Ontario Shuts Down Non-Essential Construction
Premier Ford announced late Friday that non-essential construction will be shut down effective Monday April 19th until at least May 20th.

Checkpoints will also be set up at the Ontario-Québec border to restrict land travel with exceptions for essential travel only. Construction workers who live in Gatineau and western Québec and working on an essential construction project in eastern Ontario will be allowed to travel into Ontario.

Travellers who are coming into Ontario for purposes other than work, medical care, transportation of goods will be turned back at the border.

Police will have the authority to ask anyone outside their residence to indicate their purpose for leaving home and provide their address. That includes stopping vehicles and potentially issuing tickets of approximately $750.

Ontario Regulation 293/21 detailing the above interprovincial travel rules is accessible at this LINK.

Inspectors will also visit law offices, accounting firms and other such locations to check that only essential workers are in the building.

At time of writing there was no definition of what is essential versus non-essential construction posted on the Ontario Government website. OCA will issue an update but in the meantime members can monitor this Ontario website page over the weekend to verify what is defined as essential.

Members can access OCA's COVID bulletin # 8 from last April 3, 2020 to review the list of essential construction allowed to stay open. It may be very similar.

OCA Resources on COVID-19
  • Under the RESOURCES section there is a dedicated OCA COVID-19 webpage - Click HERE
  • Under the NEWS section you can access any of the dedicated COVID-19 newsletters by OCA - Click HERE.