On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced even more restrictive and stupid protocols that would undoubtedly prevent Ontarians from buying beer.
Police could arbitrarily stop and question anyone caught walking or driving outside.
Even playgrounds were closed off.
Well, the police refused to put their noses in the way of collective flying fists.
Now, the provincial government has also stepped back (somewhat):
Along with allowing playgrounds to now remain open, Ontario is walking back the increased powers it gave to police. Solicitor General Sylvia Jones says police won't be allowed to randomly stop any pedestrian or driver to ask for their home address and reason for being out of their residence. Police will only be allowed to ask people for that information if they believe they're participating in a "organized public event or social gathering."
The change comes after backlash from medical professionals, residents and police services across Ontario, who said they wouldn't comply with the new powers.
Now, if this virus is over-running hospitals, a real leader would stick to his guns and hold the line.
Not that Canada has real leaders.
Just saying.
But where the provincial government withdraws, the federal government steps in:
Procurement Minister Anita Anand isn’t ruling out any options that could help Canada curb its third wave of COVID-19, including invoking the Canada Emergencies Act.
When asked about whether Canada would be considering the Act on Sunday, she told The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson federal cabinet would reconvene over the weekend and again early next week to “consider all options.”
The Canada Emergencies Act would give the federal government the power to issue executive orders and reallocate public funds quickly following a Parliamentary review.
Fascists never let a crisis go to waste.
(Sidebar: case in point.)
Let's take a look at how JUSTIN'S government has handled things so far:
Jan. 22: In contrast to Taiwan’s approach, Canada implements a much less onerous screening protocol for travellers returning from Wuhan to major airports in MontrĂ©al, Toronto and Vancouver. Passengers with symptoms are to be alerted that they should go into voluntary isolation for 14 days, with voluntary self-isolation essentially being the Canadian policy for the next two months.
(Sidebar: read the whole thing.)
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Feb. 3: Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux in the House of Commons: “Other countries are taking proactive measures by declaring a public health emergency. Other countries are cancelling all flights into and out of China. The United States said it is implementing these measures to increase its ability to detect and contain the coronavirus. Why has Canada not done the same?”
Health Minister Patty Hajdu replies: “Here in Canada we have very different processes in place than in the United States. For example, we do not need to call a public health emergency here because we already have the structures, the systems and the authorities to spend appropriate dollars necessary to respond, treat and maintain our public health systems.”
Hajdu also scolds opposition MPs: “One of the interesting elements of the coronavirus outbreak has been the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society. That was actually noted by an interviewer on the weekend. In fact, she asked me how Canadians can be assured that they are getting the right information. One way might be if the opposition does not sensationalize the risk to Canadians and allows Canadians to understand where they can find a wealth of information.”
“The challenge with country-by-country approaches is COVID spreads in way that we can see, and ways that we can’t,” she responded when asked if Canada is considering banning flights from India.
“The safest thing for Canadians is to have a universal approach that requires scrutiny at the border.”
So far this month, 33 flights from Delhi carried COVID-positive passengers, according Health Canada.
That’s out of 112 international arrivals carrying infected passengers, despite assurances that Canada’s border protections are among the strongest in the world.
“There’s a very low rate of importation at the border,” she said, despite being specifically asked about the latest variant. Health Canada has told the Toronto Sun it considers the strain a “variant of interest.”
Health Canada reported 640 of 44,089 international travellers tested positive between Feb. 22 and March 15.
**
But early in the month, the Liberal government in Ottawa clung to the notion that it must not close its borders to travellers, or quarantine them when they arrived, even as that was by then standard practice in Asia, and even as infection brought in by travellers were spreading in Canadian towns and cities.
Yet by the end of the month, the Liberal policy did a complete about-face, shutting down our borders.
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The Public Health Agency in a 2019 internal memo boasted it was fully prepared for a pandemic after spending millions stocking federal warehouses. The memo was dated last September 16, three months before the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China: “We want to be as ready as possible.”
**
The federal pandemic response has been so secretive, bureaucratic and haphazard “it is hard to have faith,” one Liberal MP emailed colleagues and staff. “I am sorry if the Party may be pissed off,” wrote MP Dr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.), a former consultant to the World Health Organization: “It is hard now to accept reassurances that we are prepared, that we are doing all of the right things, when we can never, ever get any specifics.”
**
The feds were so unprepared for the COVID-19 outbreak last March that they sent N95 masks to Florida to be tested for safety.
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A Quebec contractor has failed to provide pandemic masks even though the federal government awarded the firm more than $380 million in contracts to provide them, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
“To date the Public Health Agency has not received surgical masks from Medicom’s Canadian production facility,” said Natalie Mohamed, spokesperson for the health agency.
**
The Council had issued CanSino a licence to use a Canadian biological product as part of a COVID-19 vaccine. CanSino was supposed to provide samples of the vaccine for clinical trials at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University, but the Chinese government blocked the shipments.
**
When China donated medical supplies to help Canada in battling the coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne turned to Twitter to thank the country directly.
But after the small island nation of Taiwan did the same, Champagne did not post about the donation on his Twitter account and when pressed to thank the nation directly on Thursday, would not say its name.
The agency divulged last week that it sent samples of Ebola and henipavirus — which includes Nipah and the related Hendra — to China in March. It was meant for virus research, part of the agency’s mission to back international public-health research, a spokesman said.
Last month, an acclaimed NML scientist — Xiangguo Qiu — was reportedly escorted out of the lab along with her husband, another biologist, and members of her research team. The agency said it was investigating an “administrative issue,” and had referred a possible policy breach to the RCMP. Little more has been said about the affair.
(Sidebar: this nasty, little bug.)
There are several examples of the federal government's complete mismanagement of this China-spread virus and the government's willingness to use it to empower all organs of the state.
Had these things occurred in another country, there would be a revolt.
Also:
With the prospect of a federal election this year growing stronger, a new polls finds a majority of Canadians think going to the polls during the COVID-19 pandemic is not only unsafe, but would create an unfair vote.
**
A provincial court in Alberta, Canada, ruled earlier this week that Pastor James Coates, who was jailed earlier this year after holding church services, will not be allowed to challenge the constitutional validity of Alberta’s Public Health Act during his upcoming trial.
Because fascism.
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