It was a surreal sitting at Queen's Park for Gilles Bisson.
The Timmins MPP, who is also the Opposition House Leader, was one of 26 members to unanimously pass emergency legislation in response to COVID-19. According to the government, the number of members taking part was intentionally kept small to practice social distancing and help prevent spreading the virus.
“It really was a bit surreal in...there’s a sense of this is really game-changing stuff for people. People are trying to deal with what’s going on with this pandemic and we as legislators and the government are trying to figure out how do we effect change so that people are able to get their way through this and still have food on the table, still have a place to stay and do all the things that we need to do. That’s what we’re really concerned about here,” he said.
Two pieces of legislation were passed, the Employment Standards Amendment Act (Infectious Disease Emergencies) and the Municipal Emergency Act 2020.
The Employment Standards Amendment gives employees job-protected leave if they're in isolation or quarantine due to COVID-19, or who have to be away from work to care for children due to the school and day care closures or other relatives. The measures are retroactive to Jan. 25, 2020, when the first presumptive COVID-19 case in Ontario was confirmed. It also ensures employees are not required to show sick notes.
According to Ontario, the municipal changes will allow the local government to hold council, local board and committee meetings electronically "when faced with local and province-wide emergencies, empowering the government's municipal partners to respond quickly when in-person meetings cannot be held."
Bisson noted it's not every day that members from all parties speak in unison and pass legislation in a timely manner.
He said it's been good to see that "in times of crisis people do come together and do what has to be done. It’s the same in our communities and that’s what’s happening here in Queen’s Park.”
“This is really unchartered water, I’ve been at this for 30 years and I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re learning from minute to minute, day to day. And as long as people continue to pull together I think we’ll be OK,” he said.
Bisson has been in Toronto since the weekend and expects to be there for about another week, when there's another sitting to address regulatory and fiscal changes.
He said those items weren't dealt with today because there are technical things to be done first.
“We’re really in unchartered territory here and the government was not, and I don’t blame them, in a position to be able to put those economic measures in place today. There’s a lot that has to happen to get to that point that we haven’t yet done, and we haven’t even yet thought of,” he said.
While he's down south, Bisson has been reaching out to Timmins council, the chamber of commerce, BIA, and a number of other organizations. The hope is to get a sense the concrete action that needs to be done by the province to help.
“For the business community, they want to make sure that in the end when all this is over is that they don’t end up losing their businesses. There’s a whole bunch of things that need to be done in order to make sure that happened,” he said.
