Roundup: Responsibility for re-opening

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For his Monday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t have a lot of news – mostly talking about how the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy was now available for application, and that payments would be going out next week for businesses that are approved, and that they were working with the opposition on legislation for the new measures for students announced last week. And sure enough, later in the day, notice was given that the Commons would sit in some capacity on Wednesday, after their “special committee,” to pass said bill. (No word yet on whether the Senate gets recalled for Wednesday evening or Thursday morning). During the Q&A, Trudeau had to once again reiterate that he was loathe to enact the Emergencies Act, which people are still demanding that he do for some strange reason. He also stated once again the even though provinces may have different timelines when it comes to re-opening their economies (because, once again, each province has a different epidemiology), those provinces have rights and obligations around local measures, while the federal role was to provide guidelines that they should follow. Again, the notion that he should swoop in and take over their areas of jurisdiction remains a deeply frustrating one.

This jurisdictional howling will only get worse as both Ontario and Quebec unveiled their re-opening plans yesterday, Ontario starting with guideposts before they will move to next steps, while Quebec has decided that they will start opening some schools in two weeks, which has everyone alarmed that it’s too soon, and that they don’t understand the epidemiology of this disease, because it can and does affect children and they may actually be asymptomatic and become major spreaders. So that’s fun.

Meanwhile, the first “virtual” meeting of MPs in a Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic meets today, and everyone is going to call it a “historic first virtual sitting of Parliament,” and they’ll be wrong. Because it’s not a sitting of the Commons, it’s a special committee, that the Speaker will be chairing from a committee room in the West Block. And you can bet that Trudeau and others will pat themselves on the back for this, and “Because it’s 2020,” and that kind of noise, but it’s an absurdly unwieldy committee, and that’s it. Treat it with only that amount of reverence. (And look for my column on why this matters later today).

Good reads:

  • Here’s an interview with Dr. Theresa Tam on what has been done around the pandemic to date, and why measures were right at the time.
  • Here’s a look at what kind of money banks will be getting from the federal government for administering many of these emergency programmes.
  • Maryam Monsef says that new measures are being developed after consultations show an increase in incidents of domestic violence because of the pandemic.
  • Health Canada is being forced to take on the multiplying number of fake “cures” being offered for COVID-19.
  • Here is a look into the international race to find a vaccine for COVID-19.
  • Here’s a look at the daily teleconferences that MPs have with officials, as well as what kinds of teleconferences parties are having internally.
  • After a weekend of being berated for his silence, Andrew Scheer is making some tepid noises that he disagrees with Derek Sloan’s racists comments.
  • Fort McMurray is flooding, and needs military assistance.
  • Former deputy minister Paul Booth offers a reminder of how the auto bailouts of 2008 worked, and what might apply to any oil & gas sector bailout.
  • Susan Delacourt notices Trudeau pointing to provincial jurisdiction and fits it into a larger narrative about how Canada works.
  • Paul Wells examines how populists like Doug Ford and François Legault are trying to manage this crisis and their provinces’ economic re-openings.
  • Colby Cosh takes us on a detour through the strange formation of the personality cult of the leadership of North Korea, as its leader may or may not be dead.

Odds and ends:

My latest Loonie Politics video delves into the government’s disingenuous plan for virtual sittings when they had an acceptable alternative before them.

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One thought on “Roundup: Responsibility for re-opening”

  1. When I tuned into the virtual sitting someone was questioning Maryam Monsef (I don’t know her name, but she has long black hair and big eyeglasses) about domestic abuse, and she didn’t seem that civil. She basically called Monsef a racist (couched in some phrasing that kept her from getting reprimanded, I guess) and when Monsef started to answer the question, within a very short time, she interrupted her and said she didn’t want Monsef using up all her time for questions on the answer. The Speaker said she should be able to answer the question. I found it kind of ugly, really, maybe made more intense by the intimacy of the screen and that the moment was unrelieved by anything else to look at.

    I don’t think virtual sessions will become the thing that you’re afraid of. After the pandemic, people will probably not want these extraordinary arrangements to become the norm. We won’t want to be reminded of the pandemic, is my theory. Apparently Hollywood is not interested in scripts about the pandemic, for basically that reason. They won’t be appealing to audiences. There won’t be any Zoom reunions for old times’ sake.

    I am way more worried about the provincial governments’ wielding of emergency measures becoming too entrenched and slick, with the measures being invoked for every little health scare and natural disaster, as they find it easier to manage us when we have less rights. That is what makes me the most anxious.

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