Juno News - It's time to bring more choice into COVID rules in Canada

00:00:00.000 I gotta say that one of the most frustrating aspects of Canada's current COVID-19 situation

00:00:09.820 is the absolutist way in which we are approaching so much of it and so many of these rules. Both

00:00:15.920 the way government is approaching it, approaching the rules themselves, approaching the enforcement

00:00:20.520 of it, and the way a lot of people are conceptualizing it. I'll give you an example.

00:00:24.940 So Ontario now has the vaccine passport, a controversial issue. Many people support it,

00:00:30.100 many people oppose it, but it is in place now. The vaccine passport's been brought into place,

00:00:34.700 but other rules have not been lessened. So for instance, you go into the gym because you need

00:00:39.900 a vaccine passport to get into the gym, and I guess you show the passport, you do your thing,

00:00:44.100 you go in, you're working out, but there are still the rigid masking rules. You don't have to mask up

00:00:49.240 when you're at the workout station, but you do have to mask up when you're walking between the

00:00:53.280 workout stations, and you're doing other things in the gym. And you're like, okay, so you're

00:00:57.720 acknowledging everybody has the vaccine, and there's the screening stuff that says if you have

00:01:01.940 the symptoms, you shouldn't be here. So let's assume people who are feeling ill are not at home.

00:01:06.040 Let's also assume therefore that, but probably nobody in the gym actually has COVID-19.

00:01:10.640 So nobody has it. You've all got the vaccine, and you're all still wearing masks? Why didn't we

00:01:17.160 forgo the masking rules? And then someone can write to me or say, oh, but fury, et cetera, et cetera,

00:01:21.180 here's why we still need the masks, and so forth, and they'll put forward their argument. You go,

00:01:25.500 okay, well, that's an interesting argument. Maybe folks, here's a crazy idea, maybe folks

00:01:29.700 should be allowed to consider that argument and then decide whether or not they will still wear

00:01:34.560 the mask, even though they've got the vaccines and all those other things in place. Maybe the masks,

00:01:39.160 for instance, should be optional in pretty much most settings, and we'll see how many people actually

00:01:44.160 wear them. We found in jurisdictions where they get rid of the mask mandates that there are some

00:01:48.980 people, many people who still wear them, because that's what getting rid of a mask mandate means.

00:01:53.300 It doesn't mean it suddenly becomes against the law to wear a mask. It just means that,

00:01:57.140 you know, the cops aren't going to be called if you don't wear the mask. It is your choice.

00:02:01.860 And the absolutist attitude we have right now is that there has to be 100% compliance on these

00:02:07.740 things, that the further you get down the road, like I said, masking, even though all these other

00:02:11.700 things are happening, and even though there's a very low prevalence of the virus and so on and so forth,

00:02:15.360 you've got the passports in place, that at a certain point should personal choice, just a little bit,

00:02:22.540 kind of factor into some of these things. And if you're not going to do it now, if you're not going

00:02:27.680 to sort of change your approach and allow there to be a bit of personal choice as opposed to an

00:02:32.140 absolutist attitude, when are you going to do it? We've got to have this conversation as a society.

00:02:39.700 I'm of course based in Ontario where there have been times when we've been one of those

00:02:43.000 lockdown jurisdictions in pretty much much of the world. I think Ontario has the most regressive

00:02:48.140 approach. I think there are other provinces that are doing things far more balanced, far more wiser

00:02:52.380 than in Ontario. But I still think the Canadian attitude needs to be addressed a bit more as we

00:02:57.800 approach the learning to live with COVID era. We know a number of chief medical officers pretty much

00:03:04.100 of most major provinces have used that phrase, learning to live with COVID. And I think one of the main

00:03:08.740 ways we do that is to transition out of the absolutist approach to all of this and segue

00:03:14.460 to the personal choice, whatever it is. Maybe you're going to say, okay, masks in the gyms,

00:03:18.960 now that you've got the passport, masks in the gyms are optional. Maybe 95% of people still wear them.

00:03:23.320 Okay, that's fine. You're just allowing the choice factor to come into play. We've got to talk about

00:03:29.280 this stuff a whole lot more.

Juno News - September 26, 2021