Ontario Premier Doug Ford Provides COVID-19 Update | November 3

During his daily media briefing today, Premier Doug Ford unveiled a new COVID-19 framework with clear criteria to determine when regulations should be tightened or eased on a region-by-region basis.

COVID-19 Response Framework

The new COVID-19 Response Framework will help inform responses for individual regions. The new framework classifies regions as to whether they are in Full Lockdown, Red (Control), Orange (Restrict), Yellow (Protect) or Green (Prevent).

The full framework can be found here.

Enhancements are also being made to ontario.ca/coronavirus to include a dashboard with information about the spread of the virus and the capacity of the public health and health care systems. This includes local cases by public health unit regions, the total number of cases, resolved cases, deaths, tests completed and how many are positive.

Regional Levels

Based on current trends, on Saturday Ottawa, Peel and York regions will move to the Restrict level of the new framework, allowing gyms and restaurants with indoor dining to open, respecting capacity limits and restricted hours. The Premier noted that Toronto Mayor John Tory has asked for more time, so Toronto will move to the same level a week later on November 14th.

Brant, Durham, Halton and Hamilton regions will be in the Protect level. All other regions will be at the Prevent level.

Levels will be confirmed on Friday, November 6th, based on current health data.

More information can be found here.

Supporting Businesses Affected by COVID-19 Public Health Measures

The Ontario government is making $300 million available to businesses required to close or significantly restrict services in areas subject to modified Stage 2 public health restrictions (Ottawa, Peel, Toronto, and York Region) or, going forward, in areas categorized as Control or Lockdown.

Rebates will cover the period of time that businesses are required to temporarily close or significantly restrict services. The property tax rebates will be net of any federal support in respect of property taxes provided through the new Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS), so that the rebate will cover costs beyond those covered by CERS.

Beginning November 16th, eligible businesses will be able to apply for temporary property tax and energy cost rebates directly to the province through a single, online application portal. Eligible businesses include restaurants, bars, gyms and cinemas.

*Above summary by Enterprise Canada