No More Town Halls - Crisis at the Door

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 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 each person to decide. I would say the same for the increasing displeasure with westerners about our part in the federation.

COVID-19 is no longer knocking at the door. It has kicked it in and is about to cripple our country’s economy. The mere thought of social distancing has driven people batty to the point where it seems that toilet paper will solve anything that ails you.

The government that brought us budgets that balance themselves has stepped up to the plate with concrete funding in response to COVID-19. The official government page outlining this indicates the funding “to date” with a stamp of March 13. Before I give you the figure, let’s see what other countries have done.

USA - $50 billion in aid to states, cities, and territories (pop 330 million) Australia - $17.6 billion economic plan (pop 24.6 million) South Korea - $9.8 billion stimulus package (pop 51 million) U.K. - $37 billion in fiscal stimulus (pop 67 million) Germany - as much as $610 billion in loans (pop 83 million) Italy - $28 billion plan (pop 60 million)

Now... Canada? $1B COVID-19 package (pop 35 million)

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out the volume of commitment our government has given the current crisis. However, to help, I’ve provided a chart.

Compare the $1 billion commitment to the $50 million tweet by PM Trudeau and the annual $500 million successive governments have given to the Aga Khan and it may leave you with questions.

I’m pretty sure that the $28 they have allowed per person in Canada is less than we have paid out in 2020 so far in carbon taxes. CLEARLY, we need more town halls and selfies to express the severity of the current crisis. Unfortunately, this government may have to rely on those folks who were elected to bring the voice of the people to Ottawa. Maybe then they will get it right.

Tell me what you think. Email me at abletters@newsadvertiser.com