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Hold my beer.

NY new cases: 5177

Ontario: 3469

NY hospitalizations: 3783

Ontario: 2360

And here in central NY we just went back to full classrooms this week...

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It's funny to me that someone lives in Ottawa and doesn't realize that it isn't the capital of Ontario.

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Excellent article, and it's good for people to know how much of a dumbass Doug Ford is, but what pisses me off more in some ways is the lack of action taken by the ostensibly social democrat (in name only) provincial government in British Columbia. The New Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of "universal" healthcare (shout out to Tommy Douglas), the party of socialist farmers from the 50's and 60's. At the national level, the NDP is as close as you'll get to a genuinely socialist party and it can position itself that way because, at least at the moment, it's chances of ever forming a government at the national level are zero.

But provincially the NDP do gain power from time to time across Canada, and the instant this happens they crumble on most things worth doing and become essentially a Trudeau-style liberal party.

In BC, our NDP government still has left most workers with no paid sick time, has a bad record with industrial worksites where the virus is actually spreading, and still intends to vaccinate rich 60-year-olds who do nothing but play golf and sit on the porch before they vaccinate essential workers.

The thing that pisses me off the most is the lack of travel restrictions. The Atlantic provinces in Canada have almost no COVID-19. This is partially because no one lives there, but a much bigger reason is that you haven't been able to enter the Atlantic provinces since the pandemic began, basically unless you are driving a transport truck full of food or goods. Give credit where credit is due to some of the old-school dumbass conservative premiers of these provinces for instituting these travel restrictions. Especially for a region so dependant on the tourism sector in the summertime.

In British Columbia, this is what we need. We are the California of Canada. Some parts of BC never get winter. Whistler is one of the best places to ski and snowboard in the world. Did we tell everyone to fuck off and stay out until the pandemic is over? We did not. No travel restrictions, just some measly requests from our top doctor to avoid non-essential travel that obviously no one in Ontario is going to listen to if they want to avoid winter without going to Florida or take a world-class ski trip. Now our cases are through the roof and every worker at a place like Whistler has COVID.

Our Premier keeps saying that interprovincial travel restrictions are a federal issue, or falling back on civil liberties mumbo jumbo or whatever the fuck. Except that the Atlantic provinces have had this shit on lock for 13 months, and no one as of yet has taken them to the Supreme Court to find the travel restrictions unconstitutional. Even if they did at this point, those 13 months of much much greater safety would be worth it.

The dichotomy between the Atlantic provinces and the rest of Canada really makes this worse because these motherfuckers can just look right next door and see the roadmap to a safer pandemic and they won't fucking do it because they are chicken shit morons.

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