Canada and Australia are very similar in many ways. They are both vast countries with small populations. They are Commonwealth nations with similar histories and culture. They share the British Parliamentary system of government. They both struggle with similar political and social issues like Indigenous concerns, a resource economy, immigration and multiculturalism, maintaining a public health system and the various pressures facing a middle power in the political and economic climate of the 21st century.
These parallels provide an opportunity to compare and contrast how the two countries deal with common challenges.
In their response to the COVID 19 virus the contrast could not be more vivid. In fact The Land Down Under has adopted an approach that is the polar opposite of the one being pursued in The Great White North.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government have enacted an aggressively proactive policy in an attempt to mitigate the population’s exposure to the virus from overseas. This includes recently announced “advanced screening measures” for travellers from Italy on top of travel bans for South Korea, Iran and China. Canada’s federal government under the alleged leadership of Justin Trudeau have adopted a somewhat more lackadaisical approach to the growing crisis. In comparison to their Australian counterparts the Canadian government’s attitude appears to be based on the conviction that there’s nothing they can do to protect Canadians anyway. So why bother trying?
As reported by 680 News and True North, Trudeau’s Minister of Health Patty Hajdu recently communicated the government’s ‘nothing we can do’ attitude with surprising candor. When questioned about why the Liberal government hasn’t implemented extra screening measures along Canada’s borders the Minister responded, “The more countries that have outbreaks, the less relevant borders become. A virus knows no borders.”
In other words, as far as the Liberal Party of Canada is concerned there is simply no point in proactively trying to limit the number of people infected with a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus from entering the country, spreading it among the population and risking a surge in hospitalizations that would overwhelm the health care system.
And what does Trudeau himself have to say? When questioned by reporters about why his government isn’t enacting travel bans and other precautions taken by the Australians and other countries, Trudeau said this:
“We recognize there are countries that make different decisions. The decisions we make are based on the best recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the tremendous health experts who work within Canada and around the world.”
But Trudeau’s rationalization can only makes sense if the Australians and other countries adopting much more aggressive measures are somehow not getting the “recommendations” from the WHO that the Canadian government is getting. But of course that isn’t the case. The countries that have enacted travel bans and advanced screening are getting the exact same recommendations. So simply citing the WHO in no way justifies or accounts for the Canadian government adopting such a drastically different response.
Of course that didn’t occur to the reliably inept and deferential Canadian media and so Justin wasn’t pressed on the point.
Perhaps the real reason for the Trudeau government’s approach can be gleaned from the second part of his response to reporter’s questions. He said: “We know that keeping Canadians safe needs to be done in the right way and we’re going to keep doing things that actually keep Canadians safe. There is a lot of misinformation out there, there is a lot of knee-jerk reaction that isn’t keeping people safe. That is having real, challenging impacts on communities, on community safety.”
There you have it. Unlike the Australians, Trudeau and his Liberal colleagues “know” that this has to be done “the right way”. Apparently the poor Aussies are simply not as enlightened as Justin. Do they lack the quickness of mind that bestows upon Justin a unique capacity to distinguish truth from “misinformation”? How does announcing and enacting “an emergency response plan” as the Australians did last month which “outlines a strategy in the event of a large-scale coronavirus outbreak” equate to a “knee-jerk reaction” that “isn’t keeping people safe”?
Well at least we know Justin and his government are “doing ‘things”! What “things” you ask? “Things” that actually keep people safe. Things like that.
Feeling reassured yet?
But it’s with the last sentence in Justin’s statement that I suspect he is truly tipping his hand: “That is having real, challenging impacts on communities, on community safety.”
What ‘communities’ is Justin referring to here? Perhaps I’m overly cynical from years of observing how strict adherence to ‘progressive’-Left ideology determines the priorities and policy of this government. But my suspicion is that this is a reference to certain ethnic “communities” originating from countries in which the outbreaks of the virus are most severe. Is demonstrating his commitment to ‘wokeness‘ and avoiding any response that could potentially be labeled ‘racist‘ by what remains of his fanatically ‘progressive’ fan-base the determining priority here?
Of course presuming that people in those communities would take offence at their government enacting rational measures like travel bans on counties with high infection rates to protect them and their fellow Canadians from exposure to a potentially deadly virus would be incredibly patronizing. Not to mention shockingly irresponsible.
Like I said… maybe I’m just too cynical.
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