[Manic!]

Originally Posted by Traum

For the life of me, I can't see how the federal gov's handling of the pandemic was any good. Except for freely handing out record amounts of free assistance money, the Liberals totally dropped the ball on early prevention, containment, and subsequent on-going measures to slow the pandemic despite clear signs from overseas as well as warnings from the locals. The Health Minister, Patty Hajdu, and chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, were especially disastrous in their handling of the pandemic. Among the almost 9000 lives that have been lost to COVID-19, a whole lot of them could have been saved had mandatory quarantine and/or border closure be put in place at the early stages of the outbreak, and widespread mask wearing be recommended.

Even the government assistance money came out in a piecemeal manner, where subsequent policies are only there to patch up oversights and stuff they missed out in the earlier policies, while still leaving certain things fall through.

It boils me up that despite all these failings, JT is still seeing strong public support...

Only 9000 deaths. We have done better than most and we did the best out of the G7. None of the opposition parties or other provinces had any better ideas.

https://time.com/5851633/best-global...nses-covid-19/

Canada (98,645 cases; 8,035 deaths)

The only entry from North America you’ll find on this list… and the responses between the Canadian and American federal governments to Coronavirus could not diverge more. Of course, this is not an entirely fair comparison, as healthcare systems and federalized powers differ between the two neighbors. Be that as it may, it’s hard not to conclude that Canada’s universal, publicly-funded approach to healthcare isn’t better suited for handling a global pandemic.

Even in things that are potentially comparable between the U.S. and Canada—say, public messaging coordination around the virus between health agencies and national and local governments, or monetary support of international efforts to cooperate on pandemic responses—Canada is faring much better. And a critical component of that has to do with not letting the pandemic response be seized by partisan politics, relying on science to guide the healthcare responses instead (it remains to be seen if the same will hold true for subsequent economic stimulus measures).

Some academics contend that it was Canada’s experience (and more specifically, its failures) with SARS almost 20 years ago that better prepared them for this current pandemic—that experience convinced many Canadians that the federal government has a critical role to play in health care, which before had been the responsibility of the provinces, and the country spent the last decade-plus finding ways to integrate the two. Combine that with significant fiscal and monetary measures taken by Canada (one of the richest countries in the world, and one that values social safety nets at that), those looking towards North America for global leadership in these trying times would probably do well to train their sights a little higher.