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COVID-19 recovery bill doesn’t include anything for COVID recovery

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath released the following statement in response to a Ford government omnibus bill tabled Wednesday:

 

“The omnibus bill the Ford Conservatives introduced today does nothing at all to help families, devastated long-term care homes, small businesses, schools and day cares, First Nations, or municipalities to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

This bill doesn’t include a single change to safeguard long-term care residents, improve the quality of care, or increase the staff wages. This bill does not include a single dime for small and medium-sized businesses still struggling. It doesn’t add even one more child care space, or increase the number of classrooms, teachers or education workers so all students can return to school safely. It doesn’t include a single cent for municipalities, which are facing billions of dollars in deficits and cuts. Nor does it include anything at all to support First Nations communities, which are still struggling to keep the virus at bay and don’t even have clean water, let alone equitable access to health care. And it doesn’t provide the much-needed paid sick days all workers need.

 

Small businesses have told us what they need to recover, and it’s rent money. Parents have told us what they need to recover, and it’s child care and a workable plan for schools. Municipalities have told us what they need to recover, and it’s emergency funding.

 

I’m worried Doug Ford is using COVID-19 recovery as cover to plow ahead with changes that have nothing at all to do with recovering from this pandemic. We’ll be taking time to closely comb through this massive bill to evaluate the damage it may do, but off the bat, we can see that this does nothing at all to help everyday families and small businesses in Ontario.”

Andrea Horwath
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