4 | Thursday, October 22, 2020
EAST CENTRAL RECORDER
1605 Glenn Hall Drive (PO Box 970) Humboldt, SK 306-682-2561 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays (ofďŹ ce closed to public)
Online poll A new question every Tuesday at humboldtjournal.ca
WE ASKED: Humboldt, Melfort and Nipawin voters: who will you vote for mayor? Humboldt M. Behiel . . . .27% H. Bentley . . .36% L. Pratchler . .37% Melfort G. George . . .67% R. Lang. . . . . .33% Nipawin R. Harper . . . .32% B. Starkell . . .44% M. Zacharias .24% Overall Not voting . . . .8% *Poll is unscientiďŹ c and should not be used as a serious measure of candidate support.
THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: Are you voting in the provincial election day poll or by mail
COVID-19 by the numbers
2,396
ConďŹ rmed As of October 19
Consequences to hardball protest tactics Protest is an important aspect of our democracy. Sometimes, protest uses tactics that are designed to tick people off in order to get some action. I believe those tactics should be on the table if you’re a protestor, but at the same time, you should have to deal with any consequences that come from those tactics. Over the weekend, we had a no-mask protest here in Humboldt at a park beside city hall, with the activists expressing concern about the government’s anti-COVID-19 health measures. There might be a case for fewer restrictions, considering there’s only two active cases in the area around Humboldt as of Oct. 22. I don’t support fewer restrictions, as we know this virus is able to spread pretty fast if we’re not careful. After the protest in the park, some of the protestors then went to No Frills, which is part
they’re just doing their job, enforcing a national mandate from headquarters. That can’t be any fun, especially during these stressful times.
Editor’s View
Devan C. Tasa of a chain that has a national mask policy – one that the local stores have to follow. There was an incident where the group – with a few identifying themselves as from being from Saskatoon – went into the store without masks and the store’s management kept asking them to leave. The police then got involved. Again, the protestors have the right to use this tactics, but they have to deal with the consequences. In this case, it certainly got everyone’s attention. Yet, I’d suspect that sympathy will go towards the employees at No Frills. After all,
We have moved our ofďŹ ce. Instead of the one on Main Street, we have moved to a new place on Highway 20. It’s in that red building behind Wireless Age, kitty corner to the Uniplex. One of the things that we’ve discovered during the pandemic is that our old ofďŹ ce was way too big for what we needed, especially since many of the staff can work from home just as well as they can from an ofďŹ ce. So instead of spending money on maintaining a building that had too much space for what we need, we can use that to improve our core services: our two newspapers and our website.
Pandemic could herald more protectionism When the world shudders from a major event, and the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly a major event, countries tend to look inward as fear sets in. That is at least on the surface and seems a logical response. Certainly here in Canada we look at the border restrictions which limit travel to and from the neighbouring United States as a good thing given the seeming lack of control, or even a hint of a plan to deal with the pandemic, from state-to-state, all the way up to the president’s ofďŹ ce south of the 49th parallel. Yet trade needs to be maintained. Economies today are almost all integrated across borders, meaning raw materials are often gathered from one country, processed in another, with the product sold in various other countries. Close a border for any reason and the system shudders. Here in Canada agriculture producers are fully aware of that after the beef industry was generally brought to its proverbial knees when Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), was ďŹ rst found in an Alberta cow in 2003, with export markets closed in reaction.
Views on Agriculture Calvin Daniels The situation is of course different with COVID-19. The fear is that movement of people, and even products, can increase the likelihood of disease transmission. Certainly in this household, a book package sent from Britain will go into a period of isolation, then disinfecting, before being opened. Is that being overly cautious? Perhaps, but it is a non-onerous effort that comes down to being better overly cautious, than on a ventilator. So, if we in this household are being cautious, it’s easy to understand why governments are looking at domestic production being easier to ensure safety than those from half a world away moving through various hands before arriving. So to read on producer.com that according to the World Trade Organization, between
October 2019 and May 2020, G20 economies implemented 154 new trade or related measures, ďŹ nding 95 to be trade-facilitating and 59 as trade-restrictive, is hardly surprising. But, for Canada, a producer of much that cannot possibly be consumed domestically, trade is essential, and the freer of barriers that trade is the better. The increase in protectionist policies around trade creates those barriers, and that COVID-19 has increased such rules and regulations is not good news for producers here. The situation is made more concerning here since the general mood of the U.S. under President Donald Trump is to be more protectionist, even before the COVID pandemic struck. And, in Europe the decision by the United Kingdom to pull out of the European Union, itself largely a protectionist effort, muddies the waters across the EU in terms of trade and more importantly in terms of trade access. The impact of COVID has of course been felt in practically every facet of our lives this year, but the impact of free trade may be a facet where the effects are felt the longest.
www.humboldtjournal.ca
Devan C. Tasa
Jessica R. Durling
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