Juno News - March 29, 2020


Do Canadians like being controlled？


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

155.12314

Word count

1,140

Sentence count

57

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A woman in Newfoundland and Labrador was arrested and jailed twice within two days this past week for not self-isolating. She's a homeless woman who went from one province in Atlantic Canada to another, and she's not displaying any symptoms of coronavirus.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 A woman in Newfoundland was arrested and jailed twice within two days this past week for not
00:00:10.340 self-isolating. This is because the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has instituted
00:00:15.300 special public health measures so that anyone entering the province from outside of it,
00:00:20.880 even if you're coming from another province in Canada, you must self-isolate for 14 days
00:00:26.860 whether or not you are displaying coronavirus symptoms because you can be a carrier of the
00:00:31.940 virus and not know it. People who violate this order could face fines between $500 to $2,500
00:00:38.640 or be sentenced to a six-month jail term. Now, if you scan the comment sections of articles and posts
00:00:46.000 about this woman in Newfoundland, you'll see a scary amount of people delighting in the fact that she
00:00:51.500 was arrested. You see people demanding she be publicly named and shamed. But if you look into
00:00:57.180 the details, this woman is of no fixed address, so that means she is homeless. She's 53 years old
00:01:04.500 and she's not displaying any coronavirus symptoms. And yes, you can be a carrier without knowing it,
00:01:10.340 but hopefully they have tested her. And she entered Newfoundland via a ferry from North Sydney, Nova
00:01:16.280 Scotia. So this is not a case of, you know, an international jet setter who was just in China
00:01:22.160 and now coming to Canada. This is a homeless woman who went from one province in Atlantic Canada
00:01:28.460 to another. So I think we need to ask, does the punishment really fit the crime? But she is due in
00:01:35.540 court on June 9th. There was another woman in Quebec who was arrested for being out in public as well, 0.99
00:01:41.280 but she actually tested positive for coronavirus. So it's a bit of a different scenario. So alongside
00:01:46.960 these arrests, we are simultaneously seeing municipalities and provinces establish snitch
00:01:53.360 lines. The CBC had a little interview with a woman in Revelstoke, BC who had witnessed a party in her
00:02:00.680 neighborhood. And so she called the RCMP non-emergency line to report it. We just heard a little bit more
00:02:07.180 of her music. And because my boyfriend and I are in the middle of a move, we happen to be outside.
00:02:12.480 In Revelstoke, BC, Zoe Purvis was shocked to see a party across the street and called the RCMP
00:02:18.220 non-emergency line to report it. Played a little bit on my heartstring just because
00:02:23.020 I'm being so cautious. They either don't know or they just really don't care.
00:02:28.620 London, Ontario has launched a snitch line. New Brunswick has one too. And Alberta is currently
00:02:34.980 setting one up because the provincial health minister said that Alberta is getting 1,600
00:02:40.680 complaints a day about people and businesses not complying with health orders. 1,600 a day
00:02:47.600 only in Alberta. So imagine how many we're getting across Canada every single day. So it seems like
00:02:54.600 people are really into this thing where, you know, you're snitching on your neighbor and you're acting
00:02:59.940 as a voluntary informant for the government. As I wrote about in my column earlier this week,
00:03:04.780 which was about the province of BC cracking down on outdoor recreation and closing parks and all that.
00:03:10.880 And by the way, now they've also closed dog parks in a lot of places in the Vancouver area.
00:03:16.220 Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry encouraged British Columbians to call people out on social media
00:03:23.240 who are not abiding by social distancing measures. So that call to kind of publicly name and shame
00:03:30.180 is coming from a top health authority. Then we have Anna Lee Yassie, who is a UBC professor and Canada
00:03:37.680 research chair in global health, telling the star that we should consider being a little bit more imposing,
00:03:44.360 even if it means challenging social liberty for social good. And maybe it's time for Canada to be a little
00:03:50.700 more authoritarian. When I find quotes like that, and when I just kind of witness everything going on
00:03:57.500 that I just mentioned, I find it very alarming. And I find it very strange how people want to be
00:04:03.640 controlled. They're asking to be controlled. I worry about an atmosphere where everyone is snitching on
00:04:09.780 each other, and they're praising draconianism, you know, they're praising the idea that people who go to
00:04:15.940 parties amid the pandemic need to be thrown in jail, or get huge fines, and they need to be publicly
00:04:21.360 named and shamed. So Canadians appear to be getting quite a bit of pleasure out of this and getting
00:04:26.720 pleasure out of being told what to do, being controlled, having authorities telling them what
00:04:32.120 to do. And we have this recent op-ed in the Financial Post where the author Diane Francis is saying,
00:04:39.520 to beat this coronavirus, we must sacrifice our freedoms. The author says we must unleash the big
00:04:47.560 brother bazooka by deploying technology. Smartphones and other devices can help authorities monitor people's
00:04:57.300 movements in order to enforce social distancing and prevent them from gathering. She mentions how in
00:05:03.860 Korea, phone and credit card data is used by health authorities to trace people's movements and
00:05:11.100 contacts. And also how the Chinese require anyone who has tested positive, is isolated, or has been
00:05:17.900 exposed to victims to download software on their smartphones that allows police to access a color code
00:05:24.420 that defines their health status and whether or not they should be in quarantine or free to use
00:05:29.100 public spaces. These measures are not overkill. And she mentions what I talked about at the start of
00:05:36.480 my video, how one woman in Quebec and another in Newfoundland were arrested and put into jail or
00:05:43.620 isolation for violating public health orders, and both were turned in by neighbors or concerned
00:05:49.040 members of the public. Police have received hundreds of such tips but are unable to follow up on them all.
00:05:55.140 Yeah, so I'm not a fan of all of this. And the main concern is that we may institute these surveillance
00:06:02.700 measures and snitch lines in a time where many people or even most people might perceive them to
00:06:09.140 be valid and legitimate measures. But then they might become normalized and these measures might just
00:06:15.680 kind of sneak their way into being a part of our daily lives. You know, we just kind of got used to
00:06:20.960 governments tracking our cell phones and collecting our credit card data. So, you know, we won't bother
00:06:26.280 changing it because that's just the way it is now and that's how we live life in Canada.
00:06:30.920 I'm just saying, although the health impacts of the coronavirus are at the top of everyone's minds,
00:06:37.520 let's not get to the point where we're praising and delighting in the idea of freedoms and privacy
00:06:43.820 being taken away. I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for watching and I will see you next week.
00:06:50.960 I'll see you next week.