Canadian Politics: Is that a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

[Fragile Bird]

36 minutes ago, Fez said:

So I've seen certain center-right folks in the US getting really upset about this over the past day, but is it going to actually be any sort of issue in Canada?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/11/trudeau-hailfax-security-forum-taiwan-480722

 

We are in deep shit with China and have been ever since the Trump administration asked us to arrest the Huawei executive when she was in Vancouver. Did you know her extradition trial is still going on? I guess that’s not unusual for some extradition and deportation trials, people accused of being Nazis dragged out their trials for years and years, although trials for criminal matters usually go more quickly. Her lawyers of course expect the US equivalent of a show trial and a lengthy jail sentence. 
 

Owing to that arrest a number of Canadians in China were arrested, two of whom just had secret trials and were presumably found guilty. Canada repeatedly asked Trump to get involved and get the two Michaels, as we call them here, out of China, but nothing happened. Over the last few years various retired senior politicians and former ambassadors have very publicly asked the Canadian government to let her go. Unfortunately with Trump in office I’m sure he would have thrown a fit and imposed all kinds of tariffs on more products (he already hit steel and aluminum and of course lumber is an American favorite to tariff). Now that Canadians have been tried and convicted there’s really no way to let her go. I think she’ll have to go the US and be used as a pawn by Biden. The question is, will he follow through with getting the Michaels out or will he use her as a pawn for American interests. Whether or not the US is trustworthy anymore is a big issue.

We thought that there was a thaw in cooperation when China and Canada agreed to develop a Covid vaccine together. Instead when it came time to send vaccine samples to Canada the Chinese took the opportunity to spit in our face and never sent them.

The idea that the Halifax Security forum would decide to give an award to Taiwan in these circumstances really took a lot of people by surprise. I mean, come on guys, WT flying F were you thinking of? I can only assume right-wingers in the organization have an agenda to continue to destroy the Chinese-Canadian relationship.

[Fragile Bird]

Update

Apr         2Fr    3Sa    4Su    5Mo    6Tu    7We    8Th    9Fr  

BC         1074  1077   999     890   1068    997   1293  1262                       

AB         1081  1071   948     887     931  1351   1429  1521        

SK           254    280    221    219     217    189     205    358               

MB            -      181       -      135      62    109     139    179             

ON       3089  3009   3041  2938  3065  3215   3295   4227 

PQ       1314   1282  1154  1252   1168  1270   1609   1683         

Atl-4        13      13      18      13        9       17       14      14          

North        0        0        0        1        0         0         0        0                                

Total     6830  6913  6381  6335  6520   7148   7984   9244 

Once again, basically just the numbers to the end of last week. The jump in Ontario was nasty, but then again so are the jumps in BC and Alberta. Things I made note of have changed in the last few days anyway. It's all the variants. As mentioned previously, BC has really been hit with the P.1 variant from Brazil, while the rest of us are suffering from the UK variant, B.1.1.7. Fortunately there seems to be almost none of the South African variant. 

Last week we received just over 2.5 M doses of vaccine, between Pfizer and the AZ from the US. What we didn't receive was any Moderna, the excuse from the company being they were behind in performing quality control tests. Those roughly 850,000 doses are now supposed to arrive this week. We're also supposed to receive 300,000 AZ doses from South Korea as part of our COVAX shipment. Originally it was reported that our first shipment of AZ doses included the Korean ones, but that was apparently incorrect. There are more than 2M doses of vaccine out there, waiting to be administered, which is fucking annoying, and may be why some areas have rapidly expanded who is eligible for vaccine, like teachers in the Niagara region and anyone over 16 in 10 hard hit postal codes in Toronto. Ontario administered shockingly few doses over the weekend, something like 56 k on Saturday and only 74 k yesterday, instead of the 105 k they were doing Tuesday through Friday. By Thursday morning we should see that 25% of those over the age of 16 have been vaccinated in Canada, with at least one shot.

[Fragile Bird]

In other big news, a press conference is literally just starting as I type, with Deputy PM and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announcing the government of Canada will be lending Air Canada money to keep it afloat, with strict conditions. Regional service must return, levels of employment back to last spring must be maintained, and the company must give customers refunds of money instead of notes for future services.

[TrueMetis]

Anytime the government bails out a company it should gain a stake in the company.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

Anytime the government bails out a company it should gain a stake in the company.

They have taken shares in Air Canada.

[Fragile Bird]

Update

Apr        6Tu    7We    8Th    9Fr   10Sa  11Su  12Mo  13Tu  

BC        1068    997   1293  1262  1283  1036    970     873                       

AB          931  1351   1429  1521  1293  1183  1136   1081        

SK          217    189     205    358    236    321    300    288               

MB          62     109     139    179    185    112    114    135             

ON      3065   3215   3295   4227  3813  4456  4401  3670   

PQ       1168  1270   1609   1683  1754  1535  1599  1490         

Atl-4         9       17       14      14       31      15     20      11        

North        0         0         0        0        0        0       0        0                               

Total     6520   7148   7984   9244  8545  8658  8540 7549

If the numbers don't start dropping in Ontario we are going to be in some trouble. ICUs everywhere are filling up. More communities have announced that their Children's hospital will add ICU beds in bring in some adult patients. First it was Toronto, and I heard Ottawa has done it. Toronto is looking to send patients to Kingston. Dr. Tam was saying the other day she hoped we have hit our peak. Let's see what happens this week.

More vaccine has come in, I assume that's the missing Moderna, but it could be the Covishield from South Korea.. We have been vaccinated 250k to 300k a day, and tomorrow we'll have 8 M people over 16 vaccinated with at least one dose. 

 

[Aemon Stark]

I'd say Ontario is already in some trouble. Almost catastrophic trouble. And it won't be the beds that become a more critical problem (no pun intended), but the staffing. I saw a CBC report today that Ontario was potentially looking at trying to bring in teams from Atlantic Canada (I would certainly not call our local staffing overly abundant). 

[Fragile Bird]

11 minutes ago, Aemon Stark said:

I'd say Ontario is already in some trouble. Almost catastrophic trouble. And it won't be the beds that become a more critical problem (no pun intended), but the staffing. I saw a CBC report today that Ontario was potentially looking at trying to bring in teams from Atlantic Canada (I would certainly not call our local staffing overly abundant). 

No doubt about it. I think it was only last week we hit our record in ICU, 421, and today the number is 600.

[Fragile Bird]

18 hours ago, Aemon Stark said:

I'd say Ontario is already in some trouble. Almost catastrophic trouble. And it won't be the beds that become a more critical problem (no pun intended), but the staffing. I saw a CBC report today that Ontario was potentially looking at trying to bring in teams from Atlantic Canada (I would certainly not call our local staffing overly abundant). 

We hit 4,736 today.

I saw that your premier said he'd work with Ford to help Ontario out.

[Lord of Oop North]

On 4/14/2021 at 6:43 PM, Aemon Stark said:

I'd say Ontario is already in some trouble. Almost catastrophic trouble. And it won't be the beds that become a more critical problem (no pun intended), but the staffing. I saw a CBC report today that Ontario was potentially looking at trying to bring in teams from Atlantic Canada (I would certainly not call our local staffing overly abundant). 

It is bad. My aunt is an ICU nurse at UHN, and my uncle is a paramedic for Toronto EMS. They have been working non stop.
I hope this is the peak, but it is not looking good.

[Fragile Bird]

Tomorrow Ontario is releasing a new Covid-19 modeling report tomorrow, and apparently it’s going to be very ugly.

And in other news, Conservative leader O’Toole released the party’s new environmental plan this morning. I’ve heard bits and pieces, but I want to see a good summary before making too many comments. However, it’s seems he’s going to make a lot of supporters angry, because he swore up and down and left and right that if he was elected PM he would abolish the carbon tax. Instead of that, he’s got his own carbon tax, starting at $20 instead of $40 and stopping at $50 instead of going to $170. And it will achieve the same as the liberal carbon tax. Except it’s not a carbon tax, because he promised he wouldn’t bring in a carbon tax. And instead of giving rebates to people, we’ll all have an imaginary carbon credit account, and if we want to buy a bicycle or new windows we can charge it up to our account. And if we are millionaires and spend lots of money on carbon, we could even buy a car! I’ve already heard liberals call it a Petro points card.

[Fragile Bird]

Damn, Nunavut reported a new case yesterday, and now they’re reporting 11 this morning. All are in Iqaluit, the first cases there so far in the pandemic. eta 13, 1 yesterday, 12 today. I thought it was 12 in total. I assume more will be reported over the next few days.

And Moderna had slashed our vaccine delivery in half. Instead of getting 1.2 M doses next week, we’ll get 550,000 next week or the week after, I’m not sure, the 1.2 M was delayed two weeks.

The CMA is calling for extraordinary measures, pointing out that while vaccine is being distributed by population numbers, the virus isn’t distributing itself proportionately across the country. Vaccine doses should go to the hardest hit areas. If you live in the Atlantic provinces or in the North and you haven’t been vaccinated yet, you’d better act quickly because your shipments might get cut.

[Fragile Bird]

Just watched the federal press conference, still going on. The good news is we’ve bought 8 M more Pfizer doses, which will ease the Moderna problem, though it would be way better to have both. 4 M will be delivered in May, which means, I think, we’ll get almost 3 M a week instead of 2 M a week previously announced. 2 M will come in June, 2 M in July. That’s an increase from 17.8 M doses in the second quarter to 23.8 M doses.

Also, we finally have a J&J delivery coming, in the last week of April, 300,000 doses, so the equivalent of 600,000 of the other two. We are also getting more AZ, but I don’t see the number listed in the news report.

eta: we expect to receive at least 4.4 M AZ doses by the end of June.

[Fragile Bird]

Oh great, stories were predicting the Ontario modeling would show we could hit 18,000 cases a day by the end of May. The worst case scenario actually says 30,000 cases are possible by the end of May.

Breaking the chain, they say, calls for a 6-week stay-at-home order and at least 100,000 vaccine doses administered per day.

In good news, we administered 115,634 doses yesterday.

Eta: also, limiting mobility in the province. If stores close down in one region people drive to the next region.

I’m waiting for curfew news. My brother thinks we won’t go there.

[kairparavel]

My mother received one of those 115,634 doses yesterday (Moderna).

We're a little over a month away from May Two-Four weekend. The shutdown in Ontario needs to happen now before everyone thinks about busting loose for a long weekend. 

[TrueMetis]

Doug Ford refused assistance from the Red Cross claiming that only an increase in vaccine supply would help and there's no capacity issue. Ford has also previously complained about a nurse shortage. Guess who would be freed up if the Red Cross came in to help with vaccinations? (And also apparently contact tracing and support to hospitals) I can only assume Ford actively want's people dead.

Changing the emergency act to require provincial buy in was a mistake.

[Lord of Oop North]

Don't believe any of the propaganda from yesterday's announcement. I finally got a copy of the new guidelines for construction, and probably 95%+ of construction will continue business as usual. 

Basically anything that starts (i.e. apply for permit) after April 17th will not be allowed to start. But even that is not 100% true, there are still many exceptions.

So basically, money talks.

Ontario Proud folks.

[Lord of Oop North]

10 hours ago, kairparavel said:

My mother received one of those 115,634 doses yesterday (Moderna).

We're a little over a month away from May Two-Four weekend. The shutdown in Ontario needs to happen now before everyone thinks about busting loose for a long weekend. 

All my old people got their first shots, thank goodness. My wife is scheduled for next Friday too.

This Stay at Home order conveniently ends on May 20th, right before Victoria Day weekend.

Quote

I’m waiting for curfew news. My brother thinks we won’t go there.

Curfew will never happen. Police are already saying today they will not stop people randomly to enforce the emergency orders.

Yesterday's announcement proves once again that the OPC does not care about the health and safety of anyone that is not rich. We should put Dr. Brown in charge, because despite being "above his pay grade", he spoke the truth.

Curfews and random stops will disproportionately affect lower income people who are forced to go into work, and are not being prioritized for vaccines, and even those eligible in their areas have less vaccine access.

Despite Ford's gravely worded announcement about how Health Care heroes are on the brink of total exhaustion and collapse - this latest announcement is a whole lot of nothing. They closed playgrounds and parks, and a tiny amount of construction. Big deal.

Again, money talks and OPC does not give a fuck about any of us.

Ontario Proud.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Curfew will never happen. Police are already saying today they will not stop people randomly to enforce the emergency orders.

Yesterday's announcement proves once again that the OPC does not care about the health and safety of anyone that is not rich. We should put Dr. Brown in charge, because despite being "above his pay grade", he spoke the truth.

I heard a piece on the CBC yesterday, maybe on Power and Politics, comparing Kenney’s (autocorrect made it Kennedy) 16 rebel MPPs, or MLAs I guess, with the anti-lockdown crowd in Ford’s government. Those 16 are very opposed to any restrictions in Alberta, and Alberta is doing worse than Ontario. Thursday’s 1,646 would be like 5,959 in Ontario. Apparently a curfew was recommended but Ford’s angry rural MPPs vociferously opposed it. Too bad they couldn’t take a lesson from Quebec.

[maarsen]

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I heard a piece on the CBC yesterday, maybe on Power and Politics, comparing Kennedy’s 16 rebel MPPs, or MLAs I guess, with the anti-lockdown crowd in Ford’s government. Those 16 are very opposed to any restrictions in Alberta, and Alberta is doing worse than Ontario. Thursday’s 1,646 would be like 5,959 in Ontario. Apparently a curfew was recommended but Ford’s angry rural MPPs vociferously opposed it. Too bad they couldn’t take a lesson from Quebec.

You have to remember that Ford won the Conservative leadership vote by the slimmest of margins. No sitting MPPs at the time gave him any public support. You really have to wonder how much support his caucus will give him from either side side. He is being pushed two different ways and does not have the strength (or the capacity) to find a path through this crisis. Ontario elected an idiot as premier and now we are paying the price.