The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a shutdown of nearly a third of Barrie, Ontario’s economy, leading to financial hardship for many individuals, according to the city’s mayor. “We’ve seen the shutdown of a huge portion of the economy,” Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman told Global News. “That’s creating financial hardship for a lot of people.” Barrie’s unemployment rate was reported to be 5.7 per cent for the month of March, an increase from February, which reported an unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent.
Ontario’s COVID-19 emergency order went into effect in the middle of March, and as a result, Lehman thinks Barrie’s March unemployment rate is understating the current reality. “It’s probably not until the first week of May that we’re going to