The Town of Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls is looking to the province to loosen restrictions in the northwest.
Council has approved a resolution asking the government to reconsider blanket restrictions across Ontario.
The resolution calls on the government to:
-Increase consultations with communities and small businesses in the North to find realistic ways for supporting businesses throughout the lockdown;
-Revisit blanket-provincial measures to COVID-19 response;
-Allow small businesses to remain open to in-store sales, with limited capacity and increased safety measures;
-Allow accommodation-based operators to function on a risk-based, regionally appropriate model, with increased safety measures;
-Permit construction work on a risk-based, regionally appropriate model, with increased safety measures, especially in the North, where large infrastructure related to pandemic response and health care do not comprise the majority of projects; and,
-That provincial relief funding programs be broadened to better address the needs of tourism-based, seasonally-based and sole proprietor
industries.
So far, a restaurant and a store have had to close in the past month because of the lockdown.
Mayor Norbert Dufresne says “Now it’s kind of coming to a head you know, we survived 2020 but now 2021 is coming. So were all waiting for the vaccine, but businesses are starting to fold and Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls is a lot of small businesses.”
Dufresne stresses the shutdown is really starting to hit home.
(Norbert Dufresne at the open of the new Kenora Airport Terminal in September of 2018)
