Police-state tactics coming to Ontario

Premier's plan has potential to infuriate public

Ontario Premier Doug Ford brought in the toughest pandemic restrictions the province has ever seen Friday. They better work because there isn't much more the government can do.

Ford's new approach is an odd mix of bluster, misdirection, overdue restrictions and authoritarian, punitive measures that will infuriate Ontarians for little practical gain. It's hard to believe that this is the same premier that just two weeks ago thought tugging on the pandemic emergency brake and closing restaurant patios was just the ticket. Now, he's stopping just short of mass house arrest.

In Ford's media conference, he exuded all the confidence of a matador being pursued by a bull. It's not hard to see why the premier is spooked. Daily case numbers have nearly doubled in just two weeks. New pandemic modelling Friday predicted that the situation will get worse in the short term, no matter what the government does.

Ford spent rather too much time going on about how the COVID variants are getting into Ontario from elsewhere. He will tighten borders with Manitoba and Quebec, which have lower case rates than Ontario. The variants are in Ontario now. Even if not one more case comes in from elsewhere, Ontario still has a problem. Focusing on that is just a red herring.

Ford also talked a lot about the shortage of vaccine, a perfectly legitimate point. Not surprisingly, tripling vaccinations to 300,000 a day would help reduce cases.

It's interesting that Ontario now says it can administer 300,000 shots a day. Earlier this week, we were told the capacity was 150,000. Ford wants to deflect attention to the federal government, but it's rather pointless. Ontario will not see that volume of vaccine any time soon.

The government says it will devote 25 per cent of future vaccine to hot spot areas, but it's not clear when that will begin. It's the right thing to do, but the province is clearly unwilling to cancel existing appointments for older people, as it should be. There is no good path here without more vaccine.

After months of urging co-operation with COVID safety rules, Ford has now taken out a club. Police and bylaw officers will have new powers to stop people on the street, demand to know where they live and why they aren't home. This is a police-state tactic that has the potential to lose the voluntary public support that is the key to the provincial plan.

Some of the new rules are ridiculous. Golf is banned, tennis is banned, even playgrounds are banned. What was the risk? Apparently, it's unsafe to be either indoors or outdoors now.

To summarize Ford's new plan, go into your house, close the door, lock it and don't come out again until the government tells you to. Just when you thought you were already in hell, Ford has turned up the heat.

People will find new restrictions on safe activities doubly frustrating because Ford has done little to address the lengthy list of supposedly essential industries where there are known outbreak problems.

At least Ford can honestly say that his new moves are in line with what his pandemic advisers recommended earlier in the day. Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the province's science advisory group, recommended a longer stay-at-home order and a redirection of vaccines to hot spot areas. He got them.

Brown's stance is no surprise. He's been predicting the kind of mess Ontario is in since the middle of February. Now that we can see that the analysis of Brown and his fellow scientists was right, the “I told you so” people are having a field day. They're asking why in the world Ford didn't shut down the entire economy the first time a modeller suggested there could be a problem.

IT'S NOT HARD TO SEE WHY THE PREMIER IS SPOOKED. DAILY CASE NUMBERS HAVE NEARLY DOUBLED.

It all seems so simple looking back, but it wasn't. Hindsight overlooks a critical component of the equation. Ford couldn't have shut down the province indefinitely back in mid-February just because modelling said something bad might happen.

At that point, the new COVID variants were in the news, but the province had fewer than 1,000 cases a day. It has been a problem to get people to comply with rules now, even when the bad news is in their faces every day. Asking them to do it in February, based on modelling that had been wrong previously, would never have worked.

The time for action was two weeks ago, but Ford didn't get it then and he still doesn't get that targeted measures are needed, not sweeping, senseless restrictions on people who have been doing the right thing for more than a year.