Two million Ontario school kids not in class, a near-record number of COVID-19 patients in hospital, and provincewide closures or restrictions on restaurants, bars, gyms and cinemas.
It’s definitely not how Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives wanted to start off this election year.
But Omicron doesn’t care about the Ontario political calendar or how beleaguered voters might be feeling after nearly two years of pandemic life: it’s just a virus, a particularly infectious variant spreading through the population “like wildfire,” Ford said Monday.
“We’re going to get hit like a tsunami,” Ford added. “Brace for impact.”
He was talking about the impact on workforces across Ontario and on hospitals, but his message could just as easily have been directed at his political team.
While it’s fairly clear what the impact will be in the health system, the impact on Ontario politics is far trickier to forecast.
WATCH | CBC’s Mike Crawley answers questions about what’s next:
When will Ontario’s COVID-19 public health restrictions end?
5 hours ago
Duration 4:11
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health says it’s going to be a tough January because of the Omicron variant. When can we expect things to get back to normal? CBC Queen’s Park reporter Mike Crawley answers some of the most frequently-asked questions about the road ahead. 4:11
Despite plenty of criticism on Twitter of the Ford government’s handling of the pandemic so far, Twitter isn’t representative of the average voter.
Every published poll since last spring has showed the PCs leading. Ford’s approval ratings and favourability numbers in published polls remain in the 40 per cent range, and that’s enough for an election win in Ontario politics.
Will this Omicron-driven rise in cases and hospitalizations — or the government’s move to shut schools and ban indoor dining at restaurants in response — spell a drop for Ford in the polls?
Polling firms that have been tracking Ontarians’ views throughout the pandemic have generally found more voters saying the government was getting it right on COVID-19 restrictions than voters criticizing the measures as either too loose or too tight.
The chief exceptions: when Ontario neared the second and third waves without imposing significant new restrictions. That’s when the pollsters found growth in voters feeling the government wasn’t doing enough.
While there may be some people angry at the government over what they perceive as yet another lockdown, that polling evidence suggests the far bigger political risk for Ford and the PCs would have been to do nothing.
Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table urged the government to impose what it called “circuit breaker” public health restrictions back on Dec. 16. In essence, a circuit breaker is what Ontario got three weeks later: the measures that took effect on Wednesday.
Some two million Ontario students, including four-year-old Sasha Mitsui, are currently learning online as the provincial government has ordered schools closed until Jan. 17. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
We’ll never know what difference it would have made had things kicked in three weeks sooner. We’ll also never know how well Ontarians would have adhered to such measures if they’d been in place over the holiday period.
As recently as last Thursday, the government seemed headed in the direction of a pretty much normal new year. That’s when Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore announced that school would resume with in-person classes the following Wednesday, only two days later than scheduled. Just 72 hours after that announcement, Ford and his ministers were in an emergency cabinet meeting.
So, what happened?
“Ford was inundated with calls from hospital CEOs, labour leaders, corporate presidents and public health officials, warning that Omicron was contributing to mass staffing shortages, which threatened to disrupt the province’s labour force,” writes Robert Benzie, TheToronto Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief, in this story on the reasons behind the government’s moves.
It’s the first time since the initial declaration of a state of emergency back in March 2020 that the government has brought in significant new restrictions without presenting full-fledged modelling as a justification.
The modelling presented in mid-December forecast upwards of 10,000 new cases per day by Christmas and that’s exactly what transpired.
A small percentage of those who got infected over the holidays now need care in hospital, but even a tiny percentage of hundreds of thousands of infections still amounts to a lot of patients. The sheer speed of Omicron’s spread also means the nurses and doctors who provide care are getting infected or exposed to COVID-19, stretching Ontario’s burnt-out health-care workforce even more thinly.
Moore’s forecast that all employment sectors will face 20 to 30 per cent of staff either calling in sick or having to self-isolate due to Omicron factored into the most controversial measure imposed this week, the closure of schools.
There’s not a great deal of confidence out there among teachers, administrators or parents that regular in-person classes will resume fully on Jan. 17.
Last June, the Science Advisory Table warned that Ontario’s “relatively heavy reliance on system-wide school closures” risked a range of impacts on kids, including learning loss and deterioration in mental health, in addition to the stress on parents.
Keeping the schools open amid this Omicron wave would have risked widespread transmission of COVID-19, said a senior political adviser to Ford, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity.
“If we’d opened, we’d have ended up in the same place, and had a tonne of spread in schools,” said the adviser.
“They were going to close either way. You can’t run a school with 25 per cent of the teachers missing. Nobody likes it, but nobody thinks we have a lot of other options.”
On Thursday, Ontario reported 2,279 patients hospitalized with COVID-19. The province’s record high of 2,360 patients came on April 20, 2021, during the peak of the pandemic’s third wave. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not be taking advice from Pierre Poilievre after the Conservative leader challenged him to bring down government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre: I’m not going to listen to you,” said Singh on Wednesday, accusing Poilievre of wanting to take away dental-care coverage from Canadians, among other things.
“I’m not going to listen to your advice. You want to destroy people’s lives, I want to build up a brighter future.”
Earlier in the day, Poilievre challenged Singh to commit to voting non-confidence in the government, saying his party will force a vote in the House of Commons “at the earliest possibly opportunity.”
“I’m asking Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to commit unequivocally before Monday’s byelections: will they vote non-confidence to bring down the costly coalition and trigger a carbon tax election, or will Jagmeet Singh sell out Canadians again?” Poilievre said.
“It’s put up or shut up time for the NDP.”
While Singh rejected the idea he would ever listen to Poilievre, he did not say how the NDP would vote on a non-confidence motion.
“I’ve said on any vote, we’re going to look at the vote and we’ll make our decision. I’m not going to say our decision ahead of time,” he said.
Singh’s top adviser said on Tuesday the NDP leader is not particularly eager to trigger an election, even as the Conservatives challenge him to do just that.
Anne McGrath, Singh’s principal secretary, says there will be more volatility in Parliament and the odds of an early election have risen.
“I don’t think he is anxious to launch one, or chomping at the bit to have one, but it can happen,” she said in an interview.
New Democrat MPs are in a second day of meetings in Montreal as they nail down a plan for how to navigate the minority Parliament this fall.
The caucus retreat comes one week after Singh announced the party has left the supply-and-confidence agreement with the governing Liberals.
It’s also taking place in the very city where New Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat on Monday, when voters go to the polls in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. A second byelection is being held that day in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP is hoping to hold onto a seat the Conservatives are also vying for.
While New Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the Liberals, they don’t appear ready to trigger a general election.
Singh signalled on Tuesday that he will have more to say Wednesday about the party’s strategy for the upcoming sitting.
He is hoping to convince Canadians that his party can defeat the federal Conservatives, who have been riding high in the polls over the last year.
Singh has attacked Poilievre as someone who would bring back Harper-style cuts to programs that Canadians rely on, including the national dental-care program that was part of the supply-and-confidence agreement.
The Canadian Press has asked Poilievre’s office whether the Conservative leader intends to keep the program in place, if he forms government after the next election.
With the return of Parliament just days away, the NDP is also keeping in mind how other parties will look to capitalize on the new makeup of the House of Commons.
The Bloc Québécois has already indicated that it’s written up a list of demands for the Liberals in exchange for support on votes.
The next federal election must take place by October 2025 at the latest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is defending her decision to turn off comments on her social media accounts — with an announcement on social media.
She posted screenshots to X this morning of vulgar names she’s been called on the platform, and says comments on her posts for months have been dominated by insults, to the point that she decided to block them.
Montreal’s Opposition leader and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have criticized Plante for limiting freedom of expression by restricting comments on her X and Instagram accounts.
They say elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms.
However, Plante says some people may believe there is a fundamental right to call someone offensive names and to normalize violence online, but she disagrees.
Her statement on X is closed to comments.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
