Ford’s focus on health is killing Ontario economy
Premier offers nothing to businesses
Comment
What has gone wrong with Doug Ford? The Ontario premier was elected on the strength of his appeal to small business owners and ordinary workers. He built his reputation with his takecharge approach in the early days of the pandemic crisis. Now, he seems paralyzed by the fear of more COVID-19 cases, unwilling to restart the economy despite the plight of millions of Ontarians who are at risk of losing their jobs and their businesses.
While other provinces delivered detailed plans to restart their economies and set dates for action, Ford spent this week floundering.
Monday, he presented a document that was nothing more than a series of empty boxes in which an economic restart plan might eventually be deposited. Tuesday, he told Ontarians schools need to remain closed to protect children. Wednesday, he announced that more day cares would open to look after the children of front- line workers, which seemed to rather undercut his statement about schools. Thursday, he released vague, generic workplace safety guidelines and announced the hiring of new inspectors to enforce rules and levy fines. Just what businesses need.
Again and again, the premier repeated that he would act slowly and cautiously for fear of endangering all that we have achieved so far. But what is that, exactly? When the provincial economy was locked down, we were told it was to prevent the healthcare system from getting overwhelmed. That made sense.
The mission has been accomplished. This week, the province’s Financial Accountability Office reported that the province now has more than 10,000 acute-care beds available for COVID-19 patients, but less than 10 per cent are occupied. Overall hospital occupancy has plummeted from 96 per cent before the outbreak to 69 per cent.
That sounds like a good thing, but like most everything else involving the pandemic lockdown, it is not benign. The FAO estimated that more than 52,000 necessary hospital procedures have been cancelled or delayed, creating a huge health-care backlog that will be difficult to clear.
The COVID- 19 clampdown’s health effects are not limited to hospitals. General practitioners are reporting a sharp decline in patient volume as people are reluctant to go to their offices. Important health-care services such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy are all but shut down.
Even psychologists have been limited to dealing with patients remotely.
Then there is the economic devastation, which has received a fraction of the attention the Ontario government has devoted to public-health issues. A new Statistics Canada survey this week reported that 56 per cent of Ontario businesses had seen revenue cut by 20 per cent or more.
The province’s entertainment, hotel and restaurant sectors are flat on their backs. If seasonal businesses can’t open this summer, it’s difficult to imagine that many will survive.
In Quebec, 28 per cent of workers have been laid off. Ontario doesn’t bother to track that, but if the percentage is the same, it would mean that two million Ontarians are laid off.
Despite all of this, Ford has offered no economic restart plan, nor even a sense of when there might be one. The premier is focused entirely on public health and gets his marching orders from public- health officials. The economic restart has been placed in the hands of Finance Minister Rod Phillips. He created an aura of competence, pre- pandemic, but his inability to deliver a restart plan for the economy is inexplicable.
Ford keeps falling back on a line about Ontario not being like Saskatchewan, which brought out a smart and comprehensive plan last week. OK, but Ontario is an awful lot like Quebec, which acted this week, despite worse COVID-19 numbers.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault has balanced health concerns and economic concerns and initiated a limited restart of the economy. There is an element of risk to his decision, but Legault has come to the aid of the millions who are suffering from the shutdown. No doubt that was not an easy decision, but it was decisive leadership.
By contrast, Ford says he won’t act on the economy until daily new COVID-19 cases reach around 200. The province is already there, if one excludes the separate and well- defined problem in long- term care and retirement homes. Those outbreaks are terrible, but they mostly involve people not interacting with the day- today economy.
The premier needs to get off the hamster wheel of daily news conferences, at which he says nothing, and get out and talk to business owners and people who lost their jobs. They desperately need his leadership, before it’s too late.