Local mayors look to Province for solutions

By Mark Ribble

LEAMINGTON/KINGSVILLE — Hilda MacDonald and Nelson Santos each spoke with Ontario Premier Doug Ford last week, and both came away with a renewed optimism.

Leamington’s Mayor MacDonald was able to drive her point home that the small businesses of her municipality need financial aid now and Premier Ford was receptive to her pleas.

“I told him that we need immediate funding for small business here,” she said. “Not a loan either, and we need it fast.”

Ford agreed that he would look into funding for the small businesses in both municipalities.

MacDonald suggested that the province put a ‘band’ or ‘bubble’ around the agri-food industry and let the rest of the community open up to Stage 2.

“He said an announcement would be coming soon,” she said.

As for restaurants in Leamington, MacDonald said she has had preliminary discussions with administration about getting patios approved quickly.

“We want to make things as easy and uncomplicated as possible,” she said.

As for testing, MacDonald is still a big proponent of getting the agri-food workers tested, despite what County Warden, Gary McNamara said last week.

“We have no better option than testing available to us,” she said.

McNamara, speaking as Chair of the Windsor-Essex Health Unit last week, said that massive testing would not help, only hinder the numbers.

Santos agrees with MacDonald that mass testing is the way to go.

“That’s the protocol,” he said. “Our goal is safety for the community and we cannot fail in the health and vitality of our citizens.”

Santos pointed out that, while mass testing could bring higher numbers of positive cases, it also brings higher number of negative cases.

“That’s real information that will help us in our fight,” he said.

Santos says that Kingsville is ready, once they get the word.

“Council has already agreed to close the main streets in certain areas to allow larger patios for the businesses,” he said.

The two mayors both spoke to the importance of accommodation for those agri-food workers who test positive and say they have had preliminary discussions with area hotels to provide that.

Late last week, Mayor MacDonald’s April emails to Dr. Wajid Ahmed of the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit were made public and those emails shed a light on MacDonald’s attempts to get the health unit to proactively turn its attention to the agri-food issues.