Brampton mayor says Ontario’s latest lockdown ‘feels like Groundhog Day’

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is taking the province to task for its latest lockdown, which he says “feels like Groundhog Day,” as he calls for a new approach to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with inbrampton.com publisher Khaled Iwamura, Brown said “We’re kind of doing the same thing again and again,” with respect to Ontario’s fourth lockdown after the province announced a return to Step Two of its reopening plan on Monday.

“I have been encouraging the public to get vaccinated, to get back to normal, and after they made so much sacrifice, to feel that we’re not seeing a different approach is disappointing,” he said.

Brown believes the current lockdown is “too sweeping” in its application as it closes restaurants, gyms and movie theatres yet again in an effort to combat the steepest rise in COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, driven by the highly communicable Omicron variant.

He would like to see a new approach from the province, including reopening recreation services.

“I think there is a public health consequence to not having an active community. We know there’s a correlation with severe COVID cases and factors that connect them. Obesity is one factor, age is another.

“I want our residents to be active and healthy,” he continued, explaining a push to improve access to outdoor recreation in the city.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Brown called the lockdown measures, “a tough pill to swallow,” before announcing extended outdoor skating rink hours and the plowing of soccer pitches to allow outdoor games among other measures.

Brown’s disappointment extended to the new shutdown of schools, now shuttered until at least Jan. 17, calling online learning “a nightmare for parents and educators,” and noting his disappointment in the closure extension.

“We’ve lost more school days in Ontario than any other jurisdiction in North America,” he said, “If we see another extension of schools going to be closed, I’m going to be angry.

“I have spoken to parents in tears. I think there’s a mental health toll to children not being in school,” he said “There’s a learning toll and there’s an equity toll. Not everyone has access to technology.”

As a result of the closures, students in Ontario may wind up being three months behind their peers in other jurisdictions, according to a study from the COVID-19 Science Table in June.

The province’s reasoning for extending winter break was to get teachers booster shots, install air filters and institute other safety measures, to which Brown insisted, “Boy, they better be doing it. They should have done it last year.”

Provincial treatment of small businesses has also rankled Brown.

“I’m worried for our small businesses who are struggling to keep their heads afloat,” he said.

Shortly after a provincial announcement earlier today of a $10,000 grant to businesses closed by the new restrictions, but not those operating at reduced capacity, Brown said, “of course the government has to support them and subsidize them when the government is shutting them down.

“But the government has had two years to create an environment where we didn’t have to have a lockdown,” he continued. “It had two years to fix this and, despite spending more than we’ve ever seen spent by government, we haven’t created any new healthcare capacity.”

Despite his objections to the lockdown measures, Brown says the provincial order has forced his hand when it comes to by-law enforcement of restrictions.

“We have to abide by these provincial regulations. It’s not like we can allow a restaurant to open when they’re not allowed to. A provincial order supersedes a local one.”

Finally, Brown called out the Doug Ford government for what he sees as a failure to invest in healthcare. Noting Ontario had 90 per cent of beds occupied when the pandemic began, Brown said the province’s healthcare was in a “very fragile position” to be quickly overwhelmed by COVID cases.

“And sadly, we’re back at square one, so the easy, lazy approach is to have another lockdown.

“Maybe it’s time we had an honest conversation about the fact we don’t have universal healthcare in Canada,” he said. “You look at Brampton, a community where they haven’t invested in hospital capacity in the last 20 years and we have half the beds per capita than the provincial average.

“If you look at a growing suburban Canada, we don’t have adequate hospital capacity,” Brown concluded, calling the “diminished” system “embarrassing,” despite “incredible nurses, incredible physicians.

“If this isn’t a lesson that our healthcare system is fragile, then boy, I don’t know what is.”