Harry Rai cooks one of his popular Indian dishes. The restaurateur is calling on everyone in the province to count their blessings they're not facing the fatal challenges being experienced in India. (Instagram/Kashmerestoon)

By Glenn Hicks

covid-19

P.A. restaurateur warns against anti-COVID measure ‘callousness’

May 12, 2021 | 8:00 AM

It may be 11,000 kilometres away but the desperately tragic COVID-19 situation in India is close to home for a Prince Albert man.

Spice Trail restaurant owner Harry Rai, whose family hails from the north of India, is, like the rest of the planet, deeply shocked by the daily images of despair: parks and vacant land overflowing with the dead waiting for quick cremation, oxygen shortages at hospitals, and people dying in line as they try to get medical help.

Rai has a strong message for anyone who thinks social distancing and public health orders here at home are a deprivation of freedom.

Your interactions, your callousness, it carries a toll _{– Harry Rai, restaurant owner/operator}

“Just compare how blessed you are that you are in Saskatchewan where you have space and you can isolate,” he told paNOW, noting India has over 1.3 billion people on a land mass one third the size of Canada, which is home to a meagre 38 million people by comparison. Social distancing in India is virtually impossible.

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“And people are complaining about isolating [here]? God bless you,” he said.

Rai explained he has lost family members and best friends to COVID-19 in India and blamed what he called “complacency, callousness and casualness” for the horrific second wave numbers that have seen 23 million cases and over 240,000 deaths so far. On Tuesday alone there were 390,000 new cases, including 3,876 more deaths. Experts figure these cases are vastly undercounted.

Parks and vacant land have been turned into cremation areas to deal with the mounting deaths. (The Canadian Press)

Rai is certainly not alone in having lost someone to COVID-19—in Canada, India or elsewhere—and he struggles to understand how some people can protest against the health regulations.

“Your interactions, your callousness, it carries a toll. I’ve lost family members, try and understand that,” he said. “We in Saskatchewan are blessed with space and we fight against [the health orders]?” he questioned.

Penalties and consequences

So-called ‘Freedom protests’—including one in Prince Albert with participants rejecting face masks and the seriousness of the pandemic—have sparked widespread reaction and even repercussions for some participants.

A Saskatoon police officer who attended a ‘children’s freedom rally’ in Saskatoon in late April later resigned from his job, and a janitor who attended the protest in P.A. and elsewhere no longer works for the school division that employed him.

Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party of Canada spoke to a packed, maskless crowd in Regina Saturday, breaking public health rules and encouraging others to do the same. More than a dozen tickets were issued afterwards, and police are still investigating others who were present.

The opposition NDP has called for minimum fines of $10,000 and the creation of a specific offense for those who organize a protest in contravention of public health measures. NDP Deputy Leader Nicole Sarauer says the fines of $2,800 currently being handed out are not a sufficient deterrent.

However, the provincial government has pointed out the maximum fine under the Public Health Act is already $75,000 for an individual, and Justice minister Gord Wyant has said, “ law enforcement has an intimate knowledge of the range of penalties that they can enforce with respect to breaches of the Public Health Act.”

With files from The Canadian Press and CKOM.

–

glenn.hicks@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @princealbertnow