It is one of the strangest aspects of Ontario’s and Quebec’s COVID-19 nightmares that politicians have seemed almost entirely immune from criticism. Indeed, their popularity has soared in stride with the body count: An Angus Reid poll conducted in late May found Quebec Premier François Legault’s approval rating had shot up 19 points, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s 38.
Do people not think politicians are actually in charge? Do they think COVID-19 is an entirely unknowable enemy, picking its target jurisdictions at random? (The news has been full of stories about countries that got it right, and neighbouring countries that got it wrong.) No non-partisan believes this disaster is down solely to the government of the day: It takes much longer than Ford or Legault have been in office for a long-term care home system to become as decrepit and vulnerable as Ontario’s and Quebec’s demonstrably were. But a halfway curious health minister would have known that early on. The National Post’s Richard Warnica reported on Tuesday that some of Public Health Ontario’s top minds in very important positions had recently left the organization, and had not been replaced in a cost-cutting environment. Voters have fired first ministers for so much less, and refused to reward them for far better performances.
Were it not for Quebec, Ontario would be far and away Canada’s worst performer, with 30 per cent more cases and almost three times as many deaths as the next-worst provinces: Alberta and Nova Scotia, respectively. Were it not for Andorra, Belgium and San Marino, Quebec’s COVID-19 death rate would be higher than any nation state in the world. On Monday, Legault took the bold step of removing Danielle McCann as health minister … and reappointing her as minister of higher education. This is properly considered a demotion, but it’s surely not a particularly savage one.
Also on Monday, after 14 psychologically and economically ruinous weeks of lockdown in Toronto, Premier Ford and (less stridently) Mayor John Tory somehow found the cojones to criticize people for going to the beach over the weekend. Here in the city that never sleeps in, photos of scantily clad young people sunning themselves not entirely in accordance with social distancing rules had the gentry retiring to their fainting couches, and thence to Facebook to complain. “It looked like South Beach,” Ford exclaimed. (It did not look like South Beach.) “We need to get bylaw officers out there.”
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See Also:
(1) Time for Trudeau to get brave and play hardball with China
(2) Defunding police? Careful what you ask for
(3) Our taste of freedom amid COVID threatened by farmers
(4) Liberal government nearing revived trade spat with U.S. as tensions mount over dairy, aluminum
(5) When rules are just for the little people, injustice prevails
