We’re no more ‘all in this together’ than a year ago
Allowing drinks in Toronto parks shot down
Centrist Toronto city councillor Josh Matlow recently crossed a red line in municipal politics: Instead of just saying it might be reasonable to allow people to have a glass of wine or a beer in a city park, especially during a pandemic when we want to dissuade indoor gatherings, and then doing nothing about it, he actually tried doing something. He tabled a motion at the economic and community development committee (on which he does not sit) suggesting “a pilot project to allow the consumption of alcoholic beverages that do not exceed 15 per cent alcohol (in) public parks and beaches with bathroom facilities between 11:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. from May 21, 2021 to October 31, 2021.”
Matlow’s reasoning was impeccable: Drinking in parks happens already, so we know it’s not a disaster waiting to happen. Enforcement, left to the whims of bylaw officers, will inevitably produce “inequitable results.” Toronto city council got enthusiastically behind expanded patio space for bars and restaurants last summer — now, “what about Torontonians that can’t afford a drink in a bar or don’t have an outdoor space in their homes?” The things everyone’s supposedly worried about — intoxication, littering — are already illegal.
This week, inevitably, aghast committee members, with help from aghast city staff, shot Matlow’s proposition down in flames. “When alcohol becomes part of the picture, we know people become uninhibited and they’re less able and less likely to adhere to self-protection measures,” Toronto chief public health officer Dr. Eileen De
Villa told the committee. (If we ban alcohol outdoors, people won’t congregate and drink alcohol. Easy!)
“I think all we’re saying right now is this is not an appropriate time,” Deputy city manager Giuliana Carbone said of the most compellingly appropriate time there will ever be to do this. The “analysis” necessary to allow people to do what they’re already doing “would be a significant undertaking,” she warned, and a distraction from anti-pandemic efforts — of which allowing drinking in parks would be one.
“We do not have enough staff to be everywhere, to do all things,” Carleton Grant, executive director of municipal licensing and standards, told the committee. We are meant to believe that allowing something to happen takes more resources than prohibiting it.
“This has not been done in a collaborative or consultative or thoughtful manner,” arch-progressive councillor Joe Cressy, who is also chair of the city’s Board of Health, sniffed at Matlow’s suggestion to let what is already happening happen.
If you don’t have a backyard or a cottage — preferably both — the city of Toronto is not governed for you. You should probably leave if you can.
The idea that “we’re all in this together” has always been stupid, but it never stops getting less true. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government was shamed into rolling back closing playgrounds recently, but nothing else that it closed that day: tennis and pickleball courts are padlocked, picnic tables are taped off, basketball nets are chained and padlocked shut, golf courses are closed. The bylaw staff that’s too overworked to leave people alone in parks had all the time in the world to deploy the chains, padlocks and threatening signage.
Meanwhile, after 12 months of refusal, Ford’s government is instituting paid sick days: Instead of applying to the feds and waiting for your money, you’ll just keep getting paid if you have to stay home. This does not strike me as the gamechanger some claim it is — the number of paid sick days is three, which definitely lowers the game-changing potential — but it makes unimpeachable sense to make it easier for people to stay home if they think they might have COVID-19, or if they have been ordered to isolate.
It seems unlikely Premier Doug Ford had a genuine epiphany on this, but if he did, now would be the logical time: He has been in isolation since April 19 after being in contact with a staffer who tested positive for COVID-19, and Job 1 after shutting the front door was learning how to use a laptop computer. Needless to say, he will continue to be paid.
One positive legacy of the pandemic might be whittling away Canadians’ unearned trust in their governments. There are the mind-boggling delays: Some provinces seem determined to let case counts get as high as possible before implementing any new measures. There are the insane flip-flops: In the space of four months the federal Liberals have gone from “the border isn’t worth worrying about” to “travellers are enemies and must suffer” and back to “the border isn’t worth worrying about.” There is the history of insultingly ridiculous bromides: “masks don’t work.” At every point, most provinces’ rules have been shot through with completely irreconcilable, inexplicable contradictions.
The people who came up with that mess are the same people in charge of solving many of our other problems as well. Perhaps that’s why more don’t get solved. So much of Canadian politics is Wrestlemania over small differences, and most partisans are sure their team would have done infinitely better in the pandemic than the team in charge. If we are really to learn from Canada’s COVID-19 failures, that delusion has to die.
A WHITTLING AWAY OF UNEARNED TRUST IN GOVERNMENT.