BANFF – The Town of Banff has no plans to prevent visitors coming into the community, even though it has that power under the state of local emergency it declared last week to help limit the rapid spread of COVID-19.
Officials say that while the municipality has that authority, unlike in spring when checkstops were set up at both entrances to the tourist own, there is now no province-wide travel restriction – and, therefore, it won’t be as effective.
As well, Banff Town Manager Kelly Gibson said there would need to be restrictions on residents leaving town, not just stopping visitors coming into Banff in order for a local lockdown to be effective.
“We can restrict travel; that is something under the state of local emergency that we can do. We can restrict both in and out,” he told council during a marathon meeting on Monday (Nov. 30).
“We have to remember there’s a number of facilities outside of town on Sulphur Mountain that we don’t technically have jurisdiction over, so that also does cause some issues when we talk about restricting access in and out of town.”
With rapidly rising cases in Banff and Lake Louise, residents have been calling for checkstops. As an education tool, the Town has put up signs at the entrance to town alerting people of the number of positive cases.
As of Wednesday (Dec. 2), there were 166 positive cases in Banff and Lake Louise, with cases expected to rise in the coming days given there is more COVID-19 testing happening in Banff.
In neighbouring Canmore, there are 90 positive cases and another 27 in the Municipal District of Bighorn, which includes Harvie Heights, Exshaw and Lac Des Arcs.
On Nov. 25, the Town of Banff declared its second state of local emergency to supplement measures enacted under last week’s provincial public health emergency.
Banff has shut down public access to Town Hall, the Fenlands recreation centre and the community space at 101 Bear St., and reduced occupancy by 50 per cent in bars and restaurants through a bylaw, effective Dec. 3.
In addition, council ordered liquor and cannabis stores to close to the public at or before 10 p.m.,and extended the areas where masks must be work outside to include more of the downtown and all of Banff Avenue.
Mayor Karen Sorensen spoke against a temporary local lockdown, saying she didn’t believe it would be effective.
“In terms of limiting people coming into town, one of the issues we dealt with previously, and continue to deal with, is you don’t really get to say ‘you can’t come in and yet you go out,’ ” she said.
“Our residents travel outside of Banff. They may be going into Calgary for any number of reasons or any of the other surrounding communities, they could be going to Canmore for work, Canmore could be coming to work,” she added.
“I just don’t think we’re in a position right now as this little community … sitting here all by ourselves … to close ourselves off because the province does not appear at this time to be putting any restrictions in place like that.”
Sorensen said she has also heard no word from Parks Canada about restricting travel in the national park again, as was the case in the spring at the beginning of the pandemic.
“The Town of Banff operating in this little independent fashion, I don’t think really would serve the purpose of protecting us,” she said.
“Even if we were to do something like that for a couple of weeks, the minute we’re not doing that, then we’re back working with the rest of the valley, the rest of the province, the rest of the country.”
Councillor Peter Poole, however, was not opposed to additional restrictions.
He said the Town of Banff needs to implement tough short-term measures to get the COVID-19 infection rate down in the community, which currently sits at about four times the provincial average.
He said he had to shut down down a business more than a week ago because an employee tested positive for COVID-19, resulting in about a dozen people being out of work.
“What’s really hard for scheduling any staff members right now is the overall rate of incidents of the virus … it’s really severe,” Poole said, noting the current infection rate in Banff is about 40 times as higher than in late August.
“It may be worth our while to think of some shorter term measures … that we may be able to settle the mixing rate and allow us to drop the number of cases back to some level of average.”
The number of COVID-19 cases is so high in the community that Coun. Poole suspects he would have to shut down his business again within a day or two of reopening.
“We are effectively closed down, not because of government action; quite frankly, because of government inaction, and it is really tough to run a business without collective action in the province as a whole,” he said.
“We may be able to do some things which will bring our level down to the level that is average for the province, so when we reopen, we’re not going to be exporting our contamination out to the others.”
Coun. Grant Canning backed Mayor Sorensen’s comments.
“The province has shown absolutely no indication whatsoever that they’re interested in doing a province-wide closure or province-wide shutdown,” he said, noting the idea of closing the town for two or three weeks has been discussed in the community.
“Even if the town were to close down for two or three weeks, the minute that our doors open up again, the communities around us … that haven’t done a shutdown, well, the virus would potentially come back almost immediately.”
Coun. Canning noted people point to examples like Australia and New Zealand where there has been success in limiting the spread of COVID-19, but he said those lockdowns were widespread and large scale.
“They’ve closed borders, they’ve done entire statewide levels of closures and so entire regions have been shutdown and there’s been no interactions over state lines and things like that,” he said.
“Until our province, or if the province, were ever to get to that level, I just don’t think it would be very effective if we were to do it on such a small scale, when everyone around us is not considering that.”
