Alberta government ends all Covid restrictions

Alberta to lift remaining COVID-19 restrictions | CBC News:

Scary headline, AlbertaPolitics.ca, April 2021.

June 13, 2022 - "As of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, the Alberta government will lift the province's remaining COVID-19 restrictions, meaning mandatory masking on public transit will come to an end, as will mandatory isolation. 'We need to live with COVID-19 while accepting that it will continue to be present. We'll continue to work to keep Albertans safe by ensuring access to vaccines, antivirals and rapid tests, through ongoing COVID-19 surveillance and by enhancing health-care system capacity,' Health Minister Jason Copping said in a statement Monday. 

"Though not required, isolation will remain recommended for those who have COVID symptoms or a positive test result. Other provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba have already lifted self-isolation requirements. 

"The province will still keep some health measures in health-care settings, such as masking. Alberta Health Services confirmed that masking will still be required at all acute care, continuing care and community locations, including immunization and lab collection sites. 

"The chief medical officer of health order affecting continuing care is expected to be lifted by June 30, the province said in a news release. Some measures in continuing care settings will remain in place through standards and policy, such as isolation of symptomatic residents, outbreak protocols and masking.... 

"'Learning to live with COVID-19 does not mean forgetting about it,' Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Monday in a news release. 'As we bring COVID-19 management in line with other respiratory diseases, it will continue to be vital that we receive our primary vaccine series and any additional booster doses we are eligible for, and continue good habits like washing our hands regularly and avoiding being around others if we feel sick.'"

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-lifts-remaining-covid-restrictions-1.6487506

Google lobbies to slow down Canada's Bill C-18

Google warns Ottawa’s Online News Act would ‘break’ its search engine | Globe and Mail - Bill Curry:

May 16, 2022 - "Google is ramping up its opposition to the federal government’s Online News Act, warning the proposed new law would 'break' its popular search engine. Google Canada vice-president and managing director Sabrina Geremia released a detailed criticism of the bill Monday in an online post, stating the bill as currently drafted would likely make Canada’s news industry worse off and would hurt Canadians’ ability to find quality information.

"One of the social-media giant’s biggest concerns is language in the bill that prohibits 'digital news intermediary operators' – a category that would apply to Google and other search engines – from giving 'undue or unreasonable preference' to specific news items. The company argues this language is unclear and puts at risk the core function of Google’s search engine, which is to provide ranked responses to a search query.

"It also states that requiring Google to pay the news organizations that appear in search results amounts to a 'link tax' and could mean consumers receive less information. 'The ability to link freely between websites is fundamental to how the internet works,' Ms. Geremia states. 'Canadians expect that when they search for information, they will have access to ALL the content the internet has to offer. Requiring payment for links risks limiting Canadians’ access to the information they depend on. The Online News Act would break this critical principle of the internet for everyone.'

"Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act, last month. The goal of the bill is to compel global tech companies such as Facebook and Google to negotiate payment agreements with news organizations as compensation for news content that appears on the large platforms. The legislation is modelled after a similar approach enacted last year in Australia."

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-google-warns-ottawas-online-news-act-would-break-its-search-engine/

Google Toronto Office. CC 1.0 Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Google contacts each MP over fast-tracking of online news bill through Commons | CTV News - Marie Woolf, Canadian Press:

June 1, 2022 - "Google has taken the extraordinary step of writing to every MP and senator expressing fears that the online news bill is being rushed through Parliament without proper debate or consideration. In its letter, Google warns that the bill needs more scrutiny because of its implications, including for the way the search engine ranks content and elevates information from 'trusted sources'....

"Google says ... the bill has a very broad definition of 'eligible news businesses' and could mean that 'foreign state-owned outlets could be eligible even if they are known sources of misinformation and propaganda.' The letter also warns that, as currently worded, the bill's 'undue preference' provision may 'prohibit features that elevate information from trusted sources (including government information) or reduce low quality information (including from eligible foreign state media outlets). The breadth of this provision threatens potential liability for any type of ranking or moderation of news content or any action that might have a negative impact on any outlet, even if that outlet is known to produce propaganda or disinformation,' the letter adds....

"The government has fast-tracked the bill through the Commons, reducing the amount of time it is debated on the floor of the House before going into committee for closer scrutiny....Conservative House leader John Brassard accused the government of 'limiting and stifling debate' of the bill by MPs. 'I'm profoundly disappointed they moved a time allocation on such a highly contentious bill that needs significant work,' he said. 'What they are doing is simply bypassing the House of Commons. We only had two hours of debate on C-18 and, as the official Opposition, we only had one speaker.'

"Google spokeswoman Lauren Skelly said: 'Getting this right is much more important than getting it done quickly.' She said Google wrote to MPs and senators because it was important for them to 'know where we stand' and said the bill as currently written was 'deeply flawed.' She added, in a statement, that Google was 'strongly in favour of contributing financially to support a sustainable future for journalism and the news ecosystem in Canada.'"

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/google-contacts-each-mp-over-fast-tracking-of-online-news-bill-through-commons-1.5928695

The Covid goalposts keep being moved

When Believing the Health Authorities Requires Denying Obvious Realities | Brownstone Institute - Thorstein Siglaugsson:

Image: The Silver Doctors

June 7, 2022 - "This weekend The Daily Sceptic published two articles reviewing some studies purported to show Covid-19 vaccines are useful for countering so-called long-covid, lingering symptoms after Covid infection. The conclusion of the author, who is an ex-senior scientist with the UK government, is that the vaccinations do not in fact prevent those symptoms....

"The interesting thing here is how we have, over the course of 18 months, moved from eagerly awaiting vaccines that would eradicate Covid-19 by providing herd immunity, towards failed attempts at showing that at least those vaccines prevent long-term health issues among those who catch the disease and fall ill with it, the disease they wouldn’t have caught, let alone fallen ill with, had the vaccines worked as promised. 

"At the same time, more and more data from all over the world show how the vaccine rollout is in fact correlated with a large spike in excess mortality. The only hope seems to be the adenovirus vaccines, the use of which was discontinued in most countries in favour of the mRNA vaccines. That may have been a premature decision, as contrary to the mRNA vaccines, they seem to lower excess mortality. 

"To sum it up, no protection against infection, the vaccinated seem to fall ill just as easily as the unvaccinated, ... and despite some short-lived protection against death, the net effect is an increase, not a decrease in excess mortality. The last straw is trying to show that at least the vaccines prevent the rather dubious long-covid. Even this attempt fails according to The Daily Sceptic. Still, I expect we will see a wealth of studies purportedly showing some minor positive effects on all sorts of unrelated conditions; once a believer, there is always one more last straw to cling on to.

"This brings us back to the other goalposts, the three-week flattening of the curve, how lockdowns were supposed to stop the virus in its tracks, how masks were supposed to do the same, and how those goalposts have moved and how there is always another excuse. If the three-week flattening of the curve didn’t work it was because the lockdowns weren’t strict enough or not put in place at the correct point in time. If the masks didn’t work in a real-life setting this was of no consequence; the excuse was they weren’t used correctly.... If the lockdowns plunged hundreds of millions into acute poverty it wasn’t because of the lockdowns; in some mysterious way the virus itself had forbidden those people to work. 

"Moving goalposts and after-the-fact justifications are not a new problem. We see this everywhere. Every project manager has experience of targets being changed, of weak excuses, unrealistic plans and budgets. And of course there is always the tendency to try to cover up what happened. But even so, the stakeholders not directly responsible for the execution usually realize failure when it happens. 

"But this is not happening now. We, the public, are the most important stakeholder and it is not us who make the decisions or are responsible for the execution. What is new is how we unquestioningly accept every new goal, every justification, how ready we are to forget today what we were convinced of yesterday, how willingly we go for the next booster believing, truly believing the reason the last one failed to protect us was just bad luck.

"We have collectively accepted a parallel world, a parallel set of truths, and however far it is from actual reality does not matter in the least. Our goal is not to eradicate the disease, not to live with it and minimize the harm it causes, our goal is to sustain our belief in the cult leaders, no matter how often they mislead us; with every lie, every shifted target, every excuse, our faith only grows stronger.

"With every excuse we accept, with every denial we echo, every misguided action we support, we entangle ourselves more and more deeply; by each step, we take a higher stake in the narrative, and the higher it gets, the more fiercely we defend our parallel set of truths; the harder it becomes to break away and accept reality."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/when-believing-the-health-authorities-requires-denying-obvious-realities/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Trudeau's caucus wants Covid mandates ended

‘Massive majority’ of Liberal caucus wants Trudeau to drop federal COVID mandates, say Liberal MPs | Hill Times - Abbas Rana:

June 9, 2022 - "With provincial and international jurisdictions easing COVID restrictions, some Liberal MPs say the vast majority of their caucus want the federal government to drop travel vaccination requirements, allowing unvaccinated Canadians to board domestic flights. Several Liberal MPs interviewed for this article said that most caucus members want all federal pandemic restrictions dropped as soon as possible.

"'The massive majority of Liberal MPs want the mandates to end,' said one Liberal MP who spoke on not-for-attribution basis.... 'People are saying "What the hell, why are [unvaccinated] people not allowed to fly domestic, you know, like, at least let them fly domestic with masks on. You can go into a shopping mall with them, you can go into an elevator with them, you can go into a movie theatre with them.'

"Three-term Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.), a medical doctor and a member of the Health Committee, said the vaccine mandate for air travel should be removed.... Powlowski said that he still wants air travellers to wear masks when they’re on the plane. He said he would leave the timing of when to ease the federal mandates up to the government.... Citing caucus confidentiality, he declined to say what his colleagues think about this issue and what kinds of answers MPs are getting internally from cabinet ministers on this issue....

"According to federal travel requirements, all passengers taking a domestic flight must be fully vaccinated. Passengers arriving in Canada from out of country are also instructed to use the ArriveCan app and may be subject to random COVID testing. The federal Health Department and Public Health Agency of Canada announced recently that the federal mandates have been extended until the end of June.... 

"Provincial jurisdictions have already lifted or have been easing most of the COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates.... Most recently, Ontario announced that as of June 11, most provincial masking requirements would be over, including for passengers on public transit.... Late last month, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, Ont.) put forward a motion in the House calling for an end to all travel restrictions. It was defeated by a vote of 202 to 117.

"Speaking on not-for-attribution basis, several Liberal MPs said the issue has been raised numerous times in regional and national caucus meetings, but they did not get a satisfactory answer.... Sources told The Hill Times that Liberal MP Brendan Hanley (Yukon), a former chief health officer of the territory, has done more than one presentation at national caucus meetings to make the case for dropping COVID-19 restrictions. He was not available for an interview with The Hill Times....

"MPs also told The Hill Times that COVID mandates are one of the key reasons for the notoriously long line-ups at some airports, like the 'chaos' reported at the Toronto Pearson International Airport making repeat headlines for ongoing disruptions. Some Liberal MPs said that even if the federal government does not want to lift all restrictions at the same time, they can do it gradually but they should start with dropping the vaccine requirement now."

Read more: https://www.hilltimes.com/2022/06/09/massive-majority-of-liberal-caucus-wants-trudeau-to-drop-federal-covid-mandates-say-liberal-mps/366667

Lockdown returns to Shanghai

Shanghai to lock down 2.7 million, a week after easing Covid restrictions | The Guardian - AFP:

June 9, 2022 (6.47 am) - "Shanghai will lock down a district of 2.7 million people on Saturday to conduct mass coronavirus testing, city authorities said, as the Chinese metropolis struggles to fully emerge from punishing curbs. The city eased many restrictions last week, after confining most of its 25 million residents to their homes since March as China battled its worst Covid outbreak in two years. But the lockdown was never fully lifted, with hundreds of thousands in China’s biggest city still restricted to their homes and multiple residential compounds put under fresh stay-home orders.

"The south-western district of Minhang, home to 2.7 million people, will be placed under 'closed management' on Saturday morning and all residents will be tested, district authorities said in a social media post on Thursday. 'The closure will be lifted after samples have been collected,' they added, without giving a specific time or date.... The district’s announcement sparked fear among some social media users that the lockdown could be prolonged beyond Saturday if any cases are found."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/09/shanghai-to-lock-down-27-million-a-week-after-easing-covid-restrictions

Workers in Shanghai, June 2, 2022. Reuters

Shanghai Returns to Lockdown for Mass Testing on Covid Fears | Bloomberg:

June 9, 2022 (8.03 pm) - "Shanghai will briefly lock down most of the city this weekend for mass testing as Covid-19 cases continue to emerge, causing more disruption and triggering a renewed run on groceries days after exiting a grueling two-month shutdown. The plan emerged from one area with a handful of cases, then spread in hours to 15 of the financial hub’s 16 districts. It encompasses almost all of the city’s 25 million residents as health officials use testing to root out any silent transmission of the virus, a key tool in China’s Covid Zero arsenal. 

"The quick escalation reflects the worry that continues to shroud Shanghai, which implemented one of the world’s strictest lockdowns in late March after a sluggish initial response to its outbreak. The newest move follows a rebound in infections within the community to six on both Thursday and Friday, up from zero a day earlier. Residents will be released after taking the tests, but they’ll be back under lockdown if new infections are found in their compounds. There were 5 additional infections found among people in quarantine on Thursday, for a total of 11 cases in the financial hub, health officials said. Nationwide, China added 73 infections. 

"The threat of disruptive measures also returned to Beijing, as mass testing turned up 21 new local cases as of 3 p.m. on Friday. More than 4,400 people who were in close contact with those who were infected have been sent to government-mandated quarantine facilities. Several neighborhoods in the capital’s key Chaoyang district, home to company headquarters and embassies, were on alert after a flareup in a local bar ended a five-day streak of zero community spread on Thursday. There were two new infections found outside of quarantine there on Friday. 

"The return of restrictions and mass testing in China’s biggest cities underscores the difficulty of eliminating the virus while the rest of the world accepts it as endemic. The disruption wrought by pandemic curbs have impacted production at companies like Sony Group Corp. and Tesla Inc. Still, President Xi Jinping continues to emphasize the country’s adherence to a policy that has delivered one of the lowest Covid death rates in the world. Xi called for Covid Zero to be adhered to 'unwaveringly' in a visit to Sichuan province Thursday, according to the official Xinhua news agency, while stating that it should be achieved in balance with the needs of the economy.... 

"Infections are also spreading in China’s north, with outbreaks in Inner Mongolia and in Dandong, a city on the border with North Korea, which recently acknowledged what it claimed was its first Covid outbreak."

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/covid-flares-again-in-shanghai-putting-areas-back-in-lockdown  

Covid restrictions aggravate Toronto airport chaos

'Chaos' at Toronto's Pearson airport could continue until end of August, ex-Air Canada exec says | CBC News - Desmond Brown:

June 08, 2022 - "Extremely long wait times affecting arriving and departing passengers at Toronto's Pearson airport are likely to continue until Labour Day, a former Air Canada executive said Wednesday. 'Chaos, messy, impossible, difficult,' were the words used by Duncan Dee to describe the situation at Canada's busiest airport.... 

"Over the last two months, travellers at Pearson have faced long lineups, delays and cancellations, which some blame on continuing COVID-19 restrictions and a labour shortage. Dee says while Canada's Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra has promised 400 new screening officers starting at the end of June, he doubts that that's going to make a huge difference. 'In terms of the customs delays, until the pandemic-era inspections are changed, I hate to think that this is something that's going to plague us through the entire summer,' Dee said.... 

"The delays at Pearson gained added attention this week after former professional hockey player Ryan Whitney took to social media Monday to share his frustration after Air Canada cancelled flights and allegedly had minimal ground staff to assist affected passengers. 'This is the worst airport on earth, I'm telling you there's no other airport like this,' Whitney said in a video posted on Twitter. 'I am so shocked at this place, it is the biggest disgrace known to man'....

"Toronto business leaders held a news conference last month during which they urged Ottawa to end hours-long delays at Pearson. They warned during that news conference that passengers would share their experiences with the rest of the world and that could negatively affect arrivals in the medium and long term.

'My concern is that this poor first impression will keep people from returning to Canada or stories of bad experiences here at Toronto's airport will force travellers to consider other locations and destinations instead,' Edwin Frizzell, general manager of the Fairmont Royal York, said at that news conference. Another business leader, Jan De Silva, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, said, 'International passengers are being forced to wait for up to three hours, sometimes inside the aircraft they flew in on, because of longer processing times by customs officers.' 

"Dee says dropping the COVID-19 screening will "certainly help solve the arrivals problems" at Pearson. 'Right now, according to the airports, it's taking four times longer for each traveller to be processed through customs, so if you remove those pandemic-era inspections, you're going to immediately see a four-fold decrease in the amount of time it takes to process passengers — so 30 to maybe 60 seconds per passenger instead of two to three minutes per passenger. That's a huge, huge savings right there,' he said. 

"'On the security side, crew members, your flight attendants and pilots are inspected just like they are a traveller just coming off the street, so just stop that. That's something that other countries don't even do, but in Canada, we've decided that for some reason, the individuals flying the aircraft who all the passengers trust their lives with need to be inspected and need to have their liquids checked every time they go through the airport,' Dee added."

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-pearson-airport-delays-1.6481605

Rhode Island legalizes adult-use cannabis

Rhode Island Becomes the 19th State To Legalize Recreational Marijuana | Reason - Jacob Sullum:

Image courtesy The Green Fund

May 26, 2022 - "Rhode Island yesterday became the 19th state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Gov. Dan McKee, a Democrat, signed a bill that immediately allows adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis in public and grow up to three plants at home. State-licensed recreational sales are supposed to start on December 1, beginning with the state's three existing medical marijuana dispensaries. The law also requires automatic expungement of marijuana possession convictions.

"'Rhode Island now joins the growing list of states that have prioritized common sense and justice over the status quo of a failed and nonsensical prohibition," said Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. 'The approval of legalization in Rhode Island is just the latest sign that the overwhelming majority of Americans want marijuana to be legalized and that their lawmakers are becoming more responsive to this growing public sentiment.' Rhode Island legalized medical marijuana in 2006, and legislators have been trying to go further for a decade....

"As of now, public consumption of marijuana will be legal in any place where cigarette smoking is allowed. But the new law authorizes local governments to restrict or ban the 'smoking or vaporizing of cannabis in public places.'

"The law caps the number of retailers at 33, which amounts to about one store per 32,000 people.... By comparison, according to a recent report from Reason Foundation ... Colorado has one licensed retailer per 13,838 residents, and Oregon has one per 6,145. Rhode Islanders may find it easier to buy pot from black-market dealers or from stores in Massachusetts or Connecticut, both of which have legalized recreational use. Like California, Rhode Island will allow local governments to ban pot shops, but only through referendums and not in the three cities (Providence, Warwick, and Portsmouth) where medical marijuana is already being sold.

"Recreational marijuana sales will be subject to taxes totaling 20 percent: a 10 percent cannabis-specific state tax and a 3 percent local tax, plus the standard 7 percent sales tax.... Rhode Island's combined 20 percent rate is somewhat higher than the 17 percent tax in Oregon, which has had notably more success than California in displacing the black market. But Rhode Island's total tax is substantially lower than California's combined levies and the 37 percent retail excise tax in Washington.

"The day before McKee signed the Rhode Island bill, Delaware Gov. John Carney, a fellow Democrat, said he would veto a bill taking the more tentative step of eliminating civil penalties for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana.... Judging from the overwhelming support for that bill in the Delaware legislature, there are enough votes to override Carney's veto, although it's not clear whether that will happen.

"In South Dakota, meanwhile, a legalization initiative has qualified for the November 2022 ballot. Voters in that state approved legalization of recreational use in 2020, but the initiative never took effect because of a lawsuit backed by Kristi Noem, South Dakota's Republican governor. Last November, the South Dakota Supreme Court agreed that the 2020 initiative violated the state constitution's 'single subject' rule."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/05/26/rhode-island-becomes-the-19th-state-to-legalize-recreational-marijuana/