COVID-19 is no longer the dominant political concern

The focus on COVID-19 couldn’t last forever. Yes, it is a life and death pandemic. Yes, it threatens not only the health of people all over the world but the global economy.

But there are other political forces at play.

It was naive to think these would remain ignored.

This is the context in which the debate over the Canada Emergency Response Benefit is taking place. When the CERB was inaugurated earlier this year, it was billed by politicians as part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to deal with an unprecedented crisis.

To curb the spread of the new coronavirus, governments forced entire sectors of the economy to shut down. That, in turn, left hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers without income. Unemployment soared.

The CERB was a desperate effort by

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to get money into the hands of those Canadian workers.

Offering $500 a week for a short period of time to those who had lost work because of the pandemic, it was billed as a national effort. Even the opposition parties supported it.

At the time, the government downplayed any notion that some workers might make fraudulent claims.

“We knew the risk was there,” Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough told CBC in May. “But it was calculated. And we also knew we had to get the money to Canadians. So we took the risk.”

That, however, was then. Now the Liberal government has suddenly become worried about fraudulent misuse of the CERB.

More to the point, it worries that workers will find this $500 per week benefit so princely that they won’t return to their old jobs — jobs that often pay less.

Economists say that the CERB “deincentivises work.” Normal people might say it puts pressure on employers to pay a living wage.

However it is described, this is clearly not something the Liberals are willing to countenance.

A draft bill they circulated this week would deny the CERB to workers who refuse to return to their old jobs or who refuse to accept “reasonable” new job offers.

Under the draft bill, hefty penalties, including jail time, could be levied against those who knowingly break the CERB rules.

For reasons that are far too complicated to pursue in this short space, the Liberal bill has been held up in the minority Parliament and may never see the light of day.

Nonetheless, it signals how the Trudeau government now views the pandemic. It is no longer seen as a unique threat to human existence on the planet. Rather, it is just one of those things — like the demands of the business lobby — that any savvy government looking to be re-elected keeps in mind.

The same logic lies behind Trudeau’s somewhat puzzling decision to take part last week in a street demonstration protesting what he called the systemic racism of Canadian society.

I say puzzling because, as prime minister, Trudeau has the power to implement some of the changes demonstrators were demanding. In effect, he was protesting against himself — which is odd.

He was also breaking his own pandemic advice (and probably Ontario law) by taking part in a gathering of more than five people.

But as the prime minister explained later, the pandemic is no longer the sole determinant of political action. It is just one among many.

Or, as he put it: “We are trying to balance very important competing interests.”