Western Canada: Churches become focus of debate about COVID-19 restrictions as some defy shutdown orders

Good morning. It’s James Keller in Calgary.

As provinces in Western Canada and across the country clamp down on daily life to curb the spread of COVID-19, in-person religious services have emerged as a flashpoint.

Churches in B.C. and Manitoba have generated headlines – and attracted the attention of law enforcement – for holding services in defiance of provincial orders shutting them down. In contrast, the Alberta government has prioritized religious services throughout much of the pandemic and is currently allowing them to operate, albeit with limited capacity. Saskatchewan has also permitted churches to stay open.

The fate of churches during the pandemic has fuelled a legal debate about how to balance religious freedoms in the middle of a public-health emergency.

In B.C., the RCMP fined one church in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, $2,300 for holding services this past weekend despite orders to shut down. Two other churches in the Fraser Valley also had in-person services.

Brent Smith, pastor of Riverside Calvary Chapel, which received the fine, said the church is not looking for a fight, but he said there were “inconsistencies” when it came to defining essential services.

He said the church has hired lawyers and is considering a legal challenge.

In-person religious services have also been banned in Manitoba, though a church in Winnipeg held four drive-in services last weekend, where people remained in their vehicles while a pastor spoke on a stage.

Outside of Steinbach in southeast Manitoba, a church was fined earlier this month for holding in-person services. Over the weekend, police were at the church blocking the parking lot and turning away congregants.

Premier Brian Pallister said two churches were fined, including one of the churches that held drive-in services. He commended the work of the RCMP and defended his government’s enforcement against churches and businesses.

“I remind everyone that you don’t have to believe in COVID. COVID believes in you – and COVID kills,” he said.

Alberta was one of the first jurisdictions in Canada to allow churches to reopen in the spring. For much of the time since, churches in the province did not face specific capacity limits but were required to maintain physical distancing between households.

Churches were asked to cap capacity at 30 per cent, but that guideline was turned into a requirement as part of a series of measures aimed at slowing a recent surge of COVID-19 infections. Masking is also mandatory.

Premier Jason Kenney said most religious institutions were carefully following the rules, but a handful have been “flagrantly” violating the guidelines.

“We believe this approach balances the Charter-protected fundamental right to freedom of religion with the public-health imperative,” he said.

In Saskatchewan, religious services are capped at 30 people.

Law professor Eric Adams of the University of Alberta said that while preventing and limiting religious gatherings infringes on the Charter right to freedom of religion, the “extraordinary circumstance” of the pandemic allows for compelling public policy justifications to restrict those freedoms.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.

AROUND THE WEST

SASKATCHEWAN COVID-19 UPDATE: Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says it’s too early to say whether COVID-19 restrictions will be loosened in time to allow families to gather for the holidays. Current restrictions – which include suspending all team sports and a 30-person cap on indoor venues such as churches and bingo halls – are to continue until Dec. 17, when the Premier said his Saskatchewan Party government and the Chief Medical Health Officer will decide what to do next. Mr. Moe said they could choose to extend existing measures, bring in added ones or loosen the restriction that limits household gatherings “just a little bit so that we can have a few people in our home for Christmas.” The limit now is five people.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, community associations in Saskatoon are being urged to take away nets at outdoor rinks to avoid groups from playing hockey. In a letter to community associations dated Nov. 30, the city says it sought clarification from the province about how the restriction applied to outdoor rinks. The city’s letter says it was told that the ban on team sports applies to both indoor and outdoor rinks. It cites the province’s public-health order that says organized or pickup hockey games during public skating times are not allowed and asks that hockey nets be removed. As a result, the city is strongly recommending that its community associations not leave out hockey nets that could be used while rinks are unsupervised.

MANITOBA COVID-19 UPDATE: Manitobans will likely have to deal with strict COVID-19 measures into the winter, Premier Brian Pallister warned Tuesday. With daily case counts remaining high and intensive care capacity close to the limit, Pallister said some restrictions on public gatherings and business openings will have to continue beyond Friday of next week, when the current orders are to expire. Manitoba was leading all other provinces in the per-capita rate of new infections until recently, when Alberta surged ahead. To try to bend the curve, the province enacted some of the strictest rules in the country: non-essential businesses have closed, public gatherings have been limited to five people and, with some exceptions for things like medical services, people are not allowed to have visitors in their home. In-person religious services have also been banned.

HATE CRIMES: Police across Canada reported a 7-per-cent rise in hate crimes last year, according to new Statistics Canada data showing the pre-pandemic uptick was driven by more incidents targeting people because of their race and sexual orientation. Just over three quarters of all hate crimes reported by police last year occurred in eight cities that tallied at least 70 incidents: Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Toronto and Vancouver. For the second straight year, Hamilton had the highest rate of hate crimes per 100,000 people with 15.7, followed by Ottawa (10.8) and Quebec City (8.6).

RACISM IN HEALTH CARE: A former judge and independent watchdog has dismissed allegations that organized, racist games were played in B.C. emergency rooms in which health care workers guessed the blood-alcohol levels of Indigenous patients. Instead, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond found a “much more widespread and insidious problem” with Indigenous-specific stereotyping, racism and discrimination in British Columbia’s health care system. “At the point of care, there is direct prejudice and racism, touching all points of care and impacting Indigenous people in B.C.,” she told a news conference on Monday as she released her report, In Plain Sight. Even in the surveys conducted for her investigation into the treatment of Indigenous patients, 13 per cent of health care workers responded with language she describes as racist.

OIL AND GAS ACTIVIST INQUIRY: An environmental law group has lost its bid to pause Alberta’s inquiry into where critics of its oil and gas industry get their funding. Ecojustice sought an injunction in the summer to suspend the inquiry until there is a ruling on whether it is legal. Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Karen Horner dismissed the application with costs on Friday. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his United Conservative government contend foreign interests have long been bankrolling campaigns against fossil fuel development. In 2019, forensic accountant Steve Allan was tapped to lead the $2.5-million inquiry. Mr. Allan’s report was initially due in July, but after two extensions and a $1-million budget increase, it is now expected by Jan. 31. Energy Minister Sonya Savage must publish the final report within 90 days of receiving it. Ecojustice filed a lawsuit last November alleging the inquiry is politically motivated, biased and outside provincial jurisdiction. Justice Horner said in her decision that Ecojustice had to prove there is a serious issue to be tried, it would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction isn’t granted and it would suffer greater harm than its opponent if the injunction is refused. The judge ruled Ecojustice satisfied the first test but failed the other two.

HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST ASSAULTED: Two people are under investigation in connection with the beating of a friend of Vancouver-area blogger Gao Bingchen, who has been critical of a fugitive Chinese tycoon with links to former White House adviser Steve Bannon. Last week, two people protesting against Mr. Gao were arrested by Surrey RCMP after they allegedly hit and kicked human rights activist Louis Huang, a friend of Mr. Gao. Mr. Huang was taken to hospital and said one of his front teeth and bones around his right eye were broken. The protesters are supporters of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire. They are among dozens of people that have been gathering almost daily in front of Mr. Gao’s home in Surrey, B.C. They accuse the media personality of being an agent for the Chinese government, which Mr. Gao has denied.

GARAGE ART: In the little community of Sunnyside in northwest Calgary, more than 20 new pieces of art have been added to the community’s collection. Their collection is free to anyone who walks down the alleyways – the canvases are the residences’ garage doors.

SALMON RUN: On southern Vancouver Island, the salmon story is as complex and tangled as anywhere in B.C., with fish populations connected to the success of the southern resident orcas, which are connected to the tourism industry, which also relies on healthy stocks for sport fishing operators, who in turn need to balance their takes with the needs of commercial fishing. Operations such as the Goldstream Hatchery are trying to help. Its volunteers work to harvest and fertilize as many viable eggs as possible, producing an 80-per-cent to 90-per-cent return, as opposed to a rate of 15 per cent to 50 per cent in the wild. They do so by carefully removing the eggs, manually fertilizing them with the male milt, then monitoring and assisting the growth of the embryo into the fry, or baby salmon. At that point they are placed in larger rearing tanks. After 18 months at the hatchery the fish are now smolts, having physically changed in preparation for salt water. Once that happens they are released back into the river to make their way to the open ocean.

RESTAURANTS MOVE ONLINE: A Calgary-based collective of food and drink producers recently made a big splash with the debut of Best of Calgary Foods. The online store and delivery service offers up items such as from meats from Alpine Sausage and Lambtastic Farms to Village Brewery beers and canned drinks by Wild Tea Kombucha. The platform launched as restaurants and other food-focused businesses look for innovative ways to shift to online and delivery models to weather the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, as some communities are plunged back into lockdown, others imposed new restrictions on businesses and some diners remain on the fence about whether it’s even safe to venture out.

NEW POLICE CHIEF: The chief of Surrey’s new police force is looking for officers who are good communicators, who are trained in de-escalating conflict and who have demonstrated resiliency in their own lives. Norm Lipinski said in an interview that a police officer’s job is mostly managing human struggles, not crime, and he wants his officers to have those skills. “For the Surrey police service, I am looking for guardians, not warriors,” said Chief Lipinski, who comes to this new job after a 30-plus-year career spanning time with Edmonton police, in an RCMP assistant commissioner’s post and most recently serving as deputy police chief in the city of Delta. But Harsha Walia, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, said she is skeptical about the prospect of real change associated with the new department. “The new Surrey Police force will still be rife with the many systemic challenges raised against all policing forces across these lands,” she said in a statement.