Confusion mounts for Parents and facility managers for youth sports vax passports
Episode Stats
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166.21027
Summary
In this episode, we speak with Derek Frum, a lawyer out of Airdrie, Alberta, about the challenges faced by parents across the province when it comes to access to youth sports and access to recreational facilities for children between the ages of 12 and 17.
Transcript
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I'm Melanie Rizdin with the Western Standard and I'm talking with Derek Frum who is a lawyer out
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of Airdrie and Derek has been working on this situation that's been sort of challenging many
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families about the the access to sporting facilities to rec centers when it comes to
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youth sports so where are we at right now let's talk about the challenge first of all
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well the challenge that most parents are facing is that there's a patchwork across the province
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there's two health orders that are relevant and there's order 44 order 45 45 has to do with vaccine
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passports what we're not allowed to call vaccine passports but essentially youth sports is supposed
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to be forced into the pathway that is not the vaccine passports and the province hasn't responded
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that way many facilities have decided that they're going to defy the province and bring in rep the
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vaccine passport regardless of what the province has recommended and so parents are being denied
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access to the facility to watch their children children between the ages of 12 and 17 are
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suddenly being told they're not going to have a hockey season or you're not going to be able to
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play soccer or basketball or if your girl guides are in that facility then you're not going to be able
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to do girl guides this year unless you frequently do rapid testing at 40 or more of a time or you go and
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get vaccinated so the challenge that the well the orders that the province put forward compared to
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how the city handled that it's kind of a bit of a political war it certainly seems like it the
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province was quite clear what it said was if you want to do order 45 the vaccine passport and use the rep
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program you can if you're an eligible business but if you're out of scope you can't do it and
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in there it's explicit youth sports physical activity fitness and recreation is out of scope
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out of scope means you can't do it but yet the city decided by enacting a bylaw that it was going
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to force all eligible businesses to adopt rep and by doing so what the city has done essentially is
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told children ages 12 to 17 that they can't participate in sports or they can't participate in
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their chosen recreational activities because quite frankly testing that frequently is cost prohibitive
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and so the result will be children don't get to play children don't get to be with their friends
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so we did a story on this with the western standard about you sending legal letters to a number of these
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rec facilities and sporting facilities uh just sort of advising them of this where is that at right now
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so that was that was a very interesting endeavor is a little bit of guerrilla warfare to be honest
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many of the facilities were enacting these things what i think was illegally because they're violating
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not only the provincial order but they're also violating privacy law and potentially human rights
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legislation in the province it is a serious deal and it was done facility by facility outside of calgary
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and so we have gotten some responses most are confused because they haven't really had the
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orders explained to them very clearly and others are in agreement with us but feel like their hands
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are being forced now the other side of it is i've spoken with a number of different sporting associations
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now the sporting associations are like a hockey group or a soccer group a basketball group that uses
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the facility space and so that when the facility has decided that rep or the vaccine passport applies
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across that facility all of a sudden that association is stuck with those rules and now it's problematic
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to them because most of these associations have no interest whatsoever in adopting this sort of
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structure for their for their youth participants and so they feel like they're caught in between
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in the meantime they're also potentially incurring some legal liability for violating the contracts
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that they have with the parents who are purchasing these services from them so they're really caught
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in the middle and they're being victimized as well so where are we at with this what's next steps
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well there's a group of parents that are very interested in seeing this change and so we're working
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with that group and we're right now we're researching what we can do to help them and it may result in a court action
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and would this be a constitutional challenge it may be a constitutional challenge but i don't think it
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necessarily has to be it might just be getting the court to read the orders and forcing the government to
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comply with the law or sorry forcing the city of calgary and forcing rec facilities to comply with the law
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i'm just talking with two sports moms here about the situation that they're facing personally with the
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restrictions that are not allowing parents and children 12 and up into the rec facilities in the
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city of calgary and i'm speaking with tanya right now tanya what what has been your your experience your
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personal experience through this my personal experience i'm actually a double vaccinated person
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but my children are not vaccinated i've chosen not to vaccinate my children my 12 year old son
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uh is a hockey player he's made a double a team this year his experience is that he has to get
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rapid tested before entering any facility in calgary right now so that averages about 40 dollars twice a
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week for us to get him tested some facilities they don't allow the rapid tests either so he's forced to
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sit out for those particular practices or games that must be pretty disappointing for a young guy
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especially you said double a yes yeah double a is a you know pretty intense uh hockey for that age
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yeah he worked really hard to make the team um and then all of this kind of came down the pipeline
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just after he uh made the team so it's uh really disappointing for him if if it were um you know just
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community hockey um i probably would have made the decision to pull him out but he made such an
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effort to make this team um it's devastating for him to have to give that up and we're also speaking
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with chantelle chantelle is also a parent of a hockey player what's your experience been um i actually
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have uh four kids in different activities my oldest can't come into any of the facilities in calgary
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he's over the age of 12 um because he's unvaccinated my younger children can but i can't go in with
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them so they'll be unsupervised and so that's um not okay with me like for a six-year-old to be going in
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by themselves and that's outside of the city of calgary as well but um i know calgary is a lot
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more strict with their rules and so we we still have the kids in their activities to the
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best of our ability at this point but it does create a lot of division within the team the
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friends groups the parent groups um all of that stuff and i feel like it's just super confusing
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and for everyone honestly involved have you guys seen any bullying or uh you know that that kind of
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segregation happening with the kids i don't know if bullying would be the right word but there's
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definitely pointing out um or you know just making things aware and i wouldn't even say it's coming
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from the kids to be honest i would say it's coming from other adults any experience for you yes you see
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it uh you know amongst a team of of parents who may have different views um there's obviously um some
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kids that are vaccinated and some kids that are not vaccinated and uh the thing that bothers me the most
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is that everybody knows who you are it's it's they they make it known and there's no way to get
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around that so the the best solution in in your opinions would be if the facilities were allowed to
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go to well not participate in the rep program and allow for the the less volume or or less capacity
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and and do it in such a way that you don't have to do a proof of vaccination
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yeah that would be ideal for us for our kids to continue playing and for our parents to be involved
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in our children's sports still i think a lot of arenas are specific you know hockey arenas and it
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wouldn't be unreasonable to have a third capacity in an arena especially for a practice or even a game
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i think that the numbers that would be allowed in would be suitable for for us to continue that as
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well as the facilities to continue um allowing the sports to to continue with all the children
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anything else you want to share yeah i would say my facility did choose to go that route outside of
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the city and it's it hasn't made any difference with regards to they haven't had to turn anyone away
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right i know it would be a little bit different in the city but at the same time you know last year
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we weren't we were allowed one parent in i think if we went back to that that would make a huge difference
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um and you know we've been lucky so far that that we went that route with our facilities so and for
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the most part everyone's happy to do that so i don't understand why the city of calgary isn't
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and what facility what what township are you in indus