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Friday January 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 14, 2022

Ontario students to receive 2 rapid tests as school begins, top doctor’s comments draw fire

January 8, 2022

Ontario students are slated to get two rapid antigen tests when they return to school on Monday, but apart from that, the province is relying mostly on previously announced measures to keep schools safe amid the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The province also revealed Wednesday that school officials will monitor absenteeism in classrooms as opposed to reporting individual positive tests.

Officials said parents would be notified when combined student and staff absences hit around 30 per cent, prompting concerns that parents would be left in the dark about their child’s school’s status until it reached that threshold.

By Wednesday evening, the province appeared to say it would provide parents with more specific data about absenteeism.

2021 In Review

Letter to the editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Dec. 31, 2021

At the Hamilton Spectator, I’m quite spoiled by having several pages that have run for four days this week highlighting the past events of 2021. It’s a huge honour, and a wonderful testament that there are still some print media outlets, like the Spec, which embrace satire, as well as local reporting and staff photography as a necessary part of print and digital journalism. It’s a tradition in newspapers around the globe to use the final week of the year to showcase editorial cartoons which best boil down the past 12 months viewed through the lens of satire. Thankfully, there’s still a contingent of talented cartoonists sustaining the craft. Although, as many of you are aware, editorial cartooning positions have been in steady decline as newspapers respond to shrinking circulation & advertising revenues by chopping or retiring off their artists and replacing their local insights with banal syndicated Hallmark style gags masquerading as satire, or worse, bland wire photos. Support your local newspapers but remind editors that satire is fundamental to a healthy democracy. Thank you for your likes and shares, and encouraging comments. Here’s to a better year ahead in 2022, my 25th year as editorial cartoonist at the Hamilton Spectator. Happy New Year!

Ontario 2021 | Canada 2021 | World 2021 | Covid 2021

Friday August 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 20, 2021

Not the Bad Guys Anymore

When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost.

November 14, 2001

The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history. The Taliban has once again declared a general amnesty, and asked everyone to show up for work in the morning and prepare to unite behind a Taliban government that will rule according to Islamic law—but perhaps, the group has suggested, not in the harsh manner that made it infamous during its rule from 1996 to 2001. Women can continue their education so long as they wear the hijab, and the Taliban will guarantee human rights and freedoms of speech and expression, it said, so long as they comply with sharia. (Spoiler: The Taliban does not believe they do.) A Taliban spokesperson consented to an interview with a female television presenter whose face was visible. During the Taliban’s previous regime, it discouraged depiction of the human form, and would certainly not have countenanced the broadcast of a woman’s face to the entire world.

The Taliban now owns Afghanistan, and its first priority is avoiding anything that resembles chaos. In 1996, the group’s leader, Mullah Omar, told residents of Kabul to resist the temptation to flee, that the Taliban would keep them safe. Omar died in 2013, but his successors—who include his own son, the Taliban’s top military official—are saying exactly the same thing now. They have made sure the police phone number works, and they are calling for workers, including cops formerly loyal to the previous government, to report for duty. The Afghans I have reached by phone in Kabul say the same: Taliban are in the streets, acting not as avengers but as guarantors of public order. They are not executing people on street corners; instead they’re watching for looters and troublemakers. (The Taliban has always returned to this core role, since the movement’s founding: In the 1990s, when the Afghan countryside was beset by highwaymen, murderers, and rapists, the group won its first followers by securing the roads and providing order where the worst kind of anarchy had reigned.) (Continued: The Atlantic) 

August 17, 2021

Meanwhile, in Canada, there may be no better example of the unique and difficult challenge Erin O’Toole faces as leader of the federal Conservative Party than his recently announced policy on mandatory vaccinations.

Mr. O’Toole is against measures that force Canadians to get vaccinated, regardless of what line of work they may be in. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has said federal workers must be vaccinated, as well as anyone who wants to fly or travel by train.

The Conservative Leader says he believes in the power and safety of vaccines, but doesn’t feel people should be forced to take them. Mr. Trudeau doesn’t believe people should be forced to take them either, but nor should the unvaccinated have the right to potentially pass COVID-19 on to others. Thus, the mandate.

July 15, 2021

A majority of Canadians are fully or partially vaccinated. And most of them, polls suggest, support vaccine mandates or vaccine passports that bestow certain rights and privileges on those who have chosen to get jabbed. In his heart, I think Mr. O’Toole believes this also. He just can’t endorse that policy because it would alienate a faction of his base – the libertarians and vaccine deniers – who think the state has no right imposing restrictive measures on anyone. These are voters Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada are trying to steal away from the Conservatives.

Welcome to Erin O’Toole’s world – or rather, his nightmare. While his central challenger in this election, Justin Trudeau, can be many things to many people, the Conservative Leader does not have that option. He is bound, in many ways, to a segment of the population resistant to change and who are suspicious of government intrusions of any sort into their lives, regardless of the reason. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

L E T T E R S  to the  E D I T O R  The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday August 21, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 23, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 24, 2021

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Tuesday May 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 18, 2021

Reopening Ontario outdoor recreational sites should focus on equity, access: advocates

Ontario golfers have been pushing the province to reopen courses ordered closed while the province is under stay-at-home orders, but some observers say access to outdoor recreational facilities serving a wider population should be just as high on the agenda.

January 8, 2021

Doctors and recreational facility administrators say Canadians need access to affordable, inclusive and local ways to get outside and exercise, so long as health care professionals deem it safe.

“Many of the people I care for live in dense apartment buildings, have small indoor spaces and don’t have the luxury of a backyard,” said Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician and health justice activist in Toronto.

“We need to really be thinking about how to keep these people physically and mentally healthy.”

Dr. Dosani and others hope the province will make any reopening of recreational opportunities equitable. As well as golf courses, basketball nets, skate parks and tennis courts have remained out of bounds for months.

April 8, 2021

Golfers and club operators argue the sport is safe since it’s possible to golf while masked and physically distanced, other provinces are currently allowing the sport and people aren’t travelling to play.

“They are looking to play their local golf course in their home community for the physical and mental health break that the sport provides,” Mike Kelly, the executive director of the Golf Association of Ontario, said in May.

Several doctors have even given golf and many other outdoor forms of exercise the green light because the risk of transmitting COVID-19 is low outside.

However, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been unwilling to budge because the province has routinely reported more than 2,000 new, daily COVID-19 and many intensive care units are still overwhelmed.

April 6, 2021

“I talk to my buddies. I know what happens,” Ford said Thursday.

“They pick up another buddy, two or three. They go out, they go golfing…then after golfing, they go back, they have a few pops. That’s the problem.”

Ford said he hopes to reopen outdoor recreational facilities by June 2, but the golf industry is not relenting and some have even reopened in defiance.

Yet many say reopening plans can’t just focus on a sport that comes with pricey fees, often requires a membership and doesn’t always attract youth.

“Given what we’ve learned about this pandemic and how it has had a disproportionate impact on people experiencing poverty and racialized communities, it’s quite disappointing that there’s been such advocacy around a sport like golf,” said Dr. Dosani.

“It probably speaks to who has the loudest voice at times like this, and who has the resources to advocate.” (CTV)

Letters to the editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday May 22, 2021 

MacKay cartoon unfair to golfers

I found the Graeme MacKay editorial cartoon (May 18) harsh and unjustified and not up to his usual standard. The hundreds of thousands of golfers in Ontario consist of people of all ethnicities, ages and gender. They consist of doctors, nurses, front-line workers, policemen, firemen, bus drivers, truck drivers, retirees, workers at The Hamilton Spectator, etc. They are husbands, wives, grandparents, aunts and uncles. As with any large random group of people in Ontario they have suffered during the pandemic the loss of loved ones, had surgeries delayed, lost employment, lost businesses, helped their children with schooling, given to charities and hospitals and adhered to the health protocols as a group no different to others.

His illustration of a “typical” golfer is demeaning and reminds me of the comment made by Doug Ford PhD (pontificating harmful despot) this past week about golfers and their penchant for alcohol. Graeme, be careful of the company you keep.

Ed Jenner, Burlington

MacKay cartoon says it all

MacKay’s cartoon of indignant golfers was hilarious and right on point. Golfers complaining they can’t golf is the biggest first-world problem imaginable. If it’s the worst thing they have to worry about, they should consider themselves lucky.

Rosemary Gossich, Hamilton

“Having published this cartoon that seems perfectly clear, his paper received (the above) feedback from an aggrieved reader. Granted, there’s something confirming about drawing a cartoon about whiners and having someone whine about it, but the task remains to try to make your points clear while accepting that they will whooosh over some heads anyway.”

Thursday April 29, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 29, 2021

Ontario details plan for 3 paid sick days after a year of mounting pressure

April 23, 2021

After months of urgent calls about the need for paid sick leave by medical professionals, labour advocates, political leaders and even top doctors from some of the province’s hardest-hit regions, the Ontario government has announced a plan to provide three paid sick days through a temporary program ending in September.

The proposed Ontario COVID-19 Worker Protection Benefit Program would pay up to $200 per day for workers who are sick, have symptoms, have a mental health issue or need to be vaccinated, and will be retroactive to April 19. The sick days would not need to be taken consecutively and no sick note is required.

If the legislation is passed, the program will be administered through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and employers will be reimbursed in full, the province says.

April 16, 2020

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton also said the province has offered to provide funding to the federal government to double the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit payments, adding an additional $500 per week to eligible individuals, for a total of $1,000 per week.

Ottawa earlier this week rejected an offer by the province to top up the program, saying the federal benefit is designed to support workers who don’t have a regular employer, or as a stop gap until their province mandates paid sick days.

Last week, Premier Doug Ford pledged that Ontario would soon unveil details of a paid sick leave program, claiming it would be “the best program anywhere in North America, bar none.”

But as reported by CBC News, the Ford government initially sought to top up the federal program, rather than create its own. On the same day as Ford’s emotional news conference, Ontario’s finance minister wrote a letter to the federal government proposing to top up Canada’s sick leave benefit. 

October 8, 2020

Critics have long pointed out the federal benefit pays less than a full-time minimum wage job, involves days, if not weeks, of processing time and doesn’t guarantee job security for workers who use it.

The cost of the proposal announced today was not included in the provincial budget, unveiled in March.

Unlike Quebec and Prince Edward Island, where sick days are in place permanently, Ontario’s proposed program ends in just five months. The province has has passed legislation that protects workers’ jobs if they can’t work due to a COVID-19 diagnosis. (CBC)

Letters to the editor –  The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 1, 2021

Blame Trudeau, not Ford

I have to say I was aghast at the editorial cartoon of Doug Ford being whipped. It is no secret that The Spec is no fan of Mr. Ford, however to publish him being whipped and the prime minister watching is way over the line of decency and respect. Has he made mistakes, of course, some big ones, however keep in mind it is the prime minster, who you show sitting eating popcorn, who is ultimately responsible for this mess, due to poor vaccine procurement. There is enough blame to go around these days. I fail to see what this piece of work does to move anything forward.

Robert Hague, Burlington

Outraged at cartoon

I usually enjoy Mr. MacKay’s editorial cartoons, although he can push the envelope at times.

But I must profess my outrage at Thursday’s depiction of the premier of Ontario being publicly flogged. We are constantly preaching about being against violence and hate in our province but here is a depiction of an act of torture aimed at the leader of the province. People may or may not like Doug Ford and have their own opinions but this is going too far!

Rick Allen, Hamilton Mountain

Trudeau didn’t belong there

This cartoon was spot on about Ford. But putting Trudeau in was unfair. Dealing with employers is provincial jurisdiction and it’s Ford’s problem to solve, not Trudeau’s.

Sarah Mueller, Burlington