A number of public health officials in Canada are starting to learn to live with COVID, but that hasn’t stopped some people from continuing to panic about the virus.
Public health officials are finally treating COVID as an endemic illness and stressing Canadians to stop obsessing over raw case counts.
Anthony Furey discusses in his latest video.
Before the election was called, the odds of a Conservative minority government were at 1.2%. A week later, the chances of an O’Toole government are up 20%. The polls are not looking good for Justin Trudeau, but could Erin O’Toole actually become Prime Minister?
On this episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by True North’s in-house pollster Hamish Marshall to break down the latest polls and what this means for the Conservatives.
Tune into The Candice Malcolm Show.
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A majority of Canadians view Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau’s snap election call negatively, according to the latest poll by Leger.
The survey, which was commissioned by Postmedia, found that 62% of Canadians described the 2021 election as a “power grab” by Trudeau.
On the other hand, only 38% reported that the election was an opportunity for Canadians to be a part of the decision regarding Canada’s post-pandemic future.
Leger surveyed 2,002 Canadians online between August 20-22, 2021 to get their results. If collected from a random sample, a similar poll would have a margin of error of ±2.2%, 19 times out of 20.
With regard to the election’s timing, an even larger majority said it was a bad time to go to the polls. Survey results found that 69% of Canadians believe that the “election could have waited until next year or later.”
Meanwhile, only 21% responded that 2021 was a “good time to have an election.”
When it comes to voting intentions among decided voters, the Conservative Party has been closing in on the Liberals. According to the poll, 33% of decided voters indicated that they will be voting for a Liberal Party candidate while 31% reported that they will be voting for a Conservative Party candidate.
The poll’s findings seem to corroborate other polls including a recent survey by EKOS which shows the Conservatives behind the Liberals by approximately one percentage point.
When calling the election earlier this month, Trudeau claimed that he was doing it to give Canadians a democratic choice.
“The answer to tyranny is to have an election,” said Trudeau in reference to accusations from the opposition.
Prior to calling the election, Trudeau also maintained that he was not interested in forcing Canadians to go to the vote.
According to a year-end interview with CBC’s Rosemary Barton, Trudeau stated that he was “not eager for an election” at the time.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has backtracked on a pledge to protect conscience rights for healthcare practitioners, saying now doctors and nurses will have a duty to “refer” patients to other practitioners when they object to a treatment. Author and physician Dr. Shawn Whatley says conscience rights are not just about freedom of religion, but also the ability for doctors to treat patients how they believe they are best served. He joined The Andrew Lawton Show to discuss.
Watch the latest episode of The Andrew Lawton Show.
When Vancouver opened its first injection site in 2003, their harm reduction strategy was to include four pillars.
In addition to (1) keeping drug addicts safe, Vancouver’s Insite was to offer (2) prevention, (3) recovery and treatment and (4) enforcement pertaining to lawlessness in the neighbourhood surrounding the East Side site.
But as those involved with the rollout told me in 2016 – just before Toronto brought similar sites to its downtown – all three pillars other than harm reduction quickly fell by the wayside and the area became a kind of Dante’s Inferno.
Drug dealing proliferated, dirty needles were found in alleyways, human defecation was everywhere and there was plenty of violence.
Deaths from overdoses increased in Vancouver’s East Side and research showed only 3% of those using InSite were referred for actual treatment.
That is exactly what has happened in Toronto as the harm reduction industry has grown and flourished. There are now nine safe injection sites and four Urgent Public Health Needs sites in the city with neighbourhoods surrounding the sites experiencing increased crime, dirty needles even in schoolyards, assaults and defecation left in public places.
The sites have all been approved and funded by the Trudeau government. As recently as April of this year, health minister Patty Hadju injected another $7.7 million into Toronto’s harm reduction programs.
Toronto public health – which either operates or decides what agency will operate new sites – sees no disconnect when they announce that deaths from opioid drug overdoses keep rising year over year.
It’s all about enabling drug addicts by allowing them to take their illegal drugs with clean needles in a safe environment, after which they are sent back to the streets to deal with their high.
Toronto’s downtown has become a centre for the drugged out who – like in Seattle – often engage in what should be private acts in public and abuse or harass innocent passersby.
One can’t blame the addicts. They are not being given the tools by our politicians at all levels of government to deal with their personal crises. The harm reduction industry wouldn’t have it any other way seeing as they wouldn’t have a job if addicts actually recovered.
While the Trudeau government has made it pretty clear they are looking at further enabling behaviour by decriminalizing hard drugs, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has introduced a platform that focuses on recovery, the pillar very much missing and ignored by the Liberal government.
It is refreshing to see someone who thinks the solution to the drug crisis is not to keep feeding addicts their poisons.
He intends to invest $325-million over the next three years to create 1,000 residential treatment beds and to build 50 recovery community centres across the country.
These are the detox beds and recovery facilities the harm reduction industry (along with Toronto Mayor John Tory) constantly say are not available – a situation they use as an excuse to push more safe injection facilities.
O’Toole has also indicated his intention to spend $1-billion targeting the specific rehab and mental health needs of the Indigenous, who regularly occupy encampments and other streets and parks in Toronto. This is cruel irony considering that the very Liberal minister in charge of the Indigenous, Carolyn Bennett, resides in midtown Toronto.
Writing these individuals off is not the answer.
O’Toole did say he would continue to permit safe injection sites but I would hope they would be a stopgap measure only. In my view, all sites applying for a license or renewing their license must make recovery measures part of their mandate.
Before any further federal funding is dispersed for harm reduction, a site operator must guarantee that their clients be referred to detox and be held to account for their actions.
This country is at a critical crossroads on the drug file.
Either we have leaders who are prepared to get a handle on the opioid crisis and have the intestinal fortitude to stop enabling hard drug use.
Or our urban centres will continue to deteriorate into drug- and Tent City-plagued cities like L.A., San Francisco, Seattle and Portland.
The Trudeau Liberals are losing any hope of a majority and they may just lose the entire election. They’re becoming desperate and cranking up the spin, deception and misinformation about Erin O’Toole and the Conservatives.
The Liberals are spreading misinformation about O’Toole’s position on mandatory vaccines, are claiming O’Toole isn’t “pro-abortion” enough and even went as far as manipulating a video of O’Toole to scare voters about cuts to public healthcare.
Candice Malcolm says Trudeau knows he is losing badly and he’s obviously in panic mode. Tune into The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC) has “wind in its sails” according to spokesperson Martin Masse after a recent poll by Mainstreet Research revealed that the party was polling at 6.6% nationally.
The survey, which was commissioned for iPolitics, shows that the PPC is outpolling both the Bloc Québécois who only has 5.9% of the vote and the Green Party which is only sitting at 3.3% nationally.
“We’ve seen a marked uptick in funding, requests for signs by ordinary citizens, level of organization and activity on the ground since the campaign started a week ago,” Masse told True North.
Mainstreet Research is a Canadian research firm with headquarters in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. The company has received flack in the past for incorrectly calling the Calgary mayoral election in 2017.
Last week, the Leaders’ Debates Commission announced that Bernier and the PPC would not be allowed to partake in this year’s federal debate.
According to the Commission’s 2021 requirements, parties must have either one MP in the House of Commons, show that they are polling at a minimum of 4% national support five days before the election call or have received at least 4% of the vote in 2019.
Masse told True North that the latest polls show that the Commission erred in barring the party from the national debates.
“The most recent polls that all put us clearly above the 4% threshold are proof that the Leaders’ Debates Commission made the wrong decision to exclude us, based on outlier results in some polls, including one ridiculous poll by IPSOS that put us at 0.7% support,” said Masse.
“The political and media establishment would prefer to exclude us, ignore us, and pretend that we don’t exist, but they will have egg on their face if our support continues to grow.”
Other polls, including an August 22 survey released by EKOS, seem to also corroborate a surge in PPC support. According to that survey’s results, the PPC is polling at 6.1% and is tied with the Bloc Québécois.
After failing to gain traction from the “lurking Stephen Harper” and “scary social conservative” tropes, the Liberals are now accusing Erin O’Toole of planning to privatize healthcare based on a video clip so deceptively edited even Twitter has labelled it “manipulated media.” True North’s Andrew Lawton says this is a sign of a Liberal campaign lacking a clear and coherent message, or even any message at all.
Also, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is facing criticism after backtracking on his pledge to protect conscience rights for healthcare practitioners. Dr. Shawn Whatley joins the show to explain why conscience rights matter.
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An Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) trustee wants mandatory masking to be required of all kindergartners in the district once students return to school this fall.
The motion which is titled “Mandatory masking for students in all kindergarten classes” was submitted by trustee Lyra Evans before Tuesday’s OCDSB special committee of the whole meeting.
It specifically calls for “the OCDSB (to) extend the existing mandatory masking mandate to include students in all kindergarten classes.”
True North reached out to Evans for further clarification regarding the motion but did not receive a response by the given deadline.
In line with the Ontario government’s public health directions, OCDSB masking policy currently requires compulsory masking for students between Grades 1-12.
As it stands, students in kindergarten are only being “strongly encouraged” to wear a mask.
Additionally, the school board allows for students who are unable to wear a mask based on the Ontario Human Rights Code to seek accommodations on mask use.
Alongside wanting to force kindergarteners to wear masks, Evans will also be presenting a number of other motions related to vaccinations and child consent.
According to Public Health Ontario, children have a cumulative rate of infection 1.6 times lower than adults. Additionally, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and severe outcomes are “much lower” than the amount reported in adult populations.
In total, Evans submitted five motions to be presented on Tuesday. One deals with mandating vaccinations for OCDSB staff.
“Staff who are unable to receive vaccinations for medical reasons be
prioritized for teaching and working in the virtual learning environment,” Evans wrote.
Another motion also requires “any volunteer” with the board such as coaches or chaperones to “provide proof of full vaccinations against the COVID-19 virus.”
Additionally, a motion put forward by Evans seeks to require anyone visiting school grounds including guests and parents to be required to show proof that they are fully vaccinated when accessing public school property.
Evans’ final motion also has to do with educating students on making “informed medical decisions” around vaccination, citing court rulings that state that children 12 years of age can make “informed medical decision” without parental consent.
People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier is “not surprised” by the decision of the Leaders’ Debates Commission to exclude him from the two government-run leaders’ debates in September. Bernier says that the decision merely “confirms the existence of the political establishment cartel which has sought to deny the existence of the PPC since its inception.”
To be eligible to participate in the debate, a party leader must either have at least one MP in the House of Commons, have a national support level of at least 4%, five days after the date of the election call or have received at least 4% of the vote in the 2019 federal election.
The PPC garnered 1.64% of the vote in 2019 and currently has no MPs in office, but they came extremely close to the 4% cut-off. The debates commission calculated the PPC’s average level of national support at 3.27%. A recent poll by Mainstreet Research shows the PPC polling at 6.6% — surpassing the cut-off.
Bernier also faced an uphill battle to get included in the 2019 debate as he was initially excluded then. The decision was eventually overturned after the debates commission factored in the PPC’s party membership and fundraising activity.
Bernier believes the PPC was excluded from the debate because of how the legacy media portrayed the party in recent years. He says the media has portrayed the PPC as “racist and intolerant” and has not included them in their daily coverage.
Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau founded the Leader’s Debate Commission in 2018.
The “independent” and “non-partisan” Leader’s debate Commission is led by former Governor General David Johnston. The seven-person commission advisory board also contained WE charity leader and liberal party donor Craig Kielburger up until recently. Kielburger left the board after becoming enmeshed in the WE Charity scandal.
The French and English-language leaders debates are scheduled to take place in Gatineau, Que., on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9, respectively.
The English debate will be held on September 9 from 9 to 11 p.m. EDT and will be moderated by Shachi Kurl, President of the Angus Reid Institute, with the participation of Rosemary Barton, Melissa Ridgen, Evan Solomon and Mercedes Stephenson.
