Queen’s Park Today – Daily Report July 21, 2020 Quotation of the day “It's easy for people to forget that we're still in a pandemic.” Associate chief medical officer Dr. Barbara Yaffe says there's been an increase in younguns ​ ​ getting sick amid lockdown fatigue and reopenings. Today at Queen’s Park On the schedule The house reconvenes at 9 a.m. for the penultimate sitting day of the summer session. The government could call any of the following pieces of business for morning and afternoon debate: ● Bill 184, Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act; ​ ● Bill 195, Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act; and ​ ● Bill 197, COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act. ​ MPPs are expected to vote on the PC's time-allocation motion for Bills 195 and 197 after ​ ​ ​ ​ question period. Monday's debates and proceedings The time-allocation motion and third-reading of Bill 184 were up for debate in the afternoon. ​ ​ An Opposition bill and motion also hit the clerk's table: ● NDP MPP Sandy Shaw introduced private member's Bill 198, Cootes Paradise Water ​ ​ ​ ​ Accountability Act, named for the massive sewage spill around her home riding in Hamilton. The bill would require the environment ministry to publicly disclose when polluting material is discharged or escapes. ● NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky tabled a (non-binding) motion urging the government to create ​ ​ a COVID-19 essential caregiver strategy "that recognizes essential caregivers as more than just visitors" with the right to full access to their loved ones in congregate care. In the park The statues of Sir John A. Macdonald and King Edward VII at Queen's Park got a wash after ​ ​ being painted pink during a Black Lives Matter demonstration on the weekend. Three people are facing charges, and their arrest has raised questions over whether their civil rights were violated. Ford OKs Ottawa’s national sick day plan Premier Doug Ford says he’s on board with Ottawa’s plan to mandate 10 days of paid sick ​ ​ leave across the country — a measure that will swallow up about $1.1 billion of the feds’ latest Covid restart package. The program will be administered by Ottawa, not the provinces, and a senior government source confirmed to Queen’s Park Today it will not require any legislative amendments in ​ ​ Ontario, so long as it's tied to a Covid-related work absence. Ford suggested B.C.'s NDP premier, John Horgan, was the only first minister who piped up in ​ ​ favour of paid leave during negotiations with the federal government (Horgan led the charge ​ with Manitoba's Brian Pallister and Yukon's Sandy Silver). "God bless him, he's a great ​ ​ ​ ​ premier … but the rest of the premiers, we just haven't been hearing about that," Ford said. “At the end of the day, if that's what [the feds] want to do, that's great," the premier told reporters Monday. One of the PC’s first actions after taking office in 2018 was to pass a bill reversing the former Liberal rulers’ two guaranteed paid sick days and allowing employers to demand doctor’s notes from workers who called in ill. Green Leader Mike Schreiner is hoping Ford will also change his mind about the latter ​ ​ provision and permanently waive employers' ability to ask employees to get a sick note. The Tories scrapped the provision for people who need to take time off to self-isolate or quarantine amid the pandemic, but Schreiner says the end of the state of emergency on July 24 means employers can once again ask for doctor's notes. Schreiner said that won't help guard against a second wave. "This pandemic should be all the evidence we need that every worker should be able to self-isolate without question and without risk of losing their job." Toronto, Peel, Windsor held back as rest of Ontario enters Stage 3 Seven more public health units are joining the rest of the province in Stage 3, but Toronto, Peel and Windsor-Essex will have to wait at least another week before getting the green light. Durham, Haldimand-Norfolk, Halton, Hamilton, Lambton, Niagara and York region will move to the next phase of reopening on Friday. Health Minister Christine Elliott has said the government's COVID-19 command table wants to ​ ​ assess four weeks' worth of Stage 2 data before giving Toronto the go-ahead — and there will be enough information as of Wednesday. The government typically announces whether regions can move ahead on Mondays for a Friday reopening. Contact tracing app incoming, fax machines go the way of the dodo Enhanced contact tracing is key to reopening and staying reopen, and the PCs say new technology is on the way. Premier Doug Ford suggested the delayed made-in-Ontario contact tracing app dubbed Covid ​ ​ Alert will roll out by the end of the week (it was originally supposed to drop by July 2). "The app will possibly be coming out Friday, I hear that from the federal government. But I don't think that will have anything to do with moving forward for Peel and Windsor and Toronto," Ford told reporters. Meanwhile, Elliott said the province has begun "the long overdue work" of replacing fax machines used by public health units for contact tracing and case management with a new "custom-built" and "streamlined" system using cloud-based software. The first batch of units adopted the system last Friday — in Peel, Kingston-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Halton and Grey Bruce — with more coming on board every week through to September. Today’s events July 21 at 9 a.m. – Online ​ Financial Accountability Officer Peter Weltman will release a fiscal review of Ontario's ​ ​ revamped autism program, which is set to be in place by 2021. July 21 at 10 a.m. – Scarborough ​ OPSEU Local 5111, the LCBO bargaining unit, will picket outside the offices of PC MPPs Christina Mitas and Raymond Cho. The union has called on the province to crack down on ​ ​ ​ private stores it claims are selling booze illegally as early as 7 a.m., and to reopen LCBOs on Mondays (a day initially set aside for deep cleaning). July 21 at 11 a.m. – Ontario ​ Front-line hospital staff represented by CUPE will hold a five-minute in-hospital protest against Bill 195, which will allow the government to continue overriding workers' collective agreements ​ for redeployments for up to two years. July 21 at 11 a.m. – Zoom ​ The Ontario Real Estate Association and pollster Nik Nanos will host a panel discussion on ​ ​ consumer attitudes to the real estate market amid the pandemic. July 21 at 1 p.m. – Peel Region ​ Premier Doug Ford is expected to hold his daily briefing in the 905 today. ​ ​ Topics of conversation ● There were 135 new Covid cases in Monday's report. This followed back-to-back reports topping 160 cases, but is still slightly higher than last week's numbers. There was one more death, bringing the total to at least 2,752, and a teeny dip in the number of samples processed, likely due to the post-weekend slump: 20,913 tests were completed in the latest 24-hour report. ○ The majority of new cases were in Peel (35), Toronto (26), Windsor-Essex (21) and Ottawa (20). Officials in the capital blamed parties for the recent spike, and ​ ​ the city is eyeing stricter bylaws as a result. ● Another high-risk setting, indoor bars, won't be further restricted, despite Toronto Mayor John Tory's written request to Premier Doug Ford. Ford said the city’s public health unit ​ ​ ​ is able to implement measures on its own — such as an early last call, customer logs and staff screening — but he isn't willing to set provincewide rules because each region has unique needs. Ford called Tory's asks "valid," but "if you want to do that, you have the powers to do it." ○ "We can't compare Toronto and the GTA with — I always use Kenora because I love Kenora — but you can't compare it to Kenora or other smaller, rural areas in the province." ● Finance Minister Rod Phillips will share how Ontario plans to divvy up its $7-billion ​ ​ share of Ottawa's $19-billion restart package "in the days ahead." Phillips said it took about six weeks to negotiate the deal between the provinces and federal government, "so it is going to take us a few days to work our way through the exact nature of how that's going to be distributed." ○ Revenue-strapped municipalities will be waiting with bated breath. The $19-billion moneypot comes with up to $2 billion to help cover municipal operating costs and $1.8 billion for public transit, on the condition provinces match funding. ○ The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, backed up by AMO and LUMCO, has pegged Ontario's civic needs at $4 billion. ● The City of Toronto is reporting its worst cluster of opioid overdose deaths since it began tracking the data in 2017. Between July 9 and July 17, 15 people in the city died of suspected overdoses. Toronto Public Health says overdose deaths have been “consistently higher” than average since the pandemic struck in March. ○ Provincewide, the death toll has been about 25 per cent higher than normal during Covid, the CBC reported in June. British Columbia experienced two ​ ​ consecutive months of record high opioid deaths, which now nearly triple the number of people who died of COVID-19 in the western province over the past four months. ○ Meanwhile, Public Health Ontario has not updated the death toll on its interactive ​ opioid tool since September 2019, although information about overdose-related ​ emergency room visits and hospitalizations is available through December.