LILLEY: Ford needs to stop listening to Dr. No

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Patience pays off, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford might say.

On Friday, he announced that a whole range of businesses will be able to open up next week.

“As of Monday, May 4, the following businesses will be able to operate,” Ford said Friday, before listing a whole host of businesses.

“Lawn care and landscaping services, garden centers and nurseries with curbside pickup, community gardens, no-touch washes, auto dealers by appointment only, site preparations for construction projects and certain essential construction projects such as broadband, telecommunications, municipal projects in schools. Marinas and golf courses will also be allowed to start getting ready for the season, but not open just yet,” he said.

So maybe that means in a week or so you’ll be able to book a tee time even if Dr. No continues to say not yet. Dr. No is of course Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams.

Williams is the man who was against shutting down anything too early and is now against opening anything up too soon.

On March 16, while standing next to the premier, Williams said in the morning that we didn’t need to close restaurants or reduce gatherings below 250 people.

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Hours later, Williams would reverse himself and say that restaurants needed to close and gatherings had to be 50 or less.

The man who didn’t want to shut down too early is now Dr. No in terms of stopping the province from opening up. Yet when quizzed about his view of reopening the economy, of allowing Walmart and Loblaws to open but not local shops, Williams said that it isn’t him, it’s a whole-of-government approach.

“I’m not making that decision myself from my desk as to which retailers, companies, which group or this one, because of the complexity and breadth of it is related to all sorts of aspects of labour, occupational safety, all sorts of factors,” Williams told me when asked why some stores can open and other can’t.

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So, if the chief medical officer says he isn’t making these decisions and the premier keeps saying he relies on what Williams says, then who the heck is making these decisions?

Like, why can a Walmart open and let me walk through all departments simply because they will sell me a bunch of bananas, but I can’t walk into my local Home Hardware to buy what I need to fix the toilet?

For that matter, why can I buy any shoes available in Walmart but can’t visit my local shoe store?

My complaint isn’t about Walmart. I love Walmart. But why can they open while others are forced to close?

This isn’t a call for Ontario to undergo a full open as Manitoba will see on Monday, but it is legitimate to ask why some stores can open now while others are forced to close. It is legitimate to ask why some retailers will open now and not others.

Surely, we can practice social distancing at a fully open garden centre just as we can at the dollar stores that have never closed.

And if Dr. No says he isn’t the one stopping stores or other businesses from opening, then Ford should either stop blaming him or stop listening to him and start invoking the common sense that got him elected in the first place.

blilley@postmedia.com