Juno News - Will Canada’s lockdown ever end？

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:07.280 You know, I had a conversation with someone not that long ago that has stuck with me.

00:00:11.440 I don't have children, as you know, as I've talked about in the past.

00:00:14.700 But I talked to someone who had a child who is, I believe, eight or nine years old.

00:00:19.480 And as we now pass the one-year mark of this pandemic, this is one-eighth of their child's life.

00:00:27.040 If you take away the first couple of years where they're not really engaging in the world in the same way,

00:00:31.880 it becomes even more stark.

00:00:33.380 One-sixth of their alert, aware, lucid life that has been consumed by lockdowns.

00:00:38.680 And as we go further and further down, the greater the proportion comes of children's lives

00:00:44.700 that have been dominated by mask wearing and social distancing and no socialization

00:00:49.740 because, well, that is antithetical to what is being fostered in the culture today.

00:00:54.560 And when I say the longer it goes on, there's a reason for that

00:00:58.100 because we see the rhetoric really moving towards this point where it's not ending anytime soon.

00:01:03.920 Take a look at this story in the National Post.

00:01:06.300 COVID cases are falling globally, but it's not over for anybody, WHO officially cautions.

00:01:13.020 Now, here on The Andrew Lawton Show, we don't defer to the WHO on, well, pretty much anything.

00:01:17.840 But we know that governments around the world are, including our own here in Canada.

00:01:22.140 So when they put out these edicts, it's important to pay attention to them.

00:01:26.100 One spokesperson for the World Health Organization, Dr. Mike Ryan, said that,

00:01:31.220 well, you know, it's great we see in some countries some downward trends,

00:01:34.180 but in other countries we don't see downward trends.

00:01:36.740 So therefore, Dr. Ryan cautions, it's a lesson for all of us that this is not over.

00:01:42.060 It's not over for anybody.

00:01:43.940 And any relaxation of our resolve is dangerous.

00:01:47.160 We need to be very aware the virus still has a lot of energy.

00:01:50.800 And if the measures we apply are not persistent, comprehensive,

00:01:54.380 and aimed at continuing to suppress transmission while introducing vaccine,

00:01:59.100 we will pay a price.

00:02:01.400 Yes, persistence and suppression are the key words there

00:02:04.860 because it's pretty much the only thing governments are persisting at is suppression.

00:02:09.200 And again, a divide, a great divide between actual public health measures

00:02:13.380 and COVID theater that's taking place.

00:02:15.920 Now, I know I've had a lot of disagreement from listeners on this,

00:02:19.580 and I don't particularly care.

00:02:20.780 We can all have our own perspectives.

00:02:22.500 I do take the virus seriously.

00:02:24.300 I do think people, especially those with comorbidities,

00:02:27.380 those with pre-existing conditions, need to take it seriously.

00:02:30.620 But there is zero justification for the in-home imprisonment,

00:02:35.860 for house arrest of children.

00:02:37.720 There is zero justification for completely writing off

00:02:41.240 any sort of economic growth or even economic survival

00:02:44.600 just because we've determined that lockdowns make it look like

00:02:47.820 we're doing something about this when we know they are not effective.

00:02:51.840 All they do is delay the inevitable.

00:02:54.040 They don't achieve the stated result.

00:02:57.560 And if we are, in fact, waiting for the vaccine,

00:03:00.460 that's what the WHO has said there,

00:03:02.080 that, well, we just have to keep the suppression of this long enough

00:03:05.240 that we can all get vaccinated. 1.00

00:03:06.720 Well, Canadians are screwed. 0.99

00:03:08.340 Canada has proven itself to be unable to do this vaccine rollout. 1.00

00:03:13.060 I remember when we were in 20th place in the world

00:03:15.640 and then 30th and then 35th and 40th.

00:03:18.460 And now we are all, there are almost 50 countries ahead of Canada

00:03:22.980 as far as their share of their citizens and residents getting vaccinated.

00:03:27.560 And Canada is just nowhere near even being in the ballpark.

00:03:31.860 And we're not just talking about Israel and the United Arab Emirates,

00:03:35.220 which have done particularly well on this,

00:03:36.980 but countries that one doesn't think of

00:03:39.180 as being at the forefront of, well, anything.

00:03:42.420 No offense to places like the Seychelles in Indonesia,

00:03:45.600 which are not exactly developed nations,

00:03:48.340 but they're doing better than Canada

00:03:50.240 in a lot of metrics at getting their citizens vaccinated.

00:03:54.640 Israel is preparing to reopen things in a matter of months.

00:03:58.260 Now, I've got some very significant qualms

00:04:00.580 with Israel's vaccine passport approach,

00:04:03.180 but you know what?

00:04:04.080 Israel is at least opening 0.59

00:04:05.880 and they have a track that they're on

00:04:08.180 in which they want to say that the country is open

00:04:10.440 and there are going to be a lot of Canadians

00:04:12.480 that are finding that they are actually excluded

00:04:15.500 from being able to go to certain places

00:04:17.700 because those places all expect anyone being there to be vaccinated

00:04:21.980 and Canadians are going to be at the back of this. 0.70

00:04:25.080 And it's why I have some sympathy for the now former head

00:04:28.320 of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Mark Machen,

00:04:31.620 who decided that he would go with his partner

00:04:34.160 to the United Arab Emirates, to the Emirate of Dubai,

00:04:37.180 to get vaccinated.

00:04:38.980 Now, there may be more to the story than has been reported.

00:04:41.960 Mark Machen said it was a personal trip

00:04:44.340 and he didn't want it to become the subject of discussion,

00:04:47.720 but the Wall Street Journal reported that he was over in the UAE

00:04:50.760 and I believe is still there awaiting his second dose to get vaccinated.

00:04:54.520 Now, we've decided to make travel the unforgivable sin of Canadian politics.

00:04:59.800 A lot of people still paying for Rod Phillips,

00:05:01.980 the former Ontario finance minister's decision

00:05:04.720 to spend Christmas in St. Bart's.

00:05:07.400 But the reality is that travel itself was not the problem.

00:05:11.460 And I know we talked about this back in December.

00:05:14.120 The issue was Rod Phillips traveling

00:05:15.900 while he was a minister in a government

00:05:18.100 that was telling people not to travel.

00:05:20.280 The hypocrisy rather than the travel was the problem.

00:05:23.280 And that's why I wasn't too upset

00:05:25.240 when a bunch of Alberta cabinet ministers had been in Hawaii

00:05:28.340 as well as staffers in Jason Kenney's government

00:05:30.680 because that government hadn't been telling people not to travel.

00:05:34.160 So they weren't the problem.

00:05:35.920 Now, Mark Machen is a guy who hobnobs with the global elite.

00:05:39.220 He's spoken at the Davos Forum.

00:05:41.200 He was actually there a few weeks ago at the virtual Davos Summit

00:05:45.380 talking about who knows what because it was behind closed doors.

00:05:48.500 So there are lots of questions one might raise about him,

00:05:51.180 but I do not for a second judge him based on wanting to get vaccinated

00:05:55.780 when it seems like no one in Canada is going to for quite some time.

00:06:01.340 But this is now enough to get him ousted.

00:06:04.200 Now, I think that there's a big challenge when Canadians start seeing

00:06:07.920 that the elites play by different rules than the rest of us plebs do. 0.56

00:06:11.740 And that's perhaps the great injustice in what happened with Mark Machen.

00:06:15.380 Canadians that don't have the ability to hop on a plane and go to UAE,

00:06:18.880 that can't afford the quarantine hotel upon their return to Canada,

00:06:22.160 that can't take the time off work or can't work remotely,

00:06:25.200 that they see someone who's handling their money going and doing this thing they never could.

00:06:29.740 Well, unfortunately, the world has always been filled with that inequality.

00:06:33.980 But if you take a purely utilitarian view of this matter,

00:06:37.200 well, that is one fewer person or two fewer people actually in the line waiting to get vaccinated in Canada.

00:06:44.020 He didn't go and bill the taxpayers for it, as far as we know.

00:06:47.500 He went on his own dime, on his own time, got vaccinated.

00:06:51.560 Well, that's one fewer person, two fewer people that Canadians need to wait behind to get vaccinated,

00:06:57.360 which is a great service to this country, if you ask me.

00:07:00.000 He's not, again, so far as I can tell, been telling anyone else not to travel.

00:07:06.160 The federal government has.

00:07:07.920 The federal government has set out rules that only affect ordinary people,

00:07:11.560 because if you've got enough money, if you've got enough flexibility,

00:07:14.360 you can actually do whatever you want.

00:07:16.780 And that's the reality of this pandemic,

00:07:18.880 is that the restrictions are targeting a certain class of people

00:07:23.160 that the government really doesn't care about.

00:07:26.260 And this is the real injustice from the government at this,

00:07:30.500 is that they're putting all these rules and measures forward,

00:07:33.080 taking something that is technically legal.

00:07:34.980 It's not illegal to travel.

00:07:36.220 It's not illegal to leave your country or to return to your country.

00:07:39.260 But they're making it so cumbersome and cost prohibitive

00:07:42.700 that the average person cannot do it.

00:07:45.120 But the super rich, the elites, well, they can do whatever they want

00:07:47.820 because they just have the money to make it happen.

00:07:51.000 And the Trudeau government doesn't actually seem to care about that.

00:07:54.580 They know it's happening.

00:07:55.460 Just take a look at the influx of people at these quarantine hotels 0.98

00:07:59.160 in the rollout of it.

00:08:00.820 They had massive, massive numbers of people

00:08:03.240 that were trying to go into hotels,

00:08:05.480 so much so that there were hours-long waits.

00:08:07.500 People were busting the booking line

00:08:09.640 because there were so many people coming back into the country 1.00

00:08:12.200 that were affected by this.

00:08:14.560 Is travel really the problem?

00:08:16.460 Is it fair to scapegoat travelers the way the government has

00:08:19.360 just to distract from their own ineffectiveness

00:08:22.960 and ineptitude in getting vaccines,

00:08:26.160 in managing the pandemic domestically,

00:08:28.380 in getting aid to where the aid is required?

00:08:31.580 You may not like that people are traveling abroad.

00:08:33.900 That's fine.

00:08:34.420 It's not for everyone.

00:08:35.780 But don't play the government's game

00:08:38.360 when they try to get everyone to look at all of these other things

00:08:41.160 that are happening

00:08:41.780 so that they don't look at what's happening right here in Canada.

00:08:44.900 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:08:47.100 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - March 07, 2021

Will Canada’s lockdown ever end？

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