Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

Annamie Paul asked whether @ElizabethMay is involved in what she called a "one-sided campaign" to depose her as Green Leader.
Paul responds that it's a "reasonable question" but that she would never talk about stuff like that in public.

— Alex Ballingall (@aballinga) July 19, 2021

A friend of mine is trying be the federal green for that Fredricton seat. They could do a lot worse.

Glad I’m no longer in Alberta but deeply concerned about my family and friends still there, this is demonic and insane, I fucking hate the people who run things there with every inch of my being

Starting Aug. 16, isolation won’t be universally req’d if you test + except in some high-risk settings. Testing will continue to be important but we will no longer recommend testing for mild symptoms. (10/14)

— Dr. Deena Hinshaw (@CMOH_Alberta) July 28, 2021

Deranged

I first thought the "+" meant "and", as in something like "isolation won't be required as a general rule if you have been tested (and are negative) but distancing will still be required in high-risk settings", which seemed somewhat reasonable. But I was filling in a lot there. I think, based on the comments, the "+" actually means "positive", which seems so inexplicable that I can see why I misread it.

I made that same mistake, but it's definitely positive: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-covid-requirements-1.6121002

I feel so terrified and helpless, which I guess is the default state of things in 2021

Is any other province doing this? Why must Alberta aspire to be so much like the GOP?

Really disturbing to see a public health leader making "with vaccines, Covid = the flu" official policy

that would make more sense if Alberta didn't have the lowest vaccination rate in the country

For sure, though long Covid + no vaccines for children makes it p bad messaging even if the 12+ rate was ~95%. I get that we will probably need to adapt to a reality where covid is comparable to influenza, but surely we should consider waiting until after children can be vaccinated? (tbc: these points aren't directed at you Murgatroid)

And yeah, I'm seeing a lot of worried UCalgary people on my twitter talking about how effed this will be as there's no campus vaccine mandate

This province is hell of messed up. They scooped out the CMOH’s brains and replaced them with a build-a-bear voice box programmed by Tyler Shandro. Zero emphasis on second doses, all celebrating the return of freedumb, R value 1.5, fun fuckin times.

vaccinate rates must be rock bottom in many areas of alberta also i guess

Wow, this is a weird story.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/woman-body-sherbrooke-police-firefighters-container-1.6122481

Is it weirder than this?: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/former-barwin-patients-children-will-share-in-proposed-13-3-million-settlement

Oh Jesus, I didn't read the Sherbrooke story before posting. That's gruesome.

this is insane:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/deena-hinshaw-covid-19-alberta-1.6123181

Alberta fighting hard to take the mantle of worst covid response back from Ford

Looks like we've pulled ahead of the US and UK in both the % of the population that had the first dose and that is fully vaccinated, and are tied with Israel for 11th in the world wrt being fully vaccinated (we're ahead of them for first doses): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/hinshaw-covid-apology-confusion-1.6129785

In a column sent to various media outlets Wednesday, Dr. Deena Hinshaw says her words have caused some people to think she believes COVID-19 is over.

Hinshaw says that wasn't her intended message.

She said in the column that lifting precautions, including isolation requirements, asymptomatic testing and contact tracing will support the whole health of Albertans by allowing the province to focus on other health threats, opioid deaths and syphilis.

I want 2 scream

I give up

Ontario NDP Leader @AndreaHorwath doesn't think vaccines should be mandatory. Instead, she says education workers who aren't vaccinated should be required to take rapid tests.

"Unlike @StevenDelDuca, I don't take lightly people's charter rights," says Horwath. pic.twitter.com/Q4rPbd0uNp

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) August 4, 2021

why are political leaders so hellbent against learning anything even after [insert timeframe here depending on whether you want to see this as just a single issue or part of a larger thing] of this shit

fuck ford's gonna be re-elected isn't he

he's gonna outlast kenney!

Kenney has been much worse than Ford from what I've seen. Ford is not nearly so overtly racist and has at least consistently been somewhat willing to listen to constituents and moderate his policies; in comparison to Kenney, he also seems like a model of caution wrt COVID. Liberalizing rent control, scrapping planned labour protections, and privatizing home care are still terrible tbc and I'm not voting PC, but I'd take him over Kenney if forced to choose.

But yeah, polls have been showing PCs pretty likely to win: https://338canada.com/ontario/

my sense was that ford is unpopular in ontario but the opposition is completely ineffective. In contrast with Notley's Alberta NDP, who nail Kenney on everything.

His popularity went up during the pandemic. There was a perception aiui (not 100% unfounded) that he was handling it competently. The NDP have overall been a fairly good Opposition imo though this is not Horwath's best moment. Liberals usually reap the benefits though, despite their near-absence of a Parliamentary presence.

what is horwath's best moment

the last 12 months of Ontario govt's incoherent covid policies seem really exploitable by a competent opposition

They did get pools and necessary physio exercise facilities reopened for people with disabilities, although that was really more Harden than Horwath. They've pressed things like paid sick days pretty consistently but they might have been able to draw more of a big picture, perhaps. I had actually been thinking more of the Opposition pre-COVID. I think Horwath has been trying to paint a picture of Ford's "incoherence": https://www.ontariondp.ca/news/horwath-calls-ford-avoid-same-re-opening-mistakes . I think, though, that people are more likely to see this as flexibility and compromise on Ford's part. Kenney's more "coherent" approach seems easier to poke holes in.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/08/10/a-fourth-wave-of-covid-19-is-bearing-down-on-ontario-heres-a-sobering-warning-about-what-to-expect-as-new-cases-spike.html

With Ontario seeing more than three straight weeks of growth in daily COVID-19 cases — primarily in people who have not been vaccinated — the province is “most definitely” in a fourth wave, says a top doctor with the government’s science advisory table.

And with the number of new cases currently doubling every 10 days, Dr. Peter Juni, scientific director of the science table, warns the province could see as many as 1,200 new cases per day by the time school resumes in less than a month. That’s up from a current average of just over 300.

For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, Juni has a sobering message: “If we continue on our current reopening path, the probability of unvaccinated people across all age groups to experience infection in the next six to 12 months is 80 to 90 per cent. And the risk of complications from Delta in this unvaccinated group is two to three times higher than with previous variants.”

... “We’ve never been as open as we are right now during the entire pandemic. Never. We’re only able to afford that because of the absolutely successful vaccine rollout,” Juni said. He noted, however, that “we can’t have our cake and eat it too.”

“If we want to continue to be as open as we are, we need to protect the health-care system from the unvaccinated. We can only do that if the unvaccinated are being kept out of high risk settings, such as indoor dining, gyms and nightclubs.”

And that means the possible need for future restrictions if the number of COVID hospitalizations among the unvaccinated, driven by the now dominant Delta variant, begin to overwhelm the health-care system, he said.

Because of this possibility, Juni said a better key indicator moving forward is hospital occupancy, echoing comments made Monday by Dr. Kieran Moore, the province’s chief medical officer.

....As of Tuesday, 130 COVID patients were in hospital, including 109 in the ICU, according to the science table.

“If we achieve something like 400 to 500 COVID-19 hospital occupancies in the province, we will need to impose additional restrictions so that we are basically able to slow case growth down,” Juni said.

Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, pegs the first day of the fourth wave in Ontario as July 16, when the province entered Step 3 of its reopening plan and also, coincidentally, the day the province’s seven-day case average hit its lowest level before starting to rise again.

“You can circle that date on a calendar, because that’s the day we said, ‘hey, if you’re not vaccinated and you don’t care, go to the gym and exhale on everyone around you.’ That’s when we said ‘Delta, come on down!’” Furness said. “The wave starts when you set up the conditions for this to happen.”

To get a sense of how low vaccination rates can strain health-care systems, we need look no further than south of the border to the U.S., where the Delta variant has pushed cases and hospitalizations to the highest they’ve been in six months. New cases are averaging more than 126,000 cases per day, according to Johns Hopkins University. Unvaccinated residents in states in the deep south, in particular, have been hardest hit.

For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, Juni has a sobering message: “If we continue on our current reopening path, the probability of unvaccinated people across all age groups to experience infection in the next six to 12 months is 80 to 90 per cent. And the risk of complications from Delta in this unvaccinated group is two to three times higher than with previous variants.”

i think the last part of this is wrong, or at least still unconfirmed. most things i've read suggest delta is not more deadly, just has a higher viral load/higher R0. i'm not sure what to think of the first part either. look at the recent case curve for the netherland: big delta spike among unvaccinated after reopening, then it went down. small increase in hospitalisations proportional to cases, deaths basically stuck near 0. same thing could happen in ontario

https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1101300/coronavirus-cases-in-netherlands.jpg

that's a good comparison. canada is in a safer and better place than the uk and india, but the same thing happened in those two countries (cases plummetting after delta spikes).

i think if you can prevent thousands getting infected, why not get jabbed, though?

there's evidence that antibodies after getting covid only offers limited protection and not as much as getting jabbed. there is also the unknown of what covid brings in the long term. if that wasn't bad enough, there's also the risk of non-vaccinated causing another variant. as the country opens its borders and more canadians start travelling, the risks also increase. it's not just a local problem/spread issue we're dealing with. with the US having so many cases, it actually puts canada at a higher risk, as that's where most canadians travel to the most.

not to worry, the US isn't letting us in yet (although we're opening the border to them lol, extremely cucked behaviour)

eh call me a cuck but im happy to unilaterally open our borders. covid has given immigration restrictionists a field day

I assume jim just meant that the lack of reciprocity is typical of traditional the virgin Canada vs. the chad USA dynamics

I do think it's odd that I haven't see anyone publicly point out that the reason the US is staying closed is obviously and exclusively racism (against Mexicans), since there's no covid reasoning that makes a lick of sense and all the US statements I saw only referred to opening/closing the borders never a partic border

but yes, as someone who recently decided not to visit my US family because the possibility, however remote, of testing positive on my way back in would mean not being able to come back in until I was negative, it would be personally awesome to get to a point where the only req is vaccination

not to worry, the US isn't letting us in yet (although we're opening the border to them lol, extremely cucked behaviour)

― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, August 11, 2021 10:26 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's weird that this is such a widespread myth in canada. canadians are not banned/disallowed from flying into the US. lots of people at work and friends have been doing it for awhile now. you don't even have to be vaccinated. there's also been lots of people from all over the world who have not stopped flying into the states.

what isn't allowed is travelling there by land.

The flight allowance makes the now unidirectional land border even weirder though

border *closure

not to worry, the US isn't letting us in yet (although we're opening the border to them lol, extremely cucked behaviour)

― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, August 11, 2021 10:26 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's weird that this is such a widespread myth in canada. canadians are not banned/disallowed from flying into the US. lots of people at work and friends have been doing it for awhile now. you don't even have to be vaccinated. there's also been lots of people from all over the world who have not stopped flying into the states.

what isn't allowed is travelling there by land.

― Punster McPunisher, Wednesday, August 11, 2021 12:21 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh yes, sorry, im aware of this. just that if i were to go to the united states i would be using the land border (as probably thousands of americans did yesterday entering to BC through peace arch crossing)

Didn't realize there was this discrepancy. Funny to think that I could fly to San Francisco easier than I could drive to Syracuse (although tbh I have no reason to go to either place atm).

yeah i think i may have thought that there were some border restrictions in general at one stage but it was clear last summer that there were tourists from around the world, including the states, in vancouver, so that definitely disabused me of that misapprehension

that's true, jim, there's definitely more canadians that would drive to the states for day or weekend trips probably

God, this had better be true: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-ndp-david-shepherd-deena-hinshaw-jason-kenney-1.6139605

election time https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-call-trudeau-1.6138794

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal-election/2021/08/14/conservatives-launch-attack-ad-called-dumb-by-their-own-party-members.html

"The only reason for an election is because Trudeau wants a majority."

Is that supposed to be shocking?