Meanwhile The Star's editorial board offers some insights into why Canada has fared so, so much better in dealing with Covid-19 than the United States:
It’s a terrible thing for an old, dear friend to watch America — as a result of its wilful blindness, contempt for science and gross mishandling of the pandemic — descend to the status of a pariah state.Canada is an entirely different story for a number of reasons:
The Atlantic’s George Packer described in one searing paragraph recently just how pitiful the former promised land of the planet had become.
“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years.”
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational and collective, Packer said.
Instead, it got Donald Trump’s singular ignorance, delusion and pathological instinct to see everything, even matters of life and death, in political terms.
Part values, part experience, part humility of people and their leadership, part consistency of government messaging.We have also shown ourselves capable of learning some hard lessons:
At core, our national DNA favours the collective during a crisis that has demanded collective action, mutual sacrifice, looking out for the other rather than insistence on personal liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Many of the characteristics frequently cited as negatives in comparing Canada to the U.S. — our smaller size, our humility, our greater trust in government, our commitment to community and social services, no sense of our own mythic exceptionalism — have become assets in this crisis.
After SARS, Canada redesigned the federal-provincial relationship on public health and infectious diseases. Our public systems are more amenable to coherent reaction to widespread crisis than the private institutions in the U.S.As well, not having the same level of poisonous political partisanship as does the U.S. also helped:
In Canada, unlike the United States, the partisan cudgels were put aside — mercifully avoiding the vexation of states forced to deal with what Washington wouldn’t, and governors putting political affiliation and loyalty to the president ahead of science and medical expertise.As recent events have demonstrated, our leadership is far from perfect. But compared to the Americans, we do have things to be proud of as this first wave of Covid-19 wanes.
And, of course, we must keep that border closed for the foreseeable future.
The United States is a pretty low bar by which to measure other countries and their governments. We're better than America. Wow. That's not to say we haven't done many things right. We did. So far. But the measure of our success won't be known until either an effective vaccine is widely available or, in the alternative, this burns its way through the global population and dies out.
ReplyDeleteThe success of our politicians was in doing as little as possible, thereby resisting the urge to be seen to be in charge. This pandemic is, after all, a medical emergency fought with commendable success by medical professionals. Governments primarily came up with essential funding, in itself no mean feat.
The pandemic also exposed the criminal negligence of our political caste in allowing nursing homes to become charnel houses. I first reported on the failures of Ontario's Extended Care Nursing Home Act in the mid-70s. That's just shy of half a century ago. And it took soldiers of the Canadian Medical Corps to bring this disgrace into the light of day? Jesus Christ on a crutch!
What should we be expecting of our political leadership by which they can be judged? How about what they're planning to do in the very possible event that Canada and the world get hit with another contagion, possibly worse than Covid-19, in the not distant future. Virologists have warned anyone who will listen that these viruses exist and that they're in the barrel already locked and loaded.
Politicians who treat Covid-19 as a "one and done" problem refuse to address the greater predicament that may confront us and what we need to do now to restore our weakened resilience.
We are in an era of emergency of a magnitude that could equal that of a major war. It's that Churchillian line about how sometimes it is not enough that we do our best. Sometimes we must do what is required.
Those whose priority is to restore the economy above all else leave us all at great risk.
The real test is to see if we have learned anything in this crisis, Mound. If we don't change the way we do things, then we really don't have much hope.
DeleteBTW, your reference to Churchill is timely. I just finished reading Erik Larson's The Splendid and The Vile, which covers Churchill's first year as Prime Minister. As I was reading it, I couldn't help but think of the strength of character and resolve the Brits showed in facing Hitler.
Now they can't even keep their distance as pubs reopen.
It would seem that people no longer have the right stuff.
We are not without our faults. At present, one of those faults boils down to WE. On the other hand, WE can still act collectively. Throughout our history, that has been our salvation.
ReplyDeleteNever has this been more important, Owen; the U.S., on the other hand, chooses to concentrate on 'rugged individualism,' which doesn't seem to be working out so well for them these days.
DeleteAs an ex-Torontonian I am/was a big fan of the Star. Next to the G&M and the Sun-forerunner, The Telegram, it was 'bolshevik'. ;-)
ReplyDeleteYesterday I saw a headline about a right-wing buyout of the Star.
sigh ....
while the new owners say they will adhere to the Atkinson Principles that guide The Star, Northern PoV, I remain skeptical.
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