A local business professor emeritus believes another delay in moving Windsor-Essex to the next stage in economic recovery could be a nail in the coffin for local small business owners.
On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced seven more regions can move to Stage 2 which includes restaurant patios allowed to reopen as well as salons, but Windsor-Essex was excluded from moving on.
University of Windsor Professor Emeritus, Dr. Alfie Morgan, says the delay is not justified and believes this has gone too far.
Morgan says the delay is paralysing local businesses.
"A lot of these people can not survive or tolerate this extra delay," he says. "We need to get these people in the line of making some income."
Morgan believes the province needs to show more sympathy and empathy for the business community which has been struggling during the pandemic.
"It is demoralizing as far as the people are concerned because especially small business—many of them have invested their money and their lives and they have waited three months now," he says.
Morgan believes some politicians are taking advantage of the situation.
"This corona {virus) situation is giving the opportunity for politicians to posture and pose as the saviours of the people and economy, and they really aren't," he says.
The vasty majority of businesses were forced to close in mid-March due to provincial orders surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Morgan says it is time to reopen.
"This idea of erring on the side of caution is really paralysing, because if you want to err on the side of caution, don't get out of bed today," he says.
 Morgan says it doesn't make sense to shut down 99 per cent of the economy when the global infection rate is 0.04 per cent.