These are the things that bother me
I need to take stock of all that's upsetting me with Ontario's handling of the pandemic. You can come along for the ride, but I understand if you'd rather not
I have to laugh. In the face of frustration and anger and incompetence, I have no choice but to howl at the circumstances. I don’t want to laugh. I don’t want to roar. The loss of life, the suffering, the misery are all in my mind. I think as much about Ontario’s pre-pandemic volatile policies that acted as a catalyst for outbreaks and deaths at long-term care homes as I do the individuals whose mental wellbeing is being starved of nutrition by ever-shifting lockdown policies all designed without them in mind.
But the laughter is involuntary. It just happens. Like a flinch when I’m startled.
I think for the sake of my own clarity, my own understanding, I want to go over the things I’m upset about. It’s nothing new. And it’s not exhaustive. These things have been laid out before by reporters who spend much more of their days reading and writing and talking to people about this. And these are the things that are personally, especially bothersome to me: a single man, white, in good health, fine financial standing, with robust parents and well taken care of loved ones. But this is for my own edification, and if anyone else gets something out of it, that’s merely a bonus.
Here we go. Here’s why I’m so upset about Ontario’s Conservative government’s handling of the COVID-19 response. Here’s why I’m laughing:
Business as usual
I think most of us tacitly accept that a government will be slightly corrupt. Our leaders are almost always going to engage in some polite impropriety. The unspoken expectation is that those in power will quietly grant additional privilege to those who helped them get there, and we might get upset about this for a day or two if it’s discovered, but if it’s handled well in terms of public relations, we’ll all move on.
The Ford Government (often not so quietly) has engaged in frequent nepotism and sketchy real estate sales and zonings throughout its tenure. And while that’s deplorable, it’s something I can get over with the understanding that 1) my expectations for anything approaching honourable behaviour are low; and 2) no matter the party in charge, these regrettable things are going to happen.
What I can’t get over is that it’s continuing to take place during a pandemic.
The results are in
Through contact tracing we can gain an understanding of where infection rates are increasing. Combined with anecdotal evidence provided by frontline health care workers, we’ve seen a growing number of workplace outbreaks, from mid-November until the end of January, and again from the beginning of March to now.
And yet, the provincial government has not targeted its friends in the business community — the manufacturing and property development sectors, especially — with nearly the same vehemence as they’ve curbed the rights of individuals and small businesses — the hospitality industry, especially. This isn’t a mere coincidence or oversight, the Ford government’s connection to construction and land development has been well-established, and it campaigned on the promise to revive manufacturing in Ontario.
During Friday’s shambolic press conference in which the Conservatives announced tighter restrictions for the third time in three weeks (after three postponements throughout the afternoon), Labour Minister Monte McNaughton claimed — with a straight face — that the province is continuing to do everything it can to protect the health and safety of workers.
But “everything” does not include paid sick leave, more rapid testing in workplaces, mapping airflow to reduce aerosol transmission, modelling the number of people in an enclosed room or paid time off for vaccination. To the Ford Government, “everything” basically means some plexiglass and face masks (only necessary when working in close proximity to others).
Meanwhile, the language governing what construction can continue is so vague, it’s hard to believe anything is really going to be restricted by the latest optics-benefitting measures. This, despite recent outbreaks at the the Alterra Group’s 159SW Condominium development in Toronto (21 cases) and an unnamed construction site on the Mountain at Rymal Road in Hamilton (22 cases).
Scapegoating
Instead of targeting the areas in which outbreaks are actually occurring, Ford took advantage of Friday’s press conference to again blame irresponsible Ontarians for increased infections. These people do not exist.
The spread is coming from low-paid workers arbitrarily deemed essential by government, working for companies magnetized to the pursuit of profits. These are not irresponsible people. They are marginalized, living hand to mouth, paycheque to paycheque, contracting the virus at work and bringing it home.
Blaming individuals like this reminds me of that part of Farenheit 451 where the authorities, finding it too difficult to locate Guy Montag, have their medical hound take down a random, completely innocent person instead.
Rather than admit to the complexities, the complications of effective action, the Ford Government is scapegoating individuals, encouraging the people of the province toward shaming neighbours who might have outdoor drinks with their adult children’s families rather than meat-packing facilities that won’t pay for sick leave or admit to failing their community, as an outbreak of 82 workers occurs.
Sure, the supply-chain for essentials is multi-faceted. It’s not easy to make decisions on what is truly necessary at a time like this. I don’t want to be naive about that. I understand that some risks are necessary, and that those risks are going to affect individuals unevenly. But I also don’t think it’s unfair to expect government in a time like this to carry more of the burden than it has, to go against some of the organizations that helped get them elected. To put people, whether they voted for you or supported you, first.
But that’s being made to seem naive on a daily basis throughout this.
Optics-driven policy laid bare
The true purpose of the ever-increasing and almost always aimless lockdown restrictions was laid bare this weekend when Ford went back on 1) his demand that we no longer use playgrounds (despite absolutely zero evidence of transmissions from this) and 2) expanding the authority of police to stop and question individuals.
Neither policy was likely to do anything in terms of diminishing the third wave in which we find ourselves; and the speed with which Ford went back on these after public outrage and police forces refusing the rights being handed them only proves them to be examples of doing something, anything for the sake of appearance.
This is so maddening to me, a member of a population that has mostly accepted our responsibility to surrender certain rights for the greater good. But instead of supporting this good will and our “generally cautious and communitarian good nature,” as Chris Selley put it in the National Post two weeks ago, the Ford government has sought ways to “combine maximum misery and incoherence with minimum results.”
The Politicking
With all this in mind, it seemed especially grotesque when Ford went after the federal government on Friday for not supplying enough vaccines to the province. The timing of this — mere days after the provincial government defended its million vaccines in storage as a necessary buffer, or the fact that there are so many additional unused AstraZeneca vaccines that the age range for inoculation was extended, or the idea that we can rely solely on vaccines right now to fight this — isn’t even as bad as the general failure to take some responsibility for the shape of the province.
The mistakes-were-made-but-not-by-me attitude isn’t only unhelpful, it’s downright condescending to anyone keeping abreast of what’s happening. It’s reminiscent of a child who tattles on someone for an unrelated misdeed when they’re caught red-handed for something else. Ford, unwittingly, comes across as an exceedingly dumb person who assumes the people he addresses are somehow even dumber.
This is not to give a pass to the federal government. The Trudeau Liberals have been awful at testing and tracking people coming into the country. Their vaccine procurement strategy has been highly questionable. And when it comes to condescending press conferences, nothing will ever match the tone and cadence of our Prime Minister trying to play daddy but inadvertently sounding like an annoyed teacher exhausted at chastising his dumb-dumb students.
It’s just that the Ford Government’s mismanagement of this crisis has been so evident, so unhidden and so consistently made to be seen at every press conference, every announcement that it’s impossible not to target them with my frustrations, and anger and outrage and scorn and, ultimately, my laughter, at the ridiculousness of their ineptitude.
I really didn’t want this newsletter/blog thing to turn into “40-year-old man has opinions about how the government runs things,” and yet, the weight of where we are, more than year into the pandemic, is so overwhelming that pretending to not be dragged down by it seems utterly inauthentic.
I think, in normal times, I’d be able to get a lot of this off my chest, to communicate and work on articulating what bothers me, over several drinks with friends. But with that unavailable, this has become my sounding board.
I’m appreciative as I am apologetic for that.
Love Shrinking Affrighted at the Sight of Hell by Elihu Vedder.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase and gift from Elizabeth W. Henderson in memory of her husband Francis Tracy Henderson.