Ottawa has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates of any big city in the country, saying it’s safe for workers to return.“A healthy city must have a healthy core,” the mayor said in a statement.
Year-end interview: Jim Watson defends his 3-term record as mayor of Ottawa Approximately 94 per cent of adults in Ottawa are fully vaccinated, and 98 per cent of the core public service has attested that they’ve received two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine.Even so, many public servants are still logging in from home.Business and government employees working from home have taken a huge bite out of small commercial enterprises, said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.The federation is one of several business groups that have also asked the government to send its workers back to the office.“So many (businesses) are related to serving office workers.
Not just restaurants, but the dry cleaner, the convenience store, retailers, hotels in downtown cores, these are some of the businesses that have been hit hardest by COVID restrictions,” he said.While nearly all urban centres have been starved of customers since the pandemic began, those in downtown Ottawa have been put through the wringer more than anywhere else, Kelly said.Just as many capital businesses began to reopen their doors after the latest wave of COVID-19, a massive protest against public health measures flooded downtown streets with huge trucks and forced outlets to close for weeks.Meanwhile, the federal government appears to be among the slowest to bring workers back to the office, Kelly said.
Ontario public servants have already been ordered back, at least part time, by April 4, for example.The federal government has begun to.