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

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.

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.

Glad about Halton...I do wonder if Ford buckled to pressure (a lot of letters from Halton mayors). I notice a discernable change in COVID coverage on the radio the past week or so; much more sympathetic to restaurant owners and other small business people. Reconciling that with rising case numbers is going to be extremely messy.

Wow, with 82% of polls reporting, the Liberal is unsurprisingly winning Toronto Centre but new Green leader Annamie Paul is a strong second!: https://enr.elections.ca/ElectoralDistricts.aspx?ed=2255&lang=e
York Centre is pretty much a Lib/Tory tie with about 75% of polls reporting.

Sask Party win their fourth straight majority govt in SK, sigh: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saskatchewan-election-2020-1.5777823

I honestly don't know what people love about them.

Feds putting $1B into Rapid Housing Initiative to build up to 3000 new homes, targeting 15 cities. Plan apparently includes rehabilitating existing buildings (empty motels, rooming houses from what I hear) into new homes: https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2020/10/27/new-rapid-housing-initiative-create-3000-new-homes-canadians

More details here: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/liberals-pledge-1-billion-for-cities-to-buy-motels-hotels-for-rapid-housing-program-1.5113413