Leave it to Trudeau to make the economy a partisan issue
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202.16539
Summary
The coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the country, and the number of confirmed cases continues to rise. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been slow to get on board with the plan to re-open the nation's hospitals, and some critics have accused him of partisanship.
Transcript
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Remember during the early days of all of this when we were told we're all in this together and
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leave partisanship behind? We were all supposed to rally behind all the various different chief
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medical officers, the premiers, the national leaders, and we would all do what's best for
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the country together. Kind of made sense at the time. I mean, a lot of people used it to blunt
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criticism of federal officials like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but you know, otherwise the broad
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sentiment correct. No? Sure. Why then are some people not following it anymore? It seems like
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increasingly the response to the coronavirus and particularly the reopenings have become a deeply
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partisan issue. And a lot of this is starting at the top. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
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he had called for national coordination among all the different premiers. He only did this though
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after a couple premiers, John Horgan, Jason Kenney putting forward his five-point plan,
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others putting forward these various plans that showed that the premiers were leading the charge.
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Justin Trudeau then calling for national coordination. I guess he didn't want to see
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control slip away from his fingertips. But the problem is that healthcare is a provincial issue,
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and we've also seen that one size does not fit all. So all the different measures that are
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introduced in different provinces, well, they make sense for some provinces. Quebec and Ontario,
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the hardest hit. New Brunswick, hardly any cases at all. Nunavut, zero. So of course,
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you're going to have different policies for different provincial levels. Well, Justin Trudeau
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has taken his criticism one step further. The other day, he actually said he is very worried
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that hasty reopenings are going to see another flare-up in the summer, and we're not going to be
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able to go out and enjoy the summer. Kind of a downer, kind of also going up against the premiers
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in all of this. Because if you look at their different plans, for the most part, they are all
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three or four or five stage reopenings. Very cautious plans. And they all say, if we're not
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ready to move on to the next stage, we're going to. And they also say, if we realize we've gone to
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one stage, and man, this thing's blowing up on us, we're going to close it back up, and we're going to
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go back to the previous stage. Steady as she goes. There's not a single government official in Canada
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who's calling for some massive green light reopening, where we all just start running around and doing
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whatever we please. And it should be noted, polls show that Canadians, even if they were given the
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liberty to do that, most of them wouldn't. They would make their own judicious decisions. And yet
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we've got a whole bunch of voices out there in the media, on social media, who are almost taking
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these partisan approaches to say, yes, here's why reopenings are wrong, and it's just conservatives
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who want them, and it's just business people, and all of that. As if they don't understand that the
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economy is not just a word to refer to the stock market, it is a word to refer to our very
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foundations of our way of life. And a lot of people looking for opportunities to cheap shot say Doug
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Ford, too hasty with the reopening, he has been incredibly cautious. And it should be noted that
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the premiers of this country, who are all in favor of some form of reopening, they represent, yes,
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conservatives, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, John Horgan, NDP premier, he's taken a pretty good approach.
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We've got liberals, like over in the East Coast, yet Justin Trudeau seemingly being the one
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to not get on board with the province's plans. He should be saying up at the podium,
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I support these guys, I place my trust in them, and if they want to phone me up and say, here's how
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I can support them, I'm going to do that because I'm 100% on Team Canada. And yet we have not heard
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that from Justin Trudeau and some of his proxies. Is this just partisanship playing out at a time
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when we need it the least? Boy, I hope not, but some of the evidence suggests so.