Jason Kenney’s backtracking on his vow never to bring in a vaccine passport shows he is a ‘liar’ and a ‘hypocrite,’ says People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier.
Bernier made the comments in a tweet hours after Kenney did a flip-flip on the issue on Wednesday.
Bernier linked in a video taken earlier where Kenney was interviewed and said he didn’t even know what a vaccine passport was.
“It’s illegal under the Privacy Act to ask someone if they’ve received a certain medical procedure or not, including a vaccine. So the government of Alberta at least will not be participating in anything like that,” Kenney said in the interview.
Kenney on Wednesday apologized for his comments earlier this summer when he said Alberta “was open for good.”
“It’s now clear we were wrong and for that, I apologize.” He later said he wasn’t apologizing for relaxing COVID-19 restrictions on Canada Day.
As of September 20, restaurants will have to shut their dining rooms and only be allowed to serve take-out meals or on their patios unless they take part in the vaccine passport program.
The government is also bringing back forced social distancing and making it illegal for unvaccinated people to attend social functions in homes.
Vaccinated families can have friends come over from one other vaccinated house to a total of 10 people.
In schools, forced masking is in for students in Grades 4 and up, plus staff and teachers in all grades.
Mandatory work from home orders are back in place.
Churches can stay open as long as physical distancing is maintained and people wear masks. Capacity is limited to one-third of fire code.
Indoor wedding ceremonies and funeral services are permitted with up to 50 people, or 50% of fire code occupancy, whichever is less, but they are prohibited unless the hosting facility implements the restrictions exemption program.
Kenney said the province has been placed back into a state of emergency.
Alberta is under assault by a fourth wave of COVID-19, spearheaded by the Delta variant. There have been thousands of new cases and hospital ICU numbers are at record levels.
Kenney said the province could run out of ICU beds in the next 10 days if projections are correct. Thousands of elective surgeries have already been cancelled. Alberta Health Services officials are set to reach out to other provinces to see if they have open ICU beds or any extra staff that could be deployed here.
Kenney said the government will “spare no costs” to maximize hospital capacity and again said it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and urged everyone to get vaccinated.
“This is truly a life or death matter,” Kenney said.
The vaxport program starts September 20.
The full list of Alberta restrictions can be found here.
Dave Naylor is the News Editor of the Western Standard
Dave Naylor is News Editor & Calgary Bureau Chief of the Western Standard based in the Calgary Headquarters. He served as City Editor of the Calgary Sun & covered Alberta news for nearly 40 years.
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