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“It’s the law!” got the finger…

April 15, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The emergency alert came in late last week, dictating that we stay strictly at home, that we leave our homes ONLY for essential shopping – nothing more than groceries and booze (didn’t mention the booze specifically but the LCBO is considered an absolutely essential service, so, he got that right), also “health care, vaccines, exercise or work.”

“It’s the law!” quoth the alert.

Man oh man. On the next day, a sunny Saturday, the busy road where I live was busier than I’ve ever seen it. Hundreds of vehicles – love those convertibles – and dozens of motorcycles rushed north and they dashed south, like giving the finger to the “law” ordering their owners to stay home. 

In the countryside, the parking lots for the trails were packed and the parking lot for the mall was full, as though the reaction to the “law” was rather irreverent.

Adding insult to injury with the “law” are the new approaches to the shops – you can buy rubber gloves at the dollar store but not candles – what if the lights go out? Who dreamt up dividing the shops into what can and cannot be purchased? Is this an effort to reduce the number of people in the shops? That was already being controlled by the shops themselves – to be sure, less so in the box stores than the smaller, local shops.

Certainly, these new restrictions are another – nonsense – form of petty tyranny and an increase to frustration. Food packages are just as likely to be infected, just as likely to be picked up and put down again as party hats, Doug. As always, you are missing the point. 

Doug Ford had better be careful he doesn’t finally cause a Montreal-style protest.

Over the weekend in the Old Port of Montreal, Quebec law makers were greeted by hostility at their renewed curfew- “everyone off the streets by 8:00pm, rather then 9:30pm,” treating adults like children. Hundreds of protesters, mainly a younger crowd and largely not wearing masks, hit the streets in a united rage at the “laws” being pressed on them, like a police state in Canada. A lot of damage was done with fires and attacks on businesses, which seems to be an integral aspect of rioting that I have never understood. Why should shop owners be punished by crowds protesting government orders?

Government policy, fumbling and covert behind-the-scenes deals are entirely at fault for the small or huge protests. This pandemic should be over, should be under control, not leaping out of control. Long before vaccines, we were on a downward count; in June, 2020, down to double digits here in Ontario and Canada was holding its own. We were taking the matter seriously and doing our bit, each of us, finally wearing masks once the benefits were acknowledged, paying real attention to hygiene and distance and it was all working in our collective favour. By late fall, our attention span had waned, government policies wavered and failed and numbers started to climb. Now we stand at over one million people stricken in Canada.

After so long and such failure, the conspiracies theories thrive. A friend of mine confirmed just the other day that he had no longer believes Covid is a real danger. He thinks the numbers are rigged to give the government extraordinary powers to confine us and pull deals that it should not behind the curtain of Covid – like the attack on Conservation Authorities and the construction of the 413, these assaults on our most pristine environment at time of environmental crisis, to mention only two: the Doug Ford policies of pandering to big business at the expense of everything else.

The Covid numbers are soaring but where does this leave the Federal Government when it comes to the subsidies that have been provided to so many Canadians and Canadian businesses, shut down by the pandemic policies? Will they still end in June?

The internet is awash with anti-protective rhetoric and misinformation but people have been influenced by misinformation all along and not only by the internet. Propaganda has been a fact of life forever. The internet has only made it easier to spread and encouraged countless more contributors to the sour and untrue.

All this, of course, is true world-wide. Globally, the number of Covid cases are climbing. Once again to say New Zealand, as an exception, is leading the pack for low numbers and excellent participation of the population by virtue of a strong leadership.

It is worrying to suggest that only intensive vaccination will help stem the flow of infection because behaviour is no longer going to quell the disease. Too many people, too many younger people, inclined to buy into the lies they read, are exhausted with the bad news, the restrictions and government waffling. When authority does not know what to do, people will take matters into their own hands and suit themselves. They won’t wear masks. They won’t stay home.

And damn the consequences.

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