Ontario’s Labour Minister is standing behind his government’s province-wide stay-at-home order, even in areas like Chatham-Kent dealing with significantly lower cases than the COVID hot spots.
Monte McNaughton says coming from a small business background himself, he feels for retailers.
“Small businesses have borne the brunt of COVID-19, there’s no doubt about that,” McNaughton says. “But I am pleased that we’ve kept our small retail businesses open, I know it’s for curbside right now, and we did bring in new protocols for those big corporations to limit what they can supply and sell, and move a number of their products to curbside as well.”
McNaughton says the rapid spread of variants, especially the Brazilian variant, means the situation in any community can turn on a dime.
“We woke up this morning with a really frightening story out of Bruce Grey-Owen Sound, where they had day after day, zero cases of COVID .This morning they’re over 70. It’s going to be a battle to defeat this pandemic.”
McNaughton says the key to getting through the pandemic sooner rather than later is to adhere to health and safety guidelines and get everyone in Ontario vaccinated as quickly as possible.
