The never-ending dining lockdown: How Canadian pandemic strictures stack up
From schools to masks, each country unique
This week, the BBC reported that, under COVID-19, Toronto had earned the ignominious title of being home to the world’s longest ban on indoor restaurant dining. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Toronto has banned indoor dining for 360 days and counting, lifting restrictions only for a brief respite in the fall of 2020.
Despite near-herculean progress on vaccination, much of Canada is still denied the privileges sweeping much of the rest of the mass-vaccinated world: indoor gatherings, live music and normal dining. In many ways, the world of May 2021 is indistinguishable from that of 12 months prior, when we were battling a still-unfamiliar virus with no clear end in sight.
Below, a quick review on how Canadian lockdowns stack up against the rest of the world.
INDOOR DINING BANS
A detailed breakdown of world restaurant closures by the BBC’S Robin Levinson-king found that the length of Toronto’s indoor dining ban clearly stands above all other major centres.
London, Buenos Aires, Paris and New York all experienced similar or worse encounters with COVID-19, but on average their citizens got about 100 more days than Torontonians in which to dine out.
Right now, the Ontario capital is one of the only major OECD cities that won’t even allow dining on patios.
In early March, Toronto and Montreal were in about the same position as New York City and Los Angeles. But in the interim two months, mass-vaccination allowed the U.S. metropolises to reopen while a third wave prompted both Canadian cities to double down on strictures.
Western Canada has been a different story. B.C. spent the fall and winter with legal socially distanced indoor dining. Rising case rates spurred a return to closure in late March, but those measures were repealed just this week.
LOCKDOWN MEASURES
The world’s data scientists have been obsessively tracking every conceivable facet of COVID-19, and government strictures have been no exception. The Oxford University COVID-19 Government Response Tracker has been running a stringency index that ranks countries by a series of metrics including closures, stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions.
Canada’s current rate of 75.46 is among the strictest in the world, particularly given its high rate of vaccination and dropping rates of both cases and deaths. Pandemic-ravaged India, for instance, stands at 81.94 while the United States has dropped to the low 50s and heavily vaccinated Israel stands at 43.52.
But what is perhaps more remarkable is how consistently Canada has stayed at the higher end of the index. While European and Pacific Rim countries wildly altered the stringency of their responses based on current risks, Canada has spent most of its pandemic at 70 or higher.
The effect is magnified when considering COVID-19 has not struck equally in all regions of the country. With B.C. and Atlantic Canada remaining relatively untouched by more extreme strictures, a lot of this stringency is being carried by Ontario and Quebec.
SCHOOL CLOSURES
If there’s one major pandemic policy that separates North America from Europe, it’s in the approach to school closures. Even in the face of devastating first and second waves of COVID-19, European countries have consistently followed a policy of closing schools last and reopening them first.
Data compiled by UNESCO had Canadian children missing 43 weeks of school since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 27 weeks in the U.K., 30 weeks in Germany and only 11 weeks in France. The situation is similar across much of the Pacific Rim, with 11 weeks of missed school in Japan and only nine weeks in New Zealand — although both those countries saw dramatically lower caseloads than their European equivalents.
Keeping schools open in the face of the pandemic is something of which European countries have taken a measure of pride.
“No other country in the European Union has left its schools open as much as France has,” Clément Beaune, France’s state secretary for European affairs, wrote in a March tweet.
However, if Canada has been quick to impose months-long odysseys of learning-from-home on its children, it’s been outmatched by the actions of the United States.
UNESCO numbers show that the average American child missed nine more weeks of in-person learning than the average Canadian child. In South America, school closures have been worse than Canada’s in every country except Suriname and Uruguay.
NOBODY ELSE IS BANNING GOLF
There is one defining Canadian lockdown policy that has no equivalent in the rest of the world. Ontario banned the game of golf for five weeks this spring. only lifting it after intense criticism on May 22. The game is still subject to tight strictures in Alberta.
No blanket golf bans exist in any of the 50 U.S. states, according to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. While in Europe, the PGA European Tour starts this week.
This is not to say that jurisdictions haven’t imposed brief golf bans during times of crisis, but they’ve been quickly lifted after courses were able to implement basic social distancing requirements (which, given golf is played outdoors, were rather easy).
It’s indicative of an Ontario crackdown on outdoor recreation that has no real equivalent in the latter stages of the pandemic (when most epidemiologists are agreed on the extremely low risk of outdoor spread of COVID-19). New York may have built field hospitals in Central Park, but they never attempted to subject it to closure, as when Toronto banned the viewing of cherry blossoms in High Park.
MASKING NOT AS ZEALOUS AS ABROAD
The general rule across Canada right now is that face masks are legally required in all indoor public spaces. However, with few exceptions, Canadians have dodged one of the more overzealous mask mandates rolled out in certain parts of the U.S.: mandatory outdoor masks, even for people who are fully vaccinated.
This kind of stricture was just lifted in Hawaii, for instance. California has also backed off on outdoor mask mandates, although still requires residents to have a mask on them when leaving the house.
Compared to Europe, Canada is also quite loose on what constitutes a mask. Cloth masks and even bandanas are acceptable face coverings under most government mask mandates, despite dubious evidence of their effectiveness against viral spread.
In January, Germany and Austria imposed new rules requiring medical-grade masks in supermarkets and public transport, with France ushering in similar rules days later.