COVID Vacation

Adrian O'Connell | Jan 06, 2021

It should come as no surprise that former Ontario Finance Minister, Rod Phillips should sneak off to the Caribbean during the Covid crisis: Nor that Doug Ford would conspire in this outrage by his silence until he was found out.

In reality, both men, together with the rest of the Ford cabinet,have been largely AWOL between the March onset of the pandemic and the arrival of the second wave.

Despite ample warnings, virtually no preparations were made for the renewed onslaught of Covid 19 now ripping through the community, particularly in the for-profit long term care death-traps scattered throughout the province.

For months now, Ford et al, have been sitting on billions of dollars supplied by the federal government to alleviate conditions in the province's health care system, and have declined to act - instead choosing to issue vague promises to roll out funds for the amelioration of dire straits in the LTC sector sometime in the misty future.

What is unconscionable, moreover, has been the absence of any sense of urgency on the part of Ford throughout this crisis.

It is the duty of elected representatives to protect their citizens and clearly this is not happening, given that many vulnerable people are losing their lives and this inaction constitutes torpor at best - at worst, criminal negligence.

Compounding the dearth of leadership at provincial level, our local representative in the legislature has spent the intervening months systematically undermining the public health efforts of our nurses and doctors in this area with a barrage of misinformation and jingoism.

Simultaneously, in a blatant demonstration of hypocrisy, he has temporarily shelved his libertarian instincts by mounting a gratuitous attack on the OPP and has even challenged the right of private property owners to eject unwanted persons from their premises, who are ignoring stipulations with respect to public health and safety.

What.kind of Ontario do we inhabit, and what caliber of representatives do we have, where the elderly are left to rot in substandard conditions while elected leaders, in self indulgent Trumpian fashion, callously spend their elected time, fecklessly partying in large gatherings without masks and/or secretly frolicking on the beach or golf course while people die?

Adrian O'Connell