By Liam Verster

Travel Restrictions

B.C. Peace mayor seeing local economy improving under travel restrictions

May 2, 2021 | 6:00 AM

British Columbia’s travel restrictions, which prohibits non-essential travel and border crossings, has yielded some positive results for Dawson Creek and the BC Peace Region.

Mayor Dale Bumstead says Dawson Creek residents had already been limiting their non-essential travel, and over the winter when speaking with local business owners, he found that there had been an economic up-tick .

“They were seeing a lot more local shoppers, local people coming into their stores and impacting their businesses that way. So I think that the pandemic has held that normal travel that we would do, say ‘look for Saturday morning we’re going to Grande Prairie to go shopping,’ they just aren’t doing that to the same level or degree.”

“So, I don’t think that the border restrictions impacted that in any major way.”

He says the rules barring non-essential travel is helping with the local economy in northeastern B.C., as residents are sticking even closer to home and choosing to shop local.

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Bumstead adds the regulations, coupled with the vaccine rollout in the community, is also helping to bring the COVID-19 case rates down.

“People have already started to transition that habit of just going to Grande Prairie for a drive and spending the day away from home. So I think we’re starting to see that a little bit and I’m hopeful that we’re starting to see the science and the medicine impact the rate of the virus in our community certainly. We can start to look at talking about this virus in the past tense.”

While things have been going well so far for Dawson Creek, Bumstead is a little concerned about long term effects of the travel restrictions on the tourism industry. However, he says he’s optimistic that more vaccines can make it to the community and the restrictions can be eased in time for events like the rodeo in the summer.

The rules, which are set to expire on May 25, prohibits travel outside of home regions and border crossings for non-essential purposes, but does allow these kinds of travel for essential reasons like work or medical appointments.