Since the government has chosen to divide up regions across the province by their relative “danger zone”, I’ve been playing Kenny Loggins non-stop. We’re barrelling towards the upper reaches of these coloured zones, with Gatineau and the surrounding area being placed at red alert over the weekend.
As a result, our Warden announced over the weekend that police will soon be stationed at our regional borders like they were in April, but this time. . .
their task will be even more ineffectual.
In the spring, police had the power to turn motorists away for taking “unnecessary” trips to the other side of the river or into the city, and place them under a mandatory 14-day self isolation. This time, they will be tasked with “educating” the public on the dangers of travelling outside the region.
What exactly is there to educate people on at this stage in the pandemic? If several months of lockdowns and intensive public awareness campaigns haven’t worked, why would police officers have any better luck?
The people flouting the rules at this point know exactly what they’re doing and they don’t care about the consequences. Even with the the situation evolving rapidly over the past few days, how many are going to be convinced of the error of their ways by a cop wagging a finger in their face?
That being said, considering that the local police force didn’t bother keeping track of their enforcement efforts the last time around (let alone wear masks), this seems like a lot of “busy work” at the taxpayers’ expense. The Gatineau police were somehow able to produce stats on all the people they turned away on the bridges from Ottawa, but the SQ weren’t keeping any data on the subject, at least not in this region.
The local health authority could do a lot better on the communication front as well. The CISSSO doesn’t release active case numbers broken down by region, but rather a total for the entire Outaouais. The numbers (or range of numbers in our case) that they do release by municipality only show the cumulative total, not the active cases.
The government has also been so hesitant to release the data on schools with outbreaks that a concerned parent decided to compile crowd-sourced information through the website covidecolesquebec.org, which now averages about 50,000 visitors daily. Call me crazy, but if one parent is able to do this voluntarily in their spare time, the provincial authorities should be more than capable of providing the information. Why aren’t they?
However, there was one interesting piece of government data that was released recently, the annual regional panorama, which showed that MRC Pontiac now has the fifth lowest per capita disposable income in the province. This is actually an increase from when we were dead last in 2011, so there’s your silver lining for the week.
If our various levels of government want to retain the confidence of their citizens in a constantly evolving situation like a pandemic, openness and transparency are of the utmost importance. In order to make informed choices, we need clear, up-to-date information.
That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Caleb Nickerson
