The essential service provisions in the code have been interpreted fairly broadly. They were not intended to include economic harm; it's clearly safety and security of the public. There's been, perhaps, a tendency to interpret more widely.
For example, I gather that in Marine Atlantic the whole of the service has been declared under that provision, even though the summer service only runs in the summer, so that in the winter we have a problem under essential services. In any event, I think the problem is that the code is a little too specific to cover some of the issues I've heard this morning.