Town of Banff exploring making face coverings mandatory
Posted Jul 14, 2020 8:52 pm.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) — The Town of Banff is looking into making masks mandatory as it feels most visitors are not wearing face coverings in popular areas.
Earlier this summer, the town shut down Banff Avenue to vehicles and made it pedestrian-only to allow for physical distancing.
“While we have created this space where you can physically distance, sometimes it’s not possible because of people doing two-way pedestrian traffic,” Councillor Corrie DiManno said.
She added the town has experienced more visitors than they had originally thought which has resulted in more people in the pedestrian-free zone.
“I don’t think we knew what to expect, I think that’s something this pandemic has taught all of us,” DiManno added.
“We put this in place as a balance of safety and reopening knowing that our businesses were heavily impacted, so we set this up with the best of intentions to try to keep that balance and now I think it is been more popular than we anticipated.”
Safety remains the town’s top priority and Dimanno believes getting people to wear masks is the best way to achieve that.
Administration has been directed to investigate legality, authority and enforcement of making face coverings mandatory.
The mountain town has received 100,000 masks from the government of Alberta and ambassadors in Banff will be tasked with distributing them to visitors.
Banff currently has two active cases of COVID-19.
