Jason Kenney rejects notion he’s to blame for Alberta’s COVID-19 struggle

For weeks, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has preached personal responsibility as COVID-19 cases in his province have climbed.

On Tuesday, it was a question about whether he would take responsibility — for Alberta’s pandemic situation — that drew his ire.

“That sounds a lot more like an NDP speech than a media question,” Kenney said, speaking to Sammy Hudes, a reporter from the Calgary Herald. “I reject the entire premise of your question.”

The question, about whether Kenney would take ownership of an approach that seems not to have worked from a health perspective, came at the tail end of an announcement by the premier of new public health measures in a province that has long-resisted them. It prompted an irritated-looking Kenney to recount his early calls to close the borders, and provide the free masks through .

His approach has been “balanced,” Kenney said, at a time when “folks … are doing drive-by smears on Alberta.”

The fiery moment came from a premier in the hot seat. Kenney has said repeatedly that lockdowns violate individual rights, but almost a third of Canada’s active cases are now located in his hard-hit province; ; and the number of people in intensive care has grown 600 per cent in six weeks.

In a swift reversal of earlier policy, Kenney announced Tuesday that Alberta will face its strictest rules yet, including a provincewide mask mandate for the first time, and a ban on all indoor and outdoor gatherings.

Retail and places of worship will stay open, but with more restrictions on capacity.

For at least a month, a swath of personal-care services will shutter, as restaurants, bars and cafés move to takeout only.

Even Christmas gatherings are off the table, with new restrictions expected to last through the new year.

Albertans will not be allowed to socialize outside their households unless they live alone and it is with one of their two designated contacts.

“We simply cannot let this Christmas turn into a tragedy for many families. And so, with great reluctance, we are asking Albertans to limit their holiday gatherings to the members of their household, or to to close contacts for people who live by themselves,” Kenney said.

“If stronger action is not taken now, we know that hundreds, or potentially thousands more Albertans could die. We cannot let that happen. We will not let that happen. We must act to protect lives,” Kenney said.

It marks a departure for Kenney, who has largely resisted the sort of public health restrictions that have become common in other provinces and around the world.

For weeks, the premier and his government have heard from the Opposition NDP and hundreds of physicians and infectious-disease specialists urging Alberta to lock down for a short period to avoid swamping the health-care system. Instead, the government has repeatedly appealed to residents to exercise their personal responsibility.

The same day as the new restrictions, Alberta racked up another 1,727 new cases Tuesday, once again beating out Ontario, a province with three times the population.

The last time Kenney introduced new rules — restrictions that limited the hours of restaurants and outlawed personal indoor gatherings but allowed bars, casinos and even waterparks to remain open — he commented that he hadn’t gone into politics to put limits on people and spoke out against lockdowns that he said violated charter rights.

But as cases have risen, so too has pressure to act.

The mayors of Edmonton and Calgary have both warned they would use whatever emergency powers they have to bring in their own added measures if the province failed to further steps. A recent poll suggested that half of Albertans disapprove of the way their government has handled the pandemic.

On Monday, chief public health officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the measures have stopped the numbers from getting much worse, but have failed to bend the curve downward, so tougher restrictions are needed.

But even while introducing new rules, it was clear that, as Kenney put it, these were not a first resort, but the very last.

Before outlining new rules he touted Alberta’s “admirable” response in the early days of the pandemic.

For most of the year, Alberta had lower relative levels of infections, hospitalizations and fatalities “than the other large Canadian provinces, all the U.S. states and pretty much all of the European countries,” he said.

“Let’s not forget that the NHL recognized Alberta’s leadership. By choosing Edmonton as the centre for the NHL playoffs of dozens of cities across North America.”

The surge Alberta was seeing was “typical” as winter approached, Kenney said. Ontario and Quebec both had higher death rates, he added.

He reiterated that some people just don’t understand what small businesses are up against.

“Those of us in government, who frankly have secure paycheques, can too easily make the mistake of thinking of these policies as abstractions. It’s too easy to think of them as just words on a piece of paper,” he said.

“But behind every one of these restrictions lies crushed dreams and terrible adversity.”

Alex Boyd is a Calgary-based reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: