2020 Year-ender: NDP Leader Andrea Horwath reviews a 'chaotic' year

"Chaotic."

That's the word NDP Leader Andrea Horwath used to describe 2020, a year that will be recorded in the history books as the one where the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world.

"It's been chaotic for parents and for students, it's been chaotic for, you know, businesses, small businesses particularly, it's been chaotic for front-line health-care workers and for essential workers, it's been chaotic for everyday families," Horwath told QP Briefing during a year-end interview on Dec. 10. "I'm sure it was chaotic for government and certainly it's been, you know, chaotic for the official Opposition as well ... and of course, I think, probably in the most negative way, chaotic for all of those families who've experienced the tragedies that they did with the loss of their loved ones in long-term care that continues to this very moment."

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Horwath said when the pandemic first hit in mid-March, the message to her team was clear: their job was to be productive, thoughtful and helpful.

"Those early months were not the time to be overly critical, it was the time to put ideas on the table and to make recommendations to the government," she said, adding that one of the aims was to identify the challenges different groups of people were facing due to the pandemic and sending the Doug Ford government "hundreds of letters" to highlight these.

Nine months later, Horwath doesn't hold back on how she thinks the Ford government has fared in its response to the pandemic, particularly in the long-term care sector. When QP Briefing spoke with Horwath, the province reported 2,358 long-term care residents had died due to COVID-19. That number reached 2,688 residents on Dec. 29. The spread of the coronavirus through facilities housing some of Ontario's most vulnerable is an issue Horwath often raised during question period, challenging the government on the "iron ring" it said it was building around these homes.

"The scale of the tragedy that we've seen unfold in long-term care, it's just mind-blowing," Horwath said. "The anguish, the heartbreak, the anger, the frustration that the people have had to go through has been just tremendous and terrible ... it is really something I never would have believed could happen in a province like Ontario."

She referenced the passage of Bill 218, Supporting Ontario's Recovery and Municipal Elections Act, which grants long-term care homes, other organizations and the government protection from COVID-19 transmission-related lawsuits if they make an "honest effort" to follow public health guidelines and the claim doesn't constitute gross negligence.

Horwath said this "really put salt in the wound," criticizing the government for not doing more to prepare long-term care homes for the second wave this fall.

On Nov. 2, the province committed to increasing care for long-term care residents to an average of four hours per day by 2024-25. The week prior, NDP long-term care critic Teresa Armstrong's bill calling for this passed second reading.

Horwath touted the Progressive Conservative government's announcement as a success for her party, which she said has been pushing for this standard of care for several years.

"We were able to get the government at least to admit that there needs to be a minimum standard of care for long-term care residents," she said.

Among her other concerns from the legislature's recent sitting days was the passage of Bill 213, the Better for People, Smarter for Business Act, a red-tape reduction bill that also included a schedule enabling Charles McVety's Canada Christian College to obtain university status and grant arts and science degrees, pending approval from the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board.

"Why did the Ford government think it was a priority to hand over to Charles McVety and his college the opportunity to provide university degrees? I mean this is a guy who was well-known to be a homophobe, a transphobe, an Islamophobe," said Horwath, saying the government should be focused on helping "everyday folks" get through the pandemic.

While the legislature rose two days early on Dec. 8 and isn't scheduled to be back until Feb. 16, the NDP, which has called for a return of the legislature in January, won't have question period as a way of grilling the government on its policies.

But Horwath said the NDP, which has been calling for an end to residential evictions during COVID-19 and paid sick leave for workers, is "going to continue to fight for people in every venue that we possibly can" including press conferences and town halls. "We're not going to be in question period to hold the government to account, but we're not going to be quiet either."

She said some of the focus over the next several weeks will include issues like outbreaks in schools, long-term care homes and in hospitals.

While public health officials have insisted that schools are generally safe, high rates of community transmission in Windsor-Essex County pushed the region's medical officer of health to order all schools to move to online learning on Dec. 14 for one week before the holiday break. Teachers' unions in Toronto called for the city's schools to take the same approach for the first two weeks in January.

On Nov. 18, the provincial government said it had "determined that an extended winter holiday is not necessary at this time." But as part of a provincial lockdown that started on Dec. 26, the government announced that all schools in Ontario would move to online learning from Jan. 4–8, which is the first week of classes after the holiday break. Schools in northern regions will be able to return to in-person learning on Jan. 11, while in the 27 southern public health units, only elementary school students will be permitted to return to the classroom on this date. High school students will return to in-person learning on Jan. 25.

Before the lockdown was announced, Horwath said a shift to remote learning after the holiday break should be a "measure of last resort," calling on the government to further reduce class sizes, invest further in ventilation systems and expand asymptomatic testing.

"There is COVID circulating around schools that we've largely been unaware of," said Horwath, adding that this is a concern for families and educators. "If the Ford government were to put in place the investments necessary to make those schools safe over the next couple of weeks, then we wouldn't have to end up in that situation."

Meanwhile, with vaccinations across the country now underway, Horwath called the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech on Dec. 9 a "sigh of relief." But she called on the Ford government to share "clear information" about what its vaccine distribution plan looks like in the months to come. The first vaccines in Ontario were administered to front-line workers on Dec. 14, with the government providing some more details about its plans on Dec. 29.

While the government has said it will not make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, Health Minister Christine Elliott has said the government is considering some sort of proof of vaccination for Ontarians and that there could be restrictions placed on those without one "for travel purposes, to be able to go to theatres and other places."

"I get why that is something that is being considered," said Horwath, adding that making the vaccine mandatory is a "non-starter."

But she deferred to health experts, saying their advice would be needed to determine the "right combination" of people getting the vaccine, the public health measures that need to remain in place and any conditions that might be placed on people who aren't vaccinated.

And as a "chaotic" year comes to an end, the official Opposition leader is using this "quiet" holiday season with her son as a time to reflect.

"We spend a lot of nice time together over the holidays and he still lives with me and so I have that benefit that I have somebody that's ... part of my household and so we're going to make the best of it," she said, adding that they were debating at the time whether to put up their Christmas tree this year or decorate a table with the topper instead.

There will also be less bread-baking, she added.

"Let me put it this way — in wave one, I did a lot of baking of bread and eating of bread, and I'm not going to do that in wave two. So, my holiday season is not going to include another COVID 15," she said with a chuckle before striking a more serious tone.

She said the holidays will be a time of reflection and gratitude for "front-line health-care workers, who things are getting worse for and not better, especially in the hospitals and in long-term care right now, all those essential workers who you know who continue to put their health at risk and will be doing so that much more through the holiday season."

Horwath also spoke of people who are mourning this holiday season because "the loved ones that they had in long-term care weren't able to hold on and lost their lives from COVID-19."

"I think it's going to be both a more intimate kind of holiday with loved ones, while at the same time, in some ways, a tragic one, as people reflect on what COVID-19 has done to their family members, to their businesses, to their livelihoods," she said, adding, however, that the vaccine approval was a nice holiday announcement for people to hold on to.