IT’S A START Ontario will begin to gradually reopen its economy on Wednesday, premier announces //
Toronto, Peel Region and York Region are expected to be the last to make the transition but any sudden increase in cases could delay that plan
TORONTO — Ontario will begin to gradually reopen its economy on Wednesday but the government could use an “emergency brake” to move regions back into lockdown if cases spike.
Premier Doug Ford said Monday that a state of emergency will be allowed to expire as scheduled on Tuesday and regions will transition back to the province’s colourcoded pandemic restrictions system over the next three weeks.
A stay-at-home order will remain in place for communities until they move over to the tiered system.
“We can’t return to normal, not yet,” Ford said. “But we can transition out of the provincewide shut-down.”
As part of its reopening efforts, the province is changing the rules for the strictest category of the restrictions system to allow previously closed retailers to reopen with capacity limits of 25 per cent.
“To those business owners who are struggling, I want you to know that we have listened,” Ford said. “We’ve been working day and night to find every possible way to safely allow more businesses to reopen.”
Three health units — Hastings Prince Edward; Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington; and Renfrew County — will move into the least-restrictive green category on Wednesday, which means restaurants and non-essential businesses can reopen.
The Timiskaming Health Unit, which was also expected to move to the green category Wednesday, will be held back for a week since a COVID-19 variant was discovered in the region over the weekend, the province said.
On Feb. 16, all remaining regions except three hot spots in the Greater Toronto Area are set to move to the restrictions framework. The category they are placed in will depend on their local case rates.
Toronto, Peel Region and York Region are expected to be the last to make the transition on Feb. 22, but the province said any sudden increase in cases could delay that plan.
The province will also have an “emergency brake” in place to allow the government to quickly move a region back into lockdown if it experiences a rapid increase in cases or if its health-system becomes overwhelmed.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said the measure is meant to help deal with the risk posed by new variants of COVID-19.
“This is not a reopening, or a return to normal,” she said of the changes announced Monday.
“It’s an acknowledgement that we are making steady progress.”
A provincial lockdown was imposed in late December and was followed by the state of emergency and a stay-at-home order that took effect Jan. 14 as COVID-19 rates surged.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath criticized the Ford government for not putting measures in place to make the reopening safe, including more paid sick days for workers and COVID-19 testing in the workplace.
“Without those stronger public health measures, (Ford) might be dooming us to the cycle of illness and lockdowns, again and again,” she said.
Green party Leader Mike Schreiner said the government has failed to provide small businesses with a safe pathway to reopening.
Schreiner called for more testing, contact tracing and provincially paid sick days to prevent workplace outbreaks. “If we want to have any hope of reopening the economy and keeping it open, we must make our workplaces safe,” he said.
Canadian consumer insolvencies fell last year to the lowest level in two decades, as government support measures and creditor deferral programs allowed borrowers to keep making monthly payments.
There were 96,458 filings in 2020, the lowest since 2002, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada reported Friday. That’s down 30 per cent from 137,178 consumer insolvencies in 2019, the largest one-year decline in records back to 1987.
The drop in bankruptcies represents perhaps the starkest metric for what has been the biggest economic surprise over the past year: the sharp improvement of Canadian household finances during the pandemic.
Income support from the federal government and payment holidays from lenders kept Canadian households from fraying during the worst months of the pandemic, even as more than three million people were thrown out of work. Official data from Statistics Canada showed disposable income and savings rates actually increased during the lockdowns.
“With households having more income on average, that accounts for a lot of this diminution in activity,” André Bolduc, executive board member at the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals, said in a phone interview. “But in addition to that, creditors were not enforcing, people were getting deferrals.”
But there are indications things may be gradually returning to normal. Fourth-quarter insolvencies jumped 13 per cent from the three months before that, the largest quarterly increase since 2009.
The federal government has been paring back transfers and creditors are becoming less lenient toward missed payments.
The data also show business filings were down sharply in 2020, plunging 24 per cent from a year earlier to 2,786.
Alberta’s baseball talent pipeline continues to flow east to Niagara.
The Welland Jackfish announced Monday they have signed Dane Tofteland, 24, of Grande Prairie for the 2021 Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) season.
Jackfish general manager Jason Mckay described the sixfoot-four, 190-pound righthanded batter as a “big, athletic player who is equally comfortable at first (base) or in the outfield. Giving the coaching staff another middle-lineup bat with power to put forth our best lineup on any given night was our goal.”
Tofteland hit .237, with 13 homers, 15 doubles and 60 RBIS in four years playing Division 1 baseball at Indiana State University. In his final season at the Terre Haute school in 2019, he hit five homers, three doubles and had 18 RBIS.
He homered twice, drove in eight runs and averaged .193 during the summer of ’19 in 21 regular-season and eight playoff games in the Western Canadian Baseball League with the Alberta-based Okotoks Dawgs.
Tofteland is the second Albertan to commit to the Jackfish in as many months. Ben Runyon, a 29-year-old right-handed pitcher from Edmonton, signed with the team in January after compiling a 3-1 mark and 2.10 earned-run average for the Dornbirn Indians in the Austrian elite league last summer.
The IBL, Canada’s oldest independent baseball league, hopes to get back on the diamond for a 36-game schedule starting in June, after the 2020 season was cancelled due to COVID-19.