Not the time for timid leadership

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/08/2020 (1978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“We do not employ health professionals; we do not have a medical doctor on staff at the municipality and therefore we rely on people who are trained, experienced and skilled … like Dr. Roussin.”

— Brandon Mayor Rick Chrest

“We need to learn to live with the virus.”

— Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial public health officer

 

On May 27, 2002, a majority of City of Brandon councillors decided to enact a bylaw that would ban smoking in all enclosed public places as of the following Sept. 1. Under the new law, Brandon would issue fines for lighting up in all city restaurants, bars, arenas, bus shacks, stores and other workplaces. They would reach $1,000 for individuals and $5,000 for proprietors.

At the time, it was considered one of the most restrictive anti-smoking bylaws in North America, and it was done without the input of any provincial leadership or city-employed health officials — the Province of Manitoba would follow suit two years later.

It was not a popular decision at the time because it would eat away at the profit margins of local businesses. However, the effects of second-hand smoke are now well documented, and the leadership of two decades ago ultimately made the correct decision. But in order to do what was right and in the public interest, it took the leadership of our council and our mayor of the day to make it happen.

“I think it’s fair we give this a whirl,” former Assiniboine councillor Doug Paterson said at the council meeting that night. “We’re taking a risk and it’s not done lightly.”

Brandon is now faced with a similar need for leadership, as the numbers of COVID-19 in our city and in western Manitoba have continued to rise over the last several days.

As of yesterday afternoon, there were four new cases of the coronavirus announced by the province — a small jump to be sure. But it follows several days of large increases, including a huge jump this past weekend with 35 new cases announced, most of them in the Prairie Mountain Health region.

On Monday, we learned that about one-third of the then-64 known cases in the city of Brandon are workers at the Maple Leaf Foods plant. As of yesterday afternoon, there were 86 COVID-19 cases in Prairie Mountain Health, with the total lab-confirmed positive and probably positive cases in the province rising to 562.

Though the plant’s union has called for the plant to close temporarily, Dr. Roussin has repeatedly said that the outbreak does not appear to be linked to the hog plant’s operations.

But assurances from the province and our council have done little to temper the growing concerns over the spread of the virus. Vehicle lineups at the Brandon COVID-19 testing site at The Town Centre have grown enormous in recent days as concerned Westman residents get themselves checked — enough to prompt the opening of a second test site at the Keystone Centre yesterday afternoon, which was a day ahead of its previously announced schedule.

Mask use within the population has also grown as more of us see the potential benefits of wearing them in public. And part of that recognition can be attributed to the leadership of our business community.

As of today, Walmart Canada will begin to enforce a new policy in all its stores that will make it mandatory for all customers to wear masks or face coverings, including here in Brandon. It’s one of the dozens of stores in Brandon that have decided to put in place mandatory use of face masks — among other efforts such as the installation of Plexiglas shields and hand-sanitizer stations — in an effort to keep both their customers and employees safe.

At the same time, several business owners in the city did the responsible thing by deciding to close their doors or significantly reduce their services after cases of COVID-19 popped up among their staff. These businesses should be heralded for their honesty, and for doing what they can in the interest of public safety.

And yet, even with all these very public examples of leadership from our business leaders, our political leaders seem unable — or unwilling — to act.

While in discussion during the meeting of city council on Monday evening, Mayor Rick Chrest reiterated comments he made to the Sun last Friday, in which he said he wasn’t sure the city had the authority to mandate the use of masks in the city, and that the city had no medical staff on its payroll.

That assertion was challenged by Coun. John LoRegio (Meadows-Waverly), who mentioned the fact that it was the City of Brandon that put tough no-smoking bylaws in place in the past.

But in response, the mayor said he had noticed an uptick in mask wearing even before the recent spike in local cases, and that has only gone up since the outbreak started — thereby implying that such a mandate was unnecessary. Ironically, that is the same argument used by the Manitoba Hotel Association in 2002 against the smoking ban bylaw — that the bylaw wasn’t necessary because society was already smoking less frequently.

That is not good public policy.

Mayor Chrest needs to rethink his answer — the city’s elected officials clearly have the necessary authority to pass a mandatory mask bylaw. The question isn’t whether they can, but rather whether they should; whether such a decision would do anything to increase or decrease the potential risk to the public from the virus. That is the question that needs answering.

Based on a few informal polls on both the People of Brandon Facebook group and the eBrandon site, it would appear that a large percentage of the population in the area are in favour of having either the Manitoba government or the City of Brandon mandate mask use. And with so many local businesses having made the decision to make mask use mandatory within their stores, the political answer seems pretty obvious. Now is not the time for timid leadership.

At the very least, council could make mask use mandatory in all public facilities operated by the city administration. Such a move was already conducted by the city at the Brandon Municipal Airport in July in response to the pandemic, so the precedent exists.

With the reopening of schools in Brandon only a few weeks away, now is the time to be proactive in our attempts to curb the spread of the coronavirus. We will be paying special attention to the plan put forward by the Brandon School Division on Friday, and to comments made by our premier and his ministers when they visit Brandon today — brave souls those politicians, venturing into the epicentre of the most recent outbreak. Talk about “learning to live with the virus.”

In that sense, Dr. Roussin is not wrong. We all have to learn to live with the changes to our society while this virus is present, and until a vaccine is found. That is true, to a point.

But our provincial leaders seem to be taking a rather blasé attitude toward this most recent spike in COVID-19 cases, and I can’t tell whether it’s because they’ve seen it before and we’re all better prepared after months of pandemic-related changes, or just because it’s not Winnipeg that has been hit this time. Perhaps a little of both.

Whatever the case, citizens here in Brandon are clearly alarmed by the local rise in COVID-19 numbers, a concern that does not seem to be reflected in the reaction of the Manitoba government as it continues down the path of the phased reopening of our province.

That our political leadership has left decisions like this up to the business community to “lead by example” is quite telling, and most certainly disappointing.

» Matt Goerzen, editor