Saskatoon COVID-19 bylaw defeated at council meeting

SASKATOON -

A proposed COVID-19 bylaw that would limit gathering sizes in Saskatoon failed second reading at a special meeting of City Council on Friday.

The meeting began with Councillors Darren Hill, Troy Davies, David Kirton and Randy Donuer opposing a routine vote needed to even start discussing the bylaw.

After the draft of the bylaw was read into the record by city solicitor Cindy Yelland, Clark shared an update based on his recent discussions with the province.

Clark said Minister of Government Relations Don McMorris said the provincial government would not support municipalities that implement their own bylaws based on the recommendation of their medical health officers.

According to Clark, the comments came during a conference call with McMorris and other municipal leaders.

Clark said other municipalities also had questions about what steps cities might be permitted to take on their own.

The Mayor indicated some of the uncertainty stemmed from public comments from Health Minister Paul Merriman made in response to a question from CTV News on Oct. 14.

Merrian had said municipalities can "add on top of" the base layers of COVID-19 protection that are currently in place.

A month ago to the day, Saskatoon city council voted unanimously, asking Clark to send a letter to Premier Scott Moe asking for local limits on gathering sizes.

Councillors made the decision based on the recommendation of Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) medical health officer Dr. Jasmine Hasselback.

When asked by Ward 6 Coun. Cynthia Block about the continued risk posed by COVID-19, the city's emergency management director said while reported cases are decreasing so are the number of COVID-19 tests.

Pamela Goulden-McLeod said she had spoken with Hasselback prior to the meeting and that her advice had remained unchanged despite some improvement in COVID-19 trends.

"While the numbers are coming down we are plateauing at a very high number," Pamela Goulden-McLeod said during the meeting.

Coun. Hill was staunch in his opposition to the bylaw, calling it "ridiculous."

"We don't belong in the homes of the citizens of Saskatoon," the Ward 1 councillor said.

"(The bylaw) is outside of the city's jurisdiction and is overreaching and I believe it's going to damage the relationship between the province and the city," Hill said.

Coun. Donauer, who represents Ward 5, said his concern was mainly about jurisdiction.

"The Public Health Act is quite clear," Donauer said.

"Even in a pandemic the law means something to me … I just don't think we have any business making health orders," he said.

Ward. 2 Coun. Hilary Gough pointed to the "very scary" SHA modelling that was revealed on Monday and argued the messaging provincial is minimizing the risk ahead.

"The strain on (the health) system is about to double and more. With no further restrictions, I will not stand by and not try to do whatever we can," Gough said.

"I appreciate that the jurisdiction on this is complicated and as we've all declared, we prefer not to be in the position of having to consider doing this jurisdictional dance and trying to figure out what our role is here," Gough said.

Ward 10 Coun. Zach Jeffries said it wouldn’t make sense to enact a bylaw that would be struck down by the province.

However, he had strong words for the province’s response to the pandemic.

He said that if continued strain on the healthcare system predicted by modelling comes to pass, that’s on the province for “having some of the most lax and just lackadaisical restrictions that we've seen in the entire country.”

“One of our speakers today said that there are no restrictions in other areas of the country on folks in terms of private gatherings and that's actually not true. Anywhere in the province of Alberta today, if you are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated you are not allowed to gather in your own home. So there are other provinces that are looking at this and have in fact done this.”

Just before the vote which killed the bylaw, Clark also said he didn’t want to try to pass a bylaw only for it to be overturned.

“We have said that we will try and do everything we can to support the healthcare system and protect lives and livelihoods. And we are doing that and this is what we've attempted to do. And we have now seen the limit of what we can do.”

With files from Jonathan Charlton