Dr. Courtney Howard, is an emergency physician. She's also president of the Canadian Association of Physicians. Not surprisingly she's been run off her feet trying to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. She doesn't think much of the Trudeau government's bailout of the fossil energy sector.
When I first read about the possibility of a multibillion-dollar bailout of the oil and gas sector by the federal and Alberta governments, I was exhausted.
I was exhausted from days of ER work, personal protective equipment drills, obsessive counting of ventilators and considering how to encourage Canadians to have courageous conversations around end-of-life care. I was too exhausted to even think about responding.
That was precisely the point. Oil and gas companies, lobbyists and the decision makers they have formed relationships with are counting on Canadians being too occupied coping with an ongoing health crisis to register that our country is considering a massive transfer of public funds to support the very industry most likely to cause the next health crisis. And the health crisis after that. And the health crisis after that.Howard sees a Canada that is failing our future generations.
UNICEF, the WHO and the Lancet created an index of “child flourishing,” where Canada ranked 21st out of 180 countries in support for present-day child health, but 170th in terms of sustainability, making us one of the wealthy countries that “threaten every child’s future through climate change.”
Our current crisis highlights the need to take planetary health, defined by the Lancet as the “health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems upon which it depends,” into account. The virus of zoonotic origin currently bringing the globe to a near-standstill transferred into humans due to a lack of care at the interface between humanity and the rest of the natural world.
Pre-COVID-19, the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risks Report emphasized that the majority of major risks facing the world in terms of both impact and probability have to do with this intersection — they were right.
The only possible positive outcome of this tragedy is a generational pivot: For us to rise to the COVID-19 challenge with courage and unity, learn all we can and surge into a post-pandemic world committed to preventing further crises and bolstering resilience to any that may occur. Knowing that only about 20 per cent of overall health status is determined by health care, this means pushing for measures that make life outside of the hospital stable, clean and equitable.
10 comments:
One wonders who is going to profit from this. Big oil & gas, banks, of course. Who else?
For us to rise to the COVID-19 challenge with courage and unity, learn all we can and surge into a post-pandemic world committed to preventing further crises and bolstering resilience to any that may occur.
Nice words.
I agree we will rise to the challenge and beat coronavirus.
We will lose a few million but heck we have lots of spare taxpayers for bailouts.
I feel that the slow reaction to coronavirus is more to do with back room disscussions trying to decide on who will benefit financially than the actual health of the worlds population.
So far financial stimulation of western countries has focused upon business bailout.
The financial stimulous is going to those that are underfunded,over extended , royalty defecit companies that produce little more than income tax.
We are seeing this both sides of the border.
Carbon credits have taken on a whole new meaning!!
TB
Talking of bailouts!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/25/still-too-big-fail-us-is-primed-bail-out-corporations-again/#comments-wrapper
This is happening through out the western world.
Where is the outrage.
TB
It took something like this to expose the extremism of the market-libertarian fraud. Maybe not. We await the market solution that will no doubt assign responsibility to some innocuous past intervention by the leftards and secular progressives.
To those who bother to follow events, Trump's bailout atop his previous corporate tax bailout is infuriating. The first round was supposed to stimulate American companies to get back into production and hiring workers - at least that was the story. We know they took that windfall and instead used it for share buybacks and executive compensation. Why would anyone expect them to treat the current round of corporate welfare any differently than the first?
TB, do you really see a "few million" Canadians wiped out in this pandemic?
Talk about regulatory capture!
I realize it's too much to ask for but I wish this chaos would lead people to see the need for democratic restoration. We need government that, in good times and in bad, is responsive first to the public interest above all else. To achieve that we need a system in which all voices are heard and counted.
No Mound I do not see millions of Canadains dying,but world wide, yes.
As of this moment as a healthy individual I am living a life of frustrating limiting mobility coupled with a morbid curiosity of current events.
The virus has laid bare the wrongs of the world from economics to politics which are too often a product of each other.
Whilst there has been some call for change during and after the pandemic we still have those in control of government who continue to push us down the same old path particularly with disaster relief first going to those that have bled the public purse for years.
TB
Well that's a relief, TB. If you read my next post it would not be an aberration in any historical context that three million should die just in Canada.
I too fear a government plunged into penury, unable or unwilling in the post-pandemic period, to undertake badly needed investments on climate change and healthcare.
Haven't we learned over the past few decades that Canadians are not much interested in sacrifice? Who will persuade them that a return to pre-pandemic Canada is impossible?
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