The first two of Ontario's Emergency Orders ending was announced late last week by the provincial government. While many will be in effect until at least late September, the first two of Ontario's 36 orders will end as early as next week.
Ontario's Education Sector Order will end this coming Monday, August 31, 2020, one week before provincial schooling resumes.
The Limitation Periods Order will also end on the 31st, with suspended periods resuming two weeks later on September 14th.
All 34 other orders ranging from a variety of topics are extending until at least September 22, 2020. This is the most recent extension since July 16, 2020 and the eighth overall.
An announcement from Queen's Park reads, "The extensions provide the government with the necessary flexibility to address the ongoing risks and effects of the COVID-19 outbreak."
Concerns over the Emergency Orders ending with schools
The Education Sector Order (ESO) set to end on Monday comes just in time for schools to resume in-person classes. This order, now ending, gave more power to school boards to govern their own policies in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Section 3 of the Education Sector Order reads:
"School boards shall and are authorized to take, with respect to work deployment and staffing, any reasonably necessary measure to support the operators of congregate care settings in the non-clinical response to the outbreak of the Virus."
That power in the ESO rescinds as of next week. Boards will be left to make sense of Education Minister Stephen Lecce's confusing and contradictory school reopening plan.
Extensions of orders may continue even as the emergency state is over. Ontario's state of emergency officially ended last month when Bill 195 came into effect.
Learn more about these two emergency orders ending with Ontario's website here.