Curtailing basic civil liberties is radioactive across the political spectrum — and that’s a good thing
In an interview with CBC News on Wednesday evening, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath put an end — briefly — to weeks of waffling and unambiguously opposed mandatory vaccination for education workers: “Unlike (Liberal Leader Steven) Del Duca, I don’t take lightly people’s charter rights,” she said — Del Duca having recently come out in favour of mandatory vaccination for frontline health-care and education workers, and vaccine passports for “non-essential” activities.
Howls of protest ensued, not least from Northern Ontario NDP MP Charlie Angus, who called her comments “idiocy.” The howlers won. Not only did Horwath apologize on Thursday (“I regret the comment. I was wrong”), and about-face (“I fully support mandatory vaccination in health care and education”), she apologized for not changing her mind earlier.
Judging by comments on social media, many are sure they know how Horwath came a cropper: She was pandering to the teachers’ and nurses’ unions, which generally oppose imposing just about anything on their members. That could be part of it. The Canadian Teachers Federation has explicitly opposed mandatory vaccination, for example. But the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario has actually come out in favour, as did the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association this week.
Many detractors of premiers Doug Ford, Jason Kenney and Scott Moe are equally sure they know exactly why they oppose mandatory vaccinations for key workers and domestic vaccine passports: They’re trying to appease the anti-vaxxers and extremist libertarians inhabiting their parties’ base.
Again, there might be something to that. There’s no question public opinion is sharply divided. Léger’s latest poll for the Association for Canadian Studies found 72 per cent of Ontarians and British Columbians supported requiring “vaccine passports” to board an airplane, and 75 per cent of Atlantic Canadians, but just 50 per cent of Albertans.
From a higher-level view, however, it’s not nearly so simple. B.C.’s NDP government “hasn’t ruled out” mandatory vaccination for health-care workers, but nor has it ruled it in. You need proof of vaccination to travel to Tory-governed Prince Edward Island and Manitoba, or to Liberal-governed Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. But none of those provinces yet requires it in restaurants, for example. With an election forthcoming on Aug. 17, all three parties in Nova Scotia have ruled out mandatory vaccinations for any workers, Global News reported this week.
On Thursday, Quebec Premier François Legault announced the province’s vaccine passport system would soon be activated. But vaccination still isn’t mandatory for health-care workers, despite the opposition Liberals’ demands.
“There has to be an ethical consideration with this. People have the right to get vaccinated or not,” Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Iain Rankin told Global News, echoing Horwath.
“The idea of certificates of vaccination for domestic use to decide who can go to a concert or who can go to a particular restaurant … does bring in questions of equity, questions of fairness,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said way back in March.
Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley deplores just about everything about Kenney’s performance, but she hasn’t proposed mandatory vaccination or vaccine passports as an alternative.
It’s almost like something is going on here that transcends partisan affiliation and bog-standard pandering, and I think I know what it is: Like it or not — some refuse even to believe it — English Canada’s conception of the most basic civil liberties has more in common with the United States than with Europe, and even with our anglospheric cousins.
Among the provinces, only Quebec implemented a blanket curfew. Even the U.S. can beat that: statewide curfews of varying severity existed in Ohio, North Carolina, California and Arizona. Most if not all countries in Western and Eastern Europe had nationwide lockdowns, the Scandinavian countries, Finland and Britain being rare exceptions.
Last week, the Australian army mobilized in Sydney’s poorer, immigrant-rich western suburbs — enforcing quarantine orders door-to-door and demanding people out and about prove they’re no further than five kilometres from home. That’s literally inconceivable in Canada. At a guess, 95 per cent of Canadians who breezily suggested “doing what Australia did” would have been outraged had it happened.
Police in Britain announced this week they had arrested 11 people in connection with the vile racist abuse aimed at England soccer players Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford after they missed penalty kicks in the European Cup final. It’s not clear what the accused are alleged to have said, but the law under which they are charged bans “grossly offensive” messages. The bar for criminal speech in Canada is so much higher, the Brits would need binoculars to see it.
I would choose vaccine passports over further blanket restrictions in a heartbeat. But for at least 98 years out of every hundred, this default to individual liberty is a very healthy instinct. If it hampered Canada’s pandemic response, we can nevertheless say we suffered fewer cases than any comparable non-island nation save Norway and Finland, and fewer deaths than the same countries plus Denmark.
In terms of government, it has been far from a parade-worthy performance. Parts of the country (hello from Ontario!) have been locked down longer than just about anywhere in the world. But it could have been so, so much worse: at least we could go for a walk after 6 p.m. We should recognize why it wasn’t worse, and be at least somewhat thankful for it.
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EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government’s $8.6-billion plan to fast-track building new schools will include a pilot project to incentivize private ones.
Smith said the ultimate goal is to create thousands of new spaces for an exploding number of new students at a reduced cost to taxpayers.
“We want to put all of the different school options on the same level playing field,” Smith told a news conference in Calgary Wednesday.
Smith did not offer details about how much private school construction costs might be incentivized, but said she wants to see what independent schools might pitch.
“We’re putting it out there as a pilot to see if there is any interest in partnering on the same basis that we’ll be building the other schools with the different (public) school boards,” she said.
Smith made the announcement a day after she announced the multibillion-dollar school build to address soaring numbers of new students.
By quadrupling the current school construction budget to $8.6 billion, the province aims to offer up 30 new schools each year, adding 50,000 new student spaces within three years.
The government also wants to build or expand five charter school buildings per year, starting in next year’s budget, adding 12,500 spaces within four years.
Currently, non-profit independent schools can get some grants worth about 70 per cent of what students in public schools receive per student from the province.
However, those grants don’t cover major construction costs.
John Jagersma, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools and Colleges of Alberta, said he’s interested in having conversations with the government about incentives.
He said the province has never directly funded major capital costs for their facilities before, and said he doesn’t think the association has ever asked for full capital funding.
He said community or religious groups traditionally cover those costs, but they can help take the pressure off the public or separate systems.
“We think we can do our part,” Jagersma said.
Dennis MacNeil, head of the Public School Boards Association of Alberta, said they welcome the new funding, but said money for private school builds would set a precedent that could ultimately hurt the public system.
“We believe that the first school in any community should be a public school, because only public schools accept all kids that come through their doors and provide programming for them,” he said.
Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said if public dollars are going to be spent on building private schools, then students in the public system should be able to equitably access those schools.
“No other province spends as much money on private schools as Alberta does, and it’s at the detriment of public schools, where over 90 per cent of students go to school,” he said.
Schilling also said the province needs about 5,000 teachers now, but the government announcement didn’t offer a plan to train and hire thousands more over the next few years.
Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi on Tuesday praised the $8.6 billion as a “generational investment” in education, but said private schools have different mandates and the result could be schools not being built where they are needed most.
“Using that money to build public schools is more efficient, it’s smarter, it’s faster, and it will serve students better,” Nenshi said.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ office declined to answer specific questions about the pilot project Wednesday, saying it’s still under development.
“Options and considerations for making capital more affordable for independent schools are being explored,” a spokesperson said. “Further information on this program will be forthcoming in the near future.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
OTTAWA – Health Minister Mark Holland urged a committee of senators Wednesday not to tweak the pharmacare bill he carefully negotiated with the NDP earlier this year.
The bill would underpin a potential national, single-payer pharmacare program and allow the health minister to negotiate with provinces and territories to cover some diabetes and contraceptive medications.
It was the result of weeks of political negotiations with the New Democrats, who early this year threatened to pull out of their supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals unless they could agree on the wording.
“Academics and experts have suggested amendments to this bill to most of us here, I think,” Independent Senator Rosemary Moodie told Holland at a meeting of the Senate’s social affairs committee.
Holland appeared before the committee as it considers the bill. He said he respects the role of the Senate, but that the pharmacare legislation is, in his view, “a little bit different.”
“It was balanced on a pinhead,” he told the committee.
“This is by far — and I’ve been involved in a lot of complex things — the most difficult bit of business I’ve ever been in. Every syllable, every word in this bill was debated and argued over.”
Holland also asked the senators to move quickly to pass the legislation, to avoid lending credence to Conservative critiques that the program is a fantasy.
When asked about the Liberals’ proposed pharmacare program for diabetes and birth control, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has often responded that the program isn’t real. Once the legislation is passed, the minister must negotiate with every provincial government to actually administer the program, which could take many months.
“If we spend a long time wordsmithing and trying to make the legislation perfect, then the criticism that it’s not real starts to feel real for people, because they don’t actually get drugs, they don’t get an improvement in their life,” Holland told the committee.
He told the committee that one of the reasons he signed a preliminary deal with his counterpart in British Columbia was to help answer some of the Senate’s questions about how the program would work in practice.
The memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and B.C. lays out how to province will use funds from the pharmacare bill to expand on its existing public coverage of contraceptives to include hormone replacement therapy to treat menopausal symptoms.
The agreement isn’t binding, and Holland would still need to formalize talks with the province when and if the Senate passes the bill based on any changes the senators decide to make.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s NDP are accusing the government of prioritizing landlords over residents who need an affordable place to live, as the opposition party tables a bill aimed at addressing the housing crisis.
NDP Leader Claudia Chender took aim at the Progressive Conservatives Wednesday ahead of introducing two new housing bills, saying the government “seems to be more focused on helping wealthy developers than everyday families.”
The Minister of Service Nova Scotia has said the government’s own housing legislation will “balance” the needs of tenants and landlords by extending the five per cent cap on rent until the end of 2027. But critics have called the cap extension useless because it allows landlords to raise rents past five per cent on fixed-term leases as long as property owners sign with a new renter.
Chender said the rules around fixed-term leases give landlords the “financial incentive to evict,” resulting in more people pushed into homelessness. She also criticized the part of the government bill that will permit landlords to issue eviction notices after three days of unpaid rent instead of 15.
The Tories’ housing bill, she said, represents a “shocking admission from this government that they are more concerned with conversations around landlord profits … than they are about Nova Scotians who are trying to find a home they can afford.”
The premier’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also included in the government’s new housing legislation are clearer conditions for landlords to end a tenancy, such as criminal behaviour, disturbing fellow tenants, repeated late rental payments and extraordinary damage to a unit. It will also prohibit tenants from subletting units for more than they are paying.
The first NDP bill tabled Wednesday would create a “homelessness task force” to gather data to try to prevent homelessness, and the second would set limits on evictions during the winter and for seniors who meet income eligibility requirements for social housing and have lived in the same home for more than 10 years.
The NDP has previously tabled legislation that would create a $500 tax credit for renters and tie rent control to housing units instead of the individual.
Earlier this week landlords defended the use of the contentious fixed-term leases, saying they need to have the option to raise rent higher than five per cent to maintain their properties and recoup costs. Landlord Yarviv Gadish, who manages three properties in the Halifax area, called the use of fixed-term leases “absolutely essential” in order to keep his apartments presentable and to get a return on his investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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