BARRY’S BAY – MPP John Yakabuski, Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, was recently appointed to the newly formed Ontario Jobs and Recovery Committee, to prepare to restart the economy after the pandemic. The new committee was announced on the same day that employment in the province dropped by 400,000 people, according to Statistics Canada.
“These are different times, like nothing we have seen before and hopefully we never see again,” Yakabuski said in an interview with The Valley Gazette.
Nothing during his elected career as Barry’s Bay councillor, MPP or minister compares to the current conditions, Yakabuski said.
The scale of the COVID-19 affects on the economy eclipses by many fold the 1997 ice storm, the 911 attacks of 2001, the 2002 SARS outbreak during which 44 people died in Canada, and the economic turmoil of 2008-2009.
“We didn’t have massive shut downs across the globe…this is unprecedented.”
In Canada the affects of COVID-19 have been dire.
“There was essentially, in so many sectors of our economy, there were shutdowns that took place very quickly. You know, it was open one day and closed the next.”
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