Juno News - May 10, 2020


Leave it to Trudeau to make the economy a partisan issue


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

202.16539

Word Count

722

Sentence Count

35


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Remember during the early days of all of this when we were told we're all in this together and
00:00:10.040 leave partisanship behind? We were all supposed to rally behind all the various different chief
00:00:14.680 medical officers, the premiers, the national leaders, and we would all do what's best for
00:00:18.960 the country together. Kind of made sense at the time. I mean, a lot of people used it to blunt
00:00:24.000 criticism of federal officials like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but you know, otherwise the broad
00:00:29.040 sentiment correct. No? Sure. Why then are some people not following it anymore? It seems like
00:00:36.020 increasingly the response to the coronavirus and particularly the reopenings have become a deeply
00:00:42.320 partisan issue. And a lot of this is starting at the top. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
00:00:48.600 he had called for national coordination among all the different premiers. He only did this though
00:00:53.460 after a couple premiers, John Horgan, Jason Kenney putting forward his five-point plan,
00:00:58.240 others putting forward these various plans that showed that the premiers were leading the charge.
00:01:03.860 Justin Trudeau then calling for national coordination. I guess he didn't want to see
00:01:07.620 control slip away from his fingertips. But the problem is that healthcare is a provincial issue,
00:01:12.880 and we've also seen that one size does not fit all. So all the different measures that are
00:01:17.560 introduced in different provinces, well, they make sense for some provinces. Quebec and Ontario,
00:01:21.740 the hardest hit. New Brunswick, hardly any cases at all. Nunavut, zero. So of course,
00:01:27.360 you're going to have different policies for different provincial levels. Well, Justin Trudeau
00:01:31.500 has taken his criticism one step further. The other day, he actually said he is very worried
00:01:35.740 that hasty reopenings are going to see another flare-up in the summer, and we're not going to be
00:01:40.400 able to go out and enjoy the summer. Kind of a downer, kind of also going up against the premiers
00:01:46.120 in all of this. Because if you look at their different plans, for the most part, they are all
00:01:50.520 three or four or five stage reopenings. Very cautious plans. And they all say, if we're not
00:01:55.620 ready to move on to the next stage, we're going to. And they also say, if we realize we've gone to
00:01:59.660 one stage, and man, this thing's blowing up on us, we're going to close it back up, and we're going to
00:02:04.100 go back to the previous stage. Steady as she goes. There's not a single government official in Canada
00:02:09.400 who's calling for some massive green light reopening, where we all just start running around and doing
00:02:13.980 whatever we please. And it should be noted, polls show that Canadians, even if they were given the
00:02:17.800 liberty to do that, most of them wouldn't. They would make their own judicious decisions. And yet
00:02:22.860 we've got a whole bunch of voices out there in the media, on social media, who are almost taking
00:02:27.700 these partisan approaches to say, yes, here's why reopenings are wrong, and it's just conservatives
00:02:32.220 who want them, and it's just business people, and all of that. As if they don't understand that the
00:02:36.300 economy is not just a word to refer to the stock market, it is a word to refer to our very
00:02:42.560 foundations of our way of life. And a lot of people looking for opportunities to cheap shot say Doug
00:02:49.140 Ford, too hasty with the reopening, he has been incredibly cautious. And it should be noted that
00:02:54.400 the premiers of this country, who are all in favor of some form of reopening, they represent, yes,
00:02:59.420 conservatives, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, John Horgan, NDP premier, he's taken a pretty good approach.
00:03:04.280 We've got liberals, like over in the East Coast, yet Justin Trudeau seemingly being the one
00:03:09.860 to not get on board with the province's plans. He should be saying up at the podium,
00:03:15.020 I support these guys, I place my trust in them, and if they want to phone me up and say, here's how
00:03:19.540 I can support them, I'm going to do that because I'm 100% on Team Canada. And yet we have not heard
00:03:24.980 that from Justin Trudeau and some of his proxies. Is this just partisanship playing out at a time
00:03:29.960 when we need it the least? Boy, I hope not, but some of the evidence suggests so.