When is it OK to leave my house? The stay-at-home order explained
Ontario has declared a provincial emergency and implemented a stayat-home order that is now in effect. You probably have questions, and we want to help.
Q What's the declaration of emergency all about? How is it different from the stay-at-home order?
A The Ontario government declared a provincial emergency under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act on Tuesday. According to the province's website, this allows the government to create and enforce emergency orders, including the stay-at-home requirement Ontarians are living under.
Meanwhile, older orders — such as one laying out rules of the ongoing provincewide shutdown — remain in force under the Reopening Ontario Act, and the government has some capacity to amend these.
Complicated, we know, but picture it like this: The provincewide shutdown is ongoing, but it has been tweaked. (Now, for example, liquor stores must close at 8 p.m.) The emergency declaration allows new orders, like the stayat-home, to be layered on top.
Q So, under the stay-at-home order, for what reasons can I leave myhome?
A The text of the order lays out 29 purposes for which someone can leave home. Otherwise, you're ordered to stay in your home at all times. You can read them all online at ontario.ca. But let's spell out some important ones: childcare (getting, giving or going to it), attending school, obtaining a variety of goods and services, doing anything necessary to respond to or avoid an imminent risk to someone's health or safety, taking children to their parents or guardians' houses, delivering goods or providing care to someone who requires support or assistance, and walking or otherwise exercising an animal.
Q What about work?
A One exception under the order is working or volunteering, where the nature of the work/ volunteering requires you to leave home, “including when the individual's employer has determined that the nature of the individual's work requires attendance at the workplace.”
The government has ordered everyone responsible for a business or organization that is open to ensure that “any person who performs work for the business or organization conducts their work remotely, unless the nature of their work requires them to be on-site at the workplace.”
Q What businesses are allowed to be open?
A Setting aside the new work-from-home requirement, the list of businesses permitted to remain open hasn't changed for the most part. The stay-at-home order allows you to leave home for an appointment at a business allowed to be open and to pick up an order at a business allowed to offer curbside pickup.
Q What about exercise?
A The order allows you to venture out for exercise. That includes using an outdoor recreational amenity permitted to be open by the province, such as a park, playground, ice rink, cross-country ski trail, or sledding hill. The City of Ottawa has confirmed that its outdoor rinks and sledding hills will remain accessible, with 25-person capacity limits and other rules in place. Q Gatherings — what's the deal? A Indoor social gatherings remain prohibited, although if you live alone you can gather with another household. The province's website says up to five people may gather outdoors as long as they can maintain two metres of physical distance and wear masks or face coverings.
Q How will enforcement work? A Under its emergency declaration, the province says police and bylaw officers will be able to disperse crowds, indoors and outdoors, and people have a duty to identify themselves when an officer has “reasonable and probably grounds” that an offence has been committed.
However, the government has said police will not have the authority to randomly stop residents on the street to ensure compliance with the stay-athome order. The set fine for not following an order is $750, and it's $1,000 for preventing others from doing so, the province says, but fines can max out at $100,000 per person.