I'll leave it to others to determine whether we are in/near a third wave of COVID-19. Regardless, we cannot return to shutting down the economy to address the concern. Lockdowns were meant to buy a bit of time to ramp up health care capacity, not a semi-permanent policy.
Gyms & indoor restaurant dining in Toronto (for example) have been locked down for nearly 300 days and, still, remain entirely closed. Has this been an effective COVID mitigation effort?
We have vaccinated many of the most vulnerable and are finally making progress in vaccinating older Canadians. This is expected to help address concerns with health care capacity and fatalities - the entire goal of the lockdown in the first place.
Small businesses have done more than their fair share in the COVID battle. It is well past time to use other policy interventions, including rapid testing & expanded contact tracing, to address any interim problems before vaccination rates ramp up.
We simply cannot look backwards and return to shuttering small businesses to get us through the next few months. Instead, we need to allow all small firms to reopen (with an escalating % capacity) to ensure Canadians have jobs to return to when this is all finally over.
CFIB has projected that there will be an additional 180,000 permanent small business closures due to COVID restrictions in the months ahead. This assumes the economy steadily reopens, not the opposite.
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