Tag Archives: Public Health

Roundup: Expanded help, pending the provinces

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau opened by talking about his meeting with G7 leaders, talking about the need for a global response to a global pandemic, and the need to help more vulnerable nations – leaving it unspoken that it will be harder to do that if the WHOs funding takes a big hit thanks to Trump’s conspiracy theorism around it. He mentioned his upcoming meeting with the premiers, and noted that Quebec had made an official request for assistance with its long-term care workers – and while many reporters wanted details on what exactly the ask was, the response through the day was that it came late the night before and they were still talking with the province about how best to support them (though the theme seems to be that they want the army to help with these long-term care facilities – something they may have some ability to help with). Trudeau also noted that when things weren’t going as well as hoped, “we make changes,” and then announced that they were expanding the eligibility for the Canada Emergency Business Accounts, as well as gave a few more details about the planned Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance, which would provide loans (some of them forgivable) to commercial property owners on the condition that they provide rent reductions to commercial tenants in May and June – though the coordination of this is still happening with the provinces.

One thing that did emerge, both in the Q&A with Trudeau and during the ministerial one that followed, were questions relating to the modelling of the pandemic, and how we’ve had nearly twice as many deaths as projected by this point, prompting questions about what went wrong with the models. And my head exploded. These models were not predictions or forecasts – they’re an exercise to help with resource planning, which has been stated over and over again, and yet we had more than one journalist try and treat these models as credible data. And because these reporters been told time and again that they’re not data, they’re not forecasts, they’re planning tools, and the fact that this doesn’t sink in, is crazy-making.

Meanwhile, here’s economist Kevin Milligan’s evaluation of the Conservative demand for a GST rebate, which is harder than it looks, and probably not as helpful as the Conservatives think it would be.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1250802992565022720

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Roundup: Trying to blame the WHO

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Andrew Scheer was again out first yesterday morning to repeat his call for in-person sittings in the House of Commons (which Elizabeth May somehow claims is mere partisanship, which I don not grasp), before Scheer went off on tangents about the WHO, because apparently he thinks that following Trumpian logic is a winning plan. (The Conservatives on the Commons health committee have also been aggressively trying to “get answers” on misinformation from China laundered through the WHO).

Prime minister Justin Trudeau was up next for his daily presser, wherein he laid out plans to expand the CERB to those who make less than $1000 and seasonal workers, as well as those whose EI has run out, and promised wage top-ups for those essential workers who make less than $2500/month, but still no news on help for students and commercial rent (which one assumes is in partnership with the provinces). He also noted the assistance that the Canadian Forces as providing in Nunavut and in Northern Quebec. During the Q&A, Trudeau refused to get involved in the WHO debate, for what it’s worth.

Meanwhile, the issue of long-term care in Ontario was getting much more scrutiny, and it turns out that out of 626 facilities in the province, a mere nine got an inspection last year. Nine. Because the province moved to a “risk-based” system, which apparently means that there is only an investigation after a complaint is filed. So that’s totally fine, and one more sign about the complete mismanagement of the Ford government (that people seem to be forgetting when they praise Ford “stepping up” to the current pandemic challenge).

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Roundup: Long-term care and quarantine

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Andrew Scheer was out first this morning, saying that he was trying to get some kind of a deal with the government on how to bring parliament back next week as they are scheduled to, and that he wants in-person sittings of some variety to ensure ongoing accountability (and he’s right). But when asked about bringing his family on that flight when they weren’t planning on them being there (and apparently Senator Don Plett had to get a different flight because it was suddenly full with Scheer’s family), he brushed off said questions. He then spent the rest of the day raising “serious concerns” about the WHO and its recommendations (recall that Jason Kenney on Monday accused Dr. Theresa Tam of repeating talking points from the People’s Republic of China), because what the world needs right now is to hew to the Trumpian instincts to undermine international institutions.

Next up was prime minister Justin Trudeau for his daily presser, in which he announced that four planes full of N95 masks have arrived and are in the process of being validated and distributed, before he brought up $130 million of new funding for the northern territories, including more money for healthcare, for Nutrition North, for northern air carriers, and money for the CanNor development agency. He also noted that they were working to enhance the Canada Emergency Business Account programme and were looking into something about commercial rent (though that’s provincial jurisdiction, so not sure what the federal government could do). As if that weren’t enough, he also raised that they were strengthening some of the measures under the Quarantine Act, as well as boosting the capacity of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, particularly when it comes to ensuring there are more inspectors on the line. Oh, and he didn’t offer any apologies for his trip to Harrington Lake on the weekend, so there was also that. When asked about the issue of long-term care facilities (which is provincial jurisdiction), Trudeau did say they were working with the provinces to see about sending some additional funds to bolster salaries, so there’s also that.

Meanwhile, Vancouver’s city council tried to meet “virtually,” and here’s how that went down, in case anyone thinks it would actually go any better with 338 MPs in parliament.

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Roundup: Playing gotcha with the leaders

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Yesterday had no presser from prime minister Justin Trudeau, but did have a ministerial presser featuring Marie-Claude Bibeau and Deb Schulte. Bibeau laid out additional measures and funding for employers of temporary foreign workers in the agri-food sector so that they can properly quarantine those workers when they arrive, and eventually properly explained the measures taken with the arrivals that the Bloc lit their hair on fire about on Saturday (which the government could have done three days ago had they been more competent in their communications). Schulte spoke about the new federal guidelines for long-term care facilities, but because it’s provincial jurisdiction, they’re hoping the provinces implement said guidelines (but no, they don’t really have any levers to force them because of the constitutional division of powers).

Of course, all anyone could talk about today was the fact that Justin Trudeau *gasp* went to see his wife and kids at Harrington Lake (where they have been staying since Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s recovery) over the weekend, which people claim is in contravention to public health dictates. Erm, except that’s not really true because Harrington Lake is an official residence that is 20 minutes outside of Gatineau. It’s a gods damned suburb where people live year-round. It’s not cottage country where you have small populations and poor public health services that people are attempting to flee to and exposing the locals when they raid the area store on the way up. That was the behaviour that Public Health was warning against, but hey, let’s try to play gotcha.

And then there was Andrew Scheer, who decided to bring his wife and kids with him back to Ottawa on the government jet sent to pick him up for the Saturday sitting. It was supposed to be Elizabeth May, Carla Qualtrough and Scheer, where they could each physically distance on the plane, but with Scheer bringing his family (to spend the rest of the current pandemic period at Stornoway rather than in Regina, where they had been) at the last minute, and May and Qualtrough opted not to be dicks about saying no. (May and Qualtrough were flown back to BC after Saturday, for the record). It may say something about Scheer’s particular sense of entitlement, and that perhaps he should have made arrangements clearer beforehand so perhaps a different plane could have been sent, but the accusations between partisan camps over this is about as mature as we’ve come to expect during a global pandemic.

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Roundup: Disconnected speeches before swift passage

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The daily routine of our pandemic times got a bit of a shake-up this morning as the ministerial presser took place at 11:15 instead of the prime minister’s, and topics included questions on temporary foreign workers being quarantined (or not), and discussions with the provinces about taking action on long-term care facilities, which have been hit hardest by this pandemic.

Shortly thereafter, the skeleton parliament met for its emergency legislation deliberations, if we can call it that. Justin Trudeau led off, raising the history of Vimy Ridge, his own grandfather’s service of going to war while still serving as an MP, and talking about how we needed to protect the Greatest Generation who are now in these long-term care facilities, vulnerable to the pandemic. Andrew Scheer followed with his own address, raising the spectre of the size of the deficit before patting himself on the back for all of the suggestions he’s offered the government this package. The other leaders followed in turn, before the Commons resolved itself to committee of the whole to question ministers in a quasi-Question Period for a lengthy period (the only real news being that Carla Qualtrough stated that they were looking at how to ensure that seasonal workers would also be able to benefit from the CERB), followed by speeches which seemed terribly disconnected from the substance of the bill. In fact, when the speeches ended, and they passed the bill at all stages by unanimous consent, it could be quite noticeable that they didn’t actually debate the bill itself – merely the current pandemic situation.

https://twitter.com/AdamScotti/status/1249050364864856065

The bill then headed to the Senate, where the only minister that Senators grilled for a couple of solid hours was Bill Morneau and his senior associate deputy minister, again largely on the generalities and not the specifics of the bill. Once Morneau left, they adopted the bill at Second Reading and then moved to the speeches during Third Reading, and it seems to me that pretty much every senator present got their own turn, some of them more disconnected from the bill than others. Eventually it too passed, and went on for a swift royal assent. The Senate did come to an agreement on two committees to meet virtually to provide some oversight – now that they allow non-affiliated senators to sit on them – as well as agreed to strike a special committee later on to provide a definitive post mortem on the pandemic.

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Roundup: Back-end accountability and second guessing

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Even though Good Friday is normally a day where the whole of Ontario shuts down as owing to its strong Protestant roots, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless carried on with his daily presser, talking about how the CERB and the Canada Emergency Business Accounts were now online, and that the wage subsidy was on the way. He also said that his Saturday address would be in the House of Commons instead of at Rideau Cottage, and then he would be spending Sunday and Monday with family, so there will be a brief respite from daily pressers (which have been solid for nearly a month now). He also spoke about his teleconference with the premiers, and upon questions about it, stated that no, they were not looking to invoke the Emergencies Act, and it was the very last thing they wanted to do (so maybe stop asking about it). During the Q&A, he was asked about the G20 energy ministers’ meeting and noted that there had been a decision around production cuts, and with regards to the next Bank of Canada governor, the process was ongoing and they had made no decision on next steps.

During the ministerial briefing shortly thereafter, employment minister Carla Qualtrough said that CRA would deal with the issue from there end where some people got double payments (apparently because they may have applied twice out of confusion) rather than relying on people to call in, and that the accountability measures in this programme were built in on the back-end, in order to speed through the processing of these benefits to those who need them. As well, Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller said that the additional funds to Indigenous communities for the pandemic were flowing, and that they will work together with individual communities and First Nations about what they need.

I’m also concerned with the burgeoning proliferation of stories questioning how quickly the government moved early on – particularly around things like travel bans and quarantine measures. One of there reasons, illustrated by the video here, is that this novel virus has proven to work faster and much deadlier than other epidemics we’ve seen in our lifetime. We’re still in the early phases of this pandemic, so it may be a bit early to second-guess things, given that we were following best practices, and travel bans are generally ineffective because people skirt them and don’t report when they are symptomatic because they don’t want to get in trouble for skirting the ban. This pandemic is unlike any we’ve had before, so it’s hard to start demanding why we weren’t better prepared, given that we were prepared for what we were used to expecting, and that should be something we should keep in mind.

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Roundup: Dire stats as Parliament is recalled

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It was a very busy morning – first, Statistics Canada released the March job figures, which were dismal – 1.01 million jobs lost, massive reductions in hours worked, but also (which everyone didn’t really report) that most of these jobs will likely come back once the pandemic measures are over with, which is significant. Following that, the federal Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, released some of the federal modelling on the course of the pandemic, which put everyone into a hot and bothered state.

When prime minister Justin Trudeau held his daily presser, he largely played the role of empathiser in chief – yes, these are all grim numbers, but we’ll get through them together. More to the point, we could be in this until summer, so it’s time to get used to our new normal, particularly if there are subsequent waves that follow this one (though those ones would likely not be as severe and wouldn’t require the same measures like the current lockdown – hopefully). He did also say that he respected parliament but then started making excuses for why he wanted a virtual one, and nope. Not going to fly, sorry.

It was announced later in the day that Parliament will be back on Saturday – 12:15 for the Commons, 4 for the Senate, which likely means Royal Assent by the time the day is over. That means that we’ll have yet more emergency legislation that gets maybe three hours of “debate” in the House of Commons, and that once again all of the negotiations have been done behind closed doors, and there will be no public record about what kind of amendments were requested and agreed to, which serves no one’s interests, particularly those of Canadians.

[Maclean’s has a new Q&A with Dr. Isaac Bogoch on questions people have about the pandemic]

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Roundup: More flexibility, no candour

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For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau announced that they were making their wage subsidy more flexible so that more employers can benefit, and that they were making changes to the Canada Summer Jobs Programme so that they will extend the work period to the end of February 2021 and subsidise the full wage. He also said that he was going to be attending Cabinet in person, his period of self-isolation now over, but that he would still continue to work from home most of the time. During the Q&A portion, the question came up for him a couple of times, and again during the ministerial presser, about why the government didn’t go with the “send cheques to everyone” model, and both Trudeau and Jean-Yves Duclos gave lousy responses. Trudeau said that they looked at different designs, and figured that the CERB was the best way to reach the largest number of affected workers, while the wage subsidy would keep people connected to their jobs, and with those in place, they could look at filling the gaps that people still fell through. Duclos acknowledged “holes” in the social security system that they were working to address and hoped that they would have a better understanding of those coming out of the crisis.

The problem with these responses is that they aren’t what is needed. They’re talking points that stick to happy and good news elements but they don’t offer the kind of candour that is needed around capacity issues and the fact that there is no magic database that has everyone’s SIN and address. You literally cannot just send money to everyone, and cutting cheques to the whole country would literally take months. (More from professor Jennifer Robson on those challenges here). And this lack of candour is a problem – a big problem that they keep shooting themselves in the foot over, and why I wrote my column on this over the weekend. But this government’s penchant for self-inflicted wounds is something to behold, because they are completely incapable of communicating their way out of a wet paper bag.

https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1247917002296971271

Meanwhile, it sounds like the hold-up for the recall of Parliament to pass the wage subsidy legislation is that the Liberals want it to be done “virtually” (even though the Speaker says it could be weeks before that could even be feasible – though I would argue it’s not constitutional) while the Conservatives want the House to come back for regular sittings in a reduced capacity (which is what I’ve been arguing for weeks). Parliament is an essential service. The Liberals are being unreasonable on this one.

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Roundup: A whole lot more ventilators

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This morning’s presser from prime minister Justin Trudeau was largely focused on the domestic production of personal protective equipment, with 5000 companies having stepped forward to help, and letters of intent signed with partners to produce new supplies, which includes up to 30,000 new ventilators as well as other necessary supplies. He also mentioned that the proposed legislation on the wage subsidy was in the hands of the opposition to help negotiate swift passage (something which is outside of parliamentary norms), and because much of that subsidy is embedded in the Income Tax Act, it will require parliamentary approval (but I’m guessing that Parliament won’t be recalled until after Easter at this point, given that they need 48 hours’ notice). During the Q&A portion, Trudeau said that some of those ventilators could be for export if we have more than we wind up needing, but better to plan for the worst. He also said that they recognize that the banks could be doing more during this particular point in time, and they were looking at ways to get them to step up. When asked to weigh in on the mask debate, he again tried not to but then coined the phrase “speaking moistly,” and well, that turned into a meme. So that happened.

Meanwhile, as my reply column turned into another argument of “Why can’t the government just send everyone a cheque?!” here’s Kevin Milligan to disabuse you of that notion, with a couple of other reminders from Jennifer Robson.

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Roundup: CERB is go

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There were a lot of early piece of news in advance of Justin Trudeau’s daily presser – Doug Ford complaining that the province only had one week of supplies left as three million masks bound for Ontario were blocked at the US border (some half a million released later in the day), and Andrew Scheer helpfully demanding a “temporary” expansion of charitable tax credits.

When Trudeau did begin his presser, he spoke about the fact that the CERB was now online and thousands of applications had already poured in and the system hadn’t crashed. He also said that they were working on getting other benefit programmes in place for those whose hours were reduced, those who were still working but making less than they would be on CERB benefits, or students who didn’t qualify for benefits, and that there would be announcements for those soon. He also mentioned efforts at getting debt relief during the pandemic, and that they were working on bringing Parliament back to get the wage subsidy bill passed. During the Q&A, he spoke largely in generalities about working with the provinces and the US on resolving the issues around protective equipment (and by the end of the day, it seems that the mask issue had been settled and the Americans would once again allow shipments to flow to Canada), and that he was trying to find some kind of flexibility for a “virtual” parliament (which is a very bad thing and he should stop right there).

One thing Trudeau would not offer an opinion on was the mask debate, saying that it was not up for politicians to make these kinds of recommendations. During the ministerial presser shortly thereafter, Dr. Theresa Tam essentially reiterated her same advice that the only time you really need a mask is if you’re showing symptoms, and it could be helpful if you’re in a situation where physical distance is difficult – like on public transit – but repeated again that it’s not an official recommendation and that medical-grade masks should only be for medical personnel. And yet, despite this, everyone spent the rest of the day saying there were “new” mask guidelines (there weren’t), or that Tam had somehow reversed her previous position (she hadn’t), and there wasn’t a lot of focus on the fact that she repeated over and over that the problem with masks is they give people a false sense of confidence and they slack off on other measures like physical distancing or handwashing. But hey, everyone’s an armchair infectious disease specialist these days, so that’s what matters, right?

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