And the Rest of It

This time, stupidity IS the strategy:

Now, as COVID-19 smoulders in multiple regions, several experts are calling for some long-term vision for sustained resilience against mounting case counts.

“Canada is 11 months into the deadliest peacetime crisis in a century at the highest level of infection ever. How many times has Justin Trudeau used emergency federal powers since COVID began? ZERO,” Amir Attaran, a biologist and professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa tweeted this week.

“We’re in this mess because our federal government has been AWOL. They have never placed any mandatory federal measures on a province, of any kind,” Attaran said in an interview with the National Post.

The skill of politics is to mediate between competing stakeholders, Attaran said, “to cut deals, to negotiate, to bargain an outcome that’s acceptable enough to multiple stakeholders that you get re-elected. But it depends on the stakeholders being thinking beings.”

 

(Sidebar: this Amir Attaran. You have to be sucking quite badly for this bozo to point you out. Not that his over-reach is welcome but still ...)

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“The problem for us is we aren’t getting the information to suggest where it’s happening,” Barclay said. “They’re trying to get out of it and they’re guessing at where they should focus, versus using data to allow them to focus on the areas creating the biggest issues.”

 

 Did you check flights and nursing homes?

Oh, just sue them some more:

Paperwork is so difficult for veterans filing legitimate claims for benefits that “I mightn’t be great at it myself,” Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay said yesterday. A backlog of claims by injured vets numbered 49,216 this year, according to the Budget Office: “These are people who served this country.”

 

 

The scapegoat of scapegoats (for now):

An ex-Liberal MP who left caucus over nepotism had been an outspoken critic of ethical lapses on Parliament Hill. “Canadians deserve better accountability,” MP Yasmin Ratansi (Don Valley East, Ont.) earlier told legislators.

 

Why, it's like these issues are not resolved in the Canadian mindset at all: 

The B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed an attempt by the Delta Hospice Society board to reject membership applications from those who didn't agree with the society's position that Christian morals prevent the hospice from giving the end-of-life service that is legal in Canada.

The lower court ruled that the board had acted in bad faith to manipulate a vote and ordered the society to accept memberships from those who were turned away.

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Lawyers representing the City of Edmonton say the city decided not to light a bridge in colours requested by an anti-abortion group because it risked polarizing the community, a judge heard Friday.

Just like waving ridiculous flags or painting crosswalks?

If you don't want to polarise anyone, simply tell any and every special-interest group no when they ask.