A balloon store, a beauty salon, a vape shop and an auction liquidation store.
Those are just some of the businesses that Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie says have faced fines for continuing to operate despite a provincial order requiring the closure of non-essential businesses.
In an interview with CP24 on Wednesday morning, Crombie said that there have been 95 tickets issued in Mississauga so far in relation to the violation of various orders put into place to limit the spread of COVID-19.
She said that more than half of those tickets have either been for the gathering of large groups or the continued operation of non-essential businesses, something that police and bylaw enforcement officers continue to crack down on.
“That includes a beauty salon, a career college, a vape shop, a hardware store and also an auction liquidation store, a shisha shop and a balloon store,” she said, noting that the overall response to COVID-19 orders in Mississauga hasn’t been too bad.
Crombie said that in addition to fines given to non-essential businesses, there have also been five fines issued to people improperly accessing shuttered park amenities and 38 littering citations handed out over the improper disposal of personal protective equipment, often outside grocery stores.
The latter issue is something that Mayor John Tory has raised concerns in the past about, though he has said that it is a difficult crime to enforce.
“It is one of the more concerning tickets that we see increasing and we see it everywhere,” Crombie said. “You know as people come out of the grocery store they tend to peel it all off and then just leave it. It is a health hazard. It is littering in the best of times but now it is a health hazard.”
In Toronto, bylaw enforcement officers and police had issued 555 tickets in relation to the violation of various emergency orders as of Tuesday.
Staff with Municipal Licensing & Standards and Toronto Public Health had also issued 76 tickets and 159 notices to non-essential businesses.
