As the government implements more restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, many Canadians are starting to realize these restrictions are confusing and sometimes contradictory.
Do politicians not trust the public to take of their own safety? Are they playing politics with some of these rules?
True North’s Sam Eskenasi tries to make sense of all these confusing rules and messages.
The Trudeau government has spent $186,079,748 in a single year on rebates for electric vehicles, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
Under the Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program announced in 2019, Transport Canada offers rebates of up to $5,000 for electric cars sold for $45,000 or less.
The Trudeau government budgeted a total of $300 million for electric vehicle rebates. 43,912 rebates were paid in the first year.
The federal government has never been able to tell how much the rebate program will affect carbon emissions.
In December, Transport Canada officials told the Senate national finance committee that they did not know what impact the program would have on carbon emissions. By that point, the program had already cost $165 million.
While it remains unclear how much emissions have been impacted by the program, the manufacturers of electric vehicles have clearly benefited. According to the CTF, Tesla has earned around $60 million from rebates.
“It certainly looks like Tesla gamed the system by listing a no-frills model just under the maximum price in order to get access to millions in taxpayer subsidies for higher priced models,” said Aaron Wudrick, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Federal Director.
“Everyday taxpayers are subsidizing fancy cars for wealthier people.”
According to the CTF, the vast majority of vehicles Tesla sold were higher-end vehicles selling for $44,999, just shy of the $45,000 limit.
In the recent throne speech, the Trudeau government has promised to make “zero-emissions vehicles more affordable” and increase the number of charging stations across Canada.
The federal budget has budgeted $226 million for new charging stations. A 2019 federal audit found that stations in Ontario and Quebec only receive one to three uses a day on average.
Just days after Ontario Tourism and Culture Minister Lisa MacLeod toured a Cineplex theatre to review its safety protocols, the Ontario government announced that all cinemas in Toronto, Ottawa and Peel have to close to combat the spread of coronavirus.
The government announced indoor restaurants, gyms, museums and casinos in the hot zones are also required to close until further notice.
In a statement on Friday, Cineplex CEO Ellis Jacob says that new restrictions announced have forced them to close 22 theatres. Jacob says that Ontario’s decision to close movie theatres is disappointing and unfair.
“We are very disappointed with the Government’s decision to close our theatres. Our local theatre teams have worked exceedingly hard since our reopening to keep over half a million Ontario movie-lovers safe across the province,” he wrote.
“We feel that these forced closures, given our proven track record, are excessive and do not take into account for our teams’ efforts, of which we are very proud.”
Jacob says that the new lockdowns are unfair to theatres given their commitment to protecting public health and following public health orders.
“Our theatres have been open in Ontario since July 3 and in those 98 days of welcoming back movie-lovers, we have had zero cases of COVID-19 traced back to our operations,” Jacob says.
Cinemas were closed from mid-March until July as part of the wider lockdown of the Canadian economy. When Cineplex reopened this summer, theatre attendance was limited to 50 people.
On Friday morning, Ontario announced 939 new cases of coronavirus, with Toronto, Ottawa and Peel seeing higher rates of positivity on coronavirus tests than other regions.
The daily pandemic death counts in Ontario include people who have tested positive for COVID-19 but have not necessarily died from the virus.
The exact number of people who fit into this category is unknown by the government and not even being counted.
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The federal government is moving forward with a ban on single-use plastics next year, despite the importance of disposable packaging throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the second wave of which the same government says we’re experiencing right now. True North’s Andrew Lawton talks about the anti-business and anti-science war on plastic that the Liberals are waging.
Also, Yelp is fuelling cancel culture by maligning businesses who have been accused of racism by the media.
Plus, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis joins to take aim at an anti-family ad campaign in Vancouver.
Some businesses will close and gatherings will be limited as parts of Ontario return to a modified version of Stage 2.
At an announcement on Friday, Premier Doug Ford said cases of the coronavirus have increased at “an alarming rate” and immediate action has to be taken to slow the spread.
“All trends are going in the wrong direction,” he said
“We’re not out of this yet.”
Ford said that he has accepted a list of restrictions recommended to him by public health officials after seeing new data on the spread of the virus.
As of midnight on Friday Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa will return to Stage 2 of coronavirus restrictions with some modified measures. Social gatherings will be limited to 10 indoors and 25 outdoors.
Indoor restaurants, gyms, cinemas, museums and casinos will be required to close until further notice. Schools and places of worship will not be closed.
The decision comes after health officials announced 939 new coronavirus cases on Friday morning.
Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said during an earlier press conference that these measures “would not have been necessary” if people had followed the public health protocols.
According to Ford, coronavirus cases are growing significantly in the province, with the number of individuals in intensive care increasing in recent weeks. Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa have reported higher rates of positivity in coronavirus tests than other regions.
Ford said he recognizes the immense pain the new closures will cause businesses and announced $300 million to help small businesses survive the 28 day closures.
“I know what this will do to businesses that are already struggling.”
The restrictions Ford announced Friday are similar to those proposed by Toronto’s Dr. Eileen de Villa and Liberal leader Steven Del Duca in the past week.
When asked by reporters, Ford defended his handling of the second wave, saying that his government tried to avoid new restrictions until they were presented with new data Thursday.
While public health officials and some politicians are recommending a return to extreme restrictions, other medical professionals are arguing for a more restrained approach.
Last week, University of Toronto Public Health Professor Vivek Goel told True North’s Anthony Furey that Canada is well prepared for a second wave already without extreme restrictions.
In addition, 20 physicians and academics in the field of medicine penned an open letter to Premier Ford asking him to avoid full lockdowns. The letter says that slowing the spread of coronavirus is not worth the damage lockdowns cause society.
While Stage 2 restrictions are limited to Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa, areas considered “medium risk” are asked to prepare for possible restrictions.
The federal carbon tax will have to significantly increase in order to meet the targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
In the PBO report Carbon Pricing For The Paris Target released Thursday, analysts wrote that the carbon tax may have to increase to as much as $289 per tonne by 2030. The current carbon tax is $20 per tonne and is capped at $50 by 2022.
“We assume that additional carbon pricing needed to achieve the Paris target will begin in 2023 and rise through 2030,” wrote analysts.
”The additional carbon pricing in our scenarios differs significantly from the existing federal fuel charge under the federal carbon pricing system. We assume that additional pricing would apply more broadly, covering all sectors and would be applied to all provinces and territories.”
The PBO estimates that additional increases to the carbon tax would decrease Canada’s GDP by between 0.47% and 0.62% by 2030.
While the report notes that current policies are already projected to significantly reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the PBO says that much more drastic action would have to be taken to meet the Paris climate agreement.
The Paris climate agreement is a United Nations-backed treaty to combat climate change and limit the rise in global temperatures..
The Paris agreement has been cited by the federal government as motivation behind several costly initiatives designed to cut emissions, including the proposed Clean Fuel Standard which has been described as a second carbon tax.
The Clean Fuel Standard, which will require energy producers to offset their carbon footprint, may cost the energy sector between $150 and $180 per tonne of emissions produced.
Despite pulling out of the agreement, in recent years the United States has been a world leader in reducing carbon emissions.
Canada’s privacy watchdog says that the federal government is not doing enough to protect digital privacy since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
In his annual report released Thursday, Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien strongly criticized the government’s attempts to invade Canadians’ privacy online while tracing coronavirus cases.
“When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in Canada, some felt privacy should be set aside because protecting the lives of Canadians was more important. Given the gravity and the immediacy of the situation, that reaction was not surprising,” he wrote.
“However, it was based on a false assumption: either we protect public health, or we protect privacy.”
Therrien says that the pandemic revealed major flaws in Canadian privacy laws that need to be addressed.
With many services like healthcare and education going online during the pandemic, the report explains that the federal government has not done enough to ensure that the right to privacy is still being maintained.
“The law is simply not up to protecting our rights in a digital environment. Risks to privacy and other rights are heightened by the fact that the pandemic is fuelling rapid societal and economic transformation in a context where our laws fail to provide Canadians with effective protection.”
Therrien also expressed concern that the federal government has argued that the Privacy Act does not apply to coronavirus tracing and alert apps.
Unlike in many Western countries, privacy is not a human right in Canada. In his report, Therrien recommends privacy be made a human right, with Canadians given the power to go to court over breaches of privacy.
“Canada used to be a leader in privacy law, but has clearly fallen behind other jurisdictions in the world,” he wrote.
“Our proposals are realistic and contemporary, and they would also improve the interoperability of our laws with other jurisdictions, providing predictability and potentially reducing the cost of compliance for Canadian businesses.”
While public health officials call for more restrictive measures and even additional lockdowns in order to curb the spread of COVID-19, more medical professionals are stepping forward to voice their concerns about the greater harm of these restrictions.
While it’s important to protect the most vulnerable, the COVID-19 lockdown has proven to be detrimental to the well-being of Canadians.
True North’s Anthony Furey welcomes the input of these medical professionals because it is so important to have this conversation right now.
The CBC wants Canadians to only read news from their “trusted” media directory.
This week, the state broadcaster published a list of media outlets it encourages Canadians to support.
“We encourage you to find a local news organization you trust and support it. Good journalism matters,” claims CBC’s Local News Directory.
The entire initial list of outlets was directly copied from News Media Canada.
“The Local News Directory has been developed in collaboration with News Media Canada. CBC/Radio-Canada will be working with other media associations to expand the list in the coming months,” wrote the CBC on the directory’s website.
Both the CBC and News Media Canada affiliated were signatories to an open letter calling on the government to further support “trusted sources” of news in Canada.
The letter goes on to request that the government further regulate the media industry in Canada and to create copyright legislation that would prevent other outlets from reporting on and aggregating news published on their own platforms.
Many outlets under the News Media Canada umbrella are already benefiting from the Liberal government’s $595 million media bailout.
Recently, Winnipeg Free Press, which is an affiliate of News Media Canada, was awarded a grant from the government’s Local Journalism Initiative. Winnipeg Free Press publisher Bob Cox is also a panel member on the government’s initiative’s board.
“In setting up the panel and the process we sought advice from other granting bodies and agencies who faced similar situations. Based on that advice we set up a protocol to handle situations where panel members are affiliated with organizations who have submitted applications,” News Media Canada CEO John Hinds told True North.
According to a 2019 report by the Public Policy Forum, mainstream media is one of the primary sources for misinformation among Canadians on policy questions.
“Survey respondents who read or watched more traditional news media were less likely to express uncertainty about policy questions than those with low consumption, but more likely to give an incorrect response,” claims the report.
