This morning, Tanya Owen had a live interview with Mayor Bill Given, and he answered many listener questions and concerns on COVID-19 in Grande Prairie.

We have the full interview below. Here are a few highlights.

Our first question was about how long we can expect this situation to last. 

“We’re taking our advice from professionals like Dr Deena Hinshaw. All Albertans are really listening to her through this time. And it is the Provincial government that is the regulations on limits of mass gatherings, limits on essential businesses and those sorts of things.

“So we are following their direction, and in terms of the length of time, the best available information that I’ve heard is that the province is expecting to see a peak of the outbreak in mid to late May.

“In terms of planning, I would expect, and my family is planning for having to manage for these kind of conditions until at least the end of May.

“This is a situation like we haven’t had in a hundred years, and it really is something that I think all of us are going to have to plan to have a significant amount of uncertainty over a longer time horizon.”

The mayor has some words to offer for those wondering how they can help.

“The first thing I would highlight in terms of wanting to be able to help others, if you are in a fortunate position and you are able to share, the best way, right now the most immediate way would likely be to help our local food bank.

“The food bank I think relies on a lot of people going shopping all the time, having extra, and dropping things off and as you can imagine that’s slowed down quite a bit. The food bank shelves have been really bare. There are many, many families in our region who rely not just on the Grande Prairie food bank, but all the regional food banks as well.”

For those who are wondering about events in the City this summer, the Mayor has this to offer:

“As a City, the ones that we organize, we’re in control of, we’re really re-assessing. Revolution Place, pretty early on, cancelled a number of events in their calendar, or has worked with the event promoters to postpone them, move them to different dates.

“And we’re kind of taking that on a rolling basis. There’s not a definitive end to when everything with go back to “normal” and so what we’re doing is taking it one calendar month at a time and looking out. Right now, staff are already thinking about, hey, how do we celebrate Canada Day if maybe we’re not going to be encouraging everybody to get together in one place.

“And that goes for other events, big community events we’re not the organizers of I’m sure they’re also re-assessing things, like the Grande Prairie Stompede, which is pretty early in the season. I know their board was looking pretty closely.

“The Bear Creek Folk Festival, City council was discussing our support for that event just last week. We did provide a grant for the 2020 event. But we also recognize that they may need to carry over that money if they’re not able to host the event this year.

“All event organizers are looking at this on a case-by-case basis and sort of re-assessing as we get closer and closer to event deadlines.”

Mayor Bill Given finished with some encouragement.

“If I can leave your listeners with one thing, it’s that they should be confident that their local government is working well, that the services they expect day in and day out will continue to be delivered. They should know that all of those people that work behind the scenes are well-trained for this kind of emergency and event and they should also know that they’re not alone. If they’re feeling stress or difficulty, please please reach out to somebody that you know and love for support, and offer your support to others. It’s times like this where we really get by by sticking together."