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Month: August 2021

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Under COVID-19, work-at-home has hollowed out Toronto’s core. Will it ever spring back to life?

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Prairie Girl Bakery’s fantastically flavoured cupcakes and designer confections have been longtime favourites of Toronto office workers. Before , they could be picked up for work events or on the way home from five Prairie Girl stores, including two in the underground PATH at First Canadian Place and Brookfield Place.

When COVID-19 shut down the city in mid-March, the bakery’s founder Jean Blacklock remembers thinking that her team would be back to work before the buttermilk in the kitchens expired in April.

They were naive, she says now.

It was around June that Blacklock made the decision to permanently close all but the original Prairie Girl at King Street East and Victoria Street. It is extremely busy, she said, in part because the company’s treats can be boxed individually for safe, distanced celebrations.

“We’re really doing very well for one store — but we had five,” said Blacklock.

“In terms of my business, people will continue to celebrate. Human nature will remain human nature. But the nature of work and where we do it, I think, is changing fundamentally,” she said.

She isn’t alone. Experts say remote work is having a profound effect on office space downtown and the businesses traditionally supported by the people who worked in them, an impact that could reshape or “rebalance” how the city’s core develops in the future.

Mayor John Tory told the Toronto Region Board of Trade last week that he is convening a group of business leaders to help address the long-term effects of the pandemic on downtown. Without minimizing the challenges to main street and suburban business, he said “there’s more at stake” in the core, where the office towers are now only 10 per cent occupied.

“If the whole thing goes into a massive decline then you have a much bigger collective impact on one small area that is important to the Toronto, Ontario and national economy,” said Tory.

According to new data from the board, work in the accommodation and food-service sectors accounts for almost 40,000 jobs or eight per cent of all employment in the core — but has the lowest capacity for remote work of all industries, at just one in 20 jobs.

The figures, found in the board’s regional recovery playbook, Shaping our Future, show that in terms of the current use of commercial space in the city core during the pandemic, about 68 per cent of jobs have the capacity for remote work.

“That’s almost 350,000 jobs having a high capacity for remote work…So that’s a significant amount of traffic that the downtown is not seeing,” said Marcy Burchfield, vice-president of the Board of Trade’s Economic Blueprint Institute.

According to its study, the sectors with the highest capacity for remote work are finance and insurance, which account for 115,875 downtown jobs. About 96 per cent of those industries have the capacity/opportunity for at-home work. The 89,955 positions downtown in professional, scientific and technical services fields aren’t far behind at 88 per cent.

Meanwhile, the study shows that the third- and fourth-largest sectors in terms of downtown employment do not have a high capacity for remote work. The health-care and social-assistance fields account for 46,780 jobs in the core — but just 29 per cent can be done remotely.

Accommodation and food-service jobs downtown might not shift to working from home, but the trend may well impact them all the same. Positions “in food service and retail are directly related to the demand generated by having people coming into downtown for work,” notes the study.

Prairie Girl’s Blacklock doesn’t think big downtowns like Toronto will ever be the same. Companies have become too adept at managing with much of their workforce at home.

“When this is over and it’s no longer a public health crisis why would they return? I think it’s moved beyond a public health crisis into a repositioning of where people work,” she said.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Toronto’s PATH system, the vast underground network of commercial and walking space. Pre-COVID on any weekday — especially around lunchtime and after work — you could find packed corridors filled with people grabbing meals, shopping, coming to or from their jobs and using transit stops connected to the network.

These days those corridors are empty.

“The term, ‘perfect storm,’ though clichéd, is not far off as it applies to the PATH,” said Karl Littler, vice-president of public affairs for the Retail Council of Canada. “You have an absence of office workers — far more people are working from home as was the case before. The number of people working from home is five times as high as it was in pre-COVID times. There are no tourists or next to none. University and college students are at home.

“Take all of that and you have an obvious foot traffic problem.”

The apparel industry for example — clothing, shoes, accessories — has taken a drubbing. Littler said the apparel industry has in the last four months lost $7 billion in Canada, which suggests about $500 million in losses in Toronto.

“What’s in the PATH in Toronto? A lot of apparel,” he said.

If even a fraction of those Toronto jobs shifted home don’t ever return to the core, there is the potential for a “profound re-balancing of growth” where growth is no longer concentrated in denser urban centres across the region, the Board of Trade study concludes.

What’s clear, said Littler, is we’re going to see some net shift from Toronto to the suburbs as far as shopping — simply by virtue of remote working.

Burchfield said experts are predicting that “dispersed development” as opposed to concentrated growth in urban centres like Toronto. If remote work takes hold, she said, offices may need to provide different uses — some people are talking about child care or possibly affordable housing.

So far, downtown office rents are holding steady in Toronto, according to a third-quarter report released by commercial real estate company CBRE on Tuesday. But the vacancy rate rose in that period to 4.7 per cent, from 2.7 per cent in the second quarter.

Thirty-six per cent of all the vacant space downtown is sublet space, which rose 136 per cent quarter over quarter as companies — many of them technology based — re-evaluated their office requirements, said the report.

Chuck Scott, CEO of commercial real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield Canada, is not predicting the demise of the office. In fact, his company expects Toronto’s need for office space will expand once the pandemic passes.

“The office will always be there. It’s just going to be rethought and part of an overall workplace eco-system,” said Scott.

Companies will reassess their footprint as home-based work takes its place in that eco-system. But that will be offset by the need to provide more square footage for workplace physical distancing — a reversal of the recent trend toward denser offices, Scott said.

“We’re going to see vacancy rise and rents softening in the near term,” said Scott. “But long term, we see the demand (for office space) growing.”

Cushman and Wakefield’s Global Office Impact Study & Recovery Timing report, released on Tuesday, forecasts asking rents for office Canadian office space will start to soften by the end of this year and will decline 5.5 per cent from the peak by the end of 2021. Office employment, though, is forecast to recover by the second quarter of next year, with rents anticipated to recover by the third quarter of 2022.

Toronto will continue attracting “an outsize share” of tech-sector jobs, according to the report.

“From 2022 to 2030 we’re actually expecting office demand to grow by just over 53.9 million square feet in Canada. That’s in spite of a 14.5 per cent drag we’re expecting from the impact of work from home,” said Scott.

Toronto went into the pandemic with record low vacancies and a reputation for attracting top talent. That, he said, will sustain it through the pandemic challenges.

When it comes to attracting global retailers and luxury brands, Toronto also compares favourably to some other global cities, said Arlin Markowitz, senior vice-president at CBRE. Canada’s handling of the pandemic and its relative stability look attractive even next to hot markets like New York or Miami, he said.

Markowitz, who heads up CBRE’s urban retail team, said his group has set up 28 retail leases in the last 60 days, most for service stores — banks, grocers, dentists and cannabis shops.

“In dense neighbourhoods people still need veterinarians, a dentist, a take-out coffee shop, people still want fast food,” he said.

And while the PATH has been hard hit, Markowitz said there are sparks of interest by luxury retail brands in space in the Bloor St.-Yorkville area.

Some businesses think they can scoop a discount because of COVID, he said, “and frankly, that’s what they’re doing.”

However, small is “the flavour of the month” among retailers, he added, suggesting some are leasing spaces as tight as 700 sq. ft.

And while enclosed shopping malls may be struggling, suburban strip plazas have advantages, said Markowitz.

“In the past 10 years the narrative has been urban — the suburbs are dead and all that. Now some of those suburban centres are looking very attractive,” he said. “People like the idea of pulling up to a strip plaza, parking right in front of the store they want to go to. You put on your mask and you get out.

“Retail always finds a way to evolve,” said Markowitz. “Whether it’s cannabis consumption lounges or stationary bikes and treadmills, there’s always going to be a new kid on the block.”

Although Toronto’s core has seen profound changes, the waterfront has managed to maintain almost as much foot traffic as last summer despite the absence of tourism, said Tim Kocur, executive director of the Waterfront Business Improvement Area (BIA).

As part of its pedestrian count, the BIA did a snap survey asking people why they had come. “Of the 100 we asked, 62 gave postal codes that were Dundas Street or south — so a 30-minute walk. Two-thirds of people were actually from downtown and were just spending more time on the waterfront this year,” he said.

The business community plans to build on that local interest by planning events such as public art installations, that add excitement but don’t encourage gathering.

“There’s definitely worry because we can’t fully understand the future so it’s hard to forecast how well we’ll be doing in a year or two,” said Kocur.

But waterfront businesses are optimistic about the area’s “bounce-back potential,” he said.

“We’re hoping that Toronto will actually be even more of a waterfront city because this has been one of the prime destinations for people who couldn’t get out of town.”

Correction – Oct. 2 – This story has been updated to correct the name of Jean Blacklock

Tess Kalinowski is a Toronto-based reporter covering real estate for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

Donovan Vincent is a housing reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter:

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Bruce Arthur: Doug Ford gives up on Halloween, and even epidemiologists say this message will haunt us

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Time to egg Queen’s Park. Ontarians could TP it, but we can’t risk toilet paper shortages again. If we can learn lessons from this pandemic, we should.

But now that Ontario in the province’s four COVID-19 hot zones — Toronto, Ottawa, Peel and York — we should consider why that decision is being taken, and what we haven’t learned.

“I understand the intention, and I don’t think there are more people more concerned about the epidemiological situation than I am,” says Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network. “But there is no reason why this cannot be done in a safe manner.”

Living life safely and as normally as possible is, even , the goal of public health. For months we have been told to get outdoors, maintain social distance, stick to our immediate family units in serious situations such as this one, and wear masks.

Which sounds a hell of a lot like Halloween.

“It’s like the worst PR moves you can possibly construe for a public health movement that is suffering badly to maintain public confidence,” says Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, an infectious disease specialist and ICU doctor at Toronto Western Hospital. “I’m sure what they’re thinking is we’ll be the stewards of caution, we’ll be extra-safe … I look at it from the point of view that you’ve given people a lot of poor messaging, you didn’t exercise restraint when you needed to, and now you’re taking away something that multiple experts deem safe.”

It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a mess. Ontario didn’t close strip clubs until Sept. 25, opened the casinos on Sept. 28, left spin classes open until after the Hamilton super-spreader event, and has agonized over and waited too long to close businesses even when it’s clear they can be venues of transmission. Heck, it just reopened indoor dance studios.

Oh, and our kids are still jammed in schools. Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health, said schools did not appear to be significantly contributing to community spread. So why would Halloween? We should be able to make this safe.

“If you think about risk and risk reduction, we have — what, two million kids in schools?” says Morris. “Where we have them sitting in a classroom all day, masked, static, indoors. And we’re suggesting that having likely a smaller collection, outdoors, and again, we should be doing this masked. And encouraging them to do small groups, outdoors; to me, this is not a good balance of the risks and benefits. And once again I think we are unfairly targeting kids here.”

Nobody, anti-maskers and the White House perhaps aside, wants more people to get the virus. So what are we worried about, exactly? People opening their doors to 100 people, said Premier , or rummaging in a bowl or bag of candy, or lining up to get into apartment buildings. Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer of health, said he worried about people congregating on sidewalks and exchanging candy.

De Villa spoke about people coming together. Dr. Lawrence Loh, Peel’s medical officer of health, said “(I) agree that if perfectly done, the risk can be minimized. The reality, much like mask wearing, is that it’s not likely this will be perfectly done.”

The entire provincial strategy has been about assuming people will follow rules, and now they seem to assume nobody will. Getting the virus from surface transmission is less and less likely: the first real-world evidence of this involved someone wiping their nose and touching an elevator button, and another man picking his teeth and doing the same. There’s a reason we reopened the playgrounds, right?

And Halloween seems purpose-built to be safe, with just a little effort. Give out candy outside, without getting too close. Use tongs, a tube, a slingshot, whatever. Pre-wrap gift bags. Keep to your family only. Keep your distance. We’ve been doing it for seven damned months.

“It’s not like kids are going to congregate in a huddle on the sidewalk like it’s a football game, with masks off, exchanging candy,” says Sharkawy. “That’s not how trick-or-treating happens. Every parent who takes their kids out knows: they’re going to scuttle from house to house. The risk is that they come inside.”

“Everyone knows how to line up and physically distance in our society, right?” says Morris. “There’s no reason we can’t do this here. I’m extremely disappointed by this.”

Look, the province was two to four weeks late in imposing restrictions. Testing was allowed to crash into a reset that may still be muddying the data. It’s unclear if the chief medical officer of health understands some fundamental things about the virus, much less Halloween. We are doing better than we have a right to, in Ontario.

But cancelling Halloween is indicative of the lack of a coherent plan, or coherent communication, or perhaps even fundamental understanding of what we are facing. It we can learn lessons from this pandemic, we should. Get outta here with telling kids to dress up and go on Zoom or whatever.

“The problem with the vernacular that they’re using is it almost invites people to say FU,” says Sharkawy. “I mean, I heard this, and I was frustrated, and I am the most conservative person (on safety) you will meet. I cancelled my kid’s 10-year-old birthday party. All my close friends hate me because I’ve been in Stage 2 for the last four months. And I am saying this is overkill, and you’re going to lose public favour, and create more acrimony, and take more away when there’s no science behind it, no basis. This is an optics decision, 100 per cent.

“We have got to win the battles that we need to, to not extinguish their resolve, their hope.”

This pandemic has been a long, hard time, and now winter is coming. It has taken so much away. Halloween was one we could keep, and even win. The province can still change this. We can still make this safe. We should, at the very least, try.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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‘It’s like, wow, it’s real now’: Orillia swim coach on recreation facility

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

When the city opened its long-awaited recreation centre on the morning of Oct. 26, it wasn’t the splashy event that one would have expected after years of anticipation.

With a pandemic underway and strict safety protocols in place, the municipality is gradually phasing in its use to protect visitors and staff from the spread of COVID-19.

The typical splash of an opening-day celebration was instead replaced by the sound of Orillia Channel Cats Swim Club members slicing through the waters of the new eight-lane pool.

“It’s pretty amazing,” head coach Meredith Thompson-Edwards told Simcoe.com. “It’s like, wow, it’s real now.”

Just as the city is phasing in use of the building, the Orillia Channel Cats are likewise taking a go-slow approach.

The club is limiting the number of members in the pool at one time and dividing the pool into four, double-sized lanes to allow for greater distance between swimmers.

“With the Y closing, we haven’t been able to train at all,” Thompson-Edwards said. “We have done some dry land (training) to keep them as active as they can, but to actually dive in, they were pretty excited.”

For the time being, the building at 255 West St. S. will be open to the public for time slots at the fitness centre, pre-registered drop-in aquatics, fitness and sports programming, registered programs, and user groups.

The gradual approach to opening includes modified schedules to allow for monitoring of building capacity, proper cleaning protocols and contact tracing.

All participants must arrive dressed and ready for their program of choice, as change rooms are not currently available.

Masks must be worn in common areas and in designated programs.

The facility’s opening represents “a pivotal point” for the community, Mayor Steve Clarke said.

“Although the opening is very different than we had imagined, and there will be no grand opening celebration – yet – this facility is something the entire city can be extremely proud of,” Clarke added.

Memberships, known as ‘Fun Passes’ can be purchased through the city’s online portal, , which also serves as the registration point for drop-in programming.

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Police said no foul play involved in the drowning death of missing Bradford teen, Siem Zerezghi

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

South Simcoe Police have confirmed the body found in a pond Oct. 30 was Siem Zerezghi, the missing teenager from Bradford. 

Siem’s death was due to drowning, Chief Andrew Fletcher said at a news conference held at the Bradford Leisure Centre at 471 West Park Ave. Nov. 2. 

“This was not the ending we had hoped for,” Fletcher said.

Siem was missing since Oct. 24, and was last seen at around 7:45 a.m. in his neighbourhood in the area of Professor Day and Northgate drives. 

During a “large scale” search that involved SSP’s ATVs and drone, and policing partners including York Regional and Ontario Provincial police, searchers found some of Siem’s items near a pond about 100 m away from his home at 8th Line and Professor Day. 

“Every possible resource was utilized for this investigation,” Fletcher said. 

Fletcher said Siem’s jacket and one of his flip flops were found in mud on the bank near the pond. 

OPP Marine Unit was called in to search the pond and found Siem’s body. 

Following an autopsy, police said there is no foul play involved in Siem’s death. 

Fletcher said he doesn’t believe Siem knew how to swim.

The reason for Siem going to the pond that day is still under investigation. Police said they know Siem would often walk to his aunt’s house nearby, but he did not go there the day he went missing. 

“We haven’t been able to determine why he left that morning,” Fletcher said. 

Siem was a very private, quiet person who did not tell people about his plans, Fletcher said.

That morning, Siem’s father was at work. 

Based on the information police have, they are unable to determine his movements the day he went missing, Fletcher said, adding the investigation continues as they try to obtain more video footage. 

Many members of the community who took to Facebook wrote their concerns, questioning why an Amber Alert was not issued the day of Siem’s disappearance. 

Fletcher said they were not permitted to use an Amber Alert, which is only used for people who go “missing in suspicious circumstances early on in the investigation and it’s usually in the case where we have an abduction or a child removed from a home, we have a vehicle or a person, we have something to go on. That was not the criteria for this investigation.”

Fletcher said his team and policing partners involved in the search for Siem will be grieving the outcome, but are “thankful” to have found his body, as it provides the family and investigators with some closure. 

Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Rob Keffer also attended the news conference and said the support from the community was “heartwarming”. 

“This certainly isn’t the outcome we were wanting but we are here to support one another, Siem’s loved ones and family get through this very trying time,” Keffer said. 

“I am very proud of my community for the support they have showed.”

On Nov. 1, the community gathered at the library and held a candlelit walk in Siem’s memory. Siem’s family also attended. The walk was organized by a member of the community. 

A , also created by a member of the community, was created to support the family. More than $30,000 has been raised so far. 

On Oct. 29, .

“Please Siem, your family loves you, miss you. Please come home, Siem,” his eldest sister, Ruta, 21, said.

Siem also had a twin sister. 

The family and community were hopeful for Siem’s return. Many stores across Bradford hung posters of him when he was missing. 

Police said the family is “understandably” devastated at this time, and ask for their privacy, while feeling grateful for the outpouring of support from the community. 

SSP asks anyone with information to contact the force at , or , or Crime Stoppers at . You can also submit information online at .

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Heather Mallick: Are businesses worth more than human lives? In Doug Ford’s Ontario, the answer is yes

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Thanks largely to Premier Doug Ford’s intransigence, Ontario COVID-19 cases are rising so fast that a moral catastrophe threatens, prefaced by a series of shocks. It’s not just that , a frightening number, but that it will trend far higher than hospitals’ capacity to care for patients.

As the Star has reported, within two weeks hospital intensive care units will likely see 150 COVID-19 patients, which means that non-emergency surgery for people with cancer, heart and other conditions will have to be delayed again. The backlog from the last delayed surgeries will not clear. It will build.

The modelling suggests there will be “at least 400 such patients requiring intensive care, which is above the level of 350 where officials have previously warned it becomes ‘virtually impossible’ to perform non-emergency surgeries.”

People will die because of these delays. Just as families were heartbroken by not being at a loved one’s side before or at the point of death, families will suffer even more not knowing if a stricken relative could have been saved. Their bitterness and sorrow will be extreme.

But another shock could follow. If hospitals are overrun with cases, they will have to ration care, judging which patients will get possibly life-saving care and which will be left to die. Normally, according to the rules of triage, the sickest patients are treated first.

With intensive care units overwhelmed, triage might change. A very ill patient might be advised to accept death while a younger or less stricken patient might still have a chance.

Here’s where the real pain begins: a patient might have COVID-19 because they had fewer life chances in the first place. They were poor, ill-nourished, unable to speak English well, worked in a public-facing job or a careless workplace. Or they might just be a bad bet because of age or mental health or other factors that were impossible to alter.

When people begin to die for that reason, families do not get over it. That’s when the rage begins, a permanent anger at inbuilt unfairness, at a government that thought a business’s health was worth more than human health. The obvious answer is to pay businesses to stay closed in a lockdown that lasts long enough to hack at terrible rates of illness.

This is not the Progressive Conservative government’s way, so much so that it initially quietly altered the numbers provided by science to the number preferred by the government. , Public Health Ontario had provided numbers for the threshold at which “red” control, the second-highest level of restrictions, would kick in. They were 25 cases per 100,000 people and a lab test positivity rate of 2.5 per cent.

. On Friday it backed down after public furor and set the numbers at 40 cases per 100,000 with a positivity rate over 2.5 per cent, placing Toronto, Hamilton and other regions in the red control zone. If it weren’t for good journalism …

, overseen by an ethics committee from a government agency, suggested that in the worst case emergency, those with less than a 75 per cent chance of survival should be denied medication and care by ventilator.

If that is untenable, many more . Is quality of life considered? Should it be? Would people be asked to volunteer, and could they feel pressured?

Here’s the most shocking part, which will arrive perhaps next year. All this terrible fear and pain is a rehearsal for what happens when a successful vaccine arrives. Who will get it first? Presumably health-care workers and those, like the elderly and ill, who are already more vulnerable to COVID-19.

But after that, the classifications become more difficult. If there aren’t enough vaccines — people in Toronto have found even flu vaccines difficult to obtain — how will they be distributed?

I assume it will be done fairly badly, given that it is almost impossible to do well. No decision will please everyone, or even smaller cohorts. The anger people will feel as they see others get the vaccine ahead of them will be extraordinary. What is worrying is that the rage might be permanent.

It will leave some people forever free from goodwill. Look at the anti-maskers, furious over a wee, temporary, harmless bit of cloth. See unmasked men glaring on the Toronto subway, itching to start a fight.

How will they feel when they finally realize that death is stepping into the bright light, and making its choices? I say “feel” because they won’t think. They will lash out against logic, science and moral codes.

Life ends. If we all rage against the dying of the light, imagine the rage against those whose light will not die, while yours very likely will.

Times like these might cause mass resentment and moral disintegration in a once-civil society. Next year will test us sorely.

Heather Mallick is a Toronto-based columnist covering current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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Doug Ford imposes 28-day lockdown in Toronto and Peel Region

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

With COVID-19 infections going up, Toronto and Peel Region are locking down.

As Ontario topped 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, Premier Doug Ford moved Friday to impose the most severe pandemic restrictions since the spring.

The two GTA hot spots will move to a 28-day “lockdown” on Monday morning, prompting concerns there’s nothing to stop residents from going to neighbouring York or Halton regions to get around closures of barber shops, gyms, outdoor dining and more.

Ford called the decision “a difficult but necessary step” after weeks of new highs in COVID-19 cases that threaten to overwhelm hospitals and further endanger nursing homes and schools.

“The situation is extremely serious,” a grim-faced Ford told reporters.

He urged shoppers to “please avoid panic buying right now” in a nod to shortages of toilet paper last March and April.

While schools and child-care centres will remain open, restaurants and bars in Toronto and Peel Region will be restricted to takeout food and booze only, with all patios closed.

Similarly, many stores will permitted to operate only with curbside pickup or delivery. There are exceptions for supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, and dollar stores and big box retailers that sell groceries, as well as beer, wine and liquor stores, safety supply stores and convenience stores.

Stores that are allowed to remain open will be limited to 50 per cent capacity, raising the possibility of a return to lineups.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the lockdown will be “devastating” to small operators deemed not essential, especially with the Christmas holidays approaching.

“That large department stores can be open while small retailers are forced to close during the busiest season of the year is a direct punch in the gut,” it said.

Malls can stay open, but non-essential stores within them must stay closed to customers, although they can offer curbside pickups. That could lead to “chaos” in parking lots, said NDP deputy leader Sara Singh.

Indoor organized public events and social gatherings will be limited to members of the same household, but seniors will be permitted to have “exclusive, close contact with one other person.”

Outdoor social gatherings will be limited to a maximum of 10 people. The same limit applies to weddings, funerals and religious services, indoors or outdoors, with safe physical distancing.

“I don’t like to use the words ‘bring down the hammer,’ but people have to abide by this,” said Ford, warning that scofflaws face fines from $750 to $10,000.

Personal care services such as barbers and salons will be closed, as will casinos and bingo halls. Housekeepers and nannies are allowed.

Indoor sports and recreational facilities, including pools, will be temporarily shut just two weeks after gyms in Toronto and Peel Region were allowed to reopen under increased restrictions.

Opposition parties and doctors said Ford should have acted sooner, given the 1,418 new cases reported Friday and last week’s computer modelling that forecast Ontario could see 6,500 cases a day by mid-December.

“The premier was warned over and over again that this is where our province was headed, but he cancelled (previous) public health measures too soon,” Singh said.

Dr. Gerald Evans, chair of infectious diseases at Queen’s University and a member of the science table advising the government, said Ford’s move was a week or two late, and that he should extend the restrictions into the new year.

“Opening up just before Christmas just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Evans told the Star from Kingston, saying the lockdown is a much-needed signal to people that “this is getting really bad.”

Ford said Friday that the government is “going to see how it goes after the next four weeks.”

Earlier Friday, called on Ford to lock down York Region in addition to Peel Region and Toronto, and to impose travel bans from the hot zones after weeks of “dithering half-measures” that allowed COVID-19 to spread rapidly.

York Region has asked to stay out of lockdown, but is pushing the province to impose capacity limits on its malls and stores to prevent throngs of frustrated shoppers from Toronto and Peel Region from flooding in.

“We are hopeful the province will act on our request,” said Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti, who urged residents of Toronto and Peel to stay away from family, friends and stores in York Region.

Ontario’s chief medical officer said residents of areas with higher restrictions should not to go to areas with lower levels of public health measures, but admitted that the recommendation would be tough to enforce.

“We are going to be trusting and confident the public will do the right thing,” Dr. David Williams told reporters.

Rocco Rossi, president and CEO of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, called for clear directives from all levels of government.

“We have heard clearly from our members with respect to confusing and inconsistent public health guidelines; a lack of testing and tracing capacity, insufficient data on the sources of community spread. and a lack of timely and accessible supports for business” Rossi said.

is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter:

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Susan Delacourt: Justin Trudeau is still selling pandemic safety, but the marketplace is increasingly hostile

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

The next crucial weeks in the COVID-19 crisis would be a lot easier if Canadians really were the people in the old joke about the swimming pool.

The joke: “How do you get a bunch of Canadians out of a swimming pool?” Punchline: “You say: ‘Canadians, please get out of the pool.’”

While medical science is scrambling to find something to save us from this virus, the more pressing need right now is to find something to save us from ourselves.

There is no vaccination against risky behaviour — and unlike the COVID-19 vaccine, one won’t arrive in 2021. So politicians and public health leaders are currently plunged into an instant, on-the-job course in mass behavioural science for a pandemic-weary population.

Justin Trudeau, back on his front step on Friday to address Canadians, more or less admitted that he and other political leaders are figuring this out as they go along. What makes it worse, Trudeau acknowledged several times, is that the public is sick of hearing from him and other COVID-19 lecturers.

“I don’t want to be here, you don’t want me to be here — we’re all sick and tired of COVID-19,” Trudeau said. He talked of how all he had right now was his voice and his position to tell Canadians what they didn’t want to hear, from someone who uncomfortably finds himself as 2020’s holiday-wrecker.

Yes, Friday was the day for the prime minister to say that Christmas, at least as we usually know it, was “right out of the question.”

Deputy public health chief Howard Njoo was similarly, wearily candid this week in an interview with the Star’s Tonda MacCharles, explaining how COVID-19 fatigue had become the X-factor in the prolonged management of this crisis.

“Part of my learning was that we never anticipated that, let’s say even with the wearing of masks and so on, we never anticipated we’d all be doing it for so long,” Njoo said.

Trudeau also admitted on Friday that things were easier in the spring, when political leaders could stand at their podiums and wield the “blunt object” of a mass shutdown.

Now all the political practitioners are relying on a mixed and varied bag of tricks: a bit of fear here, a bit of hope there, and a “social contract” in Quebec that metes out a little taste of Christmas for those willing to pay the price of quarantine beforehand and no New Year’s afterwards.

From the outset of this pandemic, politicians have had to radically up their game in public persuasion. In normal times, governments don’t really ask a lot of citizens, beyond paying taxes and voting occasionally. Voting is even optional.

But the demands on the public are considerable during a pandemic: stay at home, wash your hands, wear a mask and, oh yes, for some of you, shut down your business and home-school your children.

This is quite a reach for politicians who are more accustomed to talking to citizens about all the great things they’re going to do for them. It’s an even bigger stretch when you’re trying to coax civil compliance out of a public that already believes it’s been asked to sacrifice too much for too long.

One principle that seems to be guiding Trudeau is the idea of voluntary compliance. The prime minister repeatedly insists that he doesn’t want to bring down the hammer of emergency legislation and on Friday, he spoke about how he was averse to making it mandatory for people to sign up for the federal COVID-19-tracing app.

“It is really important for me that it be voluntary,” he said.

Trudeau never really explains why he is so adamant on the voluntary aspect of the shutdown, so it’s not clear whether it’s a strategy or a principle, or a bit of both. One would assume that the government as a whole is looking to its previous limited experiments in behavioural change — antismoking campaigns, for instance — for some clues on getting citizens to cease self-destructive acts.

For years, politicians have been borrowing from the marketing and advertising world for clues on how to speak to citizens. (I wrote , as it happens.)

But marketers rarely have to make the big and difficult pitches that the politicians in Canada are having to make these days. Nor do they have to contend with an audience that is fatigued to the extent that Canadians are right now with COVID-19. Few sellers need to be this relentless and few buyers are this hostile to the marketplace.

It’s all a long way from the old joke about getting compliant Canadians to exit the swimming pool. But no one is trying jokes at the COVID-19 podium — at least, not yet.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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Bruce Arthur: Ontario already had a losing strategy in fighting the pandemic. Doug Ford just made it a lot worse

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

At least you’ll remember when Ontario gave up. Or maybe not, since it was timed for the day of the attention-sucking American election. Maybe that was a coincidence: the province set the new bar for COVID-19 restrictions sky-high.

But sources indicate this plan was weeks in the making, so probably not. Seven months into the pandemic Ontario praised itself for posting clear COVID-19 restriction speed limits. But they set the speed limit everywhere at 200 miles per hour, and our police force isn’t fast enough to keep up. Drive safe, everyone.

“This is throwing in the towel,” said one source familiar with the process of setting new thresholds.

“This gives us a tool that we can really react and prevent the spread when we see it going into certain regions,” said the premier, on the day he raised the bar on what constitutes spread in certain regions. “Before … everyone would start reacting when we saw the numbers going through the roof,” said Doug Ford, on the day he moved up the roof.

Ford seemed to say we are doing better per capita than Manitoba and Alberta and Quebec and the United States, so why not try to catch them?

“This is going to be very ugly,” said Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network. “We’re following the European approach here. The very first question that should be asked is in the presence of ongoing growth, how can you in any way justify loosening measures? That makes absolutely zero sense. The one thing you shouldn’t do when you’ve got a losing strategy is take on a worse strategy. Which is what they’re going to do.”

The new dashboard is colour-coded: green is great, yellow is less great, orange is worrisome, and red is what used to be Stage 2, or what Toronto, Ottawa, Peel and York are in. But now, to move a jurisdiction back from what used to be Stage 3 to Stage 2 — to close indoor dining, bars and restaurants, gyms, cinemas, etcetera — you would need 100 cases per 100,000 people per week, plus a 10 per cent positivity rate, plus several other factors, including hospitals and public health at risk of being overwhelmed.

To put the thresholds in perspective, the Star’s Ed Tubb notes two regions have gone over 100 per 100,000 per week in the entire pandemic — Haldimand-Norfolk in June, and Peel this week. Since the province ramped up testing in the spring no region has even come close to 10 per cent positivity. Ten per cent is where by not implementing restrictions until it was too late, and their hospital system is now on the verge of being overwhelmed.

So what data led to this? Ford said, weakly, “We see a little bit of a flattening. We see what’s happening in Ottawa.” Ottawa’s case counts fell in October, and have been flat over the past week.

Under this plan, nothing changes for bars, restaurants, sports and recreational facilities, meeting and event spaces, retail, personal care services, casinos, bingo halls, gaming establishments, cinemas, or performing arts facilities until the system tips from orange to red; they continue to operate with new restrictions. And bars, restaurants, casinos and gyms still have indoor service in red.

In other words, this is designed not to intervene in the economy until it’s already too late, and even then, the province reserves wiggle room, saying “decisions about moving to new measures will require overall risk assessment by the government.” Meanwhile, Ontario’s seven-day average is rising, test positivity is rising, raw testing numbers are falling, public health communication is poor, our test-trace-isolate architecture can barely handle what’s happening now in some regions, and winter’s moving in.

Look, lockdowns produce real harm, but letting the virus overrun society produces more. Three weeks ago the province’s own science table wrote, “In regions with high transmission, we therefore recommend restricting indoor activities (such as) indoor dining, banquet halls, gyms, bars, clubs and casinos.” It recommended that “additional public health measures (be) introduced if there are more than 25 new (COVID-19) infections per 100,000 people per week,” because below that, “the public health benefit of additional restrictions on indoor venues may not outweigh the consequences.”

So Ontario redefined what constituted high transmission. York, Peel and Ottawa exit Stage 2 this weekend; Toronto, which is fighting this hellaciously under the surface, is scheduled for a week after that, as if the virus respects dates.

“It’s like public health is treading water, and the premier is pushing their heads down,’” said Dr. Michael Warner, head of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital in East York. “It’s government that makes the decisions on public health, and not public health.”

Repellently, it was framed as personal responsibility. “We’re asking the public to be even more engaged on your personal risk assessment, so that you’re going to have to assess each of your settings, knowing what is there and what is in place,” said Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health. “What are you going to do, as an individual, as a family, as with your children or loved ones, to protect your loved ones? Because we want to put that decision-making over to you.”

“They’re relying on people to understand their own risk threshold, and that’s not working well, and what you’re saying now, we’re going to open up, and the perception is things are safe,” says epidemiologist Dr. Nitin Mohan, who teaches public and global health at Western University, and cofounded ETIO, a public health consulting firm. “Essentially, you’re inviting a disaster.”

Meanwhile, the people who were going to have trouble protecting themselves now have less of a chance to protect themselves. This government and contact tracing and long-term-care staffing in the summer, failed to intervene when case counts started to climb in early September, and has now decided to move the goalposts as far towards the horizon as they dare.

Maybe the slow creep of the virus to older Ontarians, and into long-term-care homes, will somehow stop. Maybe bars and restaurants and businesses don’t promote the spread of the virus as much as the world thinks. Maybe the hospitals won’t tip over. Maybe a provincial government that just chucked all its previous strategy in the name of financial health is nimble and brave enough to keep the virus that has overrun the world at bay. Maybe Ontario is special, or gets lucky. I truly hope so.

But if not, this government and its advisers own it. Because they were warned, and here we go.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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Pandemic shutters some Ontario Legion branches, while others survive with community support

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , , by shlf

With their traditional revenue streams choked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario’s Royal Canadian Legion branches are facing shortfalls of the cash they need to operate year-round. 

Fortunately, they, and the Royal Canadian Legion at-large, are adopting novel methods to raise funds for operating costs and veteran supports. Among those methods is an update to the traditional poppy campaign: cashless payment. 

Garry Pond is a war veteran and now serves as president of the Royal Canadian Legion’s Ontario Command. He said that, without the ability to rent out their event spaces, host guests in their bars and dining rooms, and plan in-person fundraisers during various stages of the province’s COVID-19 shutdowns, Ontario’s legion branches have taken a financial hit this year.

“We have some branches that are suffering, just like everybody’s suffering in our type of business,” he said. “Legion halls, hall rentals, weddings — those kinds of things we’re involved with — are suffering everywhere.”

Individual locations use funds from branch events to cover operating costs throughout the year. Without this income, Pond said, as many as six branches that were already struggling before the pandemic are in the process of closing permanently. Pond declined to say which branches were closing, but said some had struggled with shrinking memberships due to the aging-out of their members before COVID-19 struck. That remains an ongoing issue. 

“A lot of it is to do with just the nature of things, because of failing membership, and it’s related to COVID-19 in the sense that it pushed (the decline) faster,” he said. “The branches that are in trouble are branches that were in trouble before COVID-19.”

In addition to serving as a community hub, Pond said each branch has a dedicated provincial services officer who offers veterans in-person assistance benefit applications and Veterans’ Affairs paperwork.

“If the branches don’t survive, there’s nobody there to help our veterans who need assistance,” Pond said. “So it’s absolutely critical that the branches survive.”

Aside from year-round fundraising for operational costs, the Royal Canadian Legion raises funds to assist individual veterans through its annual poppy campaign, which Pond said is also suffering this year.

Funds raised through the sale of poppies are used to assist veterans with housing costs, to help match them with service dogs and to provide other forms of support. This year, the campaign has experienced a low profile because volunteers who would normally sell poppies and collect donations near the entrances of businesses aren’t able to do so. Pond also guessed people’s reluctance to carry small change due to the pandemic isn’t helping.

To soften the blow of the pandemic to its coffers, Pond said the Royal Canadian Legion has upgraded its poppy campaign to meet people where they are, by adding a contactless payment option for people looking to purchase a poppy without donating change. The Legion also offers virtual poppies supporters can  

“The poppy campaign is probably going to suffer but we’re optimistic that it’s not going to be too bad, and Canadians across the country love wearing the poppy,” Pond said.

He said individual branches have also adapted to the pandemic by hosting contests and games like “Catch the Ace” that people can participate in from home, selling takeout meals from their kitchens and launching crowdfunding campaigns.

“Our branches are doing better than I would have thought at this point in the game. They are doing well to make money however they can, and survive,” Pond said. “They’re finding ways to adapt and they’re being very diligent about how they deal with stuff. We have some branches that have done quite well with GoFundMe.”

Pond is also optimistic about the $20 million the federal government pledged to help veterans’ groups.

He urges civilians who want to support veterans to remember to donate to the poppy campaign, but said they can also support their local legion branches by becoming members. Although the Royal Canadian Legion exists to support veterans, anyone over the age of 18 can become a legion member. Annual membership dues help cover branch operating costs and keep branches open to veterans who need them.

“The best way anybody can help the legion is to become a member,” Pond said, “and help us help our veterans.”