Enforce rules or step down

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/12/2021 (1559 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“I am very concerned that we have a minority flouting public health orders again, and that has happened at various points throughout this pandemic. We’ve endeavoured to beef up enforcement on several occasions — now we need to target it to those areas where we know there are higher incidences of COVID outbreaks.”

— Brian Pallister, April 26, 2021

“It’s very sensitive. We’re also trying to send the message that we know how important it is for people to gather to meet their spiritual needs.”

— Justice Minister and Morden-Winkler MLA Cameron Friesen, Dec. 9, 2021

 

One week ago, our sister paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, reported that Christian worshippers are secretly holding church services in farm sheds and machine shops in southern Manitoba communities as a way to evade COVID-19 public health orders.

These gatherings, attended by dozens and sometimes hundreds of the faithful, are being held on private properties in the Southern Health region because current public health rules require mask use and limit the size of religious gatherings if attendees are not fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

The reason for the restrictions being imposed upon Southern Health in the first place was simple — communities in this region including the city of Winkler and the RM of Stanley, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the province.

Just yesterday, the Free Press reported that the Portage Minor Hockey Association posted on its Facebook page that it had become aware of unvaccinated parents “sneaking in back doors of arenas” to watch their children play hockey. As a result, the association has imposed a zero-tolerance approach, meaning that if a parent inside an arena is unable to show proof of vaccination, their child will be removed from the team roster for the rest of the season. No refund, and no second chances.

All of this is taking place in Southern Health. And yet vaccination rates are not showing much — if any — improvement in this region, even as ICUs in Winnipeg and Brandon fill up with patients that live within Southern Health’s boundaries.

Columnist Tom Brodbeck reported this week that ICU admissions from Southern Health alone over the past month “have been enough to trigger contingency planning at Manitoba hospitals.”

ICU admissions from Southern Health exceeded an average of one per day by mid-November, according to provincial data.

Some days in November, that number increased to two ICU admissions from Southern Health, and on Dec. 6 there were four. In fact, between Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, Brodbeck wrote that 33 of 69 COVID-19 ICU admissions were from Southern Health, a region that is home to only 15 per cent of this province’s population.

“No other health region, including Winnipeg, had more than one ICU admission in a single day over the past month,” Brodbeck wrote.

We learned on Monday that Manitoba has asked the federal government to send between 15 and 30 ICU nurses in the coming weeks to help deal with the COVID-19 hospital crisis that is unfolding before our eyes. Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson also noted that she is considering asking the military for additional help.

This comes after 11 front-line and critical care doctors wrote an open letter on the weekend urging the provincial government to ask the Canadian Armed Forces to send nurses to help out in Winnipeg ICUs.

And then yesterday, the province told Manitobans that we could soon see new case counts skyrocket thanks to the new omicron variant, which could result in 223 new cases per day by Christmas, and more than 1,000 new daily cases by early 2022.

Our ICUs are already in dire straits thanks in large part to unvaccinated people from Southern Health filling up beds, and in part due to a chronic and worsening nursing shortage. God forbid that anyone reading this find themselves in need of ICU services for something other than COVID right now. This has unnecessarily become a life-and-death situation in communities across the province.

And yet, it seems that our justice minister and our health minister are unwilling to push for tighter restrictions and stronger enforcement of fines for those who break those restrictions in Southern Health. In speaking with the Free Press earlier this month, Justice Minister Cameron Friesen acknowledged that enforcement of health restrictions like mask use and gathering sizes may not always result in tickets or fines in Southern Health. And that’s a major problem for the rest of us.

Friesen may represent Morden-Winkler as an MLA, but he represents all Manitobans as justice minister. And right now, those two roles and interests are in conflict. On the surface at least, it appears that he may be putting his own political interests — namely a potential re-election bid — ahead of his duties to enforce health restrictions.

Dr. Brent Roussin and the province’s health officials tell us the fourth wave is coming at us with a vengeance. This is no time for foot-dragging ministers who fail to act. If Friesen is unwilling to properly enforce restrictions due to political considerations in his home jurisdiction, he needs to step down as justice minister and hand the job over to someone who is.

» Matt Goerzen, editor