Toronto Public Health vice-chair questions city’s COVID-19 policy
Toronto’s Public Health vice-chair has asked the city’s lead councillor, John Filion, to resign and calls the response to COVID-19 “appalling” and lacks “thoughtfulness and courage.”
A statement from Lisa Branswell, who is now a city councillor, says that she is asking John Filion to “step down from the role of chair of the Community Safety Committee and resign as a member of the Executive Policy Committee.”
She says that she had been in contact with his staff and “has been made aware of numerous concerns regarding his inability to effectively carry out the functions of his office.” She further says that “I have been asked to ask the City of Toronto Executive Committee to replace Filion with a member of Councillor Branswell’s team who best addresses Filion’s functional skills needs.”
Branswell says that she is committed to doing “a thorough and transparent review of the City’s response to COVID-19.”
She says that she is “concerned that the response to the pandemic, and particularly in the areas of waste management, food safety, public information and public health, has been lacking in both thoughtfulness and courage.”
In her statement, she says that “I would welcome the opportunity to hear from the public. To answer questions about issues related to the city’s response. To gather additional evidence and input. To find out what was the City’s most effective and cost-effective responses to the pandemic. And to ask him specific questions of his own.”
Branswell says that she is “also concerned, as a Member of the Executive Policy Committee, that when it came to the city’s response to COVID-19, it was my right to call a meeting of the Executive Policy Committee on my own to make recommendations on that body. That request has not been respected.”
“And I am also concerned