The federal government announced yesterday that they weren’t going to be able to meet their deadline for fixing all of the boil-water advisories on First Nations reserves, in part because of delays caused by the pandemic. And while they should get some points for at least owning this rather than sending it down the memory hole like their predecessors did, this is yet one more file where they need to do a much better job of communicating what is going on with the file. And Marc Miller is better than many of his fellow ministers, but there needs to be a hell of a lot more candour that about these boil-water advisories, such as each case is unique so you can’t fit the same solution to all of them; it is a huge challenge to build major infrastructure in remote and fly-in communities, and that takes a lot more time to complete a project as a result; that in some communities, the bigger problem is capacity to maintain systems – and in some communities, the problem is that as soon as they train someone to maintain the system, they get a better offer and get poached. Miller did note that in some cases, the state of decay in some of these systems was not adequately appreciated, and that climate change and shorter winters make getting materials up to some communities on ice roads more difficult. The other aspect of note is that there is yet more funding attached to finish the job, as well as better ongoing maintenance and prevention of future advisories, which is all good, but again, they need to communicate what the challenges are, lest we get another round of people who live in cities not being able to appreciate that you can’t throw money at a problem like this and hope it gets fixed overnight.

Evergreen tweet:
Opposition puts forward the notion that throwing money at problems fixes them overnight.
This government sticks to happy-clappy talking points rather than explains why things take time.
Media quotes both sides and lets people decide (19 times out of 20).

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) December 2, 2020

This being said, there is already talk about broken promises, and the dangers of setting deadlines, and so on. I would note that there should be nothing wrong with setting ambitious targets, and there should also be nothing wrong with adjusting them, but that should be accompanied by candour that lays out why plans need to be adjusted. I think this government underestimates how much goodwill can be gained by frank and honest discussions of projects rather than just sticking to the happy-clappy talking points and other pabulum that they spout, but what do I know?

In pandemic news, the Alberta government has requested field hospitals from the federal government and the Red Cross, but they claim that this is just about contingency planning, and that they haven’t requested personnel for them. Given that infections are out of control in the province, and its hospitals are already at the point of being overwhelmed, you can be pretty sure that this line about it being for a “contingency” is bogus, that they know they need to do this because they refuse to lockdown, and this is just softening the ground.

You can still head to the bar with your buddies for a drink tonight, or maybe try your luck at the casino, and Alberta is requesting field hospitals from the Red Cross to deal with the coming COVID surge.

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) December 2, 2020

Alberta's response to the pandemic:

-labour war with doctors
-labour war with nurses
– weakening public health legislation

What did I miss?

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) December 2, 2020

Here's what the Red Cross says about their ERUs/field hospitals. They're not something you set up as a hedge. pic.twitter.com/gdG8hwTvtb

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) December 2, 2020

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau is hinting that the US border will remain closed well into 2021 (which is not a big surprise given the unchecked spread of the virus).
• Chrystia Freeland has tabled the implementation bill for the fiscal update.
• The Fiscal Update has money for the RCMP to start getting body-mounted cameras, and now they have more demands (instead of the hard work of systemic reform).
• A few reporters were granted access to the Centre Block to see the state of the renovations, some two years into a “ten-year” process.
• Conservative MP Derek Sloan is sponsoring an anti-vaccine petition, because you know, he’s “just asking questions.” (And caucus has opted to keep him onboard).
• Susan Delacourt contemplates the dangers of hard deadlines as the government isn’t able to complete their work eliminating boil water advisories on time.
• Matt Gurney looks though the CNN documents out of Wuhan about the early pandemic, and why there is no Big Bad but a series of mundane failures to warn us.
• Robert Hiltz listens to some of the things Jagmeet Singh has been saying lately, and wonders just what is the point of the NDP if Singh is be missing his own point.

Odds and ends:

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