Judge says order to dump school masks contravened Public Health Act

A Court of King’s Bench judge ruled Thursday that the Kenney Government’s decision to dump the requirement for kids to wear masks in school during the pandemic last February was politically driven in contravention of Public Health Act. 

Justice Grant Dunlop’s declaration that the United Conservative Party (UCP) government’s order lifting the masking requirement was “based on an unreasonable interpretation of the Public Health Act” is a useful reminder of the sins of now-demoted premier Jason Kenney. 

Albertans by and large have been so appalled by the unbearable weirdness of being governed by an anti-vaccine dark web conspiracy theorist like Danielle Smith that it’s already easy to forget just how bad a premier Kenney was. 

It’s not as if we didn’t all know that the man who brought us the Best Summer Ever™ put politics ahead of public health, or that the ridiculous policy of letting schoolchildren go maskless while a tidal wave of COVID-19 infections battered the health care system was driven by the contra-experts in the Kenney cabinet and their desire to make COVID go away by pretending it already had.

Still, it’s comforting to have the imprimatur of a superior court judge on this reality, as obvious as it is. 

Justice Dunlop mostly agreed with the families of five immunocompromised children who sought the judicial review of the February 8 order to lift the mask mandate and issued a declaration “for the benefit of the chief medical officer of health and other medical officers of health in considering future public health orders.”

The applicants, who also included the Alberta Federation of Labour, argued Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw abdicated her authority to the cabinet and thus failed in her obligation to protect vulnerable students.

Now, of course, we are governed by an unelected premier appointed by the UCP base, well represented by many of the same MLAs in the UCP Caucus and Cabinet who led the charge to replace Kenney with Smith. 

This is not so comforting. Indeed, it’s downright disturbing. 

But like an airplane pilot of my acquaintance who as a passenger always stared avidly out the window of a plane so he’d be the first to know if anything went terribly wrong, at least we’ll have have the satisfaction of understanding what the problem was before we go splat! 

Justice Dunlop also agreed with the families and the AFL that Education Minister Adrianna LaGrange’s prohibition of school…