Joint statement from Ottawa Public Health, City By-law and Ottawa Police

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, April 19, 2021   4:23pm 

(Ottawa) — Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been working together on a community response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  From the onset of the pandemic, Ottawa Public Health has been working in full partnership with all City of Ottawa agencies including By-law and the Ottawa Police Service.  This partnership includes local community stakeholders and demographic community leaders. All partners are fully committed to achieving the best public health outcomes possible – ‘a healthy safe Ottawa for all residents’.  

This public health crisis has harmed our entire community.  That said, the research to date shows that the pandemic has disproportionately negatively impacted the most vulnerable, marginalized and racialized members.

Last week, the Government of Ontario announced new enforcement authorities and measures aimed to assist with the enforcement of public health orders. We have heard many voices in the community raise concerns about these new measures, both in terms of their need and applicability. The concerns raised by racialized and marginalized communities are top of mind.

As we jointly review these new authorities provided to police by the Ontario government, we are committed to preventing undue distress to community members.

Community cooperation and collaboration is recognized as the best way to achieve public health measures like stay-at-home orders. Our goal is to reduce transmission of COVID-19 in the community by concentrating on addressing the environments with the greatest risk of transmission, typically indoors where people are not wearing masks and where distances cannot be kept between people who live in different households. The risk of transmission of COVID-19 outdoors also occurs where people are in close contact without masks for a duration of time with people from different households.

Adherence to public health measures is anticipated to be largely achieved with a focus on encouragement, sharing information and awareness raising.

This weekend, representatives of the Ottawa Public Health, the City of Ottawa By-law and Regulatory Services and the Ottawa Police Service met to discuss any new measures and how they might be administered for a positive health impact. Whenever new enforcement measures are considered, we need to take a deliberate and careful approach that emphasizes equity, legality, and efficacy in the application of these authorities with the specific and exclusive purpose to support public health measures.

We are currently seeing community spread in situations where effective enforcement measures already exist. Egregious violations of public health orders are covered by enforcing existing measures. Therefore, a coordinated enforcement approach to situations creating public health risk will continue to use the existing tools.

At this time, the current public health risk assessment shows that different enforcement or action by police authorities could create challenges with compliance to public health orders and may actually set COVID-19 control measures back. Current medical literature and professional study reinforces the opinion that homeless populations and other disadvantaged communities, in particular, require support to be able to increase protection from COVID-19.

We will continue to work closely with our many communities and public partners to ensure that all community members in Ottawa remain safe, respected and are informed and supported to decrease COVID-19 transmission.

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CONTACTS:

Ottawa Public Health

E-mail: OPHmedia@ottawa.ca

@OttawaHealth

City of Ottawa By-law

Tel: 613-580-2424, ext. 33471

E-mail: Michael.lalonde@ottawa.ca

@OttawaBylaw

Ottawa Police Service, Media Relations Section

Tel: 613-236-1222, ext. 5366

@OttawaPolice