Ontario Chamber Welcomes Province’s Reopening Plan

(Toronto – October 22, 2021) – Today, Rocco Rossi, President and CEO of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, released the following statement in response to the Government of Ontario’s announcement of its next steps in their reopening plan.

“We welcome the government’s announcement today that we will move to the next stage of Ontario’s reopening. Ontarians and businesses have worked hard to get us to this important stage as our economy continues to recover.

“We urge the Province to continue closely monitoring metrics: we want to ensure decisions to remove vaccine and mask requirements are evidence-based and do not put our reopening and recovery at risk. We are also encouraged to see more Ontarians getting vaccinated. Businesses aren’t out of the woods yet and cannot afford another shutdown.

“Targeted supports are also needed to get businesses disproportionately impacted by the crisis through to the other side. Businesses have suffered greatly over the last 19 months, and continue to face unprecedented cash flow constraints and uncertainty as well as labour shortages. Many have operated under reduced capacity for a significant amount of time and have had to hire additional staff to verify documents or to implement and enforce the COVID-19 vaccine certificate requirements. In addition, due to travel restrictions and the closure of the US-Canada border, tourism has been at an all-time low, adversely impacting businesses across a number of sectors.”

-30-

About the Ontario Chamber of Commerce
For more than a century, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) has been the independent, non-partisan, indispensable partner of Ontario business. The OCC’s mission is to support economic growth in Ontario by defending business priorities at Queen’s Park on behalf of its network’s diverse 60,000 members.

For more information, please contact:
Ceara Copps – Edwards
Manager, Public Affairs
cearacoppsedwards@occ.ca | Mobile (647) 936-6734