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If we’re going to study the suitable classes from the pandemic and act accordingly in the long run, we have to preserve our healthcare and long-term care programs on the entrance burner
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It will be attention-grabbing to understand how the Ontario election marketing campaign can be shaping up had it occurred a yr in the past. Final Might 7, the province was coming down off its third after which greatest wave of circumstances. ICU occupancy had lately peaked at 889 (it’s at the moment 207); dozens had been dying every single day; fewer than 400,000 Ontarians had been absolutely vaccinated. You couldn’t eat at a restaurant, even on the patio. You couldn’t store in particular person for non-essentials. You couldn’t go to church. Lots of people had been very severely pissed off.
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It doubtless would have made the election one thing of a referendum on Doug Ford and his authorities’s pandemic administration. And that may not have been very helpful, because the issues Ontario confronted through the pandemic had been a long time within the making and can want a long time to repair: Voting out Ford and in considered one of Steven Del Duca (Liberal) or Andrea Horwath (NDP) gained’t make a world of distinction in that regard.
However a spring 2021 election may also have targeted our attentions on the central questions the pandemic remains to be asking us: Will we decide to the kinds of huge enhancements in well being care and long-term care that helped a few of our peer jurisdictions climate the COVID storm higher than we did? And can we decide to sustaining these enhancements even when no different pandemic comes alongside for 25 or 50 or 100 years? What precisely would that seem like, and the way would we pay for it?
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Because it stands, it’s outstanding how little consideration these questions are getting. All of the events have needed proposals to develop hospitals, fund extra house care and recruit extra nurses and private assist staff and pay them higher. The New Democrats hit on a effective thought in “requir(ing) annual reporting to the legislature of public well being emergency preparedness.” If we’re going to study the suitable classes and act accordingly in the long run, we’d like in some way to maintain these points on the entrance burner.
However inflationary points, particularly within the housing market, plus the inhabitants’s normal want to show the web page appear to date to have pushed well being care and long-term care onto the again burner. On Friday, for instance, the lead articles on the Toronto Star’s Ontario politics webpage are about Toronto-region public transit, new-home development, the minimal wage, street tolls and a completely surprising Liberal proposal to deliver again optionally available Grade 13.
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Ontario’s final non-issue difficulty acquired taken out for a spin this week as effectively: Its ludicrous school-funding mannequin, which sees public and Catholic faculties take pleasure in taxpayer assist, however not these of different faiths. And Del Duca added a traditional Liberal twist to it.
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Minor, rote controversy erupted lately when it emerged Grade 8 college students at St. Patrick’s elementary in Woodstock, Ont. had been assigned anti-abortion posters as a part of the spiritual curriculum. This type of factor occurs a couple of times a yr: This college is “caught” busing children to the March for Life in Ottawa; that one awarding volunteer hours for pro-life actions. They’re, in spite of everything, Catholic faculties.
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For years the Greens have been the one celebration at Queen’s Park keen to suggest an answer, specifically amalgamating the general public and Catholic programs. That will require a Constitutional modification, however not the kind that requires different provinces to weigh in: Each Quebec and Newfoundland deconfessionalized their college programs after requesting the change from Ottawa. (The Star reported this week that the Greens had backed off their place, however a Inexperienced Get together spokesperson claims misunderstanding: “Our place stays that unifying the Catholic and public college boards needs to be a part of Ontario’s long run imaginative and prescient to strengthen public schooling.”) The Liberal place in authorities has basically been to barter with Ontario’s bishops to seek out some kludge of an answer whereby Catholic faculties behave only a bit much less Catholically — or say they are going to — after which hope the media transfer on to another difficulty, which we all the time do.
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It’s all the time been a weird stance, a dead-basic violation of the separation of church and state. However Del Duca, who’s Catholic and has two daughters in Catholic college, took it a step additional this week: He truly criticized Ford for not criticizing Catholic faculties that behave too Catholically!
“I don’t suppose it’s disruptive for a premier on this province to make use of a podium like this … to make crystal clear statements to everybody, together with Catholic college boards throughout this province, that sure behaviours usually are not acceptable,” Del Duca instructed reporters in Hamilton, referring to anti-abortion college actions. Solely a Liberal might boast of ignoring an issue extra righteously than his opponents. It should be an incredible life.
An outsider would possibly ask how this weird school-funding scenario might exist in a contemporary, secular nation and province that’s obsessive about rights and equality. To which I can solely say we’re effectively on our strategy to ignoring overstretched well being care and long-term care programs, regardless of having simply misplaced almost 13,000 of our fellow residents, many in horrifying circumstances. Or possibly we simply don’t suppose our legislators are as much as fixing the issue, so we’d as effectively cease worrying and benefit from the spring. We could be on to one thing there.
• E mail: [email protected] | Twitter: cselley
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