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

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?

The latter is what is permitted aiui.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/graffiti-on-monument-commemorating-nazi-ss-division-being-investigated-as-a-hate-crime-by-police

I expect they'll roll this back soon enough, but still

pretty hard to see how writing "nazi war monument" is a hate crime. here's an article from a few years ago about the battle over the monument: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ukrainian-canadian-community-urged-to-confront-past-amid-controversy-over-monuments-to-nazi-collaborators

hey look at this jackass:

Trump's spokesman says Canada sucks anyway pic.twitter.com/knSnwsRE6U

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 16, 2020

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

once upon a time such low-wattage scandals were often enough to take down a government! or at least take them down a peg from majority to minority

coming home from the 52 division demo in support of some BLM local founders who got abducted by police presumably in connection with some statue defacement. the vibe was chill cause the first one was released a little after midnight; I reckoned the other two would be out within an hour or two. sure enough it was over a little before 3. sort of perfect meld of protest and party. "knuck if you buck", lots of MIA and Missy, real loud.

once upon a time such low-wattage scandals were often enough to take down a government! or at least take them down a peg from majority to minority

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Friday, July 17, 2020 2:07 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like things have improved then? doesnt seem worth it to have conservative govt for multiple years

Well, I agree if the point is that the right solution is for stronger opposition parties to hold a minority govt in check and nip this shit in the bud.

Huge jump in Canadian cases today--almost 800 after hovering around 300 for a week--that may be linked to this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-covid-update-july-20-1.5655625

I really hope we're not walking right into what's happening next door. St. Marys is pretty much 100% masked now--a bylaw just took effect, although I don't think it's iron-clad enforceable (which doesn't really make sense to me). I've seen some moderately-sized backyard get-togethers--fewer than 10 people--but nothing crazy.

180 new cases in Quebec today compared to 100 or so last week. I’m hoping mandatory face masks in indoor public spaces, which came into effect over the weekend, will make a difference in the long run.

Allegations that Payette is an abusive boss: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/julie-payette-governor-general-harassment-allegations-1.5657397

She reportedly hates her job and always has.

What do y'all make of the stat I read today about BC: 189 Covid deaths in the province since the beginning of the year, and 728 opioid related deaths. Pretty shocking numbers tbh, really heartbreaking to read about.

(Also I'm not Canadian, just have many friends who are, particularly in Vancouver)

yeah covid basically hardly happened here and we shut down the province, but each month has more overdose deaths than the total COVID deaths, and the last two months have been record-breakers.

safe-supply is obviously necessary as soon as possible, would definitely make a dent in the death toll. can't see it happening though

(overdoses have peaked in part because due to COVID people aren't allowed visitors in their SRO rooms and are using alone more)

If memory serves, BC had the first recorded case in Canada yet it somehow managed to keep the situation under control, quite unlike Quebec (1/4 of the country’s population) which still accounts for half of all covid-19 cases and 2/3 of related deaths in Canada. That said, opioids appear to be a way bigger problem in BC (and Ontario) than they are in Quebec. I have no idea why.

xp

even if this doesn't lead to real change, I am glad to see it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/22/canada-us-safe-third-country-agreement-federal-court

everything the URL promises:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7204384/coronavirus-glory-holes-sex/

We briefly talked about it in the outbreak thread, but it’s probably safer if we restrict it to consenting Canadians.

Could technically work cross-border, though.