Just a week after the City of Grande Prairie passed its mandatory face-covering bylaw, the County will be discussing the first reading of its own. It has many similarities to the city’s bylaw, including activation triggers of 100 consolidated cases between the two regions, and cancellation when the number of cases drops under that figure for more than 14 consecutive days.
County Reeve Leanne Beaupre says she doesn’t expect to see the same amount of public demonstration that happened in the City of Grande Prairie.
“It’ll be a fair amount of discussion… but I’m not anticipating a lot of demonstration; the city has had some, with both for and against,” she says. “We certainly have not been lobbied by any organization or group of individuals to either pass or deny the bylaw.”
Beaupre says the triggers are, in her opinion, vital for the bylaw, as they would create a sliding scale and give hope to some of the county-based commercial and retail industries for continued new normal operations.
“In B.C., they’ve started to close down hours of operations and try to limit some of those activities, and our businesses have seen a hit to their bottom line, and if for some reason there was a mandatory closure again I’m not so certain many of them could survive.”
The bylaw will be discussed as part of the scheduled County of Grande Prairie council meeting on September 14th.