A blog about my personal thoughts and opinions on culture, world politics and daily life. Also included will be various articles I find interesting and would like to share with the world.
Here is Robert Anton Wilson's recommended book list, as taken from the
Books section of the official Web site. Again, Wilson says, "Not the
'best' or even my favorites, exactly: Just the bare minimum of what
everybody needs to chew and digest before they can converse
intelligently about the 21st Century.
If you are in Alberta, I suggest writing: 1) Your local MLA. 2)
Kaycee Madu. 3) Jason Kenney. Let each of them know you are
displeased with this. If you are a UCP member/voter, include those
details as well.
I live in Alberta. I’ll be contacting officials this week in regards to this. I have also sent an email to editor Matt Gurney at the National Post requesting coverage of this. Matt is also responsible for contacting 17 other columnists and contributors.In the email I provided a written summary and implications to the topic at hand and included a link to this video. This is serious and I encourage other Albertans to not just bitch and moan, but actually contact your officials as Ian mentioned.
As I listen to this, I am envisioning every officer having the same powers as Judge Dredd from the movie with the same name.
This sounds like a cop wrote the law
We are now post rule of law in Canada. People need to wake up to the
reality of the tyranny we are now under. This is late 1930's Germany and
only going to get worse in the new year!!!
Pay them if your guilty == AND == Pay them if you're innocent
Police become judge, jury and executioner. Reminds me of East Germany a few decades back.
On a plus side, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is a NonProfit designed to fight for our freedoms.
It's been awhile since my last post. Here is an interesting article showing that the pandemic response is curated by politicians and a cabinet of ministers that remain faceless. I'll cut and past most the article here in case it gets taken down from the CBC News website.
Secret recordings reveal political directives, tension over Alberta's pandemic response
Recordings provide rare glimpse into relationship between civil servants, political officials
On the morning of June 4, a team of Alberta civil servants
gathered — as it had nearly every day since the COVID-19 pandemic began —
to co-ordinate the province's response to the crisis.
A few
minutes into the meeting in a boardroom in downtown Edmonton, Chief
Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw weighed in.
The
cabinet committee, to which she and the group reported, was pressuring
her to broadly expand serology testing, which is used to detect the
presence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood.
The problem was
that the tests had limited large-scale clinical value and Hinshaw
believed it would overestimate the virus's presence in the population.
"Honestly,
after the battle that we had about molecular testing, I don't have a
lot of fight left in me," Hinshaw said during that meeting. The province
had introduced rapid molecular testing kits at the start of the
pandemic to help testing in rural and remote communities. The recordings
reveal some tensions about that decision.
"I think we need to
draw on our experience from the molecular testing battle that we
ultimately lost, after a bloody and excruciating campaign, and think
about, how do we limit the worst possible implications of this without
wearing ourselves down?," Hinshaw said.
A few weeks later,
Health Minister Tyler Shandro and Hinshaw announced the province would
pour $10 million into targeted serology testing, the first in Canada to
do so.
The
level of political direction — and, at times, interference — in
Alberta's pandemic response is revealed in 20 audio recordings of the
daily planning meetings of the Emergency Operations Centre
(EOC) obtained by CBC News, as well as in meeting minutes and interviews
with staff directly involved in pandemic planning.
Taken
together, they reveal how Premier Jason Kenney, Shandro and other
cabinet ministers often micromanaged the actions of already overwhelmed
civil servants; sometimes overruled their expert advice; and pushed an
early relaunch strategy that seemed more focused on the economy and
avoiding the appearance of curtailing Albertans' freedoms than enforcing
compliance to safeguard public health.
"What is
there suggests to me that the pandemic response is in tatters," said
Ubaka Ogbogu, an associate law professor at the University of Alberta
who specializes in public health law and policy.
Premier Jason Kenney declared a second state of public health emergency on Tuesday. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)
"The
story tells me that the chief medical officer of health doesn't have
control of the pandemic response [and] tells me that decisions are being
made by persons who shouldn't be making decisions," said Ogbogu, who
was given access by CBC News to transcripts of specific incidents from
the recordings.
"It tells me that the atmosphere in which
decisions are being made is combative, it is not collaborative and that
they are not working towards a common goal — they are working at
cross-purposes."
Ogbogu has been a staunch critic of the UCP
government. In July, he publicly resigned from the Health Quality
Council of Alberta, citing the potential for political interference in
its work due to amendments to the Health Statutes Amendment Act.
Shandro did not respond to an interview request.
In
a brief emailed statement that did not address specific issues raised
by CBC News, a spokesperson for Kenney said it is the job of elected
officials to make these sorts of decisions and he said there was no
political interference.
Hinshaw also did not respond to an interview request.
But at the daily pandemic briefing Wednesday, as the province announced its 500th death,
Hinshaw reiterated her belief that her job is to provide "a range of
policy options to government officials outlining what I believe is the
recommended approach and the strengths and weaknesses of any
alternatives.
"The final decisions are made by the cabinet,"
she said, adding that she has "always felt respected and listened to and
that my recommendations have been respectfully considered by policy
makers while making their decisions."
Secret recordings reveal tension
The
recordings provide a rare window into the relationship between the
non-partisan civil servants working for the Emergency Operation Centre
and political officials.
The EOC team, comprised of civil
servants from Alberta Health and some seconded from other ministries,
has been responsible for planning logistics and producing guidelines and
recommendations for every aspect of Alberta's pandemic response.
The
recordings also provide context for the recent public debate about the
extent of Hinshaw's authority to act independent of government.
Even
if Hinshaw had the authority to make unilateral decisions, the
recordings confirm what she has repeatedly stated publicly: she believes
her role is to advise, provide recommendations and implement decisions
made by the politicians.
At
the group's meeting on June 8, the day before Kenney publicly announced
Alberta's move to Stage 2 of its economic relaunch plan, Hinshaw
relayed the direction she was receiving from the Emergency Management
Cabinet Committee (EMCC). That committee included Kenney, Shandro and
nine other cabinet ministers.
"What
the EMCC has been moving towards, I feel, is to say, 'We need to be
leading Albertans where they want to go, not forcing them where they
don't want to go,'" Hinshaw told the group.
The
recordings confirm what Hinshaw has repeatedly stated publicly: she
believes her role is to advise, provide recommendations and implement
decisions made by the politicians. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)
Hinshaw
said she didn't know if the approach would work, but they were being
asked to move away from punitive measures to simply telling people how
to stay safe.
More of a "permissive model?" someone asked. Hinshaw agreed.
"I
feel like we are starting to lose social licence for the restrictive
model, and I think we are being asked to then move into the permissive
model," she said. "And worst-case scenario, we will need to come back
and [be] restrictive."
Soaring COVID-19 rates in Alberta
As
a second wave of COVID-19 pummels the province, an increasing number of
public-health experts say Alberta long ago reached that worst-case
scenario.
The province has passed the grim milestone of more than 1,500 new cases reported in a day. To date, 500people
have died. Intensive care units across Alberta are overwhelmed, with
COVID-19 patients spilling into other units as beds grow scarce.
On
Tuesday, after weeks of pleading from doctors, academics and members of
the public for a province-wide lockdown, Kenney declared another state
of public health emergency.
However,
he pointedly refused to impose a lockdown, saying his government
wouldn't bow to "ideological pressure" that he said would cripple the
economy. Instead, he announced targeted restrictions, including a ban on
indoor social gatherings.
WATCH | Premier Jason Kenney announces new pandemic restrictions:
Alberta bypasses lockdown with new COVID-19 restrictions
1 day agoVideo
2:36
Alberta
Premier Jason Kenney bypassed a renewed lockdown as part of new
COVID-19 restrictions, despite having more COVID-19 cases per capita
than Ontario. Restaurants and retail can stay open with reduced
capacity, though indoor private gatherings are banned and the school
year has been altered again. 2:36
Kenney repeated many of the comments he made on Nov. 6.
Even
as Alberta's case count grew so high that the province could not
sustain its contact tracing system, Kenney rejected calls for more
stringent measures and downplayed the deaths related to COVID-19.
"What
you describe as a lockdown, first of all, constitutes a massive
invasion of the exercise of people's fundamental rights and a massive
impact on not only their personal liberties but their ability to put
food on the table to sustain themselves financially," Kenney said.
Kenney said it was projected, back in April, that COVID-19 would be the 11th-most common cause of death in the province.
"And so currently, this represents a tiny proportion of the deaths in our province."
High evidence threshold for restrictions
A
source with direct knowledge of the daily planning meetings said the
premier wants evidence-based thresholds for mandatory restrictions that
are effectively impossible to meet, especially in an ever-changing
pandemic.
As of Wednesday, no thresholds have been designated publicly.
The
source said Kenney's attitude was that he wasn't going to close down
anything that affected the economy unless he was provided with specific
evidence about how it would curtail the spread of COVID-19.
"This
is like nothing we have ever seen before. So [it is] very, very
difficult to get specific evidence to implement specific restrictions,"
said the source who, like the others interviewed by CBC News, spoke on
condition of confidentiality for fear of losing their job.
Another
planning meeting source said "there is kind of an understanding that we
put our best public health advice forward and that Kenney is really
more concerned about the economy and he doesn't want it shut down
again."
The recordings suggest a desire by Health Minister Tyler Shandro to exert control over enforcement of public health orders. (CBC)
CBC
News also interviewed a source close to Hinshaw who said she has
indicated that, eight months into the pandemic, politicians are still
often demanding a level of evidence that is effectively impossible to
provide before they will act on restrictive recommendations.
The
source said Hinshaw suggested politicians "have tended to basically go
with the minimal acceptable recommendation from public health, because I
actually think if they went below — if they pushed too far — that she
probably would step down."
Ogbogu said it is clear politicians,
who are not experts in pandemic response, are not focusing on what
matters most to public health.
"The focus needs to be on the disease, on how you stop it," he said. "Not the economy. Nothing is more important."
'I may have gotten in trouble with the minister's office': Hinshaw
The
government has often used Hinshaw as a shield to deflect criticism of
its pandemic strategy, suggesting she is directing the response. The
government has at times appeared to recast any criticism of the
strategy as a personal attack on her.
At her public COVID-19
updates, Hinshaw has refused to stray from government talking points or
offer anything more than a hint of where her opinions may diverge.
Behind
the scenes, however, there were clearly times when Hinshaw disagreed
with the political direction — although it was also evident the
politicians had the final say.
In April, for instance, the government introduced asymptomatic testing in some parts of the province, and later expanded it.
Hinshaw
told a May 22 meeting she had unintentionally started a conversation
with Kenney in which she expressed concern about the value of
large-scale asymptomatic testing as opposed to strategic testing.
Kenney in turn asked for a slide presentation that would detail the pros and cons of each approach.
"I
didn't intend to have that conversation, so I may have gotten in
trouble with the [health] minister's office today about that," Hinshaw
said at that meeting.
The presentation, she said, would include
"how expensive it is to test people when we don't actually get a lot of
value, to go forward with a testing strategy that we can stand
behind. So we will see if the minister's office will allow us to put
that [presentation] forward," Hinshaw said.
The premier, she said, had asked for the presentation for June 2.
But she cautioned the team, "Not to get all of our hopes up or anything."
A
week later, Hinshaw publicly announced the province had opened up
asymptomatic testing to any Albertan who wanted it. At a news
conference, she said that given the impending Stage 2 relaunch, it was
an "opportune time" to expand testing.
'They don't want us to enforce anything'
The recordings suggest a desire by Health Minister Shandro to exert control over enforcement of public health orders.
Alberta
Health Services (AHS), the province's health authority, is responsible
for enforcing public health orders. It is supposed to operate at arm's
length from government.
On June 9, the same day Kenney announced
the Stage 2 economic relaunch, Hinshaw told the EOC meeting Shandro's
office wanted to be informed how AHS would consult with "us" before
taking any action on COVID-19 public orders.
Alberta
Health lawyers, working with the EOC, were responsible for writing the
Stage 2 relaunch order that would outline restrictions on businesses and
the public.
Hinshaw said she needed to verify with Shandro's
office, but she thought "they don't want us to enforce anything. [They]
just want us to educate, and no enforcement."
But the group's chief legal advisor was adamant.
"Under
no circumstance will AHS check with the political minister's office
before undertaking an enforcement action under the Public Health Act,"
he said
Hinshaw said Shandro's office wanted AHS to check with her first, so she could report back to his office.
The
legal advisor challenged that, saying AHS was supposed to check with
Hinshaw and a colleague "with respect to prosecutions, not enforcement
generally.
"So what is going on?" he asked.
Shandro's office was "mad that AHS has enforced things like no shaving in barber shops," Hinshaw responded.
Hinshaw
said all local medical officers of health and environmental health
officers were already expected to tell her and the team about any
impending orders or prosecutions.
But a week later, a senior
health official told the meeting AHS was "struggling about what they
should be doing" regarding enforcement.
The official said AHS had been told: "Don't turn a blind eye but don't issue any orders.
"And
then come to us, and if push comes to shove, I think it will be up to
the ministry to figure out if we are going to do something."
Ubaka
Ogbogu, an associate law professor at the University of Alberta who
specializes in public health law and policy, said 'the atmosphere in
which [COVID-19] decisions are being made is combative, it is not
collaborative and [politicians and health officials] are not working
towards a common goal.' (CBC)
In
mid-September, CBC News reported that AHS had received more than 29,000
complaints about COVID-19 public health order violations since the
beginning of April.
A total of 62 enforcement orders, including
closure orders, were issued in that period. As recently as last week,
AHS has said that "every effort" is made to work with the public before
issuing an enforcement order.
'Uphill battle'
In
private conversations as recently as this month, Hinshaw has
characterized her interactions with Kenney and cabinet as difficult,
said a source close to her.
"I would say that she has used the phrase 'uphill battle,'" they said.
The
source said Hinshaw has been understanding of the reasons for the
difficulty, "which I think we both see as being rooted in a completely
different weighting of the risks of the disease and the risks of, for
example, public-health restrictions."
Hinshaw, however, "did allude to some of the meetings as being very distressing."
But the source said Hinshaw worries about what could happen if she leaves her role.
"She
sees her position, optimally, as trying to do the best she can from
inside. And that if she wasn't there, there would be a risk that things
would be worse in terms of who else might end up taking that position
and what their viewpoint was on the best direction."
Ogbogu, the
health law expert, said that while Hinshaw may be well-meaning, her
willingness to allow politicians to subvert her authority is ultimately
undermining the fight against COVID-19.
If the government is not
following scientific advice, if it is not interested in measures that
will effectively control a pandemic that is killing Albertans, then
Hinshaw "owes us the responsibility of coming out and saying, 'They are
not letting me do my job,'" Ogbogu said.
"And if that comes at a risk of her job, that is the nature of public service."
At
the planning meeting on June 4, a civil servant told the team there was
concern the province wasn't giving businesses much time to adjust to
shifting COVID-19 guidance.
"I've been advocating everywhere I can to move it up, and they moved it back," Hinshaw replied.
"So you can see I have a lot of influence," she said sarcastically. "But I will keep trying."
