Roundup: Goodbye, Bubble

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Farewell, Atlantic Bubble – we hardly knew you. With growing spread in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, both PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador decided to pull out of the Bubble, and impose quarantines for any arrivals on their respective islands, effectively bursting it (despite some saying that this is only “temporary.” There can be little doubt that much like every other province, even those within the Bubble started to get cocky, and some of the spread can be traced back to restaurants, which remain open in the region. It nevertheless demands that even with border measures, you can’t let your guard down when it comes to taking measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Further west, Alberta premier Jason Kenney remains MIA as the province posts higher raw numbers than Ontario, but a Cabinet meeting was being held yesterday afternoon that is supposed to result in new measures being announced this morning – but we’ll see if a real lockdown gets proposed, because given the math, they are now far beyond what a two-week “circuit-breaker” lockdown could achieve. Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is now self-isolating after a close contact, while Manitoba premier Brian Pallister insists he didn’t wait too long to take increased measures, and yet also insists that his province doesn’t have a backlog in contact tracing when facts show otherwise. So there’s that.

Meanwhile, we’re getting more MPs who can’t seem to grasp jurisdictional issues. The Conservatives are blaming the federal government for not doing things that were clearly the responsibility of premiers to do, while the NDP are demanding that Trudeau reach down into provincial jurisdiction and do something when premiers don’t, which isn’t how it works. It’s all becoming very tiresome, and exasperating, because there are things that they can legitimately criticize this government for, rather than flailing about and trying to blame him for things that he has no control over. But the current political reality is that truth and jurisdiction don’t matter in the face of the narrative they’re trying to spin.

Good reads:

  • Chrystia Freeland says that the fall economic update will be delivered on Monday.
  • François-Philippe Champagne warned a Commons committee that one-dimensional “tough talk” about China can wind up hurting the two Michaels imprisoned there.
  • The CRA says that as many as 213,000 Canadians may have (presumably inadvertently) been double-paid for CERB by applying in two separate places.
  • Tax experts say that requests to have CRA stop compliance audits is a bad idea, especially because it is political interference in an arm’s length agency.
  • The now-useless (and still possibly unconstitutional) bill on mandating sexual assault law training for new judges has passed the House of Commons.
  • Senators began pre-study of the medical assistance in dying reform bill, as Conservatives and Jody Wilson-Raybould are attacking it on the Commons side.
  • An independent senator from Quebec is moving a bill about criminal penalties for not age-limiting pornography, and is tapping into age-old moral panic arguments.
  • Conservative MP Peter Kent says he won’t run again in the next election.
  • The NDP want the Environment Commissioner to be spun off into yet another independent Officer of Parliament. (The current Commissioner doesn’t want to).
  • NDP MP Niki Ashton and Green MP Paul Manly seem to think that Canada should give in to Chinese hostage diplomacy and release Meng Wanzhou.
  • Heather Scoffield predicts what we’ll see in the fall economic update, and gives her own wish list as part of it.
  • Paul Wells notes Pierre Poilievre’s winking and nodding to conspiracy theorists, but that Trudeau’s outsized ambitions wind up making it easy for him to do so.
  • Colby Cosh remarks on the end of an era as $1 and $2 bills are set to lose their status as legal tender, and why there is something disturbing in that act.

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I talk to legal experts who say the MAiD bill’s exclusion of mental illness means it remains unconstitutional.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Goodbye, Bubble”

  1. Here in PEI the bubble was working fine, unfortunately some selfish irresponsible people destroyed our system, it is very unlikely that the bubble will come back. Why Martial Law has not been imposed given how childish and immature so many people are in general. The ME generation, yuck!

  2. They grasp jurisdiction very well. They prefer to gaslight the public about civics just to “own the (neo)Libs,” because they’ve got nothing else. Meanwhile, the NDP have now proven that it is they, not Trudeau, who admire China’s “basic dictatorship,” and their willingness to steamroll over the constitution proves it. Singh (or Ashton) and FIPA O’Toole competing for the title of who loves Pooh Bear the most, despite protestations about “civil liberties” and “defunding police”. Trudeau the lonely centrist should add that famous ’70s song to his Spotify repertoire: Clowns to the left of him, jokers to the right…

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