Don’t take COVID advice from Tories
“The pandemic is not over,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra reminded the country Tuesday, as the government announced stringent new measures to help thwart the spread of COVID-19’s new Omicron variant in Canada.
The rules — mandatory on-arrival testing for many air travellers and quarantining in government facilities for some — are tough, and could be expensive and time consuming. At a time when Canadians seem to no longer be afraid of the virus and treat it as a mild inconvenience perhaps it was a needed reminder that life — especially for many outside our borders — is not back to normal.
Alghabra, flanked by Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, demonstrated that the government has learned several lessons from its pandemic management, chief among them to communicate better, and to embrace a cautious and transparent approach.
The ministers mentioned 12 times that the rules could change at any moment as the situation evolves. (That’s for those of you planning a vacation abroad.) Canada has now blocked travellers from 10 African countries because of Omicron, although the variant has also been detected in 13 others.
The ministers also urged Canadians to remain “cautious and prudent.” Public health measures won’t help stop the spread of the virus if Canadians don’t abide by them.
Get vaccinated. Social distance. Wear a mask. Respect capacity limits.
Duclos brought it home. “I was reminded recently by (public health) officials that if we, if Canadians and their governments, had acted in the same manner as we saw in the United States,” he told reporters, “we would have seen in Canada 60,000 more people dying of COVID-19.”
Although the Liberals have been criticized for slapping a ban on travel from select countries (notably South Africa which did crucial work in detecting, sequencing, and reporting the variant), politicians of all stripes — from Premier Doug Ford to Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet — praised the government’s swift action at the border. (NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh supported the move too but urged Ottawa to support vaccine patent waivers to allow more countries to vaccinate their vulnerable populations.)
Blanchet argued Ottawa should also do more while urging action to repatriate Canadians now stuck in countries with flight bans.
(According to figures released under the Access to Information Act, Ottawa spent more than $59.5 million evacuating Canadians around the world between Jan. 1 and July 8, 2020. That number doesn’t include the evacuation flights from Wuhan, China, or loans provided to Canadians to pay for their travel back home.)
At the start of the pandemic, the government was rightly criticized by the Conservatives for failing to close the borders quickly. It was a Liberal MP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River’s Marcus Powlowski, who asked Canada’s chief public health officer back in January 2020 whether all travellers coming in from China should be quarantined. Dr. Theresa Tam responded that there was no evidence asymptomatic people needed to be quarantined.
Of course, we know more now. We also know COVID-19 can spread through the air, that masks are useful, and that vaccination, testing and isolating are key to keeping people safe and allowing us to live lives outside of our homes.
During this summer’s election campaign, some vaccine-hesitant protestors pointed to confusing, ever-changing directives from public health officials as proof “experts” couldn’t be trusted.
Justin Trudeau remains prime minister in large part because the voters decided his government could be most trusted to handle the pandemic. The Liberals’ push to impose vaccination mandates on public servants and on passengers travelling on planes and trains was opposed by the Conservatives. The Tory leader, Erin O’Toole, refused to tell Canadians how many of his candidates were unvaccinated; he pledged that any who were not would be tested daily to try to ensure they didn’t spread the virus.
After the campaign, the Conservatives argued it was time to get rid of pricey pre-departure PCR testing at land borders for vaccinated travellers and to move to a rapid antigen test for those arriving by air. (The Liberals scrapped the PCR test only for trips shorter than 72 hours.) At the same time, O’Toole argued there should be no hybrid Parliament, that all MPs should be in the House of Commons in person — where they cannot physically distance — and that no one should be allowed to know how many of his MPs remain unvaccinated.
I’ve been told of two: Niagara West MP Dean Allison and Oshawa MP Colin Carrie. Allison’s campaign manager told his local paper he has a medical exemption. Carrie told constituents two doctors advised him he “cannot receive a currently approved vaccine due to a diagnosed autoimmune disease and adverse reactions to other vaccines,” but two Conservative sources say he doesn’t have a valid exemption as per Ontario’s medical exemption guidance. His office has twice refused to confirm that he has a valid medical exemption. So far, Carrie has been allowed to sit in the Commons.
As the Conservatives press the Liberals to do more to prevent a fifth wave, it’s understandably hard to take them seriously. In the words of Alghabra, “Forgive me for not taking advice from the Conservative party.”