Regina council to hold special meeting about COVID mandates

Regina city council is set to debate how to move forward with the city’s COVID-19 restrictions.

The province announced Tuesday that the proof of vaccination requirement will be dropped on Monday and masks will no longer be required once the public health order expires at the end of the month.

The City of Regina currently has vaccine and masking requirements in order to use city facilities.

“We’ve called a meeting just in response to the province signalling that they will be lifting the public health order as of Monday morning,” Mayor Sandra Masters said. “We will be discussing what to do in response to the public health order.”

The meeting is set to take place at 1 p.m. on Friday. Residents were invited to sign up to speak as a delegation at the meeting to voice their opinions on where the city should go.

“I can tell you that into my office, I regularly hear about COVID restrictions – plus and minus (for and against). This is to make sure that even though it is a special meeting, we wanted to make sure if there were any members of the public who wanted to speak to council that we were open to delegations,” Masters said.

Saskatoon city council voted Tuesday to get rid of its vaccination requirement but still requires masking.

The recommendation being made to Regina city council is to rescind the emergency powers delegated to the city manager on April 15, 2020, remove both the proof of vaccination and masking requirements, and to return to in-person council meetings.