If you live in the GTHA, then everyone is aware of Adamson BBQ’s supposed defiant stand against COVID-19 regulations. Restauranteur Adam Skelly, posted to his Instagram his plans to defy Toronto’s lockdown order and open his restaurant for full service yesterday. His justification for defying the rules? Well it’s apparently buried in his Google search history.
Regardless, his actions drew out the crowd you’d suspect. The conspiracy driven and selfish of the GTA. The ones who don’t care about you or I? Or the loved ones we haven’t been able to see because we all have stronger fortitude to see our selves through this pandemic than they do.
And what does our illustrious Premier have to say about this?
The premier can’t have it both ways. This is one of the ‘yahoo’s the Premier decried as causing the case numbers in the province to go up. His quibbling over having to appear as the bad guy, to a group of conspiracy fuelled nuts, just cost him a lot of credibility with the province as a whole. Adam Skelly, just called Doug Ford’s bluff and Ford blinked. Big time.
Toronto Police, bungled this fiasco even further by not laying charges and fines when they arrived. Only to recant at the end of business day, long after the damage had been done.
It should also be noted that the owner of the restaurant in question is stating he’ll be defying the closure order and reopening today. That remains to be seen.
This is what happens with poor communication. Ford’s policies have forced us into this situation. Not willing to actually come to the aid of small business owners. Not actually creating a plan. Doing this by the seat of our pants is no longer an option. It hasn’t been since the summer.
Instead of his tour through southern Ontario to hear from his friends about how great he was, he and his cabinet ought to have been hard at work behind the scenes to come up with a plan to address avoiding more lockdowns in the province. He announced back in July that a plan would be coming for the fall’s second wave. It is now November. Still no plan, and still no leadership. In the absence of such, we are left with situations like what happened yesterday.
It’s time for this Ontario government to actually start to help small businesses and do the actual work to bring case numbers down. Enough is enough.
Joel MacLeod.ca 