Premier Doug Ford to extend emergency COVID-19 powers into next year – Toronto Star
From The Toronto Star – Premier Doug Ford is moving to extend the Progressive Conservative government’s COVID-19 emergency powers past the province’s state of emergency, which expires next week.
The Canadian Press first reported that Solicitor General Sylvia Jones will introduce the potentially controversial legislation on Tuesday.
“It allows us to transition away from the declaration of emergency, which is an important signal to people that we’re on our way out,” Jones told CP’s Shawn Jeffords on Monday.
“But it also allows us to ensure that — because frankly, we don’t have a vaccine for COVID-19 — that we still can keep in place the important tools we need,” she said.
“We want to make sure that we’re not over-using the declaration of emergency.”
Jones said the bill will introduce additional reporting requirements to bolster oversight, including forcing the government to report any emergency order extensions to a legislative committee once every month and table a report on the use of the law six months after it expires next year.
