By the end of this week, Ontario could no longer deny that the province’s third wave of Covid infections had become a crisis. More than a third of the available 1,875 intensive care beds are currently occupied by Covid patients and infection numbers and hospitalizations keep rising. Even with a stay-at-home order in place until May 5 the situation is dire. “We are staring into the abyss,” said the CEO of the provincial Hospital Association to the Globe & Mail, while a senior health official warned that: “If we don’t change what we’re doing, things will in fact get worse.”
Much of the crisis is due to misgovernance. The education minister promised that schools would reopen after the April break, only to reverse the decision a day later; restrictions announced at the start of the month had to be revised within a week as infections kept rising; a detailed vaccination plan was abruptly changed at short notice. Each new measure has felt more improvised than the previous one.
With high school students facing several months more of remote learning and most vaccines weeks if not months away, the situation is a perfect storm of bad decisions. Half-hearted and confusing frameworks, lockdowns, and shutdowns have exhausted the public and made new restrictions harder to enforce. After months of confinement and economic uncertainty, Ontari-ans are bewildered to learn that the province could see up to 18,000 new cases a day—four times the current rate—if tougher restrictions are not enforced.
There has been a demographic shift in new cases and a worrying increase in intensity. The manager of the ICU at a major Toronto hospital told the Toronto Star: “The patients that are coming in sick with COVID are definitely more acute. They’re sicker and they’re younger…” They are also largely from sectors that have not had the luxury of working from home. With new variants posing a constant threat to commuters who use mass transit, it is not surprising that workers whose jobs increase their exposure are succumbing to the virus and spreading it to their families. Such risks have been exacerbated by the slow vaccine rollout and by months of mixed messages in previous shutdowns and lockdowns.
Ontario’s Conservative government has refused to impose lockdowns like those in France and Italy. It has interpreted “essential work” too broadly– condominium construction has barely paused in the last year — and refused to grant paid sick leave. Strict business closures, travel restrictions and a curfew lie well beyond anything it has considered so far. Such measures may be unavoidable if a worst-case scenario is to be avoided, but there is no indication that the premier will get the hard choices right this time. The current crisis has been a textbook example of what happens when politicians fail to heed expert advice and choose ad hoc governance over proper planning. As the situation veers towards catastrophe, all that can be hoped is that Premier Ford and his colleagues can buck the trend of an entire year and finally learn something from their mistakes.
