Doug Ford Headlines

Ontario's incoming premier has put the public service under a hiring freeze as part of a series of measures meant to limit spending as he re-examines the province's books, raising concerns among some government workers. (Read full article)

Incoming premier Doug Ford has quietly axed an environmental program to help homeowners get smart thermostats, energy-efficient windows and other retrofits to reduce their hydro bills and fight climate change. (Read full article)

Saying sweeping reforms brought in by the Liberal government "hurt policing efforts," Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government postponed the implementation of the Ontario Special Investigations Unit Act -- one day before the law strengthening police oversight was to come into effect. (Read full article)

"The revelation that Doug Ford has fired Ontario's chief scientist, coming on the heels of his announcement last week that he will scrap the ministry of research, innovation and science begs the question of whether or not Mr. Ford will run a government that believes in the value of science and scientific research," said [MPP Peter] Tabuns. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford has named Dr. Rueben Devlin as chair of a new council on improving health care and ending so-called hallway medicine, a position that comes with a $348,000 salary plus paid expenses.
In comparison, former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne earned just under $209,000 last year, according to the province's annual list of public sector salaries. (Read full article)

Indigenous educators and elders were to travel to Toronto to participate in the curriculum revision project over the next two weeks, but team members received emails on Friday afternoon telling them the plan was cancelled. (Read full article)

Ontario's new Tory government has cancelled a $100-million fund earmarked for school repairs this year, a cut that comes as a result of Doug Ford's campaign promise to scrap the province's cap-and-trade system. (Read full article)

If you tried to make a difficult situation worse, you couldn't do a better job than the Ford team is doing by invoking inflammatory language about "illegal border crossers" and declaring that it won't even work with the federal government to address this situation. (Read full article)

Young people in Ontario will no longer learn about such things as same-sex marriage, cyber bullying and the dangers of sexting -- at least not from their teachers, because none of these things existed in Canada 20 years ago. (Read full article)

The project, which is close to completion, was initially approved in 2009. It includes nine wind turbines meant to produce enough electricity to power just over 3,000 homes annually. (Read full article)

The Ministry of Transportation said both the electric and hydrogen vehicle and electric vehicle charging incentive programs were funded through cap-and-trade proceeds and were cancelled as a result. (Read full article)

Ontario's new Progressive Conservative government is pulling the plug on 758 green energy contracts in a bid to save $790 million. [...] But when asked, Queen's Park did not provide a list of the 758 contracts or a breakdown of how they reached the $790 million figure. (Read full article)

Ontario's new Progressive Conservative government expects to spend up to $5 million to compensate companies that bought into the province's cap-and-trade system, the provincial environment minister said Wednesday before moving to repeal the carbon pricing program. (Read full article)

Horwath said the Tories's cuts are "disgraceful" at a time when the demand for mental health services has never been greater. (Read full article)

The overhaul of wards will wipe out a 2016 decision by Toronto council to redraw the city's boundaries, which increased the number of wards to 47 from 44 for the 2018 election. That was the result of a four-year review that determined the increase was essential for effective representation. (Read full article)

Marinated in plain-spoken, folksy "common sense," and drawing on an American playbook, Ford has brought a dangerous populist politics of cultural resentment and revenge to Ontario. (Read full article)

"Not only is this government breaking its promise to let the basic income pilot project complete its course, it is also making it harder for people on social assistance to make ends meet." (Read full article)

Ontario is launching a legal battle against the federal government over its carbon tax plan, a costly move critics say has little chance of succeeding. (Read full article)

Kwame McKenzie, CEO of the Toronto-based Wellesley Institute, an urban health think-tank, and a special adviser who worked with the former Liberal government on the pilot, said researchers and policy-makers all over the world were looking forward to the results from the biggest basic income project ever rolled out. (Read full article)

Ontario's auditor general can do little to stop the new Progressive Conservative government from using taxpayers' dollars to fund the production of partisan TV-news style videos because of weak enforcement, policy experts say. (Read full article)

Last year, nearly 4,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses. And 1,100 of those deaths were in Ontario and over 300 of them in Toronto. (Read full article)

As part of a plan to ensure teachers only use the 2010 sex-ed curriculum, the government unveiled a complaints website for parents -- branded fortheparents.ca -- and reminded them of other ways to complain about teachers both online and over the phone with the Ontario College of Teachers. (Read full article)

An email sent to Ontario Parks earlier this month suggests that Premier Doug Ford and his PC party have banned the mention of anything related to climate change on the government agency's social media channels. (Read full article)

Advocates say the removal of the For Profit Maximum Threshold opens the door to the expansion of big-box corporate day cares in Ontario. (Read full article)

As for the roughly 300 other brewers across Ontario, you'll have to pay full price as usual so that they can continue to pay employees a living wage and maintain the quality of their products. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has warned universities and colleges they will face funding cuts if they fail to adopt free-speech policies that defend controversial speakers on campus and decline to stop shielding students from opinions some might find offensive. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford took aim at the province's courts on Monday, following a judge's ruling that his attempt to shrink the size of Toronto's city council in the middle of an election period was unconstitutional. (Read full article)

Coming shortly after the Ford government invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights to override a court ruling, Ontario's opposition parties see this as another effort by the Progressive Conservatives to muscle through their agenda. (Read full article)

Lindo said experts have been told they're no longer needed and the government has disbanded four subcommittees of the directorate. (Read full article)

Months after cancelling hundreds of renewable energy contracts, the Ontario government introduced legislation Thursday to scrap a law that aimed to bolster the province's green energy industry. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has "gutted" climate change programs that were beginning to reap benefits and a new "meaningful" law is needed to replace them, the province's environmental commissioner says. (Read full article)

Ontario's Drive Clean vehicle emissions testing program will be dismantled next year and replaced with a new system that will focus on heavy-duty vehicles such as transport trucks, the government said Friday. (Read full article)

The cancellation of the cap-and-trade system will cost $3 billion in lost revenue over the next four fiscal years, Ontario's fiscal watchdog said Tuesday, warning the decision would push the provincial budget further into the red. (Read full article)

The roundtable was established in 2015, as a way for experts to provide strategic advice to the province on emerging issues related to violence against women. It is made up of representatives from close to two dozen organizations that address issues related to violence against women -- but also those that have experience with specific populations, including Indigenous women, immigrants, older women, LGBTQ people and sex workers. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford has appointed a longtime Conservative and a former campaign adviser to be Ontario's representative in Washington.
According to one source, who spoke with iPolitics on the condition of anonymity, [Ian] Todd's salary will be around $350,000. (Read full article)

The grants, which are capped at a maximum of $1,000, are obtained by school councils through applications to the province. The grants are then used by councils to pay for outreach programs, such as school math and literacy nights, even the cost of translating letters home to parents into languages that aren't official ones, such as Arabic, Urdu or Mandarin, in order to keep families informed and increase their participation in the school community. (Read full article)

Employment standards inspections deal with basic workplace issues such as unpaid wages and overtime. Proactive inspections, which are initiated at the behest of the ministry, are far more effective at recovering unpaid wages, including public holiday pay and overtime, than when individual workers file complaints, according to the ministry's own data. (Read full article)

For Unifor Local 444 president Dave Cassidy, the Ford government's decision to abolish the Ontario College of Trades is just a way of getting skilled labourers to work for lesser wages. (Read full article)

The bill was introduced in July but the final vote was delayed when an environmental group launched legal action against the government, alleging the province had flouted the province's Environmental Bill of Rights by failing to hold public consultations on the issue. (Read full article)

The Ontario Child Advocate serves as an independent watchdog to investigate ill-treatment of children in the child welfare system and to review government policy and practice around services to children. (Read full article)

Critics say cost-cutting measures announced by the Ford government will have a resounding effect on northern Ontario residents. (Read full article)

With the province scrapping rent control for new units across Ontario, affordable housing advocates are cautioning the changes could mark a return to sky-high rent increases for thousands of Toronto tenants. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservative government is set to pass the Making Ontario Open for Business Act, which repeals a labour reform bill that, among other measures, raised the minimum wage and offered employees extended medical leave. (Read full article)

The resolution, brought forward by parental rights advocate Tanya Granic Allen, declares gender identity a "Liberal ideology" and asks that references to it be removed from Ontario's sex-education curriculum. [...] Still, the fact it was debated by the Progressive Conservative party at all and during transgender week, just a few days before the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has rubbed salt in the wound for many people in Ontario's LGBTQ community. (Read full article)

Like many jurisdictions with parliamentary traditions, the Ontario legislature appoints legislative officers, sometimes called parliamentary officers, to oversee and review activities of government that warrant special concern.
Their duties include regularly issuing public reports that critically evaluate government performance in specific areas.
[...] Bill 57 fundamentally undermines the independence of legislative officers by allowing a party with a majority to suspend any legislative officer based merely on "the opinion the suspension is warranted." (Read full article)

The premier's comments came after his community safety minister said qualification requirements for the job were changed partway through the hiring process to broaden the pool of applicants for the post. (Read full article)

"I believe that the consolidated financial statements of the province of Ontario as issued ... materially overstate the deficit of the province for the year," [Cindy Veinot, the Ontario government's chief accountant] said in a submission to the legislative "transparency" committee examining the province's books. (Read full article)

Staff and office expenses for 25 councillors will now cost $13.3 million; when we had 44 councillors, it was $12.1 million. (Read full article)

Environmentalists warn that legislation introduced by the Ontario government this week would allow for development inside the province's vast Greenbelt -- despite an explicit election promise from Premier Doug Ford to leave the protected lands alone. (Read full article)
(Note: Before Ford was elected, he planned to open the Greenbelt for development and then backtracked due to protests in May 2018. The above headline thus marks the second time Ford has targeted the Greenbelt. He reversed course on this in January 2019 after widespread protest, but targets the Greenbelt again later in 2019, in 2020, and in 2021.)

Ontario Proud, a group credited with helping Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives win the provincial election, received nearly $460,000 in corporate donations to fund its campaign efforts, new documents reveal. (Read full article)

The organization that regulates midwives in Ontario says the provincial government has axed its funding, forcing it to consider cost-cutting measures of its own. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives are reviewing the future funding of a slew of government programs -- including the Indigenous Culture Fund that was the province's response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [...] At the same time, the Tories are melding the environment and land tribunals, the social justice tribunals and the safety, licensing appeals and standards tribunals "into a single cluster named Tribunals Ontario," according to an internal Ministry of the Attorney General memo. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has slashed base funding to the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) by $5 million, as well as more than $2 million to the Indigenous Culture Fund. (Read full article)

The cut will mean the end of a number of initiatives for at-risk youth, including an after-school program run by teens in low-income areas that was established in the wake of the so-called "summer of the gun" in Toronto. (Read full article)

Mr. Sapers was hired away from his previous post as federal corrections ombudsman to fix a provincial correctional service plagued by a string of revelations about inmate mistreatment. (Read full article)

Cancelled programs include the Focus on Youth's after-school program, which operates in high-needs urban neighbourhoods and employs about 60 part-time students, mostly from high school. Also on the chopping block is the Tutors in the Classroom program, which will impact about 35 university and college students. (Read full article)

A top staffer to Ontario Premier Doug Ford is leaving her post for a high-paid appointment with the province's energy regulator, the latest in what the Opposition calls a series of cushy jobs for Doug Ford's friends. [...] "Stacking the OEB with his buddies and turning our energy decision-making body into a dumping ground for Ford loyalists diminishes its independence, and will have major consequences for Ontario's energy sector." (Read full article)

Ontario has eliminated free tuition for low-income students as it attempts to trim a multibillion-dollar deficit, a move that -- despite an accompanying tuition fee cut -- is being slammed as harmful to those it's purported to help. (Read full article)

"There are hundreds upon hundreds of examples of not-for-profit organizations that have relied on the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Ontario Trillium Fund for them to be able to move forward on projects that are vital to their existence," Gravelle added, "so a $15 million reduction is obviously significant." (Read full article)

Independent facilitation also supports families as their children move through different life stages. And it helps parents prepare for their children to be supported when they are no longer around by helping them maintain relationships with extended family and friends, and develop meaningful connections to people in their neighbourhood and broader community. (Read full article)

Health experts are warning that Ontario's proposal to dismantle government agencies such as Cancer Care Ontario and the Trillium Gift of Life Network could erode patient care, as more details emerge about the province's plans to overhaul the health-care system. (Read full article)

"This is clearly an intent to push this thing through as fast as possible before the public ever catches up with what the real agenda is here with the government and before anyone can mount any kind of significant opposition." (Read full article)

The most intense treatment can cost up to $80,000 per year.
At that cost, Ford's [$5,000] for children with autism won't go far, leaving many families to pay tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in healthcare costs. (Read full article)

Even for a government that seems like a series of sideshows in search of a plot, Premier Doug Ford's attacks on campus student organizations has a jump-the-shark feel. This week, he looped back to a perplexing storyline about how undergrads have been held hostage by "Marxist" student government unions that allegedly impose extortionist fees and levies. (Read full article)

Behaviour analysts say children's minister Lisa MacLeod and her staff threatened to make their lives miserable for the next four years if they didn't endorse the government's changes to autism services. (Read full article)

The protest comes a week after Ford accused student unions of getting up to "crazy Marxist nonsense" as he appealed for donations to his Progressive Conservative Party in a fundraising email. (Read full article)

"The government has gutted police oversight, scrapped the police complaints commission, and really set the clock back on accountability and transparency of policing right now, at a time when the pendulum had been swinging in the other direction," Mr. Bryant, who was Ontario attorney-general in an earlier Liberal government, told reporters at Queen's Park. (Read full article)

The Tories rewarded Cameron Montgomery, who lost in Ottawa-Orleans last June, with the plum post to chair the board of the Education Quality and Accountability Office, previously a part-time job that paid less than $4,000 annually. (Read full article)

Currently, if an employer wants an employee to work more than 48 hours in a week, they must both sign an agreement and then get approval from the Ministry of Labour. This bill removes ministerial approval. [...] The bill also takes away a rule that tells employers they must display posters informing workers about their rights on the job.[...] The omnibus bill also scraps [the Toxics Reductions Act] that force industries to keep track of the toxic chemicals they use, a measure the government also says will cut unnecessary red tape. (Read full article)

The centre's closure is prompting critics to accuse the Progressive Conservatives of pro-developer bias. The move was not publicly announced by the government, but was revealed in a short note posted on the agency's website. (Read full article)

Customizing a van for Premier Doug Ford -- with items that included a reclining leather sofa and a mini-fridge -- would have cost taxpayers more than $50,000, according to a document filed in Ontario Superior Court. (Read full article)

Ontario Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod is denying reports that she ordered services for those on an autism waiting list to be frozen, despite e-mails that show the provincial government told service providers last fall to "pause" making calls to families. (Read full article)

Some companies and industry groups felt pressure to attend to maintain high-level access to the government, according to sources, who were granted anonymity by The Globe because of fears of negative professional consequences (Read full article)

A former high-ranking provincial police officer alleges his firing this week was in reprisal for waging a legal battle over the controversial hiring of a long-time friend of Premier Doug Ford as commissioner of the force. (Read full article)

Opposition parties have also condemned the move, calling it an effort to remove independent criticism of government policy. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's government for the people has announced that it will henceforth be investing $10 million per year into something called the "Horse Improvement Program."
Because why fund post-secondary education when everyone could just work at the race track, am I right? (Read full article)

Ontario's redesigned autism program prompted by parent protests will cost at least $600 million a year, says the social services minister. (Read full article)

Changes coming to Ontario's prescription drug coverage on April 1 could force young people to go through their parents if they need birth control and that's raising concern among sexual health workers. [...] [Lyndsey Butcher, the executive director of the Shore Centre] said that could lead to some teens deciding not to fill their birth control prescriptions, and not taking their birth control can lead to unplanned pregnancies. (Read full article)

Ontario's environmental commissioner issued dire warnings Wednesday about the "frightening" state of climate policy in the province as she delivered her office's last report. (Read full article)

It's troubled, addicted and predominantly young adults who will die unnecessarily and in greater numbers in parks, alleys, stairwells and washrooms because of what the government is doing. (Read full article)

Barrelling forward with his controversial replacement of "Yours to Discover" on Ontario licence plates, Premier Doug Ford insists people in the province will welcome the change. (Read full article)

Time-and-a-half pay in Ontario is usually mandatory when employees work more than 44 hours a week, unless an overtime-averaging agreement in place. Under Bill 66, employers will have expanded use of these agreements and will be able to average workers' hours over the course of a month without Ministry of Labour approval, resulting in less overtime pay. (Read full article)

The former Alberta cabinet minister advising Premier Doug Ford's government on a revamp of Ontario's alcohol retailing will be paid $1,000 a day, the Star has learned. (Read full article)

Unions and an education advocacy group made higher estimates for the job losses in recent days, after Education Minister Lisa Thompson announced that the average class size would increase by one student in grades 4 to 8, and from 22 to 28 students in high school. (Read full article)

The plan, which is described by its advocates as "radical," is designed to eventually get psychiatrists out of providing continuing care to patients altogether. If it goes through, it will be the biggest change in psychiatry in the history of the discipline in Canada, and turn psychiatrists from "treaters" into "consultants" who will diagnose patients in a single session, and make recommendations for others to follow, then wave goodbye. (Read full article)

Ontario drivers could soon see government-mandated stickers about the price of the carbon tax on gas pumps across the province, as the Progressive Conservatives open a new front in their battle with Ottawa over the levy. (Read full article)

Toronto-based Harmony Movement will have to lay off 11 full-time staff, Cheuk Kwan, the group's executive director, told HuffPost Canada. Founded in 1994, the organization facilitated equity-focused, anti-racism workshops for 59 out of 60 English school boards in the province. (Read full article)

On March 15, the Ontario Ministry of Education announced a plan to "modernize classrooms." It includes a strategy to centralize electronically delivered education and mandate four e-learning credits for secondary students -- out of the 30 credits needed for a high school diploma -- starting in 2020-21. [...] One of [Beyhan Farhadi's] key findings is that e-learning has been used to cut costs, rather than to improve the quality of instruction. (Read full article)

"Scarborough residents really lose out with another change in plans," said Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 12 Toronto-St. Paul's), who has repeatedly pushed for the LRT network plan at council. "Not only would, for at least a billion dollars less, a 24-LRT station network be built to connect more people, provide more service for far fewer dollars, but it could be built much faster than a three-stop subway." (Read full article)

Mayor John Tory said Thursday that he is "incredibly disappointed" that the provincial government has reneged on a promise to double the city's share of the gas tax -- a broken promise that will cost Toronto $1.1 billion in funding for transit over the next 10 years. (Read full article)
(Note: After public outcry, Ford got rid of the retroactive aspect of these cuts that impacted already existing budgets but the cuts remain in place for funding after this year.)

"We went into this budget expecting deep cuts," [Andrea] Horwath told reporters. "What we didn't expect was level of irresponsibility and outright cruelty that we are seeing in this budget." (Read full article)

The Ford government's budget bill would also dissolve Ontario's Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, the tribunal that has awarded financial assistance to crime victims since 1971. The money is given to cover such items as funeral costs, physical therapy and loss of income. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservative government is slashing the budget of Legal Aid Ontario, including eliminating funding for refugee and immigration law services -- a move lawyers with the organization call a "horrific" decimation. (Read full article)

The Ford government's budget proposal to cut financial support for people who need legal services is the largest cut of its kind and will result in the elimination of many provincial legal services for refugees and immigrants. (Read full article)

A longtime emergency responder says "lives are going to be put at risk" by the Doug Ford government's unexpected decision to cut the number of paramedic services in Ontario. (Read full article)

That money would have gone to programs that deal with flood warnings, flood response and floodplain management. (Read full article)

In the apparent rush to implement the changes to OHIP+, many families were unaware that they would be losing access to the program. (Read full article)

The two services that operate interlibrary loans, deliver books across the province and provide support and training for library staff have taken a huge budget hit from the Ontario government. (Read full article)

In the spending plan tabled last week, the Progressive Conservatives revealed the department will get an eight per cent cut this year and that last year there was a 27 per cent in-year cut to the department's budget. (Read full article)

A revamp of protections by Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives includes more power for the government to override ecological concerns and throws some species to the wolves in a bid to please developers, critics charge. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has told local public-health units it is slashing provincial funding for programs such as food safety and water-quality inspections and immunization controls -- cuts amounting to almost $200-million over the next two years in Toronto. (Read full article)

Even though Canada ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to food security and ending hunger, Doug Ford's cuts to public health have put the future of 600 school breakfast programs at risk. (Read full article)

Ontario is considering ending a government-run travel insurance program that partly covers the cost of emergency health services abroad, a move the Opposition says will hurt snowbirds and frequent travellers. (Read full article)

Ontario is cancelling a tree planting program, with those involved warning the move will lead to the loss of jobs and environmental benefits that forests provide. (Read full article)

"This showcases just how out of touch the Ford Conservatives are with how important it is to support the local cultural sectors that contribute so much to our economy." (Read full article)

Doug Ford's populist campaign strategy in last spring's Ontario election campaign saw him rail against what he said was a Liberal government devoted to spending taxpayer money on "insiders and political elites." But now, less than a year after the Progressive Conservatives won a majority, Mr. Ford's critics say his government has already appointed a long and growing list of party loyalists or friends to lucrative posts. (Read full article)

Cuts to Legal Aid Ontario will impact low-income Ontarians' ability to access the justice system and worsen court delays, lawyers say. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has appointed an all-male panel to probe workplace culture at the provincial police force, raising questions about whether the review will adequately address gender discrimination and harassment issues facing female employees. (Read full article)

For a decade, the Mowat Centre has put Ontario's perspective front and centre while advancing the national debate on important issues from equalization to economic development to immigration. But no more.
It's being forced to close shop after the Ford government's surprise decision to strip provincial funding from think tanks. (Read full article)

The move has already led to at least one child care centre in Peel Region, west of Toronto, telling parents that their fees will increase -- up to an extra $72 a month for full-time infant care. (Read full article)
(Note: In October, after criticism, the province reduced these cuts and delayed them to 2020, but more cuts are expected in the future.)

The agency says it provides resources to prevent problem gambling that are used by front-line service providers including the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Ontario's Alcohol and Gaming Commission. (Read full article)

One of the main nurseries for an Ontario tree planting program that's being scrapped by the province said it will likely have to destroy about three million trees because of the cancellation. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has eliminated all of its tourism funding to Toronto and Ottawa, to the tune of $13 million. (Read full article)

A non-profit agency that helps Ontario patients access health care through videoconferencing has laid off more than 15 per cent of its staff in the wake of a cut to its provincial funding, CBC News has learned. (Read full article)

Ontario is cutting more than $70 million from eHealth's budget ahead of a major health system merger, and millions in health research funding is drying up. (Read full article)

A series of provincial funding cuts could leave the city with a shortfall of more than $177 million in its already approved budget for 2019, according to Toronto's top bureaucrat. (Read full article)
(Note: After criticism, Ford got rid of the retroactive aspect of these cuts but future cuts were to still be in effect.)

The provincial office tasked with preventing occupational injury, illness and death in Ontario will see $16 million in cuts this year, despite the fact the body is not taxpayer funded and does not impact the government's bottom line. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has cut the budget for financial supports to help victims of violence by more than $17 million. (Read full article)

Under the proposal, the Thunder Bay District Health Unit (TBDHU) which oversees about 146,000 residents spread across an estimated 230,000 square kilometres would be combined with the Northwestern Health Unit (NWHU), which oversees more than 82,000 people, spread across more than 171,000 square kilometres. [...] [Dr. Janet DeMille, the chief medical officer and CEO of TBDHU's] primary concern is that the new, larger entity won't have the flexibility to address individual community concerns. (Read full article)

The Ford government plans to stop all funding to an institute that supports Ontario scientists at the cutting edge of stem cell research. (Read full article)

Student loans, social assistance, legal aid, public health, stem cell research, environmental protections, libraries and literally half of Toronto City Council: these are just a few of the things Ontario's PC government has deemed extraneous since taking office last June.
Fluorescent orange hats for hunters, on the other hand -- well, those are something Ontarians simply cannot live without. (Read full article)

The Toronto District School Board says it has been forced to cancel or alter a number of high school classes as a result of the Ford government's decision to increase class sizes and cut thousands of teaching positions across the province. (Read full article)

The Ford government is "abandoning an entire baseline of information that it's going to need in five years to understand how climate change is impacting the natural world" by severely limiting the centre's ability to do this work, [former Ontario Regional Chief Isadore] Day explained. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has reduced funding at centres that support small businesses across the province. (Read full article)

The Ford government has axed provincial funding for two institutes credited with positioning Ontario and Canada at the forefront of artificial intelligence research -- a field the government's own prosperity think tank says must be supported if the province wants to remain competitive and create jobs in a booming technology sector. (Read full article)

Ontario's public health units co-ordinate services including vaccination programs, infectious disease outbreak investigations, and restaurant inspections.
It's unclear if the amalgamation exercise will result in savings, but it could result in layoffs since front line staffing makes up a significant portion of agency budgets, [Dr. Robert Kyle, president of the Association of Local Public Health Agencies] said. (Read full article)

The Ford government is reducing funding for children and youth at risk by $84.5 million, according to an analysis of provincial spending estimates by the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. (Read full article)
(Note: In October, this cut was reversed after protests and mass resignations, though the agency is still underfunded and unable to get out of its debt.)

Ontario has eliminated a fund supporting Indigenous culture as the government cuts tens of millions of dollars in arts funding -- a decision that is being slammed as short-sighted. (Read full article)

The cut, buried in April's provincial budget, will end the Transition Child Benefit which provides up to $230 per month, per child in families on welfare who are not receiving the Ontario and Canada child benefits, such as refugee claimants. (Read full article)
(Note: It took widespread condemnation and a court challenge to get Ford to reverse this cut in October, just before it was supposed to go into effect.)

The Ford government has slashed funding for at least nine programs devoted to combating the spread of invasive species and promoting native biodiversity, cuts that organizers say will compromise Ontario's capacity to respond to major ecological threats. (Read full article)

After 19 years of helping young adults quit smoking at campuses across Ontario, Leave The Pack Behind learned in a recent phone call that its funding had actually ended weeks ago -- a casualty of Ontario Premier Doug Ford's quest to reduce the province's $348-billion debt. (Read full article)

The measures, enacted by the Liberals last year, would have ensured all companies who use temps are liable for their injuries at the workers' compensation board, which critics have long argued is a key financial incentive to protecting these vulnerable workers. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservative government has adjourned the legislature until Oct. 28 -- the longest break in almost 25 years. (Read full article)

In what critics are calling an attack on Toronto and on advocacy work that challenges the provincial government, Legal Aid Ontario is cutting almost $1 million in funding across 13 neighbourhood legal clinics in the city and pulling $1 million from a 14th clinic, Parkdale Community Legal Services. (Read full article)

The Chief Financial Officer says those positions will include special elementary school education teachers, a teacher for gifted students, a vision teacher and instructional coaches. (Read full article)

The Ford government announced Wednesday that 416 layoff notices will be handed out to employees at health agencies across the province. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is appointing four new trade advisers to his Progressive Conservative government, two with strong personal ties to his office in addition to a former party president. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's chief of staff resigned on Friday after a cronyism scandal that forced the Ontario Premier to abruptly revoke the appointments of two people with close ties to the top adviser and led to a stream of criticism, including concerns raised privately by cabinet ministers. (Read full article)

Jobs and programs across the board have been slashed or outright eliminated. A total of 189 positions are gone, affecting classroom teachers, teacher librarians, special education and ESL resource teachers, IT support, math coaches and corporate staff. Departmental budgets have been decreased in the areas of transportation, technology and professional development. (Read full article)

An internal review of changes to Ontario's autism program calls for an immediate reset, saying the government purposely spread misinformation about the costs and the backlog for treatment to justify a funding model that would leave families "destitute." (Read full article)

The new agency threatens to derail nearly three years of negotiations between Ontario, the federal government and Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) concerning turning over decision-making power about health care to 49 northern nations so they can bring health-care services closer to home. (Read full article)

Hamilton, Burlington and Niagara are losing the bus that brings cancer screening and stop-smoking support to residents who otherwise have difficulty accessing health services. (Read full article)

The Ontario government says it is focusing on science, technology, engineering and math in education -- but an analysis of two of the province's largest boards show those courses are being squeezed out as secondary schools grapple with larger classes and fewer teachers. (Read full article)

The Ontario government will be cutting a subsidy that provides discounted fares for riders using both GO Transit and Toronto's transit system in the same trip, leaving the two agencies to come up with a way to keep the popular program running. (Read full article)

Ministry of Transportation expenditure estimates indicate that $9.7 million was budgeted for the Ontario Seniors' Public Transit Tax Credit program in 2018-2019, but only $3.5 million is budgeted for the same program in 2019-2020. (Read full article)

Municipal administration learned in April, after its budget had already been established, that it would receive $537,000 less than promised for the provincial Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative (CHPI). The money had been committed as an increase to the $10.1 million in base funding for the initiative locally for 2019, but has since been deferred by a year. (Read full article)

Another appointee of Doug Ford's government resigned Friday after the Opposition uncovered his ties to the Ontario premier's former chief of staff. (Read full article)

Thousands of new child cares spaces approved by the previous provincial government -- including 3,049 in Toronto -- may never get built due to the latest Ford government cuts. (Read full article)

Refugee lawyers have denounced the move, calling it a "horrific" reduction in services that will hurt an already vulnerable population. (Read full article)

"But the Ford government is talking about spending cuts -- real, deep spending cuts," said [Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions]. "Those will mean a very significant loss of bed and staff capacity in a system which is already stressed." (Read full article)

Ontario appears unlikely to host a mandatory anti-racism conference in 2019, prompting fresh accusations that Premier Doug Ford's government doesn't take the anti-racism file seriously. (Read full article)

Housing advocates recently expressed worry after the Ford government cancelled a plan for 800 units of affordable housing in the GTA. But the most-recent budget estimates suggest this is just the start of the attacks on provincial housing supports. (Read full article)

"You can't say, 'Hey, you're about to inspect my house, here's some cash.' You shouldn't be allowed to do that," said [David] Lepofsky, a lawyer and longtime advocate for people with disabilities. "That's a clear conflict of interest. It's actually quite troubling." (Read full article)

Pelee Island Winery and Premier Doug Ford are facing some online backlash after reports that the winery's president donated to the Ontario Progressive Conservative party just weeks before the premier made a video urging Ontarians to buy the company's wine. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is facing calls to dismantle 'Ontario News Now' -- the taxpayer-funded Progressive Conservative communication video service -- after PC party donors were featured in recent promotional videos. (Read full article)

London was one of 21 communities across Ontario to receive a portion of the $9.4 million in funding. That funding ended Wednesday. (Read full article)

Commuter train stations in Ontario could soon bear the names of companies and corporations, and those naming rights could give sponsors access to anonymous transit data under a new proposal from the Ford government. (Read full article)

Last month Ford called into a talk radio show to discuss the incident, calling the man a "nutcase." The premier was criticized for that language and when asked Friday if he regrets it, he said not at all. (Read full article)

Families and staff at Hamilton's city-funded long-term care homes are pleading with the Ontario government to stop cuts they say will hurt their loved ones. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government is exposing itself to a "perpetual" conflict of interest through its close ties to lobbyists, warns a Progressive Conservative Party riding association. (Read full article)

Under his revised plan, local municipalities will be forced to cover 30 per cent of all their public-health costs, starting next year. The province currently covers 100 per cent of the cost of certain public-health programs, and 75 per cent of others. (Read full article)

The head of the Upper Thames Conservation Authority (UTRCA) says the "shocking" letter creates uncertainty around future programming. (Read full article)

The change allowed the Premier's Office to bypass appointment rules that stipulate the government must use a "competitive, merit-based process," including publicly posting the position for 10 business days. (Read full article)

Mandate letters are commonly used by provincial governments across the country. Every other premier who issues them not only makes the letters public as a matter of course, they also publish them online as a deliberate way to allow the public to understand what the government plans to accomplish during its term. (Read full article)

The province this week announced the results of a second lottery for the chance to apply for a licence. The first was in January. In both cases, the results were flawed -- and each time highlighted how poorly conceived the whole idea to grant the right to apply for licences by lottery was in the first place. (Read full article)

The law lets the government send inspectors to see if gas stations are properly displaying the stickers and sets out penalties for non-compliance. (Read full article)

Toronto's largest school board says it has cut, or plans to cut, the equivalent of at least 296 full-time positions due to Ford government cutbacks as the new school year begins next week. (Read full article)

The new round of cuts targets life-saving public health services across the province, including school vaccinations, disease prevention, student breakfast programs, water quality testing, food safety inspections, and more. (Read full article)

Ontario college and university students are heading back to school with lower tuition fees, but accompanying cuts to government assistance mean many will have both less help paying for school and more debt. (Read full article)

Emergency room physician Dr. Raghu Venugopal, speaking after a press conference held at city hall on Tuesday before a board of health budget committee meeting, said hospital emergency departments are sometimes so backed up that patients waiting for treatment lie down on the floor. (Read full article)

That's what the latest round of budget cuts has meant to vulnerable residents of long-term care homes in Ontario. One shower a week; when summer temperatures all week have been in the thirties. One shower, out of the regular, government-mandated two. (Read full article)

Hospital overcrowding for the month of June hit a record high this year, according to the Ontario Hospital Association. (Read full article)

The city, which is also the administrator of children's services for Peterborough County, estimates provincial funding for its operation of children's services will be reduced by $425,000 in 2020, with further funding changes expected as the province phases in reductions over three years. (Read full article)

"We filed the request because we believe the conservatives used these consultations to appear as though their regressive destructive cuts are policy generated with public input and support and we know that is not true," [Jessica Lyons] said. (Read full article)

The Ontario government spent nearly a year in talks with a developer about a pitch to build housing in the province's Greenbelt, despite Premier Doug Ford's promise not to touch the protected area, CBC News has learned. (Read full article)

"The premier has overstated the deficit over the last year in order to pursue an ideological agenda of government cuts," Green party Leader Mike Schreiner said in a statement. (Read full article)

In December, Blair made a public appeal to Ontario's ombudsman to investigate what he called "questions of political interference" in Taverner's appointment. Taverner is a longtime friend of Ford and his family. Blair was fired in early March, within days of Taverner withdrawing his name from contention for the top police job. (Read full article)

It's a problem that's been many years in the making.
But it's also true that the Ford government has wasted more than a year when it had the power to do something about it. (Read full article)

The number of seniors waiting to move into long-term care homes in Ontario has hit a record high, climbing to 36,245, according to provincial data obtained by the Star. (Read full article)

The official ribbon-cutting ceremony of Niagara University in Vaughan on Sept. 15 has puzzled some people on social media since the Tory-led government has cut funding for public education yet it's celebrating the opening of a private institute. (Read full article)

Child and Community Resources (CCR), based in Sudbury, said in a statement on Tuesday that changes to the autism program announced by Premier Doug Ford's government last year that cut thousands of dollars in funding for families transformed the "large multidisciplinary organization to a shell of our previous capacity." (Read full article)

That's because the stickers decrying the tax, which gas stations are required by law to post on their pumps, were produced using the wrong adhesive and are falling off. (Read full article)

A private, for-profit education company is taking advantage of Doug Ford's cuts to education to sell students classes online that they used to get for free. (Read full article)

A plan to add more than 100 affordable apartments to a Scarborough neighbourhood is up in the air after the province cut a program that would have helped pay for the project. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservative government quietly announced late Friday afternoon that it is closing the Ontario Film Authority -- a non-profit corporation in charge of the Ontario Film Review Board -- and as of Tuesday will rely on ratings from other provinces in a money-saving move. (Read full article)

The Ontario government insisted the updates to OHIP will improve the quality of patient care. However several previously covered services have now been de-listed. (Read full article)

Theatre Ontario, which has spent close to half a century supporting and advocating for theatre in the province, is on the verge of folding due to government cuts. (Read full article)

Tuesday's report confirmed that the 20 per cent reduction in Ontario government funding will result in a reduction of $15 million -- or as many as 760 affordable child-care spaces -- as of Jan. 1. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's government has done almost nothing on the bulk of the promises in the greenhouse-gas reduction plan Ontario introduced last November, according to a new report by an environmental watchdog group. (Read full article)

Two of the three divisional court judges who heard the case ruled public consultations were still required and the PCs did not follow the law by ending the program on the basis of election results. (Read full article)

The Ford government is forcing electricity providers across Ontario to change the layout of residential hydro bills, making the province's subsidy appear more prominently. [...] It means when Ontario consumers check their hydro bills next month, the figures will look different, although the bottom line will remain essentially the same. (Read full article)

When ambulances are backlogged it results in 'Level Zero', a code used to say there are no ambulances in service. The longest 'Level Zero' occurrence was in June, lasting 461 minutes in duration. (Read full article)

A provincial grant program intended to help get parents involved in schools is being cut considerably, leaving school councils facing a substantial funding shortage. (Read full article)

What began with the merging of nearly 20 tribunals into a single administrative body has morphed into a slow bloodletting for some of the most heavily used and critical of Ontario's tribunals. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is spending at least $778 million this year to make up for programs it cut in its 2019 budget and to invest in an autism plan after sparking outrage. (Read full article)

"The legislation ensures that compensation for educators and other public sector workers will continue to fall behind the rate of inflation." [...] The statement also points out the bill was passed "just one day after the Minister of Finance bragged to Ontarians that the economy is thriving and that the government is more than a billion dollars ahead of its deficit reduction targets." (Read full article)

Most major government bills at Queen's Park go through a committee hearing before a final vote. That allows MPPs from all official parties to invite people who would be affected by the legislation to speak out. The NDP says the rule changes would give the government more power to pass bills without public input. (Read full article)

"Organizations aren't just worried about having their funding streams cut, but also the speed and uncertainty of the decision-making process, as well as the lack of information, details, and engagement with the sector by the provincial government," the report reads. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's decision to tear up 750 renewable energy contracts shortly after winning the election last year is costing Ontario taxpayers more than $230 million. (Read full article)

Ontario's Members' Integrity Act prohibits members of cabinet, including the Premier, from having outside employment and holding an office or directorship at a company. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford said Thursday he is "proud" of his decision to tear up hundreds of renewable energy deals, a move that his government acknowledges could cost taxpayers more than $230 million. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservatives touted the amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act -- which exempts from rent control units that had not been previously occupied before Nov. 15, 2018 -- as a way to encourage investors to build more properties and increase housing supply in a market that is facing a crisis. But industry experts have warned that the policy is likely to lead to more tenants being evicted as they face exorbitant rent increases. (Read full article)

In a news release, a group of parents, students, teachers and members of the community called Say No to IB Fees laid the blame for the introduction of fees on the province and changes to education funding. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's plan to fight climate change is not based on "sound evidence" and will fall well short of Ontario's 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk warns in a damning new report. (Read full article)

But environmental groups, including Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, warn the move would loosen pollution rules for the approximately 140 facilities covered by MISA, which include some of the province's largest refineries, mines, pulp and paper mills, and chemical plants. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is asking the courts to throw out at least eight class actions against it. One involves an inmate named Adam Capay, who was held in solitary confinement for most of his 4 1/2 years in custody. (Read full article)

In Ontario, the former government had put $20 million toward installing a network of 500 charging stations across the province. Nearly 350 of them were ultimately put into service, and the current government has not built any more. Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, actually removed some earlier this year. (Read full article)

The reversal comes after Premier Doug Ford's government promised to move ahead with the transit project during the 2018 election. (Read full article)

Ontario's Ministry of Health says it is not directly responsible for ensuring the province's pharmacies are "adhering to standards of practice for the profession and that patients are receiving safe and competent care." (Read full article)

"We must remember this was self-inflicted... They did not need to scrap an entire program instead of making enhancements to that program," said Kristen Ellison, whose nine-year-old son is on the autism spectrum. (Read full article)

It takes a certain kind of ineptitude to double the funding for a program and still have its recipients hate you. (Read full article)

The delays mean some landlords are out thousands of dollars in unpaid rent as they wait two months or more for hearings to take place. Meanwhile, some tenant advocates worry the delays are part of a deliberate strategy by the Ford government to pave the way for tribunal reforms that favour landlords. (Read full article)

Officials at the Landlord and Tenant Board say a shortage of adjudicators appointed to hear cases is contributing to the delays. Those appointments can only be made by cabinet order, so the Ford government is facing blame over its failure to fill some 20 vacant adjudicator posts. (Read full article)

A "confidential" government document obtained by the Star shows Premier Doug Ford's government considered keeping online learning optional until 2024 and planned to slash school board funding while creating courses to sell to other jurisdictions at a profit. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's government is weakening the powers of the independent recycling regulator that was supposed to hold producers of electronics or household hazardous waste accountable for the products they sell. (Read full article)

It turns out an angry parent recently featured in a Toronto Sun article criticizing teachers for "holding our children hostage" has cozy ties with Doug Ford's education minister, Stephen Lecce. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford has quietly appointed a Toronto police officer and a professor with Progressive Conservative links to sit on the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Star has learned.
[...] The human rights commission was caught off-guard by the political appointments, which... come amidst the rights watchdog's ongoing inquiry into allegations of racial profiling and discrimination against the Toronto Police Service, raising questions around the optics and timing -- and the potential for conflict of interest. (Read full article)

Overcrowding has become so common in Ontario hospitals that patient beds are now placed in hallways and conference rooms not only at times of peak demand, but routinely day after day, research by CBC News reveals. (Read full article)

Hospital capacity numbers acquired by CBC News show that hallway medicine is a daily reality across Ontario and not just a problem limited to big-city hospitals. (Read full article)

Data obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows the hospital spent most of the first half of 2019 with more patients than acute care beds. (Read full article)

The Ontario Hospital Association's 2020 budget recommendations call for a 4.85 per cent funding increase to $922 million to "maintain access to care." It also says that Ontario spends less per capita on hospitals than any other provincial government. (Read full article)

Councillor Rowena Santos says patients are dying in the hallways of Brampton Civic Hospital, the city's only hospital with ambulance service. For the first half of 2019, Brampton Civic was functioning at more than 100 per cent capacity. William Osler Health System, the hospital network that owns Brampton Civic, also owns Etobicoke General Hospital, which has also operated at more than 100 per cent capacity. (Read full article)

Under the plan, developers could then hire the newly-minted professionals, instead of calling in city inspectors to approve their progress. The City of Toronto is already voicing opposition, saying that raises a number of concerns including possible conflicts of interest. (Read full article)

Wait times for children and youth mental health services have more than doubled in two years, according to a report from care providers who are urging Premier Doug Ford's government to increase spending to address the delays. (Read full article)

In light of the world coronavirus emergency, more than 175 Ontario health workers have signed an open letter urging the Ford government to restore paid sick day policies that were cancelled a year ago. [...] "Evidence shows paid sick days are a vital measure to decrease the spread of illness and ensure proper recovery," says the letter, signed by doctors, nurses, personal support workers and public health workers. (Read full article)

A planned restructuring of Ontario's public health units should be put on hold until the current novel coronavirus outbreak is over, the leader of the provincial Opposition said Wednesday. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's government is looking to make it easier for landlords to evict tenants by slashing the waiting periods for eviction notices and allowing private bailiffs to remove renters, the Star has learned. (Read full article)

At the same time as Doug Ford's government is fighting with teachers over a plan to eliminate thousands of teacher jobs and replace them with cheap online courses, Ford's government is also interested in making teachers take an online math test to prove they're smarter than a third grader. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has named a former chief lobbyist for Toronto's real estate development industry to the province's powerful land-use tribunal, while stripping it of four adjudicators with environmental backgrounds. (Read full article)

As the president of Arista Homes and the CEO of TACC Construction, [Michael] DeGasperis is one of the richest and most powerful men in Vaughan, Ontario. [...] Last September, the Copper Creek Golf Club, which his family reportedly owns, also hosted a $1,000 per-plate dinner and reception organized by the King-Vaughan Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. (Read full article)

A separate regulatory change not included in the legislation but that the government said would be introduced by the Ministry of the Environment would allow Metrolinx to move ahead with early works for a transit project before its environmental assessment process is complete. (Read full article)

Catherine Fife, NDP MPP for Waterloo and critic for economic growth and job creation, said in a news release "using a for-profit company could turn Ontario's social services budget into a cash cow for the Australian firm."
"Hiring a multinational firm owned by Australian and American companies to navigate local Ontario job markets is a recipe for failure," she said. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is now saying they are working with the manufacturer of the new licence plates to "resolve" issues regarding poor visibility at night, one day after the Minister of Government Consumer Services said they are "actually very readable." (Read full article)

When you factor in enrolment growth, the amount spent per student this year is actually down from the previous year. (Read full article)

A development company with links to a fake parents' group lobbied Doug Ford's government shortly after the group's ads attacking school teachers ran in three of Canada's biggest newspapers. (Read full article)

The legislature recently adopted a host of procedural rule changes, including singing the royal anthem in addition to the Canadian national anthem on the first Monday of each month. It was sung Monday for the first time since the legislature resumed from the winter break and the new rule went into effect.
Sol Mamakwa, a New Democrat who represents the northern riding of Kiiwetinoong, with a majority Indigenous population, said it was hurtful to hear the anthem.
"As a First Nations person, as a colonized person, it's a step backwards when we talk about reconciliation," he said. (Read full article)

The newest disgrace is a welfare program quietly launched last month in Peel, Hamilton-Niagara and Muskoka-Kawartha. Adding to the shock of this is the fact that one contract, in Peel Region, was awarded to a U.S. company that will get paid for how quickly it pushes clients through the system -- many of whom suffer from addictions, mental health and disabilities. (Read full article)

Carbon emissions from Ontario's electricity sector are set to almost triple over the next decade, as gas-fired generation largely fills the void left by major nuclear refurbishments and the dismantling of green energy under Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government. (Read full article)

"Why fix something that's not broken?" NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Thursday to reporters at Queen's Park.
"If this is a way for the government to have more nepotism, to have more of their friends appointed to positions like the bench, that's frightening." (Read full article)

The difference is that while our health-care system is now mobilized, our political system remains paralyzed. If Ford stands by his closed-minded policy of a year ago -- revoking two paid sick days from workers and restoring the power of employers to once again demand sick notes -- we may have incubated our very own vector for the virus. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's Buck-A-Beer plan was supposed to save people money but, according to one Ontario beer writer, it ended up making beer in the province more expensive. (Read full article)

The region's child-care fee reduction initiative, which had been running since 2018, is ending on April 30. Olivia Nunes, acting director of early years and child-care services for Peel, told CBC News in an email that the program is ending because of "reduced child-care funding from the Government of Ontario.["] (Read full article)

Two weeks before International Women's Day, a network of sexual assault centres across Ontario received news that additional funding provided by the PC government to help reduce waitlists for counselling services will not be renewed. (Read full article)
(Note: Only after outcry was this cut reversed, though there were fears that the new funding could come with restrictions. Also remember that despite reversing course, this was still a thing Ford's government tried to do.)

Except the $148 million in "total" funding [Stephen] Lecce announced appears to be nearly a hundred million dollars lower than had been previously committed to. (Read full article)

Ontario's integrity watchdog has warned that Premier Doug Ford's appointment of an active-duty Toronto police officer to the human rights commission creates conflicts of interest. (Read full article)

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce confirmed during a radio interview that his "Supports for Students Fund" is really a ploy to replace secure unionized teacher jobs with precarious, non-unionized positions. (Read full article)

New statistics from the Ministry of Health show the average patient admitted to hospital in January spent 18.3 hours in the emergency room until a bed became available on a ward. (Read full article)

"As health-care providers, our hands are tied," Carolina Jimenez, a nurse and spokesperson with the Decent Work and Health Network, said Thursday. "Our medical advice is to stay home when you're sick and it's made meaningless because so many of our patients don't have the financial means to do so." (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's comment on Thursday that families should go ahead and travel during March break has been overtaken by events as Canada grapples with the novel coronavirus. (Read full article)

The case of the 77-year-old man is Ontario's first death related to the novel coronavirus. The province's second COVID-19-related death was reported on Thursday -- a man in his 50s from Milton, Ont. (Read full article)

In an email obtained by the Star, Dr. Shanker Nesathurai wrote Thursday that Ontario's response has undermined the province's attempt to contain the outbreak, as businesses remain open and travellers ignore advice to self-isolate. He writes that "many" other medical officers of health, who are leading the regional response to the pandemic, believe Ontario needs to take a more assertive response. (Read full article)

The provincial total now sits at 503 cases in total. (Read full article)

But health care dollars never go as far as governments like to claim. Hospitals, for example, are getting $935 million under this plan, which isn't far off what they said they needed just to maintain the existing level of care before the coronavirus threw everyone's best-laid plans out the window. (Read full article)

"The ministry was in the process of destroying expired stock prior to the start of COVID-19,'' said Travis Kann, in an email. "Once the situation in China was known, the ministry paused all destruction activities. They remain paused.'' (Read full article)

The change allows the Progressive Conservative government to push forward projects or laws that could significantly impact the environment, without consulting or notifying the public. Critics say they fear the relaxed rules could be used to skirt environmental oversight for projects unrelated to COVID-19. (Read full article)

Wednesday's increase in cases is the highest jump the province has seen in a single-day. (Read full article)

Thousands of Ontarians with disabilities may end up in hospital -- or not be able to return to the community safely -- because the Ford government has temporarily shuttered a provincial program that helps pay the cost of specialized mobility and medical devices, disability activists say. (Read full article)

Ontario is in the midst of two parallel COVID-19 epidemics, health experts say: one in the community at large, where there are encouraging signs that physical distancing is working, and one in seniors homes, an ongoing "disaster" whose true scope we are only beginning to see. [...] Nursing homes have several features that amplify that risk, experts say. Ontario's long-term-care facilities are chronically underfunded and understaffed -- a problem advocacy groups had warned of for years. Precarious work conditions force staff to patch together part-time, low-paying work at several facilities. (Read full article)

The province says on its website that each care home undergoes an annual inspection that includes interviews with residents, family members and staff "as well as direct observations of how care is being delivered." But CBC News has learned that last year, only nine out of 626 homes in Ontario actually received so-called resident quality inspections (RQIs). (Read full article)

Despite the premier declaring that the illness is spreading like "wildfire" in long-term care, Ford's measure to restrict staff to working in just one nursing home won't take effect until April 22 and will be in effect for only 14 days. (Read full article)

The Ford government is hoping to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a group of young people alleging that Ontario's lack of action on climate change has violated their charter rights. (Read full article)

The leader of Canada's largest private sector union is accusing the Ontario government of encouraging the spread of COVID-19 through a directive that allows staff who test positive for the virus but are no longer showing symptoms to return to work. (Read full article)

Insufficient testing has been one of the major failures in Ontario's coronavirus response. Along with the lack of safeguards to protect vulnerable residents and workers in long-term-care homes and the insufficient stockpiles of personal protective equipment. (Read full article)

There are now 10,010 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario, including 514 deaths. (Read full article)

Add to this the fact that Ford's government has a secret COVID-19 medical rationing protocol. It would unfairly discriminate against some patients with disabilities who need critical care, should medical rationing be required. (Read full article)

The Ford government is appealing February's landmark Ontario Human Rights Tribunal pay equity decision that ordered the province to boost midwives' wages by 20 per cent retroactive to 2011. (Read full article)

[Patty] Coates said the ministry's initiatives do not go far enough, especially given the ongoing crisis in the province's long-term care homes.
"We need to ensure that workers are safe, that workers have personal protective equipment. We see the wildfire that has been set off because we didn't have that place. Because we didn't have the proper protocols in place," she said.
"I hear the government saying, 'heroes, heroes, heroes.' And yet they are not doing what they need to be doing." (Read full article)

Ontario surpassed 1,000 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday with health officials logging a new single-day high, 86 patients. (Read full article)

The Progressive Conservative government, which was elected on promises to reduce red tape, announced Tuesday it would open an online portal where businesses could ask for regulation or rule changes to help them weather the pandemic. Democracy Watch, a non-profit which advocates for government accountability, said that portal is an invitation to use a loophole in Ontario's lobbying rules, which is especially worrying given the government's temporary rollbacks of some environmental protections. (Read full article)

Ontario had plenty of warning about the risky conditions in long-term-care homes, but it didn't act. Expert reports, seemingly, were not read. Pandemic plans were not followed. There were early lessons from the outbreak in a care home in Kirkland, Wash., followed by another in North Vancouver, that went unheeded. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has decided to not move forward with the blue licence plate design for passenger vehicles following readability concerns. The decision comes months after the new design was released and intense scrutiny grew over the plate's visibility at night. (Read full article)

"Please, this long weekend, do not go to your cottage. We can't stress that enough," Ford told reporters during an April news conference. (Read full article)

Ontario's decision to spend $2.8 billion to buy natural gas plants during the climate crisis will hinder the province's climate goals and dent ratepayers' wallets, critics and green advocates say. (Read full article)

Ontario is trying to "water down" guidelines that give health-care workers in long-term care homes access to N95 masks, the union representing them said Friday, while the health minister said the province is grappling with a limited supply of the gear. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford appears to have broken Ontario's prescribed COVID-19 physical distancing measures, saying two of his daughters who live in different households visited his home over Mother's Day weekend. (Read full article)

Ontario's top doctor says he does not feel confident that the province has met the threshold to start on its economic recovery plan -- just hours after Premier Doug Ford announced the details of the first stage of reopening will be unveiled Thursday. (Read full article)

It was not until mid-April that the province banned staff from working at multiple facilities, required everyone to wear a mask, recommended widespread testing, and topped up workers' pay. By then, many residents had died and many workers were ill, exacerbating staffing shortages. Soldiers, librarians, school board staff members and hospital workers have been enlisted to fill those gaps. (Read full article)

Barely a generation later however, environmental critics say the Progressive Conservative government is chipping away at Walkerton's hard-won lessons by rolling back environmental protections it sees as "red tape" in the name of making Ontario "open for business." (Read full article)

The Ontario government took its nearly two year fight to keep Premier Doug Ford's mandate letters secret to Divisional Court Thursday after it was ordered to disclose the records by the province's information and privacy commissioner (IPC) last summer. (Read full article)

Ontario reported 412 new cases of novel coronavirus Saturday morning, bringing the total number of cases in the province to 25,040. (Read full article)

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) report, written by Brigadier-General C.J.J. Mialkowski, outlines the grim state inside the facilities, claiming not only that there were staffing shortages and lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), but also that there were bug infestations, old food trays stacked inside resident rooms and that patients were observed "crying for help with staff not responding." (Read full article)

Ford suggested that maybe the soldiers saw more because they were there 24/7. What did everyone else do, drive by? The province has 175 long-term care inspectors. If these five homes were the most beleaguered in the province, shouldn't an inspector have been there around the clock? (Read full article)

Ford is correct when he says he didn't create the problems in long-term care, but he's been in power for nearly two years and far from making things better, his government has made them worse. It did far too little to prepare homes for COVID-19 and protect residents and staff. It took steps once the devastation in these homes was impossible to ignore but each of them came far later than it should have. (Read full article)

Ontario's minister of long-term care said that the province has been experiencing a "staffing crisis" with personal support workers (PSWs) well before the COVID-19 pandemic began. (Read full article)

Three months into the COVID-19 crisis, one of Canada's hardest-hit provinces is still unable to share some basic details about the spread of the disease, including the number of tests being performed per region, statistics on the success of contact tracing, the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) or the location of outbreak "hot spots." (Read full article)

The list includes people who work in the hospital laundry, but not physiotherapists, dietitians, medical radiation technologists, and social workers who work directly at the bedsides of COVID-19 patients. (Read full article)

Ford was asked today to comment on the protests in cities across the U.S. that were sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. (Read full article)
(Note: He backtracked on this but was criticized for his government's previous actions, including cutting the anti-racism minister and anti-racism directorate, not holding a mandated annual anti-racism conference, as well as not collecting race-based data.)

In a pandemic, economic recovery depends on employee convalescence. Without paid sick days, many workers who should stay home simply won't -- trudging, grudgingly, to the workplace for fear of losing their wages or jobs.
We will all pay the price -- personally, medically, economically -- for their misfortune and Ford's folly. (Read full article)

"Time and time again Doug Ford has insisted he is getting the best help possible from the experts -- but who are the experts? Doug Ford won't say. How is that open and transparent?" [Steven] Del Duca said. "If Doug Ford won't reveal the team of experts he relies on -- how can we trust his plans to move forward?" (Read full article)

Unifor said the plan being considered by the Ford government would have eliminated all but three statutory holidays for retail workers -- Christmas, Good Friday and Canada Day. (Read full article)

Public Health Ontario was set up as an independent agency as a response to Ontario's failures during SARS. [Dr. Natasha] Crowcroft was specifically recruited to help with that effort. But the new government didn't want to hear about that part of PHO's history and mission, according to Crowcroft. "The other message that was around before this happened was that people were saying, 'Don't talk about SARS anymore. The government doesn't want to hear about SARS," she said, "which is supremely ironic right now." (Read full article)

"How can you be encouraging privatization when the pandemic is showing us the drastic ending of privatizations on over 2,000 lives in our long term care system, mainly related to private long term care systems?" [NDP Health Critic France Gélinas] said. (Read full article)

The communication breakdown was felt most acutely in Ontario where, according to more than 15 senior medical officials -- including individuals in hospital leadership positions, infectious-disease specialists and microbiologists -- some of the most important doctors in the province were so frustrated and perplexed by the province's lack of action that, by mid-February, they were holding secret strategy sessions to brainstorm ways to get through to decision makers. On testing guidelines, on laboratory capacity, on protective gear, on the need to start watching for community spread -- Ontario's health care system was lost. (Read full article)

The province of Ontario's lax oversight of long-term care homes and failure to protect vulnerable residents from the coronavirus led to widespread preventable illness, suffering and death, a new lawsuit alleges. (Read full article)

The Mackenzie Health Centre has been renamed the "Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital" in honour of Mario Cortellucci, a Senate candidate for Italy's far-right political party and a top donor to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's leadership campaign. (Read full article)

Overcrowding, poor living conditions and lack of inmate access to medical care were some of the issues Paul Dube detailed in his annual report released Tuesday. (Read full article)

After months of telling people to stay home if they're sick, or even if they think they might have been exposed to someone who is sick, the Ontario government told one particular group of workers to stay on the job if they test positive for COVID-19. (Read full article)

More than 950 migrant farm workers in Ontario have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a Globe and Mail tally of local public-health units. Roughly 10 per cent of all workers in the Southwestern Ontario area who have been tested for the virus have had positive results. Three men from Mexico have died. (Read full article)

Tenant rights advocates in Ottawa and Toronto argue that the Ford provincial government's proposed changes to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) will hasten eviction orders against tenants pressured into rent repayment agreements by their landlords. (Read full article)

"The Ontario government painted a grossly inaccurate financial picture about the cost of services for people seeking Canada's refugee protection between ports of entry, and then used those incorrect figures to promote a false story that there's a crisis at the border," [Maureen Silcoff from the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers] told the Star. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's recent announcement to build nearly 8,000 new long-term care beds is a re-commitment of promises made by the former Liberal government, CTV News Toronto has learned, despite the premier presenting it as new information. (Read full article)

Democracy Watch said the system for appointing members to Ontario's tribunals had previously involved a competitive application process controlled by the tribunals, but it is now largely controlled by cabinet. (Read full article)

The government used its majority to pass the legislation, Bill 197, on Tuesday night over the objections of opposition parties. The omnibus bill makes sweeping changes to 20 pieces of legislation, including major rewrites of environmental law. (Read full article)

[Belinda] Karahalios and the opposition MPPs who opposed Bill 195 were right. In her words, the law amounts to an "unnecessary overreach on our parliamentary democracy" by taking away the legislature's right to review extensions of the government's emergency pandemic powers on a regular basis. (Read full article)

According to the government's statement yesterday, the $500 million investment is part of a ten-year $12 billion plan to build new schools and repair existing ones.
$12 billion is not only about $4 billion less than the existing repair backlog, it's also about $1 billion less than the $13 billion the government promised to spend over ten years last November. (Read full article)

Ford's rapid-fire firing of PC backbencher Belinda Karahalios, who dared to vote against her own party this week, does more than deprive a majority government of internal feedback. It also sends a chilling public signal to his cowed caucus that they'd best think twice before holding any impure thoughts. (Read full article)

More than 6,000 tenants across Ontario could face eviction over rent that wasn't paid during the pandemic, despite Premier Doug Ford promising that no one would be kicked out of their rental for nonpayment during COVID-19. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government spent nearly half-a-billion dollars less on healthcare than it originally planned last year, affecting the Chief Medical Officer of Health, Public Health units and long-term care ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's government is facing calls to immediately hire more nursing home employees after an expert report detailed a staffing crisis that needs to be urgently addressed with more funding, better working conditions and full-time hours. (Read full article)

Once a deeply polarizing figure, Ford almost immediately saw his approval ratings soar from 20 percent late last year to a staggering 83 percent in early April.
But it remains to be asked: given the measures he has instituted, does Ford really deserve such a boost to his popularity? Have the positions and policies of his government truly benefited the people of Ontario during this unprecedented time? (Read full article)

And on class sizes, Ford kept citing the SickKids recommendations, while skating around the fact SickKids wrote that "Smaller class sizes should be a priority strategy as it will aid in physical distancing and reduce potential spread from any index case." And he's not reducing class sizes. You can drive your car through many of the gaps between SickKids and the actual plan. (Read full article)

Some family members of children living with autism said the new services that started rolling out on Friday offered little relief. (Read full article)

[Andrea] Horwath says the October 2019 Turner and Townsend report only shows $2.32 billion in capital costs, which includes escalation and contingency, and $818.8 million in operating, maintenance and life cycle costs. That's far short of $5.5 billion. (Read full article)

The TTC and other transit agencies in the province will have to consider replacing some of their least-used bus routes with private "microtransit" services -- potentially through partnerships with companies like Uber -- in order to be eligible for a second round of emergency COVID-19 relief, according to conditions imposed by the Ontario PC government. (Read full article)

"Premier, do you have any idea what it's like to live on the Ontario Disability Support Program?" [Joel Harden, NDP MPP] asked. "You don't like the CERB, I guess, which is $2,000 a month. ODSP is $1,200 a month for individuals. OW is barely 700 bucks a month. Have you ever had to live on that?" (Read full article)

During the news conference, Ford was asked why he is choosing to spend money on hiring more police at a time when school boards have been asking for funding to hire more teachers in time for the school year. (Read full article)

"By continuing to criminalize Indigenous Peoples, the province and its police force maintain their colonial legacy of racism, inhumanity and genocide," the statement said. (Read full article)

As mentioned above, there currently are over 6,000 eviction filings by landlords based on the "non-payment of rent" by tenants. This is despite Ford's consistent (and empty) platitudes during his daily pandemic updates that people should not pay their rent if they could not afford it and that they would be protected from eviction. (Read full article)

A high number of vacancies combined with increased political intervention in selecting and retaining tribunal staff are undermining the human rights system as it faces a growing backlog of cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the experts say. (Read full article)

Under the Ford government's Bill-195, the Reopening Ontario Act, public sector employers are able to override vacation, contracting-out, scheduling and other provisions in collective bargaining agreements. (Read full article)

On Monday, the unions -- which represent 190,000 teachers and education workers -- said that they all plan to file complaints to the province's labour board over the reopening plan, which they say violates its own workplace safety laws. (Read full article)

Ontario is failing to meet its own legal obligations by continuing the use of segregation for inmates with mental health disabilities, according the Ontario Human Rights Commission. (Read full article)

Opposition MPPs, seniors' groups and health care unions are denouncing the Ontario government's legal claim that it does not guarantee the health and safety of long-term care residents, sparking renewed calls for a full public inquiry into the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes. (Read full article)

The Ontario Superior Court has struck down Premier Doug Ford's mandatory anti-carbon tax stickers, calling them an "unconstitutional attempt" to legislate private retailers to "stick it to" another tier of government or political party. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford is calling on police to crack down on large gatherings, as he himself is facing some criticism for attending an MPP's wedding. (Read full article)

The province did not address questions from the Star about how Huyer was selected for the role and the deficiencies the auditor general identified in the coroner's office Huyer has led since 2014. (Read full article)

With Ontario's students now largely learning again after a long hiatus, COVID-19 cases tied to schools are showing up as cases provincewide surpass 400 a day. (Read full article)

In a letter to Premier Doug Ford and the Ministers of Health and Long-Term Care, a coalition of major stakeholders said that the sector had informed the government of significant vulnerabilities back in June. At the time, the sector asked the province for help addressing staffing shortages and infection prevention and control deficiencies among other things -- but nothing has been done. (Read full article)

The suit, filed Aug. 31 by the Chapleau Cree, Missanabie Cree and Brunswick House First Nations, asks a judge to overturn the Progressive Conservative government's decision to dictate how a wide swath of boreal forest will be used for the next decade without doing an environmental assessment. (Read full article)

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation noted in its filing that at the time it was writing its appeal, Premier Doug Ford had "just limited social gathering sizes to 10 indoors and 25 outside across the province because COVID-19 cases continue to rise. And yet the (ministry of education) has maintained normal indoor class sizes of between 20 and 35 or more across most of Ontario." (Read full article)

"Premier Doug Ford needs to move now to prevent these layoffs and support our hospitals now," [New Democratic Party of Ontario healthcare critic France Gélinas] said. "Now more than ever during this pandemic, the premier should ensure that our hospitals have the resources they need to deliver the care people need and to save lives." (Read full article)

He puts blame for the mess we're back into, on individuals: student partiers, car ralliers. But the difference between them and him is they didn't have the capacity to alleviate or screw up the lives of a whole province. (Read full article)

The Ontario government's move to axe its out-of-country health insurance program violates the Canada Health Act, a court ruled this week as it ordered the province to reinstate the coverage. (Read full article)

The province has also surpassed 50,000 total cases since the start of the pandemic. The total now stands at 50,531 cases. (Read full article)

The Ontario Hospital Association says the government must move those regions back to Stage Two of the province's pandemic response, which saw restrictions on non-essential businesses like restaurants, gyms, and movie theatres. (Read full article)

Governments from coast to coast knew a second wave was coming. It was as predictable as fall. It was as expected as the rising of the sun. It was as surprising as the first snowfall -- timing and severity uncertain; occurrence inevitable.
And yet, somehow, many governments have reacted like someone who forgot to set the alarm clock. Leading the parade of those surprised by the unsurprising is Premier Doug Ford's Ontario government. (Read full article)

Senior infectious-disease experts have been calling on the government since June to implement infection-prevention and control measures in the province's long-term care facilities. These include hiring specialized staff to be deployed to facilities and overseen by experts at a local hospital. (Read full article)

Dr. Janine McCready, an infectious diseases physician at Michael Garron Hospital, who has been reaching out to families of students who test positive at her hospital since schools reopened, said the decision is not in line with what she is seeing on the ground. (Read full article)

Multiple sources familiar with the decision-making process tell the Star that expanding testing capacity was strongly recommended to the government by various parties in the past five months, to no effect. Had the province decided to fund expanded testing beyond the still-unachieved goal of 50,000 per day earlier -- as early as April, as late as June or even early July -- the system would already be capable of handling the surge. (Read full article)

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government was urged to prepare the province's long-term care homes for COVID-19 as early as January, three months before the government implemented an action plan to slow the spread of the virus. (Read full article)

Instead, the government switched to an appointment-only testing scheme so abruptly that people were confused about how and when they could get a test, and some assessment centres had to close for a day to overhaul their systems. That was amid a backlog of tests amounting to nearly twice Ontario's daily lab processing capacity. Then there's a shortage of lab technicians, unresolved challenges to secure globally in-demand machinery and reagent and a yet-unmet goal of processing 50,000 tests a day. (Read full article)

Chief among the confused appears to be Premier Doug Ford, who during the same press conference today told reporters that nobody should have more than ten guests at their home this Thanksgiving, but also that celebrations should be kept strictly within our own households. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's school reopening plan is leaving some schools understaffed when it comes to nurses who are responsible for monitoring health and safety procedures and responding to outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools. (Read full article)

Doug Ford said he didn't see numbers that warranted these measures until Thursday night, after case counts jumped Thursday, and Friday. It was only then that the premier called an emergency cabinet meeting Friday morning.
If that is the case, it means the province's epidemic response, its information-sharing system, and its decision-making apparatus have failed. (Read full article)

The majority of infections logged on Saturday occurred in people under the age of 60. Only 128 of the 809 new COVID-19 patients over the age of 60. (Read full article)

Ontario's Long-Term Care Minister stormed out of a press conference Monday after a reporter attempted to ask questions about the minister drawing a comparison between COVID-19 deaths in long-term care homes and a "particularly bad flu year." (Read full article)

The government also confirmed to CTV News Toronto that the provincial government, municipalities, public health officials and politicians would be potentially shielded from litigation -- dating back to Mar. 17 when the government enacted a state of emergency. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has introduced a bill that would prevent municipalities from using ranked ballots in the next civic election. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford is facing accusations of using the response to COVID-19 as a guise to advance his political interests. (Read full article)

While there are plenty of physical spaces set to handle an influx in patients, which include many field hospitals ready to go, there is no one to staff them, the Ontario Hospital Association told the Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission earlier this month. (Read full article)

There have been 400 times this year that the Ottawa Paramedic Service hasn't had a single ambulance and paramedic transport crew available, according to statistics provided by the city. (Read full article)

Ontario reported a record 1,042 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, marking the first time cases have surpassed 1,000 a day since the outbreak began in late January. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's provincial government has overruled city processes for three development sites in the West Don Lands, allowing condo towers as tall as 50 storeys without any public consultation or discussion with local councillors and planners. (Read full article)

Headed by the notoriously homophobic and Islamophobic Charles McVety, Canada Christian College is seeking the right to confer BA and BSc degrees -- despite the fact that regulatory authorities have consistently challenged its academic credentials and rejected its graduates. (Read full article)

The province has approved a massive project in Pickering that will destroy a 22-hectare provincially significant wetland, a move that has alarmed environmental groups -- and the mayor of a neighbouring town who says the "project is being rammed through." (Read full article)

Developers connected to the Toronto sites fast-tracked by Premier Doug Ford's government for condos made significant contributions to the Ontario PC Party in the last three years, a Star analysis has found. (Read full article)

"It's the right direction to move in at a high level, but it should be done quicker and decisively," [Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca] said. "Doug Ford has all of the power and resources available to make that happen." (Read full article)

A video has surfaced showing Ontario Premier Doug Ford sending birthday wishes to a conservative evangelical pastor accused of homophobia and Islamophobia, and whose Toronto-area religious college Ford recently moved to allow degree-granting powers. (Read full article)

This week Ontario suddenly and completely shifted its pandemic strategy. It decided to prioritize opening businesses, and keeping them open, no matter what. It decided to play to hospital capacity, and let COVID-19 run. It's not herd immunity, but it's not far from herd immunity with seatbelts. (Read full article)

There's no money earmarked in Ontario's first pandemic budget for Premier Doug Ford's recent promise to provide four hours of hands-on care to nursing home residents, which will require hiring thousands of nurses and personal support workers. (Read full article)

Public health experts are calling the tiered plan for dealing with COVID-19 shutdown in Ontario dangerous, "scientifically illiterate" and "dismaying," saying that the premier's new system will light an inferno rather than snuff out the pandemic. (Read full article)

Peel's Medical Officer of Health appealed to the government earlier on Friday to keep indoor restaurant service and fitness centres closed for at least another week because cases are rising rapidly and hospitals are strained. (Read full article)

According to Ontario's newly released 2020 budget, Ford's government is planning nearly $100 million less in spending on long-term care than it proposed in March. [...] The new budget also includes revised figures showing the Ford government spent $18 million less on long-term care in 2019 than it originally planned to spend. (Read full article)

Despite the province's assurances that it takes the health and safety of long-term-care residents seriously, it took the director of enforcement 20 months to issue an order to Brucelea Haven Long Term Care Home in Walkerton, a facility that in that time period racked up 75 written notices of non-compliance, 34 compliance orders, 35 orders to create voluntary plans of correction and six director's referrals. (Read full article)

"That's $1.5 million that could help people on ODSP, rather than trying to kick people off their crucial support during the pandemic," [Lisa Gretzky,] the Windsor West MPP said at Queen's Park. (Read full article)

Without saying so explicitly, the Ford government has switched its emphasis from slowing the spread of the virus to speeding up the reopening of restaurants and similar businesses -- but without laying the groundwork for that to happen safely or sustainably. (Read full article)

"Prior to COVID, I've always said that this is the biggest public-health crisis of our time," Dr. Gomes said in an interview. "While obviously a lot of focus is, and needs to be, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we can't shift our focus away from the harmful effect of drug policy right now on overdoses across the province." (Read full article)

New legislation by Doug Ford's provincial government will override the powers of Ontario's conservation authorities, limiting their ability to assess the environmental impact of developments across the province, according to environmental groups. (Read full article)

If we want to save lives and businesses, tackling COVID-19's second wave will require a commitment of public resources on a scale with what happened in the first wave. [...] It will demand more government support for businesses and their workers -- especially when those businesses are completely closed. (Read full article)

Health Minister Christine Elliott told reporters Friday that the framework was "designed after full consultation and advice" from two expert advisory groups -- the public health measures table and the modelling consensus table -- as well as chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams.
But one group said it was never consulted, and a member of the other group said she never saw the final plan before it was released. (Read full article)

A group representing more than 43,000 doctors in Ontario is slamming the provincial government's new colour-coded COVID-19 framework saying the measures don't go far enough in preventing the spread of the disease. (Read full article)

In two separate reports -- one by city staff and the other by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators -- there was unanimous opposition to the proposed changes, which include allowing child-care operators to group infants and toddlers together, reduce staff-to-child ratios for some age groups and lower qualification requirements for some staff. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is attempting to make logging companies permanently exempt from endangered species law, a move environmental advocates say would hasten the decline of creatures like the woodland caribou. (Read full article)

At the province's daily press conference Monday, Premier Doug Ford was also asked about the issue. Ford said his government has shown "unprecedented transparency" -- but did not explain why the non-disclosure agreement was necessary. (Read full article)

Both the Migrant Workers Alliance and Justice for Migrant workers say the strategy unveiled Monday does not mandate key safety requirements like physical distancing or build in enforcement mechanisms.
They say the strategy was developed by the province and farmers without consultation with workers. (Read full article)

Ontario's NDP is urging the province's top election official to investigate Doug Ford's 2018 leadership campaign, alleging the premier failed to include the use of space at Canada Christian College (CCC) in its financial disclosures. (Read full article)

This is the 15th consecutive day that daily case counts have been above 1,000. (Read full article)

These workers deserve better. It's been clear for many months that guaranteed sick days are one of the most fundamental ways to prevent workers from turning up at their jobs with symptoms of COVID-19. (Read full article)

Despite the issues, the workers said the provincial government had let them down by failing to take action to deal with their health or labour concerns. Chronic understaffing and failing to keep them safe, the authors said, means the workers can't do their jobs effectively, putting everyone at risk. (Read full article)

The fact that two former staffers of Premier Doug Ford are lobbying for Walmart raises questions about Ontario's decision to allow big-box stores to continue selling non-essential items during lockdowns, while many small businesses have to close, says the Ontario NDP. (Read full article)

One in three Toronto public schools have an active case of COVID-19, a previously unreported statistic that is in sharp contrast to provincial public health data indicating that 14% of Ontario schools are reporting cases of the virus. (Read full article)

Ontario's response to COVID-19 has been "disorganized and inconsistent," lagged those of other provinces and sidelined key health officials, the province's Auditor-General says in a new report. (Read full article)

The office pegs the cost of needed repairs at $64.5 billion over the next decade - roughly $6.5 billion a year. The figure includes taking five years to address the current repair backlog, then doing the necessary maintenance over the following five years to keep infrastructure up to snuff.
However, according to the report, the province only set aside $47.7 billion for capital repairs over the coming decade in its 2019 budget. (Read full article)

Some have questioned why individuals with expertise in medical or hospital administration or logistics weren't named to head the task force. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative party has received at least $30,833 in donations from lobbyists hired by the private nursing home industry, a HuffPost Canada analysis has found. (Read full article)

Ontario's health minister is coming under fire after comparing the province's COVID-19 response to that of Alberta, suggesting that Ontario hospitals are faring much better than other Canadian jurisdictions as a result. [...] "The [Ontario] Hospital Association is expressing concern. Doctors are expressing concern. We need to be able to better manage this, because we compare ourselves to some other jurisdiction, doesn't mean that we're doing a good job," [John] Fraser said. (Read full article)

The Ford Conservatives' budget includes significant and permanent tax cuts for, primarily, business and industry. These aren't relief programs targeted at the small businesses most severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
No, we're talking about permanent reductions that will even benefit corporations, like Walmart, who have only increased their profits during the pandemic.
The government is also handing over money to large industrial and commercial businesses with increased electricity subsidies. This means that companies like Loblaws and Amazon, which have reported record profits during the pandemic, are getting government money to pay their hydro bills. Electricity subsidies now cost taxpayers more than $6 billion a year. (Read full article)

People in Toronto and Peel have rightfully been pretty angry and confused that big box retailers such as Walmart have been permitted to remain open selling non-essential goods while countless small businesses are facing the prospect of permanent closure due to the losses they've suffered in lockdown this year. (Read full article)

"Ontario is trending dangerously in the wrong direction on climate change, and the gap between Ontario's carbon reduction targets and actual emissions levels is growing," says the report, a copy of which was provided to CBC News ahead of Thursday's publication. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is standing by proposals that could allow it to force local conservation authorities to approve developments in environmentally sensitive or flood-prone areas, even as critics warn the changes will gut long-standing ecological protections and indirectly harm the province's Greenbelt. (Read full article)

Bill 213 contains a provision that allows Canada Christian College to grant arts and science degrees.
College president and evangelical pastor Charles McVety has been an outspoken Ford supporter since 2018. (Read full article)

In her investigation, [Bonnie] Lysyk found that the Doug Ford government consistently failed to engage with Indigenous communities on matters of importance. (Read full article)

The opposition slammed the PCs Tuesday, saying the contingency fund was large enough to take care of most of the structural issues identified during the second wave of the pandemic. (Read full article)

Official Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath, however, questioned why the government would move to adjourn the legislature at what appears to be the height of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Read full article)

Ministerial zoning orders (MZOs) are a provincial tool -- used infrequently before Ford took power in 2018 -- by which the government can immediately authorize development, regardless of local rules for land-use planning decisions. (Read full article)

If residential tenants are a day late, or a dollar short on their rent, they can be evicted without a hearing. That's been the case since March as a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and Bill 184 has caused an "eviction crisis," Beaches-East York MP Rima Berns-McGown said. (Read full article)

There are more patients in Ontario intensive care units than at any other point in the COVID-19 pandemic and the medical director of critical care at one Toronto hospital is now warning of a "very difficult" January. (Read full article)

Ontario has now reported more than 2,000 new daily COVID-19 cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic. (Read full article)

A spokesperson for the TCDSB confirmed to PressProgress that "the Ministry used to secure the applications for the province. As of June 2020, most contracts have expired depending on when the contract ended." [...] According to the board's most-recent procurement report, that includes $120,500 to resubscribe to social studies textbooks published by Nelson, plus $84,500 to resubscribe to the teaching app MathUP, and another $112,000 for Gizmos special education, math and science licenses. (Read full article)

Toronto is reporting nearly 800 new COVID-19 cases as the province's death toll from the virus topped 4,000 on Wednesday. (Read full article)

While Ontario's doctors are calling for a lockdown of the entire Greater Toronto and Hamilton area until after New Year's to deal with the unnerving rise in new COVID cases, Doug Ford seems intent on playing chicken with the virus -- and peoples' lives. (Read full article)

A Star analysis of provincial inspection reports finds that homes managed by UniversalCare Canada Inc. -- designated by the province Monday to assume temporary management of Westside Long-Term Care Home in Toronto's west end -- have racked up more than two dozen citations in the last two months for violating the Long-Term Care Homes Act and its regulations. Those violations include failing to protect residents from abuse and neglect, failing to use safe transferring and positioning devices, and failing to ensure all staff participated in an infection prevention and control program. (Read full article)

The Ontario government's decision to delay the coming provincewide lockdown to Boxing Day will likely result in 10,000 cases of COVID-19 that could have been avoided, new projections reveal. (Read full article)

Similar scenes playing out over the last several weeks have raised concern among Ontario advocates who say the pickup of evictions in the pandemic's second wave coincides with a shift to online-only hearings that stack the deck against tenants. (Read full article)

Failing to protect species in southern Ontario would leave them vulnerable to local extinction, or extirpation, in an area where their potential to eventually recover is already limited. Over 80 per cent of the forests that once blanketed the landscape have been replaced with urban development and agriculture, [Nico] Muñoz said, and the region has one of the highest densities of species at risk in the country. (Read full article)

"It's heartbreaking. We've been waiting a year for the vaccine and to find out that there are days when it's just not being administered, it's hard to swallow," [Ontario Medical Association President Dr. Samantha Hill] said. (Read full article)

Ontario reported more than 4,400 new COVID-19 cases over the past two days, setting a new single-day high on Tuesday with more than 2,550 new infections reported, even as provincial labs processed far fewer test specimens than normal. [...] University of Toronto epidemiologist Colin Furness also said the cases revealed Tuesday are likely a result of activity prior to the Ontario-wide lockdown, which began on Boxing Day. (Read full article)

News of [Rod] Phillips's holiday trip to the Caribbean -- despite the COVID-19 pandemic and his own government's advice to avoid non-essential travel -- has left many questioning how it came about in the first place and sparked calls for his resignation. (Read full article)

Mr. Ford vowed months ago to create an "iron ring" around long-term care homes to spare residents, staff and families the same unconscionable suffering they experienced during the first wave of the pandemic. But the only thing that changed was the expectations, and even that was a transient shift. Indeed, the same horrifying scenes of disorder and neglect are playing out in residential care homes across Ontario, where the government has undeniably failed to deliver on its promise to protect those most vulnerable to this disease. (Read full article)

There are many reasons why vaccination and paid sick days go hand in hand. A mass vaccination campaign will take months, but there are currently more than 6,000 COVID-19 infections and 100 deaths every day across the country. We cannot sit back while the death toll mounts, when there is effective and complementary legislation that could be enacted tomorrow. (Read full article)

On Saturday, Ontario reported outbreaks at 188 long-term care homes. (Read full article)

The independent commission looking into how the province handled the deadly spread of COVID-19 in long-term care homes told the government it needed more time to finish its final report because the government itself wasn't providing enough documentation. (Read full article)

The total tally of lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario has now surpassed 200,000 as officials log more than 3,000 new infections for the fifth time since late December. (Read full article)

UniversalCare's CEO, Joseph Gulizia, has made multiple donations to the Ontario PCs since 2015. (Read full article)

Ontario's COVID-19 death toll has now surpassed 5,000 as the province sets a record for the number of people hospitalized with the disease. [...] Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical of health, said the daily case counts over the past few days are "at a level that should make everyone worry, take notice, and take assertive action." (Read full article)

An outbreak at a workplace, declared once two or more cases are detected, can lead to household transmission which can quickly lead to community spread. As a point of reference, when Toronto was dealing with bar and restaurant outbreaks in October, a single outbreak was linked to 1,700 potential exposures.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that there's been no clear plan to stop this kind of transmission. Most of the government messaging over the last few months just hasn't been applicable to people who work jobs that can't be done from home and whose workplaces remain open. (Read full article)

In response to devastating projections that Ontario's health care system is on the brink of collapse, Premier Doug Ford announced that his government will be doing ... practically nothing. (Read full article)

Nick Kouvalis, a veteran conservative operative and principal at Campaign Research Inc. and Campaign Support Ltd., tweeted and subsequently retracted a false claim last week that anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter activists -- not supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump -- were responsible for the Capitol riots. (Read full article)

"You can't go to work unless you're an essential worker, but non-essential businesses can be open," said Marty Williams, executive director of the Downtown Guelph Business Association. (Read full article)

"As far as we're aware, there was no permit for the demolition to take place. There isn't even an application to do anything with the property." (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford says that there is "no reason" for the province to "jump in" and introduce its own paid sick leave program, even amid mounting criticism from advocates who say that an existing federal program doesn't do enough to protect workers. (Read full article)

If the nurses test positive, they do get paid. But if they test negative, they must still stay home for 14 days without receiving their paycheque, hospital administrators in Hamilton and Niagara said. (Read full article)

The memo is one of several internal ministry documents related to Ontario's back-to-school plan that show safety proposals that were either abandoned or dialed back. (Read full article)

Three Ontario jails, two in Thunder Bay and one in Milton, are now facing serious COVID-19 outbreaks. [...] No plans have been released by the Provincial government for the vaccination of inmates and correctional staff. (Read full article)

In Ontario, the early weeks of the province's sluggish vaccination effort have been criticized by health-care experts, including front-line workers, as being marred by strategic missteps, a decision to prioritize hospitals over long-term care homes, and a rollout that allowed non-essential workers to get a first dose of the vaccine before some nurses and doctors. (Read full article)

[Vivian Stamatopoulos, a sociology professor at Ontario Tech University] told PressProgress the deadly outbreak "highlights the failure of this government to properly supervise and hold to account operators who fail to implement the safety measures required to keep residents and workers safe." (Read full article)

"We now have over 1,500 people that have died in long-term care from COVID-19 in the second wave alone. This week we've had about 171 deaths and we're losing basically about one person per hour. One person per hour is dying of COVID-19 in our long-term care facilities in Ontario so if this is not an emergency, what is?," Dr. Amit Arya, palliative care physician specializing in long-term care, and co-founder of Doctors for Justice in LTC, told CP24. (Read full article)

"When you think about for-profit homes, they're by design created to have one thing in mind and that's profits for shareholders. It's not care for our seniors," Dr. Naheed Dosani, said Tuesday on CBC Radio's Metro Morning. (Read full article)

"When I met with some of the members of the senior leadership team about this, I was told I was being let go as interim medical director -- not because of my performance as a physician or as a hospital leader -- but because of my outspoken, public statements regarding Ontario's pandemic response," [Dr. Brooks] Fallis says in the statement.
"As a result of my actions, the hospital was under pressure from the provincial government, leading to concern about the possible loss of funding for the hospital." (Read full article)

Ontario's over-reporting of the number of people who have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine calls into question the government's ability to track the progress of its own vaccination rollout, experts say. (Read full article)

With 56 more deaths reported Thursday morning, there are now 6,014 people who died from COVID since the pandemic began. (Read full article)

Under cover of our current health crisis, Premier Doug Ford's government has been quietly and steadily reducing the quality of justice that people in the province can expect from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The final resolution of a claim can now take years for individuals who have experienced discrimination. This is not how human rights justice was delivered in Ontario before the Ford government was elected in 2018. Disturbingly, even as awareness of systemic discrimination has grown, Ontario's human rights enforcement system has become dysfunctional. (Read full article)

The rationale for hiring security guards is to free up care staff from COVID screening so they can look after residents. Why not just hire more care staff and pay them the wages they deserve? Instead, the Ford government is funding the hiring of security guards, whose presence will make long-term-care homes look more like jails and provide operators with greater potential to avoid public scrutiny. (Read full article)

Ontario's plan to reopen schools in COVID-19 hot spots has raised concerns among parents who say the government has failed to implement safety measures just as contagious new variants of the novel coronavirus are taking hold. (Read full article)

"We call it the Holland Marsh Highway because it goes straight through the Holland Marsh and because it will destroy wetlands and significant wildlife habitat in the Holland Marsh," Jack Gibbons, chair of Lake Simcoe Watch, said in an interview. (Read full article)

"The best thing you guys ever did," Ford said about the coffee chain during the [COVID-19] press briefing, "is to make those real egg sandwiches. I used to go eat those other ones. They're the best, those real egg sandwiches, so whoever did that at Timmies, good for you." (Read full article)

Now, the slow drip of government-controlled cash flow -- grants are frozen and tuition fees were cut by Premier Doug Ford -- leaves universities more vulnerable than ever to the vagaries of the coronavirus. (Read full article)

The contract with McKinsey came under scrutiny in November, when Ontario's auditor general, Bonnie Lysyk, wrote a report on the province's pandemic response that was critical of the contract, saying the cost to hire the consulting firm was "higher than standard industry rates." (Read full article)

Vision care in Ontario will suffer because of a hastily conceived and quietly launched move by the Ford government to privatize eye surgery. The province is implementing the plan despite strong objections from eye surgery leaders. (Read full article)

Ontario's doctors are asking that public health restrictions in their province be maintained and that a planned reopening of schools be postponed for another few weeks. Before making decisions, the physicians say more information is needed on how the reopening of schools affects transmission of the virus and officials need to determine how fast the new variants are spreading in the community. In addition, there need to be clearer indications of when Ontario will be [receiving] a steady supply of vaccines. (Read full article)

"They're playing accounting games and word games in order to make it look like they're spending new money and more money when in fact they're not and they're spending less," [Rima Berns-McGown] said. (Read full article)

Hours after the Ontario government announced that every long-term care home resident in the province had been offered their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, they now say that is not the case due to an "internal miscommunication." (Read full article)

Ontario's COVID-19 case numbers are steadily declining, but more infectious novel coronavirus variants of concern pose a threat significant enough that health experts are warning a third lockdown could be required to contain them. (Read full article)

Bureaucratic turf concerns prevented a highly trained team of infection prevention and control experts from helping Ontario long-term care homes in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an independent commission has heard. (Read full article)

At an estimated $10-billion construction cost, the new 400-series freeway will run through 55 kilometres of prime farmland, conservation lands and protected areas across the GTA's northern perimeter in Halton, Caledon, and Vaughan townships, generating thousands of well-paid road construction jobs over the project's multi-year span.
But according to real estate and construction experts, the government's plan is much more than just a highway proposal. It's also a bonanza for land speculators and builders. (Read full article)

At any time, but particularly during a pandemic, imposing limits on workers' ability to bargain for fair wages and better benefits is "unconstitutional," say union leaders.
Last week, labour leaders lamented that Bill 124 had become even more unjust due to the ongoing pandemic, contrasting Premier Doug Ford's appraisal of front-line pandemic workers as "heroes" while continuing to impose limits on the wages, benefits, and sick days the workers are able to negotiate. (Read full article)

NDP leader Andrea Horwath has blasted Premier Doug Ford over the government's plan to reopening the province as experts warn it could spark a third wave of COVID-19 that will lead to yet another lockdown. (Read full article)

"Am I missing something here," a journalist asked Adalsteinn Brown, the head of Ontario's Science Advisory Table, after he had walked viewers and reporters through the latest pandemic data and modelling, "or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?"
"No," Dr. Brown replied, "I don't think you're missing anything." (Read full article)

During a Tuesday morning interview on CTV's Your Morning, Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to requests for the reinstatement of paid sick leave by referring to it as a "waste of taxpayers money." (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford is facing some online backlash for going against his own message of asking people to stay home on Family Day. (Read full article)

"It's like listening to nails on a chalkboard listening to you."
After the comment was made, [Andrea] Horwath replied saying that "this premier always goes to the worst, worst places when he doesn't like the questions the opposition is asking." (Read full article)

Green Leader Mike Schreiner warned the Tories' proposal is "a distraction" to deflect from Premier Doug Ford's "agenda of environmental destruction."
"If Ford is serious about Greenbelt protection and expansion, he would cancel the destruction of the Duffins Creek wetland, restore the power of conservation authorities (and) cancel Hwy. 413 that paves over 400 acres of Greenbelt and 2,000 acres of farmland," said Schreiner. (Read full article)

In nine of those cases, the MZOs appear to benefit developers whose senior staff and executives have donated significant sums to support the Progressive Conservatives: $112,915 to the party and $150,000 to the third-party group Ontario Proud, which supported the PCs in the 2018 provincial election. (Read full article)

"Doug Ford's decision to use the cover of a pandemic to ram through a secret deal to sell and demolish Toronto's Dominion Foundries is a completely unacceptable abuse of power," [Stephen] Blais said in a statement. (Read full article)

"This is such a waste of money," another person said on Twitter. "People already know what six feet apart is, they just don't care. Put that money into LTC's , schools or paid sick leave, we go a lot further than this tech nobody wants." (Read full article)

People exhausted by the effort of trying to access health care and demoralized by frustrating and confusing interactions with the system have far less energy to challenge bad or non-existent government planning.
Creating confusion makes it easier for the government to evade accountability as it essentially weaponizes its own chaotic messaging to damp down critique from people harmed by its policies. (Read full article)

"I'm real worried that the increase in donation limits starts to reopen the door to pay-to-play politics," [Mike Schreiner] said. (Read full article)

More than 200,000 pages of evidence requested by Ontario's commission on long-term care were released to investigators in the last week -- just days before interviews with key officials and two months before the commission is due to deliver its final report.
When commissioners interviewed Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams on Monday, John Callaghan, the commission's co-lead counsel, said he hadn't had time to review the trove of records provided prior to Williams' appearance, putting them at a disadvantage. (Read full article)

Well, premier, as you put it, for the hundredth time, public health officials across the province say the federal program is not working and there's a vital role for Ontario to play in ensuring the necessary access to paid sick days. It's long past time you listened to them. (Read full article)

Ontario is marking a grim milestone Sunday as health officials report that the province has logged more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in January. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford overrode the advice of his government's medical experts in opening up COVID-19 testing to all Ontarians in the spring, a decision that overwhelmed the province's antiquated lab system and led to critical backlogs in the long-term care sector. (Read full article)

The proposed bill will now limit how important conversations take place about the current and future direction of the province. Under the bill, groups that either support or oppose government legislation must register a full year before an election and are limited to how much they can spend; how they interact with other like-minded groups; and what suppliers they can use. This has the chilling effect of restricting free speech and the right to association. (Read full article)

The decision to relocate the youth further away from their families led the grand chiefs of both the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Grand Council Treaty #3 -- the political bodies representing 77 First Nations communities in Northern Ontario -- to write an open letter to Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday night, expressing their "collective horror" at the decision. (Read full article)

Ontario is reporting 17 more COVID-19-related deaths, pushing the provincial total past the 7,000 milestone to 7,014. (Read full article)

Two ministers and the premier took a stab at answering the same question from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath at Queen's Park Wednesday. But none of them gave her what she was looking for -- a commitment to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations for people in the highest-risk neighbourhoods. (Read full article)

The amendments to Ontario's Planning Act would nullify a key clause that limits the scope of ministerial zoning orders (MZOs), a powerful tool that helps fast-track developments by overriding local zoning rules. (Read full article)

A commission examining the impact of COVID-19 on Ontario's long-term care system has heard the government rejected proposals that could have helped protect vulnerable residents during the second wave because they were deemed too expensive. (Read full article)

The Ford government pushed through another six development deals Monday night using a powerful tool called a Ministerial Zoning Order (MZO). [...] The orders, which would fast-track land developments in the Greater Toronto Area, allow the government to immediately authorize development, regardless of local rules for land-use planning decisions. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford is facing demands to apologize after accusing Ontario's only Indigenous MPP of "jumping the line" for a COVID-19 shot he was invited to get by local medical authorities in hopes of easing vaccine hesitancy in remote First Nations communities. (Read full article)

So yes, Ontario could lock down once more, protect the most vulnerable in our population, blunt the third wave which is clearly upon us, and never have to do it again. It would kick-start the economy faster, with more certainty. It would protect the hospitals. It would prevent a third wave, which with vaccines coming in faster every week can be avoided. We could do it.
But this is Ontario. So we won't. (Read full article)

"It's so overwhelming to think about the scale of the overdose deaths that continue to happen in this province, the impact that this is having on families and friends and community members, and the fact that there is, in Ontario, no response and no urgency," said Dr. Kolla, who lives in Toronto. (Read full article)

Ontario has entered a third wave of COVID-19, both the head of the province's hospital association and its COVID-19 science advisory table said on Monday, citing the rising caseload and the speed of the spread of the virus's more contagious new variants. (Read full article)

"The government has taken little to no action to address the crisis these prisoners have," said [Rajean] Hoilett, adding the decision speaks to an even larger issue of the government ignoring the demands of suffering communities who are "over-policed and then incarcerated." (Read full article)

The Ford's government's "Director of Pandemic Response" is a former private health lobbyist with a firm representing Shoppers Drug Mart and other companies seeking COVID-19 related contracts. (Read full article)

The customer service agents tasked with helping Ontarians book their COVID-19 vaccination appointments by phone received little training and were inadequately prepared for the job, according to people hired to work the vaccine helpline. (Read full article)

One year after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected from Canadian jails, community activists say those behind bars are still not being protected from the virus. (Read full article)

If it did it would spend the money required to make schools safe for those who spend all day inside them: teachers, custodians and students. It's as simple as that. Or it should be. (Read full article)

The memo, titled "2021-22 School Year," shows Deputy Minister Nancy Naylor acknowledged the "extraordinary steps" educators have taken to support students during the pandemic, but emphasized boards should expect $1.6 billion less in support heading into September 2021. (Read full article)

After months of calls from health-care workers and advocates to institute paid provincial sick days amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Ontario government maintained its stance and didn't include such a program in the 2021 Ontario budget. (Read full article)

This has never been disclosed to readers of the Sun, where Lilley's complimentary coverage of the Ford regime is a staple of the paper's front page. (Read full article)

Amid new evidence that COVID-19 variants significantly increase the risk of hospitalization and death and warnings that Ontario's hospitals are at a "saturation point", the provincial government continued to loosen pandemic restrictions Friday. (Read full article)

In touting the provincial budget that promised hospital expansion projects in Brampton and Windsor, Ford used a government announcement to make a partisan appeal for votes. [...] "So in the next election, please vote for the PC government in the three other ridings." (Read full article)

Juni said for Ontario, there is now "no way out" of the dire scenario that's set to unfold over the next few weeks without a widespread lockdown as well -- coupled with other measures, including the province providing paid sick leave to essential workers, encouraging Ontarians to avoid movement between regions, and ensuring residents have access to lower-risk outdoor activities. (Read full article)

Ontario reported more than 2,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday for the fifth day in a row, as the number of virus-related deaths continues to rise. (Read full article)

As we face the harshest wave yet, there is still a lack of paid sick days despite universal support including from Ontario's 34 medical officers of health. As doctors and medical professionals we are bewildered that the Ontario government continues to deny our patients paid sick days. Paid sick days would both reduce COVID-19 variant spread and increase the uptake of vaccines. (Read full article)

A group of intensive care unit doctors from across the province, including several at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, are pleading with the province for tighter restrictions to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. (Read full article)

Eight of Ontario's most powerful land developers own thousands of acres of prime real estate near the proposed route of the controversial Highway 413, a National Observer/Torstar investigation has found. [...] Most of the developers in the group are also prolific PC donors, contributing at least $813,000 to support the party since 2014. (Read full article)

Right now, there are 494 patients being treated in an intensive care unit with a COVID-related critical illness, the government said. (Read full article)

Folks, just because you're legally allowed to go into malls doesn't mean that you should go into malls -- especially not for the purpose of "doing a little wander around" and leaving without shopping bags. (Read full article)

"We need to go after COVID-19 where it is and that's in those high-risk postal codes. It's in those essential workplaces," [Dr. Michael Warner] said. "We need to vaccinate those individuals, provide real workplace safety that is enforceable, rapid tests at work settings, pay people not to go to work if they're feeling unwell, don't wait until they get COVID to give them two weeks off." (Read full article)

The Ontario government's health agency is telling hospitals across most of the province to stop performing all but emergency and life-saving surgeries because of the growing caseload of COVID-19 patients, CBC News has learned. (Read full article)

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday to announce new province-wide public health restrictions, the premier took time to publicly denounce a group of people -- which includes doctors and local medical officers of health across Ontario -- who have been calling on Ford to reinstate paid sick days. (Read full article)

Ontario health officials reported more than 4,000 new cases of COVID-19 for the first time in months, marking the highest number of cases reported over a 24-hour period since the pandemic started. (Read full article)

As the province endures a third wave which has been linked closely to COVID-19 variants and transmission within workplaces staffed by essential workers, advocates fear that the number of workplace-related COVID-19 deaths in 2021 could surpass last year's total relatively quickly should rampant workplace outbreaks persist. The only way to prevent this, they say, is by boosting protections for essential workers with prioritized vaccination programs and paid sick leave. (Read full article)

"Folks, it's very, very simple. I'm gonna wing this phone number -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- it's 888 999 6944," he said. "Or you can go on the Ontario COVID vaccine site and book it. It's as simple as that." Even if Ford had got the provincial booking number right, which he did not, it's no help at all. Nor is the online booking system. (Read full article)

The record-breaking case count comes amid a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and patients in ICU in the province's third wave. In the past seven days, five of those saw daily case numbers above 4,000. The most recent 100,000 new cases came from the last six weeks. (Read full article)

The catastrophe is here. It's understandable if you can't imagine how bad this is, or how bad it will get, because even people in health care can't believe it. Friday the Ontario government is expected to introduce stricter public health restrictions for the third time in three weeks, because Ontario's panicked, pleading attempts to negotiate with a virus were always doomed. The only question now is how catastrophic it becomes. (Read full article)

The province is also marking another grim milestone with more than 700 people being treated in Ontario intensive care units. (Read full article)

While non-essential construction will temporarily shutter under the new orders, manufacturing and warehousing -- where existing data shows most workplace outbreaks have occurred, and where many workers do not have paid sick days -- will continue with no restrictions. [...] "Today's announcement doesnt really get at the crux of what's causing our COVID-19 case counts to increase," said palliative care physician, health advocate and University of Toronto lecturer Naheed Dosani -- adding that paid sick days are a crucial part of containing the virus. (Read full article)

"Communities of colour have made substantial progress in ending the unconstitutional practice of carding in recent years; these provisions roll back that progress by explicitly authorizing arbitrary detention and interrogation," said [Chris] Rudnicki. "It is virtually certain that racialized and Indigenous people will bear the brunt of this new and excessive power." (Read full article)

The refusal comes on the heels of the news that the Ford government has reached out to all provinces and territories for extra help, saying Ontario is drastically short on nurses. (Read full article)

"Buried in the bill is an amendment to the Statutory Powers Procedure Act which sets fines of up to $25,000 for the recording and sharing of online tribunal hearing proceedings," says Evictions Ontario, a grassroots organization made up of working-class tenants in Toronto that tracks evictions in the province.
"As the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board continues to churn out hundreds of eviction orders each week, the government is moving to eliminate exposure of mass evictions by targeting tenant organizers with massive fines." (Read full article)

"This entire humanitarian catastrophe should never have happened. Had the Ontario government just listened to the experts and made the important decisions ... around public health restrictions, we would never have been here," [Naheed] Dosani said.
"This whole scenario was entirely preventable." (Read full article)

As he deflected blame and lost the plot, Ford made no mention of paid sick days, which advocates have been begging for. Indeed, aside from promising to improve hot-spot vaccination distribution and limit interprovincial travel, he offered little of value to fight Ontario's third wave, as cases surge and the health system nears the brink of collapse. (Read full article)

"We are not prepared to help Doug Ford go home, leaving a police state in place while he allows COVID-19 to run rampant, overrun hospitals, and steal the lives of Ontarians who would otherwise make it through this," [Andrea] Horwath said in a statement. (Read full article)

A critical care nurse in the Toronto area made a desperate plea for the Ford government to bring in paid sick leave, saying hospitals will not be able to cope unless more is done to help essential workers stay home when they are sick. (Read full article)

Data obtained by the Star show that five higher-risk postal codes recommended for targeted vaccination by Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table were left off the province's final list of hot spots, while eight lower-risk areas -- most of which are in PC ridings -- were included. (Read full article)

If you took the science table recommendations -- a ruthless closure of non-essential businesses, ruthless safety in truly essential businesses, paid sick leave, strong outbreak control, even more vaccines diverted to hot spots, and clear communication that outdoors is safer than indoors -- and fed it through a blender of panicked incompetents beholden to construction companies who think police solve everything and have learned less than zero about the pandemic in the last 14 months, [the Ford government's current response] is about exactly what you would expect. (Read full article)

The premier -- who has been noticeably absent from question period for the past two days following a widely-criticized news conference on Friday -- was scheduled to hold the fundraiser for the Ontario PC party Thursday, joined by ministers Steve Clark and Lisa Thompson. (Read full article)

"Ontario is now facing the most challenging health crisis of our time. Our case counts are at an all-time high. Our hospitals are buckling. Younger people are getting sicker. The disease is ripping through whole families," a letter issued Tuesday afternoon on behalf of group's 40 doctors, medical professionals and scientists said. (Read full article)

On Wednesday, Ford's office was scrambling to get him a laptop computer and to teach him how to use it. (Read full article)

The point is that this government owns the third wave, lock, stock and coffins. They were told what would happen; they opened Ontario up anyway, waited until three weeks ago to do anything, waited another week before doing a little more, and left the vulnerable root causes untouched. [...] Doug Ford and his government are responsible for every Ontarian, and it's too late to say sorry to so many of them. It doesn't matter if he cries. It doesn't matter if he's sorry. All that matters is what his government has done, and what it does next. (Read full article)

Workers are going to work sick because they can't afford not to and that's making the third wave worse that it needs to be. The government has delayed far too long already. (Read full article)

According to the Ministry of Health, there are now 806 people with COVID-related critical illnesses in Ontario's ICUs. Some 588 of those patients require a ventilator to breathe. Both figures are all-time highs. (Read full article)

Ontario doctors have been taking part in virtual training sessions on the province's worst-case scenario COVID-19 emergency triage protocol, using role-play to practise telling families their loved ones are ineligible for life-support. (Read full article)

"The first wave was, as a geriatrician, extraordinarily traumatic, watching people you care for being neglected and having this horrific tragedy in long-term-care homes," said Dr. Nathan Stall, a staff geriatrician at Sinai Health Systems and a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.
"The second wave was unforgivable, what we did to long-term-care residents, because we knew better.
"This third wave is just so shameful -- blowing through every single stop sign and warning sign that were erected by scientists, physicians, citizens, advocacy groups." (Read full article)

To stigmatize Peel which is turning our nations' economy and lives without addressing the root causes of workplace, health care, and public health inequities is not an appropriate or equitable strategy to halt the spread of the current pandemic. The time is ticking to re-evaluate essential workplace designations, regulate temporary employment agencies, provide paid sick leave, and leverage the community partnerships to support Peel so that it can continue to run our nation. (Read full article)

The motion--known as Bill 247--was brought forward by Michael Coteau, a Liberal MPP for Don Valley West. It would have provided all Ontarians with 10 paid sick days per year. (Read full article)

"The CRSB is not paid sick days," said Carolina Jimenez, a coordinator with the Decent Work and Health Network and a registered nurse. "Trying to fix a broken program by topping up CRSB is not going to increase its uptake, because fundamental problems (with) its accessibility and eligibility criteria will remain." (Read full article)

Under the current rules, Ontario's electricity regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, must consider the promotion of renewable energy when it decides whether an electricity transmission project is in the public interest. If passed, Bill 276 would do away with that requirement. (Read full article)

Last April, Ontario banned personal support workers from working in multiple long-term-care homes to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
This past weekend, the government rescinded that prohibition for workers who have been fully vaccinated against the virus. [...] But it's a terrible idea. It's also one that brings into question the Ford government's commitment to improving long-term care in Ontario. [...] The oldest and most vulnerable Ontarians who live in these homes deserve the kind of care that comes from staff who are around long enough to get to know them and their needs. That happens when homes have a stable staff of mostly full-time workers. It doesn't happen when homes reduce costs by relying on part-timers and temps. (Read full article)

"There's an opportunity for our premier to do the right thing and turn the ship around. It's not just moving in the wrong direction, it's sinking, and sinking fast," [Naureen Rizvi of Unifor] said. (Read full article)

"This is not the paid sick days we need," said Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario. "Health experts, including their own science advisory table, community organizations, and front-line workers have called for 10 permanent employer paid sick days. Instead the Conservatives announced three, and only until September 25. We've called for them to be employer-paid. Instead we got a plan that given even more subsidies to Loblaws, Amazon, and Walmart." (Read full article)

In a stern letter last month to Health Minister Christine Elliott, Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) president Vicki McKenna said nurses are "deeply alarmed" by proposed regulations in a recently passed bill that she says, "leave the door wide open to privatized care coordination," thus threatening publicly delivered home and community care across the province. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's Ministry of Labour found over 15,000 COVID-19 infractions and filed 450 tickets across about 19, 000 workplaces from January to April 2021, but the Ministry only stopped work 24 times -- before hard-hit regions intervened to close dangerous workplaces themselves. (Read full article)

The proposed GTA West highway will add 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year by 2050, according to a new report by an environmental advocacy group. That's the same impact as the energy use of 81,000 homes in one year. (Read full article)

Ontario marked a grim milestone on Thursday as the provincial COVID-19 death toll surpassed the 8,000 mark since the pandemic started last year. (Read full article)

Norm Sterling -- who oversaw cuts to the environment ministry's budget that were later found to have contributed to what happened in Walkerton -- was a Progressive Conservative under the Mike Harris government. As an MPP in 2005, he voted against the creation of the Greenbelt. (Read full article)

He is now both advising the government for money -- one of his firms, Campaign Support Ltd., received $121,000 for "caucus support services" from the Ontario government in 2019-2020 -- while also seeking to influence government policy on behalf of paying clients. (Read full article)

"Without an established, practiced plan in place, the government found itself making up its emergency response as it went along," the report reads. "As noted, a pandemic is an inopportune time to create a nuanced, well-thought-out and thorough response plan." (Read full article)

Ontario reported 3,369 new cases of COVID-19 and 29 more deaths on Saturday as overall admissions to intensive care units climbed to 900 for the first time. (Read full article)

Fullerton maintained she is now committed to fixing the problems in long-term care, but was scarce on details, answering questions from only three reporters before abruptly leaving. (Read full article)

"They engaged in a pure political optics type of response," [Harvey Bischof] said. "The focus was entirely on, 'How can we blunt the news of this one particular large class?' instead of, 'How can we reduce the number of students in classes like this all across the province?'" (Read full article)

On Tuesday, the RCMP confirmed it is investigating an anti-teacher group that calls itself "Vaughan Working Families" -- the group behind a set of full-page newspaper ads placed in the National Post, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.
[...] "It's an unbelievably fishy coincidence that the only lawyer Vaughan Working Families could find to defend them in this RCMP investigation happens to also work for Ford," Ontario NDP MPP Peter Tabuns is quoted in the statement. (Read full article)

During a news conference Wednesday, Solicitor General Sylvia Jones told reporters, in response to question by a QP Briefing reporter: "Investigations would not happen at a provincial level or a ministry level." (Read full article)

People with disabilities are disproportionately prone to get COVID-19, to suffer its worst effects and to die from it. Cruelly compounding this, Ontario's protocol for triage of critical care would explicitly discriminate against some patients with disabilities who need life-saving critical care. People with disabilities deserve better. (Read full article)

Dozens of residents in two Ontario nursing homes hit hard by the coronavirus died not from COVID-19 but from dehydration and neglect, the Canadian military says in reports obtained by The Globe and Mail. (Read full article)

"It will cost the province $1.3 billion to clear the projected surgery and diagnostic procedures backlog," the office said in a statement. "In the 2021 budget, the province allocated $610 million to address the backlog, which represents a funding shortfall of approximately $700 million." (Read full article)

As Ontario gets set to debate a bill aimed to combat human trafficking, several legal advocates, community organizations and sex worker groups are sounding the alarm on the proposed legislation, saying it will only endanger already-marginalized sex workers by expanding police powers and lead to further targeting of poor and racialized groups. (Read full article)

The Ontario government failed to properly track billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funds, including for high-profile programs like pay increases for front-line workers, an audit of pandemic-related health spending has found. (Read full article)

Ontario health officials are reporting more than 2,700 new COVID-19 infections, pushing the province's lab-confirmed case total past 500,000. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's recent letter calling on the federal government to further restrict travel into and across Canada is an attempt to deflect attention away from the third pandemic wave rampaging through the province, says Public Safety Minister Bill Blair. [...] "I know they've got some serious problems ... in their workplaces and in their social gatherings but their own data tells us ... they had 2,320 cases reported in Ontario yesterday. Zero of those were related to travel...." (Read full article)

But "confidential" plans show the Ministry of Education wants to put TVO in charge of "central coordination" of all future eLearning offerings -- instead of school boards. [...] Kidder said Ford's government is looking to turn a profit on public education and TVO isn't as accountable as public boards are. (Read full article)

This week, school trustees at the Toronto District School Board will be voting on a request put forward by Queen Victoria Public School's Student Council and a group called the Black Student Success Committee to create a school renaming committee tasked with coming up with a name that better reflects the community. [...] But David Piccini, Doug Ford's assistant minister of colleges and universities and the MPP for Northumberland-Peterborough, apparently takes issue with the student-led initiative. (Read full article)

While the overall number of COVID patients in ICUs has fallen over the last two weeks, they are still higher than at any point in the first two waves, with most of the critically ill on life support, and some 30 to 40 new patients being admitted every day over the last week. [...] The challenges facing our health system thanks to COVID-19 are not just immediate. [...] "There will be people who will die because they have been unable to access the care they need, whether it be for cancer or cardiac care. That is the ultimate tragedy and that is what people do not fully appreciate." (Read full article)

In fact, of the 68 failures to comply with regulations found by inspectors between 2018 and 2020 at Camilla Care, half of them were met with voluntary plans of correction, measures one seniors' advocate calls "absolutely useless" since homes are not required to submit their plans to the ministry. (Read full article)

"We had the situation that we are all aware of -- of roughly 50 per cent of this pandemic in this province being driven by essential workers and their families who are out there. And I just didn't see any of that being acknowledged. And what happened instead is we closed playgrounds. It's just this discrepancy." (Read full article)

Bill 251 also gives expansive and excessive powers to police and "inspectors," an entirely new category of law enforcement solely tasked with investigating compliance with human trafficking regulations. The proposed law would authorize inspectors, without a warrant or notice, to enter any place at any time and to examine, demand, remove or copy anything they deem to be relevant. This would give investigators frighteningly wide latitude, based on their discretion alone. Such unchecked powers are arguably broader than the search and seizure capabilities that police already have in emergency circumstances. Alarm bells should be ringing. (Read full article)

According to his most recent filing with Ontario's Integrity Commissioner, Assistant Infrastructure Minister Stephen Crawford appears to hold shares in two high-profile private, for-profit LTC companies -- Sienna and Chartwell. (Read full article)

Palliative care Dr. Amit Arya said it "makes no sense" that the province hasn't mandated system-wide change, especially following scathing reports from the military and long-term care commission about the deplorable conditions in homes and dehydration and neglect of residents. (Read full article)

Green Leader Mike Schreiner said the government's plan "falls 10,000 staff short to reach the promised and delayed four hours of care, and it falls short on providing the necessary beds to keep up with an aging population." (Read full article)

A new review by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office confirms Ontario's education system faces a funding cut of over half a billion dollars and a long-term funding shortfall as a result of recent moves by Doug Ford's government. (Read full article)

Arthur is the main character in a story Doug Ford told Wednesday about the premier violating his own since-expired stay-at-home order to receive advice about keeping schools closed, but expanding graduation ceremonies, from a child. (Read full article)

Because the Doug Ford government is not keeping elementary schools safe by funding smaller class sizes, some school boards are being forced to cut costs by implementing the hybrid model. If school boards were adequately funded, none of them would opt to use this model, which is born out of a situation where next year's per-student funding is even lower than it is now. The situation is avoidable, and it is a tragedy for our students. (Read full article)

Homes with repeated issues are being allowed to operate as normal, when instead they should face harsher penalties, including potentially having their licences revoked, said Doly Begum, the NDP Member of Provincial Parliament for the area that includes Craiglee Nursing Home. (Read full article)

The Ontario government will invoke the notwithstanding clause to restore changes to election finance law that a judge declared unconstitutional this week, a move critics quickly labelled as a power grab intended to sway next year's provincial election. (Read full article)

"To win our fight against Islamophobia and all hateful acts our words must become actions. We should be able to get a motion condemning Islamophobia passed at Queen's Park. It's the least we can do after the act of terror in London," [Steven] Del Duca added later on Twitter. (Read full article)

In 2019, after news reports revealed nine per cent of all lead tests in Ontario's schools and daycares exceeded the national safety guideline, the province said it was working with schools to fix the lead pipes tainting children's water.
Two years later, the scale of the problem remains unchanged. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has quietly disbanded all 10 community advisory boards overseeing jails, removing what some call a key way to ensure proper treatment for the province's inmates. (Read full article)

As Ontario opened second-dose COVID-19 vaccination bookings Monday, many faced difficulties finding appointments and social media was flooded with complaints about the process being a "mess" and comparable to the Hunger Games. (Read full article)

Almost half of the Ford government's MZOs for private-sector developments have gone to projects associated with just four land developers -- the Cortellucci family, the De Gasperis family, Fieldgate Homes, and Flato Developments, founded by Shakir Rehmatullah. (Read full article)

That means today, with just under a year to go before the next Ontario election, citizens are effectively barred from spending their own money to voice their opinion on any political issue. (Read full article)

So while the Ford government defends the limits on third parties in terms of the need to keep "big money" out of Ontario elections, in fact it is content that Ontario elections should be awash in big money -- as long as it's the right kind. (Read full article)

Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Gila Martow's most recent filings indicates that she held and holds shares in Amazon while the government faced criticism for not closing the company's facilities during outbreaks. (Read full article)

The Premier is bringing back into the fold Mr. Phillips, the former finance minister, who resigned from cabinet on Jan. 1 after it was revealed he had travelled to the luxury island of St. Barts during the December holidays, when Canadians were being advised against unnecessary travel. (Read full article)

To date, 9,007 people in Ontario have died due to COVID-19 infection. (Read full article)

Canada is in an enviable position, globally: with access to American Moderna factories, we should have second doses for every Canadian over the age of 12 by the end of July. So if the government really wants to help the nail salons and hairdressers, send them all cheques. If it wants to speed up, try outdoor activities only. Just wait. Because that impatience, that stubbornness, those priorities, and that enduring ignorance is what led the nail salons and the hairdressers and everything else to be closed this long in the first place. (Read full article)

The current Ontario Works single rate is $733 a month. Adjusted for inflation, this very low amount is $103 a month below the level that Mike Harris established in 1995 when he cut social assistance rates by 21.6 per cent. Even with tax credits, this amount now translates to less than $10,000 a year at a time when the poverty line for a single person is nudging $25,000 a year. (Read full article)

The government must bring together front-line workers, boards, students and experts on public health and education to deliver a fully funded plan. It should include: a focus on ventilation and air-quality testing in classrooms, based on the latest science on COVID transmission; a reduction in class sizes, not only for safe distancing but to ensure struggling students get crucial one-on-one attention; ongoing, in-school testing and vaccination programs; mental health supports in every school; more special education workers; additional supports and immediate action to re-engage the more than 40,000 students that disappeared from schools this year; an end to hybrid and quadmestered learning; and an immediate halt to the Conservatives' terrible plan to introduce and make permanent full-time online learning -- a plan with no pedagogical value designed to deeply undermine public education. (Read full article)

Thanks to a question tabled by NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky, at the end of May, Linton discovered that at least 69 residents and six staff died from COVID-19 in Ontario congregant care settings, deaths that hadn't before been publicly revealed. (Read full article)

Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Gila Martow floated a creative idea during a recent virtual education town hall suggesting that the province could save money if it replaced paid teachers with pre-recorded videos. [...] Martow previously made headlines after it was discovered she owned shares in Amazon at the same time as she was helping rewrite the province's labour laws. (Read full article)

"The pandemic isn't over, but Doug Ford has long-since turned his attention to prioritize collecting thousands in donations from his rich insiders and lobbyists," [Taras] Natyshak stated. "There aren't too many regular folks willing to pay $1,000 for a burger and a pop -- but Ford is happy to focus on the ultra-wealthy who are willing and able to shell out $1,000 per person for access." (Read full article)

Tim Gray, executive director with Environmental Defence said that the MZOs are a "distraction" from the job of conservation authorities protecting people and their environment.
"If they are spending massive amount of time on a MZO ... that means they are not doing something else," said Gray. (Read full article)

It had said "mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions."
That section has been removed from the preamble to the curriculum, as have mentions of "anti-racist and anti-oppressive teaching and learning opportunities," and "the colonial contexts of present-day mathematics education." (Read full article)

At crucial points large and small since Ontario first declared a state of emergency in March of 2020 the government has made decisions that align with the interests of lobbyists -- many of whom have close ties to the premier, his party or both -- and the businesses they represent. Those decisions have often favoured certain sectors over others and have, at key moments in the pandemic, gone against public health advice, delaying or fracturing lockdowns. (Read full article)

Thanks to a breakneck process where procedures were hurried and safeguards left out, Ontario spent $10 million it will probably never get back on unproven COVID tests it will almost certainly never receive. The testing contract the province signed left money tied up through the summer and into the fall even as other parts of the lab system went begging, helping exacerbate a deadly second wave. (Read full article)

No one denies that Ontario needs to upgrade older long-term-care beds and build thousands of new ones. [...] The issue, to critics, is that the Ford government rushed into their plan, at the urging of lobbyists, before even learning what went wrong in the first wave of the pandemic, let alone the second. In the process, they locked in a system many see as being structurally responsible for at least some of the carnage in long-term care. They also planned and executed their long-term-care strategy -- one that was in full alignment with the for-profit long-term-care lobby -- before their own long-term-care commission had a chance to weigh in. (Read full article)

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his government is not considering making COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for health-care workers, saying it is their "constitutional right" to decide whether or not they want to get the shot. (Read full article)

Ontario won't make immunization against COVID-19 mandatory for any industry, Premier Doug Ford said Thursday as businesses preparing to reopen indoor services grappled with whether to ask staff and patrons if they'd been vaccinated. (Read full article)

"The similarity in all these cases is the province is turning a blind eye and actually willingly facilitating the efforts of developers to get by the Greenbelt," [Victor Doyle] said. "They are saying they are doing one thing, when they are actually doing the opposite." (Read full article)

Ontario spent about $10 billion less in the last fiscal year than it had planned, the province's financial watchdog said Wednesday as the opposition criticized the government for not investing those funds in more pandemic supports. (Read full article)

Documents found on an education stakeholder group's website show McKinsey & Company, the firm hired by Doug Ford to advise Ontario's 2020 school reopening, promoted COVID-19 as an opportunity for public schools to "collaborate" and "partner" with the private sector. (Read full article)

It means that since the middle of 2018, there has been no provincial oversight of whether the people working in Ontario's licensed trades actually have the credentials to do the work. (Read full article)

"We're talking about workers who are precarious, who have continued to work through the pandemic, who made it possible for others to stay home," said [Liisa] Schofield. "And the reward at the end of that is to be completely shut out of a process that's going to determine the future of their own working conditions." (Read full article)

Other vaccinations are already required for school attendance, and to ignore this fact by pandering to the privacy hawks and libertarian base that makes up a large portion of the Conservative voting coalition is harmful and inappropriate. (Read full article)

Calls for the Ontario government to take leadership on vaccine credentials or so-called "vaccine passports" are increasing from both business and health advocates, who say the province needs to either create its own program or at least give clear direction on dealing with customers and employees as the province reopens.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said the province won't be creating a proof-of-vaccination system, deferring to the federal government instead. (Read full article)

Ontario has seen about 900 wildfires this summer -- almost double the annual average. About 3,000 people have so far been evacuated from First Nations in harm's way, including more than 500 residents from Deer Lake First Nation alone.
The Nishnawbe Aski Nation said earlier this month that escalating the situation to a state of emergency would allow more support for community evacuations, including the use of aircraft, watercraft and temporary accommodations in other communities. (Read full article)

Despite being 29 pages long, the new plan lacks details in the most important areas from a pandemic point-of-view, like how schools should manage cases, or setting out thresholds for when schools or classrooms should be shut down. And coming from a government that frequently claims it wants nothing more than to keep classes in schools, that's especially concerning. (Read full article)

Ontario's Court of Appeal has dismissed the Ford government's bid to overturn an earlier decision that quashed its so-called Student Choice Initiative -- a measure that sparked concern over the future of campus newspapers, student unions and other clubs and services. (Read full article)

A "world-class destination," as Premier Doug Ford calls his vision, means three private companies operating generic, fee-based entertainments on public land. The province will pay at least $100-million, based on a previous estimate, to remediate and service it on the companies' behalves. (Read full article)

[Kaspar Cameron] said his staff got together and asked for vaccines to be required for their safety. No patron is allowed in without demonstrating that they have at least one vaccine dose, he said. [...] It's a policy that wasn't included in Ontario's plans to reopen schools for September-- though children from grades one to twelve will have to wear masks -- and one that could make a difference if it was used in workplaces in general as the province prepares for the fourth wave of COVID-19. (Read full article)

[Febe] Jimenez didn't qualify for the temporary $3-an-hour raise because she works in a retirement home, not a long-term-care facility. [...] The fact that the pandemic pay boost only affects certain workers in certain health-care settings has created a competitive system that has exacerbated staffing shortages in some workplaces, such as retirement homes, said [Sharleen] Stewart [SEIU Healthcare union president]. PSWs in those homes are leaving to work in long-term care, and the level of temp agency staff support replacing them is the highest it's ever been, she said. (Read full article)

"There is no justification for pushing through a development of this size on the environmentally sensitive Lake Simcoe Watershed without trying to determine and reduce the environmental impact," [Sandy Shaw, NDP's environment critic] said. (Read full article)

Three weeks from now, Ontario will have mandatory vaccination policies for health and education workers. But the government still won't require those workers to actually roll up their sleeves for a COVID shot to protect vulnerable Ontarians and the broader community -- and that's what's needed. (Read full article)

"It's just ethically abhorrent because we know that there will be people, whose knowledge of things is greater or lesser and there are certainly vulnerable people who might see this and suddenly feel that they need to get this money in," [Dr. Dennis] Pilon told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday. (Read full article)

University of Calgary law professor Lorian Hardcastle told PressProgress "the government is contracting with private facilities to deliver publicly-funded services, as opposed to delivering those surgeries in public hospitals." (Read full article)

Ontario's transport ministry was warned about visibility issues while the Ford government was testing its now-discontinued blue licence plates and given clear recommendations to improve the readability that weren't acted on, documents obtained by CBC News show. (Read full article)

"The job isn't done," [Dr. Isaac Bogoch, infectious diseases specialist] wrote Friday on Twitter as Ontario report 781 new infections, the highest number since the first week of June. (Read full article)

By closing off the options of vaccine mandates and passports until now, an increasingly desperate government has made itself more dependent on social distancing as a solution that won't get us very far -- and opened the door, down the road, to lockdowns for society at large. (Read full article)

Municipalities have been told that by next summer they must update official plans and plan until 2051 to accommodate population targets set by the province -- 10 years beyond standard practice.
In some municipalities, like Vaughan, Markham and Milton, meeting the targets that some have said are inflated would require developing all the remaining land that sits outside official city boundaries, called the "white belt lands" -- almost all of which is farmland. (Read full article)

Two Ontario hospitals are opening COVID-19 clinics specifically for children this week in an effort to deal with rising infections that are expected to surge further as students return to school. (Read full article)

Several Ontario religious leaders are expressing concern after houses of worship weren't included in the province's plan for COVID-19 vaccination certificates -- with some taking it upon themselves to create their own version. (Read full article)

The move announced Friday will keep Ford -- who has held just one news conference since July 30 -- out of the spotlight leading up to the Sept. 20 federal vote and beyond.
Opposition parties quickly accused the premier of trying to avoid scrutiny after a fourth wave of the pandemic took hold in August. (Read full article)

Without access to permanent, adequate paid sick leave, workers still have to choose between going to work sick or making ends meet. Overcrowded and understaffed hospitals continue to increase the risk and reliance on hallway medicine. Personal support workers continue to be overworked and underpaid, especially in for-profit long-term-care homes where residents continue to be underserved. (Read full article)

An Ontario court has found the provincial government broke the law by failing to adhere to the Environmental Bill of Rights.
[...] The court said the government failed to post proposed amendments over the controversial use of Ministerial Zoning Orders on the Environmental Registry prior to implementation. (Read full article)

The new federal holiday was announced this year in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. The day was established to commemorate the tragic effect of residential schools in Canada and their continuing impact on Indigenous communities. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford's government lost yet another court case this week. It has become a bit of a trend. (Read full article)

Ontario did not spend any funds from a new $2.7-billion COVID-19 response program in the first quarter, the province's fiscal watchdog found, prompting critics to question why the government didn't use the money during the third wave. (Read full article)

Health Minister Christine Elliott was asked about the premier's whereabouts during a news conference on Friday, to which she replied he has "been around." (Read full article)

The Ontario government's budget deficit for 2020-21 was $22-billion less than originally forecast, the province said Friday, prompting critics to accuse Premier Doug Ford of penny pinching instead of fighting the pandemic. (Read full article)

The legislation, known as Bill 124, is disincentivizing nurses to stay in a profession that has been made even more difficult by the pandemic, [Doris] Grinspun said. A survey of more than 2,100 nurses and nursing students done earlier this year by the RNAO found more than 10 per cent of nurses 26 to 35 have said they will leave the profession after the pandemic. (Read full article)

"Schools are the only remaining place where we actually want unvaccinated people to congregate. It makes much more sense to use rapid antigen tests in unvaccinated children than it does to use them in vaccinated adults," Dr. [Irfan] Dhalla said. (Read full article)

Shortly after winning the election in 2018, the Ford government froze the hourly minimum wage at $14, scrapping legislation that would have pushed it to $15 that fall. (Read full article)

Despite the Delta COVID-19 variant being more dangerous to children than earlier variants, Doug Ford's government is spending $133 million less on "implementing public health protocols in schools." (Read full article)

"Dr. Moore has said that one to five out of 100,000 Ontarians would be eligible for a medical exemption to the vaccine," said [Sara] Singh.
"Yet somehow, two members of the PC government caucus both claim to have medical exemptions. It's statistically curious that two out of 70 members somehow have these medical exemptions." (Read full article)

The Ontario NDP has called for surplus funds to be directed toward improving worker benefits, and not refunding employers. (Read full article)

[David Card] co-authored a study on the impact of a minimum-wage increase on New Jersey fast food joints by comparing them to neighbouring Pennsylvania, where the hourly rate remained static. When he measured the fallout, employment didn't fall when wages rose, as people like Ford keep insisting. (Read full article)

"You come here like every other new Canadian has come here, you work your tail off," Mr. Ford said. "If you think you're coming to collect the dole and sit around, not going to happen. Go somewhere else. You want to work, come here."
[...] Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, condemned the remarks as "xenophobic." She said they reflect the unfounded belief that immigrants, refugees and migrant workers are somehow coming to take advantage of Ontario's social safety net. She added that immigrant workers, particularly Black women, have played key roles in the pandemic, including in the food industry and long-term care. (Read full article)

Government house leader Paul Calandra has been promoted to lead a new "ministry of legislative affairs" with a cabinet minister's salary of $165,000 that opposition parties say is out of tune with restraint efforts that, for example, limit hospital nurses to one per cent pay raises. (Read full article)

It's unfair to exclude students at First Nations schools from the province's free period products program, especially given that those essential items can cost twice as much in northern Ontario as they do in the south, says New Democrat MPP Sol Mamakwa. (Read full article)

The Globe and Mail has learned that Premier Doug Ford met privately with MLSE chief executive officer Michael Friisdahl in Mr. Ford's mother's backyard in July, though representatives for both say the meeting was unrelated to their vaccine-passport app collaboration, which the province revealed last week. [...] This drew the ire of small businesses such as restaurants, which still face capacity limits while the government has allowed sports venues, including Scotiabank Arena, where MLSE's Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors both play, to operate at full capacity. (Read full article)

The Ministry's February 19, 2021 mask directive, obtained by PressProgress, reads -- without a Point of Care Risk Assessment by a registered nurse or other "regulated health professional" and outside of outbreaks -- employers can "deny" non-regulated healthcare workers, including PSWs, N95 masks. (Read full article)

The Doug Ford government says it has allocated hundreds of beds to the Ontario for-profit long-term care chains at the centre of a military report that shocked the nation more than a year ago with details of horrifying conditions and neglect. (Read full article)

The vaccine passport requirement for entry to those places could be gone by Jan. 17. All remaining restrictions, including masking in indoor public spaces, are scheduled to be removed by March 28.
Is the Ford government being overly optimistic in expecting the post-COVID era to start in just five months? Is it tying its pandemic response to the political calendar, centred on next spring's election? (Read full article)

Nearly half of all active COVID-19 infections in the province now involve students and staff at public schools and child-care centres, despite a steady reduction in the total number of cases linked to those settings. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's government is looking to contract out "employment services" for people on social assistance and one of the few vendors eligible for the contract is Maximus, a Virginia-based firm linked to Republican welfare cuts. (Read full article)

"When Legal Aid will fund a guilty plea but not a trial, you know there is a problem. These courts and new certificates are designed to induce guilty pleas and grease the wheels of injustice," Ottawa lawyer Michael Spratt wrote. (Read full article)

The Ministry of Long-Term Care said it has not issued a single fine to operators who broke the rules during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has so far killed more than 4,000 people in long-term care and infected more than 15,000 nursing-home residents. (Read full article)

When Ministry of Transportation staff revealed a proposal in April for the Bradford Bypass's new route, the government said it would lessen the 16.2-kilometre road's impact to the Holland River and avoid an archeological site.
It did not mention that the golf course being spared is co-owned by the father of Progressive Conservative MPP Stan Cho, who in June became the associate minister of transportation. (Read full article)

Health officials in Ontario are reporting 422 new cases of COVID-19, pushing the province's lab-confirmed case total past 600,000. (Read full article)

The Ontario government is not equipping Long-Term Care Ministry inspectors with powers to prosecute nursing homes under proposed legislation, making it highly unlikely that any operator of a facility will face hefty fines, critics say. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's Fall Fiscal Review cut roughly $500 million from the education funds promised in his 2021 Budget released earlier this year. (Read full article)

The Globe and Mail contacted more than three dozen hospitals this week in the wake of Premier Doug Ford's decision and found all institutions except one have created their own mandatory vaccine rules that involve sanctioning or firing employees who don't comply. Only a handful of staff at each institution are not in compliance with the vaccine requirements and hospitals say that staff departures are not impacting patient care. The findings run directly counter to Mr. Ford's claims that introducing mandatory vaccination rules at hospitals could lead to tens of thousands of staff departures and a massive disruption to care delivery. (Read full article)

Without a plan to end temporary agency work, increase full-time jobs with adequate pay and benefits, we worry that the plan to hire more staff will ultimately fail. Enforcement and fines won't fix the nature of precarious work in LTC. (Read full article)

But there was no new funding announced for community programs to help disadvantaged youth, which numerous reports over the years have pointed to as an essential part of keeping them out of trouble. (Read full article)

"Recruiters, agencies and consultants use the promise of jobs that don't exist and work conditions that don't exist to lure workers to come to Canada," said Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers' Alliance for Change. "Once they're here, they're so indebted they're unable to protect themselves and defend themselves. [...] Ontario has frankly not created any effective legislation to protect migrant workers from exploitative recruiters. As the bill stands, this will simply be window dressing, half-baked." (Read full article)

A pharmacist who was not authorized to speak to the media told CP24 they were concerned that bringing symptomatic individuals into a pharmacy setting, which frequently welcomes the elderly and immunocompromised to pick up prescriptions and children too young to wear face masks, presented an unacceptable risk. (Read full article)

Ontario's private, for-profit long-term care operators are already signalling that they are projecting increased revenues when Ford's government ends the freeze. (Read full article)

At first [Stephen Lecce] claimed that Ontario wasn't being offered a fair share per its percentage of the population -- a claim that turned out to be either false or the result of bad math by the province's education minister.
Now, Lecce claims that Ontario's full-day kindergarten program makes it "unique" and in need of extra funding. ...the intent of the federal funding is not to pay provinces for existing programs. The purpose is to lower child-care fees for families, increase wages for educators and expand public and non-profit child care programs -- not to give Ontario a cookie. (Read full article)

In Ontario, only people with a driver's licence can renew their health cards online, leaving those who use photo ID cards [...] with few other options than to physically go to a centre. (Read full article)

The layoff notices went out last week to inspectors in the compliance and enforcement section of the Ontario College of Trades (OCOT), the agency that licenses tradespeople such as electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics and hairstylists. (Read full article)

And even when ministries do hold public consultations under the act, "they are not always providing Ontarians with clear, accurate and complete information about their proposals and decisions, including the environmental implications, and they are not always providing notice in a timely manner," the report said. "Both are needed for meaningful consultation and transparency." (Read full article)

The auditor general's annual report on the environment found the government has failed to recoup clean-up costs of hazardous spills and is giving blanket approval to all work proposals that would harm species at risk.
It also found the government will likely fail to meet its own waste diversion targets because businesses aren't being held to account on recycling. (Read full article)

Even the province's own projections suggest the 413 would be afflicted by significant congestion soon after it's built. (Read full article)

Among the litany of problems cited are system crashes during business hours, data migration snafus, and document-formatting bugs so "there are no paragraph returns or proper spacing." [...] In one unusual instance, a draft business renewal appeared to be correct when reviewed online, but "the confirmation received indicated it was authorized by a lawyer who had retired from the firm seven years ago." (Read full article)

...the Ford government didn't pursue "potential congestion penalty payments in the order of $1 billion" for 2020 and could decide not to do so again this year. (Read full article)

Ontario reported its highest COVID-19 case count in nearly six months on Sunday, with 964 cases and one additional death. (Read full article)

Nowhere in Ontario is Ford's $15 per hour minimum wage enough to live on.
"The lowest cost of living we found was $16.20 in Sault St. Marie, Ontario," OLWN spokesperson Craig Pickthorne told PressProgress. "But you're still $1.20 short on making ends meet, even with a $15 minimum wage." (Read full article)

Ontario is reporting three new COVID-19 related deaths Tuesday as the number of fatalities in the province hit the grim milestone of 10,000 since the start of the pandemic. (Read full article)

[Bonnie ] Lysyk found a "troubling" absence of controls that resulted in the approval of "suspicious" applications -- including from businesses with addresses outside Ontario -- because of a focus on speed and a lack of verification.
As a result, she said $210 million was spent on grants to small businesses that weren't eligible for them, and $714 million was paid to cover losses that businesses didn't actually incur. (Read full article)

"We found that both the original intervention by the Ontario government and its later reversal illustrated the minister's ultimate authority and power regarding rule changes, even when in direct conflict with the OSC's judgment and related evidence on the matter," the report stated.
[...] Between 2011 and 2021, the OSC imposed $525-million in fines, but collected only 28 per cent of that amount. (Read full article)

Epidemiologist Colin Furness said this is a situation that urgently needs fixing, "The system has not been taken seriously by government therefore it's been implemented in a slap-dash way and we shouldn't be surprised." (Read full article)

A month after the province announced it would create a task force to study a problem everyone already understands, Steve Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, has revealed the chair and members of Ontario's new Housing Affordability Task Force.
And to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the names represent a who's-who of finance and real estate, the two industries many observers hold responsible for the out-of-control affordability crisis plaguing the province. (Read full article)

Ontario reported 1,009 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, as the number of elementary school-related outbreaks of the illness reached a new pandemic high for a second day.
According to the province, there are 260 active outbreaks connected to schools, with 239 linked to elementary schools. (Read full article)

With the Omicron variant poised to become Ontario's dominant COVID-19 strain, experts want the province to explain how it plans to shift its pandemic response if many people are infected much more quickly than in previous waves.
[...] "Going into the holidays, all of us -- healthcare and otherwise -- want some guidance in terms of how to deal with this so that we're not scrambling and shutting down services when people need them the most." (Read full article)

...the figures in the report are daunting: "In the medium emissions scenario, the FAO estimates that by 2100, additional infrastructure-related costs of maintaining Ontario's public buildings could range from $29 billion (3.7 per cent higher than baseline) to $134 billion (16.8 per cent) by 2100. In the high emissions scenario, these additional costs could range from $55 billion (6.9 per cent) to $232 billion (29 per cent) by 2100." (Read full article)

"That's the problem. If we just wait and we just wait until case numbers go up and then wait until hospital numbers go up then we're far too late," [Dr. Peter] Juni warned. "Remember Omicron doubles every three days that is the reality. Unless there is a miracle happening this trajectory won't change without public health measures." (Read full article)

I've been writing about rapid testing since December 2020 and only now, 515,000 cases of COVID, and 6,400 deaths later, is the provincial government distributing some free home tests to everyone. No wonder #FreeTheRATs keeps trending on social media. (Read full article)

The NDP's Marit Stiles is calling the free rapid tests available at some LCBO locations "a start" and said she's happy to see these kits going home with families, but adds "it shouldn't have to be a race like the Hunger Games to get a rapid test in this province -- that's outrageous." [...] Stiles is also questioning why some regions in the province are not seeing rapid tests yet after the federal government provided around $2-billion in funding for tests. (Read full article)

Ontario health officials are reporting 4,177 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday.
This is the highest number of daily cases reported since April 23 when the province logged 4,505 new infections. (Read full article)

The measures announced on Friday by the province are a good first step. However, by waiting until Ontario surpassed 3,000 cases per day to do so, it means some of our forthcoming misery is already baked in -- making it entirely possible that further restrictions will have to be announced in the coming weeks.
[...] We need a number of nonpharmaceutical interventions -- such as better masks, reduced contacts, accessible rapid testing, improved ventilation and air filtration -- in conjunction with vaccines and therapeutics. (Read full article)

But [the government] had ample time in the aftermath of the initial vaccine rollout to prepare an equitable booster plan: one that didn't favour social media savvy people who work from home at the expense of essential workers, seniors and people with disabilities. It failed. (Read full article)

There were 5,790 new cases reported Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in Ontario to 667,353.
The previous record for the largest increase in cases in Ontario was set on April 16, when there were 4,812 reported. (Read full article)

"Public health units are losing the ability to test everyone who has symptoms that are consistent with Omicron, and so these official numbers are probably far under what the true rate of COVID-19 is in the community," said Dr. Fahad Razak, who is also an internist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. (Read full article)

Previous waves have demonstrated that the lack of paid sick days is a significant barrier for the community to follow public health guidelines. Workers without paid sick days have had no choice but to go to work sick. This has especially impacted low-income workers, many of whom are racialized and work in essential jobs. (Read full article)

Ontario reported 9,571 new COVID-19 cases and six net new deaths on Friday, shattering all previous records for infection while multiple officials conceded the province's testing system can no longer keep up with and track the spread of infection. (Read full article)

Ontario reported more than 10,400 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, setting a new technical record for cases detected in a single day, although tests are so scarce that officials say case figures are likely a significant undercount. [...] Test positivity hit 26.9 per cent on Wednesday, and stayed between 19 and 25 per cent over the past four days. (Read full article)

Health officials in Ontario are reporting the highest number of new COVID-19 cases ever logged in a single day with 13,807 new cases Thursday. [...] Labs processed 67,301 tests in the last 24 hours, which the Ministry of Health said generated a record positivity rate of 30.5 per cent. (Read full article)

Many worry that economic factors are weighing more heavily on the minds of officials than public health -- a hunch validated by [Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran] Moore's own words during his press conference on Thursday: "It's less burdensome for an employer if you return to work after that five day period." (Read full article)

[Dr. Naheed Dosani] said research shows a two-tiered health system can actually decay the public system.
"This is an example of ... the privatization of health care right under our noses," he said.
Dosani agreed that an inequitable access to health care has been a trend throughout the pandemic, and said the government should do everything in its power to make access to free tests faster and more equitable. (Read full article)

As of Friday, publicly-funded PCR testing will only be available for high risk individuals. People with symptoms are being told to assume they are infected and self-isolate.
The change will greatly reduce the significance of new daily case counts as a measure of community spread, and Furness equated the move to "turn[ing] out the lights in the room and leav[ing] everyone in the dark." (Read full article)

The Ontario government will stop collecting COVID-19 numbers from school boards and suspend reporting of new coronavirus infections among students and staff starting next week.
[...] "Ford's attempt to cover up COVID numbers in schools is going to hurt kids, families, teachers and education workers," NDP Education critic Marit Stiles said in a statement.
"Parents have to decide to send their kids to school not knowing if the school has a high number of COVID cases. If we can't track where the virus is, we can't fight it. Ford is treating students and staff like pawns in his attempt to hide rising COVID numbers." (Read full article)

COVID-19 outbreaks have been declared in 40 long-term care homes across Ontario in the past day as positive cases continue to break daily records. (Read full article)

The latest case count sets yet another daily high since the pandemic started — up from 16,713 reported on New Year's Eve. However, Public Health Ontario warns that number is also likely "an underestimate of the true number of individuals with COVID-19." (Read full article)

Ontario renters may soon be paying more for their accommodations after the province hiked its rent increase guidelines today. (Read full article)

The Ontario government has instructed hospitals and health-care professionals to stop all non-urgent surgeries and procedures to preserve critical-care capacity and human resources. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford promised that these workers would have emergency child care while schools are closed but, at the same time, his government is undermining the ability of those child-care workers to do their jobs:
- They have no N-95 masks to protect them against the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
- They are not receiving HEPA filters from the government to help purify the air.
- They are not on the priority list for tests, either PCR tests or the less accurate (but still a whole lot better than nothing) rapid tests. Schools are included on the list, but child-care centres are not.
- They are not being prioritized for booster vaccines, either.
(Read full article)

Hospitals in Ottawa are scrambling to meet staffing needs as hundreds of nurses in the city test positive for COVID-19, while nursing unions in Ontario plead with the provincial government to take action to solve the staffing crisis. (Read full article)

Paramedics from Gananoque, Ont., had to drive an ambulance almost two hours to respond to a 911 call in Ottawa's urban core last week during one of several recent instances when dispatchers had no local paramedics available to send. (Read full article)

And - please forgive me for saying so - but might waiting a few weeks before sending kids back to physical school be the safest thing to do while Omicron burdens our hospitals and nearly every essential sector imaginable? (Read full article)

But there was the premier, like some wannabe superhero, trolling the streets of Etobicoke, conducting Facetime interviews with a TV reporter while driving. (Read full article)

Right now in Ontario, more than 4,000 long-term care staff currently have COVID-19. (Read full article)

It's worth noting that due to limited testing availability in the province, public health officials have said recent case counts are likely an underestimate of the true number of infections in Ontario. (Read full article)

How would parents feel if their child was denied access to safety measures that other children were entitled to, based on their race? (Read full article)

A few months before FH Health was tapped by the province to run 10 GTA vaccine clinics, each member of its board of directors made the maximum allowable donation to the Progressive Conservative Party under their own names - and all within a few days of each other. (Read full article)

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and the Ontario government have paid one of the largest consulting companies in the world $22.4 million to help run the province's new COVID-19 paid sick leave program, and could be on the hook for millions more. (Read full article)

New data from the science table advising Premier Doug Ford's government estimates a wide but "plausible range" of between 1.5 million and four million people since Dec. 1 based on surveillance testing of virus levels in wastewater. (Read full article)

Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table released modelling on Tuesday predicting that Monday's lifting of restrictions - which includes allowing restaurants to reopen with 50 per-cent capacity - will cause more infections. (Read full article)

"...if people want to come down and protest, God bless them. I understand their frustration." (Read full article)

The Opposition New Democrats raised concerns about the report showing lack of funding in areas like health and the potential for unannounced tax cuts, which the watchdog report said could explain the difference between its tax revenue projections and the government's. (Read full article)

As the City of Ottawa prepared for a state of emergency, amid what police services in the region believed was an "insurrection" by "Freedom Convoy" protesters, Ontario's Premier Doug Ford was spotted on a snowmobile trail in the Muskoka area. (Read full article)

The office of the FAO told CTV News Toronto last week that the impact to the province could be "somewhere around a billion dollars" based on previous analysis of the registration fees. (Read full article)

The government, however, is also circumventing a law the PC party put in place in 2019 that created firm financial reporting deadlines that then Finance Minister Vic Fedeli claimed was an "iron clad guarantee" from Premier Ford.
"The guarantee would require the Premier and the Minister of Finance to pay 10 per cent of their premier and ministerial salaries for each missed public reporting deadline," Fedeli said at the time.
Opposition parties believe the government's motives are purely political and designed to present a rosy financial picture just before the election. (Read full article)

Last week, Minister of Labour Monte McNaughton announced a payout of $1.5 billion to employers from the Workers Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). This surplus was manufactured by years of cuts to benefits that have forced injured and sick workers into poverty. If anything, the pandemic should be a wake-up call to fix the workers' compensation system, not erode it further. (Read full article)

It's a concern of both municipalities and environmental groups, who say the changes to the rules and laws around aggregate mines are worrying. Among the most troubling are those that restrict the use of municipal bylaws to prevent aggregate operations from going beneath the water table, and changes to endangered species legislation that allow mines to operate in protected habitat areas by simply paying into a fund. (Read full article)

"There's still a lot of infection going around, there's quite a substantial risk out there," [Dr. Mustafa] Hirji said. "I think taking away masks, which really don't impede economic activity, is a very bad decision at this point." (Read full article)

Experts say Doug Ford's much-hyped "working for workers act" does not actually ensure gig workers get paid the minimum wage and that it provides them with less protections than they already ought to receive under the Employment Standards Act. (Read full article)

The Ontario government will no longer include hiring targets for disadvantaged groups in its agreements for provincial transit projects, a reversal of a groundbreaking policy intended to deliver jobs to marginalized communities where new lines are built. (Read full article)

The timing of the campaign and its upbeat tone have the opposition parties complaining that Ford is using taxpayer money to boost his Progressive Conservatives' re-election chances on June 2.
The premier's office refused to reveal the cost of the ads when asked Tuesday by CBC News. (Read full article)

The latest report from Ontario's fiscal watchdog shows the provincial government spent 5.5-billion dollars less than planned in the first three quarters of the fiscal year that ends March 31st. (Read full article)

Health-care unions in Ontario say a newly-announced one-time retention incentive of up to $5,000 for nurses won't fix the province's worsening staffing shortage, instead calling it a ploy to gain votes ahead of the upcoming provincial election in June. (Read full article)

The deregulation plan had drawn criticism and safety concerns from practitioners who said they weren't consulted. Critics remained skeptical of the government's motives even after Monday's reversal. (Read full article)

Isolation guidelines are also being changed Wednesday for close contacts of someone with COVID-19 or who is symptomatic.
No one who is a close contact of a person outside their household with COVID-19 has to isolate now, though they are still recommended to wear a mask outside the home for 10 days and avoid high-risk people and settings.
[...] The 27 additional deaths reported Wednesday push the official death toll to 12,618. (Read full article)

Premier Doug Ford has slammed Ontario school boards who are asking for more time before dropping the mask mandate saying they "aren't medical experts" and are expected to follow the provincial directive. (Read full article)

It used to be that the decision not to wear a mask was a political statement. Now, Ford wants to turn a decision to wear a mask into a political statement. It's not. It's an "I don't want to get sick and die," statement.
[...] It's been a popular refrain of the premier's that we all have to learn to live with COVID. But that doesn't mean we stop doing the things that protect ourselves and each other from the virus. (Read full article)

Ford is positioning himself as Ontario's rescuer, claiming to expand private hospitals - whoops, alternate health facilities - to clear backlogs, employing the popular fiction that private health care reduces wait times. Let's be clear: private health care does not reduce wait times. And the backlogs themselves arose from the relentless downsizing of public hospitals: closures of operating rooms and staff shortages, including Ford's appalling treatment of nurses, leading to an exodus from the profession. (Read full article)

The albatross around Ford's neck is a sleeper hydro subsidy that's surging out of control to $6.9 billion a year. (Read full article)

But what's remarkable about the reaction to Ontario's blue box regulation is not that environmental advocates are opposed. Environmentalists have rarely seen eye to eye with the Ford government. It's that so many other stakeholders, from so many different sectors, have been so put off too. (Read full article)

The legislation, being introduced Monday, would let police officers suspend drivers' licences and vehicle permits, seize licence plates of those involved in an illegal blockade as well as remove and store other objects contributing to a blockade.
It also includes a nearly $96 million investment to: establish a permanent Emergency Response Team for the Ontario Provincial Police, enhance training at the Ontario Police College with a focus on effective public order policing and to purchase heavy equipment such as tow trucks. (Read full article)

According to the leaked draft policy document, newly obtained by PressProgress, unnamed "school board personnel" with no professional health or medical backgrounds could soon be tasked with medical responsibilities. (Read full article)

The province ignored public consultations calling for the "meaningful expansion" of the Greenbelt, say environmental groups, opting instead to protect smaller urban river valleys that aren't in need of protection. (Read full article)

[Dr. Peter Juni] said the highly infectious Omicron subvariant cannot be blamed for Ontario's rising case count and said it has much more to do with 'throwing caution to the wind.' (Read full article)

Ford has more or less washed his hands of the matter, lifted public-health measures and told the public to manage things themselves - even as the tools to do so sensibly are being withdrawn.
Less collecting and sharing of data. No regular expert briefings. Until the latest surge in COVID cases became clear this week and the head of Ontario's Science Advisory Table confirmed that we're already in the midst of a sixth wave, the province was even set to stop supplying free rapid testing kits. (Read full article)

Opposition NDP deputy leader Sara Singh said the temporary relief at the pumps isn't enough and called on the government to pass her party's bill that would regulate prices and aim to stop oil companies from jacking them on weekends. She said the government had four years to cut gas taxes but instead was making the move on the "eve of the election, at the 11th hour." (Read full article)

Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 continue to rise across Ontario, up nearly 40 per cent from a week ago and the highest since the end of February. [...] Amid the rise in hospitalizations, Premier Doug Ford said Monday that Ontario is able to manage the "little spike" in COVID-19 that the province is seeing right now. (Read full article)

While the wastewater estimates are based on incomplete data, the science table's scientific director, Dr. Peter Jüni, says the signal has now overtaken January's peak with 90 per cent certainty. (Read full article)

The independent Financial Accountability Office (FAO) found health spending per person in Ontario was $4,800 in 2020, the lowest in Canada, and $536 (10 per cent) below the average of the other provinces. (Read full article)

With an Ontario election on the horizon, the licence plate rebate is just one of dozens of announcements, re-announcements, promotions and promises that Ford has made in recent weeks on such things as gas prices, road tolls and massive spending and infrastructure programs across the province.
All are aimed at one thing - winning your vote on June 2!
Some would call them bribes; others would say it's normal pre-election propaganda practiced by all governments.
One thing is clear, though, and it's that the cost of them are staggering - billions of dollars either spent by or lost to the government for years to come. (Read full article)

...just one-fifth of the 20.7 million taxpayer-funded COVID-19 rapid tests distributed through the program went to hot spot neighbourhoods, according to provincial data obtained by the Star and never before seen by the public. [...] Meanwhile, the government gave private schools almost 175,000 free rapid tests - more than went to paramedics, daycares, shelters and jails combined, a Star analysis of the data reveals. (Read full article)

It's called The More Homes for Everyone Act - an optimistic name for a punitive bill that financially punishes municipalities if they don't approve developers' building applications within unreasonably short timelines. (Read full article)

At one of the most environmentally sensitive sections of the proposed Highway 413, the province ignored the advice of its own consultants and chose a route that would cause “maximum incursions” into the Greenbelt, farmland and wildlife habitat, according to internal provincial documents seen by the Star. (Read full article)

People on the streets keep dying - almost four a week. The deaths are so commonplace that the city tracks them on a gruesome "Deaths of People Experiencing Homelessness" dashboard. [...] Everyday, street nurses enter this ongoing crisis and save lives. But 43 of them have just been fired due to the Ford government funding cuts to the Ontario Ministry of Health. (Read full article)

Newly unearthed memos show the Ford government appears to be moving ahead with plans to contract out Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) Employment Services.
Disability advocates warn the Ford government is planning to include “targets” for these "System Managers" to push low-income people off of income support - and into whatever work they can find. (Read full article)

COVID-19 cases have spiked across Ontario and some hospitals have said more children are coming to the emergency room showing COVID-19 related symptoms. There are growing calls to make masks mandatory for students in schools to curb the spread of the virus. (Read full article)

The Ford government has been making billions of dollars worth of pre-election promises, from license plate sticker rebates to hospital renovations.
However, people with disabilities are asking when they will get help, saying they can't survive on their current payments. Some have even considered planning to apply for medical assistance in death (MAID) because it's becoming too hard to live. (Read full article)

Tenant advocates say the relationship between Doug Ford's government and an advocacy group called the Ontario Landlords Association - which claims it is lobbying to make the tenancy act less "tenant friendly" - raises questions about who is influencing rental policy in Ontario. (Read full article)

More than a pre-election budget, it's a re-election platform for Ford's Progressive Conservative government. By banking on nearly $200 billion in government spending, the Tories are buying your votes with your money. (Read full article)

According to Ontario's most recent budget, the province's education system has seen a $1.3 billion funding shortage this year - apparently because Ontario schools didn't hold enough bake sales during the last few waves of COVID-19. (Read full article)

Hundreds of lobby registry entries from private health companies reviewed by PressProgress indicate many of these companies continue to push Ontario's Ministry of Health and other officials to "privatize or outsource" health services. (Read full article)

Angela Kennedy, the Ontario Progressive Conservative candidate in the Toronto riding of Beaches - East York, was greenlit to run as a candidate for Doug Ford's party despite previously backing calls to defund abortions. (Read full article)

...the report found that only 30 per cent of principals said they received sufficient support from the Ministry of Education to implement the changes. (Read full article)

The projections show that the province's natural gas plants - which only operate about 60 per cent of the time now - will run non-stop by 2033. The additional annual emissions this will produce over the next 20 years are equivalent to a large Alberta oilsands project. (Read full article)

After the issue was first raised by the Ontario NDP, Global News combed through publicly available Elections Ontario data looking into the expenses incurred by all 124 sitting MPPs and discovered tens of thousands of payments made to select politicians between 2018 and 2021 that fell outside of the routine expenses claimed by riding associations. (Read full article)

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) was a historic achievement for the province and for champions of disability rights. The new law, passed unanimously, was supposed to make Ontario fully accessible to people with disabilities by 2025.
The 20-year timeline felt distant and achievable at the time. Some activists thought it wasn't ambitious enough. Today, even the most optimistic advocates concede it will not be reached.
"We're at a point where it's impossible for the government to lead Ontario into being fully accessible (by 2025) even if it was trying," says [David] Lepofsky, who chairs the AODA Alliance advocacy group. "And this government isn't even trying." (Read full article)

Ford, who has faced calls to remove Lecce as a candidate, said he was standing by his colleague. [...] Mitzie Hunter, a Black Liberal candidate for Scarborough-Guildwood, noted Thursday that during Lecce’s time as education minister, the Ford government removed a preamble to the math curriculum that acknowledged the impacts of colonialism. (Read full article)

"On a personal level, how could a person in good conscience knowingly buy shares and take profits from corporations whose residents suffered so egregiously and continue to suffer from inadequate care?" Ontario Health Coalition Executive Director Natalie Mehra said.
Mehra further noted that Anand's government has introduced several pieces of legislation that may have helped boost Sienna's profits. (Read full article)

For example, while [Will] Bouma held senior roles in the organization, it adopted a formal "position on homosexuality" that argued it was "evident in the destruction of Sodom" that "God condemns homosexuality." The organization added that "God's condemnation extends to all homosexual desires and acts" and that even "spontaneous attractions or perceived sexual orientation in any way contrary to God's word are sinful." (Read full article)

Doug Ford's Ontario PC government spent millions of dollars buying face masks from an oil company connected to a secretive religious sect whose members previously helped fund right-wing political organizations. (Read full article)

A video widely circulated on social media shows a nurse lying face down on the pavement outside TVO studios on Yonge Street in Toronto, while another is dragged by a man in a suit. (Read full article)

Doug Ford's government has given millions of dollars to an "open shop" anti-union lobby group which has lobbied Ford's own office as recently as three months ago in a bid to undermine unions representing skilled trades workers. (Read full article)

CityNews has been compiling instances of PC candidates not attending debates since last week when a political source shared, they had been directed not to take part in locally held debates. (Read full article)