Wednesday April 22, 2020 ~ LANGFORD
by Mary Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
This week the City of Langford suspended their package of recent COVID-19-related bylaw changes that would have seen the city enforce various aspects of protection against the spread of the virus in retail and business areas of the large municipality.
There are over 42,000 residents now in the west shore municipality of Langford, and over 1,000 businesses. Even during the pandemic (and for the most part self-isolating) people are still necessarily out shopping for things like groceries, doing banking, or filling up their vehicle with gasoline. People are also out picking up food from restaurants that offer take-out service.
“We believe that the way to keep the spread of COVID-19 out of businesses and to reduce community spread was to pass a bylaw around physical distancing stickers on floors in retail areas,” says Langford Mayor Stew Young. He said it’s just common sense.
“That is intended to maintain healthy boundaries, together with the plexiglass shields that are to be installed at cashier checkouts,” he told West Shore Voice News this week in light of the municipality’s April 20 special council meeting being cancelled and along with it the final approval of a COVID-19 enforcement bylaw.
“We were strongly suggesting that businesses provide masks or face shields to workers and to the public that feel they are at risk of transmitting or contracting COVID,” Stew Young said.
“Island Health doesn’t agree that’s there is a risk, I guess, and they said for us not to pass our bylaw,” said Mayor Young. Island Health is the BC Government’s health authority for all of Vancouver Island. The orders of the Provincial Health Officer (PHO) are clear about physical distancing and self-isolating; while the approach has been to elicit buy-in from British Columbians, the government does have the power to enforce the PHO’s orders.
Orders about mass gathering (including affecting retail) were issued on March 16, but only on April 16 were retail and grocery supported with guidelines. Langford had initiated their bylaws for retail stores and businesses at the council level on April 6, with that final approval (for enforcement) to have come on April 20.
“Which again is disappointing as we are only working extremely hard to keep our residents from catching or transmitting this deadly virus . We need to do more than wash our hands and do physical distancing at essential businesses which stay open and for workers to feel safe,” said the mayor who has lived his entire life in Langford.
“My concern now is that Island Health powers will be dealing with the workplace as the next community transmission point if we don’t take proper measures to keep essential workers safe,” said Stew Young.
By comparison, Mayor Young continues: “I wish they were more transparent, like Alberta is, as to generally where cases are so we can all be more vigilant and fight this disease where it starts and wear masks in public and especially at checkouts where plexiglass can’t be installed. Any masks are good — even homemade will be better than nothing. N95’s should of course be reserved for frontline workers.”
Experiences on the retail front line:
If asked, many front line workers in retail will openly express their concern about safety on the job, as discovered by West Shore Voice News over the past few weeks. In some cases, they feel that the plexiglass shields — while a good idea — are not really providing effective protection, as they themselves and customers will step aside from them to pass over larger product items or to more audibly discuss the transaction. In scenarios like that, everyone is trying to do their best, but the distance between worker and customer is far less than 2 metres (6 feet) and the transaction seems to take longer as everyone is being careful, which prolongs exposure between staff and customer.
In other cases, floor signage and directional aisle markings in places like bank lobbies have not in some cases been inadequate or have been improperly placed or not enforced. Improvements over recent days have been seen, but all of it is new and stressful for pretty much everyone concerned.
Various types of frontline exposure:
While for health care workers who in a sense ‘signed up for’ the importance of the work that they do with people’s personal health and are trained to a high degree in the science related to their profession, there is a sense at the retail level that these frontline workers — many of them young (and often predominantly female) — have suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in a highly dangerous line of work, without adequate prepration.
While some larger chains like Loblaws (which owns Shoppers Drug Mart) has provided some wage increases during COVID-19, that does not seem to override the palpable fear that some retail staff is experiencing in any number of stores in the Greater Victoria area.
Likely more people will shift to having groceries delivered. From a business perspective, that shifts the business playing field to stores that have the capacity to provide online shopping and the staffing to provide delivery over a large region. Some consumer sectors — such as seniors — may not have budgets that can accommodate the cost of delivery, and at the very least often have a learning curve for how to shop remotely.
In Langford where retail is an important component of the normally-robust local economy, it seems to be the city’s desire to keep stores open in a safe manner, both for customers and the businesses themselves. The now-suspended Langford bylaws were only a way to try and enforce that, but apparently businesses also pushed back. All of this is new territory in which all parties are very likely trying their best.
COVID-19 initiatives in Langford:
Yesterday the City notified local businesses through an email sent out by the West Shore Chamber of Commerce about the suspension of bylaws that would have seen fines of $500 per infraction for things like not having signage, floor markings, and plexiglass shields in place.
Langford will continue to operate its four COVID outreach vans which visit businesses around town to provide information, supplies and answer questions.
The city will continue to provide weekly email updates to Langford businesses including the Business Resource Guide for Langford businesses.