I think today's Covid19 update presser marked an inflection point in Doug Ford's pandemic honeymoon. Questions are getting tougher & tougher, answers are getting more and more evasive, and feel-good platitudes + vague promises aren't cutting it anymore. As it should be. #OnPoli
It's no longer good enough that Ford is frustrated with the pace of testing. After 6 weeks of inadequate testing & questionable targetting strategies, the Premier of Ontario can't just pretend he's like one of us, sitting on the sideline frustrated. The buck has to stop with him.
The horrorshow of how we care for our grandparents and parents generations, still not fully exposed, is starting to sink into the public consciousness. @CBCQueensPark's question about the precipitous decline in pro-active inspections is just the tip of a very large iceberg.
You can't claim every day to "spend whatever it takes", and every day duck questions about the refusal to top up the shamefully inadequate pay for PSWs. Quebec and BC did so, and the fact that Ontario has not, is a clear failing by contrast.
An emergency order mandating that seniors care workers can only work in one home only highlights the way in which carers are forced into multiple job holding to compensate for poverty level wages. Questions about if & how these people will be made whole financially were ducked.
While Ford's kumbaya persona is still largely in place, subtle hints & shifts in messaging show where they will attempt to shift the blame when the heat ratchets up: the Fed gov't; previous Ontario Lib gov't; and, gov't itself (as it manifests as the public sector).
This last point, on the purported failings of the public sector, as contrasted with the imagined hyper-efficiency of the private sector, was one that Ford returned to again and again today. It is also the argument that he will have the toughest time defending over the long haul.
As Ford repeated today, and has repeated everyday for weeks, over 80% of residential seniors care has been left to the private sector. It is precisely the drive for higher private sector profits, masked as "efficiencies", that driven the crisis in seniors residential care.
Essential jobs like PSW are atomized into chunks of part-time work, to reduce the liabilities for benefits and pension that are more commonly associated with full-time work, and to transfer lean, just-in-time modes of production usually associated with manufacturing to eldercare.
The powerful seniors care lobby argues for a reduction in "burocracy and red-tape", which manifests itself in cuts to pro-active annual inspections of every seniors residence, among other "red-tape" saving measures.
Private sector providers also fiercely lobby against any increases to the minimum standards for daily care that seniors in long-term care receive. Penny-pinching rationing of items essential to both health and dignity, such as adult diapers has been documented again and again.
Today Ford talked about bringing in consultants from Toyota (seriously?) to help bring that famous private sector rigour to seniors care. Too late. Seniors care has already been kaizened by profit driven private providers & the bitter harvest of that shows up in daily death tolls
@threadreaderapp unroll
