A Tale of Two Leaders: Ford and Trudeau’s COVID-19 response

Challenges mould political legacies; COVID-19 is proving so. Governments on all levels are scrambling to contain the virus in the hopes of “flattening the curve.” 

Each day, our Prime Minister makes a public address to breathe hope into those who need it most; the ill, elderly, and unemployed. Months ago, no Canadian would have predicted the gruelling quarantine we’re all being subjected to endure. 

Schools across the country have closed, leaving students to adapt to a method of “virtual” education. Over 1 million jobs have been lost since March 2020 due to the quarantine, and the stock market has nosedived. Stanford Graduate School economist Nicholas A. Bloom’s optimism is shrinking daily as he anticipates an economic “depression” that will surpass its 1930 predecessor.

Recently, Dr. Tam announced up to 22,000 Canadians can die from the virus even with the rigid protocols currently in place. 

Displays of leadership can take various manifestations, and Canada is experiencing two opposites in Prime Minister Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Whereas the former is marshalling legions of bureaucrats and his two most trusted advisors, Dr. Tam and Minister Hajdu, Ford, who is under similar constraints, is also actively engaged in the relief effort. 

For some, this contrast is a testament to the personalities of our two leaders. Others will place little consideration on Trudeau and Fords’ actions. COVID-19 is a challenge we face as a unified nation, not as partisans wishing to score political points.

Criticism should be levelled at Trudeau’s reluctance to identify the Chinese Communist Party as a culprit in undermining the situation by their repeated lies regarding fatalities. The government’s untested fidelity to international organizations that are equally complicit in downplaying the virus is room for concern. 

We remain in pursuit of a UN Security Council seat when involvement in the United Nations should be reduced. Abortion clinics, where the unjust slaughter of innocents occurs, continue to operate as per usual. Yesterday, Trudeau announced quarantine to prevent future outbreaks may become conventional until a vaccine is developed and accessible to the whole population.

Contrariwise, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has adopted a more “hands-on” approach. On Tuesday, he toured Woodbridge Auto Group’s factory in Vaughan, where manufacturing has begun to make respirator masks that contain the same pathogen-blocking qualities of the much sought-after N95 masks which are not produced anywhere in Canada. The province is pursuing self-sufficiency as trade’s weaknesses begin to expose themselves.

The Premier said, “While our government continues to pursue and exhaust every avenue available to secure the PPE needed to fight COVID-19, today marks the beginning of Ontario moving towards greater self-sufficiency on vital supplies that will keep us well equipped now and into the future”. 

Self-sufficiency  

Globalization’s erring is unquestionable. Achieving a world where the free movement of goods and people without any consideration for nations and their identities is as idyllic as the society envisioned by secular progressives. 

As stated in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, we ought to be cautious about the promises of infinite material wealth-because, there is always a caveat. Guinean prelate for the Roman Catholic Church Cardinal Robert Sarah addressed the epidemic, criticizing the world’s trajectory to infinite materialism wherein we de facto deify ourselves. 

Megacorporations are pushing for the abolition of borders and frenzied Jacobins, who dutifully behave as Marxian pawns are both struggling in the face of this pandemic. Integralist thinker Dr. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism has Failed articulates the logical conclusion when Locke and Rawls’ philosophies are applied; a world of hyperindividualism whereby bonds, familial or communal, are nullified. 

By redirecting manufacturing to Ontarian communities, our political leaders are finally acting on a fundamental governing principle: our nation first. Yielding immense disapproval from our current political class (the same ones who believe infanticide is acceptable) prioritizing the nation, her traditions, and the citizen body is an organic approach to governance. 

Doug Ford is responsible for an array of mishaps during his premiership; however, this is a triumph. Canada’s labour standards are superior to elsewhere, and in reorienting the economy towards a domestic sphere, communal bonds can begin to ascend once more. 

Federal-Provincial divide

Premier Ford visiting the plant is symbolic of Canada’s federal-provincial divide. The principle has its origins in a Thomistic concept of subsidiarity whereby levels of government can be understood as valances about the polity. Such a model ensures decentralization and is opposed to totalitarian tendencies. 

The local governments are those who hold the most considerable number of powers, albeit they should be limited. As such, Federal governments are only privy to certain responsibilities. While this ideal form of government has been molested by state aggrandizement, the Thomistic genus continues to animate the very essence of our federation – Sections 91-2 of our political constitution.

Doug Ford’s factory visits are what is to be expected by provincial governments, which are designed to be direct, whereas Trudeau’s scoped response is to be expected. All provincial governments have executed the appropriate measures in response concurrent with a strong collaborative effort between the various levels of government. Let’s keep it that way. 

Trudeau will retreat to his residence while Doug Ford, and the other premiers, take a more “hands-on” approach. What Canadians from coast-to-coast should be lauding is the Ontario Premier’s new determination to direct the economy towards self-sufficiency. Only then can we begin repairing Canada’s eroded communal bonds.