Scott Radley: We should be sympathetic to these small Hamilton businesses that aren’t meeting COVID standards

We learned this week that fewer than half the small businesses in Hamilton that were subject to surprise inspections last weekend were following all the required pandemic guidelines.

Adherence to all of the public health guidance rules and the orders is not at the level we would hope for," Emergency Operations Centre director Paul Johnson told council.

This news will no doubt anger or frustrate some. We all want to break free of this pandemic soon and perhaps that could happen if everyone, including these shop owners, would hold up their end of the bargain. So smarten up.

But there's another response that's also appropriate at this point: sympathy.

It's easy to say these stores and companies - the lucky ones that can even open somewhat normally - should be achieving perfect safety scores. It would be great if every paragraph in the rule book was followed to the letter.

But 10 months into this mess, it's impossible not to feel for so many of these beleaguered folks who are increasingly desperate as the ongoing lockdowns and restrictions threaten the business into which they've poured their life savings, emotions and every waking hour.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), only 18 per cent of Ontario businesses are enjoying normal sales levels. Furthermore, 20 per cent of provincial small businesses are considering permanently closing before the pandemic is over. This is on top of the 25,614 businesses that went dark across Ontario between February and September, according to Statistics Canada.

On Friday, StatsCan reported that the country lost 213,000 jobs in January alone, most of those in Ontario and Quebec and primarily in the retail sector.

They're dying," says CFIB director of provincial affairs, Julie Kwiecinski. Some are dead already and just hanging on hoping some miracle will happen."

Need more? The CFIB says only about a third are operating at full staff since revenue reductions have required cuts. This issue is particularly germane to this discussion.

Many business owners - people who already work ridiculous hours and had to add more because this new reality has made operating tougher - must now work even harder to complete the tasks previously done by the staff they've had to trim.

And on top of that, we're demanding they invest even more time to figure out the new rules and execute them perfectly.

Consider that the second most common infraction during last weekend's blitz, according to Johnson, was not having a provincially mandated safety plan completed. Nobody's doubting such a thing is important. But we're talking about additional administrative work for people already working hard to hang on by their fingernails.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how this and the other demands - screening and capacity issues were first and third in blitz infractions - become overwhelming. And it probably explains, at least in part, why the 48 per cent compliance rate was lower than the mid-70s rate seen during a previous local blitz of larger businesses, which likely have far more staff to handle these things.

We're not talking about everyone. Under the broad umbrella of small business' there are inevitably some operators who are wilfully ignoring guidelines they could easily handle. There's no excuse for that. Even if you don't like the rules, you have to follow them. In a society of laws, there are consequences for not doing so.

But it's understandable why some others aren't checking all the boxes. It's entirely reasonable to believe that many want to do the right thing and intend to, but their priority is simply doing the most necessary things to ensure the operation is still alive tomorrow.

It doesn't mean we should waive the rules and let everything go. We shouldn't. Johnson is right when he says we're in a critical time.

But boy, it makes it a little more difficult to be outraged.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com