Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Supply councils and stalled approvals

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After a very welcome day off from daily pressers, prime minister Justin Trudeau was back at it on Sunday, in his weekend uniform – jeans, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a blazer – but no sweater because it was actually nice out in Ottawa for a change. And while some weekend pressers are merely greatest hits packages, this one had a few substantive announcements – $240 million for online health and mental health tools that people can access, $175 million for a Canadian company doing promising research using COVID-19 antibodies; and launching a “national supply council” for dealing with personal protective equipment – more of which was elaborated upon in the ministerial presser that followed – and a reminder that enhanced Canada Child Benefit payments were on the way. During the Q&A, Trudeau also reiterated that the promised legislation that would allow municipalities to further restrict handguns in their jurisdictions would be coming once Parliament returned to normal.

Something that Trudeau and Dr. Theresa Tam were asked about in their respective pressers were the news that Health Canada had ordered a pause on those Spartan Bioscience portable testing kits because while the tests themselves worked, it turns out that the swabs didn’t go deep enough into the nasal cavity to get good samples, so they risked giving false negatives. That becomes a setback that some provinces – and remote communities in particular – will definitely feel because they had already ordered thousands of those kits as part of their plans.

Meanwhile, I see that Jason Kenney is back making noises that the federal government isn’t doing enough for the oil and gas sector, and brings up the auto sector bailout of 2008-09 as a comparison of “unfair treatment.” He should be careful what he wishes for – I’m not sure he’s advocating for the same thing at all.

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Roundup: Bringing in the assault-rifle ban

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For the second day in a row, prime minister Justin Trudeau held his daily presser in the West Block instead of outside of Rideau Cottage, and once again, he was flanked by Cabinet ministers for an announcement – this time it was to declare that he had signed an Order-in-Council that relegated some 1500 “assault-style” rifles to be illegal, effective immediately, with a two-year amnesty period while they sorted out the legislation around the buy-back programme that was going to accompany it, which would be tabled as soon as we got back to regular parliamentary operations, along with a budget. They took great care to say that legitimate hunters and sport-shooters were not being targeted, and Chrystia Freeland spun a homily about her father the farmer taking his hunting rifle to scare off bears and to shoot prairie chickens that would become dinner – but also made the point that part of what they were doing was targeting the fetishization of particular weapons as part of gun culture.

The reaction was fast and furious – the Conservatives considered it to be pure politics and that they were taking advantage of the tragedy in Nova Scotia to score points (because they never did that). Jason Kenney was predictably apoplectic and declared that he was looking at replacing the federal firearms officer with a provincial chief firearms officer for all the good it would do, considering that these changes are under the Criminal Code, which is federal jurisdiction. Many gun control advocates said that these measures didn’t go far enough, and that they didn’t live up to the promises that the Liberals made during the election. There is also the very legitimate criticism that these kinds of measures are useless unless more attention and resources are poured into security the border against illegal gun smuggling, which is how a great many illegal firearms wind up in this country.

Add to that was a great deal of hue and cry about the way in which this government went about doing this, which is by Order-in-Council, and many a voice over social media including some reporters who should know better that this was all very unseemly in a “minority government.” (Reminder that there is no such thing as a “minority government” – we have a hung parliament but a government is a government regardless of whether they hold a majority of seats in the legislature or not, because government is Cabinet). So, to break it down, it’s not unseemly because this kind of ban happens through regulation – the legislative framework is already in the Criminal Code. And you want this kind of ban list in regulation because you’re not going to amend the Criminal Code every time you need to add or subtract a particular make of weapon from the prohibited list. That’s why regulation exists, and has its own consultative processes and review by the Scrutiny of Regulations committee in Parliament. The government will still need legislation for their buy-back programme and any other assorted measures to mitigate and compensate current owners, and even though it’s a hung parliament, the Bloc and NDP are almost certainly going to be in support of these measures, so that’s less of a concern for them.

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Roundup: Mourning a fallen helicopter crew

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In light of the news of the downed military helicopter, prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser took on a different format – he was in the West Block today instead of outside of Rideau Cottage, and this time flanked by the minister of national defence, Harjit Sajjan, as well as Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, and the deputy minister of national defence, Jody Thomas. They largely laid out what information they had and their condolences for the families and colleagues of those dead and missing. During the Q&A, non-crash questions largely revolved around the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report earlier that morning on the projected size of the deficit given the various emergency measures, and given that so many of my media colleagues only have a certain number of pre-set narratives when it comes to the deficit, it went about as well as could be expected when Trudeau refused to bite.

On the subject of the deficit, here is a good thread from economist Trevor Tombe, as well as some additional thoughts from Kevin Milligan.

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Roundup: Concern over student measures

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s daily presser was shorter than usual – not much news other than the fact that the legislation for student measures would be coming up that afternoon, and oh yeah, the Snowbirds would be doing flyovers across the country as a salute to front-line workers, which immediately got everyone up in arms over how useless it was (but one suspects it’s also about finding a way for them to keep up their flying hours while airshows are grounded pretty much for the rest of the year). During the Q&A, there were yet more questions on trying to goad some kind of federal strong-arming the provinces over re-openings and to have their guidelines include “hard numbers,” whereas Trudeau kept falling back on “foundational elements” and consultations, and of course jurisdictional differences. He also wouldn’t say that he would mandate that meat-packing plants stay open given that there have been outbreaks in several of them (and pre-pandemic, one major plant had been shut down because it couldn’t pass inspection). He also said that there were discussions with the CFL given that they are likely going to have to cancel their season, which again had people grousing about the possibility of a bailout there (though as far as professional sports in this country goes, I would hazard to say that the CFL is one of the least dominated by millionaires).

And then there was the House of Commons. After the “special committee” met in-person in the Chamber for their designated two-and-a-half hours, things shifted to a regular-ish sitting, with the Speaker in robes and in the Big Chair, and the Mace on the table, to discuss the bill on the student measures. This one seems to have been a bit more controversial than other measures, because the Conservatives were demanding that it include measures to ensure that students would still look for jobs (in the middle of a global pandemic, no less) because it’s terrible that they could get paid for staying at home (in the middle of a global pandemic), while the NDP were howling that the measures weren’t as generous as the CERB, forgetting that if students had made more than $5000 last year because they worked enough, they were eligible for the CERB, and this student programme was intended for those who had different circumstances, while also being paired with other enriched benefits. Nevertheless, the government did relent and ensured that a ticky-box would be added to the student application portal to attest that yes, they were looking for a job, while they did increase the benefit levels for students with disabilities or dependants. Crisis averted. The bill heads to the Senate, but not until Friday, for some unknown reason.

I do find the insistence by the Conservatives and the Bloc that these students be forced to work on farms or the like to be problematic because we’ve heard from agricultural producers that this is usually specialized work, and you can’t just send untrained students to do it (which kind of goes to the point about why we should pay the migrant workers with the specialized knowledge more, and ensure that they have pathways to citizenship). As for the pearl-clutching that students might make more on the government wage replacements for the duration of the pandemic instead of taking low-paid jobs that with no guarantee of safety in the course of a pandemic, it does make me wonder if part of that lesson isn’t actually that maybe employers should be offering higher wages rather than demanding that the government enforce their being artificially low. But hey, since when does basic economics enter into the equation?

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Roundup: The Committee Zoom™

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For his Tuesday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau noted the reports of his mother being sent to hospital when her apartment building in Montreal caught fire, and assured everyone that he had spoken to her and that she is doing fine. There wasn’t much in the way of news to share – noting that new federal modelling numbers for the course of the pandemic would be released shortly (and they were, with the same obligatory dumb questions as though these were predictions and not tools for planning purposes), and that their federal guidelines would also be forthcoming later in the day (and they too were). The Q&A was mostly focused on attempts to get Trudeau to say whether or not he would make any potential COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, some obligatory Francophone outrage that some of the personal protective equipment coming into the country didn’t have French labelling, and several attempts for him to give his personal opinion on whether he would send his kids to school if they were reopened when Quebec’s intend to be (which he dodged repeatedly, talking about science and evidence).

And then came the Great Virtual Committee Meeting – which was not a sitting of the House of Commons as so many people kept calling it. I settled on Committee Zoom™ as what I was going to call it, for what it’s worth. It started off with a ministerial statement from Patty Hajdu, followed by each other party offering a response of equal length, none of which had any bearing on what she was talking about, because we don’t actually debate in this country any longer – we just read prepared speeches past one another. After a brief interruption for petitions, we got down to the questions – five-minute rounds started with Scheer (who was the only leader to ask questions; Jagmeet Singh was wholly absent from the entire day), and then distributed through the parties in what appeared to be the QP rotation list that included obsequious backbench suck-up questions from the Liberals. But it was glitchy – lots of mute button errors, interruptions when MPs didn’t mute properly, constant challenges with the translation channels and which channel the MP was speaking on (some of those points of order leading to huge digressions as points mounted), a couple of Ministers whose connections were poor and made for very bad sound (spare a thought for the poor transcriptionists in Hansard),

Of course, everyone’s takeaway seems to be just how civil the whole thing was, and that there was no heckling. The closest we got was when Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner was fairly aggressively asking questions and interrupting the responses she felt were taking too long. But without the clapping (which needs to die regardless) and the heckling, everyone has taken up with the impression that this was somehow preferable to QP. It’s not. Sure, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has a point about the questions being generally better, but this was also the function of it not being on a 35-second clock, which QP needs to do away with as it is. That would help matters immensely. But the flip-side of this format is that ministers were able to give non-sequitur talking point answers that had nothing to do with what was asked of them (particularly the ones around tax havens), which is one of the places where heckling in the Chamber would actually help get that point across. Heckling doesn’t need to be just the jeering, hooting baboons that it can be (and yes, it absolutely can be). As well, there is a need for some theatre in politics, and I don’t see the long-term benefit of being robbed of it by trying to make this a more permanent feature as people are already salivating at the prospect of. The unintended consequences will be far worse than you can possibly imagine.

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Roundup: Responsibility for re-opening

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For his Monday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t have a lot of news – mostly talking about how the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy was now available for application, and that payments would be going out next week for businesses that are approved, and that they were working with the opposition on legislation for the new measures for students announced last week. And sure enough, later in the day, notice was given that the Commons would sit in some capacity on Wednesday, after their “special committee,” to pass said bill. (No word yet on whether the Senate gets recalled for Wednesday evening or Thursday morning). During the Q&A, Trudeau had to once again reiterate that he was loathe to enact the Emergencies Act, which people are still demanding that he do for some strange reason. He also stated once again the even though provinces may have different timelines when it comes to re-opening their economies (because, once again, each province has a different epidemiology), those provinces have rights and obligations around local measures, while the federal role was to provide guidelines that they should follow. Again, the notion that he should swoop in and take over their areas of jurisdiction remains a deeply frustrating one.

This jurisdictional howling will only get worse as both Ontario and Quebec unveiled their re-opening plans yesterday, Ontario starting with guideposts before they will move to next steps, while Quebec has decided that they will start opening some schools in two weeks, which has everyone alarmed that it’s too soon, and that they don’t understand the epidemiology of this disease, because it can and does affect children and they may actually be asymptomatic and become major spreaders. So that’s fun.

Meanwhile, the first “virtual” meeting of MPs in a Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic meets today, and everyone is going to call it a “historic first virtual sitting of Parliament,” and they’ll be wrong. Because it’s not a sitting of the Commons, it’s a special committee, that the Speaker will be chairing from a committee room in the West Block. And you can bet that Trudeau and others will pat themselves on the back for this, and “Because it’s 2020,” and that kind of noise, but it’s an absurdly unwieldy committee, and that’s it. Treat it with only that amount of reverence. (And look for my column on why this matters later today).

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Roundup: No to herd immunity

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For his Saturday presser, Justin Trudeau was back to his weekend uniform – tieless, collar unbuttoned, under a sweater and blazer with jeans. He started off talking about last night’s virtual vigil for Nova Scotia, then recapped the programmes they launched during the week before talking about the $62.5 million the government would spend to help the fish and seafood processing industry cope with the pandemic, both in terms of capacity, protective equipment and ensuring more physical distancing in workspaces. During the Q&A, there was more talk of health transfers and this bizarre notion that somehow the federal government could put long-term care facilities “under the Canada Health Act” (erm, I don’t think the Act works the way you think it does, guys), Trudeau stated once again that he has no intention of interfering in areas of provincial jurisdiction. Let that sink in. No. Intention. So stop asking him to “take over” things like healthcare and rents. Provinces exist. Sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867 exist. These are real things and he can’t just wave a wand and suddenly take over. Jurisdiction doesn’t work like that. Stop asking. Trudeau also said that he was aware of the Correctional Investigator’s report on the state of federal prisons in this pandemic era, where anyone who is sick is being sent to solitary confinement (and potential human rights abuses), but he continued to claim that they were taking “strong measures.” The problem is that nobody can seem to show any evidence of said measures. (Trudeau mentioned there wouldn’t be any pressers today, so don’t look for one).

During the ministerial briefing, Dr. Theresa Tam also shot down this notion of herd immunity and “immunity passes” that keep being floated around after Chile is piloting them, in part because we simply don’t have enough information about the virus to know whether or not someone can be re-infected once they’ve had it, or how long any protection from anti-bodies may last, and herd immunity means to continually expose greater numbers to the infection, which could still overwhelm our health capacity, and no, younger people aren’t really less susceptible as has been suggested – they can still get very sick from it, even if the mortality rate is lower for younger people. It means there are no easy fixes to reopening the economy, as much as we may hope for one.

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Roundup: Commercial rent relief on the way

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For his Friday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau at long last unveiled the details of the commercial rent relief programme, now that they have ironed out the details with the provinces (considering that it’s their jurisdiction), which is essentially that commercial landlords (for properties where the rent is below a certain threshold) need to offer 75 percent discounts on their rent from April to June, and the federal government would provide non-repayable loans of up to fifty percent of said rents. From there, he mentioned that they were deploying Canadian Armed Forces personnel to certain long-term care facilities in Ontario and Quebec, and that they were working to beef up the salaries of existing long-term care workers. He also said that they were working with provinces and territories to establish guidelines for when they re-open their economies, but that people need to pay attention to the local rules and not those in other jurisdictions, because the outbreaks are different in each region. (During the First Ministers’ weekly teleconference later in the day, there was some agreement to this, and apparently each province and territory will be submitting their plans to the federal government).

Of course, with the news that there was an agreement on commercial rents, we got some fairly usual voices caterwauling that all rents needed to be dealt with, not just commercial ones. The response to that, of course, is to talk to one’s premier, because that’s where the responsibility lies – Trudeau can’t just swoop in because landlord and tenant legislation is strictly provincial, and the mechanisms they employed for the commercial rent relief are not necessarily suited for residential properties. And there was word today that Doug Ford wants the federal government to step in on residential rents – after he has been spectacularly unwilling to do anything and tells people to work it out with their landlords – so if there is more uptake with his fellow premiers in the next few days, they may try to design something, though I’m not sure exactly what, because I worry that there may be a bigger domino effect throughout the banking sector, but there are no quick fixes. And no, the national housing strategy does not give federal jurisdiction over rents, nor does the Canada Health Act provide a template for rent either, because there are no funding agreements with the provinces, nor would the federal government simply be transferring a pot of money to the provinces for residential rents. It’s complex, there are big jurisdictional issues, and Trudeau can’t and shouldn’t do everything. The provinces have a role to play and they should play it.

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Roundup: On Scheer’s silence over Sloan

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was all about science – specifically, a $1.1 billion package for research on vaccines and clinical trials, plus the launch of an immunity task force that will help to determine the spread of the virus within the population (as many may have been exposed and only ever experienced mild symptoms or had none at all), which will be necessary as we talk about re-opening the economy and how that will proceed. Trudeau also reiterated that the situation with long-term care facilities is untenable, that using soldiers to help the residents of those homes is merely a short-term solution that demands a long-term re-think. During the Q&A, Trudeau was not promising the billions of dollars that municipalities were demanding, but made some fairly vague commitments about working with provinces, given that cities are creatures of provincial legislation. He also said that provinces were going to take their own leads on re-opening their economies given that there are different epidemics playing out across the country and not just one nationally, though there is talk of federal guidelines.

The thing that had everyone talking throughout the day, however, was Conservative leadership candidate Derek Sloan making a fairly blatantly racist call for Dr. Theresa Tam to be fired while questioning her loyalty to Canada as he accuses her of following Chinese propaganda. And more to the point, that Andrew Scheer refuses to comment on what Sloan says insofar as the racism – he did say that as the opposition, they should be criticizing ministers who make decisions and not officials who give advice. Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising as the party has already been pursuing this notion of vilifying the WHO because they were too credulous about the information coming out of China and Canada followed WHO advice, and Sloan simply took it one step further. And more to the point, under Scheer, the party has offered succour to racists on more than one occasion (most notably after the incident when Trudeau called out the racist statements of an avowedly racist woman in Quebec at an event, after which the Conservatives insisted that she was merely concerned about the economic impact of “illegal” asylum seekers and that anyone who questioned the government would be called a racist – because being labelled a racist is apparently a worse crime than actual racism). A few other Conservative MPs did denounce Sloan’s comments, and local officials within Sloan’s riding called on him to be denounced by Scheer and expelled from the party.

Ah, but that’s part of the issue. The Conservatives, if you recall, voted to adopt certain provisions of Michael Chong’s (garbage) Reform Act which ensures that the full caucus must vote to expel a member, that the leader alone can’t do it. It would be mighty awkward for Scheer to pull that trigger regardless, considering that he’s in an interim, outgoing position and not really the leader any longer, and that Sloan is vying to replace him (and it will be a doomed effort), but I will say that regardless of the circumstances, I have long been uncomfortable with both leaders expelling members, and with the more recent notion that MPs (and senators, where applicable) should be expelled at the first sign of trouble, rather than managing them better from within the fold, or leaving it up to their riding association to decide whether or not to keep them in the party, being as they are really the ones who should be deciding.

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Roundup: Unveiling the help for students

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Prime minister Justin Trudeau arrived at his daily presser with big news – the long-awaited relief package for students, totalling some $9 billion in new emergency measures, starting with the Canada Emergency Student Benefit that provides between $1250 and $1750 per student between May and August (being the period when they would ordinarily be out of school). This would be augmented by additional grants next year on top of loan repayment deferrals. As well, the government would be creating a number of placements for students in needed areas, as well as a Canada Student Service Grant between $1000 and $5000 for those students who volunteer with essential services during these pandemic times – on top of additional funding for the next academic year, and specific pots of money for Indigenous students. During the Q&A and the subsequent ministerial presser, there were questions on repatriations (most especially from India), as well as on what’s happening with prisons as they face the pandemic (and here is a good thread from Justin Ling, who brought the receipts as to why this matters) – made especially important because even the Correctional Investigator can’t get proper figures about what is going on. This gets complicated when you have tough-on-crime politicians making hay about needed decarceration during a crisis like this. Trudeau also gave a rare moment of candour when he stated in response to a question that universal benefits are actually more complicated than they seem, which was why they went with the CERB (but it only took him three tries to actually say it – something I’ve been pointing out for a while).

And then the requests came. Quebec’s premier asked for an additional 1000 soldiers to help cover off in long-term care facilities as the death toll continues to climb, particularly around Montreal. (Here’s a thread that explains some of what is going on, particularly as transmission from long-term-care facility to hospitals is an added problem). Around the same time, Doug Ford also asked for military assistance with five facilities in Ontario (but wouldn’t say which ones). But throughout this, we keep seeing the PM and other ministers being asked if the federal government needs to somehow “take over” the long-term care file, which I think is a bit boggling because there’s no actual mechanism for them to do that. Provincial powers aren’t delegated by the federal government – back during Confederation, they were divvied up between the provinces and the federal government, and in many cases, the provinces were given those powers because they are closer to the people. Yes, there is a federal role in healthcare (beyond simple dollars), which has a lot to do with regulation and the approval of drugs and medical devices, which avoids the duplication of every province needing to do their own. I’m not sure how exactly they should assume control of these facilities – especially because provinces do not take well to having their funding allocations come with strings or reporting requirements. Seriously – previous governments have tried, and it doesn’t go well. Yes, we’re going to need to have a reckoning in this country about the whole issue of long-term care, but that reckoning can’t simply be having Ottawa assume control. I mean, not unless they want to amend the Constitution (and good luck with that).

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