Juno News - April 20, 2021


Ontarians are pushing back against the government's nonsense


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

195.60614

Word Count

739

Sentence Count

42


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ontario is in a crazy situation right now where it has some truly remarkable laws on the books
00:00:11.820 that are not being enforced, that nobody is following, and that many politicians are speaking
00:00:17.380 out against. And yet it seems like the provincial government is being defiant in not backing down
00:00:22.660 on those laws. What are you talking about, Fury? They got rid of the rules when it comes to
00:00:26.620 shutting down the playgrounds, which they did controversially on Friday. They got rid of that
00:00:30.840 other law saying they're going to be randomly stopping people in the street, pedestrians and
00:00:35.180 motorists. Yes, they got rid of the ones that caused the greatest backlash and the ones that
00:00:39.140 I think people knew the most about. But there are also some other truly bizarre nitpicky laws
00:00:44.400 that remain on the books and that the government is, yes, saying they're going to remain in place
00:00:50.120 for, I don't know, for the next four or five weeks for the length of this latest stay-at-home order.
00:00:55.100 Those include no sitting on picnic tables. Yes, they're there in the parks, but they are banned.
00:01:00.660 You can be charged for sitting on a picnic table. Really? Yes, really. No playing catch with your
00:01:07.460 friend, with your ball team, with your own children, with two small kids, siblings who live in the same
00:01:13.000 household. That is against the law. Really? Yes, really. No meeting up a friend, meeting up with a
00:01:18.200 friend, and going and lining up for a latte at an outdoor pickup window, going for a stroll, and then
00:01:24.000 sitting down on the grass in the park together and having a little chat. That is against the law
00:01:29.000 in Ontario right now. It's really quite something. Those were sort of the secondary, second-tier
00:01:34.340 announcements that were made by the government last Friday. And people are really frustrated with
00:01:38.960 them. People are speaking out against those as well. Now, I think a lot of people are just breaking
00:01:43.860 those laws right now, engaging in a million little acts of civil disobedience every day, because they
00:01:48.560 probably don't even know these laws are in effect. They are so bizarre, and they haven't really been
00:01:53.600 communicated that well. I think other people are deliberately saying, well, we know these laws are
00:01:58.680 in effect. We ain't following them. But what does it say when a government gets to a point where
00:02:03.720 they're passing all these very aggressive laws? And a lot of people saw that press conference on
00:02:08.520 Friday. I mean, boy, they were sounding ominous notes about how serious it was, and how there would be
00:02:13.560 enforcement and so forth, how lawbreakers, how they would be dealt with and so forth. What does it say
00:02:18.400 when you bring in these laws? You've got police associations saying they won't enforce some of
00:02:22.480 them. You've got basically millions of people flat out ignoring them and going on and breaking those
00:02:27.860 laws. And then you have politicians like mayors and others stepping forward and saying, we don't even
00:02:32.480 really support all of this. There are now various industry associations related to soccer, basketball,
00:02:38.340 golf. They are saying, uh-uh, you can't close us down. Reopen it. So basketball courts, outdoor
00:02:44.260 basketball courts, they are technically shut down for a lot of young people who live in apartment
00:02:48.700 buildings and so forth and very tightly confined spaces. That's one of their only outlets to just
00:02:54.520 sort of get outside and get some physical fitness. And you've got groups organizing to say, reopen those.
00:03:00.400 Now, when it comes to Ontario soccer saying, we got to get soccer happening again pretty much
00:03:04.760 immediately. That's actually a thing that was not newly introduced on Friday. That's been a thing
00:03:09.620 that's been on the books for a while now. So what's interesting is after you had the government
00:03:14.300 overreach on Friday and police services push back and politicians and millions of people,
00:03:19.760 you've actually now got groups basically smelling weakness and saying, we're not buying this nonsense
00:03:24.940 from the government anymore. These outdoor restrictions that don't add up and we're going to push even
00:03:29.720 further. Really interesting to see that the government not really being humble at all and
00:03:34.600 really overreaching. And then it totally backfires. And it looks like the end result is that things are
00:03:40.320 going to be even more open than they were before they brought these overbearing restrictions in in the
00:03:46.080 first place.