Apr 5 2020 — Jaime Watt — Toronto Star — The COVID-19 humanitarian crisis is compounded in its severity by an economic crisis that, like the virus, is worsening exponentially. Nowhere is this more pronounced than Alberta where, this week, the price of Western Canadian Select oil plummeted below $5 a barrel — equivalent to the price of a pint of beer. We are facing […]

Apr 5 2020 — Robin V. Sears — Toronto Star — “I love you, little brother.” With that terse but powerful declaration, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed his status as the crisis leader in North America. Frank admission of emotional vulnerability takes guts for most men, even in private. But in public, day after day, the 62-year-old, tough, often abrasive and far from universally loved […]

Apr 5 2020 — Toronto Star — Even isolation cannot prevent the sights and sounds of children and youth at play. Their laughing voices ring out with bicycle bells on soft spring winds and occasionally, they taunt each other with unbridled shouts of freedom. Their colourful jackets and boots provide a welcome antidote to the grim background of COVID-19 masks and ventilators […]

Apr 5 2020 — Anthony Furey — Sun Media — What Canadians are facing as a nation has quickly gone from being a public health crisis to a whole-of-society one. It’s the same for many countries. Yet, not all countries are responding the same way to the coronavirus. And not all experts are urging the same action. Right now, Canadians are mostly on the same […]

Apr 5 2020 — Lorrie Goldstein — Sun Media — China’s government is no doubt delighted with federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu’s vigorous defence of its credibility regarding its role in the outbreak of COVID-19, which has created a global health and economic crisis. Canadians, on the other hand, should be concerned. Not only did Hajdu blow past Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s non-committal answer Thursday […]

Apr 3 2020 — John Ivison — National Post — Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the projected spread of COVID-19 in the country’s largest province “stark and sobering”. Ontario is the first jurisdiction in Canada to share the modelling on which public policy decisions are being made, including projected fatalities. No wonder the premier, and health minister, Christine Elliott, looked ashen-faced. The province is expecting […]

Apr 3 2020 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — The nature of a contagion is that it grows at a speed that always just exceeds our awareness. It seems dormant for a long while, then suddenly it is surging. No sooner have we adapted to this than we find it has grown still further, faster. It is like a tsunami in this respect. Far […]

Apr 3 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — “Sorrow is knowledge,” Lord Byron told us long ago. “They who know the most/ Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth/ The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.” Doug Ford, no classicist, had a similar message for Ontarians on Friday as he finally broke a short-lived taboo whose justification none of us […]

Apr 3 2020 — Mireille Lalancette and Michel Lamy — Policy Options — We are experiencing an unprecedented situation. The crisis caused by COVID-19 has not just health, social and economic implications but also media implications, as its coverage completely overshadows all other events happening on the planet at the moment. It is a media eclipse unlike anything we have ever seen before.

Apr 3 2020 — Stuart McCarthy — Hill Times — It is often said that history repeats itself. It is how we respond to history that makes a difference. If the 2008 recession spearheaded by the collapse of Lehman Brothers was the “great recession,” then the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is pushing us to the brink of an even economic disaster. For Canada to recover as […]

Apr 3 2020 — Toronto Star — Canada’s deputy prime minister has found therapy in an unexpected source in the midst of a global pandemic. Chrystia Freeland’s “therapist,” as she calls him, is Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and he sees their conversations the same way.

Apr 3 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Once the White House’s coronavirus task force released its own model predicting that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, it was inevitable that there would be more questions about what Canada’s projections say. If there’s one thing that social distancing and self-isolation have made common, it is wondering where all this is going. […]

Apr 2 2020 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — The income supports are in place, the wage subsidy is set to go to employers, and the central bank is greasing the wheels of the money markets so that they can function in a predictable way. Federal authorities have now put more than $193 billion into forming a cushion, hoping Canada’s collapsing economy can ride […]

Apr 2 2020 — John Ivison — National Post — Justin Trudeau’s reluctance to level with Canadians by releasing the government’s death-toll projections has understandably led to nervousness. Are the forecasts so bleak the prime minister is worried we can’t handle the truth? Yet key decision-makers suggest that the main cause for apprehension in Ottawa is not over the immediate health crisis, or even the […]

Apr 2 2020 — Tom Walkom — Toronto Star — In times of crisis, countries must fend for themselves. That is the fatal weakness of globalization. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted this weakness. The theory behind globalization (or the liberal world order as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland prefers to call it) sounds good. It is based on two principles. First, nations should conc