Travel habits leave some politicians with ugly baggage

Why would anyone in their right mind want to travel to another country during a pandemic unless it was absolutely necessary?

Why risk your health and the health of people around you so you can lounge around under a palapa? And why on earth would you risk ending up in a hospital on foreign soil without your usual health care coverage?

Well, as we have recently found out, a lot of people do, including high level politicians and health officials who keep telling us to stay home because it’s not safe to do otherwise.

But there’s something else going on here: it’s not just that some people have an uncontrollable itch to get to a warm, sandy beach and can afford to do so, they are actually being encouraged to take flights of fancy by the airlines, and in Alberta, by the government.

Yes, the same government that posts on its COVID- 19 information website recommendations against non- essential travel; the same government that told people to restrict their Christmas celebrations to people in their household.

It wasn’t just red- faced politicians who ignored those recommendations and restrictions, lots of other people took off for Palm Desert, Cancun, Maui or Barbados.

Maybe it was because with a wink and a nod the Alberta government also telegraphed another message: if you are dying to gather with as many people as you like on a beach somewhere or beside a pool, we won’t stop you. It’s a free country after all and we all have to do our part to save the airlines, especially WestJet, which is based in Calgary.

This may sound cynical on my part, but Alberta Premier Jason Kenney actually said that during his New Year’s Day press conference in which he tried to explain why a senior minister, who was vice- chair of the Cabinet COVID- 19 Committee, for heaven’s sake, took off for Hawaii during the holidays as Alberta was recording record numbers of new cases and deaths from COVID- 19.

Other MLAs and high level political staffers also ignored their own government’s recommendations.

Most Albertans were spitting mad when they found out. They wondered how people they on their payroll could be so thick- headed, or elitist, or so devoid of a moral compass.

But now it’s clear that the inner circles of government had long been paving the way for a lax attitude toward travel. They actually wanted more people to travel abroad.

No wonder so many MLAs and staffers didn’t give it a second thought.

As revealed by the Sprawl, a credible Calgary online news site, political cronies of Kenney’s that included a former chief of staff and a former campaign manager, lobbied the government on behalf of WestJet for a protocol for COVID- 19 tests for returning international travellers that would require only a two- day quarantine.

At the time this seemed like a good idea for people who had to travel internationally for business or compassionate reasons.

The next development was a WestJet Alberta- Hawaii “safe air travel corridor.”

Another UCP crony had lobbied on behalf of a private lab company for a contract to provide COVID- 19 tests at a cost of $ 150 each to Hawaii- bound travellers before they departed so they wouldn’t need to quarantine when they got there.

Ads for WestJet flights to dreamy tropical beaches soon appeared even though COVID- 19 case numbers and deaths in Alberta were rising to dangerous levels.

It’s that kind of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing even in the face of a pandemic; the scoffing at recommendations by government officials while others couldn’t even visit their grandmother in the same city; the expectation that essential workers will keep risking their health to keep us all going while others take the easy way out that infuriated Albertans and caused Kenney’s approval rating to plummet as fast as an airplane with a damaged wing.

The real worry is that the government has lost so much trust people won’t abide its pandemic strategies and restrictions and we will be in an even worse spot than we are now — second highest rate of active cases in the country — higher than Ontario and Quebec.

We can only hope that most Albertans are more sensible, and ethical, than their government.