Fines considered for social-distancing rule-breakers

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This article was published 01/04/2020 (2170 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba politicians are not ruling out issuing fines to people who refuse to practise physical distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19.

On Wednesday, Premier Brian Pallister was asked about instances in which people gather in groups larger than 10, which is the maximum allowed under social distancing guidelines — for example videos share on social media showing people playing sports.

“I won’t take off the table the possibility of further actions if people are blatantly abusing the rights and freedoms they have come to take for granted in some cases,” Pallister said. “We respect those rights, but we also respect the right of people to be protected at times like these.”

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said the city would back any effort by the provincial government to enforce social distancing.

“As the premier indicated earlier today, handing out fines is not a desirable outcome,” Bowman said. “On that point, I want to be clear: if the province decides to increase enforcement measures like they’ve done in other provinces and initiate fines, I’ll be in full support.”

Bowman said the city would take action if the province were to issue a health order.

“At this stage, we’re working to support the provincial government’s efforts, we are seeing other provinces take some unprecedented measures to do their best to ensure citizens are respecting provincial orders,” he said.

Some cities have taken enforcing social distancing into their own hands. The City of Brampton, in Ontario, enacted a bylaw Tuesday that prohibits people from being within two metres of each other on public property unless they are from the same household. They would be subject to a minimum $500 fine. The bylaw prohibits businesses from allowing people to break the two-metre rule.

The Manitoba government declared a state of emergency on March 20. Winnipeg city council will meet on Friday to discuss the possibility of declaring a local emergency.

Jason Shaw, the city’s emergency operations centre manager, said the declaration would give the city “a host of powers.”

“There’s a whole list of powers, but the ability to stop egress and access to certain areas for transmission reasons, there’s the ability to have buildings and locations secured so that we can provide more services if we need to,” he said.

Bowman said the city would use the power as needed.

“I won’t take off the table the possibility of further actions if people are blatantly abusing the rights and freedoms they have come to take for granted in some cases. We respect those rights, but we also respect the right of people to be protected at times like these.”–Premier Brian Pallister

“The state of local emergency would be intended to provide the public service with additional tools that they could implement if and when necessary, if the situation worsens in the coming weeks,” Bowman said.

City councillors Kevin Klein and Shawn Nason called on the city to stop issuing charges for late payment of property taxes, reverse the increase to water and sewer rates and suspend the business tax for local companies that have closed. They want those changes to be in effect until Oct. 31.

They say they have identified $65 million in adjustments that could be made to the budget to mitigate financial losses to the city, including a hiring freeze and cancelling any projects that would incur debt, not including roads and bridges.

— with files from Carol Sanders

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca