Community Matters: September, 2020

In challenging times, we see the best in people. That’s never been clearer than what we’ve experienced in 2020, as the COVID-19 health crisis has dramatically changed our everyday lives professionally and personally. In our corner of rural Ontario, we should be incredibly proud of what we’ve done to protect our families, friends, neighbours and co-workers from the coronavirus by listening to our public health and elected officials who have all provided strong leadership by consistently reinforcing the importance of social distancing, washing hands and wearing a mask.

At Bruce Power, we’re proud to have stuck tightly to our number one value of Safety First. Protecting our people, the environment, our neighbouring communities and province, is at the forefront of everything we do 24 hours a day. That hasn’t changed over the past six months since the pandemic struck, and that continues to be our focus as businesses, schools, municipal facilities and other venues reopen in September.

As we entered Stage 3 of reopening across most of the province last month, the Retooling and Economic Recovery Council we established back in April wanted to ensure our businesses and non-profit organizations had the personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to serve their customers and protect the health and safety of our communities. So, we extended the commitment made at the beginning of COVID-19 by introducing in July a Strength In Numbers initiative to make the sometimes hard-to-find PPE at a reasonable cost.

Our suppliers Levitt-Safety and Canadian Bearings Ltd. have provided PPE for this program while the Ontario Chamber of Commerce helped with getting the word out about Strength In Numbers to small and medium businesses across the province. We accepted orders in July/August and will be taking additional orders for masks, hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes through our website (www.brucepower.com/strength-in-numbers) from September 21-October 3.

The company has also thrown its support behind a couple of national campaigns focused on helping Canadians return to some semblance of what our lives were like before the health crisis. The POST Promise, endorsed by the federal government, is a voluntary education and training program being used by companies to build the confidence of employees and customers in knowing that proper health and safety measures are being followed in workplaces and public spaces.

In August, the Retooling and Economic Recovery Council joined 50 of Canada’s leading companies, business associations and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce network in the Canada United movement to promote the importance of supporting local businesses. This commitment to “buy local” is reinforced by our partnership with the Nuclear Innovation Institute and NPX Innovation in the Grey-Bruce-Huron Strong campaign that includes the All In Ontario Challenge – a digital fundraising effort on behalf of the United Way Bruce Grey, the United Way Perth-Huron and other charitable organizations. Please visit www.gbhstrong.com/all-in-ontario-challenge to bid on some terrific prizes donated by area businesses, organizations and Robert Thomas of the Stanley Cup-champion St. Louis Blues.

As always, please contact me at james.scongack@brucepower.com if you have any questions. You can also follow me on Twitter @jscongack.