Hospitality association president hoping against second shutdown

Jim Bence doesn’t want the province to — as he put it — go “backwards.”

Last week, the province’s chief medical health officer said if Saskatchewan has several days with more than 60 new COVID-19 cases, then there could be more economic shutdowns on the way.

The new case count Monday was 66.

“That’s really a threshold we don’t want to reach but obviously that is a threshold that has been used by many jurisdictions and certainly we would have to consider what further interventions we would have to put in place,” Dr. Saqib Shahab said Friday.

Bence, the president and CEO of the Saskatchewan Hotel and Hospitality Association, said the pandemic has been a “rough road” for the industry.

“The last thing we need is to have chipping away at the confidence of not just consumers but of our government and of the industry itself,” Bence said Tuesday.

Talking about well-publicized incidents of crowded bars and the cases that have come out of that, Bence said the vast majority of operators wake up every morning thinking about how to keep their workers and customers safe.

Bence also believes the industry has done a fantastic job mitigating the risk.

“We would just really hope — you know, hope is not a plan — but really hope that these are really sort of one-off events and we can get back to having folks get out to these different places and enjoying themselves again,” said Bence.

Bence said people — workers, employers and customers — need to take personal responsibility for what they do.

“We really need to make sure we’re doing the right things so we can reopen this economy. But it’s just going to take tough lessons like this, but let’s not (go) backwards,” said Bence.