The political #COVID19 debate has heated up in Niagara, on social media at least, with people attacking @mustafahirji and at least one regional councillor caught between questioning the MoH, pushing back against those who threaten to vote her out and pushing misinformation.

In a local hospitality Facebook page that has a lot of cross over with an anti-masker group, people are calling @mustafahirji names, calling for him to be fired and representing the data. Welland reg. coun, Leanna Villella is in the thick of it.

A couple of things to note about what the councillor says here.
The first is that the MoH does not "override" the province. The authority of an MoH is CREATED by provincial law. When an MoH issues a sec. 22 order, it is under his/her authority as granted by the province.

This power is also specific. So the MoH cannot, say, put Niagara in the green zone when the province orders grey. An MoH can issue orders in addition to provincial ones with the constraints of the law which defines his/her powers.

A bit of history as well is important. The powers of the MoH to issue orders (like the local orders limiting the number of people allowed in restaurants) arose out of the SARS epidemic when it was found MoHs lacked the power to rapidly respond to outbreaks of infectious disease.

The other thing to note here is that Mr. Rigas (echoing comments made repeated by restaurant owner Mark Wood, who runs that page) is that Dr. Hirji is a "rogue" MoH. Not only is this false, the council (who should know it is false) says nothing about it.

Other MoHs in Ontario, due to the ineffectiveness of provincial restrictions to combat the spread of #COVID19 have issued their own sec. 22 and used that power much more broadly than Dr. Hirji has.

Other MoHs, for instance, issued their own mask orders earlier in the pandemic. Hirji, by contrast, would not do so, saying he felt it was a decision for the politicians. It took longer for Niagara to establish a masking bylaw while the politicians debated and deferred the issue.

Rigas, Wood, and other have repeatedly made the false claim that Hirji is "abusing" his powers and the petition that formed this specific group makes this egregiously false claim.

The councillor makes what could be classified as "misleading" when she says the bar keeps being raised re: #COVID19 metrics. That is specifically false, the metrics have not changed. And they are complicated and there is no golden formula or score that works. However...

...what is true is that we have no idea HOW the provinces uses these metrics. Hirji can explain his reasoning and evidence, but even he is not privy to how @fordnation uses the data to make decisions.

Consider that we have asked the province for months to explain how it uses its core metrics, how they are weighed and what other context is used in decision making. They have consistently refused to answer the question.

Also, consider that what zone a region is in is not a decision made by the MoH. That is a purely a provincial decision and to date, the province has not acted upon, nor informed, local MoHs about the hows and whys of its decisions.

We know all too well in Niagara what that impact of that has been. In early Dec, Hirji and hospital leaders - after seeing the data showed a crisis was immenient- asked the province to move Niagara into the red zone to limit the spread and save lives. The province didn't listen.

The consequence was Niagara's worst pandemic month, with record cases as most of the community's #COVID19 deaths.

Also consider that the science table modelling shows that without strong public health measures we are headed for another wave and lockdown by spring. Hirji concurs with the data, but the province is not following it. That is @fordnation's decision, not the MoH.

So those claiming the MoH has " gone rogue" or "abusing" his powers or, as at least one mayor repeatedly claims, the MoH has no effective powers to make orders at all (this is also false), are entirely incorrect about how these decisions are made.

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