| Apr 03, 2020


An Op-ed submitted by North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins

During this unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic, it is testing the leadership capabilities of many leaders in this country. As a municipal leader in North Frontenac I am no exception. Every decision I make is scrutinized and either agreed to or not. As an example, two weeks ago I issued a memo to our residents and businesses. In the memo there were three categories I was directing my messaging at; those categories were cottagers, businesses and all resident’s both seasonal and non seasonal. The messages in the memo was in relation to what was happening on that day in North Frontenac. One issue was related to seasonal residents (cottagers) coming to their cottages to escape the cities during the first days of the outbreak. Some of those cottagers had just come back from international travel and at that time our provincial and federal governments were only requesting that they stay in self isolation. Some of those cottagers, as I called them in the memo, were moving freely about the community and some saw supplies they could not get in the city in our stores and literally stripped the shelves of toilet paper and other key essential items.

I knew at that time how quickly and easily this virus could spread and the risks to our community and how our full-time residents were being impacted by this panic buying phenomenon. I decided to send a very direct, non sugar-coated messages to our residents and businesses. Unfortunately, some cottagers had taken personal offense and one wanted to have me charged with discrimination (cottager versus permanent).  Another wants to run against me as Mayor in the next election, which I welcome as I have been asking for a year for someone to run in the next election to no avail. I also need to note that a day or two after I issued the memo I had reports of full time residents doing the same and had to reiterate at that time for everyone to stay in isolation and again ran into opposition with people questioning my authority to do so when there was no federal or provincial orders at that time.

The objective of my message at that time was to raise the awareness of this serious issue and get people talking about it, which turned out to be a great decision on my part at that time as the impact of the virus evolved. I make no apologies for any of my messages as they were all based on Public Health advice and my own research on this virus with the intent of protecting my community at large. There is no diversity between seasonal and non seasonal we are all residents. The fact is, a cottage is not a permanent residence for all seasonal residents and we have all been asked to stay home and avoid non essential travel. Coming to the cottage as a break from isolation at home is not essential travel and you may put North Frontenac at risk. We have many elderly residents, some with immune deficiencies, our health care is not staffed to take on any more patients and some businesses are not stocked for you at this time of year. Of course, we do have cottages that are a permanent summer home for our snowbirds, and they are welcome as that is their permanent residence in Canada.

The point of this article is to remind everyone that leaders of Municipalities, Province and Country are under a tremendous among of stress. There is no blueprint or precedence that we can fall back on, we are forging our own trails every single day of this outbreak. Things change every day and we are expected to respond and act accordingly to ensure the safety of community. I ask that nobody take anything personal when a directive or request has been issued and not to critic the style of messaging. I am under enough stress without having to address complaints on my style of messaging. These are serious times and serious direct decisions and messaging is what is required. It is a hard time for us leaders and when this over we will be able to reflect on the decisions we made as leaders, some will be good and others not so good. We will all learn from this and adapt our emergency procedures accordingly to be better ready for the next crisis that may arise.

Currently we are under a state of emergency in North Frontenac as per the Emergency Act, and as Heads of Council, with the delegated authority under the Act, we have the authority and will make decisions and take actions as necessary under the rule of law to protect our communities at large.

In closing I want to let our health care workers, paramedics, businesses and those residents who helping others how much I appreciate your efforts. In addition the Frontenac News, which is delivered to you free of charge, is at times the only source of up to date information for some of our residents and I ask that you financially support them during this difficult time as their advertising revenue is taking a hit.

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