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Tag: COVID

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It feels like déjà vu all over again.

The COVID-19 fifth wave caused by the Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire and our governments were once again asleep at the wheel and slow to react. Across the country, in varying degrees, governments seem ill-prepared. Once again. The Omicron variant took the country by surprise.

Cue the provincial calls for army deployments. Cue the chaotic search for vaccination appointments. Cue the stock ruptures of rapid tests. Cue the Soviet-style line-ups to get tested. Cue the increased sanitary measures. Haven’t they learned anything over the past two years? That’s a question people are entitled to ask.

To be fair, things happened fast. Much faster with Omicron than any of the previous waves. The new variant was first detected on November 22 and reported to the World Health Organization on November 24. Two days later, the WHO designated it as a variant of concern. Travel restrictions were introduced by several countries in an attempt to slow its international spread. Canada reacted the same day, on November 26, by restricting travellers from several African countries from entering Canada.

By then, it was already too late and soon became pointless. The first case of Omicron in Canada was reported on November 28. Yet, despite media reports of the rapidity at which Omicron was spreading in South Africa and elsewhere, our politicians didn’t seem to have much concern.

For instance, despite the rise of cases, which began prior to Omicron’s arrival, reopening was still the operative word. Barely over a week ago, Premier Legault was full steam ahead with bigger Christmas parties while ordinary people, sensing things were turning, were canceling reservations in hotels and restaurants.

On December 14th, Health Minister Christian Dubé, flanked by Quebec Public Health Director Dr. Horacio Arruda, began his news conference by stating it was likely the last one before the Holidays. People were scratching their heads. Haven’t they heard about Omicron? Didn’t they know it was now prevalent in Ontario? They had, they knew, they were prudent, and they were monitoring.

Not a word on schools, which is where the November spike of cases was most prominent, especially amongst the not yet vaccinated younger cohorts. Even when they actually realized that Omicron was now out of control, on November 16, in a dramatic press conference during supper hour newscast, Premier Legault was adamant: schools were going to stay open, despite a flurry of restrictions, including smaller Christmas gatherings and restrictions on restaurant capacity. Parents shook their heads and a lot of them kept their kids home.

Two days later, another dramatic press conference and schools were being closed. Two days later, even more restrictions were brought in by the Premier. Not as dramatic as his spin doctors had floated in the 48 hours leading up to that newser, mind you. The trial balloons of canceling Christmas gatherings and imposing another curfew floated by Legault’s spin doctors did not sit well with the electorate.

Because people are fed up. They were promised, time and time again, that if they did the right things, if they followed the rules, if they got vaccinated, we would go back to normal. It ain’t happening. Our governments are just not able to react promptly and properly. But there are two other main culprits.

First, the unvaccinated, which account for more than 50% of the COVID hospitalizations despite being less than 15% of the population. Calls are growing for politicians to deal with them, perhaps Austria-style. It seems doubtful in Quebec and Ontario, in an election year.

Second, the lack of medical resources. Canada has one of the fewest hospital beds per capita in the OECD. It’s even worse if you look at ICU capacity. Politicians are afraid to overload the system. We’ve heard that over and over: it has been the number one factor in their decisions during the course of the pandemic. The number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients in Canada is around 1,100, and 500 more patients are occupying ICU beds. And we’re almost at capacity, for a country of 38 million.

Yet, health care is the biggest line in provincial budgets. The capacity of our health care system has eroded over the years, starting in 1976. Until then, the Federal Government used to cover 50% of our health costs. The Federal share currently sits at 22% under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. You would think this pandemic would make him realize that perhaps it is time to sit down with the Premiers and restore the federal health care transfers. Just so we can perhaps be ready for the next pandemic.

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.

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Science and politics remain strange bedfellows. The ongoing uncertainty around how to fight the virus’ spread has regularly forced political decision makers to choose between politics and science.

Politicians of all stripes will have to adapt to the new normal of pandemic variants dictating major challenges to the way they govern and campaign.

For some levels of government during this crisis, the fear of being accused of paralysis of action has clearly outweighed the value of waiting for better data: others cling to the demand for scientific precision, which will never be achieved, as an excuse to court their core voters who want minimal government action.

The appearance of leadership has led policy makers in different geographies to introduce contradictory vaccine mandates and impose non-transferable passports, sweeping aside concerns about impingement on personal freedoms and choice, while delegating enforcement to often ill-equipped third parties.

Schools were open, then closed for in person learning and then reopened, as parents and kids all expressed their concerns about the limited benefit of virtual learning.

The unrelenting strain on the health care system has already left scars on both the first line heroes manning the services and the backlog of procedures that will play out in longer term negative health and cost consequences. The mental health bill is yet to be calculated but the current system does not appear to have the resources or training to manage the pandemic fallout effectively.

Governments which adopted business and individual income supports in the name of ‘covering everyone’s back’, start to phase them out only to face pressure for reinstatement as new fast spreading variants appear.

Vaccination and  booster dose policies have been the subject of this tension as well. Which vaccines to recommend and purchase and distribute in a federal system, without a clear understanding of consequences or side effects was just the beginning. Further issues surround the timing of second and booster shots ( 4 weeks, 6 months , 168 days or 64 days).

Scientific study and panicked responses compete in the public mind for approval. The whiplash from instant policy change undermines confidence in government action.

Look at the introduction of  travel bans, quarantining and testings regimes. It is politically soothing to announce quick action but does it make much sense if the infrastructure is not in place to administer widespread tests at airports or manage and follow up with quarantine status.

Provincial governments sit on a millions of unused vaccines and antigen tests for months, but still struggle to distribute them in an effective manner when the need arises, all the while encouraging citizens to adopt them as quickly as possible as crucial responses to COVID.

In a globalized world , in pursuit of placing the interest of our local voters first, are we reaping the consequences of not ensuring greater equity in vaccine manufacturing and distribution?

Did we learn nothing from the spread of the Black Death by trade route shipping six centuries ago?

Does it make sense to penalize countries who are forthright or honest about COVID in their midst? Or is it just safer to shut the barn door and hope for the best?

As each new COVID variant strikes, the list of challenges for governing grows longer.

We should also not minimize the significant implications for the practice of politics going forward.

In the beginning of the pandemic, governments were evaluated on the quality of their support systems for citizens and business, and for their ability to keep the public accurately informed in a rapidly changing environment. In the second phase, government’s ability to procure and distribute vaccines became ‘the rapid antigen test’.

Today, as yet another variant disrupts households and the way citizens do business, managing COVID exhaustion has become critical for the future success of different levels of government.

Government’s popularity will be measured against their latest response to the unexpected; public expectations are generally focused on future performance.

COVID’s reemergence as Government’s Job 1 will also limit political flexibility.

The federal Liberals had already given notice about cutting back on most COVID support programs; Finance Minister Freeland’s fiscal flexibility for her spring budget may be significantly constrained.

Despite ongoing efforts to deflect public attention onto inflation or the Liberals’ alleged failures in economic policies, Erin O’Toole will be faced with a media rehash of Conservative’s botched vaccination policies, and tied to provincial regimes that have been criticized for their COVID policies.

Ontario Premier Ford, whose sagging popularity has been resurrected through a strategy of remaining in the background, will once again need to play a higher profile role in managing COVID in the run up to the June 2022 provincial election.

His instinctual desire in managing the pandemic has been to loosen lockdowns and constraints, and to accommodate business wherever possible. This approach has once again been overtaken by science table demands to fight the variant, leaving him forced to contradict his stated policies. This outcome has placed Mr. Ford at odds with a significant portion of his own supporters.

How the potential of a longer lasting lockdown might affect Ontario government revenues ( various analysts have been anticipating greater revenues from a revived business sector leading to a pre-election tax cut in the spring) could change his low tax targeted spending pre-election strategy.

Alberta Premier Kenney’s ability to retain his leadership in an upcoming April review is also threatened by the emergence of Omicron after he had again deliberately loosened restrictions. He faces ongoing complaints from all sides about his government’s management of COVID.

Even though Quebec Premier Legault remains well ahead in provincial polling, the need to respond on an emergency basis to Omicron’s surge has taken away focus from his preferred scenario- using opposition to Bill 21 as an emotional strategy to secure re-election in October 2022.

Any longer term restrictive gathering policies will also impact how two key election campaigns in Ontario and Quebec can be conducted.

Omicron is casting a large shadow not only on government policy options but also on the nature of politics itself.

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.

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As two weeks to flatten the curve lumbers toward its third year, one develops a kind of natural immunity to things like theNational Post’s Nov. 5 story that “herd immunity” is impossible. I mean, you wouldn’t want an outbreak of recognition that the authorities had been making it up all along.

They have. That story began “Back in the early stages of the pandemic, when vaccines were still just a hopeful idea and variants of concern had yet to make an appearance, herd immunity was all the talk… Most researchers… figured a community would need to see 60 to 70 per cent of its population immunized (either through vaccination or catching the virus) to starve COVID-19 of new bodies to infect… But that figure seems quaint now.”

I can think of other words. But in some sense we’re not meant to keep track because it never was about consistency, let alone accuracy. It was about being soothing. Thus a note in my files has the premier of New South Wales, Australia urging his people on Nov. 8 to give it a “final push” to get to “the magic 95%”. Magic. Yay. Saved. But then came the Nov. 24 story “British scientists warn of ‘horrific’ new COVID-19 variant”, rare so far, that “carries 32 mutations, suggesting it is highly transmissible and vaccine-resistant.”

Good feeling’s gone. Who saw that coming?

OK, there’s no particular reason politicians would know what the disease was going to do. But the problem is that there is a reason they’d pretend to. There’s a wise line attributed to Donald Rumsfeld: “Learn to say ‘I don’t know’. If used when appropriate it will be often.” But what would ensue if a politician said it on an important issue?

They would be roasted. And roasting politicians for ignorance is often justified. For instance Trudeau on monetary policy. But in addition to the virtues of saying “I don’t know, let me check”, there are many things nobody can know, including what the economy is going to do. And we voters don’t want to hear it.

On COVID it would have been reasonable for medical officers of health (is there another kind?) to say, and politicians to repeat: Look, we have some idea how emergent diseases play out because humankind has been plagued by them, to coin a phrase, from time immemorial. From things like the Antonine Plague, The Plague of Cyprian, and the hey-did-everyone-just-drop-dead plague we know they generally mutate into less virulent strains because killing your host is maladaptive. Unless they don’t. Like Ebola, polio, the Black Death or smallpox. Some we can mostly prevent. Others not so much. Natural immunity is some help. We’ll have to wait and see.

There’s the real problem. The worst thing they could have said politically is the most reasonable scientifically: that they are aware of a problem but cannot entirely solve it. And the reason they can’t say such a thing is not that the opposition would swoop with bared claws. It’s that they would swoop, and successfully, because citizens would refuse to accept such an answer.

We have this illusion of technical omnipotence in modern society. And if we were to let go of it, we would feel especially naked before a pitiless fate if we are pure materialists all excited about evolution until germs do it. So a headline “COVID-19: System can deal with rising cases, Elliott says” tells you nothing about what the system can deal with, whether cases are rising or what Elliott thinks about either. Instead MRDA, because they must tell you everything is under control if you just do whatever you’re currently told, regardless of what you were told last week, will be next week, or what they really think or fear might be looming.

Thus after the initial blatherskite flopping around on don’t stay home got to a Chinese restaurant you nasty bigots, masks don’t work, what me close borders, they told us to stay home until they got effective vaccines. Which obliged them to claim whatever vaccines they got were effective. And now to say the vaccines are so effective everyone needs boosters because otherwise the unvaccinated will infect the vaccinated and vice versa and we can pump any quantity of one experimental spike protein after another into you, granny and that kid over there and nothing can possibly go wrong.

It’s bad biology. But it’s good politics. Unlike “Hey, it’s a disease, so as usual some people will get sick and some of them will die while others will recover and die later because everybody dies eventually”.

So remember: When we reach the magic number, whether 70 or 95 this week, we’ll all be protected until we’re not. And everyone must accept the next soothing tale or be thought loud and stupid.

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.

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Will anyone in government go to jail?

Because someone in government perhaps should.

The revelation, when it came, actually wasn’t much of one. The CBC’s Fifth Estate, no less, revealed the sordid, appalling truth, which my colleague Brian Lilley and others at the Toronto Sun had long suspected.

Namely, the Trudeau government’s failed vaccine deal with China’s dictatorship had profound consequences – most notably, Canada’s acquisition of Covid-19 vaccines being delayed by many, many months.

Which, one can reasonably conclude, led to too many unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths in Canada.

“The federal government’s failed collaboration with a vaccine manufacturing company in China early in the pandemic has led to a delay of nearly two years in efforts to create a made-in-Canada COVID-19 vaccine,” wrote the CBC.

“Government documents obtained by The Fifth Estate show that Canadian officials wasted months waiting for a proposed vaccine to arrive from China for further testing and spent millions upgrading a production facility that never made a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.”

Lilley, and this writer, believed that the Chinese vaccine fiasco caused a critical delay of months. The CBC (amazingly) says it was two years. But let’s give the Trudeau government the benefit of the doubt, and say that the collapse of the CanSino deal (in March 2020) and the Trudeau Liberals’ belated acknowledgement of that (in August 2020) – and the commencement of a meagre amount of vaccinations in Canada (in December 2020) – meant a delay of only ten months.

So: how many Canadians were killed by Covid in ten months in 2020?

More than fifteen thousand. That’s 1,500 deaths every month.

There are all kinds of variables, here. Was a death directly attributable to the coronavirus? Didn’t nations with vaccines experience greater mortality rates? Is there a direct causal link between the failed China deal and the deaths of Canadians?

That last question is the one that lawyers – and police, and coroners – will perhaps need to consider: did the Trudeau government’s vaccine failure lead to the death of Canadian citizens?

The CBC’s report, and common sense, strongly suggest that the answer is “yes.” And, sure, the Trudeau regime’s negligence may not have led to thousands of needless deaths.

But it inarguably led to some deaths. And that, then, should have legal consequences.

In the United States, they have greater experience with governmental failures that lead to wrongful deaths.

Most notoriously, and most recently, there have been successful prosecutions of police officers – as in the murder of George Floyd – for causing death while acting in their “official” capacity.

Other examples: the former Michigan governor, and others, charged with perjury and manslaughter for their role in the lead poisoning of water in Flint, Michigan. And there have been many, many instances of what is called “public health malpractice” in the U.S., leading to prosecutions of government officials at all levels.

In Canada, too, we have seen government officials prosecuted for failing to do their job properly. In 2000 in Walkerton, Ont., most notoriously, six people died – and about 2,000 became seriously ill – when E. Coli contaminated the local water supply.

In that case, Walkerton officials Stan Koebel was jailed for a year – and sentenced to house arrest, in Frank Koebel’s case – for their role in the contamination.

So, it’s a fair question: does the Trudeau government’s vaccine failure – and the sickness and death that needlessly resulted from that failure – rise to the level of a crime? Should someone be facing manslaughter charges?

Following this week’s revelations, it’s not an unfair question.  It needs to be examined.

Will it?

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.

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The knives may be out for Jason Kenney but at a news conference this week he donned his Kevlar vest and made it clear he’s not going down without a fight.

Rumours have been circulating for a couple of weeks that the bungling of the Alberta response to Covid would prompt a high profile resignation at the top of the provincial pyramid.

On Tuesday the resignation was announced — Heath Minister Tyler Shandro, who has taken flack from all sides through the pandemic, was shuffled off to the labour and immigration portfolio.

Kenney implied it was a voluntary leave-taking. Skeptics say it was a deflection by the leader to save his own skin.

Certainly Kenney made it clear he is not stepping down, despite the mounting criticism from his own party and beyond.

All camps in the UCP are griping about the premier. Not-enough-action on Covid and too-much-action on Covid camps are both up in arms.

Vaccine fan MLA Leela Aheer, who has already criticized the premier’s leadership, came out very clearly to a columnist this week saying he needs to be gone.

A United Conservative Party vice president penned an editorial in the right wing Western Standard calling for Kenney’s resignation after the imposition of a vaccination passport.

“Having listened to our party’s membership over the last several months, I believe the will of the membership is clear: it is time for Jason Kenney to go,” wrote Joel Mullan, policy vice-president the party.

A Calgary UCP MLA apologized on Facebook last week for not convincing the government to impose restrictions more quickly while remarking on the “lack of leadership at the helm”.

Kenney responded at the news conference with his trademark ambivalence.

He admitted there have been internal tensions about how to respond to Covid.

But he also said he has the confidence of  “the members of my party, of our caucus, of our party board.”

He said an immediate leadership review would be a political sideshow at a time when the government and party needs to be focused on solving the pandemic crisis.

The argument that a life-and-death crisis that he failed to manage should prevent a challenge to his leadership is galling for a chunk of the general population as well as a growing number in his own party.

Despite that, Kenney survived what could have been an Ides of March moment at a Wednesday caucus meeting. There was no confidence vote, MLAs departing the meeting told reporters, adding that the caucus is unified on focusing on the pandemic.

There is no doubt a number of federal Conservatives who would like Kenney to get his comeuppance. The Conservatives still hold the vast majority of Alberta seats federally after this week’s election, but their popular vote took a worrying hit.

Kenney’s record is assumed to have contributed to the slump.

The predicament the UCP is now in has spawned some bizarre developments. According to the Western Standard, country singer George Canyon is considering a bid for presidency of the party on the basis he would call an immediate leadership review.

The party’s state of disarray is further compounded by its inability to raise money. The opposition NDP is outstripping the governing party in terms of both the war chest and the popularity polls.

Already there has been some caucus splintering, with two former members sitting as independents and the increasing leakage of news from internal ranks making it to media headlines.

But the UCP is so much a creature of Kenney’s own devising that it will be difficult to oust him before he is ready to go himself.

He hasn’t been able to save Albertans from the pandemic. Now the question is whether he can save the party he founded from himself.

This entire leadership drama is a bit of a political sideshow as Kenney says. The much bigger issue is the pandemic. Lives are at stake in that much larger story. Twenty-nine Albertans died in one day this week and Wednesday the first Albertan under 20 years of age died of the disease.

A governing party flailing around is the last thing the province needs. It might take the resignation of a controversial leader to put the focus back on the much more important task at hand.

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.

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Alberta Premier Jason Kenney apologized Wednesday night for being too optimistic this summer.

Seems a bit short of the mark given the mounting anger in the province as Covid ravages the health care system.

Kenney argued at a press conference announcing new restrictions that his big mistake was declaring Alberta open for good. But he also argued he was right to open the province up for the summer.

And he dodged bigger questions about his overall leadership during the pandemic.

The government’s new Covid restrictions continues a pattern of complex and contradictory measures in the face of an overwhelming health crisis.

The latest announcement about the new “restriction exemption program” outlines a set of new Covid rules that is sort of a vaccination mandate but still has odd loopholes.

Albertans can’t gather indoors in private with more than one other household and more than 10 people even if they are fully vaccinated.

Restaurants can get an exemption to the no indoor gathering rule if they require proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test at the door.

The premier had no choice but to admit that there is a huge emergency in the health care system. Alberta could run out of hospital staff and intensive care beds in the next 10 days, he said.

But he also crowed about the mortality rate in Alberta being less than the Canadian average and the U.S. That’s cold comfort for the families of the Albertans dying in this fourth punishing wave of the pandemic. On Wednesday 24 Albertans died of Covid.

As Albertans turn against the government, Kenney continues to be tone deaf to the increasing calls for humility and a steady hand.

Instead there were excuses.

“One thing we’ve learned about Covid is it simply is not predictable,” the premier said by way of explanation for his misjudgment.

That prompted a chorus of angry physicians, pundits and health care experts pointing out that there were plenty of warning signals and protests when the province opened wide for the summer.

Those protests continued through the intervening months. But Kenney was on holiday, leaving no designated cabinet hitter, for three weeks of that.

Perhaps the most eye poppingly ironic moment of the Kenney newser was this pronouncement: “Our focus is not on politics.”

Everything about the response is tinged with politics. The UCP caucus was locked in meetings for hours prior to the newser. The complexity of the final document is a testament to the many compromises and exceptions that likely came out of that meeting.

There are reports of dissension in the caucus ranks. One MLA tweeted out before the meeting supporting a column critical of Kenney’s response so far.

At this point in Alberta everything Covid related is bound tightly to politics as opponents from lockdown proponents to anti-vax zealots assail every word out of Kenney’s mouth.

Even if the latest restrictions had been pitch perfect, consistent and finely reasoned, a good chunk of the population would still be questioning Kenney’s leadership given his record so far in the pandemic.

Kenney himself alluded to the buy-in issue during the press conference. He argued that if he had maintained restrictions through the summer there would have been noncompliance and anger.

He’s already got the anger. The issue now is compliance.

No matter their political stripe, Albertans have to hope that the latest measures start bending the fourth wave curve.

Kenney said the time for analysis about what was done right or wrong will come after the crisis is over. It will also be a good time for a reality check about the leadership of the province.

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.

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