National Post

OTTAWA — Federal spending on financial supports during the height of the global pandemic in Canada greatly outpaced that of other developed countries, enough to actually raise household incomes at a time when the economy was in free fall.

A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shows that household incomes in Canada increased by 11 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, while incomes in other developed nations including the U.K., France and Germany decreased. The boost came despite a more than 10 per cent contraction in the Canadian economy over the same period, shortly after strict lockdowns were introduced across the country.

The figures underscore the immense scale of the Liberal government’s emergency aid spending, prompting economists to contemplate what level of fiscal response is necessary to cushion the Canadian public against economic fallout.

“It raises a very serious question about whether we overdid it,” said Jack Mintz, economist at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “It’s one thing to help people bridge the pandemic because they lost income. But it’s another thing to actually make them richer.”

The report by the OECD comes weeks after another report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Canada’s deficit as a percentage of GDP will be the single-largest of any country in 2021, at 19.9 per cent. The U.S. (18.7 per cent) and U.K. (16.5 per cent) are expected to run the next-largest shortfalls.

Experts are widely in agreement that some level of fiscal support was needed in order to keep businesses afloat and replace the lost income of unemployed people. But Mintz and others have long suggested that federal support programs could have already been trimmed back as a way to incentivize workers and not avoid overspending.

“In terms of lost income, the appropriate thing is probably to be flat,” he said. “But certainly not increasing.”

• Economists call for improved spending transparency as Trudeau again refuses to set fiscal anchor
• Expansion of COVID-19 programs the latest example of Ottawa's struggle to wind down spending
• Trudeau outlines $19 billion in COVID-19 relief spending for provinces and municipalities

The Liberal government introduced a number of emergency programs early in the pandemic, widely supported by businesses and the general public. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) gave unemployed people $2,000 per month, while the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) paid up to 75 per cent of wages for businesses as a way to keep people employed.

Combined, the two projects will cost over $150 billion by the end of December, according to government estimates. The federal deficit is  projected to reach $350 billion in 2021, then decline sharply in the following years.

“Canada was more generous than most other countries in providing quick stimulus,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC.

Economists are broadly in agreement that current spending measures will need to be wound down sooner rather than later, or risk slowing an eventual recovery. Ottawa in late summer made moves to reduce payments under the CERB from $2,000 to $1,600 per month, but ultimately abandoned those plans after facing pressure from the NDP.

It has since transitioned to the new $2,000-per-month Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), which Shenfeld said includes some provisions that should better incentivize return to work.

“As the economy improves, ideally, we want to gradually make unemployment benefits less available and less tempting, and build in more incentive to accept to work,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has offered few details about how she will sketch out a return to pre-pandemic budgets, and has declined to provide an updated fiscal anchor in her upcoming budget update.

In her first major speech as finance minister in late October, Freeland did hint that spending would eventually be wound down.

“Our fiscally expansive approach to fighting the coronavirus cannot and will not be infinite,” she said.

The OECD report also had the United States posting a rise in household incomes in the second quarter at 10 per cent, largely due to the emergency CARES Act passed by Donald Trump in April. However, the OECD said the bump is likely to be “temporary” as new fiscal spending plans remain stuck in Congress.

Other countries posting higher incomes included Ireland (3.6 per cent), Australia (2.7 per cent) and Finland (1.1 per cent). Italy saw a seven per cent drop, while household incomes in the U.K. dropped 3.5 per cent.

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder

OTTAWA – With Canada on track to see as many as 10,000 cases per day by December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pleaded with Canadians Friday to hunker down before the COVID-19 pandemic starts to exceed government resources.

“We have to reverse these trends now,” he said. “We must flatten the curve now before it gets any worse.”

Cases have been rising in most parts of the country for weeks and Canada set a new daily record of new diagnoses on Thursday.

More than 282,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus and an average of 55 people are dying from it everyday.

On Thursday alone, nearly 5,000 cases were found and 83 people in the country died.

“Fires are burning in so many different areas and right now is the time to get those under control,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer.

She said at the current pace Canada could expect to see 10,000 cases per day by early December. She said that will further strain health care resources that are already struggling with the surge.

“Hospitals are being forced to make the difficult decision to cancel elective surgeries and procedures in areas of the country, and healthcare workers everywhere are exhausted,” she said.

• COVID-19 testing numbers down more than 25 per cent, even as positive cases soar
• 'COVID is starting to win,' Jason Kenney warns as he stops short of severe restrictions in Alberta
• Industry groups call for tailor-made COVID-19 programs to support hard-hit sectors in second wave

Trudeau held a call with Canada’s premiers Thursday night. Earlier this week, he encouraged them not to be hesitant in imposing new restrictions and lockdowns if the data is moving in the right direction and said the federal government would be there to support businesses and workers.

He said acting early is much better than waiting.

“The science, the body of evidence that’s out there, across the country, and indeed around the world shows clearly what best practices are moving quickly and firmly, is far better than delaying and hoping that individual behaviour will itself bend the curve.”

Trudeau did offer Red Cross support to Manitoba, which has been hit particularly badly with a second wave and needs help for long-term care homes where dozens have died. Trudeau left it out of his initial statement about the meeting, but he also agreed to meet with provincial premiers in early December to discuss provincial health transfers. The provinces have called for the federal government to permanently pay for more of the cost of health care.

The federal government has offered additional testing capacity and contact tracing as well as access to PPE, but Trudeau said if cases escalate the government does not have unlimited resources to help.

“There is a threshold beyond which, when the cases spike too much, we might have to make really difficult choices about where to deploy the limited resources we have,” he said.

A source familiar with the conversation said the premiers were generally in agreement on the need for more restrictions to slow the virus, with new restrictions likely coming to hard hit provinces in the next few days.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford moved on Friday, lowering his government’s thresholds for imposing restrictions by more than half and putting most of the Greater Toronto Area into the red zone, the highest level of restrictions.

Those restrictions severely limit indoor dining and gyms, close movie theatres and other spaces. The only remaining level of restrictions for those health regions is a full and complete lockdown.

Modelling Ontario released on Thursday showed the government could be seeing 6,500 cases a day in a few weeks’ time, potentially overwhelming the province’s critical care bed capacity.

“The impact on our hospital would be absolutely devastating. As premier I can’t accept that and I won’t accept that,” said Ford. “These adjustments are necessary to respond to the latest evidence and we may need to make further adjustments.”

Ontario’s thresholds were originally higher than many public health experts recommended, including experts the government consulted who suggested they should be higher.

Ford pleaded with people to modify their behaviour and said he is prepared to go further if that is what is required.

“You have already sacrificed so much, but we need to be clear about what is at stake. We are staring down the barrel of another lockdown,” he said.

Ford has not been alone in ramping up restrictions, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister brought in tighter rules for his province on Tuesday.

And Alberta premier Jason Kenney has also taken some small measures to tighten restrictions in his provinces, forcing bars and restaurants to close earlier in the evening and suspending indoor fitness classes.

• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty

SeaDream 1, one of the world’s smallest cruise ships, departed Barbados on Nov. 7 with 53 passengers and 66 crew — the first cruise ship to venture back to sea in an industry docked since March by the global coronavirus outbreak.

But by the fifth day of the cruise, the ship was forced to halt what could have been a ‘watershed moment for the cruise industry’ after a passenger onboard tested positive for COVID-19.

“People are shocked,” Gene Sloan, a passenger on the SeaDream Yacht Club cruise, told the National Post.

Sloan, who had been writing about cruise and travel for the past 20 years, had boarded the ship on Saturday to see what it’s like to go on the first Caribbean cruise since the shutdown in March.

“The Caribbean is the world’s biggest cruise destination,” he wrote in an article for the Points Guy , “accounting for at least a third of all cruises taken in a normal year, and a resumption of sailings in the region is critical to the cruise industry’s long-term health.”

Standing in line to board the ship on Saturday had been a “strange” experience, Sloan said.

Each passenger had to undergo a COVID-19 test, a body temperature check, a pulse oximetry test; sanitize their hands, have their luggage sprayed with disinfectant as well as show several medical-related forms.

All passengers had been required by the SeaDream cruise line and the Barbados government to test negative for COVID-19 via a PCR test three days prior to boarding.

SeaDream also has started new cleaning and sanitizing measures on board the ships, with the help of ultrasonic foggers used by hospitals to disinfect rooms. They also installed a germ-killing UV light system.

While this would have been the first cruise in the Caribbean, SeaDream had already conducted some cruises in Europe, all of which went off without a hitch. Given the “level of rigorousness” with which the line had prepared its ships, it was easy to be skeptical of anyone coming down with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis once onboard, Sloan told the National Post.

After the exhaustive screening, the first few days aboard the ship had been “surprisingly normal'” Sloan said . People could still lounge by the pool, enjoying a drink by the bar, take a kayak out for a paddle or a swim. Most meals were served in the outdoor restaurant and people kept to their own groups.

The ship, he said, was built to serve 112 passengers; Carrying only 53, which amounts to 47 per cent of capacity, made it easier for passengers to maintain social distancing, as requested by staff.

Unlike in pre-COVID times, most activities off the ship would be planned on islands where passengers wouldn’t meet locals. Passengers were also required to have their temperature checked daily by staff — a reminder, Sloan wrote, of the pandemic.

Update: @SeaDreamYC has tightened its mask-wearing rules, with passengers now required to wear a mask on its ships when they can’t social distance from other passengers. The line already has a months-long track record keeping #covid off ships through frequent testing. #SeaDream pic.twitter.com/NrF7cAx4pR

— Gene Sloan (@CruiseLog) November 10, 2020

Initially, passengers were not asked to wear masks onboard the ship, a move that generated some controversy among those who saw photos of the cruise posted by passengers on their social media accounts. The cruise staff had initially reasoned that masks were not needed due to the rigorous testing passengers prior to casting off, but by Monday night had announced a change in policy that mandated masks be worn at all times.

Not all passengers were happy about the change, Sloan wrote, with some telling him that they had specifically booked the cruise because it did not require mask-wearing. However, in hindsight, not wearing a mask might have made it more likely for COVID-19 to be transmitted among the guests, Sloan said.

It’s still unclear how the virus found its way on to the ship.

Torbjorn Lund, the ship’s captain, informed passengers during a ship-wide intercom address on Wednesday afternoon that a passenger has tested positive for COVID-19. All passengers were asked to isolate in their cabins for the next 24 hours as medical teams came onboard and went door-to-door to test all passengers for any virus spread.

Sloan, who was standing outside his cabin when he heard the announcement, said he slipped into his room without seeing any of the other passengers. But, based on the few he spoke with via email during isolation, he noted that people appeared to be a “little shocked”, but not angry.

Quarantine lunch has arrived and, well, this is kind of amazing. How did they pull this off within two hours of a shipwide lockdown? #SeaDream @SeaDreamYC @thepointsguy pic.twitter.com/NqdIw3KMLu

— Gene Sloan (@CruiseLog) November 11, 2020

“The few people I talked to seemed to understand the necessity for a quarantine … to shut this kind of thing down,” he said. He commended ship staff for their smooth handling of the situation, from immediate testing to ensuring all passengers still got a gourmet lunch and dinner, delivered to their door, without having to interact with crew.

The seven day cruise, he said, was immediately cancelled and the ship docked at its home port in Barbados on Wednesday night.

There, another four people tested positive and passengers remained quarantined on the ship Thursday afternoon.

Sloan said the further four cases had been travelling with the original passenger to test positive.

The situation is ‘unfortunate’, he said, because the cruise line put a lot of work into a strategy for all worst-case scenarios. “They’ve spent a lot of time figuring out not just how to keep (COVID-19) off the ships, but if it gets on the ship, how to shut it down.”

Not only is North Korea building a submarine capable of firing ballistic missiles, the hermit kingdom also appears to be training military dolphins to do its underwater bidding.

New satellite images obtained by the United States Naval Institute (USNI), a non-profit, appear to reveal dolphin pens off the coast of Nampo, a naval base and port city in South Pyongan Province. The apparent animal pens are floating between a shipyard and a coal loading pier, with naval units based nearby.

Satellite images suggest a dolphin training program has existed at Nampo since at least October 2015, USNI reported , adding that the dolphins appear to be bred at a second site, on the edge of town, which has existed since October 2016. The program may be part of Kim Jong Un’s broader modernization of North Korea’s navy, USNI reported.

New Evidence Suggests North Korea has a Naval Marine Mammal Program - USNI Newshttps://t.co/LPXTOXVWJ0 pic.twitter.com/m7lA3eemnZ

— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) November 12, 2020

What makes the animals so useful is their sensory and diving capabilities. A dolphin’s natural sonar is superior to man-made devices and they can be trained to hunt for mines, recover equipment and stop hostile swimmers and divers.

USNI reported that it is possible that the animal pens in the satellite images are actually fish farms, which are increasingly common in North Korea, but they look different than those in other areas of the country.

North Korea would not be the first nation to try to weaponize dolphins.

The U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program has been training bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions since the 1960s, but it was only in the early 1990s that the program was declassified.

Canada does not use aquatic animals in its military operations and apparently has no plans to do so, The Canadian Press reported after Canadian soldiers got a chance, in 2011, to train with bomb-detecting dolphins during a U.S. military exercise off the coast of British Columbia.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, navy dolphins helped U.S. forces clear anti-ship mines and underwater booby traps planted in the port of Umm Qasr by Saddam Hussein’s forces.

In 2016 the Russian military spent $33,750 to purchase five bottlenose dolphins . Of course, Russia refused to say at the time what it planned to do with the dolphins, but the country’s military has a history of training marine mammals.

The Soviet Union had a dolphin unit at a seaport near Sevastopol in Crimea, but when it collapsed, the training facility was placed under the control of Ukraine. The dolphin program was reportedly restarted in 2012, and when Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014 the Russian military assumed control of the training facility.

A declassified 1976 report by the CIA notes that the Soviet Union launched its marine mammal training program in response to the success of the U.S. one.

The document also notes the exceptional capabilities of dolphins and other marine mammals, which have been trained to locate objects, place packages on moving targets, and deliver objects to submerged divers.

“Marine mammals can perform operational tasks which are well beyond even a trained frogman’s capabilities. A man with swim flippers can maintain a speed of four to five knots for several minutes in quiet water; a dolphin can cruise at five to six knots for several hours and sprint to a speed of 15 to 20 knots for several minutes,” the report says.

“Animals could be trained to attack a magnetic package to a submarine which could record information, transmit a tracking signal or explode.”

In fact, according to a 2017 study , a lack of hands may be the only thing holding dolphins back from world domination.

Despite the apparent success of marine mammal programs, the use of animals in military operations remains controversial.

Animal-rights groups have criticized the U.S. military for putting dolphins in harm’s way. Dolphins are big enough to set off a mine by accident, although the navy insists the animals never get close enough to the explosives to detonate them.

With files from The Canadian Press and National Post Staff

Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious British serial killer known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper,’ has died after contracting Covid-19.

Sutcliffe, who murdered at least 13 women across the north of England in the late 1970s, died at University Hospital of North Durham, England, a U.K. Prison Service spokesman confirmed to Sky News on Friday.

The 74-year-old, who also had a number of other underlying health problems, reportedly refused treatment for Covid-19.

Sutcliffe terrorized West Yorkshire and Manchester from 1975, sparking one of Britain’s biggest manhunts which finally concluded in 1981 with his conviction for the murders of 13 women.

Sutcliffe said at his trial at the Old Bailey, the Guardian reported: “It was just a miracle they did not apprehend me earlier – they had all the facts.”

He spent three decades at the Broadmoor Hospital high-security psychiatric unit before being moved to Her Majesty’s Prison Frankland in County Durham in 2016.

Sutcliffe is known to have started attacking women in the late 1960s but his first known murder took place in 1975 when he killed 28-year-old mother of four Wilma McCann – and he remained at large until his arrest in 1980.

McCann’s son Richard told Sky News:

“He will go down as one of those figures from the 20th century in the same league I suppose as someone like Hitler.

“It was never just a drunken fight, he went out there with tools and implements and he murdered people again and again and again and again.”

An official cause of death has yet to be confirmed, pending a coroner’s examination.

OTTAWA — Industry groups are calling on Ottawa to tailor its COVID-19 emergency support programs, as a new round of pandemic lockdowns could trigger widespread bankruptcies in hard-hit sectors.

Speaking to the Senate’s national finance committee on Thursday, business representatives warned that hotels, restaurants, retail and tourism services are getting particularly pinched after some provinces re-introduced stricter social distancing requirements.

The lobby groups called for tailor-made supports for those hard-hit sectors, referencing what some economists have called the “k-shaped recovery,” in which the economy is divided between industries that have either almost returned to normal, or who remain badly constrained by lockdowns.

“I’m worried we could lose at least half of this industry,” said Susie Grynol, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of Canada. She cited an internal survey that found 60 per cent of executives fear going out of business by Christmas.

Her comments came hours after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland testified before the same committee, during which she faced criticism from several senators for her ministry’s failure to provide regular, detailed accounts of emergency spending during the pandemic.

Freeland was discussing Bill C-9, which introduces several new measures to help small businesses withstand the pandemic, including a new rent relief program. Industry has for months expressed appreciation for private sector supports from Ottawa, including the introduction of a wage subsidy program that originally covered 75 per cent of labour costs for firms of various sizes.

But Grynol and others said shrewder programs would be needed in order to stem widespread bankruptcies in hotels and elsewhere.

“Since this summer, our economic circumstances have worsened,” Grynol said. “Yet the wage subsidy rates have declined. Our recommendation is that [the wage subsidy] be raised to 85 per cent for the hardest hit, and that the government stop supporting businesses with minimal revenue loss, whose survival is not at risk.”

• Opinion: Make second-wave support for small business targeted and workable
• Second wave of layoffs looms as COVID cases climb, straining hard-hit industries

She also called on Ottawa to back new lines of debt for hotel owners, saying hotels have been categorically denied any new credit from major banks due to their high-leverage business models.

Supports under Bill C-9 favour companies who lease their properties, she said, because it gives them more avenues to access lines of capital, whereas owners of major assets can only seek supports based on mortgage interest and property taxes.

Other business representatives suggested Ottawa should begin to distinguish between hard-hit industries and those who have already begun the long, slow climb back to health.

“The focus now needs to shift from broad-based support to sector-specific programs,” said Alla Drigola, head of Parliamentary affairs at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“They all have unique needs and these programs need to be tailored to help them.”

The lobby group has been warning for months that bankruptcies in the restaurant, tourism and retail sectors in particular will spike if Ottawa does not introduce its new rent relief program soon.

Also on Thursday, senators questioned Freeland as to why she has not provided regular updates on COVID-19 spending, even as expenditure blow past previous records. Ottawa is set to run a more than $350-billion deficit in 2021, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

“Why doesn’t government just provide this on a monthly basis to senators and to parliamentarians? Right now we have to go through various sources and try to construct and put the financial information together ourselves,” she said.

Those concerns are shared by the PBO, who in a series of reports last week blasted the Liberal government for its “lacking” supply of detailed information on its COVID-19 spending plans.

Unlike some other developed nations, Canada has yet to table a complete budget since the beginning of the pandemic, providing only one fiscal “snapshot” in early summer.

Freeland did not address why Ottawa has declined to provide regular, detailed information about its spending practices, saying only that her office would provide “considerable detail” on its spending in its upcoming fiscal update.

She said the pace of spending under COVID-19 has created a “very fast moving fast changing situation” that has made reporting more difficult.

“I very much understand and appreciate the desire for financial information,” she told senators.

Ottawa during the pandemic has provided only high-level projections for its largest pools of spending. The estimated cost for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) by the end of December is currently projected to reach $65 billion.

Total costs thus far for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) is currently $81 billion

EDMONTON — As pressure mounts on the Alberta government to tackle rising cases of COVID-19, the province has moved towards some further restrictions on socializing and exercise classes that will start Friday and last for two weeks.

The announcement comes as more than 400 doctors — joined by health-care unions — have once again called on the government to institute a “circuit breaker” — short, sharp lockdowns — and suggested other measures to bring down surging case counts.

“We have reached a juncture where only strong and decisive mandatory measures can prevent our hospitals from becoming overwhelmed,” says the open letter.

At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Premier Jason Kenney and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, didn’t go that far. Instead, they announced the cancellation of group fitness classes, team sports, amateur choir activities and a halt on serving alcohol in bars after 10 p.m. in areas where there are outbreaks, including Edmonton and Calgary.

“COVID is starting to win and we cannot let that happen,” said Kenney, who was speaking from home in self-isolation after coming into contact with a positive case on Monday. “This two-week push is, I believe, our last chance to avoid more restrictive measures that I and most Albertans desperately want to avoid.”

Kenney’s COVID-19 test came back negative later in the day.

The Alberta government is still calling on Albertans to be personally responsible for curbing the spread and to avoid hosting gatherings in their homes.

• Alberta doctors propose a 'circuit breaker' to tackle COVID surge, but no mandatory restrictions planned yet
• 'Extremely concerning:' Alberta records daily high of about 800 new COVID-19 cases

On Thursday, 51 of the 70 designated intensive care units beds set aside for COVID-19 patients were occupied across Alberta, with 225 people hospitalized from the virus. There were outbreaks in 169 schools, with 842 active cases.

Across the province, there are 8,300 active cases; Alberta added 860 new COVID cases Thursday and 10 more people have died. Daily case counts have been setting new records in recent weeks as the pandemic spreads through social gatherings, and contract tracers have struggled to keep up with the new caseloads.

“This is deeply concerning,” said Hinshaw. “We must reduce the growth of COVID-19 and we must do it soon.”

Among the active COVID-19 cases, there are more than 400 health-care workers who have tested positive; out of all-time cases in the province, more than 2,600 have fallen ill.

The first open letter from doctors pitching the idea of a “circuit breaker” to the province came earlier this week. A second letter on Thursday, signed by approximately 430 doctors, also suggested specific measures such as working from home, and shutdowns on physical activities and indoor socializing in bars and restaurants.

Dr. Leyla Asadi, an infectious diseases doctor and one of the letter’s signatories, explained the purpose of the letter was to give recommendations that could help bring down the spread of COVID-19.

“We see the toll that COVID is taking within our hospitals and we also see what’s happening in other jurisdictions,” she said. “We wanted Premier Kenney to hear our plea for help for the health system.”

Officials have been resistant to the idea there should be new and more stringent lockdown measures put in place, in part because of the economic risks and in part because public health statistics show very few cases can be tied back to public places such as restaurants and bars, for example.

That said, the origins of some 40 per cent of all cases haven’t been identified, and Asadi said, other jurisdictions suggest restaurants and bars are places where COVID spread, because they’re indoor spaces where people don’t wear masks.

“So, if they’re from an unknown source, why don’t we think that it could be these places?” Asadi said.

Other provinces, including Manitoba and British Columbia, have moved towards strict, temporary shutdowns to try and get case counts down.

“The way we’re going, I fear that by not instituting some mandatory measures now, we’re inevitably hurtling towards a severe lockdown anyway, and that’s what I’m hoping we can prevent by acting more proactively with these measures,” said Asadi.

Still, Kenney cautioned Thursday, there will be more stringent measures if the temporary measures don’t bring the case counts down.

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

Canada’s immigration minister is opening the doors to people in Hong Kong, with an aim to attract students and recent graduates, but potentially leaving out many vulnerable people in the former British colony that is coming under increasing Chinese pressure.

The Chinese government imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong earlier this year in response to growing democracy protests. The law makes it a crime to advocate for secession or independence and allows for sweeping surveillance. It also allows for people charged with these crimes to be moved to China for trials that could occur behind closed doors.

Earlier this week four pro-democracy legislators — two of whom were former Canadian citizens — were expelled from Hong Kong’s legislature causing others to resign and leaving the legislature without any opposition. Canada condemned that move in a statement as did several other Western nations.

“This action clearly demonstrates a concerning disregard for Hong Kong’s Basic Law and the high degree of autonomy promised for Hong Kong under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework,” said Foreign Affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne. “We are deeply disappointed that China has chosen to break its international obligations.”

The national security law has been denounced around the world as an assault on the city’s freedoms and an erosion of the “one country, two systems” approach that was supposed to govern Hong Kong after its transfer from Britain.

• Two of four pro-democracy lawmakers turfed from Hong Kong legislature were Canadian citizens
• ‘No more Hong Kong as we know it’: Pro-democracy bloc quits en masse to protest new China powers

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino announced new paths for students and recent graduates to apply for work permits in Canada. He also waived fees for students already here to reapply and made it clear that a violation of the new national security law would not be grounds for denying entry on an asylum claim.

“No one will be disqualified from making a legitimate asylum claim in Canada by sole virtue of having been charged under the new national security law,” he said.

Many of the protestors in Hong Kong over the last year were not charged under the national security legislation, but were accused of starting riots. Mendocino would not directly answer if they also would be allowed to make asylum claims, but said the government would not deny claims if the person was charged with a crime that would not be recognized under Canadian law.

Mendocino said Canada is deeply concerned about the situation in Hong Kong and was opening more immigration pathways as a result.

“We continue to watch the situation with grave concern in Hong Kong. And as I said in my remarks, today’s announcement is set against that backdrop.”

Under the changes Mendocino announced students from Hong Kong will be able to stay for an extended period on work permits and the government will introduce new work permits for people in Hong Kong who have recently completed post-secondary education. The government will also set a clear path for people on work permits to apply for permanent residency.

There are 300,000 Canadians living in Hong Kong and Mendocino said any travel documents they need will be expedited and their immediate family members will be able to travel to Canada in spite of COVID-19 restrictions.

Last month, Mendocino announced an increase in Canada’s immigration targets aiming to bring in more than 1.2 million newcomers over the next three years. He said there is a tremendous opportunity for Canada in potential immigrants from Hong Kong and they can help the country deal with labour shortages in health care and tech sectors.

“As our health-care workers fight the second wave, our government is ensuring that we have the people we need for a second shift,” he said. “We will continue to look for highly skilled people from around the world, and that includes places like Hong Kong.”

Cherie Wong, executive director of the advocacy group Alliance Canada Hong Kong, said the government is making a good first step, but leaving out marginal people who don’t have university degrees.

“It is bringing in a very particular group of Hong Kongers, but not the masses that are more vulnerable compared to those who already have access to immigration lawyers.”

Wong said she would like to see people able to make their Canadian asylum claim from Hong Kong, because it can be difficult for anyone who took part in protest activities to leave.

“They could be granted travel documents to be able to leave, because a lot of those who have been arrested, their travel documents have been seized.”

She said surveys her group has done show many people living in Hong Kong would be interested in calling Canada home, second only to Taiwan and ahead of countries like Britain and Australia.

China’s ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, suggested recently the 300,000 Canadians in Hong Kong could be at risk if Canada granted asylum to people fleeing the country.

Wong said she feels that is empty sabre rattling, but Canada should expect a response from Beijing over today’s announcement.

“I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party will be taking any retaliatory measures against Canadians in Hong Kong,” she said.

She said even if China takes a tough stance, Canada should keep opening its doors.

“We cannot let an authoritarian regime that has no regard for human life to dictate how Canada wants to treat Hong Kongers.”

Earlier Thursday, members of the House of Commons committee looking into the plight of ethnic Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province were unequivocal in levelling an accusation of genocide against China’s ruling Communist party.

The panel rendered its genocide finding after hearing harrowing testimony from survivors of China’s imprisonment of Uighur Muslims. They shared accounts of their mass incarceration, rape and forced sterilization of women, and mass surveillance.

Critics say China has detained as many as a million Uighurs and members of other Muslim groups in what amount to mass prisons, where they can be re-educated.

“The subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide, as laid out in the Genocide Convention,” said Liberal MP Peter Fonseca, the committee chair.

“In particular, the subcommittee would like to thank the Uighur witnesses that provided evidence at great risk to themselves and their families living in Xinjiang.”

The subcommittee’s report will eventually wend its way up to the full Commons committee on foreign affairs and international development before it makes its way to the government for a response.

— with files from the Canadian Press 

Twitter: RyanTumilty
Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

The Republicans may have lost the White House, but it doesn’t mean their party is battered and bruised.

With a conservative majority on the supreme court, and potentially retaining the Senate, the Republicans are in a good place to keep president-elect Joe Biden in check over the next four years.

But what does a Republican Party look like without Donald Trump?

Nicholas Lemann, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins Dave to talk about what the mentality is behind Trump’s challenge of the results, how party leaders may be looking to move past this election and position themselves for the midterms in two years.

Background reading:  The Republican Identity Crisis After Trump

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Get ready for another pandemic lockdown in Ontario, at least in major cities. The new case projections provincial experts presented Thursday will compel Premier Doug Ford to reimpose severe restrictions, even though he has worked hard to avoid it.

Dr. Steini Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and the province’s modelling expert, is predicting that Ontario will see 6,000 cases a day by late December, four times the level of today. That’s enough to put significant strain on the health-care system and death counts will spike, especially among older people. For a politician, it’s an unsupportable number.

Brown made it clear that Ontario will remain on that trajectory without some kind of serious restrictions, although he didn’t specify exactly what would be required. Even with a lockdown, case numbers will continue to rise in the short term.

Brown’s projection is just that, of course: a model of what might happen if things stay as they are. Just two weeks ago, he predicted that things would remain under control. That doesn’t mean his warning can be ignored now.

For months, Ford has been pulled one way by those who want pandemic control at all costs and the other way by those who emphasize the need to balance that control against the economic and mental health damage lockdowns cause. The new restriction framework the provincial government introduced last week was a big win for those who argue that the cost of a lockdown outweighs its benefits. Even public health leaders were acknowledging the point.

Now, a rather large gorilla has just sat on the pandemic-control side of the scale.

At the moment, Ontario’s hospitalization numbers are manageable, and the province’s 58 active cases per 100,000 is the lowest in the country except for the territories and the Atlantic provinces. Manitoba has triple the rate and is an example of how quickly things can change.

• Doctors' group calls for stricter COVID-19 measures as Ontario sees new record tally
• Chris Selley: A little humility from public health officials regarding COVID-19 would go a long way

Ford and the province’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, both argued Thursday that what happens next is really up to the public. Keep washing your hands, wearing your masks and physically distancing, and for God’s sake, don’t hold big house parties.

Maybe the latest numbers will scare some sense into the minority of people who are causing the virus numbers to rise, but it’s not exactly a safe bet. Unfortunately for politicians in this pandemic, they are expected to save us from ourselves, and if they don’t, it’s on them.

Ford’s next move will be a critical one, for him and for the province. He doesn’t need to abandon his framework, but he’s going to have to move some areas into a higher control level. That will trigger the job losses, economic harm and general public depression he has been trying to avoid, but there is no guarantee that a lockdown will have a quick or dramatic impact.

The analysis presented Thursday suggested that the partial lockdown that closed restaurants and gyms for a month across much of the province had only a limited effect on case numbers. There is a good reason for that. Those sectors weren’t contributing much to the problem in the first place.

Unfortunately, businesses that have spent a lot of money and are doing their part to keep infections down are likely to be the victims in the next round of closures. How much good it will do remains to be seen. It’s easy compare a new lockdown to what was done in March and predict major success, but that first lockdown made dramatic changes to a fully open economy.

Now, there isn’t as much scope for action. Ontario is still substantially shut down. Large public gatherings are not even contemplated, much less allowed. Even small gatherings are regulated and limited. People who can work from home continue to do so. Retail and restaurants operate with significant limitations on how many people they can serve. There is general agreement that schools should stay open, as should essential businesses.

Whatever Ford does next, and he should do it soon, he shouldn’t forget that the scope and nature of the pandemic varies widely across the province. Toronto and Peel Region have big problems, rural areas much less so. Ottawa was moving into the danger zone, but it has reduced its numbers. If Ottawa can keep its numbers down without additional restrictions, it would offer proof that people’s actions can make a difference.

Another lockdown would be a lot to bear after all that Ontarians have already been through. The only way to stave it off is increase our own vigilance, right this very minute. The alternative will be worse.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

The murder trial of Alek Minassian for killing 10 people and injuring 16 others in the Toronto van attack heard details of his misogynist motivation, Thursday morning.

Court was told of the “incel” subculture and the bizarre worldview of the “involuntarily celibate” that attracted and radicalized Minassian, 28, before he rented a van and drove it down a busy Yonge Street sidewalk on April 23, 2018.

Minassian admits he killed and injured the pedestrians that day in a van he rented for that purpose, but pleaded not guilty, claiming he is not criminally responsible by reason of his mental state.

Court heard Minassian is not expected to testify at his trial.

The trial is being held entirely online over video teleconferencing software, due to COVID-19 restrictions. The judge and lawyers all remain at their homes or offices. Minassian is linked in from the Toronto South detention centre, where he sits, essentially motionless, in a collared shirt and suit jacket.

Crown prosecutor Joseph Callaghan presented an agreed statement of facts on the incel elements of this case, meaning the government and Minassian’s defence lawyers confirmed its accuracy.

Minassian was influenced by incel ideology and by two men, idolized by incels, who committed their own murder sprees: Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in California in 2014, and Chris Harper-Mercer, who killed nine people in Oregon in 2015.

Minassian claimed he was in contact with both men online prior to their attacks, but an examination of his computers neither supported nor debunked his claim.

Incels are those who declare that they cannot attract sexual interest or contact. Primarily heterosexual males, incel online forums see users develop a worldview of a society divided by those who are sexually successful and those who are not.

Minassian’s computers showed he searched for information on past incel killers, court heard. Both Rodger and Harper-Mercer killed themselves after their attacks.

“The posthumous influence of Elliot Rodger stems from a series of YouTube videos and a 137-page manifesto,” which outline his motivation for his attacks, court was told. In them, Roger complains that he is seeking revenge on the world because, despite being a “supreme gentleman” he is “still a virgin.”

Harper-Mercer also left a manifesto after his shooting spree at a community college, declaring his interest in Rodger’s case and anger at not having a girlfriend.

Police seized and searched 29 electronic devices from Minassian’s home, where he lived with his mother, father and only sibling, a brother.

There were 41 examples of school assignments or classwork, authored by Minassian, found on his devices, including a video. They were provided to psychiatrists and psychologists involved in examining Minassian for assessments of his mental state for trial.

The files have titles such as “Murder is wrong,” “Right Thing To Do,” “Murder or Self Defence,” “parents spanking children,” “Being comfortable with being weird” and “High school – pretend to be afraid of girls.”

The video appears to be a post-high school class assignment, with two other men, to produce a mock television commercial for a make-believe technical product they call “Glassphone,” a set of glasses that act as a wearable smartphone.

In the video, Minassian sits at a table wearing flashy sunglasses and is approached by another student, whose face was blurred prior to being shown in court, who asks Minassian what he is doing.

At one point, Minassian mimics the style and language of infomercials, saying: “Wait, there’s more.”

Submitted into evidence was a long series of text messages between Minassian and a long-time friend, who is not fully named. Leading up to the attack, they discuss video games and going to see movies. Close to the date of the attack, Minassian cancels plans to see a movie, saying he starts work soon and is busy.

“Hey Alek, are u doing anything today?” his friend asks in a text sent in the afternoon, the day of the attack. Minassian, who was arrested and in custody by that point, was not in a position to answer.

A little after midnight, the friend texts Minassian again: “Alek, i heard what u did… it was very deplorable… Im disappointed in you…”

The afternoon of the hearing was consumed by legal arguments over a Crown motion seeking access to video and audio recordings of interviews with Minassian and his family, made by a team of doctors hired by his defence lawyer. Prosecutors already have the doctors’ notes, but recently learned the interviews had also been recorded.

The court heard arguments against this by Minassian’s lawyer, Boris Bytensky.

Justice Anne Molloy ruled the recordings must be turned over to the Crown’s lawyers as soon as any of the doctors involved are called to the stand. This would likely cause some delay, to allow prosecutors to view the lengthy videos and listen to recordings before cross examining the doctors.

Minassian is charged with 10 counts of murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.

Because he admits he was the driver and that he planned and intended to kill the people he hit, the only real issue at trial is Minassian’s mental condition and its relevance to his behaviour on that day.

Killed in the attack were: Renuka Amarasingha, 45; Andrea Bradden, 33; Geraldine Brady, 83; So He Chung, 22; Anne Marie D’Amico, 30; Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Forsyth, 94; Chul Min (Eddie) Kang, 45; Ji Hun Kim, 22; Munir Najjar, 85; and, Dorothy Sewell, 80.

The oddities of a virtual trial continued Thursday when Molloy suddenly looked perplexed at the screen.

“Nobody else is hearing this?” she asked. She said she was hearing “like jingle bells,” before deciding it may have been her cat outside her door.

The trial is not sitting on Friday but is scheduled to continue on Monday when the Crown is expected to conclude its case and the defence will begin presenting evidence.

Minassian’s father, Vahe, is expected to be called as the defence’s first witness on Monday.

The trial is scheduled to take six weeks.

COVID-19 could be the catalyst that forces embittered millennials to overthrow the capitalist order — but policymakers could intervene before that happens, a new report by Deutsche Bank proposes .

Out of the pandemic emerged younger workers who were disproportionately affected by the economic crash because they are more likely to be employed in industries such as retail or hospitality, where working from home was not a possibility. As well, job prospects have dwindled for the newer graduates and they have little in savings.

The authors of the report, strategists Jim Reid and Luke Templeman, predict “sudden and seismic shifts in the established capitalist order” if young workers continue to experience economic inequality.

“In fact, if we do not act now, there is a serious risk that over the coming decade, when the younger generation of voters begins to outnumber the older generation, a populist politician could corral the anger of the young,” the report reads.

In order to address this, Reid and Templeman suggest that rather than taxing all baby boomers, policymakers should look at where baby boomers made their wealth and tax them accordingly.

“We should avoid a simple age-related tax. A blunt instrument makes no sense.”

Baby boomers have been able to grow their wealth with ultra-low interest rates; urbanization that’s inflated property prices;  investing in companies that exploit the environment; access to cheaper education decades ago; and their mere population size outpacing younger generations, which allows them to win democratic elections.

To help close the wealth divide, the report suggests several tax policies:

• The first would be a tax on primary residence. It could be done through a capital gains tax, which could be focused on houses exceeding a certain value, to acknowledge the leverage boomers were able to take advantage of decades ago.

• Another area policymakers could focus on is additional taxes on financial assets such as stocks and bonds. This could be key because baby boomers are benefitting from low interest rates as they begin to sell the assets heading into retirement.

• Remote workers should be taxed for privilege of working at home, says Deutsche

• Reid and Templeman also recommend a “super tax” on stocks to make up for gains that companies made by exploiting the environment. Governments could then in turn reinvest the funds in stemming climate change.

The suggested taxes on capital gains is to avoid higher taxing on income, the two write, as it’s an “invasion on hard work” and there is a risk that work would be disincentivized.

The report also urges policymakers to address disparities in landownership and education.

Cities have to instigate a mass shakeup of existing rules that leave a low supply of homes for a growing population. When it comes to education, higher costs for higher education are outpacing graduate salaries.

If policymakers choose to avoid the wealth gap between baby boomers and the younger generations, it could spell disaster, the report says.

“If we do not enact substantial change now, then a generation of young people will soon take power,” Reid and Templeman write. “When they do, all indications are that they will enact policies that not only forcibly redistribute in blunt ways, but also upend the very foundations of capitalism.”

Somewhat lost among this year’s frantic election cycle has been the cycle of tragedy and belated triumph that Joe Biden has experienced along his path to the White House.

Here, we take a look at Biden’s journey to the point he at right now — on the verge of taking over from Donald Trump as U.S. president.

Scranton

Joe Biden was born in the blue-collar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four siblings. His family later moved to Delaware. He overcame stuttering as a boy by reciting passages of poetry to a mirror.

He was practically a political novice – having served two years on a county board in Delaware – when in 1972 he became, at the age of just 29, the fifth-youngest elected senator in U.S. history. He would remain there for 36 years before serving from 2009 to 2017 as vice president under Barack Obama.

He brings to his political career a mix of blue-collar credentials, foreign policy experience and a compelling life story marked by family tragedy — the loss of his first wife and a daughter, and later a son.

Biden speaks openly about the 1972 car crash that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, weeks after his election to the Senate. Decades later, in 2015, his son Joseph “Beau” Biden III, an Iraq war veteran who had served as Delaware’s attorney general, died from brain cancer at age 46. Biden’s son Hunter has struggled with drug issues as an adult.

Biden almost abandoned his political career to care for his two young sons who survived the accident in 1972, but stayed on, commuting by train from Delaware to Washington to avoid uprooting them.

He met his current wife, Jill Taylor Jacobs, in 1975 after they were introduced by Biden’s brother Joe. They were married two years later.

“Joe often tells people that I didn’t agree to marry him until the fifth time he asked me,” she told the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Insider reported. “The truth is, I loved him from the start.” The couple had a daughter, Ashley, in 1981. Jill, a teacher, is reported to wish to continue her day job after Biden takes office.

A folksy type known for blunt talk and occasional verbal gaffes, Biden has often referenced his working-class roots to connect with ordinary Americans. Biden also was the first Roman Catholic U.S. vice president.

His previous two presidential runs did not go well. He dropped out of the 1988 race after allegations that he had plagiarized some speech lines from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. In 2008, Biden won little support and withdrew, only to be selected later as Obama’s running mate.

• No longer shielded by presidential 'cloak of immunity,' Trump could face litany of lawsuits on exit from White House
• Trump has 10 more weeks remaining in the Oval Office. What is that going to look like?

Fixture

A fixture in U.S. politics for a half century as a senator and vice president, his win concludes a long climb to the political mountaintop.

When he takes office, the 77-year-old Democrat will become the oldest person ever elected to the White House. Biden will be 78 years old upon inauguration on Jan. 20. Biden had a health scare in 1988 when he suffered two brain aneurysms.

Under Obama, Biden served as a troubleshooter on matters of war and foreign affairs and on domestic issues such as gun control and fiscal policy.

Obama did not always heed Biden’s advice. Obama gave the go-ahead for the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden despite Biden’s warning that it was too risky.

After serving as vice president, Biden had opted not to run for president in 2016, only to watch Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. When Biden announced his 2020 candidacy in April 2019, he took aim at Trump.

Over the course of the campaign, Biden sought to portray his political experience as a benefit, casting himself as a tested leader up to the tasks of healing a nation battered by the coronavirus pandemic and providing steadiness after the turbulence of Trump’s presidency. Biden also advocated for America’s role as a leader on the world stage at a time when Trump was abandoning international agreements and alienating longtime foreign allies.

“We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden said, adding that if re-elected Trump would “forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation – who we are – and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris – whose father is an immigrant from Jamaica and whose mother is an immigrant from India – as his running mate, making her the first Black woman and first person of Asian descent on a major-party U.S. ticket. At 56, Harris is a generation younger than Biden.

Bipartisanship

Despite years of partisan hostilities in Washington, Biden remained a believer in bipartisanship. During his time in the Senate, Biden was known for his close working relationships with some of his Republican colleagues. In addition, a number of disaffected Republicans, including former government officials and former lawmakers, alarmed at Trump’s presidency have endorsed Biden.

One of Biden’s accomplishments as a senator was helping to secure passage in 1994 of a law called the Violence Against Women Act to protect victims of domestic crimes.

While in the Senate, Biden built up a specialty in foreign affairs and at one time headed the Foreign Relations Committee. He voted in favor of authorizing the 2003 Iraq invasion before becoming a critic of Republican President George W. Bush’s handling of the war.

Biden was criticized as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 for his handling of sexual harassment accusations against Republican President George H.W. Bush’s conservative Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas by former aide Anita Hill. Liberals criticized him for doing too little to defend Hill’s allegations, which Thomas had denied.

The committee held explosive televised hearings prior to Thomas’s eventual Senate confirmation. Thomas accused Biden’s committee of conducting “a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas.”

In May of this year, Biden denied a former Senate aide’s accusation that he had sexually assaulted her in 1993, calling the claim “not true” and saying “unequivocally it never, never happened.” The allegation was made by a California woman named Tara Reade who worked as a staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office for about 10 months.

Reade was one of eight women who in 2019 came forward to say Biden had hugged, kissed or touched them in ways that made them uncomfortable, though none accused him of sexual assault. Reade publicly accused him of the assault months later.

The Conservative Party has a big problem when it comes to winning federal elections, and Erin O’Toole’s team knows it.

While the party reliably draws about a third of the popular vote every election, it has little hope of ever consistently winning majority governments without substantially raising its voter ceiling.

“Conservatives have essentially run the same campaign over and over again since 2006,” one O’Toole adviser said. “Strategically, the differences between the campaigns have been marginal…If we want to win, we have to do something different.”

So O’Toole is indeed trying something different, as has become strikingly apparent in his speeches and political ads since being elected leader in August. His goal is to expand the pool of people who vote Conservative, finding new voters among the working class and lower middle class who have drifted away from the left and become disengaged from electoral politics.

If it works, it will reorient Canada’s political landscape. But O’Toole also risks alienating his existing voter base and party caucus.

To get into sustainable majority territory, the Conservatives need to find another five per cent of voter support, boosting them into the range of 39 per cent of the popular vote.

Since the modern Conservative Party was formed in 2003, only one thing has been proven to work: a strong NDP that saps Liberal strength from the left. This was the case in 2011, when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won their majority. But in the five other elections, nothing the party tried has gotten their vote share high enough. Peeling off Liberal voters in large numbers is hard to do from the right; if a voter wants Liberal-like policies, they will probably just vote Liberal.

Simply put, when the NDP vote is weak, it spells trouble for the Conservatives.

“Conservatives have been agonizing for as long as I’ve been involved in politics about what, if anything, we can do about that,” said one person working on O’Toole’s campaign strategy, who asked not to be named so as to speak more freely. “We need to break out of that. It’s a convergence of things completely out of our control, and you can’t depend on that. That’s not a viable basis for a winning strategy.”

Hence, the unconventional speech O’Toole gave to the Canadian Club of Toronto two weeks ago that raised eyebrows across the country.

“It may surprise you to hear a Conservative bemoan the decline of private sector union membership,” said O’Toole. “But this was an essential part of the balance between what was good for business and what was good for employees. Today, that balance is dangerously disappearing. Too much power is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who have been only too happy to outsource jobs abroad.”

The speech said Canadian workers used to be able to expect full-time employment, a steady salary and a pension, but that now feels like a “bygone era.”

“Do we really want a nation of Uber drivers?” O’Toole said. “Do we really want to abandon a generation of Canadians to some form of Darwinian struggle? A future without the possibility of home ownership? A sense of inevitability? While some benefit, millions are losing hope and resentment is growing.”

He questioned Canada’s trading relationship with China, and said his party will put more emphasis on the national interest. “Free markets alone won’t solve all our problems,” O’Toole said.

• O'Toole slams outsourcing to China, calls for better conditions for workers
• The unlikeliest of unions: Conservatives look to make allies in the labour movement

Afterward, a panelist on CBC said O’Toole sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a Conservative leader. But the strategy behind O’Toole’s comments is based in part on what’s already worked in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, where right-wing parties have been picking up working class votes — and winning elections.

“Look, I think the writing has been on the wall for actually quite some time on this,” said Patrick Muttart, who was instrumental in shaping the campaign strategy for Harper’s Conservatives in their string of victories from 2006 to 2011. He spoke with the National Post from London, England, where he now works in the private sector.

In 2005, Muttart started using intensive polling data to segment the Canadian population and pinpoint voters to target through tax breaks and tough-on-crime policies. But as he created an ideological map of Canadian voters, he found there was a “white space” made up of voters who are economically moderate or even left-leaning, but culturally conservative.

“They’re not socialist, but they may have left-of-centre instincts on certain things, and are driven more by economic performance rather than economic ideology,” Muttart said.

“But they do tend to be quite culturally conservative in that they believe in the idea of Canadian identity, they believe in the idea of strong, controlled borders, they certainly believe that the justice system needs to be tough but fair,” Muttart said. “And they also have a problem with pervasive political correctness, cancel culture, those sorts of things.”

Muttart, who is not advising O’Toole, said Harper made some progress in recruiting these voters, but it wasn’t a main focus.

“I think under Harper it was more about making traditional conservative economics relevant to the working class, or more white-collar middle class,” he said. “It was selling the agenda to this community. Whereas I think O’Toole is trying to do it the other way around. He’s putting the voter group first and looking to build out policy from that, so the policy is relevant to them.”

Harper’s message was centred on small government, free markets and free trade. Compare that to a video O’Toole released on Labour Day, where he promised a “Canada First” economic strategy that “fights for working Canadians.”

“The goal of economic policy should be more than just wealth creation,” O’Toole said in the video. “It should be solidarity and the wellness of families — and includes higher wages.”

Do you think it's time for economic policy that puts Canadian workers first? ????????
Happy Labour Day ???? #LabourDay pic.twitter.com/lED5SQ1zP1

— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) September 7, 2020

A few big questions arise out of this. One of them is: who exactly are these voters? The “working class” is a very broad term, and some of the people O’Toole hopes to attract aren’t necessarily in it.

At least one group of voters O’Toole is targeting are trades workers, such as people who belong to construction unions. As Conservatives sometimes point out, it’s unionized workers who build the pipelines and natural resource projects championed by their party. But the party’s stance against organized labour may be turning away people who would otherwise vote for them.

As one example, there are well over 50,000 construction workers belonging to LiUNA (Laborers’ International Union of North America) in the Greater Toronto Area alone. When O’Toole talks about the importance of private sector unions — as opposed to teachers’ unions or government workers — this is the type of worker he has in mind.

There are other voters in suburban areas that Conservative strategists believe they could pick up with a more moderate economic message, including in immigrant communities and among white-collar office workers in middle management. These are people who may be culturally conservative by temperament, but more skeptical about rigid free market ideology. Such compromises aren’t completely new ground for the Conservatives; even under Harper, the party defended supply management in the dairy sector, for example.

But O’Toole’s team is also thinking about the more common definition of the working class, people who live outside large cities, have lower levels of education and income, and have become disengaged from politics and estranged from the left-wing parties they once supported. There are areas of the country where the Conservatives don’t consistently win — northwestern Ontario, interior B.C., Atlantic Canada, most of Quebec outside of Montreal — where O’Toole’s new approach is aimed at expanding the voter pool.

“One of the largest voter blocs in 2019, if you look across the parties, was non-voters,” said Sean Speer, a former Harper strategist who now writes frequently about Conservatives and the working class. “You have a third of eligible voters not voting. If you can get even a fraction of those, you can change the political dynamics.”

Speer, a National Post columnist, said he believes many of these voters should naturally fall into the Conservative camp, but they’ve perceived the party as “concerned about elite issues” when it comes to economics. He describes them as “people who don’t like the left’s positioning on cultural issues, but have not been comfortable supporting Conservatives in the past because of their emphasis on markets and capitalism (as ends in themselves).”

“One way to think about it is the people, but another way to think about it is places,” he said. “On the face of it, a place like Sudbury or Thunder Bay ought to be voting Conservative, but it’s not.”

One O’Toole adviser said Conservatives have to start thinking differently about economic issues.

“The left always goes on about income inequality, and they have a point,” the adviser said. “There is serious inequality in Canada that Conservatives have to wake up to, and that is the inequality that exists primarily between those who are well educated, who live in a city, who have a higher income, and those who don’t. The gap just keeps getting bigger and bigger. That’s the inequality that needs to be addressed and that Conservatives have to take seriously.”

O’Toole’s team believes left-wing parties are losing traction with working class voters. They point to the rail blockades in early 2020, where activists shut down train lines to protest the construction of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline through Indigenous territory in B.C., despite court orders allowing the construction to proceed. During the leadership race, O’Toole promised legislation to make it easier for police to clear blockades of rail lines and other “critical infrastructure.”

“The people who were hurt economically by (the blockades) were working class people,” one adviser said. “And the NDP and the centre-left came down very firmly on the side of protests.”

But changing the Conservative Party’s message on economic issues — and especially saying nice things about organized labour — comes with significant risk as well. There has already been some pushback from caucus members, sources say, though overall most of the party’s MPs and senators understand the need to forge a new strategy.

“It’s a bit of a reorientation, and of course there’ll be resistance to that,” said one party source. “But if you want to keep doing it the same way, you can expect the same result.”

Speer compared it to muscle memory, where Conservative politicians are used to talking a certain way. “I honestly have not heard any evidence that there’s hostility or division (in caucus),” he said. “It’s more subtle than that. It’s just not people’s default setting…You don’t flip the switch overnight.”

There’s also the issue of O’Toole’s own record. Unions abhorred two Conservative private members bills that were passed during the Harper majority years, bills C-377 (which forced more financial disclosure on federally-regulated unions) and C-525 (which mandated secret ballot certification votes and made it easier to decertify.) O’Toole voted in favour of both. When the Liberals won their majority in 2015, one of their first moves was repealing both bills.

O’Toole’s office did not answer directly when asked whether O’Toole regrets his votes on those bills or would vote differently today. “Mr. O’Toole is committed to unionized workers and is looking for new ways to support workers,” a spokesperson said. “We will have more to share in the coming weeks.”

Jerry Dias, who as Unifor national president leads the largest private sector union in the country, isn’t about to let O’Toole forget about those votes — or the work O’Toole did on free trade agreements from 2013 to 2015, when he was parliamentary secretary to the minister of international trade.

“He’s really working on the premise that people have short memories,” Dias told the Post. “He says all of the right things, but the problem is his history is the opposite. That’s going to be his biggest hurdle, to convince people: ‘Everything that I have stood for was all bullshit. I’m a new man today.'”

O’Toole’s strategy is aimed at workers, not union leadership. But he’s also done himself no favours in this regard. “I will be Jerry Dias’ worst nightmare,” O’Toole told a crowd last January when he was launching his leadership campaign, describing Dias as one of the “fat cat union leaders.” O’Toole’s campaign later gleefully boasted about how Dias was running attack ads against him.

Dias said O’Toole is now trying to take the same path as Donald Trump in the U.S., and he thinks Canadians will see through the sudden shift to union-friendly messaging.

“I just don’t see it as genuine,” Dias said. “Am I pleased that he’s saying it? Yes. Do I believe he means it? No.”

That brings up the biggest question of all: what does all this mean for a campaign platform? Is O’Toole’s new approach largely just a communications strategy, or will it result in concrete promises that substantially differ from what voters have seen before?

O’Toole’s team, for obvious reasons, is not giving away their platform — above all because it’s still being developed. Expect it to be tough on China, tough on crime, and heavy with emphasis on building strong communities. What that actually means is yet to be seen.

“It’s a balancing act,” Speer said. “The ultimate political strategy and agenda will certainly involve some of these themes and some of these issues. But it’s not going to be a full abandonment of how conservatives have thought about policy and government.”

For ideas, though, look to the other countries where Conservatives have succeeded in winning over the working class. Trump is a difficult comparison because of the overwhelming personality of Trump himself and the endless chaos and controversy he creates. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a closer match, but the dominance of Brexit as an issue also makes that comparison tricky. Still, in both countries conservatives have successfully appealed to voters in areas once reliably leftist.

Muttart said he sees Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who won a surprise election victory in 2019, as the best comparable to O’Toole.

“I think there’s some striking similarities there,” Muttart said. “The suburban dad with a good feel for middle Australia, but still intensely political and partisan and knows how to play the game.”

Australia has mandatory voting, so growing the voter pool there wasn’t an issue. But Morrison won his election primarily due to a swing of lower-income voters toward his Liberal Party (along with his coalition partner, the agrarian National Party). Higher-income urban voters in turn moved toward the leftist Labor Party, which had made climate change a major campaign focus. In his victory speech, Morrison attributed his win to the “quiet Australians” who were missed by the polling industry but came out to support him.

With these examples in mind, O’Toole’s team is determined to try something different in the next campaign, with the ultimate goal of finding a sustainable path to winning majority governments.

“If you think that the party’s ceiling is too low, which I do, the question is how do you go about solving for it?” Speer said.

“There are different ideas on offer, including moderation, including changing its position on climate change, and all these issues,” he went on. “I think their solution, as I understand it from the speech and from the (Labour Day) video, is the kind of realignment strategy that they used in the U.K. Of all the options on offer, it strikes me as the most compelling and the one worth testing. It’s the starting point.”

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt

As a candidate for U.S. president, Joe Biden talked about wanting to get the country off its dependency on oil.

But how things will actually play out under President Biden — and what this means for Canada’s energy sector — is still up in the air.

Will that stance mean less U.S. oil production, which means an opportunity for Canadian companies? Could Alberta’s oil be hit with a cross-border carbon tax? And where does a green new deal fit in?

Geoffrey Morgan, who covers energy and power for The Financial Post, joins Dave by phone to talk about the ramifications of a Biden presidency for Alberta oil, the Keystone XL pipeline and how it could force Justin Trudeau and Jason Kenney to work together for the sake of the energy sector.

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app.

#distro

While it’ll be another month before the U.S. electoral college formally declares the country’s next president, the chances of Donald Trump hanging on to the Oval Office grow slimmer each day.

However, even when Joe Biden is formally proclaimed the winner of the 2020 U.S. election, Trump will still retain power over the White House until Jan. 20, when he is obliged to vacate for the incoming administration. That’s a little over 10 weeks away — a period during which Trump can still exercise the same authority he has had over the past four years.

Normally, in the time between the election and inauguration day, the former president and president-elect would meet to discuss transition processes in and out of the White House. Former U.S. President Barack Obama was reported to have begun conversations with Trump as early as Nov. 10, 2016, when he formally invited the then-real estate mogul to visit the White House. During the 2008 U.S. election, then-President George Bush had reportedly put together a transition team for the winning campaign as early as mid-October, and has been credited with providing Obama and his incoming administration with a pretty seamless transition.

However, it appears the Biden campaign may be in for a “rocky” period of transition. Mark Lebo, a political science professor at Western University, told CTV News that if the president’s reaction to the initial outcome of election is any indication, Biden has his work cut out.

For one, key Trump-appointed administrator, Emily W. Murphy has yet to publicly recognize Biden as the winner of the election. Part of Murphy’s job description is to sign a letter to release funds to the Biden transition team through a process called ascertainment, which lets the new team have access to national security tools for background checks, and helps pay for training and incoming staff.

Secondly, there will be a catalog of lawsuits to get through, all filed by Trump to contest the election’s outcome. Trump may struggle to find any legal success, but until the electoral college formally convenes in mid-December, he has the right to continue contesting the results, according to John Wright, vice-president of Maru/Blue, a public opinion research organization. And it looks like he’ll keep doing just that.

Furthermore, on Monday, the president announced on Twitter that Mark Esper, his defence secretary “has been terminated” and replaced by Christopher Miller, previously the head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Esper had a publicly tense relationship with Trump, going against the president on several major issues this year. In June, he opposed the president’s desire to use active-duty troops to subdue protests in U.S. cities after the killing of George Floyd in May.

Lebo said Trump’s firing is a sign of more disruption to come; the disposal of Esper has raised concerns that other top national security officials who have fought with the president may soon have to pack their bags, such as CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“This wasn’t just a staffer that he fired. This was the secretary of defence. This is somebody overseeing an $800 billion budget and he fired him in a tweet,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “There’s going to be a lot of this, I think.”

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Firing top officials would further complicate the transition that Biden and his team are preparing to make, come Jan. 20. “Frankly, he can do a lot of damage, by destabilizing every major agency, by firing a whole series of senior leaders,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday.

There are also concerns about whether Trump will voluntarily concede to Biden and leave the White House when the time comes. Lawrence Douglas, a law professor at Amherst college, told the Guardian that it’s “unfathomable” that Trump would “belligerently barricade himself inside the Oval Office and refuse to leave.”

Regardless, Lebo told CTV that even whenever Trump does leave the White house, he expects the president to try to hold on to his power over the Republican Party and the U.S. politics. “I imagine a lot of tweeting,” he said. “He’ll try to critique the presidency from the outside, much like he did under President Obama’s terms. He was always tweeting and sort of worked his way into the political discussion.”

Half of the four pro-democracy lawmakers expelled from Hong Kong’s legislature this week are former Canadian citizens, and one activist believes that’s one reason they were singled out for ouster.

The government’s forced removal of the Legislative Council (Legco) members prompted the body’s 15 other democratic politicians to announce they were all resigning in protest , dramatically underscoring China’s clampdown on Hong Kong.

The developments left the city’s Beijing-controlled government with virtually no opposition as the People’s Republic increasingly imposes its will on the city.

Both Alvin Yeung and Dennis Kwok, two of the four members thrown out of Legco, renounced their Canadian citizenship in recent years before entering politics in Hong Kong.

Yeung emigrated to Canada with his mother in the early 1990s, attending high school and university in Ontario, before returning to Hong Kong as an adult. Canadian-born Kwok left this country at age three but kept his citizenship until 2012.

They and the two others ejected by the Hong Kong government under a new rule were considered “very moderate” among Legco’s democratic minority, said Cherie Wong of the group Alliance Canada Hong Kong.

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They may have been targeted as a warning to the more radical lawmakers that no one is safe from Communist Party (CCP) retribution, she said, citing a Chinese saying, “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”

But it’s also likely a statement about their foreign roots, Wong argued.

“The fact these two were Canadian citizens is a very, very strong signal,” she said. “A lot of these things are happening in a symbolic manner … And now they are in danger, really.”

It’s difficult to know if Kwok and Yeung were targeted, said Guy Saint-Jacques, a former ambassador to Beijing. But he said it’s possible, citing controversial comments by China’s Canadian ambassador recently.

Cong Peiwu warned Canada to not give sanctuary to those fleeing prosecution under a new national security law if it cares about “the good health and safety of those 300,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong.”

Other activists said they doubted that the pair’s past citizenship was an issue. But all agreed the Canadian government should take a tough stance on what’s happening in Hong Kong, which means imposing sanctions on officials like chief executive Carrie Lam.

Saint-Jacques also said sanctions should be seriously considered, but in conjunction with other countries.

Hong Kong had once been a relatively liberal counterpoint to mainland China under the “one country, two systems” arrangement. But Beijing’s grip on the city has steadily tightened in the last few years, especially in the wake of mass protests calling for more democracy in 2019.

That culminated in the draconian new national security law implemented earlier this year, while Legco elections were postponed and the four now-removed legislators were told they could not run again.

Then came a new rule from China’s National People’s Congress saying the Hong Kong government could unilaterally throw out lawmakers for failing to show sufficient loyalty to the mainland government.

The first to go were Kwok and Yeung, both part of the Civic Party, and their two colleagues, Kwok Ka-ki and Kenneth Leung.

About 300,000 Canadian citizens live in Hong Kong, Canada’s largest expatriate population outside of North America.

As an elected member of Legco, Yeung had to renounce his Canadian citizenship to run for the council, but told the National Post last year the lessons he learned about democracy while living here stuck with him.

“The Alvin Yeung you’re seeing today, most of it comes from the Canadian education,” he said. “It’s always here. It’s the values that matter more.”

Kwok, as an unelected member of a “functional constituency,” did not have to give up his citizenship but did so to show he was “wholeheartedly” committed to serving Hong Kong, he told the Post. Still, he said he has tried to apply Canadian ideals of “freedom and democracy and rule of law” to his work there.

Fenella Sung of the group Canadian Friends of Hong Kong does not buy that a Canadian background had anything to do with their removal, saying Chinese ethnicity, not nationality, is what matters to Beijing.

She said the pair’s Canadian connections do underscore the deep ties between this country and Hong Kong, and called for the government to impose sanctions under its so-called Magnitsky law.

“When elected officials are ripped off of their seat due to political reasons …that’s the final demarcation line that (shows) Hong Kong has totally fallen under the shadow of authoritarianism and dictatorship,” said Sung.

Gloria Fung, spokeswoman for Canada Hong Kong Link, also discounted the Canadian connection as a reason for Kwok and Yeung’s ouster. But she urged Ottawa to both impose sanctions and set up a “safe-harbour” program to help non-Canadian Hong Kongers at risk of persecution to move to Canada.

The purge of democratic politicans from Legco “is an indication that one country, two systems is completely dead,” she said.

• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP

Tripadvisor has placed a warning on a Thai resort’s listing after its management briefly landed a guest in police custody for posting multiple bad reviews.

Wesley Barnes, an American expat had stayed at the Sea View Hotel and spa on Koh Chang Island, located in the Gulf of Thailand. During his stay, he found staff to be unfriendly and, at a point, had a dispute when they tried to charge a corkage fee for alcohol he and a friend had brought on to the premises.

In July, he submitted negative reviews of the hotel online, calling the staff “unfriendly” and wrote that the resort’s foreign management “treated staff like slaves”. He also told the Guardian that he felt the hotel’s manager was aggressive.

Another review, posted on Tripadvisor, describes staff as acting “like they don’t want anyone there”.

Under the Thailand’s harsh defamation laws, the resort sued Barnes, leading him to be arrested by immigration police in the country and held in custody for two days. Barnes, who works in Thailand, also had his passport taken away. He told the Guardian that the publicity around the case caused him to lose his job as a teacher.

The resort told the Guardian that it had initially attempted to reach Barnes directly to resolve the issue, but decided to take legal action because multiple reviews were posted across various platforms within a number of weeks.

“We have no problem with honest reviews, as you can see, many negative reviews are still published. It’s the malicious defamation ones that are a problem,” the Sea View Resort said in a statement. “We chose to file a complaint to serve as a deterrent, as we understood he may continue to write reviews week after week for the near future.”

The resort added that coverage of the case had led to more hostile online reviews and intimidation of its staff.

Koh Chang police confirmed to the Guardian that a complaint had been filed by the resort and that Barnes had been accused of causing “damage to the reputation of the hotel”, and of arguing with staff over the corkage fee.

Barnes, however, maintains that while he did write a review comparing the resort to “modern-day slavery”, the review was never published. He told the Guardian he received an email from Tripadvisor stating “we cannot publish your contribution as it does not meet our review guidelines”.

Under Thai law, Barnes would have faced up to two years in prison and a fine of more than $8,600. He and the resort reached a settlement last month, wherein the resort agreed to drop the charges if Barnes sent an email to media outlets, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, the U.S. embassy and the Tripadvisor website apologizing for the reviews and explaining that he wrote his reviews in anger.

On Wednesday, Tripadvisor placed a notice on Sea View’s listing to warn potential guests of what happened to Barnes.

“This hotel or individuals associated with this hotel filed criminal charges against a Tripadvisor user in relation to the traveler writing and posting online reviews. The reviewer spent time in jail as a result,” it wrote.

“Tripadvisor serves its users best when travelers are free to share their opinions and experiences on our platform – both positive and negative. The hotel may have been exercising its legal rights under local law, however, it is our role to inform you so you may take this into consideration when researching your travel plans.”

The hotel told the Guardian it was “deeply disappointed” by Tripadvisor’s warning and believed the notice would “create further confusion and reinitiate a closed case.'”Barnes has not yet commented on Tripadvisor’s notice.

A spokeswoman for the online company told the Guardian that it believes in the right of travellers to write about their experiences, good or bad.  “Tripadvisor strongly opposes any action where a business, like the Sea View hotel and spa in Koh Chang, uses local law to send someone to jail for expressing their opinion.”

An unsmiling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week urged provincial premiers to “do the right thing,” to “do more to fight” COVID-19. But some say Canada is in the COVID situation it is in because of a patchwork, “whack-a-mole” response to the pandemic and no clear national strategy to protect the country.

COVID-19’s second wave is eclipsing its first. Manitoba, facing bleak COVID-19 trends, enters a month-long shutdown Thursday that will forbid people from socializing with anyone outside their households and shutter non-critical businesses. In Alberta, doctors are pleading for a “circuit breaker,” a short, sharp shutdown to avoid “catastrophic” consequences, while in Toronto, the city’s top doctor, Eileen deVilla warned Tuesday the country’s biggest metropolis is seeing “spread and risk like we’ve never seen before.”

Across Canada, there were more than 41,000 known active cases as of Wednesday morning; 1,556 people were in hospital, and 294 in intensive care. Canada reported 68 more COVID-19 related deaths Tuesday, bringing the total recorded fatalities to 10,632. Ontario and Quebec account for most cases (75 per cent) and deaths (92 per cent). Given that hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag infections by three weeks, it’s likely we have yet to see the “severe impacts” associated with the virus’s resurgence, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public heath officer, said this week.

Now, as COVID-19 smoulders in multiple regions, several experts are calling for some long-term vision for sustained resilience against mounting case counts.

“Canada is 11 months into the deadliest peacetime crisis in a century at the highest level of infection ever. How many times has Justin Trudeau used emergency federal powers since COVID began? ZERO,” Amir Attaran, a biologist and professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa tweeted this week.

“We’re in this mess because our federal government has been AWOL. They have never placed any mandatory federal measures on a province, of any kind,” Attaran said in an interview with the National Post .

The skill of politics is to mediate between competing stakeholders, Attaran said, “to cut deals, to negotiate, to bargain an outcome that’s acceptable enough to multiple stakeholders that you get re-elected. But it depends on the stakeholders being thinking beings.”

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Viruses don’t have brains; they don’t think. They have no agency, Attaran said. “If you try to manage them politically you will fail every single time.”

Provinces have responded with a rollercoaster of economic restrictions, a batten-down, lift, batten-down again, shock-therapy approach that’s missing any long-term vision, said University of Ottawa epidemiologist Raywat Deonandan. “We’ve never had the national conversation of a long-term COVID strategy that allows us to wait out the dark winter until the vaccine arrives.”

Increased spread in the autumn was expected, “but it’s looking like a very tough winter for millions of Canadians,” said Dr. David Naylor, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, and former chair of the federal review of Canada’s response to SARS that led to the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada, as well as the role of Chief Public Health Officer of Canada.

It’s easy to criticize from the sidelines, Naylor said. “This is an unprecedented epidemic, the virus has insidious patterns of spread, the world has struggled to find effective treatments and many jurisdictions are faring worse than Canada.”

“But there’s time to change course,” he said.

A number of countries have done what Atlantic Canada has done — “reset the count to zero cases, and then re-enter containment mode where the aim is to completely smother any and all flare-ups,” Naylor said.

“Zero covid” has been achieved in New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan and Australia. On Wednesday, Australia’s hotspot state of Victoria saw it’s 12 th straight day with no new cases of COVID. Some five million residents of the state capital of Melbourne were placed in lockdown, with home confinement orders, travel restrictions, a two-hour time limit for daily exercise and many businesses shuttered, after confirmed cases surged in July. The lockdown lasted 111 days, cost an average of 1,000 jobs daily and was criticized for risking people’s mental well being. But Victoria succeeded in wrestling a bigger second wave, on a per capita basis, than Ontario’s to the ground, Attaran said.

“It came with an economic price, but whatever that price, it’s less than not wrestling it to the ground,” said Attaran, who believes interprovincial travel in Canada should be halted, even travel within parts of provinces, with “cordon sanitaires” drawn around regions like the GTA and Ottawa to restrict movement into and out of regions. Treat regions like islands, even if they aren’t ones, he and others said.

“Unless we do an Australia, or an Atlantic Canada, it’s obvious where this ends. It ends being the United States,” Attaran said.

But it’s hard to smother flare-ups when a city or region accepts a a high amount of community spread, Naylor said. It becomes harder to trace cases, the virus gains the upper hand, tracing capacity is overrun, “and all those maddening suppressive measures come back into play,” he said.

“Those restrictions hurt the economy, disrupt civil society, bear hugely on the disadvantaged and those with precarious employment and cause untold psychological distress,” Naylor said.

But Canada has been slow getting on with rapid testing, especially for screening high-risk settings, many jurisdictions didn’t build up enough testing and tracing capacity, and in some cases “the thresholds for tolerable case counts were set at levels that confused open flames with embers,” Naylor said. “There was always a risk that those flames would spread easily.”

Trudeau, speaking to reporters yesterday, said Ottawa “doesn’t decide who closes down where and how fast.”

But Attaran said national guidelines are needed for re-openings that provinces could not deviate from without federal permission, instead of a confusing hodgepodge of rules that seem to be changing week by week.

Ontario’s five-tier, colour-coded system, for example, includes thresholds for action many experts worry are too high.

“You need to get a test positivity rate of 10 per cent before you enter ‘red.’ And they call that ‘control.’ That’s not control. That’s the end. That’s game over,” Attaran said.

Others say an approach in one jurisdiction might not be successful or even appropriate in another, or that elimination, in the absence of a vaccine, is an unrealistic pipe dream given the pandemic is going to be around through 2021, or longer. There are parts of Canada where public trust and confidence is high, such as Atlantic Canada, but pulling off measures like restrictions on travel and mobility would be harder sells in provinces where there is a lower perception of risk and lower buy-in.

“Countless good people are working flat out across Canada to respond to this crisis” and Canadians, in general,  have been “brilliantly cooperative” with masking, distancing and other public health measures, Naylor said. “One simply has to hope that the hard-hit jurisdictions will make the changes necessary to get control of the epidemic in the weeks ahead.” Use restrictive measures selectively, he said, “but bear down hard on the flares and smother them, or at least minimize the embers.”

But restrictions don’t work unless they’re given time to work, Deonandan said. “Diluted, tepid, weak interventions will cause pain but no gain,” he said. “They must be strong enough to actually get something out of it” and there has to be the political will to do the necessary, he said.

“Circuit breakers are great, but you’re just giving the system a breath, and then, after it catches its breath, the virus is back, slogging through again, because the second you lift the circuit breaker, cases go up again, unless you are investing in additional tools and strategies,” Deonandan said, including what Asian countries do well — robust case detection and contact tracing, and monitoring borders to extinguish cases as they enter to prevent re-seeding outbreaks.

“We suck at both those things,” Deonandan said. “A national strategy strengthens those things.”

Yes, the virus shouldn’t paralyze us, said infectious diseases physician Dr. Andrew Morris. When people say “we just need to live with this,” it’s a good theory, but “the practicalities don’t pan out. They fail, and they have failed,” Morris said. “You have to look at the successful countries, the Asian Pacific countries and Atlantic Canada who have all taken an elimination approach.”

Over the summer, cases were low, and regions kept opening up. “An elimination strategy would have said we can’t accept any cases where we don’t know what the mode of transmission is,” Morris said.

Today, nationally, 32 per cent of COVID-19 infections are of unknown source. We’ve fallen back, and it was totally predictable, Morris said.

“There is an important but significant number of experts who believe we should stay on the mitigation approach, because the collateral damage of an elimination approach is too great,” Morris said. “But we need this kind of discussion — we need a national discussion around it.”

Deonandan doesn’t believe Canadians have the stomach for a hard lockdown. With Pfizer’s news this week that an early look at its experimental vaccine suggests it’s 90 per cent effective in preventing infection, a possible vaccine has shown its face. “Now there’s a bright light at the end of that long tunnel, and people think, ‘we’ve just go to wait this out.’ Yes, but that tunnel may be a year long.”

 

• Email: skirkey@postmedia.com | Twitter: sharon_kirkey

A Japanese town has deployed robot wolves in an effort to scare away bears that have become an increasingly dangerous nuisance in the countryside.

The town of Takikawa on the northern island of Hokkaido purchased and installed a pair of the robots after bears were found roaming neighbourhoods in September. City officials said there have been no bear encounters since.

Bear sightings are at a five-year high, mostly in rural areas in western and northern Japan, national broadcaster NHK has reported. There have been dozens of attacks so far in 2020, two of them fatal, prompting the government to convene an emergency meeting last month to address the threat they pose.

The so-called ‘Monster Wolf’ robot consists of a shaggy body on four legs, a blond mane and fierce, glowing-red eyes. When its motion detectors are activated, it moves its head, flashes lights and emits 60 different sounds ranging from wolfish howling to machinery noises.

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Machinery maker Ohta Seiki has sold about 70 units of the robot since 2018.

The real Japanese wolf roamed the central and northern islands of the country before being hunted to extinction more than a century ago.

Takikawa city officials said that bears become more active and dangerous as they search for food before going into hibernation in late November. A decrease of acorns and nuts in the wild this year may have driven the animals to venture closer to towns in search of sustenance, according to local media.