Juno News - The little guy is always an afterthought for the government

00:00:00.000 a lot of justifiable frustration at the Ontario Ford government recently when it came to the issue

00:00:10.200 of capacity restrictions. A lot of people were really upset to learn that the government had

00:00:16.540 told large facilities that cater to professional sports, big concerts, that they'd be allowed to

00:00:22.600 open at 100% capacity. So we're of course talking about thousands of people, many thousands of

00:00:28.960 people at a hockey game or at a concert, but, but small businesses, small venues, restaurants,

00:00:35.720 independent restaurants, they would still be stuck at 50% capacity. What on earth was going on here?

00:00:42.860 Well, these smaller outlets, they were really upset. They lobbied the government. They complained.

00:00:48.020 They got a meeting that they thought a cabinet minister would be at. Turned out there was no

00:00:51.420 cabinet minister at it. They were not getting their grievances heard by any decision makers.

00:00:56.180 That story made the news as well. Eventually the government clued in and realized, come on,

00:01:01.600 this just can't hold anymore. And they say they're going to change it. They announced they would bring

00:01:05.640 about the changes and those places would have their capacity restrictions lifted as well. Long

00:01:10.940 overdue. And you got to wonder what on earth was going on here? Where was the logic, the science,

00:01:15.940 the fairness? What I think was going on is this was just yet another example of the little guy

00:01:21.960 being an afterthought. We have seen that time and time again, whether it's in Ontario or

00:01:27.720 just in other jurisdictions where they are not putting the small business, the little guy, the

00:01:33.220 individual as someone who's front and center. People who are not, I don't know, not connected. Maybe

00:01:38.380 they don't have the right lobbyists to get their voices heard or to get their voices to be taken

00:01:43.400 seriously. You know, you're always told, oh, just another couple of weeks, just another couple of

00:01:47.880 months, do this, do that out of an abundance of caution, so on and so forth. And I think there's

00:01:52.260 been other businesses, organizations that have been able to lobby as to why maybe rules should

00:01:57.400 be a little different for them. The little guy always happened to get stuck with the most aggressive

00:02:03.180 restrictions. I will never forget when the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they said,

00:02:08.320 look, then this was a time when retail was flat out closed in Ontario. You could not go into small

00:02:13.560 retail outlets for in-person shopping. They said, can we please change this to make a rule

00:02:18.180 three people, maximum of three customers in a store. Made total sense, I think. Why not? Just a

00:02:25.320 question of fairness, particularly when you still saw at places like Costco and Shoppers Drug Mart,

00:02:30.640 were there hundreds of people in there? Yes, there were. And the government never, never agreed to that

00:02:36.280 very reasonable request from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. So yet another example

00:02:41.460 of how the little guy is an afterthought, whether it was a year ago or, well, the fact that it's still

00:02:46.620 happening right now.

Juno News - October 16, 2021