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They told us to be afraid of flesh and blood enemies.  Nazis, Communists, terrorists, religious fundamentalists, cults.  They may have been warped because of ideology or trauma, but they were people who could be fought against and killed nonetheless using our own, better ideology or trauma.

The stuff of our imaginations vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens all sorts of legendary terrors, each with their own fatal weakness.  Figure out what it is and you can turn them from hunters to hunted.

This virus cannot be seen or killed, of course.  We cannot use good old know how, bravery, or derring-do to beat it.  All we can do is try to survive it, contain it, restrict our behaviour so as to minimize the chances of it killing us.  Once you have it, the luck of the draw and the strength of your own immune system determines whether you live.  You could be condemning others to death without even knowing it.

It's not a full-on apocalypse, or even the realization of the global warming doomers' nightmare visions.  It is a massive, disempowering inconvenience, complete with embarrassing visuals of shoppers hoarding toilet paper.  No self-respecting disaster movie, or even the ones that don't respect themselves, would include that detail, but there you have it.

This is all to say that the corona crisis should be shaking our assumptions about the world, and our ability to control it, to the core.  We should be less sure of ourselves.  We aren't, of course.  Conspiracy theories, hilariously broken statistical projections, idiotic memes and above all, smug assertions about how Canadians are "care-mongers" continue to fill the air.

I used to think that the worse things got, the fewer illusions people would have.  There would be less myopic nostalgia, less deliberate ignorance of growing crises, less fruitless escapism.  Indeed, we are here today because people downplayed the seriousness of the virus before it went global.  Now I know that the worse things get, the more awesome we think we are.

This completely unjustified self-confidence is what led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his merry band of Liberal royalists to propose eliminating parliamentary opposition entirely until late 2021.  And in turn, this is what led Canadian political observers to caution that this was mere overreach on the Liberals' part, and not a deliberate attempt to seize power, in keeping with their barely concealed belief in their own divine right to rule this country.

This is who the Liberals are, because they have told us over and over that this is who they are.  And yet seasoned political operators and commentators are outraged that it has come to this.  After the debasement of the rule of law during the barricade episode what seems a lifetime ago, this was the next logical step.

It hasn't helped that the self-styled Co-Founder of the Conservative Party of Canada Peter MacKay, the aggressively irritating Erin O'Toole, and the barely functional Jagmeet Singh are doing their best to make Trudeau's case for them.  The PM seeks to make himself King Of Canada, and the CPC squabbles about whether their own leadership race should be cancelled or not.  If they were to go away until 2021, and perhaps even longer, they would hardly be missed.  But then there is still that longing for democracy free of partisanship, where MP's work across the aisle for the benefit of CANADIANS, and the belief that somehow voters will have to change the government eventually.

And so, even as the number of cases mount, the PM will continue to warble about "values" while the CBC bemoans the cancellation of local broadcasts and the lay folk enjoy a wicked thrill each day more Americans die of the virus than Canadians.  South of the border, Joe Biden is carried to the Democratic nomination by a host of backward-looking primary voters who are so desperate to prove that Donald Trump is a bug, not a feature that they will vote for a literal dead person.

Perhaps there is some heroism in continuing to retain some sort of normalcy in utterly insane times.  But there comes a point and we are approaching it where normalcy has become so twisted that nobody can remember what it is anymore.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


In the Great Pandemic of 2020, all of us have good days, and we have bad days.

On a bad day, this writer authored a ten-point list of predictions, none of them good.

They included: the rise of demagogues on the far Right and far Left, each preaching their own brand of xenophobia and exclusion.  Another prediction not so far-fetched that the economy would continue to collapse, along with cities and key infrastructure.

Corruption. Tax revolts.  Surges in theft, mental illness and domestic violence.

The ten-point list did not go over well.  People didn't like it.

So, another list was prepared.  This one also had ten points but was far more optimistic, and was based on things that this writer has observed.  Things that are actually happening, right now, right here.

People will treat each other in more neighbourly way.  All over, this is actually happening.  The Internet is full of emotional accounts of citizens on their own initiative, and often at their own cost ferrying deliveries of food and medicine to those who are sick, or alone, or isolated.  There has been an upswing in kindness, everywhere.

People will find creative ways to socialize while social distancing.  The Internet is helping them to do this: virtual birthday parties, Skyped get-togethers of friends, online jam sessions, FaceTime group chats, remote tours of cultural places that are far away.  Global Internet usage is up by a third and WiFi calls by as much as 82 per cent, says AT&T.

People will become more creative and productive, because they have the time and the motivation.  My own consulting firm, which long ago embraced a decentralized client-service model, uses online tools videos, graphics, testimonials to achieve public and government relations goals.  And we've gotten busier since the pandemic started.

People will not let the arts wither in isolation, and they will find ways to connect to new audiences.  Right from the start, this has been happening.  Boston's Celtic punk legends, the Dropkick Murphys, hosted an online concert on St. Patrick's Day.  Why?  Their lead singer, Ken Casey: "At this point no one's thinking about finances, we're thinking about lifting spirits and getting through this thing…" Nearly ten million people watched their free show.

People will reconsider past views about politicians and institutions, and re-assess.  Ontario Premier Doug Ford, for instance, has become much more popular because of his candour and approach during the pandemic at one point even driving his truck to a Markham dental equipment firm to receive a donation of thousands of medical masks.  An early CBC analysis found that 60 per cent approved of the Ontario government's approach to the pandemic a figure most expect to grow in the next round of polls.

People will adjust and find new jobs and new ways of supporting themselves and their families.  Coronavirus could and probably already has driven unemployment to 20 per cent.  The Canadian Federation of Independent Business projects a third of small and medium-sized firms will not survive the pandemic.  So, say groups like Colleges and Institutes Canada, it is critical that governments help provide training for post-pandemic work and governments, federally and provincially, are pledging to do so.

People will accept that there is a right and proper role for government, and reject the Trumpian anti-government populist orthodoxy.  In fact, even in the American libertarian heartland, a USA Today/Ipsos poll found wide support for "drastic interventions," quote unquote, by government.  Conversely, as the death toll goes up, support for anti-government types like Trump goes down so, one ABC News/Ipsos similarly poll concluded that a majority of Americans now disapprove, or strongly disapprove, of Trump's laissez-faire approach to the pandemic.

People will pay more attention to mental health, because many are experiencing how truly fragile mental health is in times of crisis.  Calls to mental health crisis lines have exploded during the pandemic so provinces like Ontario have ramped up online mental health services, and Ottawa has pledged to spend millions for kids' mental health initiatives.

People will come together to find a cure for this beast, because so much depends on it.  In Canada, vaccine clinical trials are underway at six different universities.  And globally, more than three dozen companies and academic institutions are working to find a vaccine for the coronavirus.  "There has never been such a rapid global collective effort to fight one disease," said Karen Grépin, a public health professor at the University of Hong Kong. "Never."

People will love each other more deeply, because they are seeing how quickly life can slip away.  During this unprecedented crisis, this writer has lost friends and family of friends including one long-time Calgary friend, Mike Bezzeg, who was killed in a tragic road accident, after taking food to a self-isolating acquaintance.  Mike's death and every death during this terrible time reminds us of the fragility of life, and how fleeting it is.

For Mike, and for all of the ones we will lose in the Great Pandemic of 2020, we need to lean towards and work towards the good days.

Because they are coming back.  They must.

Photo Credit: Toronto Sun

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


It's a good thing the COVID-19 scare has us all vigorously washing our hands, because when this panic is finally over, you better believe there's going to be an awful lot of finger pointing.

More specifically, people across the globe will be angry at their national leaders for not "doing enough" early on to stop the virus from infecting their countries.

This might not be a fair reaction, since a rampaging killer virus is a once in a lifetime disaster that no one could possibly have foreseen, but when tragedy strikes it's just human nature to assign blame.

We want to believe we live in a universe where bad things can be prevented.

On top of that, if the economy sinks into a deep recession, people are going to be in an ornery mood and ready to lash out at anybody in power.

At any rate, my point is in the months ahead, both US President Donald Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will both be on the "You didn't do enough" firing line.

In fact, it's already happening.

Trump's enemies in the media and elsewhere, for instance, are currently accusing him of not taking the virus threat seriously in its early stages and then of dropping the ball when it came to virus testing.

Expect such accusations to grow in intensity.

Indeed, Congressional Democrats are starting to talk about creating a special commission to investigate Trump's handing of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Trudeau too is on the hot seat.

Many are currently arguing that, thanks to his penchant for political correctness, Trudeau took far too long to ban international flights coming into Canada and that his government's screening measures for people arriving from virus hotspots were both lax and insufficient.

Again, expect such accusations to grow in intensity with time.

So how can Trump and Trudeau defend themselves from such attacks?

Well, Trump's play is obvious: blame China.

In other words, Trump's argument will be that the whole world was lulled into a false sense of security by Communist China's duplicity, i.e. the Chinese government failed to disclose the true deadliness of COVID-19.

This is one reason the US President, much to the annoyance of the media, keeps referring to COVID-19 as the "Wuhan virus" or the "Chinese virus," it helps drive home the message that it's the Chinese government which is truly at fault.

Anyway, it's a good communication strategy because it plays into the tribalistic mentality of humanity; people are hard-wired by evolution to accept the idea that "outsiders" are potentially dangerous, so Trump's blaming China will likely resonate on a subconscious emotional level with many Americans.

What's more, playing an anti-China card complements Trump's "Put America  First" populist agenda, so it strengthens his brand, since he can now say, "The USA must break its dependence on foreign countries that wish to do us harm."

Plus, as an added bonus, Trump might actually be right to call out China.

Certainly reports have emerged lately which indicates the Chinese Communists did indeed produce disinformation when it comes to the seriousness of COVID-19.

This now brings us to Trudeau.  How can he deflect blame?

Well, right now, it seems highly unlikely he will use the "Blame China card."

After all, unlike Trump, Trudeau is a globalist; he's all about increasing international interaction and he's especially keen on gaining more access to the Chinese market.

Plus, let's not forget, he once expressed admiration for the efficiency of the Chinese dictatorship.

Besides, his Health Minister, Patty Hajdu, has gone on record defending China.  Recently when asked by a reporter if China was falsifying its numbers she responded, "There is no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate, and their death rate, was falsified in any way."  She then accused the reporter of fueling "conspiracy theories".

So it would be extremely difficult for Trudeau to pivot and suddenly start demonizing his friends in Beijing.

Mind you, that's not to say he won't use his own tribalistic argument to defend himself.

What will he do?

Well, I predict, just as Trump is blaming China for the virus, Trudeau will blame Trump.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.