Small businesses have undoubtedly been hit the hardest by the COVID19 pandemic. In London, Ontario the vast majority of spas & salons are all locally owned & run small businesses & need YOUR help to stay in business.

We spent the months we were shutdown adapting: renovating & retrofitting our spaces to accommodate social distancing. We spent this time sourcing & stocking up on scarce PPE & cleaning supplies with sticker prices double or even triple what they were pre-pandemic. Some have installed HEPA systems, employed fogging services & purchased steaming equipment. Spending money that isn't coming in in order to service a more limited number of clients when we would finally be able to reopen.

With Stage 3 came expanded service options including the ability to provide services for clients where they couldn’t wear a mask. This includes many of our bread & butter services such as skincare treatments & facial waxing. We were finally able to hire back most of our staff who had been laid off for months. We’ve been safely accommodating clients with:

• rigorous cleaning & decontamination (on top of our already strict sanitization & sterilization protocols)
• limited capacity & plexiglass barriers to ensure social distancing
• enforcing mask-wearing on staff AND clients even before it was mandated
• provided faceshields for our staff to wear in addition to their masks for providing services where the client cannot wear a mask
• daily health prescreening of clients & staff at the door including taking temperatures
• offering online shopping with delivery & contactless pickup

Everything we have done is in line with what has been required by the Middlesex-London Health Unit. In many cases we have gone above and beyond what is required because we want our clients, staff and community to be safe. We also want to be able to keep our staff working.

Our hard work has paid off. There have been NO OUTBREAKS at spas & salons in London. Our clients tell us DAILY how happy they are with the measures we have put in place and how safe they feel coming into our businesses.

Now Dr. Chris Mackie with the Middlesex-London Health Unit wants to introduce more restrictions including prohibiting services where the client has to remove their mask. We knew restrictions may happen with the rising number of cases in Canada, but these outbreaks are NOT coming from our industry. We have created a very clean & safe atmosphere for these services. We spent incredible amounts of money to meet the requirements to reopen and now we are faced with having to cancel months’ worth of clients and lay off staff, some of whom just returned to work. If this continues, we will not be able to survive.

Sign this petition to let Dr. Mackie know you do not want to punish our industry for following the rules HE put in place. Show him you do not want us punished for going above and beyond what is required to keep our community safe. Tell him NOT to include the personal service industry in the new Section 22 restrictions.