“This decision will ruin decades of work and thousands of businesses.”Ĭustomers line up at Walmart in Toronto, on Nov., 22, 2020.
He warned that independent stores would see their customers migrate online and to places such as Walmart and Costco, which as grocery outlets are deemed essential and allowed to stay open with new 50-per-cent capacity limits. “Missing out on sales in May was harmful, to miss out on Christmas is fatal,” said Dan Kelly, head of the CFIB.
The Retail Council of Canada (RCC) and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) are pressing Ontario Premier Doug Ford to soften the blow for businesses as a large chunk of the Greater Toronto Area enters a COVID-19 lockdown just as holiday shopping season was supposed to begin. Ontario’s move to limit non-essential retailers in Toronto and Peel Region to just curbside pickup or delivery could kill off thousands of small stores that count on make-or-break Christmas sales to survive, retail-industry associations say. Ontario reported 3,215 new cases on Wednesday, according to government data.Please log in to bookmark this story. Hours earlier, Ford had told reporters that schools were safe and closures would be unnecessary. On Tuesday, Toronto Public Health shuttered the city's schools for in-person learning, sending the country's largest school district of around 247,000 students back to remote learning through April 18. The province also announced that all teachers and education staff in Toronto and the suburb of Peel would be eligible for vaccination beginning during the school districts' April break, as well as special education teachers province-wide. Ontario plans to expand vaccination in neighbourhoods with higher infection rates, by rolling out mobile clinics to community centers, workplaces and other locations that will inoculate residents over the age of 18. ICU admissions are rising faster than the worst-case scenario modeled by experts, Ford said. Provincial data showed more COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICU) than at any point since the pandemic began. Hospitals in Ontario are becoming more stretched. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned of a "very serious" third wave of the virus, with more young people going into hospitals and on ventilators driven by more dangerous virus variants. On Tuesday, Canada reported 6,520 COVID-19 cases. These include medical device supply and repair shops, optical stores and auto mechanics. Retailers considered essential can open for in-store shopping by appointment only. Industry groups had criticized Ford for allowing big box stores to remain open during past lockdowns while shutting small businesses. Big box stores can remain open, but with capacity limits and only certain products including groceries, pharmacy and gardening materials available for in-store purchase. Last week, Ontario shuttered all indoor and outdoor dining, a move that fell short of what the government's expert advisory panel said was necessary to avoid catastrophically high COVID-19 case numbers.Īs of Thursday, all retailers except grocery stores, pharmacies and sellers of gardening supplies will close for four weeks, although curbside pickup will be allowed. The order requires people in Canada's most populous province to stay in their residences except for essential reasons, including exercise, vaccination appointments or grocery trips. "What we do until we start achieving mass immunisation will be the difference between life and death for thousands of people," he said. We need to hunker down right now," Ford said at a briefing in Toronto.
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