News and Updates
Here are today’s new developments:
- The federal government announced it will provide $14 billion to the provinces and territories to help them reopen their economies safely, an amount Doug Ford said will not be enough to cover the impact of COVID-19 to Ontario, the cost of which he pegged at $23 billion.
- Ford said he does not support paid sick days during his press conference today, a doubling down on his government’s slashing of paid sick days for workers upon taking office – Andrea Horwath said Ford’s refusal to support paid sick days is callous, and puts Ontarians in an unsafe position. Further, it could contribute to a second wave of the coronavirus in Ontario.
- Dismal job numbers in Ontario for the month of May were revealed in this month’s Statistics Canada Labour Force survey. MPP Catherine Fife, said Ontario remains in economic free-fall while the rest of the country begins to rebound from the shock of COVID-19. “While other provinces have stepped up to protect jobs, support businesses and ban commercial evictions, Doug Ford has sat on his hands,” Fife said.
- Ford said he will announce details regarding "stage two" of the province's economic reopening early next week - this is despite the fact that the average number of new cases of COVID-19 daily has trended upward for the past week.
Solutions we’re pushing for:
- I am calling on the government to take over direct management of long-term care homes operated by Sienna, a company that runs 37 long-term care homes in the province. Disturbing reports and data reveal that Sienna homes have had some of Ontario’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks.
- MPP Mike Mantha, said the Premier's misleading announcement, made earlier this week, for Broadband funding in the north was a re-announcement of funding pledged in 2019 — an amount the Ford government has still only invested a fraction of. “The re-announcement shows Ford is failing to invest in broadband during the pandemic, when families need it most,” Mantha said, calling for $1 billion to be invested in broadband, and for the government to deliver high-speed internet to rural and northern communities that need it now.