Province Working on Plans for Stage 3

Monday, 22 June 2020 14:34

The Province of Ontario is not ready to commit to dates for Stage 3 at this time, however they are working on plans and some areas who have been in Stage 2 for a couple of weeks, could move into stage 3 first.

ONTARIO - The Province of Ontario is not ready to commit to dates for Stage 3 at this time.

Today they announced that Toronto and Peel and move into Stage 2, while Windsor-Essex remains in Stage 1. Health Minister and Deputy Premier Christine Elliott says they want to see everyone in stage 2 first.

"First of course, we want to get Windsor-Essex into stage 2 but we are planning for Stage 3. We have a jobs and recovery committee that takes a look at that, that looks at what businesses can do safely to enter that stage but we won't be ready to do that until we have been able to assess the health effects of people from Stage 2."

Elliott says we might even need to slow down a little bit.

"Understanding if there is any concern areas that we need to be dealing with, whether we need to slow down a little bit, whether we need to remove 1 or 2 things from stage 2. We haven't done that analysis yet, because it hasn't been long enough."

Elliott says a number of things need to happen before we enter stage 3.

"It depends on a number of factors, including the number of new cases, the ability to manage things from a health perspective, hospital occupancy and so on. As well as the public health resources in each area to make sure they are able to deal with any potential up ticks in cases."

Minister of Finance Rod Phillips says they have stated all along that there needs to be at least 2-4 weeks in between the transition.

"We do have communities like Ottawa, London, Kitchener Waterloo that have been in stage 2 for a couple of weeks and the kind of measurements that the Minister talked about are being taken, the conversations are happening locally. Our priority in stage 3 is to get businesses open and not just open but open in a way where customers will be able to enjoy a safe experience but also those businesses will be able to be viable."

You can listen to their remarks from this afternoon regarding Phase 3 below.