We Still Have a Government, Right?: Canadian Politics 2020

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/06/21/man-62-who-died-in-police-involved-shooting-identified-muslim-council-of-peel-demands-public-inquiry/

This sounds deeply fucked

Ugh

I was out in the car today, so I heard some of Ford's daily briefing on the radio, first one in a while.

I don't know why any politician would ever choose to go to war with the press. When Ford was defending his brother and attacking the press, he got, surprise, nothing but bad press. Today, he called everyone who had a question by their first name, was very cordial, was treated cordially in return, and he's probably getting the best press he's ever had right now. I know the counter-argument would be that attacking the press helped get Trump elected. Maybe--but he would never have even been in that position to begin with if he hadn't spent 35 years nuzzling up to the press (and vice versa) to begin with. It just seems like such a pointless thing to do.

I've said way too much nice stuff about Ford during the pandemic, so I have to even that up a bit.

http://www.cp24.com/news/ontario-s-new-math-curriculum-to-introduce-coding-personal-finance-starting-in-grade-1-1.4995865

Putting aside how worthwhile these changes may or may not be, it seems like a terrible time for any big curriculum revisions. Teachers are going to be overwhelmed enough trying to navigate their way through whatever's waiting for them in September (which is guaranteed to be something other than a normal return to school).

Personal finance in Gr 1? Did they decide this based on Facebook memes?

Grade 2, portfolio diversification; Grade 3, hiding money in offshore accounts; Grade 4, derivatives...

(Broadly speaking, I think more emphasis on learning about money, and learning about it at an earlier age, is a good idea. This just isn't the time to do it--wait a year.)

Tbf, I don't have kids or teach elementary school classes. What kinds of things do you think kids would benefit from learning at that age?

Ford also nixed a long planned police reform/accountability bill. Fuck him.

I just think they need to get a better and earlier sense of money, and maybe, by the time they hit grade 5 or 6, the importance of managing it. I know I was clueless until I hit about 30, and have been making up for lost time ever since.

As to grade 1, that's tougher. I never had a class of my own below grade 3, so I'm actually not sure how much awareness of the topic they have at that age.

Yeah, I’m pretty concerned about how much is being dumped on the schools and parents to figure out come September. The “here’s three possible scenarios - just be prepared for all of them” approach isn’t really that helpful.

A teacher friend also pointed out to us yesterday, who do they think is even working on this stuff over the summer because, education staff are off?

Btw, clemenza, I guess it was the wording of "personal finance" that threw me. If they just mean e.g. knowing how to count change at the primary school level, which they probably do, that sounds reasonable, although I'm surprised that isn't being covered already.

Making change is already covered, starting in grade 4, I think. I'd always try to teach counting-up, which maybe half got; the other half were better with standard subtraction. My interpretation of "personal finance," if that's the term they're using, would be more about money management, investing, budgeting, etc. And I think a grade 5 or 6 kid could be taught that, at least in broad outline. "Here's what retirement looks like if you don't plan, and here's what it looks like if you do"--and then go from there. But I don't know what they have in mind.

Big jump in COVID cases today, first one in a while.

Border closure extended: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/travel-ban-extended-july-1.5632625

Let's hope it stays that way until they get their shit together.

there's been reports of Americans vacationing here in bc, getting through the borders by claiming they're traveling to Alaska.

burn them!

although tbh there def are still tourists around just in general here, which boggles the mind

The airbnbs on my street in Montreal have seen some traffic the past couple weeks. Honestly confused as to what in the hell there is to do. OTOH I am desperate for a some time away from my apt/the city so it's not entirely mysterious to me

I understand why it would be nice to be here - very little covid, bars and restaurants open, summer in bc is v nice etc. - but how are they getting here?

Cases were back down to where they've leveled off recently. Must have been some reporting blip yesterday.

Must have missed that firm support Bolton promised

Adrienne Arsenault really held his feet to the fire on this. Worth watching: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1758622275621

I assume this is because of delayed Canada Day reporting, but according to Worldometer, only 67 cases reported nationally yesterday.

At a time when the problems with the long term care home system are evident, the Ford government is rushing through a bill to restructure the whole home and LTC care system and privatize home care, which is what keeps a lot of people out of the long term care homes. (The currently existing home care system, which is mostly very good, is one of the NDP government's undersung accomplishments from the 90s.) Might be voted on tomorrow:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/home-care-bill-debate-northeast-1.5624534

https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/release-submission-submission-on-bill-175-connecting-people-to-home-and-community-care-act-2020/

Uh, what?

https://globalnews.ca/news/7142057/china-canada-travel-exercise-caution/

I’m happy to announce the appointment of @BobRae48 as our next Ambassador to the @UN. He has dedicated his life to serving Canadians and our country, and I know he’ll work hard to advance our interests around the world in this new role. https://t.co/rK2helVWe8

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 6, 2020

I guess the Chinese 'travel advisory' is related to this??: https://globalnews.ca/news/6986293/meng-wanzhou-china-warning-canada/

Among the reasons it is wtf is that, as noted above, the border is already closed to non-citizens/residents until at least the end of the month.

Some seemingly clear stats and graphs for Ontario, January to now. The bit that shows decreasing severity in recent cases looks pretty reassuring. https://files.ontario.ca/moh-covid-19-report-en-2020-07-07.pdf

Whoa:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/police-chiefs-call-for-decriminalization-of-personal-drug-use-1.5017860

Very good.

this is p much the de facto situation here at the moment

would be good for the country writ-large of course

Wow

I strongly suspect this is a ploy to head off anti-police (or at least pro-budget-slashing) sentiment, at least based on the timing, but yes, it's an excellent development.

How tf does Trudeau manage to do something this dumb?: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/margaret-justin-trudeau-we-charity-1.5643586

This take seems OTM: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-we-charity-margaret-trudeau-alexandre-1.5645781

Dude had been growing on me too.

As scandals go, this is about as low-wattage as they come.

Just like our other scandals.

Hm, what makes this fundamentally different from something like the sponsorship scandal, aside from the fact that the deal got cancelled when they got called out?

“ For whatever reason, the prime minister and his office seem to have a recurring problem of failing to check themselves. As a result, they have now repeatedly wrecked themselves.”

lol

Hot take: the fact that nobody seems to care. I mean, we probably won't be talking it about this a week from now. All in all, people like Trudeau a lot more than they did Chrétien and the state of international politics is such that we've kind of lowered our standards, as evinced by previous non-scandals involving our current administration.

xp

for some reason nobody wants to think trudeau is just doing secret deals to enrich or benefit his family and donors. the rhetoric is that he made a mistake, we don't impute ill intention to him. I'm agnostic about his intentions myself!

Huh. The postmodern scandal.

NB, though, that it took years for Adscam to become the massive scandal that it did (Auditor General started investigating in 2000. It really blew up about four years later.) That might actually be the key difference - that this was dropped right away and not allowed to go on for years.xp

but yeah it seems like he'll be teflon as long as he has that guy downstairs to compare himself to

I don't really see what the positive spin on his intentions would be tbh. The program itself sounds a little ... curious - small 'grants' (below minimum wage, I'm surmising?) for students to do 'volunteer' work?

Even where I am, in west-central Ontario, Florida matters.

I was out driving this afternoon and heard the London mayor give his daily briefing. They're moving onto Phase 3. He said they only had one new case today, although they had five on Saturday, an outlier. Four of them were travel-related, and three of those were people returning from Florida.

My first reaction was that I thought the border was basically closed to all but commercial trucks. (Which maybe accounts for these cases, too, but my sense was no.) And then the usual uncertainty over whether they're moving too fast

The border is definitely still open to citizens and permanent residents, if that's who the returning people were.

I'm far enough away from any border that I didn't know that--why are there always posts on my FB wall imploring Trudeau to keep the border closed?

Let me rephrase that: are you saying a Canadian can go to Florida right now and come back, or that these were simply people who'd been there for three months or whatever and are just returning now?