Our national resolve seems to weaken as COVID-19’s second wave worsens
That national cohesion, the willingness of Canadians to work together, to endure inconvenience and hardship to bring COVID-19 under control during the pandemic’s first wave, no longer exists as the second wave rages across the land, like a wildfire in a tinder-dry forest.
The pleas from scientists and public health officials — to isolate at home and venture forth only for essential purposes, to wear masks and maintain social distances when doing so — that worked to a quite astonishing degree in the spring are falling on too many deaf ears today.
Traffic on Toronto-area highways that were virtually deserted early in the first wave are busy again. In the “red zone” where I live, shopping centre parking lots that were two-thirds empty during the initial stages of COVID are two-thirds full now. The big-box stores are booming.
What happened to the national cohesion? Partly, it’s the victim of simple COVID fatigue. Partly, it’s due to conflicting messages from provincial leaders whose governments are responsible for pandemic control within their borders. The premiers know people should stay at home, but there is only so much electoral capital they are prepared to risk by translating pleas into enforceable orders. Besides, they are sympathetic to the cries for freedom from their politically potent business sector.
Part of the problem rests in Ottawa. In the beginning, most Canadians listened to the prime minister and accepted the need to adjust their behaviour. The acceptance was provisional. The public would go along as long as the measures they took seemed to work, and as long as the provincial governments and federal political parties were on side.
It was remarkable that the federal parties sang from the same song sheet as long as they did. It was too good to last, and it hasn’t. The opposition parties have torn up their blank cheque and are demanding that the Liberals account for just about every contract awarded and every dollar spent on COVID relief. The acquisition and distribution of vaccine has become a highly charged issue. The government has committed billions to purchase vaccines from various international suppliers. But the Conservatives, sensing they have a hot-button issue, are enthusiastically hammering the Liberals.
Why will Canada, as it appears, have to line up behind the United States, Germany, Britain and other countries that have facilities to manufacture vaccines and will surely look after their own people first? Canada once had this manufacturing capacity, so why have Liberals not replaced it? (This being a reference to the famous Connaught Laboratories in Toronto where insulin was discovered in 1921. It was a Crown corporation when it was privatized by the Mulroney Conservative government in 1986, then sold off and dismantled. No subsequent government, Liberal or Conservative, has bothered to replace it.)
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and his mates profess to be in high dudgeon. When, they demand, will Canada get its first doses? How many doses will there be? Who will decide who gets them? How, and how quickly, will they be distributed?
The Liberals’ responses have fanned suspicions that something is not quite right. For a leader who claims to be wedded to transparency, Justin Trudeau is a master of half-answers, his ministers of empty evasions.
Meanwhile, the second wave rages on. Ontario and Quebec continue to set daily records for new infections; Alberta, of all places, has more active cases than any other province; British Columbia and Manitoba are swamped, and the Atlantic Bubble has burst.
Last week, I suggested the Trudeau government ought to invoke the Emergencies Act and take command of the war on COVID from the provincial governments — this for the statutory period of 90 days (renewable). But there could be a problem. In order to employ the act, the government must, within seven days, place a motion of confirmation before Parliament. If the motion fails, the emergency powers must be withdrawn.
Given the changed mood, I wouldn’t bet on its safe passage.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com