic recovery,” she said.
Pancholi said she’s concerned the bill allows providers who have failed the licensing process to potentially apply sooner for relicensing when the government should be focused on reopening existing childcare centres.
After first reading, the bill will extend the maximum time for temporary layoffs related to COVID -19 from 120 days to 180 days.
The bill will also allow some changes around electronic documentation to continue including the remote signing and witnessing of wills, personal directives and enduring powers of attorney using two-way video conferencing.
Shandro said the $2 wage top-up most health-care aides at continuing-care facilities are receiving will continue until there is a vaccine for the virus.
The bill delays tabling of the annual report and annual infrastructure report from June 30 to Aug. 31. Officials say delaying the release of the report will allow staff across government departments to remain focused on managing the pandemic.
NDP health critic David Shepherd said his party doesn’t object to the extensions in the bill but believes some changes are missing. In particular it does not repeal the powers given to the government earlier this year in Bill 10.
Bill 10, the Public Health Emergency Measures Act, amended the Public Health Act and allows a cabinet minister to make legislative changes without the approval of the legislature.
The NDP has maintained that Bill 10 is an example of government overreach. The opposition tried and failed to add a sunset clause to the legislation.
“We’re not in a public health emergency so there is no need for the government to keep this power overreach from Bill 10,” Shepherd said.
After Bill 10 passed, Premier Jason Kenney said that given public concern, the government’s lawyers would “go back to the drawing board.”
We’re not in a public health emergency so there is no need for the government to keep this power overreach from Bill 10.
The legislative assembly appointed a 12-member committee of government and opposition MLAS to review the Public Health Act and report to the legislature in four months.
Shandro said the committee’s review of the Public Health Act will look at sunset clauses including the Dec. 31, 2021 date for the orders extended under Bill 24.
“We’re going to be asking them also to consider the extent to which sunset clauses are required for these amendments or any other emergency powers that might be given to a government in the future,” he said.