Editor:
This is my response to an opinion article "Freedom in a Floundering World" written by our Banff-Kananaskis MLA Miranda Rosin.
The pandemic is not over. That is a fact, not a belief.
The emergency service, medical, educational, science professionals, business owners, executives, citizens and caregivers to the vulnerable (or the masses as you refer to them) are not begging and pleading for you to take away their rights and freedoms. That is a fact, not a belief.
Instead, they are demanding you do the job you were elected to do. As a reminder, that is to provide governance, and devise enforceable and time-limited regulations that will limit the spread of the virus. Along with this comes a public expectation that government will stem the contagion while ensuring that our financial, medical and human resources are not exhausted.
To repeat: the only way for government to protect its most vulnerable – the elderly living in care facilities, those immunodeficient or compromised, those who risk their health in their workplace – is to provide oversight, education and regulation that supports masking, distancing, stay in place orders and vaccination. Governments around the globe have embraced that fact.
Meanwhile, suggesting that “anti vaxxers,” “anti maskers,” and other deniers are somehow freedom fighters and civil rights activists does not make you a hero of civil liberties. It makes you, at best, not helpful to our shared responsibility as citizens to manage the destructive power of this virus.
And, at worst, those suggestions make you a danger to the lives and livelihoods of many Albertans who expected you to act for the well-being and safety of all residents of this province.
Liz Oscroft,
Canmore
