A stalled Windsor region ‘fighting to stay alive’

Business owners struggling in only area of province still stuck in Stage 2 of COVID lockdown

On the line from Windsor, twin sisters Mesia Walker and Nena Buduhan are laughing in that way you laugh when you’ve reached the end of your rope. Laughing to keep from crying.

Walker and Buduhan are the owners of two yoga studios — Modo Yoga Windsor and Modo Yoga Tecumseth — in the only part of the province where yoga studios are still prohibited from opening.

For the past five months they’ve been doing what they can to keep their eight-year-old business afloat — livestreaming classes online, holding small outdoor classes when weather permits — but with each day the Windsor-Essex region remains stuck in Stage 2, survival becomes a little more difficult.

“We’re getting more desperate,” Buduhan says. “We’re really fighting to stay alive.”

While every other region in Ontario has moved forward into Stage 3 and is able to reap the economic benefits of a broader reopening, Windsor-Essex has been left behind, largely due to a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among migrant farm workers in the towns of Kingsville and Leamington.

Tension is growing between the business community — anxious to reopen like the rest of the province — and public health officials, who say Windsor-Essex still isn’t ready.

Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the region’s medical officer of health, said in a phone interview on Saturday that the decision to move the region into Stage 3 is the province’s, not his, but he is mindful of the costs of the economic disruption.

“I am deeply concerned about everything, not only the health impact, but also the social, economic and mental health impact on everyone in the region,” he said.

“I’m completely aware of what the potential impacts and risks are, but we are just trying to balance that risk. We don’t want to set ourselves up for failure after all the good things that we have done so far.”

Windsor-Essex has the highest rate of COVID-19 infections in Ontario, but after a large spike of infections in June and July, cases have been trending downward in recent weeks. There has been an average of just five new cases per day over the last seven days.

Ahmed said if the current trend of single-digit case counts continue, he’s confident the province will soon allow the region to move into Stage 3, but he declined to estimate a time frame.

“We are confident that with everything that we have right now, we should be able to move forward to Stage 3 as soon as the province allows us to go.”

Some local businesses fear they might not make it much longer.

“There is a lot of frustration here,” says Rakesh Naidu, president and CEO of the WindsorEssex Regional Chamber of Commerce. “Businesses are struggling. Every day is a big challenge.”

With every day the region remains in Stage 2, Naidu said, local businesses face additional pressure. “The more we delay, the more they’re going in a direction from which getting back will become more and more difficult.”

With the U.S. border closed to non-essential travel, the local economy is also facing the added loss of its usual cross-border tourism from nearby Detroit, he said.

Naidu would like to see the province allow the less-affected parts of the region — namely the areas outside of Kingsville and Leamington — to move into Stage 3, as it did when it allowed parts of the region to move into Stage 2.

“If some businesses are allowed to open, even partially, as we take care of the pockets with high-infection rates in our region, I think that would be something that we would welcome.”

In addition, Naidu said businesses in Windsor-Essex should be given a longer time frame to access some of the governmentassistance programs, such as the employee wage subsidy.

“That way they are not at a disadvantage (compared to businesses in other regions) that have been allowed to open and are able to use these programs.”

Ahmed said the biggest issue continues to be the congregate living areas of migrant workers, but with recent improvements aimed at reducing the risk of transmission on farms he believes any future outbreaks can be effectively contained and will not lead to “spillover” into the broader community.

Workers in the agri-farm sector account for nearly half of Windsor-Essex’s more than 2,300 cases. Three migrant workers have died after contracting COVID-19 in Ontario this year, two of them from farms in WindsorEssex. There have been allegations of crowded living conditions and farm owners ignoring mandatory quarantines.

In June, the province announced a “three-point plan” to reduce the risk of infection on farms in Windsor-Essex, primarily with proactive, on-site testing. Ontario also recently sent its Emergency Medical Assistance Team — a kind of hospital SWAT team — to Windsor-Essex to assist the local health unit. The federal government, meanwhile, announced a $59 million investment on July 31 aimed at supporting temporary foreign workers by improving living quarters and increasing inspections, among other things.

Advocates say problems faced by migrant workers are structural and cannot be addressed with piecemeal investments.

“We welcome all measures to protect the well-being of migrant workers, especially regarding improving housing conditions and strengthening inspections and enforcement,” said Santiago Escobar, a national representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which runs a migrant workers support centre in Leamington. “But all these changes are meaningless if these workers don’t have access to labour rights.”

Escobar cited laws that prevent migrant workers from unionizing, closed work permits that tie them to a single employer and the lack of a path to permanent residency as the major obstacles to improving their working conditions.

Jim Brophy, an occupational health researcher and former director of the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers, said that even with the recent attempts to address outbreaks on farms, not enough is being done to protect migrant workers.

“You would think that given what’s happened on the farms that you’d have ministry inspectors there pretty much 24-7,” he said. “Not only is it horrible, you know, for the health of these afflicted individuals, but we’re facing a pandemic here. We’re facing the danger of widespread disease throughout the community.” Walker and Buduhan are hopeful the province will allow Windsor-Essex to move into Stage 3 sooner rather than later. They’ve already drained their emergency funds and they’re running out of ways to keep the business going. “If we look at it for too long we get really, really scared,” Walker said.

They know Stage 3 won’t be the end of their struggles. Even when they’re allowed to partially reopen, it will be a long time before they regain their pre-pandemic business. But it will give them something to build on.

“We need more than Stage 3 right now,” Walker said. “We need help.”

“There is a lot of frustration here. Businesses are struggling. Every day is a big challenge.”

RAKESH NAIDU WINDSOR-ESSEX REGIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PRESIDENT