Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

I remember people sharing this piece in 2015 and thinking it was dubious since a Tory advertising strategy v clearly was then and is now to portray Trudeau as a "vapid...airhead", as per that ad (and, er, slogan): https://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/10/23/dont-worry-justin-trudeau-will-never-be-hurt-by-sexist-objectification/ . That said, the fact that this strategy has yet to find success might prove her right idk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJjdsm4B7bc

really doubt those "nice hair" ads shifted a single vote

That O’Toole tweet is pretty interesting in light of all the recent fringey freak outs over politicians using the almost same phrase “build back better” as some coded globalist conspiracy about “the great reset”.

build back better = evil, globalist, pedo ring

build back stronger = good common sense, a plan not a slogan, Canada first

I don't think Canada needs another slogan! It needs three new slogans! Take that, Canada!

“Canada needs a handyman” you expect the guy in the photo to be Mike Holmes.

Yeah, at the risk of giving the Tories a better campaign idea, what's funny is that he could have made it "Canada needs a captain" or "Canada needs a pilot" and made a reference to his actually respectable air force career. Instead he concluded that pretending to be Bob the Builder is the ticket to victory.

The right O'Toole for the job!

OK, here's the actual stay-at-home order. The announcements had been written badly but it seems like getting curbside pickup is OK: https://files.ontario.ca/solgen-stay-at-home-order-2021-01-13.pdf . I'm not sure what the difference from the previous lockdown is.

Erin "o'Toole Man" Taylor

Hm, if this is accurate, maybe school closures are more justified than I thought tbh (URL does not describe comments - a new U de M study finds that elementary schools are a driving factor behind the spread of COVID in Montreal): https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/emsb-unveils-air-purifiers-maintaining-they-will-slow-spread-of-covid-19

Yeah, it's worth bringing that article up again since the 2020 thread is now closed.

I don't know about Ontario or even the rest of Quebec, to be honest, but closing schools anew would certainly be justified in Montreal right now. I suspect we'll hit a new hospitalization peak in the coming days. As soon as it subsides, Legault will claim victory and argue that keeping schools open was the right call. A couple of weeks later, we'll be back to square one and he'll be forced to implement even stricter lockdown measures. It seems to me that his strategy is reactive rather than proactive, partly because the general population prefers it that way (it makes the decision-making process more 'legible', as it were, and seeing is believing). Regardless, I do hope to be proven wrong.

Oh ha, did you already share it? I just saw it tonight, my bad.

Warning: National Post, but I can't find another English source for this atm.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/head-of-radio-canada-spent-month-of-december-in-his-miami-condo-despite-public-health-warnings

Does it make a difference that he's not an elected official?

I think it does, it's just that CBC/Radio-Canada have been campaigning against non-essential travel for months now.

There's a rep for the small-business association who appears on a London radio station regularly. She was just on and quite upset. I've heard her many times and trust the accuracy of what she says. 1) With the 8:00 curbside pickup rule in effect, Amazon is allowed to deliver after 8:00 p.m. (not sure if they actually do that) while small-business owners are not allowed to personally run over a delivery after their stores close; 2) Walmart and Costco are still allowed to stay open after 8:00 p.m. as long as they meet the 50% food threshold (maybe I have the number wrong--that seems high).

Setting an 8:00 pm limit does seem a bit like a very soft curfew, and I don't know that I see the point of those, but it also seems relatively generous for most small businesses, I think?

I think it's more the two sets of rules than the curfew itself. As she put it, the government--and she urged the host to get someone on to explain their reasoning--has opted for one side.

It might be possible that the 8pm curbside rule is meant to target some specific kind of nightlife or gatherings using it as a loophole, maybe culturally linked, so they don’t want to say it explicitly. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense otherwise.

That's how I understand it as well. Maybe it's also a way to minimize the devil-may-care side effects of late night alcohol/drug use.

This is such a fucking dumb gamble, I'm honestly livid right now:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7576475/quebec-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-second-doses-90-days/

The WHO is against it and Pfizer-BioNTech threatened to withdraw their vaccine supply from Quebec if we don't follow the two-dose schedule yet they're going with their moronic gut feeling anyway.

I can't take this government anymore.

I couldn't before the pandemic. Now it's becoming irrational.

I'm the same, and there's nothing irrational about it! I cut Legault a fuckton of slack last year but his last few calls are indefensible given how poorly things are going. We're about to overtake France's no. of deaths/1M pop, ffs!

Fwiw my dad works in the healthcare sector and I think this dicey 90-day lag between doses just broke him.

Why would they do this? Just bc they can give out first doses to more people this way?

Yes, except it's not much of a mid- to long-term plan for the province. The feds are saying we shouldn't wait more than 42 days before administering the second dose. Legault wants more than double that, with precious little to back him up.

I do not share any of the outrage about this! Loads of epidemiologists and virologists agree that "first doses first" might be the best plan, and Biden (and the UK) have both advanced similar proposals. Basically, there is disagreement in the scientific community. Accordingly, I am comfortable with elected government making informed choices. I think I agree with them that generalized immunity for more people is more important than total immunity for a smaller population at this point.

Pfizer-BioNTech did not "threaten" the government - Legault was asked what he would do if they made a threat like that and he said of course the government would comply.

My wording was indeed off. This is what I was referring to:

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/pfizer-could-withdraw-vaccine-supply-from-quebec-if-two-dose-schedule-not-followed-legault-1.5262256

Anyhow, suit yourself. It goes without saying that I am not a medical expert myself, but I will continue to trust my dad, an infectious diseases specialist, in this matter. Perhaps the government's little experiment will pay off, perhaps it will backfire. Time will tell. Either way, we are essentially being used as guinea pigs right now, and it's not something I am at all comfortable with seeing as official recommendations are being flouted.

Canada's National Advisory Committee believes that the second dose can be delayed for up to six weeks:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vaccine-panel-ok-to-delay-second-dose-1.5871677

Between six weeks and 90 days, the difference is rather stark.

(The UK's doing 12 weeks too.)

Just some more perspective on the amount of debate:

Will delay of the 2nd dose of vaccines promote virus resistance? https://t.co/aaTvv6ATIs @meredithwadman w/ @florian_krammer @PaulBieniasz @jbloom_lab @sarahcobey
Debated here, mostly likely no.
There's also a case for stronger immune response by delay, not discussed/studied pic.twitter.com/PEcXiChlIY

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 14, 2021

Good for them? Their handling of the pandemic has been absolutely atrocious so far.

xp

Which vaccine are we talking about by the way?

Because this article (from yesterday) suggests that 'spacing out doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine may be more effective at protecting people':

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/second-shots-of-covid-vaccine-could-be-delayed-further-in-england

That may well be true, but to my knowledge we haven't even approved that one yet.

See also (from last week):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/no-data-to-support-uk-delay-of-vaccines-second-dose-says-who

The plot thickens...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pfizer-temporarily-reducing-vaccine-deliveries-1.5874645

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/15/canada-ontario-doug-ford-lockdown-covid-19-toronto/

Ontario mess made the WaPo.

The stuff with Baber up in York is really bad news for Ford I think. That letter is reinforcing a lot of anti lockdown arguments that sound reasonable to a lot of people, notably from the c2c article that’s gone viral amongst conservatives lately. The false premises in it require too sophisticated a takedown to easily counter. Baber is being called a hero and a whistleblower. ffs. Ford’s original support is very fractured and a large portion has observably moved farther right, and while that could be an exploitable political weakness, I still find it ominous and upsetting.

I ran into a neighbour while out walking yesterday and asked him about my coffee question above. Which I know seems utterly insignificant, but, as I explained to him, it has next to nothing to do with coffee--obviously, I can make that at home. It’s much more about simply going in there; if you’re on your own during one of these lockdowns, many days that’ll be the only interaction you have with anyone that doesn’t take place on a computer screen. To that end, I thought his idea for what I should say if I ever got questioned was pretty sensible, seeing as “essential” has been deemed to vary from person to person: call it a mental-health issue.

Turns out be nothing anyway. The only two cops here come in from Stratford; they work out of the municipal building that’s a few dozen steps around the corner from Tim’s. There’s usually a car parked outside, so last night I just asked the guy. I don’t think he answered immediately--there was a slight pause, like he wasn’t sure either--but he said it was fine. Which means, for me, there’s no change at all that I can think of between now and what was already in place as of Boxing Day. And I don’t see that there will be, for me, until and unless schools reopen.

What do we make of Blanchet's comments on Alghabra? "His ties to the political Islamic movement raise questions" is vague and almost seems like innuendo, although I wonder if there's some context I'm missing.

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2021/01/15/nouveau-ministre-trudeau-qualifie-les-propos-du-chef-bloquiste-dinacceptables-1
https://globalnews.ca/news/7574235/bloc-quebecois-omar-alghabra-criticism/

On Twitter, he mostly also seems to be avoiding saying anything direct but shares articles like this, which, despite its, uh, questionable take, does at least specify what he might be taking issue with (the group's, acc to the author, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian leanings and ostensible support of Hamas): https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/593416/bonne-semaine-pour-l-islam

I wonder if there's some context I'm missing.

The context is dogwhistling. Blanchet is said to have taken his cue from 'Rebel News', as it's now called:

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-01-15/propos-sur-le-nouveau-ministre-omar-alghabra/blanchet-seme-l-intolerance-dit-trudeau.php

Really, though, it's just a racist procès d'intention and Lisée is now trying to put some flesh on it.

Huh, "Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on 1st day in office, sources confirm": https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/biden-keystone-xl-1.5877038

My wife's very happy about that.

i remember obama delaying it. good on biden

I’m very much an environmentalist, so ultimately feel like it’s the right move, but I do have concerns about the economic realities. I sometimes wonder if the average Canadian just thinks of the energy sector as just one of many similar big Canadian resources? Because I think I did, until I worked over a decade in banking - in a central admin centre. We had branches and large clients from coast to coast, but the small handful of Alberta transits, by quantity, a tiny fraction of all accounts nationally - in terms of actual dollars, they absolutely dwarfed everything else combined. It did change my perspective a bit.

yes, canada is a petro-state. it needs a kick in the arse to move away from it as it is a dying industry afaict

Along those lines, some good news (economic and environmental) out of Ingersoll they were talking about on the radio this morning.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/gm-canada-announces-tentative-deal-for-1-billion-electric-vehicle-plant-in-ontario-1.5269550

Good:

Racism has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. My statement: pic.twitter.com/TP6uATWOi3

— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) January 18, 2021

good excuse for them to get rid of a headache, but I'll take it

Am I the only person in the country that thinks this is overblown? Like, how is someone supposed to vet every donation? This guy gave Sloan like $100, he’s supposed to have his people research every donation, recognize the name of this Nazi?

Maybe that’s a good idea, I don’t know, but is that kind of deep dive SOP?

I’m glad Sloan’s gone, he is a human cancer, but it feels like a weird scandal.

The reality is that on Monday for the newly eligible 18+ population, there will likely be no or very few booster appointments available, but we are actively working to increase capacity. (2/3)

— Ottawa Public Health (@OttawaHealth) December 19, 2021

Any idea what time the bookings open tomorrow? I'm wondering if I should check right away at midnight.

8 am, acc. to CTV, but I haven't seen anything directly from the province: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/everything-you-need-to-know-to-book-your-booster-dose-appointment-in-ontario-tomorrow-1.5713346

monday covid numbers are gonna be crazy

I have a booster booked for the 30th but if any of you non-Torontonians want to give me your Moderna so I could get it before then, I'll gladly take it (got Moderna for my first two, no side effects except a sore arm each time)

I don’t know if the booking system where you are is similar to Halton region, but the way it worked here was that at first it looked like there were no appointments soon, so I took the first appointment it said was available, about a month out, but then once in the system was able to request a link to reschedule (valid for one hour) and by refreshing many times, usually a much sooner one or last minute appointments would appear as other people reschedule theirs.

So what I’ve ended up doing under the current situation was to push it back to one in late January, just to stay in the queue in case the shortage resolves.

So for jmm and anyone else here, OPH is now saying this:

With many thanks to local healthcare workers, @OttawaCity staff and volunteers, we have been able to add an additional 15,000 appointments for boosters over the holidays. We are constantly working to increase our capacity. Thank you, #OttCity! Every vaccine counts! (1/2)

— Ottawa Public Health (@OttawaHealth) December 20, 2021

Me, my wife and my brother are all booked to receive our boosters this week in Toronto. We used the listings of local pharmacies rather than the mass sites where we each got our first two shots; most of those sites don't appear to be open now, or maybe they are only taking walk-ins?

Thx xp. I'm not counting on being able to get one of those, but hopefully it's an indication that more will continue to be added.

Quebec shuts down schools, bars, gyms, restaurants, casinos, etc. again, after recording highest new case count since the start of the pandemic and three new deaths in one day. Several hospitals postponing non-urgent surgeries and Dube is talking about the likelihood of triage protocols.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/new-closures-covid-19-quebec-1.6292622

3,784 new cases, no new deaths in ON:
https://globalnews.ca/news/8462925/ontario-covid-cases-december-20-coronavirus/

QC restaurants still open, sorry

Anyone near Ottawa, over 50k appointments were made available about half an hour ago. I got one for early Jan, my partner is getting hers this week.

Nice, I got one for early January also.

got my booster yesterday afternoon, got an early invite because I went double AZ. not feeling the greatest this morning...

So our one kid who just got cleared with a negative PCR from a school exposure (and subsequently me cleared to about to drive to see my ailing mum) just got a brand new notification (our fourth!) from the school and public health, so has to isolate and test all over again. Unfortunately this time it’s the variant requiring stricter measures so it’s all of us in isolation now, regardless of vax or symptom status. And it asks us to isolate her alone in a room, away from the rest of us, but that’s just not manageable. The worst part is that the PCR is mandatory at the end of it, so even if she’s still well and we’ve all been housebound, she needs to then go to the same testing place where all the sick ones are, potentially getting exposed all over again. I’m good with the isolating, but that part doesn’t seem sensible at all. We’ll do our best to deal though. This is really the only place I allow myself to vent a bit.

To be clear it’s our fourth exposure, but it’s been two per kid, from different schools, and one from hockey, so four separate case sources. We still do almost no socializing. Could be we are suddenly unlucky or it’s just gotten that much worse out there.

And it asks us to isolate her alone in a room, away from the rest of us, but that’s just not manageable.

o_O

Kim that sounds like a very unreasonable setup, sorry you are going through that

that’s awful. sorry, Kim

Two-day postponement for schools? What's the point of postponing for two days? Two weeks, or go online, or return Monday.

I personally think I had this in the days leading up to Christmas. Was sick the weekend before (sore throat, coughing, congestion, bit of a temperature), then started to get a little better each day. Mostly self-isolated, although I did make a quick trip to the grocery store (triple masked + scarf); I thought I was going to be stuck at home, so I had to. Trying to get a test proved to be pointless, so my sister suggested I come up as planned on the 24th, and they'd give me a rapid test there. It came up negative, so either I didn't have it or--what I think--I had three or four asymptomatic days, followed by four or five mildly symptomatic days, then the test.

Had to cancel my booster (Dec. 22) and probably will have to wait weeks. So--without detailing how supply works for retired teachers--I'm going to book off January and return February, presumably after a booster shot.

What I just heard on the radio is that the two-day delay is to give them time to install proper ventilation units?

I don't know...Better late--really, really, really, really late--than never, I guess, but wow.

nonsense of quebec's authoritarian measures made transparent by: "oh also shops will be closed on sundays???"

Feel like we're a matter of weeks from just letting er rip in much of the world? Like more back to normal than we've been in a couple years.

Sunday shopping ban is next level

Lol we got emergency alerts on our phones about the QC curfew.

No bars in Hull tonight, alas.

Newfoundland only got Sunday shopping in 1998. Should've stayed how it was, Sundays were super chill.

to my previous post.. this is just my head spinning a bit. Here we've gone from a case or two a day to per capita cases per day about on the level of Ontario now (if these numbers still mean much). They still report numbers as though they have any distinction between "contact of a previous case" or "under investigation". This week we were told to contact trace ourselves, Public Health is done with that. All cases are reported as "under investigation". ...by those infected? OK.

Kids are going back to school online. But restaurants are open, half capacity.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-to-stop-collecting-covid-19-numbers-from-school-boards-suspend-reporting-of-cases-1.5724870

What does that mean exactly? Individual boards were reporting before the break--my board, Peel; you just had to look it up--but is that a separate thing from the province's own reporting? I can't figure that out from this story.

The ministry also laid out in the memo steps on how school boards can minimize school closures due to operational reasons related to "high rates of expected absenteeism" among staff.

I got a call today for a supply job next week. I hung up before getting the details, then booked off for the month. As I indicated above, I don't want to go back until I get boosted. I'm contributing to a looming absenteeism catastrophe, but I just don't want to be in there until I get that third shot. (If I did, as I suspect, come out of an Omicron infection, have I now built up immunity to that? Thing is, I'll never know if I did or not.)

BREAKING: @ongov to announce (imminently) schools will go online for the next 2 weeks. As bitter a pill for some who will struggle mightily during this time, this will afford some needed time to upgrade safety measures, defuse the surge of Omicron.

— Abdu Sharkawy (@SharkawyMD) January 3, 2022

Not sure about that source

Not to sound naive, but he looks pretty legitimate; guessing it's true. Not surprised, if so--the two-day postponement always struck me as ludicrous.

Schools moved online for at least two week; indoor dining, gyms, museums, etc closed; WFH if possible; non-urgent medical procedures paused (!):

New modelling from Public Health Ontario on hospital admissions shows that the Omicron variant will overwhelm the entire health system.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-public-health-measures-jan-3-1.6302531

Music lessons specifically mentioned in the full printed statement this time, sigh: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures

nonsense of quebec's authoritarian measures made transparent by: "oh also shops will be closed on sundays???"

― sean gramophone, Thursday, December 30, 2021 8:25 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

craziest thing about this was that grocery stores are not considered essential services and were closed sunday. only deps and pharmacies

I haven't really processed the Ontario changes yet; I keep getting e-mails or FB posts about this or that closing. It really is going to feel like April 2020 for at least a couple of weeks, probably longer.

Today's COVID-19 briefing in B.C. marks a significant shift in the province's fight against the virus.
Businesses and people know what to do to prevent spread.
Health orders are not the long term solution. #bcpoli

— Richard Zussman (@richardzussman) January 4, 2022

we're on our own, baby!

the pacific wild west

https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/01/04/BC-FOI-Missing-COVID-19-Data/

funny enough, before the pandemic, i requested copies of some forms from the ministry of health i had personally filled out. i needed them to figure out some personal information i had written but had forgotten what i had put down. i was actually given the option to request this information and i took them up on it. what a mistake that was. i was transferred to some weird department (i guess it must've been the privacy department?) and they asked me why i wanted that information. after i explained why, they told me they couldn't release it to me. i told them i was entitled to it under the privacy act and that they had even told me i could request the forms. the lady on the phone gave me the strangest runaround and weirdest excuse. i don't even remember what she said but she was trying to dissuade me from requesting it.

in the end, she budged. she quoted a delivery time that was ridiculously long. i think it was more than 30 days or something. i finally received the copies of the forms i filled out maybe 30 days later or so. the kicker: the information i needed from the form had been blocked out with black squares.

so, yes, i'm not surprised. we're all just sheep and do as the government says because we have no other choice. we're left in the dark about a lot of stuff through bureaucracy. they know they can get away with it. keeping us ignorant of the real details is how they control all of us. honestly, fuck the dumb provincial and federal governments.

yeah this policy was pretty much bullshit: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-government-brings-in-10-application-fee-for-freedom-of-information-requests-1.6264020

New thread: Down With the Sickness: Canadian Politics 2022