[Thanos]

Unfortunately "grassroots" conservatism has morphed into the same sort of alt-right stupidity that's infected the GOP in the US from top to bottom. Old school Canadian conservatives, even a lot of Reform Party types, will hopefully not want anything at all to do with that mob of idiots. I know I won't. And if I get even the slightest bad feeling that a Conservative leader will make any sort of outreach to radicals infected by Trumpism, or who will give social conservatives a larger say over policy, then I'll have nothing to do with that party ever again.

[bootlegga]

^ What he said.

[JaredMilne]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

uwish uwish:

if the left can blame Trump for deaths, we can blame Truduh...

It's the right that can't seem to tell the difference between active hostility and simple ineptitude.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."-Hanlon's Razor.

More generally, though, wasn't Doug Ford already on a lot of people's shit lists for everything from his nepotism in hiring unqualified buddies for government jobs to the fiasco around Laurentian University? I don't recall him doing a particularly good job as Premier even before the COVID shit hit the fan.

As I've said before, the Ford brothers are/were two of the best retail politicians Canada's seen in the last 35 years, but they are/were incompetent boobs when it came to actually governing.

Thanos Thanos:

The premiers that rushed to re-open in order to "save businesses" also refused to do a couple of simple steps that would have salvaged many more businesses from going under, because it goes against the completely bogus "free market" ideology they worship like slavish dogs. One, they could have put a moratorium for the duration of the epidemic on commercial evictions. Two, they could have provided direct partial payments of commercial rents to landlords, and then given tenants a five-year interest/penalty-free period to catch up on the remaining outstanding rent. Three, they (and the feds) could have extended the period that landlords can claim losses against their tax payments from three (?) years to five. And that's just the beginning of what could have been done to help businesses stay afloat. And they chose to do nothing like that because it would have been "socialist" and been too much government "interference" in the economic system.

I'll say that I still don't like Trudeau's government all that much - I haven't forgotten the scandals they engaged in both prior and during COVID. That being said I have to admit that I'm glad it was a Liberal government in power during COVID because I can only imagine how much worse it all would have been if the feds were run by a colossally inept failure and goof-off like Andrew Scheer and his Conservatives. It would have been a national disaster that the country would never have recovered from, and would have probably resulted in the Tories being wiped out worse in the next election than they were in 1993.

It didn't help that one of Stephen Harper's long-term goals was to "tighten the screws" on Ottawa and make it harder for the federal government to do anything without raising taxes. Then, all of a sudden when everybody starts demanding the government do something in a huge crisis, we end up with much larger deficits than we would originally have had.

Also, can someone rep Thanos for me? I still need to rep other people before I can rep him again.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

You just lost all credibility by using the tired, old "It's Harper's fault!" slogan, albeit with different wording. Typical leftie.

-J.

[DrCaleb]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Also, can someone rep Thanos for me? I still need to rep other people before I can rep him again.

I got you.

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

You just lost all credibility by using the tired, old "It's Harper's fault!" slogan, albeit with different wording. Typical leftie.

-J.

Except that Jared studies and analyzes political history as his occupation. He is literally a professional political analyst.

What do you bring to the table again?

[llama66]

I also rep'd for you Jared.

[Scape]

[DrCaleb]

Well, at least he isn't taking sick days in Mexico.

[Scape]

Comedy gold if it wasn't so sad:

Party Lines - The Chauvin verdict and Ontario’s COVID crisis

Having the science council have to go public with the recommendations about parks to clarify the Didn't recommend this and that the problem is with the Ford government blatantly ignoring science does nothing to inspire confidence.


Quick question how can you have a government if no one can follow your incoherent leadership?

[Scape]

The inside story of Doug Ford's COVID-19 climbdowns

$1:

Giving police arbitrary powers and closing playgrounds ‘came out of nowhere,’ says source

The decision by Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet to give police arbitrary powers and shut playgrounds across Ontario was made in a rush and without evidence that the moves would help rein in the third wave of COVID-19, multiple sources tell CBC News.

Various sources close to the government say the decisions came amid panic over the latest modelling for the pandemic and fears that Ford's approval among voters would suffer badly if he was not seen to be taking action.

There's no consensus among Progressive Conservative insiders about who's actually responsible for proposing the controversial measures that were approved by cabinet late Friday afternoon, only to be rescinded 24 hours later.

Some are blaming the premier's key political aides, chief of staff James Wallace and principal secretary Amin Massoudi. Other sources say Health Minister Christine Elliott and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones own the playground closure and police powers, respectively.

Still others claim the impetus to take action came from two of the PC party's top advisers, campaign director Kory Teneycke and pollster Nick Kouvalis.

One thing the sources do agree on: the recommendations did not come from the government's health or scientific advisers.
"It came out of nowhere," said one PC political strategist.

CBC News is not naming the sources in this story so they could speak freely about what was happening behind the scenes.

All the finger-pointing could be read as a sign of the disorder verging on chaos inside the Ford government right now.

Cabinet battles
According to multiple sources, the cabinet has been at loggerheads since the second wave of the pandemic began to build last fall, as calls for tougher public health restrictions grew louder. In broad terms, the split is between ministers from outside major cities who have opposed restrictions at every step and those from the Greater Toronto Area arguing for more rigorous measures.

The internal cabinet battles have come amid repeated recommendations from Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table for stricter measures sooner to try to slow the spread of more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus.

Repeated polling provided to the government has shown widespread support among Ontarians for public health restrictions such as lockdowns in the battle against COVID-19.

Sources say Kouvalis has warned Ford's team repeatedly that he would suffer political damage if the government failed to put strong enough restrictions in place quickly enough.

The rural-urban cabinet tension heightened in the past month as the government abandoned Ontario's colour-coded COVID-19 prevention framework, which had allowed looser restrictions in less-affected regions, in favour of province-wide measures.

It culminated last Friday with the government not acting on recommendations from the science table — such as mandating paid sick days and paring back the list of essential workplaces — while imposing measures no health advisers had actually recommended, such as closing outdoor recreational facilities.

Public desire for action
There are differing accounts of how and why Ford and his government decided on Friday's measures.

Cabinet agreed Thursday to a plan with next to no new restrictions, and MPPs were briefed on it Thursday night, according to two sources. On Friday, Ford was given advice that the restrictions were not adequate to satisfy the public's desire for action, the sources say.

A new cabinet meeting ensued. As the cabinet discussion dragged on, a news conference to announce the plan originally scheduled for 2:30 p.m. was rescheduled for 3:30, then ultimately didn't begin until after 4 p.m.

During cabinet, according to two sources, concerns about the unconstitutionality of the police powers were raised by Attorney General Doug Downey, the government's top lawyer, but were shot down. The controversial provision was passed even though Ford's cabinet has plenty of other lawyers, including Elliott, Caroline Mulroney, Ross Romano and Prabmeet Sarkaria.

One source says Ford was especially rattled by the way police force after police force quickly announced they would not use the powers the government gave them.

Ford and the government rescinded the sweeping police authority and reversed the closure of playgrounds on Saturday, but have retained the closures of other outdoor amenities, despite evidence they play almost no role in the spread of COVID-19.

"The ultimate goal was to keep people home. It was done with the right intentions," a senior government official said Wednesday.

"We will admit it was rushed," the official said. "We're working on putting a better process in place to ensure we aren't rushed into these kinds of decisions."

For the record, the "rushed" decisions happened amid nine hours of cabinet meetings, according to sources.

Possible shuffle
The entire debacle has fuelled talk of a cabinet shuffle.

Some PC strategists are urging Ford to get rid of ministers who have repeatedly fought against public health measures.

"He needs to move out some of the people who only care about their own ridings and he needs to bring in MPPs who are loyal to him," said one insider.

Other political advisers are telling Ford that now is the wrong time for a shuffle. Their argument is that changing ministers with Ontario in the midst of the third wave of the pandemic, with record numbers of COVID-19 patients in hospital, would be perceived as a sign of desperation and panic.

Ford and his government have reasons to feel a certain amount of panic.

The situation in the hospitals is on a knife edge. Even hospitals in northern Ontario — spared last week from a provincial directive — have been ordered to stop non-emergency surgeries.

So many patients are being transferred from GTA hospitals to places like Kingston and London that those ICUs are now filling up and are having to transfer their own patients to Ottawa and Windsor. It's what one ICU doctor calls "hopscotch."

Wednesday saw 36 critically ill patients transferred, a one-day record.

Premier in isolation
One of the premier's own staff tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, and Ford went into isolation.

While the impact of COVID-19 on people's lives and health is what matters most, Ontario's third wave appears to be having a political impact, too. Three recent polls suggest support for Ford and his party has fallen as the public grows less satisfied with the government's handling of the pandemic.

One of the polls happened to be sampling opinion both before and after Friday's news conference. The results of the Innovative Research poll clearly suggest that the announcement dragged Ford and the PCs down. It's rare for a single event like that to shift opinion so clearly, pollster Greg Lyle said in a text message this week.

Since Monday, the PCs have tried to go on the offensive on three fronts, all of them focused on criticizing the federal Liberal government: over international flights, vaccine supply and the inadequacies of the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit.

The PCs have frequently cited the existence of the federal sickness benefit as the reason Ontario workers don't need paid sick days in the pandemic. But now, Ford's ministers are hinting they will bring in something to address its inadequacies.

It's by no means clear that the government will go so far as changing provincial law to require employers to provide workers with paid sick days on a permanent basis.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

Scape Scape:

Quick question how can you have a government if no one can follow your incoherent leadership?

Ask Trudeau

-J.

[Scape]

I think Doug has gone plaid on that point. Trudeau comes off more wishy-washy, Ford is full on dumpsterfire.

[llama66]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

llama66 llama66:

This Pandemic could be a sea change for Canadian politics. I could see the Conservatives relegated to sideline status for a very long time.

That would be a huge change in the wrong direction. The last thing Canada needs would be the Liberals staying in power for an extended period of time.

Conservative parties as a whole will take a hit, but they will never die. If anything, a return to grassroots Conservatism will be what's needed.

-J.

And yet, due to ineffectual leadership on the part of the Cons both Provincially and Federally, that's what you'll get. You'll continue to get this until the Conservatives can separate their heads from their asses.

[Scape]

Liberals are NOT any better, it's only because the NDP are forcing them to do the right things in a minority that have made them any better. Otherwise, yes, Doug and Justin are two sides of the same coin just one has better hair products.