Province-wide emergency brake announced in Ontario in response to COVID-19 third wave

The Government of Ontario, in consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health and other health experts, announced on Thursday, April 1, 2021, that it plans to impose a province-wide “emergency brake” in response to the surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across the province. The province-wide emergency brake will go into effect on Saturday, April 3, 2021, at 12:01 a.m. and the government has stated that they intend to keep the emergency measures in place for at least four weeks.

Similar to the province-wide shutdown on Boxing Day, the government of Ontario has said that the province-wide emergency brake will impose time-limited public health and workplace safety measures in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19 variants. The measures for the emergency brake announced include, but are not limited to:

• Prohibiting indoor organized public events and social gatherings and limiting the capacity for outdoor organized public events or social gatherings to a 5-person maximum, except for gatherings with members of the same household (the people you live with) or gatherings of members of one household and one other person from another household who lives alone.
• Restricting in-person shopping in all retail settings, including a 50 percent capacity limit for supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, indoor farmers' markets, other stores that primarily sell food and pharmacies, and 25 percent for all other retail including big box stores, along with other public health and workplace safety measures;
• Prohibiting personal care services;
• Prohibiting indoor and outdoor dining. Restaurants, bars and other food or drink establishments will be permitted to operate by take-out, drive-through, and delivery only;
• Prohibiting the use of facilities for indoor or outdoor sports and recreational fitness (e.g., gyms) with very limited exceptions;
• Requiring day camps to close; and,
• Limiting capacity at weddings, funerals, and religious services, rites or ceremonies to 15 percent occupancy per room indoors, and to the number of individuals that can maintain two metres of physical distance outdoors. This does not include social gatherings associated with these services such as receptions, which are not permitted indoors and are limited to five people outdoors.

Please note, unlike the Boxing Day shutdown, non-essential retail will be permitted to remain open at 25 percent capacity during the emergency brake.

However, on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer of Health, all people in Ontario are being asked to limit trips outside the home to necessities such as food, medication, medical appointments, supporting vulnerable community members, or exercising outdoors with members of their household. Employers in all industries have also been told that they should make every effort to allow employees to work from home for the course of the emergency brake.

In addition, the government of Ontario announced that the current COVID-19 Response Framework: Keeping Ontario Safe and Open, will be paused when the province-wide emergency brake comes into effect. The government of Ontario plans to monitor the impact of these time-limited measures throughout the next four weeks to determine if and when to lift the restrictions.

We will continue to monitor and provide updates as soon as they become available. The COVID-19 ‎situation is rapidly evolving with new measures being adopted ‎or modified at both ‎the ‎federal and ‎provincial level.

For further information, please consult our ‎Coronavirus Resource ‎Centre or feel free to ‎contact any member of our DLA Piper Canadian Employment and ‎Labour Law Service ‎Group, who will ‎‎ensure that you are acting upon the most up-to-date information.‎

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