Roundup: Such a serious country

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The country is fixated on the election south of the border, while we’re failing to effectively deal with a global pandemic, but what shiny thing caught everyone’s attention yesterday? The fact that Whole Foods’ uniform policy forbade employees from wearing poppies. The horror! The horror! Politicians from all stripes across the country were outraged – outraged! Doug Ford leapt into action to declare he would pass legislation to make it illegal for businesses to prohibit employees from wearing poppies, which is more than he’s done about dealing with the pandemic in his own gods damned area of jurisdiction, so make of that what you will. Erin O’Toole got worked up and posted a video calling on people to boycott “Woke Foods,” which is not only not clever, but not even close to a reflection of the situation – in fact, Whole Foods came under fire for not allowing their employees to wear masks that said “Black Lives Matter” on them, so that’s hardly being Woke™. (Then again, when you wield a shitpost-shaped hammer, everything is a woke-shaped nail). It was the lead question in QP. Three separate unanimous motions were passed in the House of Commons after Question Period to condemn Whole Foods, to encourage all businesses to let their employees to wear poppies, and to summon the Whole Foods CEO to the Veterans Affairs committee to explain himself. Everyone needed a piece of their outrage pie.

A couple of hours later, the veterans affairs minister, Lawrence MacAulay put out a release saying that he spoke to said CEO and everything was okay – employees would be able to wear poppies after all. Phew! Of course, we got all parties on-side for the most useless and ridiculous of symbolic controversies, because that’s just how serious we are as a country. Well done, everyone.

Meanwhile, there’s still a pandemic where the second wave is spiking in Canada, and none of the premiers seem to want to do anything about it. Doug Ford is set to loosen restrictions on some of the most hardest-hit regions of Ontario, while his promise to hire thousands of more long-term care workers lacks any details, which sounds about right for Ford. Jason Kenney is calling on people to voluntarily stop having house parties, but won’t make any actual restrictions, nor will he sign onto the federal contact tracing app. You’d think that we’d be spending the day raking these premiers over the coals for their unwillingness to do anything (because it’ll hurt small business – when they have the capability of offering supports for them), but no, we can’t even do that either.

Good reads:

  • There were a few more details on the potential vaccine roll-out plans, but some of those candidates have distributional challenges, like needing to be stored at -80ºC.
  • Trudeau also affirmed his faith in American democratic institutions (while not commenting on outcomes), which seems wildly optimistic to me.
  • The CRA is asking the Federal Court to order a cryto-currency trading company to turn over its client data as part of their plan to combat the underground economy.
  • The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the federal government’s spending is still sustainable, so long as they don’t enact any new permanent spending plans.
  • In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada said that Maple Leaf Foods didn’t owe a duty of care to reimburse Mr. Sub franchisees who lost money after recalls.
  • MPs are being given additional security measures off of Parliament Hill as threats against them have been increasing.
  • An expert witness at the court challenge to Quebec’s Bill 21 says that enforced “secularism” will hurt social cohesion. Gosh, you think?
  • Kevin Carmichael talks with companies who are looking at how they will manage things in the US in the coming weeks and months.
  • My weekend column looks at Trudeau’s use of “prorogation reports,” and how they are a cynical waste of time that offers no openness, transparency, or accountability.

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One thought on “Roundup: Such a serious country”

  1. Well, they spent the whole summer going after the PM’s mom and a kids’ charity over a Hillary’s emails non “scandal” that they made into Watergate on steroids. (And they’re still going at it.) Why should they be expected to get serious about the pandemic now? Fauxtrage for ratings is all they got.

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