Where are we now

Jeff Green | May 13, 2020

As I write this on Tuesday, we have reached a milestone in our KFL&A region. Public Health's daily update on the spread of COVID-19 says that we have not had a confirmed case of the virus anywhere in the City of Kingston, Frontenac or Lennox and Addington Counties, for 14 days. There were 6 cases reported in the previous 14-day period. A combination of vigilance and good luck have paid off for us.

Early on in the pandemic, I read that any jurisdiction that had no reported cases for two consecutive 14-day periods would be considered virus free, so while we may not be clear we are certainly headed in the right direction.

In a provincial context, you would expect a jurisdiction like ours, with a population of 200,000, to have had 301 cases and 23 deaths, so with 61 total cases all told and 0 deaths, we have done more than well.

As I wrote several weeks ago, this would mean a lot more if KFL&A were an island, but it is not.

Our neighbours in the Leeds Grenville, Lanark Health Unit (LGL) jurisdiction have seen about 25 new cases over the last 14 days, which is a downward trend for them. Throughout the pandemic, however, they have had over 300 cases and 46 deaths, with most of their transmission and 43 of their 46 deaths coming in long term care homes. The population in LGL is 140,000. 

The boundary between KFL&A and LGL is a virtual one. There is no border on Hwy. 7 at Silver Lake, or west of Seeley’s Bay, or east of Kingston on the 401.

The boundaries are also arbitrary.

The provincial government has been considering folding multiple Public Health organisations into one, for several years, going back to the Kathleen Wynne Liberal government. Just about all of the plans that have been floated over that time have had the counties of Lanark, Leeds Grenville, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and the City of Kingston in one jurisdiction. If those changes had been made last year instead of next year, we would be living in a jurisdiction that has about an average risk of transmission instead of one with a very low risk.

However we divide ourselves up, ultimately the success of our collective response to COVID-19 comes from a co-ordinated effort among neighbours, communities, municipalities, provinces, and the country as a whole. Re-opening our social and economic world will require that same level of co-ordination if we are to mitigate the risk of a large second wave of infection.

It makes sense, therefore, that the Province of Ontario rejected out hand a proposal for a regional opening up of Ontario, an idea that was presented in a letter to the premier last week from Dr. Kieran Moore, the Medical Officer of Health for KFL&A.

To be fair to Dr. Moore, the letter was not specifically about KFL&A in particular, and much of its thrust was that the province should consider some different solutions for different parts of the province, within a provincial framework. 

For Frontenac County and Addington Highlands, the best-case scenario for the local economy in the coming months is for the number of COVID-19 cases in urban and rural areas throughout the province to drop steadily, as they have been in recent weeks.

There are a few reasons for this. The first is that we need businesses in all of our neighboring small and medium sized cities to open so many of our residents can get back to the jobs they have in Kingston, Perth and Napanee.

The second is so we can wholeheartedly welcome our seasonal residents from other parts of Ontario, who pay the lion’s share of taxes in at least three of our municipalities. Necessary as it has been, the call for seasonal residents to stay away has created an us-them mentality, and the sooner that ends the better.

Finally, the only kind of tourists that we can safely look at in 2020 are in-province tourists. They may be coming here to camp, cycle, hike, canoe, or visit the cottages of friends or relatives, and will be subject to the social distancing requirements that the province puts in place for the summer. We will need people to come here from Toronto and Ottawa in higher numbers than normal if we are hoping that our retail and service sectors have any sort of a tourist season at all.

Just as we will not have visitors from the United States, Europe, and perhaps even Quebec, we need urban Ontarians who will not be travelling outside of the province this summer, to come here instead.

That is our way forward, and that depends on a careful, successful, province-wide re-opening strategy.

On a municipal level, we need to figure out a new message to send to our seasonal residents to welcome them back, safely.

Even though there are many limitations to the KFL&A numbers, as I’ve pointed out, our COVID-free status is something that we take comfort in. As arbitrary as our virtual borders are, it is tempting to want to close ourselves off from risk. 

But we couldn’t do it, even if we tried to, so we need to be ready to look at our situation from a broader lens.