Ontario outlines what's allowed under stay-at-home order in new regulation

Confusion persists over police enforcement of the newly instated order

CBC.ca
Jan. 14, 2021

Late Wednesday, the Ontario government outlined the activities allowed under its newly issued stay-at-home order, which took effect today.

Residents are required to stay at home except for the following reasons:

• Work, school and child care.
• Obtaining goods and services that the government deems necessary. Goods include groceries, services include health care and financial services. This section also includes doing curbside pickup.
• Assisting others.
• Health, safety and legal purposes, including exercise.
• Travelling to another residence or moving.
• Travel to an airport, bus or train station for the purpose of travelling outside of Ontario.
• Gathering for a wedding, funeral or religious service, rite or ceremony allowed under the Stage 1 framework.
• Obtaining goods and services necessary for the health and safety of animals.

The government said the order does not apply to homeless people. More details can be found here.

Attending school or dropping off a child at daycare is permitted, as is obtaining food, beverages, or personal care items. Obtaining services for your vehicle or home, financial services, veterinary care or government services are also permissible.

People who live alone can gather with members of a single household. Leaving home to seek support for mental health or addictions is also OK.

Doug Johnson Hatlem, a street pastor at Sanctuaries Ministries of Toronto, said it is good news that unhoused people are exempt.

"It is a welcome and unexpected relief that the stay-at-home order explicitly does not apply to people without homes in Ontario. I am very cautiously hopeful that law enforcement will not find any way around this clear directive not to put upon any further some of our most beleaguered community members," he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, public health units reported another 2,961 cases of COVID-19 and 74 more deaths.

Here's what you need to know about the new rules
The province said police and bylaw officers will have the power to enforce the stay-at-home order and issue tickets to rule-breakers but hasn't given details on how that will play out in practice.

But the city still doesn't know how it's supposed to enforce these new rules, said Matthew Pegg, Toronto's fire chief and head of emergency management, at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

"Literally, the best information we have right now comes off a media release and a slide deck," Pegg said. "It simply is not the technical detail we need in order to assess or understand that.

"We are sitting right now in a position where we have ... not even seen a draft of the regulations."

If you're not sure trip is essential, stay home, says Ford
At a news conference Wednesday, Ford said that people must only leave their homes for essential reasons.

"I know essential means different things to different people ... so we need everyone to use their best judgment. If you're not sure if a trip is absolutely essential, it probably isn't," he said.

In a statement Wednesday morning, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) said it is concerned about enforcement of the order, and the lack of detail so far "around the accommodation of constitutional freedoms."

Michael Bryant, executive director of the CCLA, said that Ontario cannot ticket its way out of a pandemic.

"During the first wave of the pandemic, there were a disproportionate number of tickets for the homeless, the vulnerable and for racialized minorities," Bryant said.

Ontario under 2nd state of emergency

The order was announced yesterday as the province declared a state of emergency -- its second of the COVID-19 pandemic -- and unveiled a series of new restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus.

They included prolonging the pause on in-person learning in schools in five southern Ontario hot spots -- Toronto, Hamilton, Peel, York and Windsor-Essex -- to at least Feb. 10.

Child-care centres for kids not yet in school will remain open, however.

The government also restricted hours of operation for non-essential retailers currently offering delivery and curbside pickup to between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., and imposed a five-person cap on outdoor social gatherings.

Wearing a mask is also now recommended outdoors when physical distancing is difficult.

Plans to administer vaccine in long-term care by mid-February
The provincial government also said Wednesday it plans to administer the COVID-19 vaccine in all nursing homes and high-risk retirement homes by Feb. 15.

In a technical briefing this morning, members of Ontario's vaccine distribution task force said residents, workers and essential caregivers at those facilities will get their first doses by that date.

The plan builds on an earlier pledge to give the COVID-19 vaccine to long-term care facilities in hot spots by Jan. 21.

Officials said the government is now able to move the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine safely to long-term care facilities, which has allowed it to speed up immunizations in nursing homes.

Long-term care homes have been hit hard during the pandemic, with 3,063 resident deaths from COVID-19 since March.

At Wednesday's news conference, Ford was asked about the "iron ring" the province had said it planned to secure around Ontario's long-term care homes. In response, Ford pleaded with front-line health-care workers to get tested for COVID-19.

"It's not coming in through the walls and the ceiling ... inadvertently though our great health-care workers, it's coming in," Ford said.

The premier also said at the news conference it's possible Canadian Forces soldiers will be called in again to help at some hard-hit homes, although he provided no specifics.

However, a senior official in the Ford government later told CBC News that the province does not believe that any long-term care homes are currently in need of assistance from the military. The Red Cross is already assisting in homes, and no facilities have such a staffing crisis that military support is warranted at this time, said the official.

The province said it had administered more than 144,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine as of Wednesday, and about 8,000 people had now received the two doses of the vaccine required for full immunization.

Ford later said the province has administered more than 150,000 vaccine doses so far.

"That is changing on an hourly basis," he said.

"We're emptying our freezers."

Public health units can shut down Ontario workplaces for COVID. They rarely do
Ontario issues stay-at-home order as COVID-19 models show province is at 'dangerous point'
Ford said the province now has the capacity to administer 20,000 vaccine doses a day, and is working toward 40,000 a day by February.

The province is currently focusing on vaccinating health-care workers and those in long-term care facilities but says people over the age of 80 will be the first priority group to receive the shot when Ontario enters the second phase of its vaccine rollout in April.

No paid sick days in revised plan

Notably absent from the province's plan were paid sick days for low-wage and essential workers.

During a briefing Tuesday, two doctors helping to guide Ontario's COVID-19 response said that more social supports, particularly paid sick days, would be essential to limiting further cases of the illness.

The lack of paid sick days for many of the province's essential workers continues to be a major barrier to reducing transmission of the novel coronavirus in many of the hardest-hit communities, said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical officer of health.

"People need to be supported to do the right thing," she told reporters.

Furthermore, the medical officers of health in both Toronto and Peel Region have repeatedly called for the provincial government to offer relief for workers who can't afford to take time off if they fall ill.

Speaking yesterday, Ford said he does not want to double-up on a federal program that offers $500 per week for those who need to take time off work to isolate. Critics, though, have pointed out that the federal initiative does not offer job protection and works out to less than minimum wage.

The new restrictions were announced hours after the province released projections that show the virus is on track to overwhelm Ontario's health-care system.

The forecasts indicate deaths from COVID-19 will surpass those in the pandemic's first wave unless people dramatically reduce their contact with others.

Death toll now at 5,127

The new cases reported today include 738 in Toronto, 536 in Peel Region, 245 in Windsor-Essex, 219 in York Region, 171 in Hamilton and 154 in Ottawa.

Other public health units that double- or triple-digit increases were:

Waterloo Region: 146
Niagara Region: 131
Durham Region: 119
Middlesex-London: 103
Halton Region: 88
Lambton: 72
Southwestern: 52
Simcoe Muskoka: 50
Brant County: 22
Sudbury: 18
Haldimand-Norfolk: 16
Chatham-Kent: 14
Eastern Ontario: 12
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 11
Huron-Perth: 11
Peterborough: 10

(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the Ministry of Health's COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit, because local units report figures at different times.)

The seven-day average of new daily cases fell for a second straight day, down to 3,480 from a pandemic high of 3,555 on Monday.

Ontario's network of labs processed 50,931 test samples for the novel coronavirus and reported a test positivity rate of 6 per cent, down slightly from recent days, which have seen rates above 7.5 per cent.

There were 1,674 patients in hospitals with COVID-19. Of those, 385 were being treated in intensive care and 276 required a ventilator to breathe.

The 74 additional deaths logged in today's update push the official toll to 5,127.