Roundup: Asking for a “special monitor”

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As case numbers continue to rise alarmingly in most parts of the country, Ontario Premier Doug Ford tried to get into a pissing match with the federal government over vaccines, and the federal government wasn’t playing ball, simply tweeting vaccine delivery numbers in response. This on the same day that Ford insisted that schools were safe, and hours later, Toronto’s chief public health officer issued a Section 22 order and closed all Toronto area schools as of today, so that’s a good look. (In Alberta, Jason Kenney also had to issue new restrictions, while still trying to take swipes at the federal government for vaccines well – distraction from their own failure to contain the virus).

In the middle of this, Erin O’Toole decided that he was going to promise a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic – which, to be fair, the government has also said they would be willing to hold once things were in the clear, because everyone wants lessons learned – but O’Toole loaded his particular desire for such an inquiry full of easily disproven allegations and conspiracy theories. Things like how there weren’t any vaccines even being considered last spring because everything was too new; or CanSino (which the government never “put all their eggs in one basket” with, and the vaccine task force didn’t give them any priority when they started compiling the vaccine portfolio), which he keeps referencing as though saying it often enough will make it true. That, and by focusing solely on vaccines, he is very conspicuously trying to avoid blaming his provincial brethren for their massive failures, for which a proper national public inquiry would probably be needed to enumerate (because I doubt that most of those provinces will call inquiries of their own).

More to the point, O’Toole’s demand for a “special monitor” to be appointed from the Auditor General’s office to examine decisions “in real time” is literal parliamentary insanity. What exactly an accountant knows about public health decisions I’m not entirely sure, but frankly, having them looking over the government’s shoulders is literally O’Toole abdicating his own responsibility for holding government to account for their decisions. Trying to pawn the job off to a non-partisan Officer of Parliament (or their proxy) as a way of using them as both a cudgel and a shield is the height of cowardice and a refusal to do his own bloody job. It’s also why I keep warning against the proliferation of these kinds of Officers – pretty soon, MPs won’t have a job left to do. This is a mess all around, and O’Toole continues to prove that his attempts at showing he is relevant only reiterate that he is trying to make himself obsolete.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau announced that the (kludged) federal sickness benefit was being extended to four weeks (seeing as provinces refuse to do their jobs).
  • Dr. Theresa Tam is warning that the new variants mean that younger people are not only getting infected more, but they are heading right into ICU in many cases.
  • Former Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick apologised for dropping the ball on the Vance allegations, citing other things coming up (like the Mark Norman case).
  • Rupa Subramanya makes the very salient point that we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to the Americans with vaccination rates given their status.
  • Paul Wells has some trenchant observations about the culture in the Liberal Party and its relationship with power as he muses about Mark Carney throwing his hat in.
  • My column tries to divine what kind of federal commitment towards childcare we can expect in the upcoming budget, given that it will be a central focus of it.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Asking for a “special monitor””

  1. Michael Wernick, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. Another distinguished public servant who got run out on a rail by the Cons, their conspiracy theories, and a sham hit job pushed through by their media friendlies desperate for “ratings” and to try and *force* the model of a Liberal Party sans Trudeau. Curious silence from all the usual suspects after the friendly sausage handler last July proved him to be prescient — and coincidentally during another fake “scandal” when those same usual suspects were trying to make fetch happen and didn’t want to look at more important things as a “distraction.”

    Social media isn’t the only vomitorium. So is legacy media for that matter.

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