Juno News - February 10, 2022Ontario has no plans to end its COVID-19 mandates
Episode Stats
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Summary
Ontario has no plans to lift the vaccine passport or the mask mandate. What on earth could be the reason for this? Why is this happening? Why are they holding on to these things that others have already gotten rid of?
Transcript
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There's no use denying it, and there's no point delaying the inevitable.
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COVID-19 rules are collapsing all across Canada.
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We've got Saskatchewan pretty much doing away with everything.
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We've got eastern provinces getting rid of a whole bunch of rules.
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They were some of the provinces that had the tightest lockdowns previously.
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And yet what's kind of interesting though is my home province of Ontario,
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They have no plans to do away with the vaccine passport and the mask mandate.
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We've got people all across the country saying,
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We've got public opinion polling showing that the majority of people say,
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Just let people make their own personal choices
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if they feel they need to take COVID precautions.
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We've got chief medical officers all across the country,
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So how can it possibly be that Ontario has no plans to do away with some of these rules
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when other provinces have gotten rid of all of them entirely pretty much?
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Well, originally Ontario had said they would end the vaccine passport system on January 17th
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and they would get rid of the mask mandate on March 28th.
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They plunged Ontario into lockdown yet again in January.
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And just to be clear, you don't need to check the timestamp here.
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A lockdown that a lot of people certainly thought was unjustified.
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More and more people have been saying as the months have gone by.
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So what are the plans now if January and March were the times to get rid of the passport and the mask mandate?
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Well, now the plans are, well, they have no plans.
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They talk about the gradual and cautious reopening of Ontario.
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They use those words so often, so many times in their documents.
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And they talk about an easing of different capacity limits and indoor gatherings.
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They say that's going to be the sort of final reopening announcement, March 14th.
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It keeps in place the vaccine passport system and the mask mandate forever.
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Well, I don't know about forever, but there's no indication when they're lifting it.
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Christine Elliott was actually asked about this at a press conference.
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And she said, yeah, there's no plan to lift the mask mandate or the vaccine passport system.
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Now, Brian Lilly did press Christine Elliott on and she said, okay, we're not planning to keep these things in forever.
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And I guess we can lift it sooner if necessary.
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Did they not look around and see what's happening in the world?
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Jurisdictions everywhere are lifting these things.
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And yet Ontario stubbornly digging in their heels and saying, we're not going to budge.
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Well, I don't think folks are going to like that very much.
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I think you're going to see a lot of pushback on all of that.
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And I have no insider knowledge to back this, but I anticipate things are going to move sooner.
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And Christine Elliott and Doug Ford are maybe previously saying they're going to move.