Roundup: Back-end accountability and second guessing

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Even though Good Friday is normally a day where the whole of Ontario shuts down as owing to its strong Protestant roots, prime minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless carried on with his daily presser, talking about how the CERB and the Canada Emergency Business Accounts were now online, and that the wage subsidy was on the way. He also said that his Saturday address would be in the House of Commons instead of at Rideau Cottage, and then he would be spending Sunday and Monday with family, so there will be a brief respite from daily pressers (which have been solid for nearly a month now). He also spoke about his teleconference with the premiers, and upon questions about it, stated that no, they were not looking to invoke the Emergencies Act, and it was the very last thing they wanted to do (so maybe stop asking about it). During the Q&A, he was asked about the G20 energy ministers’ meeting and noted that there had been a decision around production cuts, and with regards to the next Bank of Canada governor, the process was ongoing and they had made no decision on next steps.

During the ministerial briefing shortly thereafter, employment minister Carla Qualtrough said that CRA would deal with the issue from there end where some people got double payments (apparently because they may have applied twice out of confusion) rather than relying on people to call in, and that the accountability measures in this programme were built in on the back-end, in order to speed through the processing of these benefits to those who need them. As well, Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller said that the additional funds to Indigenous communities for the pandemic were flowing, and that they will work together with individual communities and First Nations about what they need.

I’m also concerned with the burgeoning proliferation of stories questioning how quickly the government moved early on – particularly around things like travel bans and quarantine measures. One of there reasons, illustrated by the video here, is that this novel virus has proven to work faster and much deadlier than other epidemics we’ve seen in our lifetime. We’re still in the early phases of this pandemic, so it may be a bit early to second-guess things, given that we were following best practices, and travel bans are generally ineffective because people skirt them and don’t report when they are symptomatic because they don’t want to get in trouble for skirting the ban. This pandemic is unlike any we’ve had before, so it’s hard to start demanding why we weren’t better prepared, given that we were prepared for what we were used to expecting, and that should be something we should keep in mind.

Good reads:

  • Talk of using cellphone data as part of contact-tracing is raising a lot of red flags around privacy implications.
  • The RCMP will also have a role to play in the enforcement tools available under the Quarantine Act.
  • Here is a look at how one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks happened at an Ontario long-term care facility.
  • Chantal Hébert delves into how the current pandemic situation may have lasting repercussions for political leaders (or leadership hopefuls) once it’s over.
  • Chris Selley points out that the current crisis is shining a light on institutional problems we keep half-assing about, like prisons and long-term care facilities.
  • Matt Gurney reminds us of how fragile our food supply chains are when they rely on cheap imported labour to do much of the work for us.
  • For the Globe and Mail, I write about how Parliament is an essential service that can’t be done virtually.
  • My weekend column builds on that and debunks the excuses that Trudeau articulated in support of trying to take Parliament virtual.

Odds and ends:

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3 thoughts on “Roundup: Back-end accountability and second guessing”

  1. Happy Easter Dale, have a good weekend and get some rest. You’ve earned it.

  2. “We’re still in the early phases of this pandemic, so it may be a bit early to second-guess things….”

    Yes, and Prime Minister Kim Campbell thought that elections were no time to discuss policy and the NRA thinks that mass shootings are no time to talk about sensible gun laws.

  3. “This pandemic is unlike any we’ve had before, so it’s hard to start demanding why we weren’t better prepared….”

    Really?! We are all just passive takers of what comes our way? It was impossible to prepare for the unexpected because it was too novel? To the contrary, there has been research for decades on zoonotic viral threats. An outline of what to prepare for appeared in The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector in 2006. Politicians just didn’t want to fund the necessary response until it was too late. Any suggestion to the contrary is just gaslighting.

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