Ontario calls for health-care help
Canada has ordered 30,000 new ventilators from domestic companies
TORONTO — Ontario put out a wartime-like plea Tuesday to press anyone in the province with health-care experience into service, as the first Ontariomade personal protective equipment rolled off the lines following a similar call to action to businesses. Premier Doug Ford announced the opening of an online portal through which people with medical training can be matched with jobs in order to increase front-line capacity in hospitals, clinics and assessment centres.
“Join the fight today, because we need every person in Ontario in this fight,” Ford said.
“We need an army of 14.5 million people ... Whether it’s staying home, working in our hospitals or long-term care homes, or putting food and medicine on our shelves, we’re all part of this and with your help we will win this battle and our province and our economy will come back stronger than ever before.”
Health Minister Christine Elliott said people who should look at the health-care portal include retired people, students, and people who were trained in other jurisdictions — though she suggested foreign credentials may not be immediately and fully recognized.
“What we’re trying to do is match the employer’s needs with the skill set of the person that’s coming forward,” she said.
“They may or may not, depending on their skill sets, their experience and so on, be able to practice medicine, but they certainly will have a place in our health-care system.”
The jobs will come with pay, Elliott confirmed.
Ford also announced Tuesday that the first made-in-Ontario face masks are ready, one day after he warned that the province would run out of personal protective equipment in a
week. Ford was at the Woodbridge manufacturing facility in Vaughan, where the first 1,000 Level 3 masks have been produced.
He lauded the work of the company, together with the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, to retool their factories and get the required approvals to manufacture masks for front-line workers.
The company hopes to eventually produce one million masks per week and have the product certified as N95 masks to be used in all health-care settings. Woodbridge will be making the masks at its facilities in Vaughan and Kitchener.
Ford has blamed supply shortages on a combination of delays in global shipments, domestic manufacturing lag time and U.S. restrictions.
Canada has ordered 30,000 new ventilators from domestic companies but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday he is hoping we don’t end up needing nearly that many.
Federal officials also said more than 230 million surgical masks and 75 million N95 respirator masks have been ordered but cautioned the global supply chain is so fragile they cannot guarantee how many of those will actually arrive.
A shipment of 500,000 N95 masks from Minnesota-based 3M bound for Ontario is set to arrive Wednesday. The shipment was delayed after President Donald Trump ordered the company to stop exporting critical equipment needed in the U.S.
A full-court press from Canada overcame that obstacle for the time being, but Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday the entire world is looking for these supplies and the markets to buy them are changing, sometimes by the hour.
Trudeau said this morning “the entire world was unprepared” for a pandemic of this size, and said Canada is better off than some other countries where supplies are more limited and the outbreak more severe.
Trudeau said about 5,000 Canadian companies have answered the call for help to make everything from face masks to medical gowns to ventilators to help treat people afflicted with COVID-19.