Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Ontario is on fire, and Ford offers performance art

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I will admit that I am currently vacillating between rage and despair right now, as Doug Ford and his band of murderclowns looked at the new modelling data that shows us still on a course for disaster, and decide to do the barest minimum effort to merely prolong the state of affairs, rather than to take meaningful action.

It’s not just half-measures – it’s theatre. Closing parks and playgrounds will do nothing to halt the spread of the virus, but workplaces deemed “essential” continue to operate with few protections for workers – which is where much of the new infections are happening, and then spreading when those “essential” workers return home, often to crowded, inter-generational households – and most of all, Ford is still not budging on paid sick leave. On top of that, he’s giving police the power to randomly stop people to ask why they’re not at home, and essentially reintroduced carding (which is unconstitutional), and will inevitably target Black, Indigenous and other minorities because that’s what police do. (Several police forces have pledged not to use these powers, but we’ll see if that holds). And then Ford lies and says that Ontario has had the toughest measures anywhere, and pats himself on the back while he blames ordinary people for not following rules – rules which change on a daily basis and are never clear to begin with – and blames the federal government for not magically providing vaccines fast enough when it is mathematically impossible to vaccinate our way out of this.

None of this needed to happen. That’s what is just so gods damned enraging about this whole thing. They were warned repeatedly back in February not to re-open until the reproduction rate of the virus was lower, and they didn’t listen. They rushed to re-open just as variants were starting to spread in the community, confident that they could let a little bit of COVID circulate and everything would be find (when it grows exponentially), because they needed to “protect the economy,” and lo, things got worse like everyone knew that they would, and we had to restrict again, and it will keep happening like this until they can finally squash the curve of transmission.

If there is one silver lining, it’s that we know that Doug Ford can be swayed, because Uncle Doug doesn’t like being the bad guy. He wants to be the fun uncle. And maybe now, people in Ontario will finally be outraged enough to stop being guiled by his folksy bullshit, and finally start demanding action in a consistent and coherent manner. That may be what finally spurs action, months and thousands of unnecessary later, assuming the anger is directed in the right way. That may, however, be easier said than done, but the possibility exists, and perhaps we as a province should seize it.

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QP: Putting words in Boris Johnson’s mouth

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In the wake of yesterday’s nudity brouhaha and the subsequent calls for an investigation, the prime minister was away and there were but two Liberals in the Chamber — Mark Gerretsen and Marc Serré. Candice Bergen led off by video, and she recited a hyperbolic litany of ills that lockdowns have imposed upon the population and lamented the government’s failures, before demanding to know why the finance minister was treating the situation as a political opportunity. Sean Fraser noted that they were looking to reform the system for those who were disadvantaged by the status quo. Bergen then switched to delays in Moderna shipments, and using it to blame the government for the third wave of the pandemic. Patty Hajdu reminded her that the government has been there for the provinces all through the pandemic. Bergen then raised the Daily Mail’s coverage of vaccines in Canada, falsely attributing comments to Boris Johnson around vaccinations when Johnson has in fact credited the lockdowns in Britain for halting the spread of the virus and not vaccinations, which is a pretty important thing to realize. In response, Hajdu again repeated that they were supporting provinces and encouraged people to get vaccinated when it’s their turn. Gérard Deltell got up next and in French, slammed the Bloc for joining the Liberals in ending the defence committee study on the General Vance allegations, to which Harjit Sajjan dismissed the attacks and patted himself on the back for his six hours at committee. Deltell then tried to police the government’s feminism, and Sajjan said that they were waiting for the committee’s report.

For the Bloc, Yves Perron led off to decry delays in getting temporary foreign workers out of quarantine and into fields, for which Carla Qualtrough assured him they were working as fast as they can to resolve the situation. Perron blasted that the contractor doing the testing didn’t have capacity in French, and Qualtrough assured him they were working to ensure people in Quebec could get their services in French.

Jagmeet Singh led off for the NDP, and in French, asked to extend the tax filing deadline, and Diane Lebouthillier listed tax relief measures they have offered. Singh switched to English to blame slow vaccine rollout on the federal government, apparently believing that vaccines can be produced form thin air, and wanted an admission of failure on domestic production. Anita Anand recited vaccine arrivals and that Canada is third in the G20 for vaccinations.

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Roundup: The curious case of Will Amos

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It was the end of Question Period when Bloc MP Claude DeBellefeuille raised a point of order, asking the Speaker to remind MPs that there is a dress code, citing that she had seen a male MP in a state of undress – which came across through the interpretation as “shirtless,” but as it turns out was much more – and she managed to do this without naming who it was, or offering too much description other than he apparently has a very good physique, and all with a straight face. The Speaker thanked her for the intervention and gave his usual gentle chiding. Because said MP’s mic was not activated, no one public-facing saw who it was, especially not in the Chamber. MPs who are on Zoom, however, have a different view than the rest of us get, and they could see it.

Not long after, someone leaked a minimally censored screenshot to Brian Lilley, who put it out over Twitter, and in short order it was determined that this was Liberal MP Will Amos, and he was more than shirtless. Amos made an apology, citing that he had just come from “jogging,” and didn’t realize his camera was on – but I know this has raised more questions because MPs need special log-ins and passwords in order to even log into their special Zoom, so why he would have done so before he had changed is…dubious. (It has also been questioned why he would have gone jogging mid-day when there are no showers in his Precinct office building). In any case, Amos has learned a very valuable lesson.

A bigger issue here, however, is the screenshot itself. MPs aren’t allowed to take photos in the Chamber, and it has been determined that screenshots of their Zoom screens follow under the same rules. It would have almost certainly been an MP who took the screenshot in order to leak to Lilley, which is a violation of House rules, and arguably, Amos’ privileges. It’s also likely that it was a Conservative MP who leaked said photo, given that they leaked it to Lilley. (There are additional issues around the non-consensual sharing of such images, and whether they would have been so quick to do so if it was a woman). I suspect that if Amos were to pursue the matter as a breach of his privileges, this could turn into a Thing that the Procedure and House Affairs Committee will likely have to deal with. It should also be yet another wake-up call for MPs about their collective behaviour over the course of this whole Hybrid Parliament, and why they are letting their standards slide. It probably wouldn’t hurt for the Speaker to actually lay down the law for a change rather than the constant gentle chidings that do absolutely nothing to change behaviour, but here we are.

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QP: Demanding an admission of failure

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As rain threaten outside, Justin Trudeau was back in the House of Commons for another day of Question Period, with one other Liberal behind him, and you would be right if you guessed that it was once again Mark Gerretsen. Erin O’Toole led off by pointing to other American outlets which are concern trolling about the situation in Canada, and blamed the rollout of vaccines for the third wave — which is a huge falsehood — and demanded and admission of failure. Trudeau called this out as disinformation, citing our place in the rankings and that delivery schedules were rolling along even if Moderna is occasionally a day or two behind. O’Toole quoted the head of Toronto’s university health network saying this is the worst place in the pandemic and he blamed the slow rollout of vaccines instead of murderclown premiers, to which Trudeau stated that they were doing what they could to support provinces. O’Toole switched to French to repeated his first question, got the same answer, and then repeated the question on doctors in French, and again got the same answer.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and raised the bailout of Air Canada, accusing the government of trying to break regional airlines, for which Trudeau insisted there will be further assistance for the aerospace industry. Blanchet was not mollified, but Trudeau replied with further assurances that they are supporting the sector. 

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, he decried the current state of the pandemic, and demanded a new plan to fight it, for which Trudeau stated that in some areas of the country it is bad and that they are doing what they can to help affected provinces. Singh switched to English to decry the cancellation of vaccinations appointments in Scarborough, which is a question of provincial jurisdiction, not federal. Trudeau stated that things were bad in Ontario and that they were trying to offer what assistance they can to the Ford government. 

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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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