After Premier Jason Kenney was nowhere to be found at a news conference announcing Alberta will not be moving forward yet with the lifting of some COVID-19 measures, one political commentator is calling on him to step up and own his decisions.
“If he wants to look like he’s a leader, which seems to be his desire, then he should be taking responsibility for his good decisions as well as the ones that need to be modified or changed,” Lori Williams, an associate professor at Mount Royal University’s faculty of policy studies, said.
On Friday morning, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health announced the province would be delaying the lifting of remaining COVID-19 measures, including testing, tracing and isolation requirements.
“We are not going backwards. We are pausing to monitor and assess before taking a step forward,” Dr. Deena Hinshaw said in a news conference.
“If monitoring confirms our original expectations that a rise in cases will not lead to high levels of (hospitalizations) and we do not see evidence of increased risk for severe disease for children, we will proceed with implementing the next set of changes after Sept. 27.”
While Education Minister Adriana LaGrange was on hand to outline the steps the province will be taking to protect students when they go back to school in September, the premier was not at the news conference. Nor was he at the news conference announcing the government would be lifting those measures.
“He’s trying to put some distance from it because he doesn’t want the political blowback,” Williams said. “In essence, it looks like he wants to get the credit for being a leader and ahead of everybody else, but he doesn’t want any of the criticism that has gone with that.”
When the province announced Alberta would stop testing, contact tracing and isolation requirements, feedback was swift from within the province, the country and even around the world, Williams said.
In Alberta, daily protests at the legislature in Edmonton and MacDougall Centre in Calgary began and grew larger day by day.
The government rolling back those decisions was likely directly linked to those protests as well as the other blowback, Williams said.
“There’s been a whole lot of momentum built to criticize the government now and I don’t think it would be very difficult to get those protests going again if there’s another measure taken by the government that’s unpopular.”
The decision to pause the lifting of those measures was made Thursday night at an emergency cabinet meeting and at the advice of Hinshaw.
NDP health critic David Shepherd spoke to reporters after Hinshaw’s announcement Friday morning. He also said Kenney is trying to distance himself from the conversation, hoping that “Albertans memories are going to be short.”
Shepherd called on Kenney to step up and own the decision, while also continuing to ensure Albertans, businesses and schools get the support they need to continue to deal with COVID-19.
“Instead we see them ducking and hiding and bobbing and weaving because they don’t want to deal with potential political fallout with potentially some of their far-right base, potentially with some of their own caucus, as we saw this spring.”
Former UCP caucus members and current independent MLAs Drew Barnes and Todd Loewen released a joint statement Friday morning, saying this announcement is “at least the third time the premier has broken his word to Albertans when it comes to pandemic management.”
“At this point there is no reason for any Albertan to trust this premier when it comes to pandemic policy,” they said.
During the news conference Friday, LaGrange and Hinshaw were asked about the political ramifications of the changes.
“(Hinshaw) brought forward further recommendations, again we’re following the science and the advice of our chief medical officer of health. She has served us really, really well and we thank her for her dedicated service to Albertans,” LaGrange said.