The New Democratic MPP for Timmins says making ski hills shut down for the pandemic lockdown was a miscalculation by the Ford government.
Opposition house leader Gilles Bisson says Mount Jamieson Resort was already doing well at stemming the spread of COVID-19, with steps in place to enforce physical distancing and other measures.
“Mr. Ford on this one, in order to try to fix some of the problems they’ve created in the past with how they’ve dealt with this particular pandemic, figured he had to have a blanket province-wide mockdown – and I won’t even call it a lockdown – which in the end is creating a lot of hardship on people that’s not necessary,” Bisson asserts.
Mount Jamieson is a not-for-profit operation. MPP Bisson says it’s incumbent on the Conservatives to make them qualify for funding that for-profit ventures are getting.
“This is really about Northerners who did what they were supposing to do being by Mr. Ford told ‘you’ve got to pay a price here,’” he says. “Unfortunately, that’s not the way this should have gone down.”
Bisson says all the lockdown measures implemented in southern hotspots for COVID-19 need not have been instituted in the north.