Juno News - March 22, 2020


Is Trudeau's response to the COVID-19 pandemic enough？


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

139.26958

Word count

647

Sentence count

32


Summary

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

The Prime Minister announced that Canada will no longer allow illegal migrants crossing the border at Roxham Road from upstate New York to Quebec, reversing three years of a flawed policy that allowed millions of people to enter the country without proper documentation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 The Prime Minister held another press conference in front of what has become his unofficial
00:00:09.540 residence at Rideau Cottage with 24 Sussex Drive being renovated. This seems to have become an
00:00:16.720 almost daily event since he announced the closure of our borders last week. In his Saturday morning
00:00:24.720 press conference he took almost 30 minutes to say well absolutely nothing important and he did it
00:00:32.140 in both official languages. Now I have no issue with the Prime Minister providing updates to Canadians
00:00:38.580 when he has something to say it's just that he didn't seem to have anything to say. Thus far
00:00:44.660 though he has announced an 82 billion dollar stimulus spend that could drive the deficit north of 100
00:00:51.220 billion dollars. Think about that number it's massive but by far the most significant announcement
00:00:58.260 he has made is saying that Canada will no longer allow the illegal migrants crossing the border at
00:01:05.880 Roxham Road from upstate New York to Quebec reversing three years of flawed policy. He did it without
00:01:14.020 apology to Canadians for the nearly 60,000 people who have already entered the country illegally
00:01:20.100 and and accessed our very generous system while awaiting adjudication on their refugee claims.
00:01:29.940 What is not clear is how many of those who are unsuccessful with their refugee claims and are
00:01:35.860 ordered out of the country actually leave. There isn't much available information on that that I could
00:01:42.420 find anyway but I wager the number is very high. Most refugee applications are not accepted
00:01:49.860 and theoretically those who are unsuccessful are ordered out. Do they actually leave or do they continue to
00:01:57.300 remain and access the generous welfare system medical systems and educational systems of the country?
00:02:02.980 We don't know. It's about time that the Prime Minister took this action after three years of saying there was
00:02:10.020 nothing we as a country could do about it. Clearly that was nonsense as was calling conservatives who called for the
00:02:18.580 the the shutdown of the Roxham Road access point. He called them racists. It is not racist to want to
00:02:27.060 secure our borders and to protect the nation. I'm glad that the Prime Minister has finally come to that conclusion.
00:02:33.300 It remains to be seen whether once closed it will remain closed once the pandemic is over though.
00:02:42.900 And it will be over sooner or later. The question remains is when and how many deaths will be directly
00:02:50.500 related to the COVID-19 virus by that time. The other question that remains is at what cost
00:02:57.780 to the Canadian economy. There has been varying reactions to the pandemic depending on where you
00:03:05.140 live and work. In Vancouver for example it has ordered that all restaurants stop serving dine-in meals
00:03:12.020 as of midnight last night. Across the Burrard Inlet there is no such restrictions in North Vancouver.
00:03:18.740 That might change but as of today that is the case.
00:03:21.300 Those affected restaurants and the many folks that they employ will be directly and adversely affected.
00:03:31.780 The government has promised financial assistance to affected businesses but again at what cost?
00:03:38.580 Is it worth a hundred billion dollar deficit?
00:03:43.300 Time will tell but at least the Prime Minister is finally engaged after sitting on the sidelines for weeks
00:03:49.700 after the US had taken action. The other thing I'd like to see is for the Prime Minister to stop with the stunts
00:03:56.500 at his press conferences. Like the one the other day where he ran back into the house to get a coat
00:04:02.820 after he had started the presser. Or the one this morning where he started the media briefing wearing
00:04:08.740 headphones and then seemingly took them out as an afterthought after he had started talking.
00:04:13.940 These are serious times and the Prime Minister is talking about serious things. One would hope
00:04:20.820 that he would appear as serious as a subject matter. For True North, I'm Leo Knight.