 By Pepper Parr
May 31st, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
There is a crusty old salt in the east end of the city who from time to time send us a note that actually makes a lot of sense.
Let me share it with you,
 That’s creative – effective, not so. “On the matter of masks” he opines. ”And looking beyond the junk science and conspiracy theories that abound and confuse, I think it is fairly obvious that wearing masks is at very least …. Helpfull … And just possibly more than that. Especially in preventing transmission.
 Masks have gone corporate. “I think we can also agree that masks are virtually useless at preventing reception/ingress via droplet /aerosol/ physical proximity or contact, and we have to be careful not to let our mask lull us into a false sense of safety.
“I’d suggest the mask argument is situational.
“I don’t wear a mask when I take my daily walk and I certainly don’t wear it at home.
“I do wear it every time I’m in my apartment elevator as a courtesy to others. NOT to protect myself.. It won’t!
 You should get a prize for wearing one of these. “I wear one when I go shopping and believe all stores should insist on wearing them within the store.
“And by the BTW, the LCBO should be emulating other retailers.
“I don’t wear it in the car on the way to and from but again …. In the elevator going home.
 Hand washing is the best defence you have – and it costs next to nothing. “I protect myself with an almost paranoid hand washing and sanitizing regime.
“People have the right to choose Not To Wear Masks. If they choose that option the store owner or other patron’s rights must hold equal value and suasion.
“No Mask …. No Entry …. is a reasonable position. Someone much smarter than me once said …”Your right to swing your fist freely … ends at m y nose!”
“There is probably a universal agreement that masks, while imperfect and certainly not foolproof, do help.
“Stay safe, keep others safe …. Wear a mask where appropriate, and as my old Mum always said: “Have You Washed Your Filthy Hands Yet?” She actually yelled it more than simply suggesting it.
 By Pepper Parr
May 27th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
It is getting a little confusing.
Emergency Orders are being extended for very short periods of time.
The most recent date is June 9th – a mere 12 days away.
We don’t seem to be getting clear reasons other than the “government continuing to protect the health and safety of the public during the COVID-19 outbreak.” And that “Public health and safety remain top priorities.”
We got that – we know that.
Could we have more in the way of detailed information on the why of it all ? Why are an additional 13 days needed? What difference will it make ? The people of Ontario are law abiding people – they are also capable of asking sensible, responsible questions.
 The six foot rule didn’t seem to mean anything to this crowd. will we see a spike in infection 10 days from now. And if we don’t – what does that tell us? Have we got testing under control? Is the province looking for specific details to come out of the testing that will guide their next decision?
 Day after day the Premier and a few of his Ministers parade before the TV cameras. Good communications practice – the message has not become more focused. The public has trusted the Premier – the Premier now needs to trust the public. The Premier put himself and a couple of his Ministers before the television cameras every day. He will do a rant on the “greedy landlords”; he will rant about the irresponsible behaviour of those who gathered in Trinity Bellwoods Park last weekend.
He broke the rules on Mother’s Day and made that trip to his cottage.
There is a bit of discomfort building up – the public isn’t buying it all they way they were two weeks ago.
The provincial government is “extending all emergency orders in force under s.7.0.2 (4) of the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act.”
That is a very power piece of legislation and so far, for the most part, the public has gone along with their political leadership.
I have this sense that their grip on things isn’t as firm as I’d like it to be.
“Current emergency orders include the closure of outdoor playgrounds, play structures and equipment, public swimming pools and outdoor water facilities, as well as bars and restaurants except for takeout and delivery.
“Additionally, there continues to be restrictions on social gatherings of more than five people, and staff redeployment rules remain in place for long-term care homes and congregate settings like retirement homes and women’s shelters.
“We are extending these emergency orders to protect the health and safety of all individuals and families as we begin to gradually and safely reopen our province,” said Premier Doug Ford. “To build on the progress we have made to contain COVID-19, people should continue to follow these simple public health guidelines, practice physical distancing, wear a mask when it is a challenge to physical distance, and wash their hands regularly.
The following emergency orders have been extended until June 9, 2020:
• Closure of Establishments
• Prohibiting Organized Public Events, Certain Gatherings
• Work Deployment Measures for Health Care Workers
• Drinking Water Systems and Sewage Works
• Electronic Service
• Work Deployment Measures in Long -Term Care Homes
• Closure of Places of Non-Essential Businesses
• Traffic Management
• Streamlining Requirements for Long-Term Care Homes
• Prohibition on Certain Persons Charging Unconscionable Prices for Necessary Goods
• Closure of Outdoor Recreational Amenities
• Enforcement of Orders
• Work Deployment Measures for Boards of Health
• Work Deployment Measures in Retirement Homes
• Access to COVID-19 Status Information by Specified Persons
• Service Agencies Providing Services and Supports to Adults with Developmental Disabilities
• Pickup and Delivery of Cannabis
• Signatures in Wills and Powers of Attorney
• Use of Force and Firearms in Policing Services
• Child Care Fees
• Agreements Between Health Service Providers and Retirement Homes
• Temporary Health or Residential Facilities
• Closure of Public Lands for Recreational Camping
• Work Deployment Measures for Service Agencies Providing Violence Against Women Residential Services and Crisis Line Services
• Limiting Work to a Single Long-Term Care Home
• Work Deployment Measures for District Social Services Administration Boards
• Deployment of Employees of Service Provider Organizations
• Work Deployment Measures for Municipalities
• Limiting Work to a Single Retirement Home
• Work Deployment Measures for Mental Health and Addictions Agencies
• Congregate Care Settings
• Access to Personal Health Information by Means of the Electronic Health Record
• Certain Persons Enabled to Issue Medical Certificates of Death
• Hospital Credentialing Processes
• Education Sector
• Management of Long-term Care Homes in Outbreak
 The strain on the Premier is becoming evident. The following orders have also been extended:
• Electricity Price for RPP Consumers (until May 31, 2020)
• Global Adjustment for Market Participants and Consumers (until June 1, 2020)
That’s a lot of orders.
We are all partners in this – help us feel more confident about what you are doing Premier.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
By Pepper Parr
May 24th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
There were two scenes that I came across as I drove from Milton to Hamilton this morning to get some work done at the office. Both seemed to me to be a message – word that all was far from lost.
We are in a pickle, for certain, and we need to have our wits about us as we take care of ourselves and those close to us.
We also need leaders who have it within them to make the hard unpopular decisions to get us through this pandemic.
The scientists think they know what to do; the politicians need only to hear what the scientists are saying and then take the appropriate action. The solution seems to be to take every step possible to ensure that the virus does not spread through the community any further. We aren’t doing that as well as we need to – there are still too many new infections being reported.
 Plants floating in a pond on Watson Road South in Puslinch Township, Wellington County. If we don’t keep our distance from others the lockdown we are in will get tighter.
 The words of a child. The Regional Medical Officer of Health (MoH) issued a Class Order. She wasn’t asking us to do what she believed was right and she wasn’t telling us to do what she believed was right – she was ordering us to do what she believed is right.
The Medical Officer of Health has a tremendous amount of power. Her words need to be taken very seriously.
I saw those plants in that pond and the child’s painting in front of a Canadian flag as signs that we can and will get through this.
Just follow the instructions and don’t be stupid.
The people who learned that they had been infected last week were people who picked up the virus from someone they may not have even known.
On Mother’s Day, May 10th, the Premier had his daughters over to the house for the first time since the lock down. He certainly wasn’t setting a good example; if he can do that then everyone can.
The virus is understood to take 14 days to spread once you have been infected. Today is the 24th – will the number of infections show a spike when the MoH reports on Monday? – they did when the last results were reported on Thursday of last week.
Class Order issued by the Medical Officer of Health
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
 By Nicki St George
May 19th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
The Gazette put together a team of parents who are at home taking care of their children while the province goes through school closures and the shut down of everything other than essential services.
Ashley Worobec and Nicki St. George write regularly on how they are coping. We invite parents to take part in this initiative by adding comments to each Coping with COVID19 & the kids article.
Ashley Worobec is a sports-based chiropractor living a life of fitness, health, and parenthood in Burlington. Nicki St George is a teacher, a recovering cancer patient and a mother working on an MBA
WEEK 9-
This week has been a blur.
Dan was busy working on a deadline for the 9-week project that has been occupying his days and nights and I was back in full-swing at work with a flurry of emails and zoom meetings to attend. The children were often left to their own devices (literally and figuratively). I now have the musical stylings of Molly and Daisy from something called Toy Heroes permanently stuck in my head. My penance for neglecting Beatrix.
 Screen time – determining which level is the challenge. Of course, while I am feeling overwhelmed by feelings of guilt over this, the children see completely oblivious and are happy to have fewer restrictions placed on their device time. My mantra this week has told me that this is all temporary, but I still worry about the longer-term effects of too much screen time and how that will stunt the creativity of my children.
I now separate screen time into the following categories: educational, games, and family TV time. This last category is the cause of some heated debates in our family. Nailed It seems to be the only acceptable compromise. Leo, a fellow night owl, sneaks out of his room every night after bedtime and begs me to watch Community with him – how can I say no? It seems the children are most amenable to compromises when they are breaking their bedtime curfew.
Leo’s bedroom is a library. There are stacks of books everywhere and he has read every one of them. So at night I am faced with the choice of allowing him to use EPIC (an online database with a huge selection of books that he likes), i.e. more screen time, or do I allow him to sneak out and watch TV with me? I know there is a third option, but he is good company and I love laughing with him. Sometimes he goes into Bea’s room and plays dolls with her. She likes playing with him the best.
I still managed to get out for my morning walks every day this week, and we ate dinner together every night as a family, so I am still going to consider this past week a win. I did burn an entire batch of homemade granola, a sign that I was slightly off my mom-game, but my homemade chicken soup and scones will make up for that (I hope). I ordered hand-sewn masks for the family by a local Burlington mother who has been laid off. The idea of leaving my house with the kids while we are all donning face masks fills me with both hope and dread.
 When it is just Nicki and the kids – no such thing as social distancing. I have felt frustrated all week by the lack of clarity around social distancing rules. In other provinces and countries, the citizens are given direction about how to expand their ‘bubbles’ or at least they are aware of when they might be able to start this process. Of my friends, some are being very careful and have not seen their boyfriends in 9 weeks and others are being a lot less careful.
I have reconciled that outdoor visits while maintaining a 2-meter distance is okay; however, the weather this week put the kibosh on any plans that I had to see friends in this way.
By Joe Gaetan
May 17th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Joe Gaetan is a regular Gazette reader who more often than not gets it right. He can be, has been, a trenchant critic. He is Italian.
“First, I would like to say that this will be the last issue of my reporting on the Covid19 pandemic. Secondly, I recently read an article entitled, “Seniors with Covid19 show unusual symptoms Doctors Say”. The premise of the article is that some seniors experience unusual symptoms, please read it and share as you see fit, https://khn.org/news/seniors-with-covid-19-show-unusual-symptoms-doctors-say/
“ When I first started doing this I did so because I wanted to see how Canada was doing compared to Italy. As time marched on I became interested in what was occurring in South Korea (for obvious reasons) and the USA (because they are our neighbor). And now it is time to move on and I am getting sick and tired of hearing phrases such as “during these difficult times” blah blah.
“This chart shows the average number of new cases per day for the months of March, and April and for May to the 15th. The U.S.A. is currently running at an average of 25,951 new cases per day while S Korea is seeing about 17 new cases per day. Canada is now seeing 1,419 new cases per day on average while Italy is at 1,228. We have a way to go.
 Cases per day, by month, comparing Canada and Italy. “This series of charts and my favorite are the % Daily Change in Cases that tell us if we are winning or losing the battle against Covid19. Canada is within striking distance, but we need to be below 1%.
 Canada’s curve – needs to be brought down to less than 1% “S Korea is the benchmark for this. As you can see S.K was running at a rate of 1.85% back in March. The rest is history and their average % daily change rate for May is .16% down from an average of.32% for April. Canada per the above chart is at an average daily % change rate of 1.65%, so I suspect we may be 45 to 50 days away from where SK is today % wise but with way more cases.
Penny Hersh, a strong face mask advocate, said in a comment: “My concern has been that once things started opening up that residents would not do what they should to protect themselves and others.
“Yesterday, there was a huge lineup for ice cream at La Creme de la Creme on John Street. The lineup outside of the shop snaked all around the street and around the corner. No physical distancing was taking place and no one was wearing a facial mask.
“Friday evening, about 5 or 6 cars of residents( about 15 people) came together in the parking lot across from Emma’s and stood in the parking lot some drinking and all socializing once again no physical distancing or masks.”
The message is getting out to family’s – it doesn’t seem to be getting out to the younger people who seem to think they are immune to the virus. The data does say that this cohort is infected less than other cohorts – but they are being infected. No one has come up with a way to get this message across.
 They are sometimes oblivious to the obvious.  South Korea’s curve – this is where we need to get to.  Joseph A. Gaetan has a BGS degree in applied studies, earned through studies at The University of Waterloo and Athabasca University. He also earned a Province of Ontario Engineering Technology Certificate through Fanshawe College, and for 8 years worked at earning a trade becoming a Journeyman Machinist. He also studied French at the Centre Linguistique du Collège de Jonquière and Italian at Mohawk College. In addition, he has taken online courses through the EDx platform taking courses from Harvard, The University of Queensland, Wellesley and Delft Wageningen, he is currently working at learning 6 languages through Duolingo. His work career includes being a Machinist, a CNC programmer, a business owner, a consultant and the Director of Organizational Development for a Fortune 100 company. All of this thanks to life-long learning.
 By Ray Rivers
May 15th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
“f….g bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards.” ”My message to them other than ‘thanks a f…g lot’ is go vegan.” (Bryan Adams – Instagram)
 Bryan Adams: It will take decades to live down the rant. Nobody is denying that Bryan Adams’ rant was stupid and pointless. He has apologized for offending anyone and taken down his post. We define racism as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race, based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. So was Adams being racist?
Of course not and those accusing him should be ashamed of themselves for playing the racist card. What do we call those people so consumed by their own ethnicity that see everything through a racial lens? Adams, a 30 year vegan, claims his rant was only about the consumption of meat, and wild animals in particular.
Besides being an outstanding musician and song writer, Adam’s philanthropic work to improve education around the world has earned him the Order of BC and the Order of Canada. None of his harshest critics, including a vocal MLA from BC, or the head of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, Amy Go, can hold a candle to that kind of humanity. Ms. Go suggested that his Order of Canada be forfeited because of the rant.
 Chinese wet market Wet markets still exist in a number of developing nations and bats and bat meat is sold at some of them. Bats have been consumed throughout Asia, in Africa and even in early Australia for eons. In the Wuhan market the South China Morning Post reported that 120 wildlife animals across 75 species had been for sale before the Chinese government finally shut down the market and announced that wild animals would no longer be sold for consumption in China.
It used to be when we wanted to condemn someone we’d just call them Hitler. Both the British government and Hillary Clinton once compared Russian leader Vlad Putin to the Nazi dictator after he had invaded Ukraine. But that is so passé these days. Besides, if you have to invoke Hitler you’ve already lost the argument. Today the term is ‘racist’.
 Derek Sloan: rookie Conservative MP The rookie Conservative MP and leadership candidate Derek Sloan questioned the loyalty and patriotism of Dr. Tam, Canada’s chief medical officer, by asking whether she was working for Canada or China. And suddenly there was this spontaneous chorus calling out… racism. Sloan presented no evidence of disloyalty so his insensitive question was… just an insult. And that dumb move has likely disqualified him, at least in the voters eyes, from winning the Tory leadership.
Sloan just needed to look at Tam’s record as chief medical officer to see she could never have been working for China. After all, China had almost completely eliminated its outbreak. But Canada, with less that 3% of the China’s population, has almost as many COVID 19 cases and more deaths than China, if we can believe their numbers.
Had Tam been working for China, or any of the neighbouring Asian nations, she might have thought to close our borders earlier, as the authorities in Hong Kong, where she was born, had done. Instead she advised keeping the borders open while thousands of Chinese, including some from disease ridden Wuhan, arrived by the plane load. That was followed by travellers from disease plagued Iran and then Europe and the United States bringing their disease here until the virus had become embedded in our community.
 Dr. Theresa Tam And If Tam had been working for China she would have mandated that all Canadians wear face coverings in public, the way they are required in South Korea, China, or her native Hong Kong. The seniors in long term care, who make up 80% of Canada’s fatalities from COVID 19, contracted the virus only from staff or visitors – few or none of whom were wearing masks when the care centres became infected.
After all, Dr. Tam had advised non-symptomatic people against wearing masks in public, suggesting they would be prone to wear them improperly and actually increase exposure. After the US government advised all Americans to wear a mask in public she had to backtrack a little. Still, Canada is one of the few countries which has still not mandated the use of face coverings in public.
Canadians are confused by this policy vacuum on protective coverings. How does one otherwise protect themselves, and others, on subways, narrow sidewalks and in grocery stores? Aren’t masks the key to being able to reopen the economy? In the end businesses like the Longo grocery chain have had to fill the policy gap by requiring all staff and customers to wear a mask inside the store. They’ll even give you one to wear.
 Dr. Theresa Tam: doing an impossible job under impossible conditions Dr. Tam is a paediatric infectious disease specialist and a former assistant deputy minister of the infectious disease prevention and control branch of Public Health Canada. She co-chaired Canada’s handbook on pandemic preparedness, following the SARS outbreak in 2006. Those are brilliant credentials and hard earned qualifications. So why haven’t the outcomes been more consistent with the potential of the person giving advice.
Derek Sloan is a social conservative and he has been soliciting support from socially conservative Canadians of Chinese origin who are deeply opposed to China’s current government. He even has a Chinese-language section on his website. That hardly sounds like a Sinophobe, or an anti-Asian racist.
According to a recent poll only 14% of Canadians rate China positively today. That is just slightly ahead of how we feel about Saudi Arabia (10%) and far lower than how we felt back in 2005 (58%). 85% feel China has been dishonest about the impact of COVID 19 and over three quarters want the government to have nothing to do with Chinese electronics giant Huawei.
But attitudes are also shifting in China. Many people in Wuhan apparently are still unsure of how the virus started there. They have been told by their government that it was introduced there by the US army. And the Chinese people are angry over why Canada is still keeping Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou under house arrest.
China, perhaps sensing widespread international resentment over the pandemic is turning inwards with a new five year plan focussed on domestic priorities. It knows that it has been all too successful as the world’s factory for everything, and that is almost certain to change.
Everybody wants to get back to normal, a time when we could go to a sit-down restaurant or hug our children and friends without worrying about the rising body count. We believe we are the victims of some dystopian scenario not of our own creation. And while we could have managed things better on our end, we are pretty sure where this horrible and relentless virus came from.
So it is not unremarkable that even we mild mannered and generally tolerant Canadians are beginning to see senseless acts of hatred and violence among us, as we have recently in Vancouver. And this kind of hatred is generally directed towards people who had nothing to do with wet markets in Wuhan, if that was even the birthplace of this pandemic.
 The message doesn’t always get through. And those who falsely cry out racist, like the fabled creatures crying out wolf, just confuse and numb us. And that makes it easier to avoid confronting the real racism out there driven, as always, by ignorance – the absence of truth. And people want to know the truth.
Without the truth we are left with conspiracy theories like Mr. Sloan musing that Canada’s chief medical officer might really be working for China. But that wasn’t even the right question. Instead of national loyalty he should have directly challenged Dr. Tam’s professional judgement in her role as Canada’s chief medical officer of health. Though he’d probably still be accused of racism for that.
 Ray Rivers writes regularly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background links:
Bryan Adams Rant – Bryan Adams – Chinese Xenophobia –
Wet markets – Longo Masks – Derek Sloan –
Dr. Tam – Attitudes – Canada-China –
By Pepper Parr
May 12th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
The strategic thinkers ask the “What if” questions.
Their job is to attempt to look over the horizon and figure out what lies ahead and then plan for that possible eventuality as well as they can.
The province is stepping very gingerly into opening things up. Parks and provincial conservation areas have been opened. Retail is permitted to sell you something and have it delivered to you at the curb.
I saw one clothing store promoting their product line – couldn’t get my head around buying a suit without tying it on first and then having the alterations done.
Restaurants are hoping the province will come up with some regulations they can live with – staying alive is their issue at this point.
We Canadians watch with despair and at times total disbelief at what is taking place south of us. Hearing the Premier insist that the border between us and them be kept closed now sounds like a really good idea. Interesting change for Canadians.
The province is dragging its feet just a little in announcing when and if schools will be opened. My take is that the writing is all on the wall – see you all in September is the message I think we can expect – but I’ve been wrong before.
 What if ? The BIG question is – where will we be in December?
Will there be Christmas? If the province finds that every time they loosen up there are spikes in the number of new infections meaning they have to clamp down.
December is the month for retail. It is also a huge festive family month.
But what if things are just so bad that it would be necessary to put and keep regulations in place that severally limit what we will be able to do ?
The Premier broke the rules on Mother’s Day – will he, and others be able to exercise the discipline needed to stay the course should we be in December where we are now ?
The leadership of the country keeps referring to this as a war with absolutely no actual war time experience. We may be about to have to learn just what hard times are.
The people who are doing that strategic thinking are, hopefully, asking the hard questions.
There once was a small community in California named Paradise, which is what the people who lived there thought it was – until forest fires burned down every dwelling. Nothing was left standing.
We no longer have plagues; there are crop failures, tragedy hits some families. Life has never been fair.
All we have is our own inner strength – we might want to think about just how strong we may have to be.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
By Ray Rivers
May 11th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
“All countries will wake up after the global pandemic with much higher debt levels. Canada is fortunate because we are starting at a much lower net debt-to-GDP level,”..…”If low interest rates are maintained, there is no good policy case for rushing to austerity — either spending cuts or tax increases.” (former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page)
Isn’t it a rule that one is supposed to become more conservative as they age? So I’m looking at the ballooning federal deficit – and it’s a lot of money. This year’s red ink may well stretch into the three hundred billion dollar mark. Government revenue has dropped like a lead weight and these monstrous payouts are rising like hydrogen blimps.
 720 billion is what it would cost to pay out a Universal Basic Income annually. Tory leader Scheer has grumbled that the $2000 a month in emergency funding (CERB) is discouraging folks from going to work, but CERB breezed through Parliament anyway. And he is wrong – it’s not the $2000 that is keeping folks at home – it’s the lockdown.
In fact Scheer should get on board with the other opposition parties, some voices within his own party, and even the Anglican Church, which are all calling for a permanent universal basic income (UBI). The COVID-19 health crisis landed on us with lightening speed and with it came the economic crisis, thanks to the necessary lockdown.
Since both crises will likely be with us, at least to the end of this year, those emergency funds will need to be extended. That sounds more and more like a UBI. Having already rejected implementing a proper UBI Mr. Trudeau needs a rethink. It is time for him to re-discover his social democratic roots and implement a permanent UBI or move aside for some one who will. There are those who once thought universal health care was impossible too.
UBI is not a new idea. There have been a number of pilot UBI projects around the world and the results have all been positive, even those in Ontario and Manitoba which were prematurely aborted. If mental health and income security mean anything to society UBI is a no-brainer. And there is no evidence that UBI provides a disincentive to work, so Mr. Scheer’s concern about ‘money for nothing’ turning us all into lazy bums is nonsense.
 As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has yet to take to the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Do the numbers. A UBI at the $2000 per month level for each of the 30 million Canadian adults might seem frighteningly high. But UBI would eliminate the need for old age security, unemployment insurance and a host of other federal and provincial income support programs in addition to the complex of welfare programs administered by all three levels of government. UBI would be taxable and possibly even clawed-back for high income earners at tax filing time. In the end the numbers should be, at a minimum, a wash.
UBI or not Canada is facing a record high deficit this year. But we’ve done this before. Does anyone remember that we were once heavily invested in the second world war? The federal government, unlike the provinces or municipalities is not constrained by debt, at least not in the short run. We print our own money and the Bank of Canada is buying up most of that debt. So we owe that money to ourselves.
But we should expect inflation when it is safe to reopen the economy. We’re already seeing some of that – especially hand sanitizers and meat products as the processing plants shut down. And inflation may affect our currency exchange rates, but even much of that is unlikely. After all, if there is an upside to this being the pandemic it is in that we are all in this together – a level playing field – this economic malaise is truly global. And inflation is an eventual pathway out of the debt, since today’s obligations will be smaller in tomorrow’s inflated dollars.
We can pay ourselves back once this is over. Canada ran sizeable deficits in the later Pierre Trudeau years, and right through the Mulroney near-decade. Yet after Jean Chretien balanced the budget both Harper and Trudeau inherited and grew one of the lowest debt-to-GDP economies in the G7. And even with a deficit of $300 billion our debt-to-GDP ratio will still be lower than when Chretien came into office, unless our economy really slips into the dark side.
 The federal government can just print all the money they want to distribute. Most economists and politicians agree with the current approach of keeping the fiscal taps running. But the truth is that UBI would be more efficient than what the PM is doing now. It would cost less, avoid duplication for some and inadvertent exclusion for others. It would also avoid the inevitable double-dipping and potential cheating inherent in the current mess of hastily developed income subsidy programs.
Still we shouldn’t be too worried about those deficit numbers even as we are getting more conservative in our golden years, at least not yet. We’re doing what we can – staying home, keeping our physical distance, washing our hands often and always wearing a mask in public. Governments may have been responsible for letting this outbreak get as bad as it is here in Canada. But they are doing the right thing in keeping the money flowing.
And they will need to do even more of that once we safely open up more economic activities. Already the federal minister of infrastructure, Catherine McKenna, is calling for shovel-ready projects to get us back to work sooner than later – but hopefully only when it is safe to do so. But even when we get back to full employment UBI makes for better social policy and sounder economic sense.
Ray Rivers writes regularly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background links:
Deficit – Biggest Deficit – CERB –
Wage Subsidy – Who’s Missing – UBI –
 By Pepper Parr
May 5th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
What’s happening to us?
We read that thousands have died – from something we don’t understand and nor do the scientists who are struggling to find a vaccine that will prevent the spread of the disease.
 Self-isolating We are asked to stay inside as much as possible and when we do go out we are asked not to congregate with people. Don’t stop to talk to people – if you do keep at least six feet of space between people.
 No hug – not even a Hi – just a wave Children don’t get to see their grand parents; some parents don’t get to see their parents because they are in a retirement home.
We are told to wash our hands often – at least every hour.
We can’t go to work and when we are able to get back to work we are warned it is going to be a much much different environment.
How did we get to this point ?
There is a delightful children’s bedtime story – short – that has a lot for adults – it may have been meant for us and not the children.
There is something to think about for all of us in that short clip. Part of the answer as to what is happening to us is in that story.
By Pepper Parr
April 29th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
In normal times the administration of the city is in the hands of the City Manager who works at the will of council.
Council also issues Staff Directions which set out some very specific tasks they expect the City Manager to ensure gets done on time and within the budget.
But these are not normal times.
On March 21st, Mayor Marianne Meed Ward declared a State of Emergency and the role city council played going forward was severely diminished. When the province declared a State of Emergency that meant many of the instructions as to what a city had to do came from the province.
The City manager was, to a large degree bound by what the province was calling for.
So – what was a mere city councillor to do?
In Burlington several of the Councillors began to chafe a bit and worked on the city manager to get more in the way of information as to just what was happening day to day.
 City manager Tim Commisso: With most of the power over local decision making – there might be some reluctance to give it back to council. As Chair of what is known as the Emergency Coordinating Group (ECG) the city manager takes the steps he thinks are necessary to ensure the safe operation of the city and while city hall is closed to the public there are some people working on tasks that can only be done from within city hall.
The ECG is made up of a large number of people. They meet twice a day on-line and make sure that what needs doing is done.
My understanding is that the City Manager is now giving the city Councillors an update once a week as to what was done and why.
That information however is not being shared.
If the Councillors do have a weekly report they aren’t sharing that information with their constituents. One wonders why.
One could also ask why the City Manager doesn’t share those reports with the public.
An opinion piece in the Toronto Star on April 27th raised some serious questions under the headline: “Use of municipal emergency powers has gone too far.”
Anneke Smit and Alexandra Flynn argue that “meaningful, participatory governance has been thrust aside” in the name of keeping people safe while a virus kills hundreds across the province.
“Municipalities have very weak powers in Canada’s constitutional framework, cities are subject to provincial whims when it comes to both stable funding and political structures. Local governments are overlooked in conversations about democracy and governance, yet they are responsible for many of the decisions that most directly affect our daily lives.
“Canadian municipalities have made big decisions from the start of the crisis, such as enforcing physical distancing; dealing with the functioning — or not — of public transit; access to parks; and deciding whether to dedicate extra space for pedestrians and cyclists to name a few.
“Canada’s municipalities are not governed by a “strong mayor” system. This means that city council as a whole makes decisions, not just mayors. Provincial state of emergency legislation changes this. In most provinces, municipalities have the power to declare their own state of emergency. In its survey of 65 of the largest Canadian municipalities, the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) counts 56 that have done so, in some cases for the first time in history, leaving mayors able to bypass city council votes and act unilaterally.
“While B.C.’s emergency legislation requires a mayor to consult the rest of council before they act, this is not the case in most Canadian provinces. CUI counts 10 of the surveyed cities having cancelled city council meetings during COVID-19 (including Toronto, Halifax, Windsor, Winnipeg and Edmonton). The cancellation or diminishment of council meetings means residents won’t know who made what decisions, which questions were asked, or hear staff advice, and decisions on many key issues not immediately related to the pandemic are simply being postponed.
“What is more, 28 of the municipalities have also cancelled committee meetings, and 34 have cancelled public consultations. These meetings are the backbone of local democracy. They give the public a chance to directly weigh in on issues that matter to them in their communities.
“In the early stages of the pandemic, decisions had to be made quickly. A single, authoritative voice on behalf of a government was arguably necessary. Five weeks later, much of the dust has settled, and we are left with unaccountable local decision-making in many communities and no immediate end in sight to states of emergency.”
That pretty well sets out what is taking place in Burlington.
It doesn’t have to be this way – the elected members of council can agitate and advocate for a more open process – and those with the courage to do so might better serve their constituents by being more vocal.
All seven were elected and they speak as the will of council.
The Gazette for one would like to hear that will expressed verbally.
 Elected less than two years ago – they have now let someone else make the decisions. Related news stories:
Mayor declares State of Emergency
What does a State of Emergency mean?
 By Christopher Boyd
April 23rd, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
The Gazette uses Malware to secure its web sites. There are any number of software applications that can be used – we found Malware to work well for us.
One of the added values is a newsletter they publish. In the most recent version they published a piece of just what “free” software is all about. Well worth reading.
It’s almost impossible not to rely on social networks in some way, whether for personal reasons or business. Sites such as LinkedIn continue to blur the line, increasing the amount of social function over time with features and services resembling less formal sites, such as Facebook. Can anyone imagine not relying on, of all things, Twitter to catch up on breaking coronavirus news around the world instantly? The trade off is your data, and how they profit from it.
Like it or not—and it’s entirely possibly it’s a big slab of “not”—these services are here to stay, and we may be “forced” to keep using them. Some of the privacy concerns that lead people to say, “Just stop using them” are well founded. The reality, however, is not quite so straightforward.
 For example, in many remote regions, Facebook or Twitter might be the only free Internet access people have. And with pockets of restriction on free press, social media often represents the only outlet for “truth” for some users. There are some areas where people can receive unlimited Facebook access when they top up their mobiles. If they’re working, they’ll almost always use Facebook Messenger or another social media chat tool to stay in touch rather than drain their SMS allowance.
Many of us can afford to walk away from these services; but just as many of us simply can’t consider it when there’s nothing else to take its place.
Mining for data (money) has never been so profitable.
But how did this come to be? In the early days of Facebook, it was hard to envision the platform being used to spread disinformation, assist in genocide, or sell user data to third-parties. We walk users through the social media business model and show how the inevitable happens: when a product is free, the commodity is you and your data.
Setting up social media shop
Often, Venture Capital backing is how a social network springs into life. This is where VC firms invest lots of money for promising-looking services/technology with the expectation they’ll make big money and gain a return on investment in the form of ownership stakes. When the company is bought out or goes public, it’s massive sacks of cash for everybody. (Well, that’s the dream. The reality is usually quite a bit more complicated).
It’s not exactly common for these high-risk gambles to pay off, and what often happens is the company never quite pops. They underperform, or key staff leave, and they expand a little too rapidly with the knock-on effect that the CEO suddenly has this massive service with millions of users and no sensible way to turn that user base into profit (and no way to retain order on a service rife with chaos).
At that point, they either muddle along, or they look to profit in other ways. That “other way” is almost always via user data. I mean, it’s all there, so why not? Here are just some of the methods social networks deploy to turn bums on seats into massive piles of cash.
Advertising on social media
This is the most obvious one, and a primary driver for online revenue for many a year. Social media platforms tend to benefit in a way other more traditional publishers cannot, and revenue streams appear to be quite healthy in terms of user-revenue generation.
Advertising is a straight-forward way for social media networks to not only make money from the data they’ve collected, but also create chains where external parties potentially dip into the same pool, too.
 That advertisement, beneath the headline, offering a free report is an example of an advertiser using the Google AdSense platform to put their advertisement in front of the audience they want. The Gazette earns a couple of pennies for each that someone clicks on. At its most basic, platforms can offer ad space to advertisers. Unlike traditional publishing, social media ads can be tailored to personalized data the social network sees you searching for, talking about, or liking daily. If you thought hitting “like” (or its equivalent) on a portal was simply a helpful thumbs up in the general direction of someone providing content, think again. It’s quite likely feeding data into the big pot of “These are the ads we should show this person.”
Not only is everything you punch into the social network (and your browser) up for grabs, but everything your colleagues and associates do too, tying you up in a neat little bow of social media profiling. All of it can then be mined to make associations and estimations, which will also feed back to ad units and, ultimately, profit.
Guesstimates are based on the interests of you, your family, your friends, and your friends’ friends, plus other demographic-specific clues, such as your job title, pictures of your home, travel experiences, cars, and marriage status. Likely all of these data points help the social network neatly estimate your income, another way to figure out which specific adverts to send your way.
After all, if they send you the wrong ads, they lose. If you’re not clicking through and popping a promo page, the advertisers aren’t really winning. All that ad investment is essentially going to waste unless you’re compelled to make use of it in some way.
Even selling your data to advertisers or other marketing firms could be on the table. Depending on terms of service, it’s entirely possible the social platforms you use can anonymise their treasure trove and sell it for top dollar to third parties. Even in cases where the data isn’t sold, simply having it out there is always a bit risky.
There have been many unrelated, non-social media instances where it turned out supposedly anonymous data, wasn’t. There are always people who can come along afterwards and piece it all together, and they don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to do it. All this before you consider social media sites/platforms with social components aren’t immune to the perils of theft, leakage, and data scraping.
As any cursory glance of a security news source will tell you, there’s an awful lot of rogue advertisers out there to offset the perfectly legitimate ones. Whether by purchase or stumbling upon data leaked online, scammers are happy to take social media data and tie it up in email/phone scams and additional fake promos. At that point, even data generated through theoretically legitimate means is being (mis)used in some way by unscrupulous individuals, which only harms the ad industry further.
Apps and ads
Moving from desktop to mobile is a smart move for social networks, and if they’re able to have you install an app, then so much the better (for them). Depending on the mobile platform, they may be able to glean additional information about sites, apps, services, and preferred functionalities, which wouldn’t necessarily be available if you simply used a mobile web browser.
If you browse for any length of time on a mobile device, you’ll almost certainly be familiar with endless pop-ups and push notifications telling you how much cooler and awesome the app version of site X or Y will be. You may also have experienced the nagging sensation that websites seem to degrade in functionality over time on mobile browsers.
Suddenly, the UI is a little worse. The text is tiny. Somehow, you can no longer find previously overt menu options. Certain types of content no longer display correctly or easily, even when it’s something as basic as a jpeg. Did the “Do you want to view this in the app?” popup reverse the positions of the “Yes” and “No” buttons from the last time you saw it? Are they trying to trick you into clicking the wrong thing? It’s hard to remember, isn’t it?
A cynic would say this is all par for the course, but this is something you’ve almost certainly experienced when trying to do anything in social land on a mobile minus an app.
Once you’re locked into said app, a brave new world appears in terms of intimately-detailed data collection and a huge selection of adverts to choose from. Some of them may lead to sponsored affiliate links, opening the data harvesting net still further, or lead to additional third-party downloads. Some of these may be on official platform stores, while others may sit on unofficial third-party websites with all the implied risk such a thing carries.
Even the setup of how apps work on the website proper can drive revenue. Facebook caught some heat back in 2008 for their $375USD developer fee. Simply having a mass of developers making apps for the platform—whether verified or not—generates data that a social network platform can make use of, then tie it back to their users.
It’s all your data, wheeling around in a tumble drier of analytics.
Payment for access/features
Gating access to websites behind paywalls is not particularly popular for the general public. Therefore, most sites with a social networking component will usually charge only for additional services, and those services might not even be directly related to the social networking bit.
LinkedIn is a great example of this: the social networking part is there for anybody to use because it makes all those hilariously bad road warrior lifestyle posts incredibly sticky, and humorous replies are often the way people first land on a profile proper. However, what you’re paying for is increased core functionality unrelated to the “Is this even real?” comedy posts elsewhere.
In social networking land, a non-payment gated approach was required for certain platforms. Orkut, for example, required a login to access any content. Some of the thinking there was that a gated community could keep the bad things out. In reality, when data theft worms started to spread, it just meant the attacks were contained within the walls and hit the gated communities with full force.
The knock-on effect of this was security researchers’ ability to analyse and tackle these threats was delayed because many of these services were either niche or specific to certain regions only. As a result, finding out about these attacks was often at the mercy of simply being informed by random people that “X was happening over in Y.”
These days, access is much more granular, and it’s up to users to display what they want, with additional content requiring you to be logged in to view.
Counting the cost
Of the three approaches listed above, payment/gating is one of the least popular techniques to encourage a revenue stream. Straight up traditional advertising isn’t as fancy as app/site/service integration, but it’s something pretty much anybody can use, which is handy for devs without the mobile know-how or funds available to help make it happen.
Even so, nothing quite compares to the flexibility provided by mobile apps, integrated advertising, and the potential for additional third-party installs. With the added boost to sticky installs via the pulling power of social media influencers, it’s possibly never been harder to resist clicking install for key demographics.
The most important question, then, turns out to be one of the most common: What are you getting in return for loading an app onto your phone?
It’s always been true for apps generally, and it’ll continue to be a key factor in social media mobile data mining for the foreseeable future. “You are the product” might be a bit long in the tooth at this point, but where social media is concerned, it’s absolutely accurate. How could the billions of people worldwide creating the entirety of the content posted be anything else?
By Ray Rivers
April 22, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
 Peter Mackay – at full bore. Peter MacKay had a point – that the Conservatives needed to get a real leader to head their party. Though he may not have put it that way exactly. And he was adamant the Tory leadership convention should proceed, coronavirus or not.
That would have been foolhardy and the party wasn’t having any of it. You just don’t assemble a thousand or more party members for that kind of passionate event in the midst of a deadly epidemic.
But if MacKay didn’t get the memo neither did Andrew Scheer. For him parliament was just another day’s work – and everyone should be there daily – business as usual. Perhaps he could be excused for his devotion to the highest political temple in the country. Working for government was the only real job he’d ever had.
 Andrew Scheer But hello, Mr. Scheer – there is a contagion raging throughout the land. Canada’s chief medical officer has told us that everyone’s health is important and MPs like everyone else need to exercise social distancing. As Britain’s PM, Boris Johnson, demonstrated, just because you’re an MP doesn’t mean you are immune from COVID-19.
But it’s pretty clear Scheer has trouble understanding what social distancing means. For example, when the government sent a nine person plane to pick up Scheer and two other MP’s, he insisted on bringing his whole family including all five of his children. Unmasked, they flew together sharing the same breathing space, and were packed-in like sardines in a can.
Unlike Scheer, the other three party leaders do get it. Green MP Elizabeth May believes they can hold the government to account without showing up in Ottawa. MPs from some provinces are required to quarantine after leaving their home province, making it difficult for them to attend. Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said the average person doesn’t care much about what MPs are up to in Ottawa [anyway].
So, stapled onto the first of a number of emergency funding bills was a request by the Liberals that they be given emergency authority to approve money bills without full parliamentary approval. That, they argued, would expedite the upcoming tranches of emergency funding bills to follow. Trudeau got royally hammered for trying that on.
 The House of Commons Chamber that the members work in while the Centre Block undergoes a ten year re-build.
To be fair the government probably was just trying to be expeditious and avoid having MPs co-mingle as a group greater than five persons. In a minority situation the opposition could always work together to defeat the Liberals should they feel it necessary. And besides, as we all expected, the funding bills went through pretty much unchanged – so the debate was essentially a rubber stamp. But that was a war measure and this is not war – or is it?
And the funding did take longer to get in place as a result of having to follow due process – something Scheer later complained about, ironically. Though, in fairness, he wasn’t the only one to hold up the emergency response.
 Erin O’Toole MacKay has been adamant that the Tories need a new leader. Of course he is currently the odds-on favourite, even though there is a rising tide for Erin O’Toole in western Canada. There are a lot of things wrong about Scheer but it was probably the mean spirited and miserable campaign last election that wrote his ticket.
Even though he had won the most seats in the House, everyone knew it was only because of western alienation. Some people prefer not to face the truth, even if it is in their best long term interest. Another pipeline or two are of no value if nobody is buying oil. And when the price of even West Texas oil falls so low that the oil companies are paying people to take the oil, it’s time to get out of Dodge…and your gas guzzling Dodge too. The future is clear.
Knowing Scheer had to go, the Tories must have been hopeful to pick amongst the wealth of potential candidates at their pleasure. But it didn’t turn out that way. Rona for personal reasons, Lisa because her neck wasn’t red enough. And Michael because he was just a nice guy – and we know where they finished.
And even Kevin was up to his ears after he and his wife got up to that nasty business with their yacht. Oh, if only Maxime was back in the game. Jason Kenny has his hands full at the moment. And Doug Ford… well….
So it’s Scheer for the interim and that’s a pity for all of us. He’s actually relented now and agreed to a new consensus plan, including virtual meetings. Still you’d think he’d get it. The only reason he’s still in that job is because COVID-19 postponed the Conservative leadership contest. But he still doesn’t take social distancing seriously. I wonder what Peter MacKay thinks about all that.
Leadership – it means walking the talk. That is another reason why the Tories need a new leader.
Ray Rivers writes regularly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background links:
Scheer on COVID 19 – COVID Emergency Bill – Scheer Flight –
Economic Response Plan – Who Held Up Government –
 By Ray Rivers
April 17th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
It’s a mess.
Long term care homes are host to about half of all of Canada’s COVID-19 fatalities. Ontario has 626 nursing homes, a little over half are privately operated, a quarter non-profit, and the rest municipal. There are close to 80,000 beds in use and there is a waiting list almost half as long again.
The costs of long term care are co-funded between the province and the patient. In 2018 provincial funding totalled $4.28 billion, less that a tenth of the provincial health budget, which amounts to about $150 per resident a day. That is board, room, cleaning and care for a little over $50,000 per patient per year plus the patient’s co-fund.
There was this idea once that for that kind of money, one could book a year-long ocean cruise, and get everything except the medical care. But nobody ever thought that they might also get stuck, like the 4000 Canadians on some 70 cruise ships, as of late March this year, who can’t get off because of COVID 19.
 Quebec has called on the federal government to bring in the army’s medical corps to help with their lack of health care at long term facilities But Ontario is putting an ‘iron ring’ around its institutions according to its premier, who has promised to leave no stone unturned, spare no expense.…
Next week he finally will ban support staff from working in more than one long term facility, thereby eliminating a potential source of spread. But B.C. had brought in a similar regulation almost a month ago and Ontario had enacted a similar rule back during the SARS crisis. So why has it taken this long for Ford to act? Perhaps he empathized with the long term support staff, having to take on extra employment to make up for their miserable pay levels.
It’s not Ford’s fault that COVID 19 came to Canada and Ontario. The virus arrived here with travellers arriving first from China, then from other places. As the contagion got a foothold and spread, we remained calm on the advice of Canada’s chief medical officer.
 Dr. Teresa Tam: Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Tam told us that the risk to Canadians was minimal and there was no need for travel restrictions, quarantine or protective masks to reduce the risk of exposure. So today Ontario has had over 500 deaths and over half of those are in long term care.
But Ford’s record in this is anything but spotty clean. Jurisdictions, like South Korea, which have minimized the coronavirus casualties, have used extensive testing to identify, isolate and treat the infected. Ontario has the lowest record of testing in Canada, and that may explain why its infection numbers appear lower than they actually are – and why our death rate is so high.
Following the SARS crisis masks and other personal protection equipment (PPE) were stockpiled, but they got stale dated and eventually junked. But nobody, even in the previous administration, thought to rebuild the stockpile. So now Ford and his health minister are promising to fix this, even if late and too little.
Ford changed the labour laws in the province reducing sick leave days for employees and allowing employers to demand a medical certificate. In the early days of the epidemic this may have contributed to the virus spread, since sick employees would need to still go to their jobs to get paid, and those who didn’t needed to visit their doctor’s crowded offices for their medical certificate.
 A nursing home in Bobcaygen where 29 patients in a 65 bed facility died of COVID19 But perhaps worst of all, when it comes to long term care the Ford government had stopped inspecting health and safety conditions in nursing homes as a matter of policy. These annual inspections are the only way the province had to ensure that a nursing establishment was meeting it’s health, safety and licensing requirements.
Inspections went from 100% in 2017, under the previous Liberal government, to almost zero last year. Is it any wonder infection has spread so rapidly?
Instead of an annual snap Inspection for all homes conducted during the previous government only 9 of 626 were inspected in 2019.
Unfortunately this brings back memories of another Conservative premier who rolled the dice, deregulating water safety. That ended up with 7 people dying and half of a town’s people sickened. That policy, like Ford’s decision on inspections, was ideological, about cost cutting, eliminating red tape and promoting deregulation.
Australia has a different take on long term care. Their system is national and publicly run under strict rules and inspections. Australians saw where this virus might be heading before anyone called it a pandemic and responded much faster and more effectively than Canada, even though their first case arrived two days after ours.
And their long term deaths have been low, making them a model for us to emulate in this country. In fact there have been twice as many COVID 19 deaths in Ontario’s long term care homes than among Australia’s entire population of 25 million. Clearly they are doing something right.
 The government of the day – Mike \Harries Tory’s failed the people of Walkerton. Doug Ford has told us that his wife’s mother is a patient at a Toronto nursing home. One has to wonder what she thinks. After all, his is the kind of subtle negligence which eventually came back to haunt former PC premier Mike Harris. We’ll see eventually if this is really an iron ring or just Mr. Ford’s Walkerton.
Nobody wants to criticize a political leader during a time of an unprecedented health crisis. Doug Ford rose up in everyone’s expectations with his early daily briefings, closing the schools, declaring a state of emergency and gradually locking down the province’s economy. It was comforting to see someone in charge.
He could have moved faster and shut down more non-essential workplaces earlier, like construction. And public transit across the province should have been shut down as it has been in other places where social distancing is impossible. Ford’s people should have embraced masks earlier, instead of simply regurgitating the mis-truths from the World Health Organization and Canada’s own Dr. Tam.
And he could have left the provincial parks open. After a month of lockdown people need to get out for some exercise and fresh air. It would be easier to social distance on a park trail or open field than a crowded sidewalk, wouldn’t it?
Lately Ford has pretty much run out of ‘breaking news’ for his daily press conferences. They’ve started to morph into poorly staged political rallies, as the Premier and his beleaguer health minister tell us how they are there for us and doing all they can. And watching the two of them in action confirms for me that the PC’s did the right thing in nominating Ford for the top job.
 Ontario Premier Doug Ford Ford recently got angry complaining about Ontario’s pathetic rate of COVID 19 testing. But then seriously, isn’t he the premier? We want Ford to succeed in fighting this epidemic. It’s in all of our interests regardless of any political stripe.
But we need to have faith and believe in our premier. And that means some straight talk instead of hype and empty promises. Ford could begin by recognizing what has gone wrong and assuring us that he has learned from his mistakes.
Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
Background links:
Long Term Care in Ontario – Ford Didn’t Protect Them – COVID 19 Spread in Ontario Nursing Homes –
Masks Destroyed – Long Term in Australia –
 By Jim Young
April 16, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
I have lived on Silwell Court, which backs on to the controversial 2100 Brant Street Development, for 28 years. I know the neighbourhood and the people involved, they were my neighbours. I also know John Calvert; a quiet, capable former Mississauga city planner. He and I share notes on planning issues and I am always the wiser for his thoughts.
Like John, I worked for change at the last municipal election, hopeful that those changes would bring greater local resident input on city plans. Also, like John, while happy with much of our new council’s work on Transit, Climate Change and the recent Covid-19 crisis response, I am equally disappointed in their approach to land planning issues. His Op-ed piece on 2100 Brant Street and the Gazette picture juxtaposing the proposed 233 units with the 236 surrounding homes says all that needs to be said about over-intensification, poor planning and design.
 The blue area denotes the Havendale community with 236 homes. The orange area is the proposed National Homes development where 233 homes would be built. But greater than any objection to that development is my fear that the process to approve it indicates how future planning applications will be handled and resolved by the city. A process that not only limits the public input electors demanded in the 2018 council rout, but leaves us wondering whether it is an unfortunate confluence of conflicting provincial / municipal planning ideologies or intentional city planning policy; forsaking local input for expediency.
First it is only fair to point out that, even with the best of intentions, municipal planners are severely limited by The Ontario Planning Act. Developer amendments to zoning bylaws and official plans, are assessed, not necessarily on the local impact or wishes but more on how they comply with provincial planning legislation and guidelines. Also, the time for city planners to assess those amendments is severely limited by the Planning Act. Even the much debated Official Plan, still in the works after so many years, must comply with The Act and subsequent provincial guidelines on density, transit and mobility.
The land use planning, amendment and appeals process was already complex and changes by two successive provincial governments and an ongoing Official Plan review by the city have made the whole process so complex as to be un-navigable by planners and unintelligible to us mere citizens.
The old process was: The city’s Official Plan regulates what may be built. Developers who wanted to deviate from that submitted amendment applications to the city are approved or disapproved. Prior to submitting the application, developers held a statutory public meeting to inform residents of the proposed changes. Cities had 120 days to respond to applications. Developers could appeal unfavourable planning decisions to the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board). Failure by the city to respond in time was also grounds for an appeal by the developer.
The first change, in early 2018, saw the OMB replaced by LPAT (Local Planning Appeals Tribunal), a supposedly more municipal and resident friendly body. It allowed 180 to 210 days for cities to respond to amendment applications and made it, theoretically, easier for local residents to contest developer proposals. Before any of this could be tested, the Provincial election that year changed the government.
 Burlington MPP Jane McKenna at the ground breaking of The Gallery, the 23 storey tower going up opposite city hall. The provincial government delivered regulatory changes that kept developers smiling. With that change, a more development friendly government cut amendment application response times to 90 or 110 days and changed much of the amending criteria in favour of development. In a city which still had no official plan in place and a large number of pending applications, this was an impossibly tight deadline to meet. Throwing further confusion into this was the Review of the Official Plan, demanded by the electorate and concentrating on the downtown.
In a bid to allow planners time to develop the new official plan free from ongoing amendment applications the city froze the planning process using an Interim Control Bylaw. (ICBL)
We can argue whether this was undertaken properly, if the (ICBL) was successful? If the Downtown Transit Hub should have been addressed first? If the revised downtown plan is any better? But those are arguments for another column.
The outcome has been that on top of all the in-process amendments, frozen by the ICBL, developers lodged a further thirty one appeals to LPAT opposing the new plan and the ICBL. Add to this a city and a province beset by a Covid 19 lockdown and the whole process has simply seized up. Applications are frozen again, LPAT appeals are suspended and there seems to be confusion about whether the application deadline clock is still ticking or not. An email from Heather MacDonald, Executive Director, Community Planning Regulation and Mobility suggests to me the clock is frozen too, an article in the Gazette, April 14 suggests the issue is being debated at the province but there is no decision as yet.
The debate now becomes: Is the city a victim of powerful and shifting provincial planning whims? Or is the city happy to hide behind a land planning regime it cannot win against and capitulates to quietly while still disingenuously proclaiming its defence of resident interests?
I am beginning to believe the latter. Reading John Calvert’s plea to our mayor, one might reasonably conclude that the city’s new approach to planning amendments is: Receive the application. Sit on it until the response time runs out. Let the developer appeal to LPAT, then negotiate a settlement agreement with the developer with almost no input from local residents.
I worry that, with the city’s planning in an unresolvable mess and aware that municipalities are virtually powerless anyway, our elected council has found a way to live with a pro developer provincial planning regime while shrugging off responsibility for the outcomes.
I further worry that in a “Covid Shutdown” political environment, what little resident or municipal input exists in the planning process will be further eroded by meetings in camera, with no traditional citizen delegation.
Related news articles:
Calvert letter to the Mayor on trust
The pain Calvert carries
Marianne Meed Ward on trust.
 Jim Young is an Aldershot resident who delegates at city council on transit and local development. He is consistent in his mission to ensure local government is transparent and accountable to the people who elected them.
By Pepper Parr
April 15th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
You have to give credit where credit is due.
For the past month Ontario has had a Premier who has delivered. Surprising to many, is the level of empathy we are seeing from the man.
 Ontario Premier Doug Ford – being pressed at every level yet keeping it all together. Doug Ford is there before the cameras every day of the week; answering the tough, but necessary, questions.
Yesterday he stepped away from the camera, took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his brow. He was sweating it literally.
There is nothing smooth or slick about Doug Ford; his oratory doesn’t soar but when he says he will “look into it” – he does.
Hearing a politician say that they will do whatever it takes and then having them deliver on that statement is certainly refreshing.
His response to the desperate situation in the long term care homes hit home for this man; his Mother-in-law is a resident in one.
He moved swiftly to make changes across the system – long term care and the people who provide the service will benefit from his ability to see the problem, accept the advice he was given and get the wheels moving.
There will come a time when the spending being done today will have to be recovered from the tax base and we will watch with interest on how the current government pulls that off.
But right now Doug Ford is leading in a way this writer didn’t expect.
Does anyone happen to know where the leader of the provincial Liberals is. Has the New Democrat leader lost her tongue?
Many of us laughed when Doug Ford was basically hidden during the last federal election for fear that he would embarrass Andrew Scheer.
I may have issues with underlying philosophy that the Progressive Conservatives bring to the table but the man leading the government today is doing the job and I’m not embarrassed.
Listening to him say that he is a politician and he listens to the experts – and that it is his job to step aside and let the experts do their jobs is refreshing.
We didn’t see that from the federal Liberals during the SNC mess that occupied the minds of many trying to figure out just what the full story was behind the demotion of the then Minister of Justice Jodie Wilson Raybould.
 Doug Ford is likely to be a two term Premier. Every political leader has people who do the longer term political thinking. Were I Doug Ford, I would be asking my team to think about when to go back to the electorate.
When the COVID-19 crisis is behind us and things are getting back to, or close to, normal I would call a snap election – because when this is all over there is going to be a huge economic mess that may take as much as a decade to recover from and some very painful financial decision are going to have to be made.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
By Pepper Parr
April 14th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
I didn’t know John Calvert. I knew of him. He was Director of Planning in Mississauga at a time when Hazel McCallion was Mayor – and he survived – Hazel was one tough cookie.
I was sent a copy of the letter Calvert wrote to Mayor Marianne Meed Ward expressing his profound disappointment on how the National Homes development on Brant was proceeding.
John Calvert has lived in Burlington for more than 30 years. Watching the shape, look, and feel of the city disintegrate has bothered him for some time.
 John Calvert: Deeply hurt and disappointed I had to ask a friend for contact information and see if Calvert would take a call from me.
He said he would and we had a ten minute talk.
I heard a very distraught man who was deeply hurt talk about the Due Process that he did not feel had taken place and the need for public input on planning decisions.
He agreed with me that people were excited when Marianne was elected Mayor – many believed that the development proposals on the table were going to ruin the city.
Calvert said he “likes Marianne” he just didn’t seem to like what she was doing.
“It took me some time to write the letter” said Calvert. “I showed it to my neighbour Ed Doer who was heavily involved in the opposition to the National Homes development; he said I had written what needed to be said.”
When Mayor Meed Ward went to France to take part in the 75th WWII anniversary she went with Calvert’s wife who was one of the Burlington residents who made the Juno Beach reception centre possible. Calvert told me that the two women travelled together and got along very well.
Calvert said he was asked to speak at one of Meed Ward’s campaign funding events. “I did so willingly” said Calvert
Calvert knows the ins and out of the planning profession. He told me that the communities we build today will determine the kind of society we will have a couple of decades later.
He talked about the lack of amenities in a community that was to have 233 homes – which may have been chiselled down to 215.
“The traffic problems will be horrendous.”
Calvert hopes that this Council decides to take a sober second look at what is being proposed.
The issue for Calvert is trust and quality in developments. By quality he doesn’t mean quartz counter tops and shiny high end stoves. He means space for people to live, back yards where there is room for one of those large Italian families and parks where children can play and enough room for a child to learn to ride a bicycle.
Calvert said he was excited when Meed Ward came along – mistakes that had been made were going to be corrected. Now it doesn’t look that way.
“Someone has to stop this” he said
Related news item:
The Calvert letter
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
By Pepper Parr
April 4TH, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Easter isn’t about coloured eggs and the Easter Bunny.
Starts with Palm Sunday, then Good Friday, then Easter Sunday.
This Sunday we remember when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the crowds waved branches and laid down coats and shouted “Hosanna!”
 Children in churches around the world will take part in a Palm Sunday procession. In many churches there is a procession with the children walking into the Sanctuary waving palm tree leaves and singing hymns.
Covid-19 has put a serious crimp on church attendance. My church, Hamilton Mennonite, sent out a note saying they “need help to do a different kind of Palm Sunday processional, and anyone of any age can participate! Here are the steps:
 1) Print the attached palm branch colouring page (as many as your household needs)
2) Colour (or otherwise decorate) it
3) Take a Picture of your artwork (horizontal is best). Include you holding it, if you want, or add your name to it.
4) Email it here or to Alissa at hmcpastor@cogeco.net by Friday night (or 1st thing Saturday morning if you must!)
Watch for the Photo Processional this Sunday morning in worship!
I’ll go on line to see how my Pastor handles the procession.
Think about what that procession was all about; the trial that took place, the decision to crucify a man named Jesus – that part is all fact – well documented.
The balance of the story, the Risen Lord – on the third day he rose – is pure faith – you either believe it or you don’t.
Much of our core social philosophy and fundamental social beliefs comes out of a Christian perspective. We now have many who bring a Muslim perspective to the way lives are lived.”
With parents struggling to keep their children active and at least a little entertained painting hard boiled eggs seems like a good idea and the hunt for the treats that are part of the secular Easter will keep the kids happy for a couple of hours.
You might give some thought to telling them what the season is really all about.
It isn’t the Easter Bunny is it?
On Sunday 9:45 – Join live here:
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
By Ray Rivers
April 2, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
 Spouting Donald Trump regularly spouts so much misinformation that the American public has almost become immune to him. But almost a hundred thousand people have signed a petition calling for Trump to end his daily COVID-19 briefings, claiming he is politicizing the crisis and using the news pressers as just another partisan political rally.
Fortunately nobody is making that kind of complaint on this side of the border. As tedious as the PM and premier’s daily briefings have become, there is usually some newsworthy item to justify pre-empting our favourite day-time TV reruns. And unlike the combative Trump, our leaders appreciate the seriousness of the situation and have been careful to play nicely with each other.
Doug Ford, whose poll numbers were in the toilet only a few months ago, has almost overcome his bully-boy countenance, dutifully earned after attacking teachers and Toronto’s city council. His fight over the carbon tax with the federal government now seems like distant history, as he regularly heaps praise on the PM and his deputy PM.
 Doug Ford is coming across as a much more focused and stronger reader. But his populist instincts of overreaching continue to get him into trouble, as for example when he advised workers to just walk off their jobs and promised not to let anyone get evicted for not paying their rents. But his past stumbles, most recently the illegible license plates, are forgotten and forgiven as this epidemic now interminably occupies our lives.
Compared to our southern neighbours, Canada is in a better place. But our numbers are still growing and there is no end in sight. And if there is a recovery strategy it has to be a best kept secret, as new numbers roll-in every day telling us that things are only getting worse – not better.
We’ve seen how China, despite bring hampered initially by its knee jerk denials, was finally able to lock down the virus only with a dramatic quarantine, exhaustive travel restrictions, a shuttering of virtually all business and the mandatory wearing of face masks in public. We’ve also seen how South Korea is claiming limited success by aggressive testing and tracking, isolation, travel bans, and… face masks.
But Canada is not following either of these models. Our first COVID-19 case arrived from China near the end of January, yet it took another month to restrict International travel. Arriving passengers were neither tested nor quarantined until enough infected people had arrived for the virus to become a self sustaining problem.
 It was a different time: The Prime Minister was welcoming refugees into the country almost every day. We just kept counting the infected and dead until, by early March, we had joined the rest of the world in suffering the consequences of this deadly and growing epidemic. So we started ratcheting down our economy by a series of half measures. Mr. Trudeau announced voluntary internal travel restrictions but not a ban, and only partially closed the US border. And Mr. Ford shuttered some, but not all, non-essential Ontario business.
Our chief medical officer of health keeps telling us that all we need to do is wash our hands and keep our social distances. Social distancing is a good idea but how is that even possible for those who need to make the daily commute to their job by subway or bus, for example. So what about the masks which worked so well in Asia?
The virus is respiratory. I’m not a medical doctor but even I know that means the pathway for the infection starts with the mouth or nose and moves out by a cough, sneeze or even talking. The virus apparently lasts a relatively long time on some surfaces (counters, doors and grab rails and grocery produce) but it gets there when an infected person coughs or sneezes near or onto those surfaces – or touches them after sneezing into their own hands.
 Masks were essential in China – Rivers wonders why they are not essential in Ontario  World wide data on the morning of April 2, 2020 So the Chinese authorities believe wearing a mask reduces the contagion. But our Dr. Tam, the World Health Organization and the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) are still telling us not to wear a mask in public unless we are already infected and contagious. But couldn’t people be contagious and not display symptoms? And shouldn’t they stay at home if they are sick? And why do doctors and nurses wear masks?
Given the enormity of the epidemic spreading across the USA, the CDC is apparently on the cusp of recommending that everyone should start wearing a mask in public. Of course there aren’t nearly enough masks in America for all the people, so the CDC will likely offer a ‘how-to’ make and keep clean (for re-use) your very own cloth mask.
This would no doubt give Donald Trump something new to announce at one of his press availability sessions. But how will he explain why he didn’t do this sooner? Trump’s poll numbers have never been higher. This is amazing given how he has totally mismanaged the COVID-19 issue. Trump was aware of the epidemic when he banned commercial flights to China back in January.
But his administration fumbled terribly. Having decided to develop their own test kits they failed to get them done in a timely fashion. They failed to enforce social distancing. And their business as usual attitude allowed the virus to spread such that the US is now the global epicentre of the pandemic. And they don’t even have enough face masks to protect their own health care workers, let alone their population.
The US infection rate has been doubling every four days and is now 200,000 – more than twice China’s. The US chief medic has projected that the outbreak could rise to a million infections or more in that country alone. It is very likely that US deaths, already greater than those in China, could reach 100,000, even if they all start to wear masks tomorrow. That is twice as many fatalities as all those American soldiers who died in Vietnam.
Canada’s political leaders are also witnessing a rise in their approval ratings. That is a natural phenomena, particularly In the early stages of a crisis like this. We want to believe in our government and leaders in a time of uncertainty. For example, George W Bush, one of American’s worst presidents by almost any account, saw his approval rating skyrocket after 9/11 as the country looked to their president for leadership.
The approval we’re giving Mr Ford and Trudeau is unlikely to last if this epidemic continues too long or gets worse, however. And that approval will disappear if the public discovers that our governments have failed to protect us because of some kind of prejudice by our chief medical officer against wearing face masks – even if they have to be homemade ones.
Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province. He developed the current policy process for the Ontario Liberal Party.
Background links:
Trump Petition – Ford Overreach Ford Risen – Mask Use –
Trump Worst Leader – South Korea – US Death Toll – More Masks –
Dr. Tam– Face Masks –
By Pepper Parr
March 31st, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
I was surprised to learn that there isn’t always someone from city council at the Emergency Coordinating Group (ECG).
I knew that the Mayor and the City Manager were never in the room at the same time. Tim Commisso told me in a telephone interview that he is putting in 15 hour days and stick handling 200 + emails. He has deep experience at the municipal level and has seen a city through a disaster. But he is not a young man and he doesn’t have as much as he needs in the way of bench strength.
A State of Emergency does change the ground rules – but it shouldn’t dilute the level of on-the-ground democracy.
Running a city under a State of Emergency is not business as usual.
The politicians have to let the experts do what they do.
However, there isn’t a reason in the world why at least one member of Council cannot be in the room. They are not in the room to participate – they are in the room to witness, record and to serve as a hobble on bureaucrats that could go too far astray.
They are not there to ask questions. A good committee chair would ask the Councillor if there were any questions or suggestions at the end of a meeting.
Right now we have a Mayor saying everything is going just fine. That may well be the case.
We are not suggesting there is anything amiss. It is when the proceedings are transparent that things don’t go amiss.
Our Mayor would be serving her constituents’ interests well if she advocated for having at least one member of Council at that table or on-line.
Sharman was right to bring this to the attention of a very concerned public.
Related news story:
Councillor Sharman finds being elected means squat during an emergency.
By Pepper Parr
March 29th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
This came to us from a Gazette reader: Carol Gottlob has been with us from the very beginning.
I’ve never taken advantage of any opportunity to be a passenger on that bike; today she can put on her helmet and the rest of her safety gear and enjoy the freedom the road offers – and those roads will be close to empty today. Ride with the wind my friend!
Tips from a Road Warrior by Carol Gottlob:
 Carol Gottlob with her 750 Honda Shadow. In these times of new rules governing our lives to keep us safe in the time of CoVid, I would like to provide some simple tips from the perspective of a motorcyclist.
As a motorcyclist, I AM A RISK TAKER. This is pointed out to me at every opportunity when I tell people I ride a 750 Honda Shadow. I am well aware of the risks. They are calculated risks, and along with them, are some useful protocols to reduce those risks and improve my safety and the safety of those I share the road with. Here they are, and here is how you can apply them to your current self protection plan:
1. Keep your engine and brakes in good working condition. This equates to keeping yourself healthy by eating well, exercising and getting rest.
2. Wear protective gear. I don’t go on my bike without a helmet, gloves, and a safety jacket at the very least. You should not go out of the house without a mask, gloves or sanitizer if you are going to be in a grocery store, liquor store or gas station.
3. Ride at a safe distance. When we ride in formation, we are staggered, and the higher the speed, the further apart we are distanced to allow time for emergency braking. Remember to keep at least 6 feet apart when walking outdoors, shopping or talking to your neighbour on the front porch.
4. Ride defensively. Don’t assume everyone is going to follow the rules. Be watchful, especially at the intersections! But also remember to be polite if someone makes a mistake.
5. Know where you are going. Plan your route so there are no surprises, such as construction or a road closure. Likewise, plan your shopping trips efficiently so that you know which stores are open, get what you need and leave the stores quickly so others may enter.
6. Obey the traffic laws. Pull over and stop your engine when the cops pull you over. There’s a reason they’re pulling you over. It’s usually because you have been doing something unsafe, such as speeding. Listen to the authorities, for the same reasons.
7. Help others in distress. If you see a fellow rider by the side of the road, stop and ask if they need help. If you see a friend or a neighbour having trouble in these times, ask how you can help.
8. Enjoy the freedom and the journey. When you’re riding a motorcycle, it’s not because you want to or have to get somewhere, it’s because you enjoy the open road, the adventure and the friendly waves from other riders. In other words, make the best of this journey we are all on together. There will be lots of stories to swap when we stop our engines, take off our helmets, settle down with a beer and appreciate sharing the experience with other like-minded folk.
We are all risk takers on this blue green planet hurtling through space.
Ride safe, my friends.
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