Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: A broken system thwarting foreign agents

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Something in the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) annual report, made public this week caught my eye, which talked about how the “critical election incident protocol panel” – the body set up in order to have some sort of way to help deal with any detected foreign interference during an election (given the whole Russian interference thing south of the border in previous of their elections) – needs to include more traditional espionage as part of their warning triggers. Why? Because, as NSICOP says, foreign agents could try to infiltrate political parties to exert influence, whether it’s in nomination meetings, or volunteering in campaign offices.

I will admit that I laughed.

Not because foreign interference isn’t serious – because it is – but because the joke would be on them, given that grassroots members no longer have any influence in our political system since we have made the system entirely leader-driven. Nomination meetings are being gamed by leaders’ offices to the point where it’s difficult to determine just how free and fair any of them are these days – that is, when leaders aren’t outright appointing candidates (as Justin Trudeau did with Marci Ien and Ya’ara Saks for the by-elections late last year). Trying to hijack nomination contests at the best of times is exceedingly difficult because of the requirement for the leader’s signature (or their proxies, thanks to the garbage Reform Act), which was part of why that requirement was created back in 1970 – officially to keep the Chief Electoral Officer from needing to adjudicate nomination disputes, but anecdotally about heading off pro-life groups trying to hijack Liberal nominations. Foreign agents trying to use the same tactics would have fairly marginal chances of success once their involvement became known.

This is less of an indictment of the use of party infiltration as a tactic of foreign agents, but rather of how our system has degenerated. Because we insisted on moving to leadership contests that became quasi-presidential primaries, we have upended the entire grassroots nature of our parties, and now everything is top-down, leader driven. It shouldn’t be this way, and yet this is where we are.

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QP: Making CNN a national issue

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It being a lovely Tuesday in the nation’s capital, the prime minister was indeed present and in the Chamber for Question Period, with only one other Liberal – Mark Gerretsen, of course – with him. Erin O’Toole led off in person, with his scripts in front of him, and he raised that sensationalised CNN report saying Canada was desperate for vaccines. Trudeau reminded him that Canada was third in the OECD for vaccinations and people needed to keep up public health measures. O’Toole insisted that no, the government’s rollout was too slow and confused, to which Trudeau pointed to the UK where higher vaccinations did not mean they had to let up lockdowns, and that while Conservatives don’t like masks and social distancing, people needed to keep it up). O’Toole then raised the American travel advisory — that was months old and applied to every other country in the world — for which Trudeau called out the bullshit for what it was, that the advisory was from last March, and that the Conservatives were only interested in making things up. O’Toole then repeated his first question about the CNN report in French, got the same answer, then he pivoted to vaccine rollouts in Quebec, and claimed that Trudeau said everything was on track yesterday and then we just learned there would be a Moderna delay. Trudeau castigated him for making things up after their conversation yesterday, stated what he told O’Toole about shipments and yes, Moderna may have a day or two delayed here and there.

Yves-François Blanchet raised Quebec’s Bill 99 having been found to be justifiable by the Auebec Court of Appeal, to which Trudeau dissembled about working well with the Quebec government. Blanchet noted that the Quebec bill would clash with the Clarity Act, and one of them had to go, and Trudeau dismissed this as posturing, that the Bloc would rather talk about sovereignty than fighting the third wave.

Jagmeet Singh led for the NDP, and in French, lamented that Canada was losing the race against the variants, to which Trudeau praised the number of doses that have arrived in Canada. Singh switched to English to demand “real action” by improving paid sick leave, for which Trudeau reminded him that they put in the programme months and they were working with provinces to boost their measures. 

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QP: Blaming the lockdowns on vaccines

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With Ontario back under a “stay-at-home order,” the numbers in the Chamber are again back to bare-bones, with the Liberals once again resorting to only keeping Mark Gerretsen in the Chamber and no one else, with only two NDP MPs present, and four Bloc MPs. Additionally, those Bloc MPs stayed out of the Chamber until after the moment of silence for the death of Prince Philip was over, because they really are that petty about our constitutional monarchy. Candice Bergen off for the Conservatives via video, and she recited the party’s bullshit assertion that the lack of vaccines was responsible for the current round of “lockdowns,” which serious people know was never the way out of the second or third waves. Anita Anand replied by pointing out that Canada surpassed their targets for receiving vaccines by over 3.9 million doses. Bergen then lied and claimed that the Americans issued a travel advisory to Canada last week — that advice had been in place for months and is the same as every other country — for which Patty Hajdu reminded everyone that now is not the time to travel. Bergen complained more about “lockdowns,” to which Hajdu reminded her that even with vaccinations underway that people still need to adhere to public health measures, and that the federal government doesn’t determine local advice. Gérard Deltell then took over in French to proffer the ridiculous complaint that the Americans have fully vaccinated ten times more people than Canada has, and insisted the federal government failed. Anand repeated her response about vaccines delivered, and when Deltell condescended to her about the quality of her French before complaining she didn’t answer the question, Anand repeated that vaccines were ahead of target.

For the Bloc, Alain Therrien complained that the government was practicing “predatory federalism” by attaching strings to future transfers in the budget, which Sean Fraser refuted with listing increased transfers to the provinces. Therrien was not convinced, but Pablo Rodriguez discounted his concerns as rumours, as they were working well with the provinces.

Jagmeet Singh led the NDP, and in French, he complained that the third wave was getting worse, and that the federal government needed to improve paid sick leave — which is provincial jurisdiction in 94 percent of workplaces. Rodriguez again responded by reminding him of federal supports and working with the provinces. In English, Singh declared that Ontario is “on fire” and made a pitch for Green Lantern Theory, including so-called federal support for vaccinations, to which Hajdu reminded him that the field hospitals set up in provinces that need it are from the federal government.

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Roundup: Mark Carney undermines his Bank of Canada successors

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When it was announced that former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney was going to be speaking at this weekend’s Liberal convention, we got the usual amount of tongue-wagging from journalists and pundits who assumed that this would be the time when he announced he was running for the party. The Conservatives put out a nasty press release that considered him the “future leader of the Liberals,” as though this was a replay of the Michael Ignatieff trajectory. Carney didn’t make any announcements of future plans, but he did the next worst thing – he stated that he planned to support the Liberal Party in any way he could.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. I have written about this before, but the Bank of Canada is an institution that needs to be scrupulously independent, much like the Supreme Court of Canada. Monetary policy is not to be trifled with, and the separation between fiscal policy (government and the Department of Finance) from monetary policy (Bank of Canada) is sacrosanct in our system. We had a bona fide political scandal about maintaining this separation decades ago, which was the Coyne Affair, and it led to changes that guaranteed the central bank’s independence. This is why, much like Supreme Court justices, former Bank of Canada governors need to maintain their scrupulous independence after office, because the danger of tainting the institution is too great. Because what are we going to see now? All monetary policy decisions will be viewed through the lens of partisan politics and opportunism – which is toxic to the institution. Opposition MPs will start badgering and hectoring the current Governor when he appears before committee and assuming partisanship in his advice and policy direction – something that we are already getting dangerously close to, as Pierre Poilievre tried to go after the Governor over the decision to buy bonds through the current fiscal crisis (which is perfectly sound expansionary policy at a time when we were seeing deflation instead of the kinds of inflation that the Bank is trying to target). This matters, no matter how many Liberal partisans seem to think that this is something they can just handwave away because he said nice things about them.

If Liberals had a modicum of respect for institutions that they claim they have when those institutions are under attack by the Other Guys, then they wouldn’t keep doing this, and yet it happens time and again. They undermined the Senate, the Governor General, and now the Bank of Canada. They have become an absolute menace to the systems and institutions that are at the heart of how our country operates. This is a problem.

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Roundup: Waiting for the modelling to show up

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If you weren’t convinced up until now that Ontario is being run by a group of incompetent murderclowns, there was a tacit admission yesterday from Solicitor General Sylvia Jones that the government held off on increasing restrictions because they wanted to see the modelling show up in hospitals first.

Let that sink in. Fourteen gods damned months into this pandemic, they still don’t understand that the modelling is a warning, not a prediction. They decided to wait until the lagging indicators – hospitalisation – was prevalent before “locking down” (but not really), which means that by this point, the spread of the virus is out of control. How they could not understand this fourteen gods damned months later is a sign that they are either wilfully ignorant, or they just don’t care. They were content to let people die because they couldn’t be arsed to stop the spread of the infection that they knew was coming for some wrong-headed notion about trying to “balance” the economy rather than ensuring people wouldn’t die – never mind that the economy would come back faster if they squashed the spread of the virus and it we wouldn’t any more lockdowns.

https://twitter.com/mattgurney/status/1380194055112511490

I’m still mad about this. I was mad about it all day since the interview hit social media. I would say it’s unbelievable, but given this particular posse of murderclowns and everything they’ve done in this pandemic, it’s unfortunately all too believable.

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Roundup: Stay-at-home again, complete with feigned surprise

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Ontario is now back under a “stay-at-home” order, issued its third state of emergency, and lo, there has been movement on vaccinations in that they are now going to start targeting high-risk neighbourhoods and essential workers, like they should have started weeks ago, so that’s positive. Oh, but still no paid sick leave because Ford and company continue to mislead people by claiming the federal sickness benefit is the same thing, which it absolutely is not. What most assuredly is not positive is the fact that the provincial government knew this was coming. They have been warned for weeks that this was going to happen, and they were explicitly told that loosening restrictions in the face of the new variants would be a disaster. There was that press conference on February 11th that said just that – and they didn’t listen, and now they have the gall to pretend to be surprised that the numbers are exceeding their worst-case scenarios? Sorry, but no. Get out of here with that bullshit.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1379884476054966272

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1379962777566085120

And here’s Supriya Dwivedi which lays out why Ford has completely ballsed this up and created this Third Wave and all of the illnesses and resulting deaths as a result.

Meanwhile, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization has decided to stick with their advice that second doses can be delayed for up to four months – and the “up to” is key – but given increasing vaccine supplies, that interval is likely to be less. And the reason why they’re saying this is because they are looking at the balance of ensuring that as many people get a first dose as soon as possible in order to have at least some level of protection. The problem is that this isn’t being effectively communicated by most media outlets (the Star piece linked here is actually doing a decent job) and even on Power & Politics last night, after the head of NACI patiently explained all of this, Vassy Kapelos still characterised it as NACI recommending a four-month delay, omitting the “up to” and creating a false impression of the advice, and it makes it easy for certain parties like the Conservatives to deliberately misconstrue NACI’s advice for partisan point-scoring. I do not understand what CBC thinks they are doing by reporting this way. It defies sense.

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Roundup: Asking for a “special monitor”

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As case numbers continue to rise alarmingly in most parts of the country, Ontario Premier Doug Ford tried to get into a pissing match with the federal government over vaccines, and the federal government wasn’t playing ball, simply tweeting vaccine delivery numbers in response. This on the same day that Ford insisted that schools were safe, and hours later, Toronto’s chief public health officer issued a Section 22 order and closed all Toronto area schools as of today, so that’s a good look. (In Alberta, Jason Kenney also had to issue new restrictions, while still trying to take swipes at the federal government for vaccines well – distraction from their own failure to contain the virus).

In the middle of this, Erin O’Toole decided that he was going to promise a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic – which, to be fair, the government has also said they would be willing to hold once things were in the clear, because everyone wants lessons learned – but O’Toole loaded his particular desire for such an inquiry full of easily disproven allegations and conspiracy theories. Things like how there weren’t any vaccines even being considered last spring because everything was too new; or CanSino (which the government never “put all their eggs in one basket” with, and the vaccine task force didn’t give them any priority when they started compiling the vaccine portfolio), which he keeps referencing as though saying it often enough will make it true. That, and by focusing solely on vaccines, he is very conspicuously trying to avoid blaming his provincial brethren for their massive failures, for which a proper national public inquiry would probably be needed to enumerate (because I doubt that most of those provinces will call inquiries of their own).

More to the point, O’Toole’s demand for a “special monitor” to be appointed from the Auditor General’s office to examine decisions “in real time” is literal parliamentary insanity. What exactly an accountant knows about public health decisions I’m not entirely sure, but frankly, having them looking over the government’s shoulders is literally O’Toole abdicating his own responsibility for holding government to account for their decisions. Trying to pawn the job off to a non-partisan Officer of Parliament (or their proxy) as a way of using them as both a cudgel and a shield is the height of cowardice and a refusal to do his own bloody job. It’s also why I keep warning against the proliferation of these kinds of Officers – pretty soon, MPs won’t have a job left to do. This is a mess all around, and O’Toole continues to prove that his attempts at showing he is relevant only reiterate that he is trying to make himself obsolete.

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Roundup: The third wave is accelerating

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The third wave is accelerating, and targeting younger populations, and the affected provinces are seeing record levels of hospital strain, and the number of positive cases has now topped one million since the beginning of the pandemic. School boards are starting to shut down in-person learning in several Ontario regions, and it’s getting really, really bad. But the province is keeping on with its current mockdown rather than imposing actual tough measures, and I’m sure we’ll hear another round of blame being laid at the federal government (never mind that the vaccine rollout is ahead of schedule, with another 2.2 million doses arriving this week).

One thing we are hearing a lot about is workplace spread, and most of it with “essential workers” (even though that definition is so broad these days). This is causing a number of infectious disease experts to call for the province to shift its vaccination plans from simply going by age to targeting areas where more of these essential workers live, or even vaccinating at workplaces. I’m not confident, however, that the affected provinces will do so, because a) they are being run by incompetent murderclowns who are incapable of pivoting to where there is greater need, b) they want to cater to boomers because that’s where the votes are, and c) they have an in-built ideological inability to doing the kinds of things that are needed to halt workplace spread, such as paid sick days or simply paying people to stay at home to avoid spread, and this is allowing things to get progressively worse.

To that end, here’s Robert Hiltz, who quite rightly points out that the current mockdowns will remain useless because the provincial governments have decided that these workers are expendable to keep the economy chugging along, while tut-tutting at the rest of us, and yes, that should make us all furious.

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Roundup: A refusal to admit failure in the face of the third wave

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Ontario is once again going back into a four-week mockdown because the province walked right into the third wave of the pandemic, despite being warned repeatedly that they were headed for disaster, but they barrelled ahead anyway. And because the murderclowns who run this province want to keep things as confusing as possible for everyone, decided to brand this one a “shutdown” instead of a “lockdown” or a “stay at home” order.

But what remains galling is the fact that nobody wants to take responsibility for the current state of affairs. Most concerning is that the province’s chief medical officer of health insists that it hasn’t been a failure, because hey, the modelling said we’d be at five or six thousand cases a day if they didn’t make any interventions, and we’re only at 2000, so mission accomplished. No, seriously – that’s his argument. It’s utterly bonkers, and they’re getting away with it because all of Doug Ford’s folksy sing-song pronouncements keep blinding people to what is going on, and the bulk of the media in Queen’s Park is not going hard enough on him for it.

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1377376033729511425

Of course, this isn’t simply confined to Ontario either. Alberta is seeing some its highest case numbers, and the variants are in full-blown community spread, and what does Jason Kenney do? Refuse to impose tougher measures, trot out his failed “personal responsibility” schtick, and blame the federal government for not making enough vaccines appear from thin air by way of magic. No, seriously. How people stand for it, I just don’t understand.

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Roundup: Sending in the wrong minister

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The shenanigans at committees on all sides are severely testing my patience, as things continue to spiral toward a potential contempt of Parliament charge, never mind that what’s being demanded is exceeding what is generally acceptable parliamentary norms.

The demands that staffers appear at committee are clearly outrageous and in violation of the sacrosanct notion of ministerial responsibility, but the Liberals are nevertheless pushing the bounds of what is acceptable in and of itself. Instead of sending staffers, they were offered the chance to send the prime minister instead – a bit of a long shot, but sending the Government House Leader was clearly testing the committee’s bounds. For them to then send the Minister for Middle Class™ Prosperity® on a second appearance is definitely pushing buttons, and they should know better. If you’re going to invoke the principle of ministerial responsibility, then gods damned well respect it and put the actual minister forward, and for PMO staff, then the prime minister is the responsible minister. Sending Mona Fortier is a deliberate slap in the face.

At the same time, I am also particularly at the end of my rope with the constant demand for unredacted documents, and the insistence that the House of Commons’ Law Clerk be the one to do any redactions. His office is already buried under the literal millions of documents that the Health Committee demanded, and now the Foreign Affairs committee also wants a piece of him and his time to do even more redactions when the non-partisan civil service is normally the body that does this work. This is generally beyond the scope of what the Law Clerk should be doing, and he’s already stressed his resources and staff to do work they shouldn’t be doing, and yet more MPs keep making even more demands. That’s not how this works, and not how this should work, and yet they keep hand-waving about “cover-up!” as though that’s some kind of talisman. I’m not sure what the solution here is other than telling MPs from all sides to grow up, but that’s where we are.

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