isolation

Tuesday December 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 15, 2020

Seniors, long-term care workers should be first in line for COVID-19 vaccine, committee says

The independent committee charged with deciding who should be the first Canadians to be vaccinated against COVID-19 today released its final directive recommending that long-term care home residents and seniors over the age of 80 get priority access to shots.

May 27, 2020

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) said the initial, limited quantity of vaccine doses should be reserved for people who are most at risk of contracting the virus and developing severe symptoms.

While the federal government is procuring the vaccines and consulting with bodies like NACI to help coordinate distribution based on need, it will be up to the individual provinces and territories to decide who gets vaccinated when.

Canada’s long-term care homes have been hit hard by the novel coronavirus, with thousands of deaths reported since the onset of this pandemic.

NACI said that since the elderly residents of long-term care and assisted living facilities, retirement homes and chronic care hospitals face “severe outcomes” and a much greater chance of dying from the disease, they should be at the top of the list for the initial batch of roughly six million doses that will be made available in Canada in the first three months of 2021.

April 1, 2020

Pfizer’s vaccine, which is expected to be the first product approved by regulators for use in Canada, requires two doses — so roughly three million people should be inoculated in this first stage of the rollout.

NACI said it’s not just the residents who should go first — it’s also recommending that provinces and territories prioritize the staff who work at these sites for early vaccination.

After long-term care home residents and staff are immunized, NACI said the next priority group should be all Canadians over the age of 80.

“All adults of advanced age should be prioritized for initial doses of authorized COVID-19 vaccines, beginning with adults 80 years of age and older, then decreasing the age limit in 5-year increments to age 70 years as supply becomes available,” the final directive reads.

June 9, 2020

After the 80-plus cohort is vaccinated, front line health care workers should be next in the queue, said NACI.

The committee said that doctors, nurses and other staff at hospitals should get their shots early to maintain staffing levels in the health care system.

“Immunizing health care workers and other workers functioning in a health care capacity (e.g. personal support workers) minimizes the disproportionate burden of those taking on additional risks to protect the public, thereby upholding the ethical principle of reciprocity,” the directive reads.

June 3, 2015

NACI also expressed concern about Indigenous adults living in communities “where infection can have disproportionate consequences, such as those living in remote or isolated areas.”

Because health care options are limited at the best of times in these remote areas,

Pandemic Times

Indigenous individuals can face an elevated risk of death and “societal disruption,” NACI said. For that reason, the committee said that some First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities should be in the first cohort to get vaccinated.

These four groups — long-term care residents and staff, the elderly, front line health care workers and some Indigenous adults — are expected to consume all of the six million doses to be delivered in the first three months of 2021.

“As a ballpark, these four groups of people, as things are rolled out, should be covered by the initial doses,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer. (CBC News) 

 

Tuesday April 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 21, 2020

Politicians putting partisan interests ahead of safety

Across Canada, and around the world, people are learning how to do things remotely. Things they never would have dreamed they would need to learn. Some very unlikely things — including publishing newspapers and websites. 

Coronavirus cartoons

Churches are meeting remotely. Executives at all levels are doing it. Students of all ages. Doctors, counsellors, financial advisers, planners, scientists and civil servants. Musicians are performing from their basements and home recording studios.

It can be frustrating, and there are a range of indirect problems that can result from working in isolation. But we do it, because it’s what is best from a public health perspective. And that is what the vast majority of us agree is most important right now.

But Canadian Parliamentarians cannot meet remotely, apparently. At least, Andrew Scheer and his Conservatives aren’t supporting virtual parliamentary sessions. Instead, they want a reduced number of MPs to meet in Parliament face to face. 

January 23, 2020

The governing Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois all agree that virtual parliament is doable. The lone holdouts are the Conservatives. A vote was scheduled for late yesterday afternoon that will see an unhappy compromise — MPs will meet together once a week, on Wednesdays, for in-person sittings. There will also be two virtual sessions per week that will include two-hour-and-15-minutes for questioning cabinet ministers, and another session for debating new legislation. 

The Conservatives are expected to vote against even this compromise. Instead, they want three in-person sittings per week. Scheer’s defence is that since construction work on the Centre Block can continue, so can face-to-face parliament sittings. “If they can safely renovate the building that houses our parliament then surely we can do our duty to uphold the bedrock of our democracy.”

But why can’t virtual sittings work? Scheer doesn’t have a good answer for that. His best attempt seems to be that virtual sittings aren’t possible immediately and MPs “cannot wait for the weeks and weeks that it may take the House of Commons administration” to provide necessary technology. 

But that excuse doesn’t wash either, since House Speaker Anthony Rota has written in a public letter that virtual sittings should be available by May 6.

October 31, 2019

Given Scheer doesn’t have a sensible answer, the real reason for his resistance to something all other parties can agree on is undoubtedly partisan. Scheer doesn’t want to give up the partisan bear pit that is traditional Parliament, especially Question Period. Doing so takes away his partisan soapbox, and means less face-time on TV.

It would be bad enough if this was just about MPs risking their health and spreading COVID-19. But it’s not just about them. Some support staff — pages, laundry and cafeteria staff for example — won’t need to be recalled. But others, such as broadcast technicians, clerks and interpreters will have to come to work in the West Block. When the House met on Saturday, April 11, 40 additional employees were required so that 32 MPs could do their work at the emergency sitting.

So let’s be entirely clear. Scheer is putting his own partisan interests ahead of public health. Even though the vast majority of Canadians are working hard to live by the distancing recommendations from public health leadership, Scheer is insisting on up to 100 people meeting, and at least in some cases, not being able to practice physical distancing.

There is still a chance that Scheer might relent on this terrible position, perhaps recognizing how the optics make he and his Conservative party look awful. That would be a wise reversal. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday April 9, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 9, 2020

Why we should all be wearing masks — and how our public health authorities got it wrong

Coronavirus cartoons

For months, as the COVID-19 crisis escalated and Canadians and Americans watched people across Asia increasingly wearing masks in public spaces, our health authorities stuck to their long-held policies, strongly advising against this. 

That is, until Friday. That’s when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reversed course, advising the public to use “cloth face coverings” to help slow the spread of COVID-19. They may have preferred to make this a quiet change on their website, but a characteristically bombastic press conference (and victory lap) by Donald Trump ensured that there was no saving face (no pun intended). 

The Public Health Agency of Canada made the same policy change Monday, and I suspect that the World Health Organization will not be far behind. And with these reversals come an eroding in public trust in the very organizations we need people to trust the most, at the very moment when our collective survival most depends on that trust.

So what went wrong? (continued: Toronto Star) 

 

Friday March 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 13, 2020

Trump’s European Travel Ban Doesn’t Make Sense

Last night, a few thousand Atlético Madrid supporters crammed into a corner of Liverpool’s Anfield stadium to watch their soccer team knock the reigning European champions out of the continent’s premier competition, the UEFA Champions League. As they woke in their hotel rooms and Airbnbs this morning, they discovered, as Madrileños, or, more important, Europeans who live in the no-border Schengen Area that operates on the continent, that they are now barred from traveling to the United States. The 50,000 Liverpool fans who were also in the stadium last night, or at least those who happen to be British or Irish, awoke chastened by their team’s defeat—but not banned.

January 13, 2018

If there is an award for the most absurd spectacle capturing the arbitrariness of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, this surely wins it.

President Donald Trump’s decision to ban most European citizens from traveling to the U.S., except those from the United Kingdom and Ireland, appears to make no sense, and to inject past grievances and prejudices into delicate scientific and political equations. In this spiraling thriller–cum–horror novel, Trump’s emergence, full of hostility and conspiracy, with warnings of foreign viruses, heralds a darkening turn—an early indication of the power of a pandemic to infect global decision making and international relations.

December 16, 2019

Politics, domestic and international, is already morphing under the strain of the coronavirus, and all signs indicate that it will continue to do so. Some governments will rise to higher ideals, to duty and justice, equity and science; others will simply be unable to meet the test or, worse, disgrace themselves. Some systems will allow combinations of various measures, and some political leaders will take decisions in good faith, based on good science, but still get it wrong. This, though, is the stage when politics comes to the fore, when the values of those with power are revealed. More than that, this crisis is becoming a test of the international order, formal and institutional or informal and cultural, to cope with the pressures placed on it by nationalism, quackery, corruption, ignorance, and malevolence.

Yesterday, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, slashed interest rates in a coordinated stimulus effort with the British government. He declared that 2008 had revealed the danger that the new globally integrated financial system posed, but that today this very system could help, not hinder. In his world, global institutions and a culture of coordination had developed. The giants of the financial crash had learned the lessons from the 1930s and moved quickly and globally in the knowledge that a beggar-my-neighbor policy in a global depression beggars everyone in the end. Today, it is sobering simply to wonder whether anyone is applying this lesson to the pandemic—an even more obvious case of the stupidity of petty nationalism.

November 14, 2019

And yet, as ever with the American president, the rationale for his decision carries its own peculiarly Trumpian worldview, exposing both how he sees the world and the weaknesses of who he sees as his adversaries. Trump is nothing if not alive to the flaws of his enemies. In this case, it is not without logic to treat the European Schengen Area as one country. While it clearly isn’t one and doesn’t overlap neatly with either the euro or the European Union (Norway, which is not an EU member, is part of Schengen; Ireland, which is both an EU member and part of the eurozone, is not), it is a core feature for almost all EU member states, a common travel area in which there are no internal checks. Schengen is one of Europe’s core strengths and accomplishments, but also a structural weakness that continues to challenge its legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens.

The EU is a proto-state. It has the institutions of a state, a central bank and parliament, currency and court. And yet it is weaker than a conventional state, mostly unable to take effective collective action in times of crisis, whether diplomatically, fiscally, or militarily. Its weakness is in handling migration and debts, refugees and Russian aggression. The worry today is that this weakness will be exposed, even though the coronavirus is exactly the type of cross-border challenge that highlights one of the EU’s fundamental strengths: its ability to coordinate continentally. (Continued: The Atlantic) 

 

Wednesday April 13, 2016

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Wednesday April 13, 2016 Attawapiskat emergency debate to be held by MPs this evening The House of Commons will hold an emergency debate this evening over "the gravity" of the many suicide attempts on the northern Ontario First Nation reserve of Attawapiskat. Members of Parliament will address the crisis during the debate scheduled to begin at approximately 6:40 p.m. ET and expected to last until midnight. The request for an emergency debate comes as Attawapiskat Chief Bruce Shisheesh fears more young people will try to harm themselves while the community tries to grapple with the crisis after declaring a state of emergency Saturday, following reports of 11 suicide attempts in one day. There are also reports of over 100 suicide attempts and at least one death since September. On Monday, provincial and federal government officials sent a medical emergency assistance team and five additional mental health workers to the First Nation community of less than 2,000. Three mental health workers were already in the community, a spokesperson for Health Canada told CBC News on Tuesday. The emergency debate was approved by House Speaker Geoff Regan Tuesday morning on a request from NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose riding includes Attawapiskat. "The crisis in Attawapiskat has gathered world attention and people are looking to this Parliament to explain the lack of hope, that's not just in Attawapiskat but in so many indigenous communities. And they're looking to us, in this new Parliament, to offer change," Angus said in the House of Commons on Tuesday morning. Angus said the emergency debate would allow MPs to address "the lack of mental health services, police services, community supports" facing so many First Nations communities across the country. "In closing," Angus said, "the prime minister called the situation in Attawapiskat 'heartbreaking' but it is up to us as parliamentarians to turn this into a moment

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 13, 2016

Attawapiskat emergency debate to be held by MPs this evening

The House of Commons will hold an emergency debate this evening over “the gravity” of the many suicide attempts on the northern Ontario First Nation reserve of Attawapiskat.

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday June 3, 2015 CanadaÕs residential schools cultural genocide, Truth and Reconciliation commission says The residential schools that removed aboriginal children from their homes, subjecting many of them to substandard education, malnutrition, abuse, illness and even death was a key part of a government-led policy that amounted to cultural genocide, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concludes. ÒThese measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,Ó says the 381-page summary of its final report released Tuesday in Ottawa. ÒThe Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources,Ó says the report. The heart-wrenching and damning report is the culmination of a six-year examination of the history and legacy of residential schools Ñ largely operated by churches and funded by the Canadian government Ñ that saw 150,000 First Nations, MŽtis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century. The exercise has been Òa difficult, inspiring and very painful journey for all of us,Ó said Justice Murray Sinclair, Canada's first aboriginal justice and the commission's chairman. ÒThe residential school experience is clearly one of the darkest most troubling chapters in our collective history,Ó Sinclair told a packed news conference Tuesday in Ottawa. ÒIn the period from Confederation until the decision to close residential schools was taken in this country in 1969, Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide.Ó Through the testimony of residential school survivors, former staff, church and government officials and archival documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pieced together a horrifying histor

June 3, 2015

Members of Parliament will address the crisis during the debate scheduled to begin at approximately 6:40 p.m. ET and expected to last until midnight.

The request for an emergency debate comes as Attawapiskat Chief Bruce Shisheesh fears more young people will try to harm themselves while the community tries to grapple with the crisis after declaring a state of emergency Saturday, following reports of 11 suicide attempts in one day. There are also reports of over 100 suicide attempts and at least one death since September.

On Monday, provincial and federal government officials sent a medical emergency assistance team and five additional mental health workers to the First Nation community of less than 2,000. Three mental health workers were already in the community, a spokesperson for Health Canada told CBC News on Tuesday.

January 25, 2012

The emergency debate was approved by House Speaker Geoff Regan Tuesday morning on a request from NDP MP Charlie Angus, whose riding includes Attawapiskat.

“The crisis in Attawapiskat has gathered world attention and people are looking to this Parliament to explain the lack of hope, that’s not just in Attawapiskat but in so many indigenous communities. And they’re looking to us, in this new Parliament, to offer change,” Angus said in the House of Commons on Tuesday morning.

December 10, 2011

Angus said the emergency debate would allow MPs to address “the lack of mental health services, police services, community supports” facing so many First Nations communities across the country.

“In closing,” Angus said, “the prime minister called the situation in Attawapiskat ‘heartbreaking’ but it is up to us as parliamentarians to turn this into a moment of hope-making.”

October 28, 2005

“That’s why I’m asking my colleagues to work with me tonight, to work together, to discuss this issue tonight and start to lay a path forward to give the hope to the children of our northern and all other indigenous communities,” Angus said Tuesday morning.

Regan acknowledged “the gravity of this situation” before granting Angus’s request.

Other Ontario First Nations communities declared public health emergencies earlier this year.

At least four aboriginal leaders have been scheduled to appear before the Commons indigenous affairs committee on Thursday to discuss the health crises facing their communities. (Source: CBC News)

Federal Minister of Indigenous & Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett was asked about former prime minister Jean Chretien’s suggestion this week that those living on remote reserves could consider moving.

“It is about people’s attachment to the land, people having a right to live a traditional life and but also with economic opportunities,” she said.

“There’s choice involved …. Some communities have chosen to change their location to no longer be flooded and be on higher ground. Some community members choose to go to town to get a job, but then be able to come back, but this is about us wanting to support the choices.” (Source: Globe & Mail)

 

Other media

Published in the Regina Leader-Post April 14, 2016

Published in the Regina Leader-Post April 14, 2016