Your mid-week tip-toe through the tulips ...
Oh, I would say that we are in distress:
Canadians are currently at the US border, using lights as Morse code saying “SOS” with the flag turned upside down pic.twitter.com/MAHGQCQdpF
— LΞIGH (@LeighStewy) April 18, 2021
Cases in point:
She praises her government for spending $20 billion to help the provinces restart their economies over the summer, and providing $2 billion to ensure kids could safely return to school in the fall. And Freeland commends her government for doing such a great job of procuring vaccines and committing an additional $1 billion last month to speed up the roll-out.
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Which all seems a little rich. Especially if you live in Ontario, where the health-care system is on the brink of collapse, businesses have once again been shuttered, children are not in school and there are not nearly enough doses of vaccine to go around.
It just goes to show that you can’t solve every problem by simply throwing money at it. You actually need a plan. Unfortunately, the Liberals have consistently opted for the former, handing out borrowed money like it was going out of style, while seeming to spurn the idea of creating a strategy for how the money should be spent, or developing systems to keep the virus at bay.
It’s no coincidence that this is the first federal budget in two years: the government clearly spent most of last year flying by the seat of its pants. Some of its spending, like quickly getting money to people who lost their jobs in the first-wave lockdowns, made sense. So did the $2 billion the government spent on procuring personal protective equipment.
But there was never any national strategy, or strong co-ordination with the provinces, on how to deal with lockdowns, inter-provincial border closures, testing or contact tracing. The federal government failed to implement meaningful restrictions at our international borders, and didn’t put the hotel quarantine system in place until well after the variants started circulating here.
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These are strategies that have worked well in countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, and are the kinds of things the federal government could have taken the lead on, even if it didn’t want to use the Emergencies Act to usurp provincial powers.
Why, you act as though you believe the government to be competent and fair.
Oopsy.
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I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with:
The annual pace of inflation jumped higher in March due in large part to a plunge in prices a year ago at the start of the pandemic.
Statistics Canada said Wednesday the consumer price index in March was up 2.2 per cent compared with a year ago.
The increase compared with a 1.1 per cent year-over-year increase in February, which was then a pandemic-era high.
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Cabinet’s budget was a “major disappointment” on pharmacare, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress yesterday told the Commons finance committee. “People are struggling to access medication,” said Hassan Yussuff: “I really think people need to know.”
Not enough in it for you?
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Harper failed to destroy the CBC when he had a chance:
The new federal budget released on Monday promises millions in new funding for CBC and Radio-Canada despite declining viewership.
Over the next year, Canada’s state broadcaster will receive an extra $21 million in addition to the CBC’s annual $1.2 billion federal grant.
“Budget 2021 proposes to provide $21 million in 2021-22 as immediate operational support to the CBC/Radio-Canada,” the budget document reads.
“This funding will ensure its stability during the pandemic and enable it to continue providing news and entertainment programming that keeps Canadians informed.”
No one gets their news from the CBC.
Former public safety minister Ralph Goodale will take over as Canada’s new high commissioner to the United Kingdom at a time when Brexit tensions are roiling old grievances in Northern Ireland.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the decision on Wednesday, adding that the role will see Goodale provide “strategic advice” to him as Canada and the U.K. face issues including the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the Brexit decision.
(Sidebar: this Ralph Goodale.)
Are they hoping that everyone will forget?:
A judge is scheduled to release her decision Wednesday on a request to delay the final leg of hearings in Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case.
The hearings were set to begin next week but lawyers for Meng say they need more time to review documents related to the case obtained through a Hong Kong court.
If she had been in China, her kidney would be on the way to Singapore by now.
Where Doug Ford has failed, the federal government, too, has failed.
Spectacularly:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that could include barring incoming flights from specific countries, such as India, even as he defended his government’s actions on the border as effective Tuesday.
I'm surprised that India didn't restrict flights from Canada, or at least flights that had Bengali Butthead on them.
Also:
“After at least one hour, which felt like a week I was worried I would miss my special appointment. Of course I swore to uphold isolation and all the regulations like phoning in to report my isolation daily, because Canadians can’t be trusted. I guess. I finally went to ask the nurse if I could leave. She told me that the very young Chinese guard in the first booth said that he didn’t agree and I had to go to their choice of detention centre. I was floored and asked if she could do something. No, the Chinese guard said no! The Canadian Health Canada nurse obviously got orders from him. Well. I was so shocked that I wasn’t allowed my medical emergency care.
“I said well I have to try and make my appointment because it was beginning to be painfully unbearable. All she said was that I could call for an ambulance, see a paramedic and wait until my detention was over. I thought that a nurse would know that in cases of specialist treatment, a paramedic is of no help.
“I had to say I must leave and I’ll deal with the consequences later. It’s a $3000.00 fine.
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U.S. President Joe Biden says he’s planning to give surplus COVID-19 vaccines to other countries, including Canada, in the future as his country’s vaccination rollout hits another milestone.
IF Biden remembers.
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Canada’s chief public health officer says new information on COVID-19 and variants prompted the National Advisory Committee on Immunization to suddenly cancel its planned announcement on who should get the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Ahem:
Dr. John Conly, an infectious diseases physician and professor of medicine at the University of Calgary, not only denied that aerosol transmission is a primary route of transmission, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but also said that N95 masks can cause "harms" — including acne.
"Any time you look at benefits, you need to look at harms, of which there are many harms with N95s — and I think to ignore them you are at your peril," Conly told a panel discussion at the University of Calgary on April 9 on the role of airborne transmission in the COVID-19 pandemic.
"There is acne, also issues with eczema, conjunctivitis, CO2 retention; there has been decreased O2 concentrations in pregnant women — many side-effects to this."
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Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency, yesterday said he was unaware of any executive being fired for pandemic mismanagement. Successive audits have cited the Agency for “confusion,” “limited public health expertise” and lack of preparedness though Parliament funded it at $675 million a year for pandemic management: “I can’t answer that question off the top of my head.”
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Canada Post waited a week to notify employees of what became a fatal Covid outbreak at a mail processing plant, according to its largest union. Post office management did not comment. Federal labour inspectors earlier cited Canada Post four times for breach of health regulations at separate plants: “Every worker in Canada has a right to a safe and healthy workplace.”
But, you know, churches.
And facts and other things that don't add up.
Australia currently doesn't care what China thinks:
Australia on Wednesday cancelled two deals struck by its state of Victoria with China on Beijing's flagship Belt and Road Initiative, prompting the Chinese embassy in Canberra to warn that already tense bilateral ties were bound to worsen.
Under a new process in Australia, Foreign Minister Marise Payne has the power to review deals reached with other nations by the country's states and universities.
Payne said she had decided to cancel four deals, including two that Victoria agreed with China, in 2018 and 2019, on cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature trade and infrastructure scheme.
"I consider these four arrangements to be inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy or adverse to our foreign relations," she said in a statement.
China's embassy in Australia voiced its "strong displeasure and resolute opposition" to the cancellations late on Wednesday.
"This is another unreasonable and provocative move taken by the Australian side against China," the embassy said in a statement. "It further shows that the Australian government has no sincerity in improving China-Australia relations."
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