Across Ontario, seven health-care workers have died from COVID-19 and more than 3,200 are sick. Those sobering statistics has pushed the province’s largest union to lobby for one piece of equipment that may help those on the front lines. “We’ve been calling on the government to use its emergency powers to order industry to produce the N95 mask and it was disappointing to learn General Motors in Oshawa will be making masks but not the N95 masks,” says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions. “We know it can be done.” GM will be making surgical masks, which provide barrier protection but do not provide as much respiratory protection as an N95 mask.