Decision 2021 | Day 24 | Justin Trudeau | Canadian National Hero

Decision Canada 2021, Politics, , , , , ,

There he stood, morning in, morning out for a year. A whole year. Reassuring the nation that all would be fine. Standing in front of his Rideau Cottage home, his beard growing longer with each passing day, his wife herself, initially, a victim of COVID-19, leaving him to care for his children alone while his wife Sophie self-isolated, a father to his three children and Canada’s father in a time of despair.

On March 11, 2020, the World Heath Organization declared that the world was in the grip of a once-in-a-century pandemic that would kill millions, no vaccines yet existed to fight off this killer, and to protect us, lockdowns would be required that would keep us inside our homes for weeks and months on end.

Businesses across Canada were shuttered, no one went outside without wearing a mask — once a week shopping for necessities would be approved, but little else.

In addition to the health crisis that jeopardized our collective health, nations across the globe faced an economic crisis the likes of which we’d never  known.  On March 18, 2020, on the orders of British Columbia’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province declared a State of Emergency.

On March 16th, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that until further notice, Canadian borders would be closed to foreign nationals — urging Canadians abroad to return home as soon as possible, given the ever-tighter travel restrictions countries around the world – including Canada – were imposing to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, stating that before the end of the month, the federal government would disallow the opportunity given Canadians to return home.

Canada was in a crisis, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide, presenting an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work, causing economic and social disruption, devastating the lives of millions of Canadians at risk of falling into poverty.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces $82 billion rescue plan | March 18, 2020

The Liberal government and Justin Trudeau — working in concert with Health Minister Patti Hajdu and Minister of Public Services and Procurement, Anita Anand, among other Ministers — mounted a massive and efficacious response to the pandemic, quarterbacking an unprecedented campaign against the threat of the virus and lockdowns that had shaken the economy, legislating a blitz of new and necessary programmes designed to keep Canadians safe, and economically whole.

March 15, 2020. Ottawa commits $2 billion to buy supplies, purchasing tens of millions of masks, and thousands of testing kits and ventilators from Canadian-based manufacturers, who shifted production to make the badly needed equipment and supplies.

March 16, 2020. Canada announces plans to close the border to international travel. The Canada-U.S. border closes to non-essential travel, with exceptions for truckers and a few other groups. A mandatory self-quarantine for travelers. Anyone returning to Canada legally required to self-quarantine for 14 days.

March 18, 2020. Government announces an aid package providing economic benefits for Canadians affected by COVID-19, the programme fleshed out in subsequent days & benefits increased.

March 25, 2020. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) announced, providing $500 per week in financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians affected by COVID-19. Minimum Employment Insurance benefit increased to $500 weekly. Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit of $500 per week for workers who’d contracted COVID-19. Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit of $500 per week to support families with children six years of age, or younger, and to support low-income workers and families. Mortgage Deferral Payment provided to homeowners facing financial hardship. Old Age Security pensioners receive one-time $500 tax-free benefit.

March 27, 2020. For businesses in Canada: The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy provided to employers, to keep employees on payroll during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy to provide rent / mortgage subsidy to qualifying businesses, including charities and non-profits. Relief measures for Indigenous businesses, providing $306.8 million to small and medium-sized Indigenous businesses, and to support Aboriginal Financial Institutions that offer financing to these important businesses.

August 31, 2020. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government signs contracts with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to procure more than 100 million doses of their experimental COVID‑19 vaccines, signing contracts with Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), Novavax and AstraZenica/Covashield for 80 million more doses. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announces funding to establish a new biomanufacturing facility at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre in Montréal, and two other biomanufacturing facilities, in western Canada and Ontario, approved by the National Research Council of Canada to increase vaccine manufacturing of up to four million doses per month, to ensure Canada’s ability to produce sufficient vaccine doses to meet our country’s need.

The federal programmes and actions above barely scratch the surface of the response by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government — which set out to provide health, social and economic support for every Canadian, and support for every sector of the economy. The critically important programmes enacted by the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government were and are unprecedented anywhere across the globe.

Little wonder, then, that going into this election, Justin Trudeau’s personal approval rating was in the high 80s, and support for his government at 45%.

The rhetoric you’re likely to hear from an Erin O’Toole Conservative government

Ask yourself: given the chaos Canadians have witnessed in the anti-science Conservative government-led provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, what is the potential that an Erin O’Toole-led government would have responded to this once-in-a-century pandemic any better than we’ve witnessed in those four anti-science Conservative provinces — where each of their leaders have record low approval ratings — or we saw in Donald Trump’s COVID denialism (and we witness in today’s federal Conservative party Trump acoloyte caucus)?

“It’ll just disappear one day. It’ll go away like all things go away,” Trump said. “I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. COVID will go away without a vaccine, just go away, and we’re not going to see it again. It’ll be gone, like it was never here. You have my word on it.”

The 44th Canadian general election is the most volatile election in our nation’s history. Both Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh have together employed American, Republican-style politicking, unprecedented in Canadian history that a right wing and (allegedly) left wing party would collude on their campaign messaging to “gain power” …

“Justin Trudeau is a liar,” say O’Toole and Singh. “He’s not done a damn thing for you. He’s a smarmy, self-righteous, virtue signalling fraud who trots out the same — still unfulfilled — campaign promises he did in 2015 and 2019. He can’t be trusted, he’s not on your side. Vote for me. I’ve got your back. Throw that Justin Trudeau onto the scrap heap of history. He’s done. It’s time for a new day.”

Don’t you believe any of the malarkey above that’s being spewed out by Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh. You know better. You’ve witnessed Justin Trudeau advocate for us, and over the course of these past 19 months, Mr. Trudeau — and his incredibly competent and hard-working, principled Ministers of the Crown — have sacrificed for us, and provided for us each and every day, keeping us all safe.

Please don’t allow Erin O’Toole’s and Jagmeet Singh’s cynical politics of personal destruction cause Canadians to indulge a sense of collective amnesia, and not recognize that, indeed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a Canadian national hero. We would not have pulled through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic were any other Canadian leader in place. Justin Trudeau as Canadian Prime Minister remains critical to our national health, our ability to prevail in this pandemic, and to our national identity as Canadians working in common cause for the benefit of all.

Quite simply — and you know it’s true — there is no other Canadian political leader (and certainly not Erin O’Toole or Jagmeet Singh) capable of returning each one of us to the lives we led prior to the pandemic, ever more emboldened that we found the strength and the wherewithall to make it through this tragedy, and come out the other end all the better, more fulfilled personally and economically, with a greater wealth of spirit, and a sense of joy to inform all of our days yet to come.

Decision 2021 | Day 23 | Hoodwinking Canadians on Climate Change

Decision Canada 2021, Politics, , , , , ,

https://giverdigitalstudyguide.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/4/5/47458811/4582725_orig.png

On social media the other day, Sandy Garossino — a retired Crown Counsel, national journalist and political pundit — told her readers on Twitter that this election, and for her every election going forward, would be about one thing …

All elections determine the character of a country for the next four years.

And they have a lot to say about what the world will feel like, too. But this election may determine the flavour of the next four millennia — maybe the next 40. That’s because time is the one thing we can’t recover, and time is the one thing we’ve just about run out of in the climate fight.

Electing an Erin O’Toole-led Conservative Party would push Canada backwards fast, and would cost us dearly. Writes Max Fawcett in the National Observer …

The now-defunct Northern Gateway pipeline project is both a monument to the failed Harper-era policy of petro-nationalism and a testament to the power of Indigenous communities and those fighting for their rights. It’s emblematic of a past when concerns about climate change were far less important to the government of Canada than the interests of Alberta’s oil and gas sector.

Tankers could crash off B.C.’s west coast carrying Alberta crude

And for some strange reason, Erin O’Toole wants to bring it back from the dead — which would deal a fatal blow to any hope Canada has of reaching its net-zero emissions targets by 2050. This contradiction is at the heart of the climate plan O’Toole is trying to sell to Canadians. We are well past the point where we can delude ourselves into thinking we can have our cake and eat it, too, on climate change.

Fawcett goes on to quote Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, “The Conservatives don’t want a plan that works, still less one they might actually have to implement. They just want a plan they can wave around for a while, then discard.” If Canadian voters genuinely care about climate change, writes Fawcett, they’ll do themselves a favour and put O’Toole’s plan in the trash can — before he gets a chance to do it himself.

As respected Québec environmentalist and Liberal Party candidate in the riding of Laurier—Sainte-Marie, Steven Guilbeault, wrote recently …

“Erin O’Toole has made the Conservative party a home for dinosaurs. The following examples just barely scratch the surface of the climate change denial rampant in the Conservative Party of Canada.”

Here are a few examples of where Mr. Guilbeault’s concerns arise, that barely scratch the surface of the climate change denial rampant within the Conservative Party of Canada.

In Red Deer-Lacombe, Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party candidate Blaine Calkins was caught spreading misinformation to children, saying “whether or not you think carbon dioxide is pollution or not is, I still think, a question.”

Professor accuses Alberta MP of spreading ‘climate misinformation’

In the North Okanagan-Shuswap, Erin O’Toole’s Conservative candidate is the enthusiastically endorsed Mel Arnold, who has questioned whether humans are the main cause of climate change — arguing that there is no scientific consensus.

North Okanagan-Shuswap Tory candidate questions science on climate change

In Cariboo-Prince George, O’Toole’s candidate Todd Doherty couldn’t bring himself to say that climate change was caused by human activity and claimed it was due to “adding more and more bodies to the room.”

There’s a video very much worth watching embedded in the tweet below.

In Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Cheryl Gallant has a long history of climate change denial, including having stated that: “alarmist claims about ‘man-made’ global warming have cost the Ontario government tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.”

Ontario Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant writes over-the-top climate change rant

In Kelowna—Lake Country, Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party candidate Tracy Gray skated and refused to give a straight answer when pushed on whether human activity is the cause of climate change, in an interview with CBC Daybreak Kelowna.

In Miramichi-Grand Lake, Erin O’Toole’s anti-choice Conservative Party candidate Jake Stewart has called environmental activists eco terrorists.

In Don Valley North, Erin O’Toole’s candidate Sabrina Zuniga has downplayed the environmental impacts of oil spills, claiming that “oil is natural … so spilling into the environment, the land will absorb it because that’s what oil is.”

Ontario Spadina-Fort York Tory candidate Sabrina Zuniga says oil is absorbed in soil, with absolutely no damage to the environment — because oil is a natural substance.

In Cloverdale—Langley City, favourite Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer candidate Tamara Jansen called reports of rising CO2 levels “scare mongering” and referred to scientists warning about climate change as pushing “climate change dogma.”

Cloverdale—Langley City Conservative Candidate Tamara Jansen Promoted The Idea That the Earth Was Created in 6 Days, Casting Doubt on Evolution and Climate Change, while others rally to express concern about Ms. Jansen’s extremist anti-choice views .

In Yorkton—Melville, Tory candidate Cathay Wagantall has suggested climate action is a conspiracy to hurt workers, while in Battlefords-Lloydminster, candidate Rosemarie Falk believes that the Tories need to think about: “Gen Z, which has grown up their whole lives being fed climate alarmism.”

In Québec, Trois-Rivieres, Conservative Party candidate Yves Levesque said the quiet part out loud, “as an elected official, as a person, that we’re going to destroy the planet, well we’re going to do it in a pragmatic way without lowering your purchasing power.”

In Shefford, Québec, Erin O’Toole’s preferred candidate, Céline Lalancette, denies the very existence of the human causes of climate change, telling the media: “humans are not responsible for climate change, it has never been proven” and “the universe will do what it has to do.”

Tory Céline Lalancette denies existence of human causes of climate change

Well, that’s it for VanRamblings for this Monday, September 6th, a hyperbole-free column (well, almost) on a few of the less savoury folks who comprise the Conservative Party of Canada candidate corral — not exactly the most progressive amalgam of candidates who you’d choose to cast a ballot for, or in this case, not cast a ballot for … but rally against, if you care at all about our world.

You do — and won’t vote Conservative in the 2021 Canadian federal election.

Stories of a Life | 2021 | VanRamblings is Transformed

Stories of a Life, VanRamblings, , ,

The ‘header’ above represents what VanRamblings used to look like.

VanRamblings made it’s début on February 15, 2004 — following on months of work by web developer, Mike Klassen, to create VanRamblings — resultant from a heartfelt plea by Michael and an editor friend of mine, Jay Currie, that …

“Raymond, you are passionate about so many things, and have much to say of interest to people on a broad range of topics. Given the current state of the media industry, although you’ve written for a variety of publications over the years, given the dearth of media outlets to employ you, at present your voice has been silenced.

We believe that it is of critical importance that you be given an outlet where you might present your unique insight on a range of topics of interest to you, and the general public. To that end, we’d like to work with you on creating a blog that will provide you with a creative outlet, and where your voice might make a difference, when you write about the state and nature of society, politics, the arts, popular culture, cinema, web and tech issues, travel and more.”

And thus VanRamblings was born, thanks to encouragement from Mike and Jay, and great — and arduously intensive — web development work by the former.

VanRamblings’ blogging platform from the outset, and for the past 17½ years, was Movable Type — the de rigueur professional blogging platform back in the day.

Over the years, a few technical issues arose beneath the hood of VanRamblings, and although Movable Type long ago fell out of favour among the blogging web developer cognoscenti — the preferred, most used and most reliable blogging platform, WordPress, in 2004 a blogging platform then in its infancy — up until mid-morning this past Wednesday all was well with VanRamblings, until disaster struck — and VanRamblings on Movable Type was no more, kaput, gone, finished.

And thus today, and going forward, a phoenix-like, risen from the ashes re-birth of VanRamblings, this time as a much more reliable — or so I am faithfully assured — WordPress blog!

VanRamblings will return on Monday with coverage of our current and incredibly dispiriting 2021 federal election, now a mere 16 days away from the unthinkable.

 

Arts Friday | Netflix Debuts ‘Worth’ Today

Arts Friday, Cinema, Netflix

A week Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that was 9/11.

Sara Colangelo, the award-winning writer and director of the 2018 film, The Kindergarten Teacher, brought her latest film, Worth, to the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, Now, some 19 months later, Netflix makes Worth available on their service — the film starring Michael Keaton and Amy Ryan.

Following the horrific 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre and the U.S. Pentagon, Congress appointed attorney and renowned mediator Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) to lead the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Assigned to allocate financial resources to the victims of the tragedy, Feinberg and his firm’s head of operations, Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), faced the impossible task of determining the worth of a life to help the families who had suffered incalculable losses. When Feinberg locks horns with Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a community organizer mourning the death of his wife, his initial cynicism turns to compassion as he begins to learn the true human costs of the tragedy.

Available now on Netflix.