In COVID times, transparency must come first

In Niagara, it was a flower farm. In the Hamilton suburb of Stoney Creek, it was a restaurant.

The floral shop had an outbreak of COVID-19. The Stoney Creek restaurant was charged for violations of pandemic safety regulations. It doesn’t have an outbreak — yet.

Originally, Niagara residents were not told which floral operation had the outbreak. Niagara’s acting medical officer of health said identifying the business wasn’t necessary because it wasn’t a “frontfacing” operation — it didn’t have a lot of public interaction.

Subsequent media reports identified the business as One Floral Group. The flower farm has had to temporarily close due to so many workers being infected, and it hopes to reopen gradually, according to the owner.

The Stoney Creek restaurant was charged for allowing patrons to go mask-free, dance and break physical distancing rules. It and some patrons are facing hefty fines.

But we still don’t know which restaurant it was. The violations there were “beyond the pale” according to city officials, but they will not say which restaurant is guilty. A spokesperson for the City of Hamilton says: “We aren’t sharing business names unless we need to share it publicly from a public health perspective, where we need to inform the community of a higherrisk situation.”

From a strict public health perspective, that rationale might be defensible. But with the pandemic getting worse by the day, we would respectfully suggest that public health officials in jurisdictions like these should broaden their thinking.

A quick Google search tells us Stoney Creek has literally dozens of restaurants. What are worried consumers to make of that? Should they stay away from all of them? How does that jive with the popular pandemic thinking that we should be trying to support struggling hospitality businesses?

Niagara Region is the flower-growing heartland of Ontario. There is no shortage of farms, some with retail operations, some without. Had it not been for media reporting, Niagara citizens still wouldn’t know which flower farm was struck. Might some have been at risk due to proximity to the outbreak or interacting with staff who work there in nonbusiness settings?

It doesn’t help that policies on identifying businesses and institutions touched by this pandemic vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The City of Ottawa releases business’ names upon request. Burlington and London do not. Legislation around provincial offences, which include pandemic-related charges, doesn’t “permit police services to disclose personal information in relation to tickets,” according to the provincial government.

It is time for a reset. We favour protection of personal and commercial privacy as much as anyone, in normal times. But these are not normal times. And if the latest projections and trends hold true, and we’re looking at as many as 6,000 new cases a day by December, we are only now beginning to understand what the new normal looks like. One thing for sure: It should include a new approach to identifying businesses in cases like these.

Hamilton city council took a step down this road when it supported a new policy that will make public the names of businesses charged with violating COVID rules. We still don’t know if the scofflaw restaurant will be identified, because the new policy isn’t retroactive. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

During this pandemic, especially, public policy needs to default toward transparency and community protection, not secrecy.