Tag Archives: Doug Ford

Roundup: A promise to fight back against federal action

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Another day, more record-breaking COVID cases in this country. In Ontario, new modelling suggests that if we don’t get this under control that we’ll be seeing 6,500 new cases a day by mid-December, which should terrify everyone. And Doug Ford? Well, he called the reports that he ignored public health advice “inaccurate,” and “one doctor’s opinion,” and insisted that he’s trying to find a “balance.” Because the needs of businesses outweigh human lives.

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In Alberta, where the pandemic is starting to overwhelm a couple of hospitals, Jason Kenney was back in isolation for the second time after another close-call with a positive COVID case (which he tested negative for) – because he’s totally taking it seriously. Kenney decided to “toughen” measures, which means that he…reduced hours in restaurants and bars, stopped indoor sports, and limited weddings and funerals. Because he still refuses to do a proper lockdown to get infections under control, and he refuses to do anything to inconvenience businesses. Hell, he’s still telling people to go out to restaurants and bars – just not as late, which also has the added effect of ensuring more people will be in these establishments during the compressed hours, which would seem to increase the chances of infection rather than decrease it. After all, Alberta’s public health insisted that people should socialize in a “structured setting” (i.e. restaurant or bar) instead of at home, so they’re really taking it seriously.

As for those who still insist on calling on the federal government to enact emergency legislation, Ford stated yesterday in no uncertain terms that he would not stand for it, and warned that other premiers would also fight back because they want to guard their own jurisdiction. So yeah, unilateral federal action would not fly (not that it really could under the terms of the Emergencies Act anyway), and we’d simply wind up in court over it. In other words, stop waiting for Trudeau to act (because he can’t) and pressure the premiers instead to quit worrying about businesses – especially since they have the power to help them out – and worry instead about the hundreds of deaths that are happening every week.

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Roundup: Ford ignored advice in favour of uncontrolled spread

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Surprising nobody, we find that Doug Ford rejected advice from his public health officials in releasing his colour-coded guidelines, because it’s all about business over human lives. And while there have been calls for a while to try and determine just who is giving him advice, this reinforces the point that these remain political decisions, and that it is Ford and his Cabinet who are the ones to be held to account for what has been happening with infections in Ontario. The fact that Ford put his “red line” figure so far above public health advice, to a level where you are literally dealing with uncontrolled spread rather than trying to stamp it out early, should tell everyone that he is not taking this seriously.

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We’ve also been finding out things like Ford refusing to spend COVID funds on things like schools and long-term care homes, and have instead been sitting on the funds to pad the books – and we have the province’s Financial Accountability Officer confirming this. This should be no surprise. I mean, look at the autism programme, where Ford promised more money and then spent none of it, and the wait lists continued to grow and parents and families continue to suffer, and the long-term consequences of not getting early intervention therapies are going to balloon for years. But Ford doesn’t care. He cares about looking like he’s fiscally prudent because every gods damned pundit in this country still thinks it’s 1995 and will always be 1995 – and Ford desperately seeks their validation.

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And this need for validation has been a big part of why we’re at the state we’re in here in Ontario. Because Ford didn’t go full-Trump early in the pandemic, or throw tantrums at Justin Trudeau, everyone suddenly started giving him praise. He sounded avuncular, and suddenly everyone assumed he was doing a good job when he wasn’t doing anything but sitting on the COVID money and delaying any meaningful action about, say, getting schools back up and running, or increasing lab capacity for testing, or the contact tracing abilities of public health units across the province. None of it. But people still showered him with praise for how well he was behaving, and for striking up an unlikely friendship with Chrystia Freeland. And yet here we are, where he and his Cabinet have repeatedly lied about what is going on with the pandemic, about their response, and even the direction of the case numbers. Hopefully this piece in the Star that clearly demonstrates that Ford rejected the advice in favour of waiting for uncontrolled spread (because gods forbid he close down businesses) will start to open people’s eyes, but my optimism for that is waning because of all of the other scandals and distractions that his government has created only serve to scatter the attention necessary to force his hand.

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Roundup: Exasperation over provincial inaction

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You can almost see the exasperation creeping into prime minister Justin Trudeau’s weekday press conferences, as yesterday, he implored the premiers to do more to fight the pandemic and to stop trying to keep businesses open, because they will still fail without healthy populations. He also obliquely asked mayors and public health officials to use what powers they can if their premiers won’t. Because this is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government has almost no levers. And the numbers are getting very serious in this country.

In Ontario and Manitoba, there are record high numbers, and Manitoba is going into a province-wide lockdown, while in Ontario, Toronto’s chief medical officer of health is imposing more restrictions on that region after Peel Region did the same earlier in the week. In Alberta, doctors are imploring the government to institute a “circuit-breaker” lockdown for at least a couple of weeks so that they can get infections under control before they completely overwhelm the healthcare system, but Jason Kenney says no, because he’s concerned about “civil liberties.” And you can tell just how seriously Alberta is taking this – their chief medical officer of health retweeted advice telling people to only socialise in “structured settings,” which means bars and restaurants. There are no words.

As for Doug Ford, he made his own swipe at Trudeau’s remarks, insisting that if Trudeau is talking about him, that they need more financial support for businesses, which is ridiculous at this point. The federal government has been shovelling money out the door – not always in the most effective manners, mind you, because they have very limited levers, whereas provinces have more direct levers that they refuse to use. And Ford here, playing the victim, is just engaged in buck-passing so that he doesn’t have to look like the bad guy when things go into lockdown, and they’re going to have to sooner than later. He keeps saying he’ll act when things get “out of control,” but by then it’ll be too late. Positive tests are a lagging indicator. Hospitalisations are a lagging indicator. Deaths are a lagging indicator. If you’re waiting for things to get “out of control” rather than stopping the exponential growth when it presents itself, that’s negligence. But then again, Ford’s apologists seem to think that there is greater political cost for him to closing businesses than there is in preventing hundreds, if not thousands of deaths, and if that’s the calculation, I can’t even with these people.

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Roundup: Such a serious country

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The country is fixated on the election south of the border, while we’re failing to effectively deal with a global pandemic, but what shiny thing caught everyone’s attention yesterday? The fact that Whole Foods’ uniform policy forbade employees from wearing poppies. The horror! The horror! Politicians from all stripes across the country were outraged – outraged! Doug Ford leapt into action to declare he would pass legislation to make it illegal for businesses to prohibit employees from wearing poppies, which is more than he’s done about dealing with the pandemic in his own gods damned area of jurisdiction, so make of that what you will. Erin O’Toole got worked up and posted a video calling on people to boycott “Woke Foods,” which is not only not clever, but not even close to a reflection of the situation – in fact, Whole Foods came under fire for not allowing their employees to wear masks that said “Black Lives Matter” on them, so that’s hardly being Woke™. (Then again, when you wield a shitpost-shaped hammer, everything is a woke-shaped nail). It was the lead question in QP. Three separate unanimous motions were passed in the House of Commons after Question Period to condemn Whole Foods, to encourage all businesses to let their employees to wear poppies, and to summon the Whole Foods CEO to the Veterans Affairs committee to explain himself. Everyone needed a piece of their outrage pie.

A couple of hours later, the veterans affairs minister, Lawrence MacAulay put out a release saying that he spoke to said CEO and everything was okay – employees would be able to wear poppies after all. Phew! Of course, we got all parties on-side for the most useless and ridiculous of symbolic controversies, because that’s just how serious we are as a country. Well done, everyone.

Meanwhile, there’s still a pandemic where the second wave is spiking in Canada, and none of the premiers seem to want to do anything about it. Doug Ford is set to loosen restrictions on some of the most hardest-hit regions of Ontario, while his promise to hire thousands of more long-term care workers lacks any details, which sounds about right for Ford. Jason Kenney is calling on people to voluntarily stop having house parties, but won’t make any actual restrictions, nor will he sign onto the federal contact tracing app. You’d think that we’d be spending the day raking these premiers over the coals for their unwillingness to do anything (because it’ll hurt small business – when they have the capability of offering supports for them), but no, we can’t even do that either.

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Roundup: Budget cuts and accountability for advice

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There was an interesting piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday where a couple of former top doctors enumerated some of the problems at the Public Health Agency of Canada that have been festering for years in spite of repeated warnings, which started creeping in with the budget cuts that started in 2011, and which were compounded with the loss of scientific capacity to the point where the president who just resigned had no scientific background at all. Which isn’t to say that you necessarily need someone with a science background in an administrative position like that (as opposed to the Chief Public Health Officer, which is a different kettle of fish entirely), but it points to some of the ways in which the civil service in this country has been losing capacity for a while. Suffice to say, it would appear to point to the fact that the current government wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on at PHAC, though to be fair, there has been a fair bit on their plates, as they were dealing with medically assisted dying, legalised cannabis, and completely restructuring First Nations and Inuit healthcare delivery, which were all health-related files. The fact that emergency stockpiles weren’t being properly managed has come up repeatedly, but this does start with the cuts made under the Harper government.

Meanwhile in Queen’s Park (where premier Doug Ford made cuts to public health before the pandemic began), there is a piece in the Star that starts to ascertain just who is as the premier’s “health command table,” and ascertains that it’s Ford pulling all the strings and making all of the decisions. Which is as it should be – any “command table” should be merely advisory, because in our system of government, Cabinet makes the decisions, and Cabinet gets to wear them. I worry that trying to expose who is at this table will try to blame them for the advice they’re giving to Ford, rather than Ford making decisions on that advice – particularly when we’ve seen him ignore advice on things like school re-openings. There is a debate to be had about the transparency around the advice being given, so that we can ascertain whether or not Ford is actually following it, which I get, but I also wonder if there isn’t also a need for that table to be a place of frank discussion without it all coming out in the press – like why we have Cabinet confidentiality. And it’s a fair debate to be had, but again, let me reiterate that this is 100 percent on Ford, no matter what advice he may or may not be getting. That’s how Responsible Government works, and we need to quit finding ways to give Ford a pass, or an out on his shite decision-making.

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Roundup: PBO on thin ice

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Comments made the Parliamentary Budget Officer over the weekend should have him very nervous for his future, as he is straying far beyond his mandate. The PBO, Yves Giroux, was in the media saying that current deficit levels are “unsustainable” within one or two years, which both misreads the current situation, and is venturing into opining on policy choices, which is not his job.

As an Independent Officer of Parliament, he has a certain degree of latitude for doing the job he is tasked with doing, which is to provide costing for proposals on demand by parliamentarians – something which can be a very creative exercise at times – and to provide independent fiscal forecasts of federal budget numbers – also something which has been made redundant because the Department of Finance doesn’t publish their forecasts any longer as the current practice is to take the average of the top twenty private sector forecasts and use those in budget documents. But he’s not invulnerable – Independent Officers can still be fired for cause, and Giroux seems to be flirting with that line.

It’s possible that Giroux doesn’t understand just what he’s doing when he’s answering these media requests, but it’s not the first time that he’s said dumb things in the media, such as a few weeks ago when Bill Morneau resigned that it was akin to “changing pilots mid-flight” (apparently unaware that this is actually standard practice on long-haul flights). He’s supposed to be a lot more circumspect, by virtue of his position, and not offer up any kind of opinion on policy choices. He is not there to second-guess the government and its actions – this is not a technocracy. He is supposed to provide cost estimates when asked, and provide independent forecasts (and as we saw in the election, sometimes he has trouble with the former when he simply put certain parties’ promises on his letterhead without actually doing any analysis of them). Offering opinions on policy choices impacts his ability to be independent, which he should know if he had any particular sense about him. I suspect that someone – perhaps a former PBO who is feeling particularly charitable – needs to pull him aside and to tell him to stop answering all of these media requests, and if he does accept them, to stick to the very narrow contents of his reports. His predecessors largely did not have this problem. Other Officers of Parliament do not have this problem. He needs to undertake to rectify it.

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Roundup: Hot and Bothered for Basic Income

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The idea of a Basic Income has been a hobby-horse of parliamentarians for a while, and yesterday the Parliamentary Budget Officer came out with a report that purported to cost one out in a couple of different scenarios. But it’s a bit of a horror show of a report because what it’s actually describing is a cash transfer and not an actual Basic Income scheme, and more than that, some of the things it purports to strip in order to pay for its high price tag are a number of disability supports. Remember that while a Basic Income may sound like a left-wing idea, there is plenty of right-wing support for it if it dismantles the welfare state, where replacing tailored disability programmes with a one-size-fits-all cash transfer is a feature and not a bug. (More from economist Mike Moffatt here).

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1280537746881212422

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1280630991661535238

Suffice to say, this report got some senators all hot and bothered, including Senator Yuen Pau Woo, who put out a press release on the topic, calling for a pilot project, so here’s Lindsay Tedds, who worked on BC’s Basic Income project for the last two years, and who knows a thing or two about Basic Income.

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1280562781142388736

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Roundup: A horrific report

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The theme of the day was set from the start of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser – that the military deployed to long-term care in Ontario had found troubling cases of abuse and neglect, and that Trudeau immediately forwarded on those concerns to premier Doug Ford. Trudeau then went on to talk about their contract with GM in Oshawa for more face masks, and spoke about the other partnerships for things like more ventilators and other equipment. Trudeau also spoke about funding up to 700 youth jobs in the agriculture sector, and that he was convening a meeting with the UN Secretary General and the prime minister of Jamaica as part of an international push to ensure poverty reduction as a result of the pandemic. During the Q&A, Trudeau was asked repeatedly about the request to fast-track the claims of asylum seekers who were working in long-term care facilities, and he spoke about trying to find flexibility (but apparently not about the fact that it’s hugely problematic that facilities are hiring these extremely low-wage and largely untrained workers). When asked about the pending Meng Wanzhou extradition verdict, he said that the great thing about our justice system is that governments don’t have to apologise for it. And when asked further about the report on those long-term care facilities, Trudeau reiterated that this was a provincial matter, but that the federal government needed to be “part of the conversation” going forward.

A short while later, Doug Ford released the report, then wrung his hands about how terrible it was, and how he vowed he was going to take action – kind of like he promised that they would ensure there was an “iron ring” around these facilities, and well, that didn’t exactly happen either. And he talked tough, saying that the people who ran these facilities could face charges, but his government did cut back on inspections, so he has to wear that one too. And while he mouthed the words about taking responsibility for the situation, in the same breath Ford blamed his predecessors, and then said he was going to need “federal help,” which translates to “I don’t want to have to pay to fix this,” and he wants to put this on the federal books instead of his own. Because that’s what always happens. The NDP opposition in Ontario was also making itself useless by demanding a full public inquiry, which won’t tell us anything we don’t already know, especially as we’ve just had another public inquiry on long-term care home deaths in this province, and it will simply be a justification to delay action, possibly permanently.

Meanwhile, the NDP and Greens voted in the House of Commons to prop up the Liberals’ motion to carry on with the useless “special committee” hearings rather than proper sittings of the Commons, which also included provisions that means that they will rubber-stamp some $150 billion in spending on June 17th without a proper legislative or committee process, essentially abandoning their fundamental duties as MPs. Slow clap, guys. Slow clap.

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Roundup: Framing models as data

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau started off by saying that the government had signed an agreement with Amazon Canada – and not Canada Post – to manage the distribution of personal protective equipment to the provinces and territories when it is received by the federal government, but one imagines that this also involves warehousing and logistics than just simply delivery. He also announced $100 million being diverted to help meet food insecurity needs, through Food Banks Canada, as well as a variety of other breakfast clubs and other food organizations. He also mentioned his teleconference with the other premiers and their devotion to data sharing and projections, and that they were working to verify the latest figures that were being put online. During the Q&A, he confirmed that Canadian Forces – in the form of Rangers – have been dispatched to the Nunavik region of Northern Quebec, and addressed the news that the American president had ordered 3M to stop sending N95 masks to Canada and other Latin American countries (3M’s president pushed back citing humanitarian concerns and retaliation), and Trudeau stated that he has warned the Americans not to block access to needed supplies – particularly as Canada has many supplies and healthcare workers the Americans need, such as the 1000 nurses who live in Windsor but work in Detroit. It does highlight the need for more domestic production of these masks as competition for procurement gets more intense globally.

And then, Ontario released its modelling of some potential COVID-19 morbidity scenarios in the province, and the media went crazy. Despite the fact that this modelling is not data and that they are mere possible scenarios that are used for planning purposes, it was framed as “data” and in the language of how many people “will die,” as though this was mathematical certainty (though a handful said “could,” as though it were any better). And lo, all of the headlines used both this framing and sensationalism, they buried the new restrictions that are being imposed in Ontario as a result. And when some of the doctors that were being interviewed about these projections, and those doctors pushed back that this wasn’t data, self-righteous journalists threw tantrums about how this was information the public had a right to know, and so on.

But here’s the thing – part of this is a transparent attempt by Doug Ford to justify his further crackdowns, which I get. (Thread from Scott Reid here for context). But at the same time, there is no nuance to reporting of these models, they are incorrectly framed, and it’s throwing a lot of big numbers and timeframes out there without sufficient context. It’s not only disaster porn, but I fear that it will not actually have the desired effect of scaring people into compliance with lockdown measures. Instead, I am reminded of the aphorism that a single death is a tragedy, but a thousand deaths is a statistic – and numbers like these (the wild range of 3000 to 15,000) will have the real possibility of becoming a statistic in people’s minds, which may do more to undermine the whole reason why this modelling was released in the first place. And that worries me more than anything else.

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Roundup: The crash and the cries for stimulus

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It was a tough day on the markets yesterday as stock markets plunged at record levels over panic-selling because of COVID-19, and oil prices cratered while Saudi Arabia and Russia got into a pissing contest. Bill Morneau held a post-market-closing press conference to assure Canadians that there was fiscal room to deal with the situation, but he spoke in frustrating platitudes and generalities as he so often does (because this government is largely incapable of communicating their way out of a wet paper bag), but it needs to be acknowledged that his budget challenge has become a lot more complicated, particularly as the oil shock is going to impact federal revenues as well as Alberta’s. But seriously, the whole Conservative “spent the cupboard bare” narrative is bogus and economically illiterate, and they are actively spreading misinformation about it.

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Around the same time, Jason Kenney held his own press conference, saying that all options were on the table for dealing with the downturn on the province’s economy – and then immediately ruled out a sales tax, which would stabilize the province’s revenues. Because that might make sense. Rachel Notley says that he should scrap the budget and re-do it, given that its assumptions are now proved to be useless, but other economists say it’s likely not worth it at this point, and it would be better to have a fiscal update in the near future.

And then come the demands for some kind of fiscal stimulus plan, but one of the things they’re pressing is that measures need to be timely. Maclean’s talks to four economists about what they think such a plan could look like for the best impact.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1237235733762473984

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