How OPG is helping communities and frontline health care workers

OPG’s employees across the province are working to ensure a reliable supply of power during the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, the company is proud to help Ontario’s frontline health care heroes and community organizations mobilizing to support the food vulnerable. Our actions to date include:

• Donated 1 million surgical masks, 75,000 N95 masks and 17,500 Tyvek protective suits for distribution to hospitals and care facilities in need
• Provided 10 Power Assisted Air Purification Respirators to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
• Secured Health Canada approval on our 3D-printed protective shield design and partnered with Ontario Tech and other suppliers to ramp up production
• Provided $500k to Feed Ontario to help launch their province-wide emergency food box program
• Provided $250k to the Regional Food Distribution Association of Northwestern Ontario to distribute emergency food support to First Nations
• Provided $150k to Feed the Need to buy and distribute food to organizations across Durham Region.

In keeping with advice from the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Health, OPG has also taken a number of actions to ensure safe, reliable electricity generation while protecting the health of our employees and the public. These actions include:

• Activated our Crisis Management Communications Centre, which provides executive level oversight, and our Infectious Disease Incident Response Team
• Activated business continuity plans
• Launched a “Solutions Team” mandated to collect, evaluate, and quickly implement ideas to help ensure safety for essential employees and to further support frontline health care workers
• Supplied critical staff with surgical masks or half-face respirators for extended close contact work
• Implemented a work from home policy to the extent possible across the organization
• Closed information centres and visitor access for facilities and office buildings
• Restricted all work-related travel
• Deferred all non-regulatory training
• Cancelled in-person meetings and switched to virtual meetings or conference calls
• Deployed hand-sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and increased awareness of hygiene protocols for shared surfaces and workstations
• Established Site Hygiene Teams – including safe work planning and training on protocols for cleaning
• Secured control rooms and restricted access to critical staff only.