Juno News - February 16, 2022


Calls to end all restrictions and mandates are growing louder

Topics
protests against COVID-19 restrictions
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Doug Ford Bridge COVID-19 Omicron
Invoking the Emergencies Act confirms that Trudeau has lost all control Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to solve a crisis he created

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

192.25

Word count

827

Sentence count

56


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The protests against COVID19 are only growing, and if the government doesn't do something about it, it's going to become a game of whack-a-mole where one protest is dealt with and then another seems to flare up.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 It seems that the protests against COVID-19 restrictions across Canada are only growing,
00:00:10.160 are only gaining steam, and if the government manages to decrease one of them or stop one of
00:00:15.200 them, as is going on on the Ambassador Bridge, well it ends up becoming a game of whack-a-mole
00:00:19.460 because one protest is dealt with and then another one seems to flare up. People's passions
00:00:25.240 towards this issue are only intensifying, both in terms of those who are protesting the mandates
00:00:30.080 and also we're seeing some counter-protests emerge, where there are people who are upset that there
00:00:34.680 are convoys in their cities, particularly in Ottawa. I saw some folks in Kingston were doing a
00:00:40.060 counter-protest and didn't want a truck convoy to get entrenched in their city, and also, this is
00:00:44.220 kind of the odd part, counter-protesters who seem to really want the mandates to stay in place. These
00:00:48.800 are people who are fans of the restrictions sticking around in perpetuity. But the bottom line is that
00:00:54.780 things are really only gaining steam. They're only increasing. I saw a gentleman post one video
00:01:00.000 online that he's a military reservist and he was in his uniform and he said he's going to begin a walk
00:01:04.920 across Canada from, I believe it's BC to Ottawa, beginning, I think, February 20th. We'll see if
00:01:10.340 that goes ahead, but that gentleman seemed very sincere and passionate about the fact that he was
00:01:14.180 going to do that. So there you go. New things are only just emerging by the day. People's frustrations
00:01:20.560 are really being ratcheted up. And I've said since before there was a convoy that we've got
00:01:25.960 to get rid of these COVID-19 restrictions and mandates. We've got to move towards things being
00:01:30.680 optional. You've got so many people, the vast majority of people, pretty much everybody double
00:01:34.980 vaccinated, tens of people triple vaccinated. Omicron variant has been confirmed to be significantly
00:01:40.140 milder. What's going on? What's the holdup? You want to wear the mask in the grocery store? Go ahead
00:01:45.180 and wear the mask. You don't want to wear the mask in the grocery store? Go ahead. Don't wear the mask
00:01:48.900 in the grocery store. Make things optionally. I mean, I think that's really the core of what people
00:01:54.600 who are taking to the streets in protest are saying. I mean, a lot of different people are
00:01:59.140 saying a lot of different things, of course. I mean, there's a variety of grievances going on there,
00:02:03.740 and they sort of run the gamut. But the collective grievance is just leave us alone now. No more
00:02:09.360 overbearing, broad-based, mandatory stuff. Let us just figure it out. We've been talking about this
00:02:14.540 COVID thing for two years now. Respect us like adults to make our own personal risk assessments.
00:02:20.200 That's the core message that's happening. And I think just because the government brings in a state
00:02:25.260 of emergency, allowing them to deal with a more sort of acute concern there, the blocking of the
00:02:30.480 Ambassador Bridge, once they deal with that issue, it doesn't mean it's going away. So I know Doug Ford,
00:02:35.700 Justin Trudeau, they're really playing the tough guy act. They got to say, we will not capitulate to
00:02:40.100 protesters. But they also know that these rules are collapsing rapidly around the world. And in
00:02:46.160 Canada, we've of course had announcements in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, other provinces
00:02:51.360 bringing back the rules, not bringing back the rules, reducing the rules. Ontario's got to head
00:02:57.040 in that direction very soon. Federal government has as well. And they've kind of acknowledged that
00:03:01.440 they're going to be doing it pretty soon. But they want to make it pretend as if they're not doing it
00:03:06.600 because of the protests. But the protests, yes, one or two may be reduced or kind of go away in the
00:03:12.540 interim. But they're not going to eliminate all protests before they eliminate the rules. It's
00:03:16.660 pretty clear that things are only gaining steam. So I think the path of least resistance, the most
00:03:22.420 elegant solution, is just to fast track the plan to get rid of the rules. Because it is a pretty
00:03:28.820 moderate, mild request at the end of the day to say, let's leave these COVID risk assessments
00:03:34.300 up to us. So we know Doug Ford is going in that direction. We know Trudeau is as well. And I think
00:03:39.760 for the sake of national unity, you know, they need to not really need to stop being so stubborn. I
00:03:45.180 mean, they need to take the high road and say, okay, guys, we're going to wrap this up anyway.
00:03:50.120 Let's just do it a week or two early. And I think that's the most responsible and most unifying path
00:03:55.340 of aging period together. So I'm not corrected. So I'm going to make sure that we're obviously trying to
00:04:11.800 take moreê³µout when you're towards the base. So I think that's pretty important. I'm going to give you