Opinion | Erin O’Toole has a big problem with Jason Kenney

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole must be wishing that Alberta Prime Minister Jason Kenney could have been delayed for a few more days before announcing radical changes in public health and a piss on the province for its handling of COVID-19.

On Wednesday night, Kenney acknowledged that the fourth wave of the pandemic is sweeping his province at an alarming rate, largely due to low vaccination numbers and inadequate public health measures that have allowed the virus to spread. Measures that he loosened earlier this summer.

The situation in Alberta is devastating. As my colleague Kieran Leavitt wrote, 24 people died Wednesday, at a rate of one per hour. There were 269 patients fighting for their lives in intensive care units. Thousands of surgeries needed to care for flooded hospital wings, mostly unvaccinated, were canceled.

Kenney’s decision to declare a state of emergency, to “reluctantly” adopt a vaccine passport (or as he calls it a “restriction waiver program”), and to emphasize that vaccination is not a personal health option Rather, it has “real consequences for our entire society,” it has the potential to change the course of this choice.

For one thing, it can send potential conservative voters, those annoyed with mandatory closures and vaccine passports, into the arms of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada. On the other hand, Kenney’s recognition that he prematurely rushed to reopen the province, a move that likely cost lives, may cause undecided voters to reconsider voting for O’Toole, who is praising Kenney for his handling of the pandemic.

So far, the Conservative leader has tried to make this election campaign a referendum on Justin Trudeau. On the campaign trail, his stump speech notes that the Liberal leader called an unnecessary and costly election: $ 600 million that could have been better spent elsewhere. Why should Trudeau be rewarded with another term after this selfish act? O’Toole asks.

Liberals expected the election campaign to be a referendum on their handling of the pandemic. Who do you trust to guide Canada through the next waves of COVID-19? Liberals were encouraged by their success in acquiring vaccines: They spent $ 9 billion on a diverse portfolio to ensure that any Canadian who wanted to get vaccinated would be ahead of much of the world, including most of the G7 nations.

On the first day of this campaign, Trudeau made managing the pandemic a wedge issue. He stressed O’Toole’s opposition to mandatory vaccination, noting that the Conservative leader would not require that passengers on planes and trains be vaccinated, nor would he insist that all of his candidates be fully vaccinated.

In response, O’Toole emphasized housing for the unvaccinated. He described vaccination as “personal health decisions” that he promised to “respect” and refused to apply for vaccination passports, saying he would respect the decisions of the provinces. (Meanwhile, Trudeau has set aside a billion dollars to help provinces adopt such systems.)

Conservatives have done themselves no favors on this issue. From Calgary, Nose Hill incumbent Michelle Rempel Garner suggested in the Commons last fall that the failure of Liberals to require the manufacture of vaccines in Canada would leave Canadians unvaccinated until 2030, the Provencher incumbent. Ted Falk telling his local newspaper that you were 13 times more likely to die from the Delta variant if you were twice vaccinated than if you were not vaccinated. (This is false).

In Peterborough – Kawartha, conservative candidate Michelle Ferreri was found campaigning in a long-term care facility without being fully vaccinated, while in Battlefords – Lloydminster Rosemarie Falk returned tell a local reporter Conservatives oppose international vaccine passports.

More damaging, however, are O’Toole’s own words, praising Kenney for handling the pandemic “much better than the federal government” and, in an October 2020 clip posted to Liberal Calgary candidate Skyview’s Twitter profile George Chahal adds that “Federal Conservatives can learn a lot from our UCP cousins.”

O’Toole’s bid to position himself as a bridge builder between those who are uncomfortable with the heavy hand of the state demanding that vaccines participate in society and those who believe that everyone should take the hit so Canadians can avoid More lockdowns, it may suggest to voters that the Tory leader would be weak for public health at a time when the pandemic is again a hot topic.

O’Toole was asked 10 times Thursday if he still thinks Kenney handled the pandemic better than Justin Trudeau.

He refused to reply.

Althia Raj is a national policy columnist for the Star in Ottawa. Follow her on Twitter: @althiaraj