Even before seeing the title of this editorial, readers probably had a good idea what the topic was going to be.
Last week the region was shaken up by a string of announcements from the provincial authorities. On Monday, it was announced that two fellow MRCs within the Outaouais (Papineau and Vallée de la Gatineau) were headed for the red zone while Pontiac remained in the orange. The next evening those hopes were dashed as . . .
the premier announced that every orange zone in Quebec would be going to full alert regardless of their actual case numbers. He also announced that the move would come into effect in about 30 hours or so.
This isn’t the first change of plans that Quebecers have have had to endure over the last month, as our provincial officials have renegotiated their “moral contract” several times.
How is it possible that they couldn’t anticipate the need for a coherent strategy heading into the holidays? By rolling out the plan at the last minute they caused a significant amount of havoc. Local businesses had to adapt and try to clear inventory. Parents had to scramble to find child care options for their youngsters. Families had to cancel whatever limited plans they had, or else plot with their loved ones about how to discretely bend the rules.
That previous line is not to endorse any flouting of the rules, but when a government squanders what little credibility they had left with a plan this hastily thrown together, it’s no wonder people stop paying attention.
Pontiac county is somewhat unique within the region, recording less than 20 overall cases since March, which is the reason this imposition feels so grossly disproportionate. Even if you include the Municipality of Pontiac with its proximity to Gatineau, the cumulative and active case numbers are quite low. We shouldn’t be pushing our luck, as a spike of infections could rapidly overwhelm the local health care system, but it’s absurd that we’re under the same restrictions as those in Canada’s COVID capital, Montreal.
If we’d been kept in the orange, we might have been swarmed by city-dwellers looking for a hideaway to stage their holiday benders, which was exactly the concern that local officials had with seasonal residents fleeing viral hot spots for their cottages in the summer. Doug Ford used that same reasoning to lump the Ottawa region in with the rest of southern Ontario in the holiday restriction plan he announced on Monday.
This region is beholden to the whims of city dwellers both real and hypothetical. It’s so surreal that there’s not really much to do but laugh.
After a whirlwind of misery that 2020 has been, we’ve arrived at the end of the year more or less intact. This final kick in the shins that our provincial overlords snuck in at the last minute is troublesome but can still be overcome with a little bit of ingenuity.
However you’re celebrating, or even if you’re planning to just curl up in the fetal position for the next few weeks, stay safe and look forward to all the possibilities that 2021 has to offer.
Caleb Nickerson
