Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

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.

Can you even donate to an individual MP without it going through the party in the first place? I don't think there's a way for me to donate directly to Catherine McKenna or Joel Harden but not to the Liberals or NDP?

the donation was for sloan's leadership campaign

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/white-nationalist-donation-derek-sloan-1.5878070

sloan claims he had no idea who the guy was and is returning the money, but no denunciation of white supremacism in his statements either. there's a long history of denouncing and returning embarrassing political donations, and I agree politicians probably can't vet everything. O'Toole is just taking the opportunity to get rid of a headache.

It’s not that he accepted the donation. It’s that his specific policies attracted it.

definitely o’toole using a good opportunity. agreed it’s overblown, but part of the reason is that it’s the kind of thing that goes with the rest of what sloan represents. this is the guy who said he’d designate antifa as a terrorist group, after all.

the best part is that it’ll damage cpc as well, and deservingly so. they had many opportunities to get rid of sloan before.

in any case, i’ll celebrate derek finally getting what he deserved. too bad he blocked me on fb/twitter.

sloan is so disingenuous about the shit he propagates, justifying his antivax petition with the "any constituent can write a petition" defence. he's done and said a ton of things that merit getting the boot.

Oh I see, so the donation was given through the party but meant for Sloan's leadership campaign per se and, even while the party did take a cut, the issue is that Sloan attracted that element in the first place?

seems like you can give up to $1500 directly to a leadership contestant (but yeah the conservatives took a 10% cut). and you can give to electoral district associations or party-endorsed candidates, not just to parties.

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=ces&document=part6&lang=e

Reportedly a glitch in the reporting, but cases do seem to be coming down. In London, their 5-day average is down ~35%.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-january-19-2021-vaccine-update-1.5878789

lol, why do Canadians do this?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsMp0HAXMAE0EwX?format=png&name=240x240

Annoying, but I accept it. Vague moral superiority is pretty gentle as far as nationalism goes. If we don’t have social cohesion, we lose our social programs.

Oh hey,

Not sure this should have been the event that triggered it, but Sloan is booted. Well deserved.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/01/20/conservatives-mps-eject-derek-sloan-in-a-secret-ballot-vote.html

I'm not really up on this guy, so yes, you guessed it, first reaction: "Huh? Far from great, but a couple of songs weren't bad."

it's nice to see o'toole jumping on this so quickly and decisively - harper would've likely doubled down in a similar scenario,
but i have a feeling this will be seen as a weakness by his caucus.

Yeah I'm underwhelmed by how O'Toole demanded that his caucus had to "coax me" into ejecting Sloan

poorly formed joeks aside, I thought this Andrew Coyne article was excellent:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-conservatives-have-a-hypocrisy-problem-that-goes-beyond-derek/

"Derek Sloan is right. It is hypocritical for the Conservative Party to kick him out of caucus for unwittingly accepting a donation from the notorious neo-Nazi – and party member – Paul Fromm, when the party had done the same. Like Mr. Sloan, the party failed to screen out either Mr. Fromm’s donation or membership application – forgivably, perhaps, as he gave his name as Frederick P. Fromm. But only Mr. Sloan is paying the price for it.

Not that he deserves any better. There are worse things than hypocrisy, and one of them is the party’s willingness to tolerate Mr. Sloan’s presence in caucus as long as it has. If Mr. Sloan is being scapegoated in the present case, he had already earned his ticket out of caucus several times over: for suggesting homosexuality was a choice, for insinuating that Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, was in the pay of the Chinese government, for other public statements that were at best reckless and at worst outright bigoted."

From that article (which was very good indeed):

Is it any wonder that more than 40 per cent of Conservative voters, according to a Leger poll, would have voted for Donald Trump in the recent election? Or that a similar number believe he actually won?

Err, really? That's worse than I thought.

I guess it's only 40% of 30% of all Canadian voters, if you want to look at the glass as being 12% full

this is a minor thing but i'm curious: i wonder what happens to sloan's blue check twitter account now, since it's got "cpc" in the name.
does he lose the right to use it?

Sloan is paying the price for everything he's done wrong, obv.

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