Premier Kenney said at a conference in Calgary on Friday afternoon that public health measures could be adjusted for the holiday season.
The announcement is expected to be made on Tuesday, December 14, the same day that the current state of emergency measures are set to expire.
Kenney said, "December 14th, the state of public health emergency will lapse, that is why we think the right time for us to potentially move forward with some modest, common sense, relaxation of measures for Christmas holidays."
At the same time, Kenney pointed out that they must be very careful as the Omicron variant is now added factor in the pandemic. " We're all concerned about the Omicron variant and we do expect there will be future waves. There will be a fifth wave at some point.[...] So we need to get our baseline numbers down to a satisfactory level for us to be able to proceed with relaxation."
Kenney said that it is another issue is to get Albertans to buy into the current health measures. He used his own family as an example, saying there would be four people gathering, all fully immunized, but from three different households. Under the current rules, they would not be allowed to gather. Kenney says, "I don't want to create a situation where we have millions of Albertans violating the rules when we are not in a current emergency situation. So, that's what we are looking at on Tuesday we will be very clear and that information will be available next week."