Delta wants to see a return to sport as quickly as possible.
That’s the message from Mayor George Harvie and city manager Sean McGill following a virtual Mayor’s Summit on Sports Tuesday night.
Harvie and McGill met on-line with various youth and adult community sports organizations to get an idea on their plans to allow those organizations to return to some form of play while following the COVID-19 pandemic health and safety protocols.
McGill said the meeting on Zoom was well-received.
“On the return to sport, we proactively sent out letters to all the user groups on Monday and it included a check list and what they needed on their check list to return to sport,” said McGill. “The essential key thing is they [user groups] need to have their governing body put out a return to play or safety plan, which they [user groups] need to submit to us and how they will follow that. We don’t audit that plan, but as long as they are meeting the requirements of their governing body within the provincial health orders then we will start issuing permits.”
McGill said Delta expects to get all of the organizations plans by the end of the week and should start issuing field permits by Monday.
“This is for skill development and practices, not for games yet and no contact in sports,” he added. “For contact sports like football, they can practice, but they just can’t have contact.”
Harvie said a return to organized, scheduled games will be dependent on orders from Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.
“I’d like to see youth back playing, the volunteers out volunteering and getting the spirit and much-needed exercise and relief from staying home all the time,” said Harvie. “I really feel the anxiety in Delta and in other communities across this province and across the world…we are kind of done with this pandemic, but unfortunately it is not done with us. We want to get back to normal as soon as possible, but it has to be at the permission of the governing body. We have had a couple of groups take exception to this, but this is what every city is doing and that is our legal responsibility to follow the governing body.
“I think the governing bodies overall, are doing an exceptional job of trying to get through this hard problem.”
Harvie said one sport that is really difficult is hockey.
“Any contact sports…so that is the difficulty right now,” he said. “But I must say I was extremely pleased with Premier Horgan and his government providing the insurance risk and removed that liability, so that was a huge thing to get us back to norm.”
Harvie said for all outdoor sports users, Delta fields will be ready to go within two weeks.
“We have hired back more of our temporary staff to achieve this,” he said. “With regards to the rinks, we have Tilbury Ice, and the skating club is back practicing following their organizations’ protocol and ice is in that facility year-round, but we will not be putting ice back into the other facilities until we have an idea of when they [user groups] get their approval otherwise we would have an empty building, running ice and increasing costs.”
Harvie also emphasized that all programs and services that will be reopening in the coming weeks will be restricted to Delta residents only.
“With Surrey announcing that they will be keeping a number of their facilities closed, it is important that we are Delta families first and only Delta residents have access to our facilities,” said Harvie.
