Erin O’Toole has apparently decided he’s going all-in for the unvaccinated, and wants “reasonable accommodations” made for them while they continue to flood the healthcare system and push it to the point of collapse, and lo, he wants the federal government to halt their vaccine mandate for truck drivers citing the fragility of the supply chain. (Erm, so when the virus rips through the unvaccinated drivers, that won’t further disrupt the supply chain?)

Logic doesn’t seem to be penetrating O’Toole’s rhetoric—nor the simple fact that premiers are responsible for the management of the pandemic, not the federal government. There are no “reasonable accommodations” because rapid tests are not actually passports that allow the unvaccinated free licence to go out in public (unlikely to be masked either, because the Venn diagram of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers is nearly a perfect circle). All it does is prolong the pandemic and the strain on the healthcare system which is leading to the mockdowns across the country—which again, O’Toole is trying to pin on Trudeau because the federal government continues to offer pandemic supports, and he claims that this is “normalizing” them. (He also calls them lockdowns when they are nothing of the sort). He’s tried to claim that the federal government should have been able to increase bed capacity in hospitals (physical beds are not the problem—the problem is trained staff to tend to the patients in those beds). It’s just a bunch of fuzzy logic, rank innumeracy, and outright lies, and O’Toole knows it, but he’s decided that this is the path that he can exploit politically, and there frankly aren’t enough people, particularly in the media, calling him on his bullshit (because both sides! *jazz hands*).

It’s amazing that a former Bay Street lawyer doesn’t understand Section 92(7) of the Constitution Act, 1867. https://t.co/41xiu3cmUb pic.twitter.com/DBEqa2UExs

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 7, 2022

Meanwhile, O’Toole is also calling for emergency meetings of the health committee to examine the “critical gaps” in the federal government’s ability to manage the pandemic in the omicron wave. Which is…not the federal government’s fault. They provided the vaccines, and the rapid tests when asked, and are deploying military help across the country when provinces ask (never mind that the military is stretched beyond capacity and they can’t do their actual jobs right now). No, what O’Toole has decided we all need is a dog and pony show to deflect from the failures of the premiers so that he can try and pin this all on Trudeau. It would be risible if we hadn’t already seen the Conservatives abuse that very same committee in the previous parliament, for the sake of a few headlines.

Good reads:

• Canada and its allies are calling out Iran’s refusal to negotiate a settlement with the families of the victims of downed flight PS752.
• It sounds like some federal prisons in Quebec are facing looming staff shortages.
• The Competition Bureau has forced Keurig to pay $3 million in penalties, plus investigation costs, for false and misleading claims about K-Cup recyclability.
• Library and Archives says it’ll take 65 years to process an access to information request for 780,000 RCMP documents, as many have not been declassified yet.
• Jagmeet Singh announced that his wife gave birth to a baby girl.
• The Star has the inside story on why Doug Ford changed his mind on closing schools after initially promising to keep them open.
• Matt Gurney reflects on that Kathleen Wynne interview, the lessons not learned from the 2018 election, and why that could secure a re-election for Doug Ford.

Odds and ends:

Perfect message for today. https://t.co/8s1ozTI2DU

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) January 6, 2022

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