We're Lucky

Another Canada Day has come and gone. Each anniversary should remind us that Confederation is a work in progress -- and that we still have much work to do. But, Susan Delacourt writes, on this anniversary, we should recognize that we are extraordinarily lucky -- because we are not the United States:

The border between this country and the United States has never been this sharply defined, literally and politically. As many states in America are tumbling back into a resurgence of the virus, Canada and its health-care system are slowly emerging from the crisis in much better shape than our neighbour to the south.

There are two big differences between Canada and the United States: We are not Americans and we have medicare:

Those two big identity differences — our not-Americanism and our medicare program — are not just figments of our imaginative pride anymore. It’s a good thing that Canadians are too polite to be smug.

Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan are all in the nearly-there club, with chart curves that look comfortably similar, rising up to late April or early May, then declining. Only the United States is in the red category on this site, its numbers still on a sharp ascent as of the end of June.

COVID-19, in short, is punching a big hole in U.S. claims to superiority with its allies and Americans themselves are noticing.

One former health-care executive in the United States has been getting a lot of attention in this country lately because of a mea culpa he posted on Twitter. Wendell Potter, who used to work with the Cigna health-insurance firm, said he was sorry for all the lies he used to tell about Canada’s health-care system and pointed to the COVID-19 response in our two countries as proof of which one was better.

Potter’s Twitter thread confessed that big money was spent in his business “to push the idea that Canada’s single-payer system was awful & the U.S. system much better.” Now, however, he said it’s clear “it was a lie & the nations’ COVID responses prove it.”

We're far from perfect. We too have a long history of racism. And, likewise, our policing system has to be reformed. But, on this Canada Day just passed, we should be grateful for what we have and for what we have accomplished.

Image: ottawa.ctvnews.ca

Canada Day 2020

Canada Day in the Time of COVID. Tourism is the lifeblood of our town. And the tourists have arrived in groups, shoulder to shoulder. They don't wear masks. When the locals remind them of the rules, their response is: "There's no COVID here!"

It's all rather surreal. In two weeks, we'll discover what kind of a day this was.

Nonetheless, Happy Canada Day.

Image: South China Morning Post

Three In One

In the middle of a pandemic -- where the United States is the epicentre of the disease -- the Trump administration has once again petitioned the Supreme Court to kill Obamacare. Paul Krugman writes:

The legal argument behind the case is beyond flimsy: The lawsuit claims that the 2017 tax cut effectively invalidated the act, even though that was no part of Congress’s intention. But with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, nobody knows what will happen. And Trump’s support for the suit makes it clear that if re-elected he will do all he can to destroy Obamacare.

Not to worry, says the president. In tweets over the weekend he insisted that he would come up with an alternative to Obamacare that would be “FAR BETTER AND MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE” while protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions.

But he’s been claiming to have a much better alternative to Obamacare since he took office. Republicans in Congress, who voted to repeal Obamacare 70 times during the Obama years, have been making the same claim for more than a decade.

The Republicans claim there is a better alternative to the present healthcare system. And there is -- single-payer. But nobody wants to go there. There is, however, one other option:

We could go back to being a country in which people with pre-existing conditions and/or low incomes can’t get health insurance, where for a large fraction of the population illness either goes untreated or leads to bankruptcy. That would, in part, mean becoming a country in which Americans who caught Covid-19 during the pandemic would be uninsurable for the rest of their lives.

And that is the destination Trump and the Republicans have set for their country. Trump is Larry, Curley and Moe all rolled up in one person. And the Republican Party is a fools parade.

Image: IMDb

Reclaiming And Redefining

In the wake of COVID 19, Glen Pearson writes, we are reconsidering the notion of social capital:

What is social capital?  It is actually something quite real, practiced, and built upon.  It is about reciprocity between people and groups.  It is about a trust learned in hardship, a network of practical needs and ideals, and a rediscovery of civil society as something more powerful than government, more enriching than finances, and more social than anything social media can attempt.  It is only actualized by doing, not by preaching, or soapboxing, or manufacturing press releases.   It takes the word “capital” and recaptures it back to its original sense of a place where people gather to make decisions instead of leaving it as some kind of financial resource.

Social capital has little to do with people holding money in common.  The capital we are talking about here is cooperation, collaboration, the putting aside of differences, the use of the political to locate common ground instead of mud to throw.  It includes those historic and shared virtues like truth-telling, the importance of personal stories, the following through on promises, forgiveness, collective and individual, restitution, the essence of faith, and the transformation of collective action.

The core of social capital, its ultimate reason for existence, is for the public good, not private enrichment.  This is perhaps too much to ask on a regular basis, since all of us need a measure of selfishness and a certain preoccupation with our own activities.  But in a crisis – war, economic depression, natural disasters, and, yes, a pandemic – the ability to put one’s personal pursuits aside in an effort to achieve the security of the greater good is not only possible, but historically quite prevalent and doable.

At this moment it's essential that we think seriously about social capital:

If we don’t capture the spirit of our unique possibilities of rediscovering social capital during this time of not only national, but global crisis, then the post-COVID-19 future will proceed without us – devoid of our input, stripped of our ideals, and ultimately uncaring of our tomorrows or our children’s tomorrows.

We have spent the last fifty years fixated on economic growth:

We all recognized one another at a distance on our way to materialistic bliss in recent decades, but we were too busy buying to be building.  In the process, our citizenship power got away from us as our purchasing power became our fixation.  But now, in this pandemic, we are suddenly noticing one another again, respecting the health of others, donating like never before to our most vulnerable, and even showing remarkable restraint from pounding one another to death on social media.  Something is going on that’s quite beautiful in its own way, as communities recover their sense of collective need and collective action.

This is the time to reclaim our rights as citizens and to redefine our purposes. Otherwise, all of this pain will have been wasted.

Image: LinkedIn

Safety -- Present and Future

Justin Trudeau is getting advice from Liberals of the Past. But he refuses to intervene in the Meng Wanzhow extradition case. Susan Delacourt writes:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is getting a remarkable degree of cross-partisan support for his firm decision to not intervene in Meng’s extradition case, despite a letter from 19 prominent Canadians urging that he do just that.

But the letter has highlighted one political schism that is a recurring theme in Trudeau’s career — the one between this current regime and Liberals who governed before him.

Jean Chrétien’s signature was not on the letter signed by 19 of some of Canada’s most serious legal and foreign-policy thinkers, including former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour and former justice minister Allan Rock.

It's a difficult decision. Trudeau is following the law -- which, in this case, does the bidding of a lawless president. Past Liberals would have thumbed their noses at Trump. But Trudeau is not of their ilk:

One thing should be clear to anyone who has been watching Trudeau’s life in the politics — this is not a prime minister likely to be persuaded by arguments from former Liberals. From the moment he ejected Liberal senators from his caucus as a newly elected leader in 2014, Trudeau has shown a near-complete lack of deference to Liberals who came before him, including those who worked with his father. His clear “no” to the letter this week very much echoed the tone of the senators’ ejection.

Perhaps Justin's position has been influenced by his recent experience with Jody Wilson-Rayboult. Or, perhaps, he has read Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. When Thomas More's son-in-law suggests that he not give the devil the benefit of the law and, instead, save himself, More replies:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”

This is a matter of safety -- present and future.

Image: MEME

Harris's Ghost

Mike Harris's ghost continues to stalk the province of Ontario. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

It is impossible to follow provincial politics today without fathoming the ghost of Ontario’s 22nd premier, still looming over Ontario — from devastating death tolls to controversial road tolls.

Nursing homes rules were watered down. Water inspections were diluted, setting the stage for Walkerton. Highway 407 was sold for a song to private owners, who promptly reaped windfall profits from blindsided motorists. A fetish for law and order led to a deadly police confrontation with Indigenous protestors at Ipperwash.

You would think that the damage Harris wrought would have fueled a radical redirection of government. Instead, his idealogy took hold and future premiers genuflected to Harris:

Even as Harris faded from public life in 2002 to make big money in big business — chairing the board of the Magna auto parts giant and also Chartwell Retirement Residences (which runs the nursing homes he reconfigured while in power) — he reshaped the business of politics. Borrowing bits of Reaganism and importing elements of Thatcherism, he cobbled together his famous blueprint for power, the Common Sense Revolution.

You don’t have to reread the document to understand its underlying ethos. Never mind the rhetoric about cutting red tape, slashing taxes, unplugging photo radar, downsizing government and downloading welfare, its underpinning is simply this:

Politics shall henceforth be transactional. Not transformational.

This new antediluvian, anti-tax ideology soon infected Liberal opposition leader Dalton McGuinty, who signed a public pledge for the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation foreswearing future increases. When he won power in 2003 — and took stock of a hidden $5-billion deficit concealed by the Tories in that year’s election — McGuinty had to reverse himself by increasing OHIP premiums (a tax by another name).

During his decade in power, McGuinty dreaded any increases and found ways to lower taxes — setting the stage for confrontation with unions when he imposed wage restraints. When Kathleen Wynne took over as premier, she too eschewed tax hikes and pushed for a balanced budget, mindful of the anti-tax legacy bequeathed to her by predecessors both Liberal and PC.

The COVID crisis exposed Harris and The Common Sense Revolution for what they were -- fraud and hoopla. Doug Ford has finally reversed what Harris did:

Only now, in mid-pandemic, has Ford’s government undertaken a course correction. Today’s Tories are spending their way out of an economic emergency. They have ditched any talk of eliminating the deficit or paying down the debt. After first reducing regulations — and regular annual inspections — Ford has vowed to step up comprehensive assessments of nursing homes.

We will wait to see if the course correction is permanent.

Torontoist

Who's Banning Whom?

Donald Trump began his presidency by instituting travel bans on those who weren't Americans. He ends his presidency with the rest of the world banning Americans from entering their countries. Why? Because Americans have become super-spreaders. American columnist Francine Prose writes in The Guardian:

It’s a strange feeling: in just a few months, we’ve become a pariah nation. We’ve gone from being admired for our spirit, our culture, our stalwart devotion to freedom despite our government’s persistent attempts to curtail those freedoms – and are now being viewed as a nation of super-spreaders, a danger to our own health and that of the hotel reception clerk, the waiter at the café, the two innocent grandmas with the bad luck to sit at a table too near the Americans sipping their morning cappuccini.

Trump is one reason for this reversal:

It’s a clear rebuke to the way that Donald Trump has handled the Covid-19 crisis: refusing to take it seriously, promising that the virus will “fade away”, advocating unproven cures, and (perhaps most unbelievably of all) suggesting that wearing a mask is a political gesture: a sign that we don’t like him. 

But he alone is not responsible for the situation Americans now face:

Blame must also be laid at the feet of the governors who ignored the CDC warnings and rushed to re-open their states, and on a system that lacks a safety net to help us through crises like this, so that people are forced to choose between going to work and possibly getting sick – or letting their families go hungry and lose their homes.

Ultimately, however, it's Americans themselves who are to blame. They have been brought up spouting Patrick Henry -- "Give me liberty or give me death!" Now, countries around the world are quite prepared to let them exercise that second option --  just as long as it isn't on their soil.

Image: DeviantArt

Barr's Justice Department

What is going on at the American Department of Justice is deeply troubling. Ruth Marcus writes:

It is becoming alarmingly difficult to keep track of all the reasons to worry about what’s happening at Justice under Barr — and increasingly clear that what we know that is worrisome may be the tip of the iceberg. And it is becoming absolutely imperative that Barr and other senior department officials testify about their activities.

Last Friday saw the botched massacre of Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The episode was telling for those, myself included, who once had higher hopes for Barr’s second stewardship of the department.

Jay Clayton, the intended nominee, might be a fine chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and an excellent corporate lawyer. He has no business overseeing the Southern District. Clayton’s “management experience and expertise in financial regulation give him an ideal background . . . and he will be a worthy successor to the many historic figures who have held that post,” Barr proclaimed in his Friday night announcement. This is dangerous hackery, insulting to those who have served in that post and, more important, to the department.

Barr, who calls himself a conservative, was touted as a guardrail against Trump's wild impulses. However,

for those who thought Barr would be competent, consider: He ousted Berman, a registered Republican and Trump donor, and wound up with Audrey Strauss, a registered Democrat who has contributed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the job. Well played.

It's abundantly clear that, in Trumpworld, there is one law for the rich and well connected. There is another law for everyone else. And the well connected are incompetent.

Image: sltrib.com

A Future Of No Growth?

People are talking about getting back to "normal." But, perhaps, normal isn't such a good idea. Glen Pearson writes:

The prosperous nations of the world have spent their entire existence upholding the rationale that progress is impossible without growth.  It has found welcoming audiences in universities, various levels of government, mass media, and Chambers of Commerce.  It has been the driving force of graduates, small business entrepreneurs, tech gurus, houses of faith, sports franchises, and urban planners.

We have a lot to show for it: technological miracles, vast suburbs, affluence, a collection of material riches historical average families would never have known, and a sense of “can-do” that infuses everything.  But there was a cost to that rampant pursuit of growth that now threatens to undo us: a degrading planet, vast swaths of poverty, racism, renewed nationalism, and yes, unpreparedness for a pandemic.

Governments have been devoted to the notion of growth. But the future may be one of "no growth:"

For the first time in perhaps centuries, the concept of growth is becoming the subject of criticism and exploration.  A growing list of academic voices is wondering if anacronyms like GDP or GNP are actually proper or accurate measures of true prosperity.  There was so much these abbreviations didn’t account for: people without jobs and jobs without people, environmental ruin, broken communities, homelessness, bankruptcies, the decline of infrastructure and human productivity.  These are the things that are awry in our world and they reached record levels during the same time as wealth exploded.

We have come to the point where governments view their main reason for existence as the management of growth rather than the expansion of prosperity.  The former is about creating winners and losers; the latter involves bettering the human possibilities for families, businesses, the environment, and, indeed, civilization itself.  Politics is at its best when it accepts differences, and politicians are the most effective when measuring progress through the advancement of all sectors of modern society.  When this is not the case, citizens fall prey to acquiring cheaper goods at the expense of meaningful labour, and we don’t think twice about it.  Governments have, as a result, learned to appease voters through the flow of trinkets instead of equity.

Growth -- with its winners and losers -- isn't a dead idea. Donald Trump is the incarnation of the idea. But it's abundantly clear that the world can no longer afford people like Donald Trump:

Suddenly all those things we had acquired – knowledge, technology, ease of travel, wide-open possibilities –  have been held ransom, contained by something that can only be found through a microscope.  All that wealth and growth couldn’t keep us from having to socially distance or face the threat of a diminished future.  An effective prosperity would have invested much more than it took away.  It would have poured funds into healthcare, more secure food chains, a politics of meaning rather than madness, and societies built on empowered citizenries instead of spoiled voters.    An unseen virus has stripped us of our security and left us highly suspicious of the idea of economic growth as an end in itself.

Facing that reality is difficult. But facing it squarely could be our salvation.

Image: economicshelp.org

Justin And Donnie

John Bolton writes that Donald Trump doesn't like Justin Trudeau. That comes as no surprize. Susan Delacourt writes:

Bolton has given readers a peek behind the scenes of the now-famous G7 meeting in Quebec in 2018, which resulted in a stream of Trump invective toward Trudeau in the immediate aftermath.

The book describes Trump’s reaction after watching Trudeau’s closing news conference, during which the prime minister spoke out about the U.S. tariff war against Canadian steel, levied just days before the G7 gathering.

“He was throwing a fit about Trudeau’s using his closing press conference to score points against him,” Bolton writes in the book, a copy of which was discreetly supplied to me on Monday. “Trump had been gracious to Trudeau in his press event, and he was infuriated Trudeau had not reciprocated.”

Bolton then goes on to say how Trump ordered members of his inner circle, specifically his economic adviser Larry Kudlow, to publicly shame Canada’s prime minister on TV.

Trump arrived at the G7 Conference looking like a tired old man. Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron looked young and vigourous:

As Bolton reports about the G7 meeting itself, “Trump himself seemed very tired; in fairness, so were many others, but not Macron and Trudeau, and certainly not their aides, who were pushing policy agendas contrary to ours.”

Trump seemed oblivious to those policy differences. “I tried to judge whether Trump really wanted a G7 communiqué and would therefore make more concessions, or whether he was indifferent. I couldn’t tell, but Trump (who had not troubled to prepare himself) didn’t really have much of an idea what was at stake.”

As has been the case from the beginning, Trump didn't -- and still doesn't -- give a damn about policy. What matters to him is Image. Justin seems to understand that. And he has refused to retaliate in kind. When asked about Trump's attack on him, he told Delacourt:

“As satisfying as it might be to sort of let it rip in public or respond to personal attacks or personal comments with personal comments, does that help me do my job? Does that help Canadians? No. So I put that aside,”

It seems that Justin has taken a lesson from his father. When the White House tapes revealed Richard Nixon calling Trudeau the Elder "a son of a bitch," Pierre's response was acerbic and on point. "I've been called worse things by better people," he said.

Image: MEME

No Renewal?

Donald Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is in hot water. Tom Lutz reports:

Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was under pressure on Sunday after claiming hundreds of thousands of people had applied for tickets to the president’s return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, only for the rally to attract a sparse crowd.

The Tulsa fire department said 6,200 people attended. The Trump campaign claimed 12,000. The arena holds 19,000.

The campaign had built an “overflow” stage outside the BOK Center, to host brief remarks by Trump and Mike Pence. Those speeches were cancelled.

Trump’s demeanour on returning to Washington was widely scrutinised. He was initially quiet on Twitter on Sunday but the president was reported to be “furious” at the “underwhelming” event, which followed a week of controversy about whether it should even be held. According to NBC, Trump was “particularly angry that before he even left DC, aides made public that six members of team in Tulsa tested positive for Covid-19”.

Rick Wilson, a bestselling author, former Republican consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super pac, was critical of Parscale’s approach.

“Brad broke the first rule of American politics: under promise and over deliver,” he told the Guardian. “Brad’s survival now depends on the good offices of his patrons inside the Trump camp, and [Ivanka and Kushner] are already signaling their displeasure to the media.

But, then, that's been the story of Trump's presidency -- to overpromise and underperform. It's too soon to write Trump's obituary. But it could be that the Trump Show won't be renewed for another season.

Image: The Guardian

What We Have Learned

Robin Sears writes that COVID has taught us several lessons. Here are a few:

First, it’s time to begin preparing for the next pandemic, now. We have had a virus attack emerge more than twice a decade since the turn of the century. Let’s never again enter the next one as shambolically as we did this. Better public health funding, regularly inspected and replaced PPE stockpiles, and public health classes for every elementary school student are a minimum.

We have learned how scandalously we allowed our parents to be treated by some in the elder care industry. We treat cattle better than some of the miscreants in this crisis were doing secretly. Every long-term care facility must have legislated requirements about staffing levels, medical support, and no more than two clients to a room. Government oversight was often stunningly careless. Regular inspections and stiff penalties, and timely public reporting on findings, are required. We should all give our heads a shake for allowing these appalling abuses to have taken place under our noses.

We learned that massive and fast injections of cash and credit work. One small example: the U.S. Fed injected 700 per cent more liquidity into their economy in three months than it did in the three years after the 2008 crash. What we don’t know is what the fiscal legacy will be. There appear to be two schools of thought.

There is the usual debate among economists about how long this level of public debt can be maintained:

One group of mostly younger economists say that the global economy can absorb far higher debt levels for longer than we ever thought possible. That high levels of public sector debt are manageable without being inflationary or currency crushing. The United Kingdom, slower than many to respond — but still a provider of massive levels of assistance — has just reported their inflation sits at one half of one per cent. This is not what mainstream economists, let alone right-wing monetarists, said would happen.

The second school, still believers in the traditional fiscal and monetary orthodoxies, say we have bequeathed an alarming unfair burden to our grandchildren. No one knows, today, who will be proven right.

But, as an old man, I'm placing my bet with the younger economists. Finally, we've learned something about ourselves:

Perhaps most impressively, we learned how deep is our shared commitment to each other. From the tens of thousands of essential workers who daily put their lives at risk, to the myriad of small kindnesses that neighbours and friends supported each other with. The predictions of some gloomy pundits that people behave badly, when wracked with terror in a pandemic, were simply wrong.

Massive challenges are ahead of us. And there is no guarantee that we will meet them. But we can meet them -- if we choose to do so.

Image: Quotefancy

Stuck In The Past

Chantal Hebert writes that Peter Mackay may lead in the Conservative leadership race. But the party is still stuck in the past:

The party may be about to change its head cook but, if the debates suggested anything, it is that it is not in the process of rewriting its last election menu.

Take climate change. In the last campaign, the Conservatives lost votes over the perception that they were not serious about the issue.

But if an election were held tomorrow, the plan the party would put forward would be built on the same premises as Scheer’s.

As prime minister, Erin O’Toole and Peter MacKay would similarly dismantle the climate-change framework put in place by the Liberals, including, of course, the carbon tax.

Both talk a bigger game on pipeline building than on transitioning to a carbon-free economy.

But the Conservatives are reaching back further than the recent climate change debate:

In fact, with two social conservatives — Ontario MP Derek Sloan and Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis — rounding out the leadership lineup, this week’s debates featured more talk of turning back the clock on abortion and LGBTQ rights than of moving the country decisively forward on climate change.

For decades now, the Conservative Party of Canada has looked to the past for inspiration. That's why it keeps being run over by The Train From The Future.

Image: CBC.ca

Ugliness All Around

Michelle Goldberg managed to get a pre-publication copy of John Bolton's new book. And, having read it, she writes that the book

describes a conversation Trump had with Xi at the opening dinner of the Group of 20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, with only their interpreters present: “Xi explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

It is impossible, at this late date, to be shocked by the behavior of our depraved president. Nor is it surprising, given Trump’s treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, that he is pro-concentration camp.

But Americans should know that China’s detention of over a million people largely on religious grounds — a project that reports say includes torture, sterilization and forcing Uighur women to sleep with members of China’s Han majority to promote “ethnic unity” — is happening with our president’s behind-the-scenes approval. (In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump denied the account in Bolton’s book.)

The book contains other revelations:

Bolton provides, albeit belatedly, firsthand confirmation that Trump did exactly what he was impeached for — leveraging American military aid in exchange for Ukraine’s help in smearing Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden: “Aug. 20, I took Trump’s temperature on the Ukraine security assistance, and he said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over,” Bolton writes.

Earlier Bolton describes him “pleading with Xi” for help in the 2020 election by making agricultural purchases from farm states. Though Bolton writes that the government’s pre-publication reviewers prevented him from using Trump’s exact words, Vanity Fair saw an unredacted version of the passage: “Make sure I win. I will probably win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms. … Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win.”

While all of this is meant to paint Trump in the darkest of hues, it does nothing to enhance Bolton's reputation. He had the opportunity to testify to all of this but chose not to. He deserves no red badge of courage. But he does confirm that, in Trump World, it's ugliness all around.

Image: Pinterest

Ford's Road To Damascus?

COVID 19 has changed a lot of things. Martin Regg Cohn wonders if it has changed Doug Ford. When he was elected, Ford posed as The Great Disrupter:

Basking in his election night triumph, the Progressive Conservative leader acted as if his own irresistible brand of personal populism had swept the province. Not that he’d won by default thanks to a protest vote against a tired Liberal government and voter distrust of the NDP.

“My friends, the party with the taxpayer’s dollars is over — it’s done,” Ford boasted back then.

Weeks later, his new PC government unveiled an unprecedented throne speech setting out an agenda of disruption and demolition of government operations.

Ford's mission was to upend just about everything:

Within months, Ford’s Tories had unilaterally dialed back promised health funding to municipalities, stoking outrage. They had arbitrarily revamped autism programs, sparking protests. And they had done nothing on nursing-home beds apart from reduce comprehensive annual inspections, setting the stage for disaster.

On police accountability, now in the news but back then a partisan talking point, the Tories staked out an unapologetically uncritical stance: “You can count on your government to respect the men and women of Ontario’s police services — by freeing them from onerous restrictions that treat those in uniform as subjects of suspicion and scorn.”

But when he began being booed at public events, Ford's tone changed. And, when the pandemic hit, so did his policies. However, the change may only be temporary. There are clues hanging in the air:

A good clue to Ford’s true thinking comes from his stubborn refusal — against all evidence and advice — to restore the paid sick days he eliminated before the pandemic. Or consider the disturbing findings revealed in the Star this week by Tribunal Watch, which detailed the stealth purge of Ontario’s quasi-judicial tribunals that hold landlords to account, hold a light to racism and help the disadvantaged maintain dignity — a reminder of the patronage stench that has long pervaded Ford’s government (despite his pre-election claim that “the party” is over).

Never mind the serene rhetoric on the surface, it is Ford’s underlying actions that count. They are a reminder of his early and ongoing agenda to change the province in his own image and ideology, rather than enact the change the province so desperately needs and wants.

We should soon know if Ford has had an epiphany on his road to Damascus.

Image: readingacts.com

Irrelevant Conservatives

The Conservative leadership debates begin this week. Tonight the contenders will debate in French. Tomorrow they will debate in English. But, Susan Delacourt writes, the contenders have much more to worry about than their debating skills:

Languishing in opposition is always tough on parties, but being the chief critic of the government during a pandemic is a special kind of political purgatory. For at least the first couple of months of the COVID-19 lockdown, Canadians weren’t in a mood for the kind of partisanship that usually prevails in Ottawa.

Worse, how do you criticize a government that is churning out money and aid to frightened Canadians?

Worse still, COVID has exposed the shaky foundations of the world the Conservatives have had a considerable hand in building:

Where the Conservative party will stand in a post-pandemic Canada should be the question of the summer. The old reliable party positions — smaller government and lower taxes — don’t entirely fit with how the pandemic created the need for lots of government and lots of debt, which may require higher taxes to fix.

The pandemic has also exposed tension between international and domestic forces, the haves and have-nots in a world of income inequality, not to mention health-care spending and the social safety net. Oh, and climate change hasn’t gone away as an issue, either.

Under Andrew Scheer, the Conservatives have spent their time agitating for more time in Parliament:

Last week, he and the other federal Conservatives turned that into a deal-breaker, refusing to grant quick passage to pandemic-relief legislation because the Liberals wouldn’t budge on holding more sessions in the Commons.

Here’s the fundamental problem: pandemic-preoccupied Canadians aren’t agitating for more Parliament. They’re worried about their health, their economic future and matters being raised by the surging debate over racism in Canada. More Commons sittings just aren’t currently on the agenda of the average citizen.

In short, the Conservatives are floating on a sea of old ideas. Their biggest problem is proving that what they stand for is relevant in this brave new world.

Image: Bleacher Report

Et Tu, Mary?

There are lots of people in the streets these days trying to bring Donald Trump down. But Arwa Mahdawi writes that it may be Trump's family who drives the final nails into his coffin:

The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Mary, 55, who is the daughter of Donald’s late brother Fred Trump Jr, has written a “harrowing and salacious” book about the president. Too Much and Never Enough will be published in the US on 28 July, a month before the Republican National Convention. The timing is clearly designed to do maximum damage.

Why the bad blood? Well, for one thing, Mary reportedly blames Donald for mistreating her alcoholic father – behaviour she believes contributed to his death from a heart attack at the age of 42. Then there was the fight over Fred Trump Sr’s estate in 2000. Mary and her brother, Fred Trump III, claimed they were dealt with unfairly in their grandfather’s will as a result of “fraud and undue influence” by Donald and two of his siblings. The ill will is said to have escalated when Donald, in retaliation for the lawsuit, cut off medical insurance for Fred III’s seriously ill infant son, who required round-the-clock care. Fred III was quoted as saying: “Our family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.”

Perhaps it's only fitting. Apparently, Trump told his children that they should never trust anyone:

According to a GQ profile of Donald Trump Jr, the president used to ask his children whether they trusted him. When they replied: “Of course,” he would tell them off for not learning their lesson. Maybe he had a point: Mary’s book (which is also said to contain “damning” comments from Donald’s sister, the retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry) marks the first time a Trump has written a critical tell-all about the president, but I would be surprised if it were the last time one of his own undermined him. The question is: which Trump will turn on the president next?

Mahdawi doubts that Trump's children will do Daddy in. But she suggests that it would be wise to keep your eyes on Melania:

Melania may be taciturn, but she is no dummy – nor is she a pushover. According to a new unauthorised biography of Melania (which the White House has dismissed as “fiction”), an enterprising Ivanka tried to rename the First Lady’s Office the “First Family Office”, but Melania was having none of it. She also, apparently, put an end to Ivanka treating the White House as if it was her own home. In addition, it has been widely reported that she used her husband’s presidency as an opportunity to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement – staying in New York during the first few months he was in office as leverage for negotiations. “That woman! She will be the end of him,” one of Trump’s friends was reportedly overheard saying about Melania’s refusal to move to Washington. Who knows, those may be prophetic words. Perhaps Melania will end up finishing what Mary has started.

There would be more than poetic justice if Trump's dysfunctional presidency was finally brought down by his dysfunctional family.

Image: Disinherited

Cerberus for The 21st Century

There is a gulf -- a growing gulf -- between Trump World and the real world.  Francine Prose writes:

Given how busy most Americans are these days – home-schooling their kids, dealing with unemployment, waiting on line at food banks, protesting systemic racism, worrying about our economy and our educational system – few of us have the time, the energy or inclination to wonder what it’s like to be Donald Trump, to imagine how his mind works, what he really thinks and believes. But over the past few weeks, the increasingly strange, intentionally provocative, inappropriate and frankly delusional tweets and pronouncements issuing from the Oval Office have once again caused us to reflect on the president’s inner life. We’ve grown accustomed to his shortcomings, the regular failures of decency, common sense, and good taste. Yet the gap between what the president is saying – and the reality we observe around us – appears to be widening.

Is it possible that a president who has spent four years lying to the American people now assumes that everyone is lying? Or can he simply no longer distinguish between fact and fiction, between conspiracy theories spread by fringe “news” outlets such as the One America News Network and observable reality? What sane human being could imagine that America wanted to hear that George Floyd was smiling down from heaven at the day’s modestly improved job reports?

Trump has normalized so many things -- things which should not be normal:

It’s remarkable, how much one can get used to, with a president who has made over 18,000 false or misleading claims since taking office. But all that seems more disturbing now, not only because the tweets and speculations have gotten more aggressive and outlandish, but because the upheavals in our country, the crises we face – the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, the tanking economy, the unrest inspired by the early stages of a necessary reckoning with racism – have made us wish, more than ever, for a leader who shows some honesty, common sense, or who just (we’re setting the bar quite low here) behaves like a responsible adult.

He resembles Cerberus, the figure from Greek mythology who guarded the gates of hell:

These days, when I think of Trump, I only rarely picture a guy with an orange face, weird hair and an absurdly long tie. I’ve instead begun to imagine Cerberus, the many-headed dog-monster from Greek mythology.

One of this creature’s heads is obviously Donald Trump’s, but there are others, snarling and yapping and bickering, all offering wrong opinions and bad advice as they try to keep Trump in line and do damage control when he strikes out on his own. Trump’s head may be the monster’s public face, but there are also the heads of Ivanka and Jared; of Attorney General William Barr subverting the rule of law and orchestrating the vile photo op in front of St John’s church; of Mitch McConnell; and of Senior Adviser Stephen Miller, fanning Trump’s racism and implementing his inhuman anti-immigration policies.

Let’s not forget who Cerberus was, in Greek mythology. Perpetually angry and snarling, Cerberus acted as the guardian of the underworld. His ferocious multiple dog heads were forever twisting, showing their teeth, and barking at the newly damned approaching the gates of hell.

Image: Monster Wiki - Fandom

Pandemic Fatigue

Robin Sears writes that pandemic fatigue is setting in:

Public health officials have raised alarms almost daily about the risks of letting our guard down, or re-opening without clear safeguards. Yet Canadians have volunteered to talk show hosts that they are weary of hand washing, sanitizing and staying home. So far we have avoided the impact of this COVID-19 fatigue sending caseloads soaring again, as is happening in the American South. But there are limits to everyone’s willingness to put much of their life on hold.

The base level of stress and anxiety that the lockdown has inflicted on nearly everyone is draining. Widespread reports of sleep disruption, distraction and fatigue attest to the hidden costs of COVID-19. The fatigue leads to indecision and anxiety, driving the cycle around again. You can see the impact everywhere.

The fatigue is setting in just as people are in the streets demanding meaningful structural change:

Then there is the contrast of the massive high energy anti-racism street protests around the world. Will they also begin to fade? Perhaps not. By the end of this week the shift in Americans views of police violence was dramatic according to several polls. Being an American election year may mean real legislated change is possible. In Canada, there have been too many politicians and police leaders who bristle at the suggestion that we have systemic problems to acknowledge and address, too. Our political response so far has been somewhat tone-deaf.

The danger is that, just as we are on the cusp of real, sweeping change, we may choose to lay down and go back to sleep. Knowing how to orchestrate change is critical:

Tommy Douglas always encouraged young radicals to lead from the front. He always added the caution to ensure that you are not so far in front that you have left your supporters far behind. A strategy of “étapisme,” that Quebec sovereigntists used to defend their cautious pace to their most radical base, ‘step by step,’ can be an excuse for inaction. But demands for the impossible — like defunding police services — merely pushback the delivery of what is actually achievable. It is a tough balance to find and maintain.

We are, as they say, at an inflection point.

Image: Harvard Health - Harvard University

Trump And History

Fintan O'Toole writes that Donald Trump is the Unpresident -- a man who enlarges the public sphere  as he tries to shrink history:

This sudden enlargement of the public sphere is a response to Donald Trump’s mastery of belittlement. For all his logorrheic meanderings and florid hyperbole, Trump’s method is essentially reductionist, with mocking nicknames (“Crooked Hillary”), three-word slogans (“Lock her up!”), and an entire presidency predicated on four letters: MAGA

A central feature of Trump’s practice of malign minimalism is the erasure of American history. It is not just that his own ignorance (exposed, for example, in his suggestion in February 2017 that Frederick Douglass was still alive) seems almost total. It is that Trump is obsessed with a pseudo-history in which the past exists only as prelude to his own greatness and to the unique evil of his enemies. In the days after George Floyd’s death, Trump tweeted repeatedly about history: “The Greatest Political Crime In the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt”; “the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history”; “Our Country has just suffered through the greatest political crime in its history.” He twice tweeted versions of a quote from Fox News host Lou Dobbs describing Trump himself as “arguably the greatest president in our history” and “Absolutely 100% the greatest President in history.” And he claimed that “My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”

In this demented solipsism, the entire American past is shrink-fitted so that it hugs Trump’s own ample figure, cleaving both to his greatness and to his victimhood as an object of unparalleled persecution. The immediate backdrop for this obliteration of history is the catastrophic failure of Trump’s administration to control the spread of the coronavirus. A word Trump has repeatedly used to characterize both the crisis itself and his allegedly brilliant response to it is “unprecedented.” (He used it twice, for example, in his address to the nation on the pandemic on March 11.) The virus must exist in a temporal vacuum. Nothing like this has ever happened before, so how can Trump be blamed for not being prepared? There is no history of pandemics.

Trump doesn't know history. But he's convinced he can make it go away. Unfortunately, those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.