One small business comfortable with Manitoba reopening plan, movie theatre not so much

WINNIPEG -

Starting Saturday, retail businesses in Manitoba can increase capacity to 50 per cent as the province announced the newest round of reopening health orders Wednesday.

Black Market Provisions in South Osborne is comfortable with making the change, as the small shop has made a habit of going above and beyond public health measures.

“We feel more comfortable now because case counts are so low and vaccination rates are so high,” said owner Alana Fiks.

The shop has not let people inside since Halloween of last year. Fiks says at 25 per cent capacity only one shopper could come in at a time, so up until a few weeks ago they were doing online orders only. In the last few weeks Fiks set up an outside counter for walk-up service.

Under the next reopening phase in Manitoba, the increase is business capacity to 50 percent applies to retail, restaurants, personal services, gyms and libraries for all Manitobans. However, movie theatres have been grouped with museums and art galleries, VLT lounges, bingo halls and casinos where patrons need to be fully vaccinated to come in.

Landmark Cinema CEO Bill Walker says the vaccination requirement came as a surprise and feels it's unfair to use movie theatres as an incentive to get vaccinated.

"When it’s really not about the health and safety about what happens in a movie theatre because theatres are demonstrably one of the safest venues you can engage in from a public health assembly perspective through the pandemic," Walker told CTV News Wednesday afternoon.

Walker said the Winnipeg and Brandon Landmark Cinemas are expected to open Saturday with limited show times, but a decision still needs to be made about the Winkler location where vaccination rates are low.

The new public health orders take effect at 12:01a.m. Saturday, July 17th.