Tag Archives: Doug Ford

Roundup: Essential incoherence

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The provincial stay-at-home order is now in effect in Ontario, and it’s already a gong show because the province refuses to define what is “essential” for travel or items, leaving it up to police to interpret for themselves – and we all know that that’ll never end badly, or disproportionately targeting marginalised communities, right? Yeah, and it’s so typical of Ford’s government, where they lack the basic self-awareness that they are the ones in charge and have to make the rules.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1349390384938450944

So what is the Ford government doing instead of their gods damned jobs? Why, they’re picking even more fights with the federal government over vaccines, insisting that their capacity to administer outstrips supply (not so far, it hasn’t), and I fail to see how a number of premiers think that if they’ll bellyache loud enough that they can magically make Pfizer produce millions of more doses in the blink of an eye, at a time when they are dealing with global supply chain issues. But we all know that this is performative, and attempts to distract from their failures to control the spread of this pandemic. To add to that, their constant focus on the vaccines and the fact that it takes time for deliveries to ramp up is an attempt to shift the blame on the ongoing uncontrolled spread to the federal government – that they would have been able to control it if only the feds had acted faster (when Canada was pretty much the third country in the world to approve it and accept deliveries). That was never going to happen – vaccines don’t work like that in the middle of an outbreak. But these premiers need to wash their hands of culpability, so that’s where we are.

https://twitter.com/SusanDelacourt/status/1349483284707868673

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Roundup: More pandemic theatre

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The horror show of COVID infections continues apace in Ontario, and premier Doug Ford has decided to get really serious and issue a “stay-at-home” order, which amounts to little more than the mockdown that is currently in place already. In spite of his promises of an “iron ring” around long-term care facility, there are now outbreaks at forty percent of facilities. Ford won’t do anything about the sick days that are necessary for people to stop spreading infections at workplaces, and he won’t do anything about evictions from commercial landlords. So he’s totally handling this with aplomb.

So really, what Ford is offering is more pandemic theatre – the close cousin of security theatre. And most of the restrictions and exemptions don’t actually make sense. They’re not going to do enough to curb transmission – especially as newer variants start making their way into the community – because he won’t do the hard work of closing the large workplaces where spread is happening, because that would be harming the economy – as though rising infections and deaths won’t do worse economic damage. Ford continues to shirk his responsibilities and let this pandemic get worse, and more deaths to pile up, as he tries to shift blame and try and to get people to blame one another than acknowledge his own culpability. The “Uncle Doug” schtick isn’t working, and he keeps hoping it will, and here we are, waiting for things to get worse before he institutes more half-measures. Welcome to Ontario – yours to discover.

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Roundup: Ford fails, flails, and falsifies

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As the numbers of this second wave of the pandemic continue to climb, Ontario premier Doug Ford continues to flail and grasp for any bit of cover that he can. Yesterday, while warning that the next set of modelling data are truly terrifying – but not actually doing anything about it – he tried to once again shift blame. And the not doing anything – making vague promises that he’ll consider more actions for Monday or Tuesday, rather than immediately, despite the fact that the current mockdown isn’t working and ICU capacity is at the red line in most of the hot spots, means that Mr. “I won’t hesitate” is once again hesitating, and there will be more lives lost on his watch.

As for the blame-shifting, Ford (along with a couple of other premiers) are howling that they’re running out of vaccines, after the slow roll-out – so slow that Ontario is already starting to give people their second doses. But, running out of vaccines is a good thing, because it means they’re going into arms. And more to the point, he knows that there are thousands of more Pfizer doses coming next week, the week after, and then again, the week after that, plus another bulk shipment of Moderna vaccines – and deliveries are expected to scale up further in February. They know this. This has been communicated for a while now, but he’s trying to deflect the attention to Trudeau once again to divert away from his own incompetence. (And apparently there were some hurt feelings among the premiers during Thursday’s first ministers meeting because Trudeau dared to criticize the provinces for their role in the slow roll-out. The poor dears).

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1347570045178818560

Meanwhile, here’s a roundup of vaccine plans and timelines being put out by the provinces and territories (assuming that they will actually meet them).

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Roundup: Feigned ignorance and consequences

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The list of politicians, federal and provincial, that travelled over the Christmas break, has grown, and premiers especially have been finding it hard to keep their stories straight about their own culpability. A reminder: ministers cannot leave their province without permission, and they need to have someone appointed as an acting minister during their absence, which requires paperwork, and in no possible universe would the premier not have known. While Doug Ford has lied that he didn’t know his finance minister was leaving the country, Jason Kenney and Scott Moe took the weaselly path of “taking responsibility” for not making it clear to their caucus that there wasn’t to be any travelling – something which is a red herring in the case of ministers. They knew and were caught out, and now they are trying to minimize the damage and divert attention away from their culpability, but anyone who knows how governments work know that this is grade-A bullshit.

There is a question of consequences – particularly for the backbenchers who were caught out. Among the federal Conservatives, there seems to be little that they can do to sanction Ron Liepert, while David Sweet resigned as the chair of the ethics committee and said he’s not running again in the next election. A real question will be for Senator Don Plett, who is the leader of the opposition in the Senate. There could be some real political damage to the institution if he doesn’t do something to show remorse, whether that is stepping down from his leadership position, or some other act of contrition. If he doesn’t do it voluntarily, we’ll see if Erin O’Toole makes a move as party leader, or if the Conservative caucus in the Senate makes their own move to limit the damage to their own reputations. Regardless, we’ll see how the next few days play out as the outrage continues to swirl.

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Roundup: Ignoring workplace spread

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For the last post of 2020, it seems fitting to take one more kick at Doug Ford, whose incompetence has been responsible for the worsening of the pandemic. While Ford continues to try and blame the federal government for international travel bringing in cases – something which the evidence does not support – his mockdown full of half-measures is doing nothing about workplace spread. Case in point is that Amazon facility where some 400 cases were identified, which is a big-P Problem, and yet nothing from the Ford government about this. That’s kind of a problem – but this is Doug Ford, and when he says he’s looking out for the “little guy,” he’s talking about the business owner, not the workers.

Meanwhile, he’s not taking criticism for his failure well, and well, it shows. His “uncle Doug” schtick is failing him, and he doesn’t know what else to do. This could end very badly for all of us.

Programming Note: I am taking the rest of the year off of blogging, as well as there won’t be a new YouTube episode next week. Loonie Politics columns should remain unaffected. Have a safe, socially-distant holiday and we’ll see you in the New Year.

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Roundup: Fundraising off of blame-shifting

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has opted to keep up his little pissing match with the federal government over the border and what he claims are insufficient measures or testing, in spite of all evidence to the contrary – or of the fact that using rapid antigen tests at the border wouldn’t necessarily give proper results because they don’t work as well when someone is pre-symptomatic, meaning they would be just as likely to give a false sense of security with arrivals that may very well be unwarranted. And to top of all off, Ford is using this exercise in blame-shifting in order to send out fundraising appeals to his part’s donors – but remember, he’s “not playing politics.”

Speaking of Ford “not playing politics,” he tried to clap back at Ottawa’s mayor over concerns that the city wasn’t consulted before the mockdown was announced, and the fact that we are in the twenty-eight-day zone rather than the fourteen-day zone despite having the lowest positivity rate in the province and zero cases in ICU. Ford’s response – that he’s trying to save lives, and the mayor must not care about body bags piling up on his doorstep. Excuse me? Ford sat on federal money that should have gone to increasing testing and tracing capacity, and dollars for making schools safer, and for long-term care facilities – which he promised he’d put an “iron ring” around and then did nothing about it, and who has hesitated for month before doing a necessary lockdown – and even then didn’t do a proper lockdown, opting instead for a half-measure mockdown that does nothing about workplace infections – and he’s lecturing others about body bags? Sorry, no. He’s the one going to be held to account for the thousands of death on his watch, not the mayor of Ottawa.

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Roundup: New mockdowns after Goldilocks failed

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Things in Ontario have reached the point where Doug “I won’t hesitate” Ford has finally enacted a province-wide mockdown…but not before he hesitated even further by not putting it into force until Boxing Day. You know, so that everyone can still flood the malls and box stores, and feel like they’re justified in “cheating” for Christmas gatherings. And by mockdown, it’s not a real lockdown – it’s a few added restrictions but most workplaces are still up and running, in spite of mounting evidence of outbreaks in them, so good job there.

Ford, meanwhile, was more than happy to blame the federal government for not properly closing borders, and insisted that they do more testing at airports…which they are. Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu had to counter that the rapid testing pilot at Pearson is ongoing – but that also doesn’t change the fact that only 1.3 percent of new cases can be traced to travel, which blows a hole in Ford’s narrative. Of course, that narrative is all about blame-shifting so that he doesn’t have to look like the bad guy in the “lockdowns,” never mind that these should have happened in September at the latest to have nipped the second wave in the bud, but they didn’t do that, because they tried the “Goldilocks approach,” and it failed. How many hundreds of people have died unnecessarily since?

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Roundup: CRA changed the rules

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There has been a lot of consternation over the past few days of the “education letters” that CRA has been sending to people to say that they can’t verify their incomes and that they may need to repay their CERB benefits. The big complication, however, is that it appears that the CRA had quietly changed its income criteria from gross income to net income. But reporters have receipts, and CRA did make changes that they aren’t saying.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1338505818090725378

This does seem to be something that the minister should probably look into, because this certainly looks bad for the CRA and like they are acting in bad faith – as the government keeps insisting that they will encourage flexibility and leniency for those who made mistakes “in good faith.” But if the mistake was CRA’s – or that they deliberately changed the criteria for whatever reason – then this is more than just people making errors in good faith, and punishing people for the CRA’s screw-ups is a really bad look in the current context.

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Roundup: Scheer joins the sister-hiring brigade

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The saga of MPs hiring siblings exploded yesterday as several revelations came to light – that Andrew Scheer not only hired his sister-in-law, but that he also hired his sister to work in his office when he was both Deputy Speaker and Speaker. Granted, this was within the rules at the time, and those rules were changed at the end of the time Scheer was Speaker (and his sister was let go then – and then moved over to a Conservative senator’s office), but for someone who liked to give lectures to the prime minister on the optics and the appearance of ethical conduct, it does seem like a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, said that while these hirings were within the rules, he wants to set a higher ethical bar, so he would have a talk with Scheer about it, though he apparently let his sister-in-law go around the same time. No word yet on whether the Conservatives will call for his resignation.

Meanwhile, in the other sibling hiring drama, it turns out that now-former Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi’s hiring her sister was actually flagged to the Ethics Commissioner two years ago, and his office decided to take a pass on it, figuring that it was better dealt with by the Board of Internal Economy. Now he’s saying that maybe he should have taken a look then. Of course, this sounds to be about par for the course for Mario Dion, whose approach to interpreting his enabling legislation is…creative to say the least, from inventing new definitions under the Act, stretching the credulity of what it covers in some reports, and even confusing his Act with the MP Code – which are completely different – in another case. So, that’s going well. Incidentally, the Board of Internal Economy will be meeting later this week and will address the Ratansi complaints at that time about whether or not this hiring violated the rules, and they will determine the next course of action at that point. (And yes, this is an example of parliamentary privilege, where parliament makes and enforces its own rules, because it’s a self-governing institution, which is the way it should be).

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Roundup: A warning of finite federal resources

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Apparently spooked by the new modelling numbers showing daily infection counts in the range of 6,500 by mid-December, and the fact that he got caught out ignoring public health advice in favour of uncontrolled spread, Doug Ford announced that they were re-jigging their advisory system to a much more reasonable number to trigger “code red” states. You’d think this was good news, but “code red” still means you can eat out at restaurants and go to bars, and aren’t really in any kind of serious lockdown state, so it looks like a lot of show, and more excuses to not inconvenience business owners while case counts grow exponentially and hospitalisations and deaths mount.

Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is sounding a bit more impatient with premiers, reminding them that their resources aren’t infinite and that there is still a chance to save Christmas if we all act now (but probably not). And while certain voices sounded incredulous that a government that has shovelled money out the door at an unprecedented rate doesn’t have infinite resources, we’re not talking about money – we’re talking about personnel from the Red Cross and Canadian Forces if absolutely necessary to step into hospitals and long-term care facilities, and one imagines it also means physical resources like PPE. You can’t simply buy capacity or trained staff – it doesn’t come off the shelf, and people should realise this. And to that end, Trudeau also warned that if they reach the threshold beyond which they have capacity, then difficult choices are going to need to be made about the allocation of those resources.

And if the calls for the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act wasn’t bad enough (it’s not going to happen), we’re not getting calls for Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health to resign because Ford won’t take advice and he won’t visibly push back against Ford’s blundering – even though his options as an advisor would be limited, and he may not feel he’s at the ethical line of requiring a public resignation just yet. And even further down that path was a piece in Maclean’s (which I’m not linking to) that called on these provincial health officers to assert authority and start making orders, which is a dangerous path to tread down. Why? Because this isn’t a technocracy. In a democracy, advisors advise, and elected politicians decide. Dr. Howard Njoo, the deputy federal chief public health officer, made this exact point yesterday – that they give their best advice to their political masters, and it’s up to those masters to make the final decision, which Ford, Kenney and company are certainly doing. We don’t want politicians to hide behind their advisors by blurring that line of accountability, and we don’t want unaccountable advisors to be making the decisions exactly because we can’t hold them to account at the ballot box. We also need to remember that “listen to the science” isn’t actually public policy. Science can provide guidance, but policy is about implementation, which the science cannot always dictate. Nevertheless, we need to stop blaming Ford’s public health officer and blame Ford himself (along with Kenney, Moe, Pallister, Legault, et al.) They are where the responsibility and the accountability lies, and where the pressure for them to actually take this pandemic seriously needs to be centred.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1327380638106849283

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