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News Advertiser
MARCH 18, 2020
www.NewsAdvertiser.com
No More Town Halls - Crisis at the Door Arthur Beaudette News Advertiser - Opinion I THINK it started back in 2017. The much-celebrated (by Liberals) PM Trudeau town hall tour where he would supposedly consult directly with Canadians on how to make Canada better. The events had a mix of selfies and tense moments. But now, that is all over. With COVID-19 (no there was no escaping the tie-in) it is necessary that we exercise social distancing. This ranges from the end of large gatherings to small meetings and everything in between. This also means the end of the much-ballyhooed town hall tour. This leaves me with one question. How on earth will the Liberals govern without this amazing direct access from the selfie seeking fan base? It’s not like there is a system in place with elected representatives who are organized into areas like electoral districts where said representatives have offices that the electorate can bring their concerns. Or is there?? But I digress. The town hall meetings didn’t really produce much more than entertaining news coverage and interesting social media videos. Particularly in the west. They definitely didn’t produce any results in the area of “making Canada better”. It was only in January when a survey revealed that 1/2 of Canadians were facing insolvency. Our federal government can’t hope to keep up with the wide array of crises without all the touring and selfie action.
Something will surely fall through the cracks. In the first eight weeks of 2020 PM Trudeau gathered with the government’s “incident response group” 11 times. While I don’t have the official list of “emergencies” that they are dealing with, here is what comes to mind. We have the climate emergency, the canceling of the Frontier oil sands project by Teck, the escalating conflict in Iran that saw a commercial airliner shot down with Canadian citizens on board, evacuation of Canadians from China, the Coastal Gaslink pipeline dispute and subsequent rail blockades which put a drag on our economy and of course the arrival of COVID-19 in Canada and its inevitable surge. I doubt that the feds honestly feel that Teck and our $12 billion TMX pipeline actually qualify as crisis but that’s for
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COVID-19
In the case of the potential epidemic that we are facing, I don’t understand why the appropriate measures are not taken to provide everyone with a complete prevention kit at a reasonable price. As we know, health care is a big part of the budget of every province. If we were all to be sick at the same time hospitals couldn’t cope. So the name of the game is prevention. The provincial government should make sure by every means that suppliers keep providing us with masks and hand sanitizers at regular prices and in sufficient amounts at all times. In France, the government has obliged the suppliers to provide all supplies needed for prevention at regular prices. In case of being sold out, they have required pharmacists to make themselves enough hand sanitizer and sell it at regular price. Those things can be done here as well. Gaétane P. Lucsanszky
- Thank you Gaétane. Governments are scrambling, some woefully unprepared or frozen in fear. In Alberta, the government has earmarked $500 million in funding directly for COVID-19 efforts. A state of emergency was also issued in Alberta. As you stated, concrete actions must be taken. - AB Name: Nini Musama Occupation: receptionist Likes: drawing, drinking ice caps Dislikes: When I am late for work, cold weather.
