Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Lennox and Addington County warden Marg Isbester will add her name to a letter urging the Ontario government to take a regional approach to re-opening the economy.
Before signing the letter Isbester called a special virtual meeting Thursday afternoon to gather input from the county’s lower tiers.
Council was unanimous in their support for the warden to put her signature on a letter that was prepared by Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington chief medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore, which will be sent to the province. Isbester’s name will appear next to Kingston mayor Bryan Paterson, who has also requested Frontenac warden Fran Smith add her name to show strong partnership between the municipalities.
Moore’s letter asks for the province to lift restrictions based on evidence and research in a phased approach that is weighed against potential risk, and that they be applied in localized, geographical boundaries. In short-what works for Toronto may not work for KFLA, and vice versa.
“It’s important for communication and I guess economic tourism, everything, that we sort of look at this as a partnership, but as individually too,” said Isbester before opening the discussion up to comments from council. “Just the same as every single lower tier within County of Lennox and Addington is going to look at how we come out of this, how we see things that will fit within our areas. Kingston will look at it very differently than we will, certainly the County of Frontenac will too, but I think the purpose of us going forward is not to make the decisions but to make sure we have an influence in making the decisions that we want to get things across to the Province of Ontario, who has been very good to look at things regionally, that we do have the options to make some decisions on our own, that it isn’t a cookie cutter approach.”
While every council member did vote in favour of the warden signing, they had some concerns.
Among those concerns were cottage owners who live outside KFLA boundaries. Though KFLA continues to show low levels of infectious COVID-19 cases, cottage owners could be coming from areas such as the Greater Toronto Area, which shows a much higher rate of cases.
“There is no answer I don’t think to the cottagers because it’s only voluntary that they don’t come to their cottage,” said councillor Tony Fritsch of Addington Highlands. “That’s a challenge.”
He also noted if KFLA lifts some restrictions while other Public Health territories don’t, they’ll likely see an influx of people coming to this area.
“As far as we know well over 90 per cent, probably closer to 97 or 98 per cent of the people in the country, have had no exposure to this virus and as far as we know have no immunity,” added councillor John Wise of Stone Mills. “Until a vaccine comes along our process is to gradually let people get sick again….(The letter) seems very well thought out with four phases of implementation with as much monitoring as can be managed to detect outbreaks and to take whatever stepback measures are required to isolate that outbreak.”
The letter was expected to be forwarded to the province by next week.