Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Monday it would not begin lifting restrictions to fight the coronavirus for weeks to come despite pressure from businesses to restart the economy.
According to Reuters, Ford said he could not provide a timetable for allowing people in non-essential businesses back to work until the numbers of new cases began dropping steadily.
“I won’t set hard dates until we’re ready, because the virus travels at its own speed,” he told a briefing.
About 14.6 million people live in Ontario, representing 39 per cent of the country’s population. Together with neighboring Quebec, it accounts for 82 per cent of the 47,327 positive diagnoses.
Canada’s death toll grew by less than 10 per cent for the eighth day in a row, hitting 2,617, official data showed.
Ford said he had been grilled by business owners about when they could open again.
“I understand the pain a lot of companies and people are going through and the pressure,” he said, adding later that “we aren’t going to be rushed into anything.”
Ontario plans to reopen in three stages, each of which first requires a consistent two-to-four week decrease in the number of new cases.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the provinces were coordinating with Ottawa on how to reopen the economy and stressed the need for extreme caution, given how little that experts know about the coronavirus.
“I have confidence every province is taking very seriously this responsibility to be careful because nobody wants to have gone through all this for nothing,” he said.
In Quebec, elementary schools and childcare services outside Montreal – the country’s second-largest city – will reopen on May 11. In the Montreal region, elementary schools will reopen on May 19.
(Reuters)
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