Restrictions draw unfavourable reviews in Southern Health

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This article was published 01/10/2021 (1828 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STEINBACH — Regional retail capacity limits and restrictions targeting the unvaccinated drew mixed reaction in southern Manitoba. While some cheered the new rules, others saw them as sowing seeds for further division.

In Steinbach, just after the new restrictions were announced Friday, Angie Desrochers said she worried about how the changes would affect an upcoming family funeral. Two of her relatives died this year (one of COVID-19) and their funerals had to be postponed repeatedly. Now, it seems unlikely the whole family will be able to grieve together.

“We know we have family members who are not vaccinated,” said Desrochers, who is vaccinated.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, although Desrochers said she is in favour of measures that will help keep children safe in schools and avoid a return to remote learning.

The province clamped down on indoor and outdoor gathering limits that include unvaccinated people, and introduced a new rule only for the Southern Health region that restricts retail capacity to 50 per cent.

One Steinbach business owner, who identified himself only as Landry, questioned the fairness, pointing out the city’s vaccination rate has been increasing and is higher than some other southern communities. Roughly 60 per cent of Steinbach’s population is vaccinated.

“I’m not too sure, to be honest, how it’ll play out,” he said.

Others who spoke to the Free Press in Steinbach offered unqualifed support of the new restrictions, but several echoed uncertainty.

“I don’t know if that helps; people are just upset,” said Peter Thiessen, who said he’s vaccinated and thinks more people should be.

“If you don’t want to be vaccinated, (be more careful) and stay away more from people, I would say.”

It won’t make a big difference in Winkler Mayor Martin Harder’s opinion — few retail stores, especially locally-owned ones, operate beyond that capacity “at the best of times,” he said — but he called the decision to focus restrictions on southern Manitoba unfair.

“When Winnipeg was a red-hot zone, southern Manitoba was restricted,” he said. “And I remember at the time, Winkler had not had a single case, at that point. So, yes we are targeted. And yes, I’m tired of being targeted.”

A standardized set of stronger restrictions on all Manitobans would be fair and wouldn’t bring what the mayor called unnecessary friction between communities.

“My biggest concern is they continue to nickel-and-dime restrictions into areas that could have been just left alone… We’re going to live with this for a long time, and every time we put more restrictions in, it’s opening up the door for more enforcement, and enforcement becomes agitation, and it creates divisions within people,” Harder said.

In nearby Morden, Mayor Brandon Burley said the time for the province “sweet talking” his constituents and others in the region into getting vaccinated had long-passed and called targeted restrictions necessary.

“It’s pretty unintelligent to think that you can run with scissors and not get hurt, and we’ve been doing that for a while now in southern Manitoba,” he said. “And we got the sharp, pointy end of the scissors.”

Burley described Friday’s announcement as “underwhelming.”

Not all of Southern Health has faced a reckoning of the unvaccinated over the last year.

In Portage la Prairie, 73 per cent of its population is fully vaccinated — nearly double the number in Winkler and more than three times the lowest-vaccinated region in the province, the Rural Municipality of Stanley.

“People have certainly tried to do the right thing here, and I think it’s been fairly effective,” Portage Mayor Irvine Ferris said. “And I know this is really going to hit retail, especially our smaller local operations. I think the business community feels fairly strongly that we should not have been included.”

Ferris credits his community’s outlier status to early and intense education tactics — local leadership and medical professionals spoke up fast and were unwavering in their commitment to getting the community vaccinated.

“I had regular meetings with a doctor I’ve known for 40 years, and he was able to help educate me, and we got involved in doing weekly interviews with local media,” he said.

“Most doctors at the clinic and hospital, some people have known them for years, they trust them, they’re grounded in science. So I think the leadership we had made a significant difference.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca