Politics

The political perils of pandemic travel

Published

4 years ago

January 5, 2021

COVID-19 is a threat that requires collective action. Unfortunately, some Canadian politicians are demonstrating how hard it can be to marshal a response to such challenges.

The good news is that almost every elected provincial and federal figure in Canada appears to have avoided travelling outside the country during the holidays. The bad news is that the exceptions number more than one or two; at last count, a dozen or so of our elected representatives wantonly disregarded official calls for Canadians to avoid unnecessary travel. And some of those exceptions have been particularly flagrant.

Ontario’s finance minister skipped off to St. Barts, the tropical island recently written up by the Daily Mail as a pandemic refuge-of-choice for the rich and famous. Rod Phillips was nice enough to leave behind a series of photos of himself visiting local businesses and eating pancakes on his front porch, along with a handsomely staged video wishing his constituents a happy holiday. But he was compelled by public opinion to cut his trip short, and was promptly relieved of his senior cabinet post upon returning home.

Rod Phillips at Toronto’s Pearson Airport upon his return from an ill-considered overseas holiday. (CBC)

In Alberta, the list of AWOL MLAs and political staff who vacationed abroad — all from the governing United Conservative Party — has grown by the day. But Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was unwilling initially to punish anyone for their wandering. Only after absorbing several days of mounting outrage did Kenney realize that firing or demoting half a dozen members of his own team — including his own chief of staff — was the only acceptable response.

Federally, five MPs are known to have left the country in December. Three of those MPs — the NDP’s Niki Ashton and Liberals Kamal Khera and Sameer Zuberi — did so because of family members who were sick or who recently had passed away. Such cases can be distinguished from those who simply wanted to go somewhere warm or different.

Liberal MP Kamal Khera rises in the House of Commons on Friday, October 20, 2017. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Do as we say, not as we do

But it still might be hard to defend such travel to any Canadian who hasn’t been able to see an ill or dying loved one — or who simply refrained from such travel because they thought it was the responsible thing to do. The NDP saw fit to revoke Ashton’s critic portfolio and both Liberals resigned their parliamentary secretary assignments.

In the upper chamber, Conservative Senate leader Don Plett was compelled on Monday to acknowledge that he’d slipped off to Mexico for a few days. He’d apparently planned to stay longer but, upon reflection, realized that his decision to travel was unwise (Plett’s period of reflection in Mexico may have coincided with news breaking in Canada of Rod Phillips’ whereabouts).

Conservative Senator Don Plett of Manitoba. (Chris Rands/CBC)

The challenge in every collective effort involving a large group is that it can be very easy — and tempting — for any one person to opt out. And each case of someone shirking responsibility makes it easier for others to do likewise. And if enough people opt out, everyone suffers.

Climate change is a classic example. In fact, when it comes to the fight against global warming, various politicians and critics have argued for years that Canadians should not feel compelled to act until other countries (the United States or China or India or Saudi Arabia or whatever) are prepared to do as much or more.

Collective effort vs. private privilege

COVID-19 presents a real-world example of how shortsighted that sort of thinking is. But it’s also a reminder of how easily a collective effort — even in the presence of a very immediate danger — can fray and fragment.

Political leaders can facilitate or organize collective efforts in at least two ways. The first way is the simplest: they can model and promote the desired behaviour. When that isn’t enough, they can implement rules or incentives that require or promote that collective action.

The politicians who have gone astray in recent weeks obviously have trampled all over the first approach — and those who are in government can be accused of hypocrisy for failing to live up to the requests and warnings health officials have been relaying to the general public. There is also some irony in the fact that the largest number of travelling politicians seems to be associated with an Alberta government led by a premier who likes to emphasize the importance of personal responsibility.

Public will was always going to be critical to controlling COVID-19. No government (among the Western democracies, at least) can hope to police the individual behaviour millions of citizens. But governments are still expected to do everything they can to keep the number of infections as low as possible, and to bring the public along with that effort.

The Alberta and Ontario governments have both struggled with imposing pandemic restrictions on the public. Their own members may have just demonstrated that clear signals and stringent standards are necessary at this moment. But their travelling colleagues may also have made much harder to implement new closures and restrictions — just at a moment when increasing infections and a virulent new strain of the virus make dramatic action all the more necessary.

The travel scandals have damaged individual and party political fortunes over the last few weeks. Far more worrisome is the injury these footloose politicians may have done to the public’s willingness to share the burden of containing the pandemic. At the very least, they have gifted message fodder to the “anti-maskers” and other fringe voices who delight in opposing public health restrictions.

It might be pleaded that politicians are just like everyone else. Just as the vast majority of Canadians generally abide by best practices and public guidelines, so too do the vast majority of the nation’s political leaders. Some Canadians have strayed; so have some of their elected officials.

But the actions of political leaders resonate. At a moment when leadership is incredibly important, a dozen public officeholders have betrayed the public’s expectations and trust. And that matters now not only because of the pandemic, but because of another collective action problem: the need to protect and reinforce democracy and the political process against cynicism, distrust and division. Alongside climate change and COVID-19, political dysfunction has been one of the defining challenges of the era.

A dozen Canadian politicians leaving the country — most of them for leisure — in the midst of a global pandemic doesn’t doom the collective challenge of upholding liberal democracy. Nor will it completely undo a national effort to combat a health crisis.

But it doesn’t help.

Source: – CBC.ca

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News

Alberta Premier Smith aims to help fund private school construction

Published

6 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

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.

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Health Minister Mark Holland appeals to Senate not to amend pharmacare bill

Published

6 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

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.

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Nova Scotia NDP accuse government of prioritizing landlord profits over renters

Published

6 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

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.

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