All we can do is wait and see hoping the USA finishes quickly and gives us vaccines. Reality is JT's promise looks bleak

Welcome to politics.

The rest doesn't matter.

A slant is one thing - basically making **** up to fit one's narrative is something else altogether.

OK, so "invoke the Emergencies Act and implement a national response" - to what end?

The best comparison? Definitely not. But there are some important similarities, for sure. And they've clearly out-performed North America and Europe. Being an island nation is definitely a large benefit, and being in the southern hemisphere means they're on a completely different timeline. But obviously they're doing something right.

I don't know a whole lot about Rebel, other than that the few times I've been to their site, it's been because I was led there by a link from a conspiracy theorist.

Clearly they're learning as they go and unsurprisingly not getting everything right. But botched since day one? How so?

This part perplexes me. Are you thinking our leaders want pandemic recovery to go poorly?

Protecting the economy is more important than a few people gaming the system. Because if there's a crash that will cost us orders of magnitude more.

Once we're through this the CRA or whomever can focus on recovering fraudulent or dubious payouts but for now the only viable solution to get there is to keep the support coming. But until then nothing matters except getting there.

I hope they DON'T want the recovery to go poorly. I highly doubt that.

But, I also believe that in situations, such as this pandemic, leaders should lead. They should be proactive (not reactive). They should be ahead of the game. They have the resources, the time, the experts...

I am of the opinion that our leaders have not been out in front of this virus for the most part, and I have criticized them for it. They have been one or two steps behind, generally speaking.

I will grant that they have done well in ordering the vaccine: apparently Canada has 4x the needed doses to cover the population.

From no initial travel restrictions to old age home horrors to slamming small business while keeping wal mart jam packed to promising vaccines that are already not being shipped in full. Now with these new restrictions on travel you can just hop on a u.s. carrier to sun spots. Ford said he will announce a plan for eventual re opening next week.

I canceled my mom's 74th birthday party and dinner last mid March, telling friends and extended family to stay away. They thought I was nuts, 2 days later restaurant dining was closed. And there won't be a party this March either. So I'm not some anti mask, anti vaxx flu bro. And it really bugs me when ppl say screw the old and sick let's jut let it rip. But there needs to be some sort of risk reward ratio that makes sense. My job is safe no matter how long this goes on, but it is time to start moving forward which hopefully will be announced next week here in Ontario

Doesn't matter how many you have ordered if you can not get them to fulfill your orders.
One thing I didnt realize about the announcement that Canada will be making their own vaccines that they will be produced in the Quebec factory that is not completed. We all know about Quebec construction and government chances are the facility will be so far behind schedule.
I agree with Nutella I was in Costco today at 9:45 AM and it was packed lines were 20 to 25 carts for self serve and cashiers. I bet 1/2 those shoppers were couples or parents with older children.
Yet a Fitness Studio can not have classes of 4 or 8?
Sadly they closed the border again to late and all the variants are here.


3/4 of a billion dollars is not a few people gaming the system. These kids had part time jobs that made them $500 a month or so and the government gave them $2000 a month. Smart little bastards though ill give them that

LOL Exactly.

They have them ordered. Now let's work on the delivery, which, for the most part (entire?) is beyond our control. Once again, fingers crossed and hope. Who does PT have to call in the EU? LOL

Science!?

I love how New Zealand just did their own thing and went against what WHO was recommending way back when. I understand circumstances, geography, etc., etc. differ from country to country.

My point: independent thought. The leadership of NZ, presumably, sat down, had a meeting, came to a conclusion and did their thing. Bravo.

And when it comes to vaccines... sign me up for the Oxford variety:

I think this is actually quite important. Three of the four are more or less reasonable news organizations that try to report true things on the big issues and are largely non-partisan. They aren't perfect, they don't have exactly zero biases, but you can read most news stories (op-eds of course are always varied depending on the writer) and trust it. The fourth is an absolute dumpster fire, in some ways worse than fox news, a hyperpartsian piece of trash by alt-right conservatives for alt-right conservatives.

You have to be able to recognize the differences here.

At times, sure. And that varies from province to province. I just think it's far from what nutella was describing.

I've always thought this was hugely overblown - I consider it a non-issue. As I've said before, US and Italy were two of the first to restrict flights from China, several weeks before we did. Did that even help? What I think is most important is to monitor and screen incoming flights, and have solid contact tracing in place. I expect we could have done better in that regard.

Yeah, I don't know enough about this to be able to say they did X or Y wrong, but it certainly appears some balls were dropped on this.

We have only our own shopping habits to blame for this. You need to compare apples to apples - Walmart sells groceries. I haven't heard of any jurisdiction that closed grocery stores while allowing Walmart to remain open. If Walmart is packed while independent grocery stores are dead, that's because we've all made a choice. Of course there is an unfair advantage when it comes to other goods that Walmart sells, but I don't think there's an easy answer here. I believe at least one province made stores like Walmart close off non-grocery areas at one point, which of course brought them a lot of criticism.

IDK how much control we should expect to have over this, and it's early in the game still. Perhaps you're right and the government has over-promised; time will tell.

I would agree it was rather silly to get Canadian airlines to agree to stop flights without thinking through possible response from non-Canadian competition. This wasn't well thought out.

As an outsider, it's appeared that Ontario has been a little more ham-handed at times, and maybe that explains some of your frustration. Much stricter lockdowns, yet results aren't really any better than elsewhere in Canada, and the school situation seems like quite a mess.

These are the comparisons people make that drive me crazy. WTF does Costco have to do with fitness studios? Costco sells food, and doesn't have people exercising. If you want to make a case for fitness studios being open, that's cool, but Costco having lines is completely irrelevant to that case.

Yes of course Rebel News is crazier than Fox but they all have Agendas from The Sun newspapers to CBC. Of course some are more reliable than others and opinion pieces are just that. One may consider Global honest and CBC having an agenda while someone else sees the reverse. Its obviously worse in the USA with 24 hour news and its all bout the cash. Funny the ratings have plummeted for CNN, MSNBC and Fox with Trump gone

Not irrelevant if your one of these fitness studios. You still have to pay your rent, carbon tax and Utilities and property tax. Sadly the science does not show closing them down if they operate at partial capacity. Heck they could not even do one on one training here. Also Costco and Walmart are not full grocery stores. Though I agree they need to remain open I just hate the capacity they are operating at
Alberta has now caught up on all its contact tracing and yesterday under 300 new cases but why not release the stats on were the cases are originating.

Not sure if this story goes anywhere. Canada taking Vaccines from Covax.

I just can't see JT calling an election now as Vaccine distribution has not gone as planned.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...r-poor-nations

Bolded is not really true. The rent for my business is being paid for by the feds right now.

The only ones truly suffering are those businesses that opened very soon before the pandemic hit, or during it of course, because they can't get the subsidies.

Please expand on this. How is your business rent being paid for by the feds? Do you have a "landlord?" Did said landlord apply for the subsidy program? CEBA?

Yeah this was a program that was a total failure. The landlords had to agree to it and over 75% refused. I am not sure why a landlord would not prefer 75% of the rent over nothing. I have a 5-6 friends that landlords refused and both closed their doors. One was crossfit studio the other a restaurant

Yes, this was my understanding as well.

Something is better than nothing... unless there is/was alternative plans by the landlords. Seems nefarious?

Agreed: this program failed miserably.

Great intent, as usual, with terrible delivery.

Renting out will open you to expenses. For some, that 75% income - those expenses might be a bigger losing proposition than simply shutting it down and doing barebone maintenance. Worries about the stability of the rent income can also play a part, uncertainty is also very bad for business.

We get the CERS program, where the rent is paid directly to the business, and then we in turn pay it to the landlord. It's set up to be a percentage of the rent, but if you're affected by lockdown there's a 'top up' which takes it close to 90% of the full rent amount. So for October and November we got about 45% of the rent paid to us, which I then gave the landlord, but for December where we were locked down we got about 90%.

I don't think it was a failure as it kept many landlords and businesses from a world of financial trouble. I think the bulk of the landlords who didn't get it were in situations where the tenant either refused to take part or refused to pay the 25% - mostly owing to them not having it, I suspect.

I disagree here because the forgotten part is taxes. Vacant spaces still have to pay property taxes and there's no earthly reason why a landlord would prefer paying taxes and op costs themselves over having those numbers covered by the government for free.

I would speculate that the biggest reason to no go through with the program with certain tenants is because they wanted the space vacant for other reasons.

I do think CERS was a new program after the other one failed. Does it require your landlord to agree to it?

Actually that is false a majority of landlords refused to participate on this one. I know many people who wanted to do it but their landlords refused

Not sure how that makes sense. Not that I doubt you, but it sure seems counter intuitive that they'd pass on free money. Do you have a link that supports the data?

CERS doesn't require the landlord to do anything.

Yes but CERS replaced the program called CECRA were the landlord had to opt in. I am not sure if they applied for CERS.

BC keeping lock down restrictions indefinitely. I hope I don't hear this next week at ontario's press conference

Could very easily be a different response in Ontario, as our "lockdown" is completely different from what's going on in Ontario. Schools never closed here, and most businesses have remained open since the spring. Probably the harshest measures are not having anyone over to our homes, whether inside or outside, and no non-essential travel.

This is pretty bad, Trudeau said today the plan is still on track.