Working through challenging times
Things change – in a global pandemic, sometimes those changes occur quickly and in unexpected ways.
Monday morning, for example, Labatt Breweries of Canada made a switch at a variety of its breweries. Its facilities in London, Ont., Edmonton and Montreal, along with the company’s Goodridge & Williams operations in Vancouver and the Mill Street Beer Hall in Toronto, started making hand sanitizer instead of beer.
Canada’s car manufacturing sector is going to try to go from making car parts to making medical devices needed during this pandemic.
Many restaurants have switched from dinein to takeout offerings and delivery services.
Sometimes, the changes are the result of business demands. Sometimes, they are to meet new government standards and regulations. And sometimes, they are simple human resource decisions – with the need for people to self-isolate after returning from some vacations, or after exposure to possible infection, there just may not be the staff for things to run smoothly.
One province may, for instance, start provincial boundary shipping inspections that slow daily transport of goods. Others might declare provincewide states of emergency, like Nova Scotia did on Sunday, which sharply curtail business operations for any companies that haven’t been declared essential.
New rules may change the number of people allowed to report to work or the conditions they work in.
And no company is immune from those changes.
At Saltwire Network, we’re working to make sure that we get timely and accurate news into the hands of readers who need as much information as we can get to them.
That said, working across several different provinces means there are different hurdles, as different provincial governments react differently and establish their own guidelines for businesses to follow.
Because of that, we have to adapt to make sure we meet all the requirements of what is, clearly, a unique and unprecedented situation. And that means meeting both the requirements of governments and of common sense as we work together to try to slow the spread of COVID-19.
We’d also like to point out that all the work from our team of Atlantic Canadian journalists is available online at our central digital news site Saltwire.com.