The Premier says the province’s restart is gaining some ground and more industries resume operations and people begin to move around the province more frequently.
John Horgan says B.C.’s success to slow down the spread of COVID-19 is a cause for optimism.
“People are adapting, people are finding ways to make do in this extraordinary time,” he said. “Its the resilience of British Columbians that have allowed us to to be in this privileged position in Canada, quite frankly, where we are tacking the public health issues head on, but also recognizing that our economy needs to continue to operate.”
Horgan says unlike some other provinces, B.C. did not need to shut down its economy completely, noting there are people and companies looking to the province as a place to invest in the months and years ahead.
“So on balance I’m pretty excited about where we are. I think about the past four months that have been extremely challenging for British Columbians,” Horgan added. “We are far from out of the woods. COVID-19 is in British Columbia and we are doing our best to flatten the curve. We are taking advice from public health officials.”
While the number of cases have increased slightly this past week, Horgan notes the province continues to see a relatively low number of new COVID-19 cases reported each day.
“It speaks to the best approach that we could come up with which was a gradual restart of the economy,” Horgan said. “We’ve seen some really positive indicators when it comes to public transit and ferry use, all going up, More and more people are coming out of their homes and participating in the restart.”
At the peak of the downturn, the province lost almost 400,000 jobs, though about 118,000 jobs have since returned according to Finance Minister Carole James who will be releasing a fiscal update in Victoria on Tuesday.
“We’ve continued to see relatively low cases, new cases of COVID-19, which speaks to the best approach that we could come up with which was a gradual restart of the economy,” Horgan said. “We’ve seen some really positive indicators when it comes to public transit and ferry use, all going up, More and more people are coming out of their homes and participating in the restart.”
While more people are back at work, at the peak of the downturn, the province lost almost 400-thousand jobs.
Finance Minister Carole James will be releasing a fiscal update tomorrow, and Liberal Kamloops-Thompson MLA Peter Milobar told NL News his party is waiting with bated breaths for the update.
