TORONTO -- Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his hair is almost at the point where he’d go to the "dog clippers" — but he's still urging patience to keep salons in Toronto and Peel closed as the regions battle COVID-19 variants.
That's despite an apparent brisk business in underground haircuts offered in online listings that promise customers to skip the wait for salons to reopen — but pose a significant public health risk of their own, doctors say.
“Look at me. I’d go to the dog clippers right now because in the morning it looks like that,” Ford said Monday, holding his hands up to indicate volume. “Once we get it open I’ll be the first in line, but we’ve got to be cautious.”
Brampton’s mayor took a different line, saying that he respected the risk of transmission was there, but that officials should find a way to legalize haircuts to allow salon owners an income and so that the underground market isn’t so popular.
“We haven’t had any outbreaks in hair salons and yet they continue to be shut down. I hope the provincial health table can find a way to be creative and let them stay open. If it’s outdoor hair salons, so be it,” Patrick Brown said, adding he hasn’t had a haircut in four months.
“I’m dying for a haircut,” Brown said. “When I wake up I look like a chia pet.”
A CTV News Toronto investigation discovered dozens of listings across multiple internet platforms that promised “mobile studios” for haircuts, despite public health orders that have kept salons closed for four months.
One salon operator said he’s a single father trying to make ends meet for him and his young son. He said he tries to follow safe procedures and didn’t think he was breaking rules because there are so many others advertising as well.
“I assumed that it was fine because all these other people are already doing this,” he said Sunday.
That has salon operators arguing that letting them open could actually improve public safety if they can follow public health measures like sanitization and contact tracing, compared to underground operations that may not.
"In my opinion it's the worst possible. They're cutting out of basements, they're cutting out of backyards. There's no structure, no way to be sanitary," said Carlos Bonifaz of Brazykuts on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto.
Salons are allowed to open in almost all of the rest of the country. In most regions of Ontario, they’re allowed as well — it’s just in grey zones that include Toronto and Peel where health orders prohibit them from opening.
Infectious disease expert Abdu Sharkawy said that the spread of COVID-19 variants is increasing in Toronto, and that it’s difficult to find an argument to let salons open inside. Outside salons could be an option, he said.
“This isn’t something that would come naturally to a lot of hairstylists and would require some degree of planning but it is infinitely safer than having covert underground salons that are clearly in violation of public health policy,” Sharkawy said.
The City of Toronto has issued 15 tickets to personal care establishments for breaking public health rules. All of those were given to licensed business establishments, and none were to underground operations.
“We’re asking people to please be patient. I want to get my hair cut,” said Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott, asking people to think of the larger fight against COVID-19.
“It’s unfortunate that we have these underground operations. Because we’re nearly there. This is a race against the clock to vaccinate as many people as possible and prevent the variants from growing exponentially,” she said.
