City Council to Debate End of Calgary Mask By-law – Calgary

City council is expected to decide on Monday when masks will no longer be mandatory in interior spaces in Calgary.

Calgary Temporary Face Covering Regulation expiration date discussion comes as Alberta moves closer to Stage 3 provinces Open for summer plan, which will see nearly all health restrictions related to COVID-19 lifted as of July 1.

Currently, Alberta remains in Stage 2, with masking requirements in place across the province.

However, even after Alberta moved to Stage 3 and the general indoor mask mandate across the province was lifted, a mandatory mask regulation would still be in effect in Calgary.

The Council administration has identified four options for the Calgary face covering settlement, including:

1. Repeal of the regulation on July 31, 2021.
2. Repeal the regulation once the province enters phase 3 of the Albertas Open for Summer plan.
3. Repeal the regulation when 75 percent of eligible Calgarians are fully immunized.
4. Keep it in place until December 2021, in accordance with the original regulations.

The administration recommends that the board move forward with the first recommendation and that the regulation expire on July 31, saying it would help ensure that COVID-19 cases in Calgary do not increase once the province will go to step 3.

The proposed timeline provides a low-impact measure to prevent transmission of COVID-19 during business reopening and offers a specific end date for the face covering regulation if there are no other restrictions on interior public spaces announced by the Government of Alberta, a council report States.

Calgary’s temporary face covering regulations were passed in July 2020, months before Premier Jason Kenney announced a province-wide mask mandate in November 2020.