Irresponsibility knows no borders

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2020 (1965 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The newly elected mayor of Yorkton, Sask., has decided that his community should take advantage of Manitoba’s stringent code-red lockdown orders that have forced non-essential businesses in our province to shutter their storefronts.

Yorkton Mayor Mitch Hippsley told CTV News in Regina this week that he in fact encourages shoppers to travel to the small city to do their shopping.

“Somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people we look after for a city that is 18,000, so the big-box stores are a big draw and we’re very lucky to have shoppers come to town,” Hippsley said.

And though he paid some lip service to the concerns over COVID-19, he told the television newscaster that the community is very lucky to have shoppers come to town.

“We just hope that they will follow the code of health law as in social distancing and masks and hand sanitizing and that goes without saying,” he states in the news report.

And the new Yorkton mayor, who was just elected to office earlier this month, is not alone — the Yorkton Business Improvement District echoed Hippsley in the story, and actively encouraged more Manitoba residents to shop “local” — well, their local — and follow Saskatchewan’s health guidelines.

As various Sun readers who commented on our online COVID-19 update story yesterday afternoon stated, there are a great number of people who live in the Parkland region of this province who are more likely to head to Yorkton to do their shopping — for essentials and non-essentials alike — than make their way to Brandon, if nothing else than for convenience sake.

The same can be said for those Manitobans who live in the eastern part of the province and find themselves closer to Kenora, Ont., for their shopping purposes.

Manitoba’s COVID-19 restrictions, which were enacted earlier this month, were meant to keep us in our homes and prevent unnecessary socializing — a harsh but necessary remedy to rising coronavirus numbers that are straining the province’s health-care resources.

And that does include those Manitobans who actively drive across the border into Saskatchewan for their groceries, farm implements and Christmas shopping.

The fact that these residents are actively flouting provincial COVID-19 health regulations did not go unnoticed by Manitoba’s chief public health officer, Dr. Brent Roussin.

“It’s disappointing to hear about people driving outside the province to do non-essential shopping. We’ve heard reports of driving to Yorkton or to Kenora to do some shopping,” Dr. Roussin said yesterday, with a heavy sigh and obvious frustration. “Again, our messaging has been really clear and the reasoning behind our messaging is really clear. There’s a purpose beyond all these orders — it’s to save Manitobans’ lives. Going around those orders puts Manitobans at risk.”

Not only that, but considering the depth of the viral outbreak in this province, which is considerably worse than that of Saskatchewan, Yorkton’s mayor and businesses are putting their own people in danger by encouraging such behaviour.

As of yesterday, there were more than 3,000 known active COVID-19 cases in Saskatchewan, and more than 7,000 total since the pandemic first hit our neighbours to the west back in March. And though the number of cases in the Central East region where Yorkton is situated have been relatively small compared to the cities of Saskatoon and Regina, the community certainly hasn’t been immune.

Meanwhile, Manitoba has 8,758 active cases out of a total of 14,907 since March. There are 303 people currently in hospital, with 50 of those in intensive care.

People being who they are — irritable at the best of times when it comes to health restrictions, and flagrantly uncivil and unaccommodating at their worst — the province should have seen this coming and closed the borders to Ontario and Saskatchewan before they enacted such stringent restrictions, if their intent was to have all Manitobans follow them to the letter.

That’s on the Pallister government, to be honest, because nothing these border-hoppers are doing is technically illegal so far as we know. Ill-advised? Certainly. Potentially harmful? Definitely. But not illegal.

There’s lots of irresponsibility to go around here — the province for not closing regulation loopholes, and fellow Manitobans for ignoring public health orders. But the prize for most irresponsible chucklehead has to go to Yorkton’s mayor for inviting shoppers from a province that is under severe lockdown orders during a contagious and deadly pandemic.

It’s one thing to expect to see Manitoba licence plates in Yorkton during such a lockdown, but quite another to actively encourage their arrival, thus putting your own community in jeopardy for the sake of some extra cash in the till during the Christmas shopping season.