We Still Have a Government, Right?: Canadian Politics 2020

Whole situation still seems v strange, but I suppose they (eventually) came up with a solution that lets her continue teaching and accommodated students who were unhappy. I do agree that if you're going to be lecturing about the linguistic nuances of the reclamation of slurs, you should be aware of the linguistic and cultural nuances involved. I've had my own (milder in consequences) run-ins re academic freedom at this institution in the past and can confirm that admin can be spineless and craven. Incidentally, they have actually repeatedly stood by this lady's academic freedom and right to a platform: https://twitter.com/janicefiamengo

That said, the particulars of those differences suggest that ranking them, which is maybe what that tweet is trying to do, is pretty foolish.

Yes, I could maybe see the value if it was an effort to bridge gaps in cultural understanding. NB also that we are talking about people who are not only in the same city but at the same institution, one whose mission and core values including the promotion of bilingualism. It seems very odd that Lieutenant-Duval was attacked almost entirely in one language and defended almost entirely in another: I can't think of a better illustration of how 'bubbles' are not just failing to engage in productive dialogue but seem to be actively avoiding it.

There was a pretty good episode of the Canadaland podcast a couple of weeks ago about "the two solitudes" and how cultural differences affect movements like me too and black lives matter. There was a fun bit where the person being interviewed remarked that discussions about this stuff often just devolves into white anglos and white francos arguing with each other about which side is actually more racist or intolerant.

OTM

Heh, yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

An open letter signed by more than 600 uni and cégep profs (the counter is not up to date) from Quebec, defending the U of Ottawa lecturer. They partly echo what rob was saying – 'more generally the fact that "getting an individual person fired" has become a focal point for enacting social justice is depressing. That uni administrations are now quite willing to go along with these kinds of punishments should really give the game away' – which is very much otm.

https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/546909/il-faut-defendre-la-liberte-academique-des-universitaires

Isabelle Hachey has also brought an interesting detail to light. Said lecturer had specifically cancelled class on Sep 9 to allow her students to attend a BLM event:

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2020-10-20/je-suis-prof.php

Between this and the highly contrasted responses to the murder of Samuel Paty in France, it really does feel like the two solitudes are a cross-border concept.

Seeing what I wrote again, I should clarify that there are work-related behaviours that make being fired a just response, e.g., sexual harassment, discriminatory hiring/promotion/supervision, and more direct or recurring racist speech (I'm not sure how lawyers define a "hostile environment," but that's what I have in mind). Sorry if obvious—just worried I was overstating things.

No worries, I very much agree and never assumed anything else.

Incidentally, I feel that something that gets lost in the two solitudes back-and-forth on this is that many, if not most, of the black people I know in Ottawa are francophones. Not sure what the % of the community is but we do know that 76.6% of francophone visible minorities in the city are black: https://www.clo-ocol.gc.ca/en/publications/linguistic-portrait-ottawa .

Interesting.

Fwiw Dominique Anglade, who is the current leader of the PLQ and of Haitian descent, sided with the lecturer. Likewise Dany Laferrière.

Anti-'lockdown' protests in Toronto and Vancouver on Saturday:
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/10/17/two-protests-take-over-downtown-toronto/
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/anti-mask-protesters-conspiracy-theorists-march-through-downtown-vancouver-1.5149905

When Ontario releases their daily COVID numbers, are new cases and testing related? Are x number of cases each day based on the x number of tests done that day, or are the two numbers on separate tracks. If they're related, yikes. 821 cases today--high, but within the range of the past couple of weeks. But now that appointment-only testing is in place, there were only ~24,000 tests done. That'd be a 3% positivity rate, much higher than when we were doing 40,000 tests a day.

Is there a way that they could be unrelated?

My guess would be that are somewhat distinct, but I'm not sure...That the results of testing aren't necessarily 100% in sync, so each day's cases are based on reporting that covers a two or three day window, while the total number of tests is for that day only.

Oh I see what you mean.

The protests in vancouver were on both Saturday and Sunday, was a two day thing. I walked past it on saturday - inadvertently- and it was quite big. They were showing some english covidiot's prerecorded speech on a big screen

Ugh.

not surprisingly, the homophobic preacher who used to show up in the westend until he broke a guy's leg, and the idiot behind the transphobic jkr billboard were there as well.

Everything I hear about the lobster fishing situation is making me so angry, when are we going to let the FNIM just be.

globe and mail editorial page comes very close to endorsing the NDP in BC, thought this was unpossible

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-in-bcs-pandemic-election-the-liberals-and-ndp-have-reversed-roles/?fbclid=IwAR3tGPmOFf5v_Zda6vzYAwWnXZegJlK4-wxxiOBO_h-ubMaWsJOnQyAv4aY

Ha wow

NDP and Greens back Grits in confidence vote, unsurprisingly. No election.

slimy to use it to protect themselves from WE oversight. smart manoeuvre I guess, but slimy

Agree

le plus ça change

Just shy of 1,000 cases in Ontario today. I hardly ever see anybody without a mask (although this morning two separate people came into Tim Hortons without one). I don't really get it. If it's "small gatherings" now that are the problem, how does that jibe with people doing what they're supposed to be doing when they're out in the world?

I wrote a longer reply that disappeared, but I’ll just say that you might be surprised by how many people are still doing things together behind the scenes. Large gatherings are apparently still happening in the hot spots too, but enforcement has trouble because attendees are doing things like Uber-ing in to disguise the numbers

Looks like Halton is next on the Phase 2 list.

The gamble pays off - according to cbc ndp win 55 seats in BC

\m/

jim in vancouver's prediction was a lot more accurate than mine and everything's

so great to see richly deserved defeats for some of those liberal MLAs

55 out of 87?: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/british-columbia/2020/results/. Wow. Is this the best the BC NDP has ever done?

BC's COVID management seems to have been much more successful than ON/QC - what was done differently?

1991 NDP got 51/75 seats, which percentage-wise is better than 55/87? The NDP have never been anywhere near 45% popular vote in their wins, and they've never won by ten points or more. In this election there are still another 500k mail-in ballots that won't be counted for two weeks, and I would not be surprised if those ballots heavily favour the NDP and get them another 1-3 seats, and also expand their popular vote margin significantly.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7085828/bc-coronavirus-strategy/

These seem key:

“They were very, very quick off the mark to take advantage of the publication in China of the genetic composition of the virus and to develop tests locally that could be produced and used locally,” he said...

In Quebec, massive outbreaks in long term care facilities contributed to the province’s high case numbers and death rates, Buckeridge said. Policies like allowing staff to work at multiple facilities just facilitated the virus’ spread in vulnerable populations, he said, and it was allowed for a long time. B.C. issued an order in March to stop this, although it took some time for the practice to end.

I don’t really want to call the response any kind of disaster, because I don’t think it is. But I have to admit that the mess with testing and especially the constantly changing recommendations is getting very frustrating. They’ve changed our school attendance criteria enough times now that I’m literally confused as to what we’d need to do in different scenarios. That said, our particular school seems to be managing things very well.

The second wave following school reopenings is p close to disastrous imo.

which province? ontario?

i feel so lucky to be living in BC through all this

Ontario, yeah.

I just mean that here, I wouldn’t point at the incompetence or ignorance of many in our leadership who are causing things to actively become worse (unlike some places!) More that general unpreparedness caused a scramble to catch up that is failing some of us in some regards. There are mistakes. I’ve been inside a hospital a few times since spring and it’s very organized and controlled there (could be different elsewhere I guess) If something has to give, I guess parents being annoyed at new shit every week isn’t the end of the world.

Don’t mean to diminish any deaths. Just strictly talking about the response. I would imagine it’s difficult to fix any of this with so many of those you’re trying to protect actively fighting your measures.

It seems believable that if we'd done what BC did with testing and LTC workers, we'd have seen fewer deaths. The reopening of schools could have been managed better too, it seems.

This isn't just the response but also it might have helped if the government hadn't been actively taking apart in-home care prior to this, which pushes more people into LTC homes. NB also that the significant majority of LTC home deaths happened in privatized for-profit homes and that privatization has been on the govt's agenda: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/for-profit-nursing-homes-83-percent-of-covid-deaths-eastern-ontario-1.5604880.

But I mean, yeah, we're not at a loss for WORSE examples that we could look to for comparison.

Rapid testing does seem to be one thing that might have been making the biggest difference right now. I didn’t quite grok it’s potential value a few months ago, but it now seems obvious that if it were widely available enough, life could be near normal.

I’m three hours from where my mum lives right now, and the fact that she’s essentially trapped indoors, in a basement on her own. Says she feels like she’ll never get outside again. And now that the kids go out, I can’t go there without risking her -but it’s getting to the point where the risk might be worth it? it’s awful!

:(

:(

enjoying some of the NDP wins in natural liberal territory being partially down to the BC Conservatives and vote-splitting. In Chilliwack NDP won by 8.5% and the Conservatives took 18% of the vote.

lol yeah I saw them interviewing some liberal supporters on the street who presumably didn’t vote, because they were like “oops!”

Halton spared from further restrictions for now.

What the hell @ Ford giving Oosterhoff a total pass on the huge family party though. “He said sorry” oh well then. I really don’t know how he expects anyone else to abide by the guidelines if he can’t even muster a performative scolding for something so flagrant from within his own team.