The frustration with COVID-19 keeps growing. Canadians are tired of the distancing, the damn masks and the stupid elbow bumping. We all want our lives back. And the politicians aren’t helping.
In Ontario, the politicians have other fish to fry. We are going to have an election called in another week—in case you hadn’t noticed all the electioneering. The Ford conservatives have been straight out campaigning for the past two months. Maybe they feel they’ve the most to lose. And they should.
But there seems to be some confusion about what this election is about. It is certainly not about long-term care facilities. The only people who have right to be concerned about that are those in ill-health and in their late 80s or 90s and their families.
I think Mr. Ford’s most serious enemy in this campaign will be that smarmy MP Pierre Poilievre. He is going around giving conservatism a bad name. He is pandering to the angry and the ignorant. He is promising free-form protesting to all. He is making foolish promises that we expect any sensible person to suspect.
For that hopeless Horwath and the emerging Del Duca to be arguing about who has the best plan for publicly-funded long-term care for Ontario is not going to help either of them.
Long-term care in this province is serious but there are other issues. There is a long-term approach to COVID-19 to address. There is a serious inflationary spiral that has to be alleviated. There is a serious shortage of decent rental accommodation in our province. We need more medical training and graduates. And then we need to pay them properly.
We certainly don’t need to learn that our senior management in our hospitals are topping the province’s sunshine list. We have far too much management and not enough nurses.
And you can hardly say that we will have more teachers and pay them properly. First you have to train the teachers.
What is desperately needed is a statement from each of the parties that encapsulates what they are planning for the province. If they are unable to come up with a statement, the voters will provide it. And the parties are unlikely to like it.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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