It’s good to pencil out the costs of your business once in awhile just to see where you are at on the balance sheet. But if you are a cattle rancher, you probably shy away from looking at how much money you have been losing especially in the last few years. There is a reason why cow/calf operations in Manitoba contracted by 7% in 2022.
So here’s some back of the napkin costs for someone thinking of keeping a few cattle. The assumptions are that you already have a small plot of land, say 80 acres, some outbuildings, and ready access. Many young families are already choosing this type of lifestyle out in the country.
The numbers will be for Manitoba in $CAD using costs from 2022. Your goal is to start out with 20 bred cows plus 1 bull calving in March with the weaned calves for October sale. Assumptions are that costs will be low end of the scale and you will be putting in a lot of sweat equity and will be able to be mostly available to look after the animals.
INPUTS
20 Bred Cows – $2000 each, these are low quality animals but you have to start somewhere – $40000
1 Two Year Old Bull – you got real lucky at the auction, stole this one – $4000
Infrastructure – Upkeep of barn, sheds, fences, drinkers, tools, chute, headgate, cattle/calving supplies, etc. – $10000/yr
Normal Vet Bills – vaccines, medicine, supplies, preg/semen checks, can’t even count taking an animal in or calling them out to the ranch – $2500/yr
Pasture Rental (1/4 Section) – hopefully pasture is available close by or there’s a community pasture with space. BTW, two years ago the community pastures were kicking the animals out in August to save the grass. Also, you might have to improve the fencing for added costs – $6000/yr
Manure Removal – if you haven’t got your own machinery, you’re either renting or calling in custom to clean your pens yearly – $2000/yr
Transport – you have to move cattle back & forth to pasture, to market, to the vet, etc. We’ll assume you have a buddy that can help out and you can trade favours to cover these costs. But custom trucking is in the range of $300/hr.
Feed – dry hay is your most cost efficient feed source. To get cattle through our Manitoba winters, we figure on 8 X 2000lb bales per animal. Feed has been in very short supply due to the drought years on the Prairies. They’re still using straw laced with molasses to get animals through this winter. You’re lucky and found reasonable priced bales with reasonable transport costs. BTW, the truckers pay full Carbon Taxes & guess where those costs get pass to. So $100/baleX8X21 animals = 168 bales – $16800/yr
Bedding – hopefully you can source some straw nearby, we were selling ours for $50/bale last year. That’s going to be lots of forking for you since you don’t have your own front end loader. Let’s say 100 bales for the winter – $5000/yr
Salt & Mineral – salt happens to be incredibly cheap, something like $8/50lb bag. Mineral more expensive at $50/40lb bag. Your animals need it plus some way to feed it other than just throwing blocks on the ground – $500/yr
Operating Costs – we could assume you have a nice old farmer who is okay with unloading all your bales and setting it up so you could creep feed through the winter. You will still have to feed the cattle in their pens during calving but you could go old school and just fork the hay over the fence. Have fun doing that twice a day. The farmer could be paid in cookies baked by your wife and she could show him a little skin once in awhile. But you’ll have some extra fuel costs and electrical costs – $1000/yr
Cost Year 1 – @$88000, yearly costs for subsequent years – @$45000
INCOME
Will lose 1 calf (heifer this yr) due to accident, illness, predators
Need to keep back 3 heifers as replacements
Assuming 50/50 split, there will be 6 heifers/10 steers for fall sale
Assuming really good gains on the pasture, steers will average 700lbs, heifers 650lbs
Last years prices were the best we’ve seen in quite awhile, $2.40/lb for steers & $2.10/lb for heifers
Assume about $1500/cull cow sold
Assume about 5% costs for the auctioneer to sell the calves
Gross Income – $8190 for the heifers/$16800 for the steers/$4500 for the cull cows minus 5% commission = $28000
Congratulations! Your first year losses are in the range of $60000 and each year after you are losing an additional $17000. Not to mention, you are tied to animals that could all die on you if you don’t constantly pay attention to them especially during calving season. Hope you enjoyed having a life before cattle cuz that’s your whole life now. You now have a time consuming, expensive hobby farm.
The smart people who think about going into cattle for a living just burn their cash instead of going through all this hassle.
*** Dec 30 Update – Nearly 5500 calls were made to the Covid Enforcement Brown shirts over the Christmas period of Dec 21-27. Most of the $1296 personal fines were related to household gatherings. So, thousands of Manitobans ratted on their neighbors. Nice to know who is watching. ***
*** Dec 22 Update – A nearby Municipality has confirmed that the Province is soliciting through Council for persons or organizations to act as their defacto Covid enforcers ‘Eyes & Ears’. This particular Council declined to cooperate. ***
Canary, fink, informer, narc, rat fink, snitch, tattletale are all synonymous terms associated with people willing to report their fellow citizens to the authorities whether it’s on the school playground or the mean streets. Now our 2020 lexicon has a new term added, the dreaded ‘Karen’.
Notice how all the words for a stool pigeon are derogatory in nature? Tattletales run to the teacher to squeal on the mean kids. Collaborators turned in their fellow citizens in totalitarian regimes such as fascist Germany or Stalinst Russia. Now, busybody Karens drop a dime on their neighbors commiting the sin of Covid infractions.
Karens in the Keystone province have been busy since April when you could first start complaining about your neighbor’s pandemic faux pax. If you are interested in the records of Manitoba’s enforcement fines, they can be accessed at the Cross-Departmental Reports section of this link. Businesses are named and shamed for various Covid related infractions which run at $5000 a pop.
All across Canada, there are increasing instances of snitch induced Covid disputes. A widely published social media video from Calgary recently showing a young man, Ocean Wiesblatt, being arrested by Calgary Police Services. If you watch the numerous full length online videos, the situation devolved to the point where a policewoman lost control of herself and pointed a taser at Mr. Wiesblatt with the threat of discharging the weapon. Eventually, he was taken down, his skates forcibly cut off, and he was arrested.
This entire incident was precipitated by an informer, Twitter handle dlo-artist, who had broadcast the following:
Screenshot from dlo-artist’s deleted Twitter account
This Karen has since deleted many of their social media accounts but the person’s home address is still visible. The address is on the other end of town from the Southwood Community Association Rink. Why were they so bothered by the horrible ‘atrocity’ of an extra five people on the ice? Oh, the humanity, 90 minutes and the Covid SWAT teams aren’t dispatched yet?!?
Scrolling through D Lo 168’s patreon and clothing store accounts, which are still active, it would appear that this erotic artist is fond of drawing partially clad/naked Disney heroines in suggestive sexual positions. I would assume that the Walt Disney Company is entirely comfortable with the racy depictions of their creations and that there are no copyright issues.
This is the problem with the snitch game, what goes around comes around. Is it really any skin off your nose if this artist is making a living from ripping off Disney? But was it any of their business to call the cops on a gathering of an extra five people playing outdoor hockey?
Perhaps these Karens who are willing to snitch on Covid rule breakers are motivated by a higher cause. But the weight of evidence, especially from the totalitarian societies of the 20th Century, suggests otherwise. Informants were used to great effect in Stalinist Russia. If you felt slighted by your neighbor, desired his job, his house, or his pretty wife, all you had to do was call up the State, make up a story and late that night the SMERSH black sedans would whisk them away. Of course, you would always be nervously looking over your own shoulder in case you inadvertently crossed someone. Gradually, on a larger scale this devolves into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ situation and everyone lives in terror.
Even here in Canada, it has been recognized that police informants are only rarely to be relied upon, especially when some sort of compensation is involved.
By now it must be clear that jailhouse informers are so unreliable that they tend to undermine criminal trials… Their testimony has all too often resulted in a wrongful conviction… How many wrongful convictions must there be before the use of these informers is forbidden or, at least, confined to very rare cases.
The current trend of Canadian provinces setting up dedicated Covid Snitch lines is unsettling. Manitoba has a COVID Tip Line for tattling on your neighbors who might notice you are having guests over for Christmas supper. The Province went out of its way to authorize extra personnel with the ability to hand out tickets. Indeed, the Province went so far as to hire a private security firm to bolster the numbers.
What is worse is it seems that authorities are not just content with ‘Team Manitoba’ doing the right thing and volunteering to tattle. There are rumours that small towns now have PAID Covid snitches. I reached out to the Manitoba government and Crime Stoppers for comment. According to a spokesperson from the Manitoba Communication Services, the Province has not adopted this policy nor condones it. But, according to a Municipality in my area, the Council was approached by the Province to see if there was anyone or organization in town who would act as their Covid infraction ‘Eyes & Ears’. This particular Council declined to cooperate.
I predict this widening network of ratting out of your neighbors and local businesses over having a guest over or not wearing a mask, will not end well.
The young hockey player only mouthed off to those cops but he did not resist arrest other than passively stand on the ice. It was the two women officers who lost control and almost tasered him. How long will it be before someone gets shot and killed over something as stupid as not wearing a mask?
Then on the flip side, have you heard of the phrase ‘Snitches get Stitches’? It’s pretty easy to figure out in a small town who is ratting people out. Small town gossip travels faster than a viral video and the end result could easily end in bloodshed. Is that really the intent of health regulations that are supposed to be ‘protecting’ us?
The Covid-19 pandemic has started to unleash the brutish nastiness we are willing to inflict on our fellow man in the name of the ‘public good’. I suggest reading Christopher Browning’s novel ‘Ordinary Men‘ in order to better understand the concerns raised by people opposing the pandemic health orders and draconic enforcement measures.
Canada is lurching down a dark path and our authorities are employing tactics well known to tyrants. If you ever wondered what were the genesis points of past Canadian atrocities, we are living it now.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
WFPS respond to multiple calls at the Maples Personal Care Home in Winnipeg during a deadly weekend in early November 2020. (Source: CTV News Winnipeg)
WHAT WENT SO TERRIBLY WRONG IN MANITOBA?
This is a candid assessment of the abysmal handling of Manitoba’s Covid-19 response on the part of our elected and appointed officials who were tasked with guiding the province through a ‘pandemic’. Frankly, everyone of them should resign in disgrace and several should be arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death.
The Manitoba government releases numerous News Bulletins and since Jan 30, nearly 300 specifically on Covid-19. All of the following information has been gleaned from the government’s own media releases.
Here is a list and some of my commentary on the key Manitoba Covid-19 milestones:
Mar 10: Province looking for more PPE & masks for patients and caregivers
Mar 13: Started ramping up testing & opening clinics, schools to close Mar 23 to Apr 10, events with more than 250 to be cancelled
It would be interesting to see the value of Dynacare’s contract for testing in Manitoba
Mar 17: Closure of daycares, casinos, Personal Care Home (PCH) lockdowns, gatherings down to 50, Province had 266 ventilators & Health Sciences Center created a 30 bed Isolation Ward
Mar 20: State of Emergency declared (continues to this day), all gatherings limited to 50, Manitobans asked to ‘Flatten the Curve’
The Provincial government copied most of the rest of the World with their response to a virus which was heralded as apocalyptic. In essence, we all maxed out the credit cards, took out a second mortgage, quit our jobs, slammed the door shut, and hid cowering in our basements covering our ears so we couldn’t hear the wolf howling outside.
Mar 26: termed a ‘Historic Pandemic’, $4.5M to be spent combating Covid-19 anxiety
“The most important way of reducing the spread of this virus is to stay at home as much as you can,” Roussin said. “We know that this virus is spread, almost exclusively, by symptomatic people and through close, prolonged contact with those individuals.”
Mar 27: gatherings dropped to 10, Provincial highway checkpoints set on borders
Mar 30: restaurants closed to diners, non-essential businesses to close
Mar 31: School cancelled to ‘flatten the curve’, Manitobans told to ‘Stay Home’
For the Apr & May, MB closed. There was zero traffic on the roads, no school, no non-essential businesses open, everyone applied social distancing, all borders were closed, all events started to be cancelled, there was little mask use, in person government related services closed, there was a touch phobia and a run on toilet paper, disinfectant products, and hand sanitizer.
Apr 5: Province to borrow $10B, told to stay home for Easter to flatten the curve.
Apr 9: OP Safe Apart announced with enhanced fines of $486/person & $2542/business, they have since increased to $1296/person & $5000/business plus $298/person for not wearing a mask in a public place (2nd highest in the country). Snitch line & extra officers set up to enforce, more messaging to ‘Flatten the Curve’
Apr 15: Emergency Act to be strengthened & $1B to be spent on Covid-19 efforts
Apr 16: Travel to Northern MB cutoff
Apr 29: Announced plans for slow reopening starting May 4
Manitoba did quite well at keeping the wolf out. Our numbers were very low and we did not see the type of carnage in our Personal Care Homes (PCHs) that was experienced in Ontario and Quebec. You would think provincial officials would have been taking notes.
Manitoba’s current hospital capacity: 2432 Acute Care beds plus 86 ICU with expansion plans for extra 300 AC and 100 ICU emergency spaces
Ok, looks like the Province is ready in case of a Fall resurgence. Maybe all the sacrifice and unprecedented spending to ‘flatten the curve’ bought us some time.
Apr 30: PCHs to restrict staff to one home only, all 127 homes have adequate staffing in place
Good idea? Government is great at making up new rules and laws but is infamous for not understanding the practicalities for implementation. There are reasons homecare workers bounce from residence to residence. A good manager would have looked at this and known immediately that this plan would not be sustainable.
May 4: 2020/21 deficit could possibly hit $5B, MB had the highest direct debt/capita of all provinces
May 22: Gatherings allowed to increase from 25 to 50
Jun 4: MB dropped 64,200 jobs in Apr and had a 13,800 rebound in May, unemployment rate was 11.2%
Jun 23: started planning for PCH visitations
Jun 26: Northern MB opened back up
Jun 29: $280M for PCHs for fire suppression capital projects
Jun 30: Fiscal update, $2.1B spent on Covid-19 measures and touted as 2nd highest as % of GDP, $5B deficit projected if there’s a 2nd wave. 7000 Surgical procedures delayed and still not caught up
Jul 17: cases up-ticked and blamed on Hutterites. (There was a large funeral in AB with thousands of Hutterites attending. Individual Hutterites started to be discriminated against.)
This was the beginning of the government’s ‘Name & Shame’ campaign. Premier Pallister has personally gaslighted numerous individuals and businesses for not being on ‘Team Manitoba’. His melodramatic tirades berate anyone who questions his dictates. He was ‘forced’ to cancel Christmas because we just did not listen!
This has only served to divide the population and has encouraged an army of Karens eager to snitch on their neighbors because they’re not following this or that inane new pandemic rule.
Jul 21: “Thanks to the efforts of all Manitobans, we continue to lead in recovery and have among the lowest COVID-19 test positivity rates in the country,” said Pallister. “That means we can continue our careful, balanced plan to restart our economy, give people back their lives and get Manitobans back to work. Manitoba is one of the safest places in the world to go back to work and get back up on your feet,” said Pallister. “We must maintain our vigilance while growing our way out of this pandemic. I encourage all Manitobans to have their say in our next steps of restarting our economy.”
This did not age well as our rates in the fall were some of the worst in North America.
Jul 29: Front line workers to receive $1377
By this point, Manitobans were starting to move around again and businesses were open. People still kept their distance and being outdoors and camping were popular. Even on the beaches, people ‘social distanced’.
Aug 11: In the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) region there was a slight uptick in cases related to Hutterite colonies and some Brandon clusters connected to close contacts. Vehicles for the Brandon testing site stretched for miles.
Aug 17: Advice from government was to wash hands, social distance, and the first instance to consider masks if social distancing was not possible. SuperStore and other major retailers were making mask use mandatory as of Aug 24
Aug 19: Premier Pallister, after complaints from parents, mandated masks for Grades 4-12 upon return to Sep classes
This was another knee-jerk reaction from the government. They were fine with sending the kids back to school without masks. Then immediately after an outcry from concerned parents, out came the first of the mask dictates.
You know what, I do not care if you want to wear a mask or not, fill your boots. There is some wishy washy evidence about their effectiveness that only surprisingly came out with this virus and none others, ever! But if you believe in them, fine, that’s how placebos work.I do notice that people are not avoiding each other as much anymore.
Masks also gave the government a convenient focus point to show they were serious about dealing with this thing. They could also gaslight the ‘anti-mask’ malcontents and point fingers and the spotlight away from failed government policies.
Aug 24: PMH region moved to Condition Orange for minimum 2 weeks (it lasted a month). Mandatory masks and gatherings in & out limited to 10. Cases in PMH starting Aug 6 – Sep 16 were: 18, 10, 2, 20, 11, 3, 4, 12, 25, 3, 9, 20, 2, 13, 17, 5, 24, 45, 35 (this was the day PMH moved to Orange), 10, 8, 9, 18, 31, 12, 13, 7, 8, 6, 1, 4, 3, 6, 0, 1, 2, 4, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 4. Hospitalizations, ICU visits, and deaths in the region barely moved.
My suspicion for the ‘high’ case days is there was mass testing at the Hutterite colonies and no surprise, they found extra infections. Obviously, because the colonies could be closed down easily, there was no wider community spread.
But the panic over case numbers gave the government the excuse to put the entire Southwest corner of the Province into a partial lockdown. Manitoba had been successful at keeping the wolf away but a little yip sent us running back to the basement.
Sep 3: travel to Northern MB was closed again and there were more mask recommendations from the Province
Schools reopened around Sep 8, and immediately cases were identified at various schools. They were mostly described as coming from outside of the school with no general outbreaks. But Sep 22, 20 cases were connected with a Winnipeg school. Mask use in Winnipeg was already increasing both in and out.
There are good reasons to get the children back into school. One big one is that there is not enough child care if they were all sent home again. But drive by a school at recess. The kids are swapping germs like they always have and the hundreds of ‘School Exposures’ list backs that up.
The Government lies that children do not spread the virus. Otherwise, why were the 20 schools of the Hanover School Division shut down? Why are the higher grades staying home an extra two weeks after Christmas vacation? But if you apply a risk analysis, society needs to take these extra cases on the chin and live with it.
Sep 18: PMH was brought back to yellow but there was a ‘concern’ about the rising case numbers in Winnipeg. PMH was touted as a success story because they ‘followed’ the rules.
Cases, cases, cases….so what? They’re juicy high numbers for public consumption & handy for gaslighting different regions but without context over how serious each case is, again, so what?
Sep 28: Winnipeg went to Orange with mandatory masks and gathering sizes of only 10 in or out.
It is glaringly obvious that despite mass mask wearing, social distancing, and hiding in our basements, the wolf had not gone away. The virus was endemic to the Province and all we had accomplished was to have it roar back as viruses typically do after the summer lull.
Starting in Oct, there were warnings that Manitobans should not gather for Thanksgiving (Oct 10). There were numerous case outbreaks all Oct in schools, prisons, and PCHs. Outbreaks in PCHs started to explode starting around Oct 20. Healthcare workers were identified as the carriers into some PCHs. Outbreaks are still continuing in numerous PCHs, schools, and prisons.
This was the point of breakdown in the PCHs and should have been sending wake-up calls to those in charge. PCH staff were burning out and bringing the infection into the residences with devastating results reminiscent of the spring carnage experienced in Ontario and Quebec. Funny how the PPE protocols did not protect the elderly in the scores of homes that have experienced outbreaks.
Oct 7: During the Speech from the Throne: “This year has been like no other, yet we have weathered it better than most,” said Pallister. “The resilience of Manitoba’s economy, finances, public services, and most of all, our people, have stood out strong. I am confident that if we keep working together, guided by Manitoba values, we will come out of this pandemic stronger and more prosperous.”
It didn’t take long for Pallister to be caught out in this lie.
Oct 9: An emergency $500M infusion of cash sought by government to add to $1.577B already spent on Covid-19
Oct 19: Province mandated more business closures, reduced gathering sizes, and liquor establishment curfews in Winnipeg
Oct 26: travel to Northern MB shut down again
Nov 2: Premier Pallister announced MB was ready for a 2nd wave, there was a focus on more testing. In Winnipeg, if one household resident was symptomatic all residents had to isolate pending a negative test result. Exemptions were made for healthcare & First Responders if they were asymptomatic. Winnipeg went to a hard lockdown.
Nov 5: The Premier emphasized that he was bringing the non-compliance hammer down and encouraged Manitobans to snitch on their neighbors. A contract with a private security company, G4S, was being written up so a total of 3300 government personnel could issue Covid-19 tickets. Meanwhile, PCH orders were changed to exempt workers from only working in one home.
Nov 12: The entire Province went to condition Red and hard lockdowns
Nov 13: A team was being sent to Maples PCH to determine what went wrong. Over 50 of the 200 residents have passed away so far.
The staff at Maples conducted a fo’c’sle sitdown mutiny when they en-mass called in sick and contacted 911 numerous times on the evening of Nov 6. People can only work in impossible conditions for so long before they give up in despair.
Where were the Health inspectors who should have been keeping tabs on a system that was starting to fall apart? PCHs had gone to hard lockdown mid-Oct. When things came to a head at Maples, well over 30 PCHs had declared outbreaks.
In the Navy, you are taught to stay ahead of the Ship instead of surfing behind her in the wake. The Navy also has a Board of Inquiry after every major incident in order to assign blame and to roll heads.
People need to go to jail for what happened in these homes.
The average age of Covid-19 mortality is exactly the same as the average life expectancy! If the media wasn’t blaring about the pandemic, would we even know there was one?
Dec 8: Premier Pallister cancels Christmas and New Year’s. He continues to ‘Name & Shame’ non-compliant offenders. He did let up on drive-in religious services after some high profile church incidents.
Frankly, my belief is if Pallister had enough troops, he would place all of MB under house arrest. Thankfully, he only has 3300 ticketing goons and a volunteer army of snitching Karens.
Dec 9: $7.7M announced for PCHs to help with staffing and operating expenses
This latest funding announcement, is too little too late. It was identified from day one who the virus was going to be worst towards. But instead of being proactive, the Province has allowed the system to self-monitor itself and they are always playing catch-up.
Ken Waddell has been writing some scathing editorials at the Neepawa Banner over the Government’s handling of Covid-19. In many of them, he has mentioned some proactive steps the health officials could have been touting. One in particular is the steps taken by the local hog plant which has kept the virus out. So here’s a question, how can the meat plants be so successful when healthcare ‘professionals’ are failing so badly?
Here is the answer. Healthcare in Canada sucks and has been that way for decades. PCH service is even worse. Our much vaunted systems are run by incompetent administrators who know how to ‘play the game’ instead of actually knowing how to run things. Our elected officials care more about looking like they are doing something rather than actually doing something.
Increasingly, western governments and their populations have become risk adverse. Government has sought to control more and more of our lives. Then a moderate crisis came along and their go-to response was to SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN! They went all in with a philosophy of making the goal zero cases yielding zero deaths. The population is going along with it, so why change course or admit you were wrong?
To be perfectly blunt, old, sick people die. Also, to be direct, the West is so divorced from reality they cannot handle this simple fact of life. The wolf eventually gets us all. Sadly, most people are so narcissistic they only feign concern for the elderly. The most strident of Karens are concerned only for their own well-being.
The numbers for Manitoba show we are dying from Covid-19 at the SAME EXACT RATE AS NORMAL LIFE EXPECTANCY! We literally have no abnormal death spikes, our hospitals and ICUs are not being overrun or in danger of being overrun. Unless the media told you, you wouldn’t even know we were in a pandemic.
Of course, the virus is dangerous mainly to the old and sick but instead of targeted solutions with acceptable risk/benefit outcomes, we have gone with an untenable zero risk model. This will only result in an endless game of whack-a-mole which we will never win and ruin the Province and thousands of lives. The cure is fast becoming worse than the disease. Maybe a fast roll-out of an effective vaccine will get us off this ride of horrors.
Heaven help us if we ever have to face an actual wolf at the door.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
Most Canadians would hold the belief that their sacred institutions from the Federal Parliament down through their Province and Municipal elected officials would have their backs in time of strife or mayhem. Most Canadians have access to 911 service whose operators quickly determine, “Police, Fire, or Ambulance”. In extremis, when provincial resources fail, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are on call for Aid to the Civil Power operations.
The public should expect that with the billions of tax dollars spent on emergency preparedness with the central coordination run through Public Safety Canada that Canadians should be well taken care of in the event of calamity.
Well, Canada, depending on the scope of the disaster, be prepared to look after yourself.
Here are a few examples to illustrate my point:
A snow covered Argus at the Comox Air Museum – Photo courtesy of Katherine Bickford, http://carlykb.com/gateway/
Comox Snowfall Cancels Christmas Military Flights
If anyone has lived on the West Coast of BC, either in the Lower Mainland or on the Island, they are somewhat acquainted with that weird meteorological phenomenon called snow. It will occasionally show up, usually in multiples of feet, create absolute havoc for a couple of days, then melt with the subsequent rain. The rest of Canada would take the opportunity to make fun of us for a change while they were suffering from the more usual Canadian winter weather.
Up Island at 19 Wing Comox, there is usually a good wallop of the white stuff maybe once a year. The RCAF are not stupid and like any Canadian airport, they have a Snow and Ice Removal (SNIC) plan. But all the planning does not help when a particular weather event happens rarely. Hence, each and every year, it is like people have never seen snow or what to do with it when it shows up.
That is when the holes of the Swiss cheese all line up and an incident happens such as one occasion while I was the Duty Operations officer for 442 Squadron.
The Christmas Military Flight Airbus had flown into Comox and was ready to start the long cross country journey across Canada to Trenton, ON. A large snowfall had occurred overnight and since the airfield did not have a hangar large enough, the aircraft remained parked outside overnight. The actual snow was not so much the issue as was the ability to de-ice the aircraft whose dimensions were too large for the civilian terminal machines to take care of.
Back in the day when the Boeing 707, aka White Knuckle Airlines, flew, the frequency of flights would be two or three times per week. Nowadays, larger military aircraft flying into Comox is rare.
But, hey, no problem, call in the military de-icer. Whoops, the one guy who knew how to run the machine was on Christmas leave out of the Valley. Okay, we pulled out the Operator’s Manual to see how to run the machine. Fine, but whoops again, the barrels of de-icing fluid were half a mile up a snow plugged road that was very low on the SNIC plan priority list. Long story short, the Keystone Kops bumbling caused the cancellation of the flight and the ruination of hundreds of military member’s Christmas plans.
Lesson Learned: This debacle occurred due to a combination of factors involving the rarity of a weather event and the nature of how the RCAF is run. Snow occasionally shows up in Comox but it is only a bother for a few days until the rain washes it away. You can plan for it but institutional memory is short and can be complicated with frequent postings or lack of adequately trained personnel who are not familiar with how to handle semi-complicated situations.
If the wind was steady and freshening from the Southeast, would not a prudent person look towards where the fire might head towards?
Town of Slave Lake Burns Down in 2011
According to news articles and the subsequent 2012 KPMG report, it was a miracle that no one died during the evacuation of the Town of Slave Lake on May 15, 2011.
Words like massive, unprecedented, rapidly-developing were used to describe a wall of fire being pushed into town by 100 km/h winds. The fire, later determined to be arson, cost Albertans about $1 billion in damage and recovery costs.
The arsonist has yet to be identified and no blame was ever laid against any of the people in charge of responding to the inferno. But should have the authorities been better prepared?
The KPMG report made a series of recommendations mostly based on better communication and cooperation amongst the disparate entities in charge of the area’s emergency response. One crucial factor overlooked, except for a single minor mention related to the Provincial Operations Center (Pg 63), was literally no one was paying attention to the weather!
It was a hot, dry spring in fire country. There were numerous wildfires in the area, some to the SW of town and Fire 65 (the one that burnt down the town) was to the SE. Would you not think that a single person in charge would consult a weather forecast to see if any weather phenomenon such as high winds were in the forecast?!?
In the military, literally every briefing started with a Met Report so that everyone, especially the Commanding Officer, could weigh the risks associated with the forecast weather situation. Then as the day goes on, there are regular weather updates especially if a rapidly approaching system is expected to impact operations. Also, when all else fails, you look out the window.
Going back through the meteorological records from the Slave Lake Airport starting at midnight May 13, the wind was from the West at 20 kph, veered North at 0900, dropped to 10 kph and continued to veer to ESE at 1600 picking up again to about 20 kph. The barometric pressure started to steeply decline at this point. For the next three days the wind stayed in the Southeast with the really strong winds occurring on the 15th, the day of the main evacuation.
This type of weather indicates there was a deepening, west to east moving, low pressure system with a steep pressure gradient to the west of town. The weather forecasters would have predicted the high winds but no one was paying attention.
Lesson Learned: Complacency and lack of specific knowledge almost got a lot of people killed. The area was described as ‘fire country’ so no one was particularly concerned about fires in the area. The arson, whether deliberate or accidental, should have been foreseen because of the conditions. But the most egregious lack of foresight was the collective oversight of simply looking up the forecast or even noticing that the wind was steady and freshening from the direction of a rapidly growing fire.
Coast Guard Station Sea Island – Photo courtesy of Duane Currie
Lack of Coordination Between Lower Mainland Emergency Services
The over-riding emergency fear for Vancouver’s Lower Mainland is the inevitable ‘Big Quake’. To that end, the province has attempted to prepare for it.
Thankfully, the 2010 Winter Olympics helped officials as they were able to tap into extra money which was put towards emergency preparedness. A great example is the province’s E-Comm system (finally fully rolled out in 2018) whereupon all the seperate agencies can actually communicate with one another.
During an emergency, the first item to fail is communications. While I was with the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) in Vancouver, our communication link onshore at an incident scene was usually a police member with a cell phone. Useless! It was just easier to look for the flashing lights as the hovercraft sped up the Fraser River.
Unfortunately, Canada usually waits until after a disaster before politicians put money into proper prevention. Again with the CCG, we attempted to set up exercises with the police and fire services but were turned down as there was not money in the budget for the extra overtime.
Lesson Learned: Money for proper emergency preparedness in Canada is usually too little, too late. Of course, you have to balance budgets and be reasonable but there are simple, prudent, relatively low cost measures which are not being considered due to other spending priorities. Canada has a history of being reactive vice forward thinking.
This brings me to the unfolding debacle of Canada’s Covid-19 response. I will focus on one small aspect otherwise this article would be too lengthy.
This fall’s response by Manitoba’s Health Ministry with regards to protecting our most frail and elderly has moved into the territory of criminal neglect. From MB’s 2nd Covid-19 News Bulletin dated Feb 07, they were already advising people with flu-like systems to avoid senior residences. Quickly after that, there were ample examples coming from Italy, Spain, Quebec, etc. of what should have been prepared for. The CAF Report on LTC homes was harrowing reading and should have been a wake-up call to the other provinces.
MB Premier Brian Pallister did not listen.
To their credit, the Manitoba health system kept the Covid-19 virus out of the Long Term Care (LTC) homes during the spring spike which decimated the facilities in ON and QC.
But this fall has been a bloodbath, particularly in homes like the Winnipeg Revera Maples Long Term Care Home. According to the government’s News Bulletins, for the month of November, a full 25% of the 200 bed home’s residents have succumbed from the virus. On Nov 13, the Province announced it was setting up a review of Maples plus other hard hit facilities. No kidding!
What exactly did the Province think was going to happen in these homes whose staff consists of low paid, mostly recent immigrants? I do not blame the staff whatsoever as they have been shouldering ever increasing workloads and health issues with miniscule extra support from government. At Maples, it finally reached a breaking point on Nov 6 when the staff mutinied by en-mass calling in sick for the evening shift.
In the Navy, this would have been called a Messdeck Lock-in where the lower deckers refuse to come out until their demands for better treatment and conditions were met. Work people too hard, for too long without support and they become despondent and rebel.
Ministry inspectors and the Health department should have foreseen these issues but blindly disregarded obvious problems with the LTC homes. Too little, too late and in my opinion government officials and LTC home management need to be charged and jailed for negligence.
Do you feel safe with the fact that all these agencies are supposedly in charge of keeping you safe during a major emergency?
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
Does Manitoba have a Plan to end the Health Emergency?
The short answer to my query posed above, is no.
It appears that the Manitoba Government is continuing to knee-jerk react when it comes to dealing with this pesky virus. A little bump in numbers of cases over the last few weeks has the population clamouring for lockdowns, quarantines, and border closures. It appears that despite the miniscule numbers of hospitalizations, ICU beds used, and deaths (seven, one, & thirteen), the goal now seems to be total eradication of the virus with zero cases no matter the severity.
So, despite the massive intrusion of government upon the lives of Manitobans, the incredible hardship being borne by businesses and individuals, and the incredible cost being incurred, the media has decided to act as cheerleaders for the draconian crackdowns. Zero effort is being made to question the Government’s decisions.
To be fair, I would say our leadership is being asked to make unprecedented decisions which may ultimately be the correct course of action. But in the absence of media asking the hard questions and demanding answers, the public is left uninformed and divided with all the opinions and contradictary information flying around.
I would like to point out that a few voices in the media wilderness are piping up and imploring the Government to figure out an exit strategy. Ken Waddell, who runs the Neepawa Banner, put out an excellent editorial today which I encourage you to read. It’s worth noting that Ken owns the paper, so he is not beholden to higher corporate interests and can speak his mind.
So if I were able to hold Premier Pallister’s feet to the fire over his Covid-19 strategy, I would have the following pointed questions for him, his Health Minister, and his Chief Medical Officer:
The goal from the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic was stated as ‘Flatten the Curve’ so the hospitals and ICUs were not overwhelmed. Kudos and back pats all around as MB never even came close to taxing our medical system. So why is there still a Health Emergency Order in place? Even with the uptick in numbers there wasn’t a commensurate rapid rise in hospital patients. Under what conditions will you release the Province from the Emergency Order?
According to StatsCan, Manitobans die from all causes at a rate of 30/day. BTW, what has the suicide rate been like since this all started? We’ve lost a whopping 13 people from Covid-19 related deaths (I’m guessing there was co-morbidity and old age involved). Is this Government operating under the premise that even one death from this virus is too many?
Have the 13 deaths, although regrettable, been worth the estimated 15% of Manitoba’s businesses closed for good and the rest of our damaged economy. Were the 13 deaths worth the extra $10 Billion plus in extra debt the Province has taken on? Were 13 deaths worth the suspension of our rights, freedoms, & liberties which the Government shows no sign of returning? Were a whole 13 deaths worth tossing a million Manitoban’s lives upside down?
Now masks seem to be the order of the day. Please show me the medical evidence you’re basing your decision on. If masks are so successful, why weren’t they mandatory back during the lockdowns and quarantines when the State of Emergency was first declared? How much did public pressure play into the decision to start making masks mandatory in schools and in the Prairie Mountain Health Region?
As for the Hutterite colonies, I hope you realize you’re putting a big target on their backs by identifying them. But since you have and it’s been stated that they’re the source of many of the new cases in Westman, do you have evidence of widespread community spread of the virus due to Hutterite activity? In addition, on the affected colonies, was there widespread testing or only testing of the symptomatic?
What criteria, other than a modest rise in case numbers, did you use to put the PMH region under Orange conditions?
The PMH region takes in the whole SW corner of the Province. Please substantiate why citizens of, for example, Swan River are being forced to follow Condition Orange procedures when the actual clusters are located in the Brandon region?
What is the exit strategy for dealing with this virus? Seems to me that a strategy of protecting the vulnerable such as the elderly and immune-compromised along with reminding Manitobans to keep up good hygiene habits would allow us to go back to normal. Instead, this Government seems determined to keep Manitobans hostage under Health Emergency Orders until there is never another single case ever.
It will be interesting as to just how far Manitobans can be pushed before more and more of us poke up our heads and cry out ‘SHOW ME THE BODIES’ and then reject the Government’s intrusion on our lives.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
A nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital wears a unique mask as the hospital celebrates the release of a COVID-19 patient after 45 days in their care in Orange, California, May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake
To Mask or Not to Mask – Why is this even a question?
***January 12, 2021 Update: Here’s an excellent video detailing the timeline of mask usage. Somehow, within a span of a week or two, the World’s health experts went from decades of evidence of general mask usage to be worse than useless to making them mandatory because of ‘evolving evidence’. Masks are straight placebos, nothing more, nothing less. It makes the public feel ‘safe’ and it makes it appear as if the government is doing something. It’s the same pattern for every useless government measure which the virus has circumvented merely because mankind can only live with a viruses, not defeat them (with the exception of vaccines). Watch the video.***
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare
The latest flashpoint in Canada’s Covid-19 response relates to the mandatory wearing of face masks. Just like the run on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, flour, garden seeds, and other goods whose demand sky-rocketed, now retailers are running out of elastic for ‘do it at home’ self-made masks. The public has been whipped and beaten with 24/7 virus coverage by their governments and the media and they are desperate to find a solution to end this rollercoaster ride.
Let’s start with a question that is probably too obvious: in all the umpteen decades that surgical masks and the like have been around, has the medical community not thoroughly studied their effectiveness under these type of circumstances? Are doctors and our Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) so grossly incompetent that they cannot with a reasonable certainty declare under what conditions we should be utilizing masks, the frequency they should be changed/washed, and their relative effectiveness? Why are masks going to be touted now as the ultimate panacea when they weren’t back during the spring lockdowns?
If you want a good explanation from a doctor on what masks can and cannot do for you I recommend listening to ZDoggMD’s Mask explanation video along with all his other info and concerns with this pandemic.
There should be zero debate as this simple piece of medical tech should long ago have been figured out. But instead, we have people shaming non-mask wearers in person and on social media. We have Anti-Mask groups protesting and promoting Mask Exemption cards online. Large businesses such as banks, Walmart, Superstore, and other chains are declaring on their own that mask use is mandatory on their premises. Oh, if anyone thinks these large businesses are just ‘protecting their employees and patrons’, well give me a break. They are just protecting their bottom line in the event a case gets linked to a store and they have to shut it down.
So here is my problem with the randomness of mandatory mask wearing: if you’re a CMO who has bona fide reasons to order the wearing of face masks, then fine, that is where you have to balance the needs of society with our personnel rights and freedoms under the Charter, (which happens to be the first paragraph). But if you are some random business or ‘Karen’ who tries shaming or ordering me into wearing a mask just because you say so, then you can FUCK right off. Paragraph 7 of the Charter reads: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
In general, that means, I do not get to tell you not to wear a mask and you do not get to tell me to wear one.
The whole reason we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to protect our rights and freedoms especially during times of duress when they are most likely to come under pressure. There was a reason the War Measures Act was changed after the 1970 FLQ Crisis. Sweeping powers given to government are never a good thing.
The argument of ‘Well, it’s their business, it’s their rules. Just shop elsewhere.’ comes up as a counter-argument. That does not wash with me. I am old enough to remember the AIDS hysteria. It was a Gay disease and you could catch it from something as simple as a toilet seat. Would it have been proper to make a policy of ‘No Gays Allowed’ in your store? But because the population was scared, homosexuals were persecuted anyways. There are a few Christian bakeries who learned the hard way about turning away certain customers.
Speaking of Brandon, starting on August 24, group sizes of 10 and mandatory mask wearing comes into effect for all indoor/outdoor areas of the Prairie Mountain Health Region. This is ostensibly in response to a slight uptick (there was a ‘jump’ of about 100 cases in the last two weeks) in cases mostly in the Brandon area. The PMH region takes in the entire South West corner of the province and it baffles me as to why citizens up in Swan River should be forced to take the same precautions as people in the ‘hot’ zones. As an aside, when you glean through the government’s numbers for the southern health region and the adjacent city of Winnipeg added together are higher than PMH’s but there is no change in their health policies.
My feeling is that Premier Pallister did not want the blowback of making masks mandatory at this time for Winnipeg. He waffled on mandatory mask use for school children than quickly made them mandatory after a barrage of concern from parents. It will be the same for the rest of the province. Mandatory masks are coming because the public demands them, not because of any concrete, scientific, medical reasoning.
But this is typical for the entire lurching, knee jerk reactions exhibited by our authorities since this whole virus thing started. It was understandable in hindsight that governments got scared and shut everything down. But since then, we have not been stacking the bodies in the streets. Hospitals have never been overwhelmed and we have been learning the true nature of this particular virus. But we have gone massively into debt and there is more and more evidence that the ‘cure’ is worse than the disease.
No government has the balls to declare that they massively screwed the pooch with their response so they keep playing politics and with the aid of the media has kept the population running scared.
As I first opined, there should not be a debate whatsoever about whether we should ‘mask up’ or not. I cannot believe the medical establishment is that inept. All the CMOs have to do is lay out the facts and pass on their best recommendations. Most people are reasonable and if they are treated like adults will follow sound advice. Instead, we have the politicians playing politics with a hot potato and as usual none of them have the fortitude to make a hard decision. As a society, we have become afraid of our own shadows and the sheep are easily panicked.
It is understandable why individuals and businesses want to protect their interests and feel like they must take matters into their own hands. It is after all just a mask. But where does this stop? When do the roadblocks go up with armed police demanding your papers for Covid-19 testing and mandatory vaccinations? When will the citizenry be divided up into ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ zones? When will the masses be forced into more draconian lockdowns?
When you look at the relatively small numbers of sicknesses and deaths in Manitoba and Canada as a whole that are attributed to Covid-19 and compare those with a regular flu season, imagine how far the country would go down the rabbit hole if we had a real crisis.
I spent many years in uniform protecting this country and my actions were governed by the National Defense Act. In the military, especially back during the Cold War, most of your rights and freedoms were stripped. I had the right to vote and that was about it. I did not sacrifice my rights and freedoms for them to be arbitrarily taken away by a bunch of jittery sheep.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
UPDATE – Analysis from Israel seems to confirm these Canadian numbers and our experience of declining cases. After looking at world numbers, it appears the virus plays itself out all on its own in about 70 days despite government action or inaction. We might have destroyed our economy for no good reason other than mass hysteria.
Borrowing from my nautical background, there is a document called the Collision Regulations which regulates the safe passage of vessels on the water. In order to prevent collision, ships determine who is the ‘Give Way’ vessel and who is the ‘Stand On’ vessel and then act with due regard to the observance of good seamanship to safely avoid each other.
As an Officer of the Watch on a Navy ship, one of my jobs was to look for possible conflicts with other vessels, work out a plan to avoid them, inform the Captain with my recommendations, follow and execute his orders, monitor the situation until danger of collision was past, then get the ship back on track.
Ideally, you would try to minimize the ship’s detours and time off track as we were always on mission.
Taking another page from my naval career, when lazy leadership wanted to send a message to the sailors, they would enact group punishment. This was particularly detested and unpopular because the many would be unjustly punished for the actions of the few. The reasoning for giving out a general slap across the face was to build unit cohesion and self-policing but the effect was usually just sharp resentment.
Tying these bon mots in with Manitoba’s and indeed most of the World’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in my opinion, governments did too little, too late. Then when they did start to act, it was a shotgun approach vice a targeted strategy which succeeded in only panicking their populations and subsequently devastating their economies.
Canadian governments knee-jerk reacted to dubious reports from China, horror stories from Italy, and worst case epidemiological modeling which projected apocalyptic, Biblical ‘End of Times’. This has led Canada into the worst crackdown and suspension of civil liberties probably in the history of our country.
The Manitoba government has been regularly issuing Covid-19 Media Bulletins since January 30. Bulletin #53, April 16, lists no new cases (cumulative total 250), 8 in hospital, 4 in ICU, 121 recovered, and 5 deaths. 18,349 Covid-19 tests have been completed. For comparison for the Manitoba 2017-18 flu season: In total, 508 influenza cases were hospitalized including 35 admissions to intensive care units (ICU) and 46 individuals died. Of those hospitalized and deceased cases, 65% and 76% were aged 65 years and older.
Just as a quick aside, it’s being reported that greater than 90% of Canadian deaths are those 60 years and older. (Sounds eerily like the flu stats that I just spoke of.) ‘Dr. Theresa Tam says outbreaks in long-term care homes are the most crucial COVID-19 problem. Tam is urging all Canadians to continue to stay home to keep older people, who are most at risk, from dying.Half of the 734 deaths in Canada from COVID-19 had occurred in long-term care homes.‘ Um, here’s maybe an alternative thought. How about we protect the most vulnerable of our population and keep them in lockdown instead of destroying our economy by keeping everyone else at home?
By using the Way-Back machine, here is a review of the major points of the Manitoba Covid-19 timeline starting with the first Bulletin issued on January 30.
For the month of February, the risk to Manitobans was rated as LOW and people had no need to wear masks.
Early in March, it was recognized that cases were climbing in China and the virus was starting to spread to other countries particularly Iran then Italy. By the end of February, MB had tested 38 people, there were no cases, and Canada had 12 cases.
March 10, the Province started looking for more Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE). They also stated that when dealing with patients with the virus, the patients and their caregivers would be wearing masks. (This went against the Health Canada, Dr. Tam, advice that masks would not work.)
March 11, MB recorded its first case (travel related), people traveling from China, Iran & Italy were asked to self-isolate, the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic. The government stated ‘Those at the greatest risk of severe outcomes include those over 65 years of age, those with underlying medical conditions and those with compromised immune systems.’ The oft-repeated phrase, social distancing, was first introduced and recommendations set.
On March 15, all international travelers coming back to MB were recommended to self-isolated for 14 days. Only travelers with symptoms were going to be tested.
So at this point, the bold action would have been to test and quarantine those travelers coming in from the hotspots. Social distancing practices are always a good idea even when a bad flu or the chicken pox is going around, so good recommendation there. They already knew who the target group was so early lock downs of the nursing homes and hospitalsmade sense (but really did not happen).
As reported by MB, it looks like Covid-19 cases peaked around April 1 (34 new cases that day) and are flattening out. This ties in with the curve flattening for new cases experienced by Canada as a whole and also calls into question the effectiveness of ‘Social Distancing’ policies. Graph SourceFactoring in recoveries, there was a big split in early April which suggests MB has peaked regarding the virus. Source – MB Covid News Bulletins 1 – 49Crunching the numbers for Covid-19 in MB, tentatively the province peaked for Hospitalizations/ICU visits/Deaths around April 8th. The caveat is the numbers are quite low to start with. Source: MB Media Covid-19 Bulletins 1 – 49
For the next week, testing for the virus ramped up, schools were slated for early closure (March 23 for 3 weeks), events with 250+ were canceled (soon dropped to 50+), daycares, casinos, care homes, surgeries, adult day programs & courts were slated for shutdown. Border measures for drivers were being considered. The Province had 266 ventilators and the Health Science Center was prepping an extra 30 ICU beds.
On March 20, the government hit the panic button by declaring a State of Emergency. Here is the actual legislation. The directives first applied to public areas, not work. Groups of people of 50+ were banned. The phrase, ‘Flatten the Curve’ was first used as was this being termed a ‘Historic Pandemic’. There were 19 cases (all travel related) in the province.
On March 23, schools were closed and Manitobans really started into ‘social distancing’ protocols.
On March 25, a female in her 60’s was the first hospitalization and ultimate death.
On March 27, the government launched a $4.5M program to help combat anxiety related to the virus. Only groups of 10 people were now allowed. Information checkpoints were set up at provincial borders and the two main airports. Domestic travelers coming to MB were also supposed to self-isolate by this point.
March 30, the Province moved to really shut things down. No diners in restaurants, no non-essential business, school was cancelled indefinitely, transit was still running but social distancing and flattening the curve were the watchwords. This was when the big push for people to ‘Just Stay Home‘ was used by the Premier. At this point, the province had done 8550 tests, there were 103 cases, 3 in hospital, 2 in ICU and 1 death.
April 1, a research program with QC, AB and MB regarding the drug hydroxychloroquine was announced. Also, ‘new screening procedures are being implemented for staff working in acute and long-term care facilities.’ This was odd because the hospitals and nursing homes were supposed to have already been on lockdown. The screening is a little hit and miss because many care staff are not having their temperature taken.
April 5, the cost to Manitobans estimated at an extra $10B
April 6, Manitobans are told to stay home for Easter, there was a no ‘non-essential’ travel advisory and we still had to flatten the curve.
April 8, social distancing was credited with keeping new cases low as they had seemed to have peaked back around April 1 but we were cautioned not to let up. Considering, really hardcore social distancing had not reached the 2 week point, this seems like a dubious claim.
On April 9, the government really hammered home the message that Easter weekend should be spent alone in your house. Operation Safe Apart was announced with pre-set fines of $486/person and $2542/business for people who were not social distancing enough. There’s a snitch line to report your neighbors and extra officers have been hired. That curve was not going to flatten itself despite evidence that MB may have peaked in early April. Hospitals and ICUs have never come close to being pushed to capacity up to this point.
As of April 16, cases have slowly flattened out to 250 in total with 121 people recovered. 8 people are hospitalized, 4 in ICU and 5 total deaths.
Returning to my Navy examples, our governments saw a potential conflict, started to gather pertinent information, slowly began to react, but instead of acting rationally, they hit the panic button. Then they forgot to monitor the situation so that we could get our country back on track.
To be fair, I can see where confusion would happen as China was lying through their teeth regarding their experience with the virus. (But China always lies so why would anyone take them seriously?) At first, everyone was told human to human transmission wasn’t possible. The risk to Canadians was low (ultimately this is going to be true). But it was the 3.4% mortality rate from China, Italy’s experience, and the influential Imperial College paper model that freaked World governments.
Unfortunately, governments are full of risk adverse bureaucrats and spineless politicians. Instead of targeted approaches to a crisis, it is easier to blanket a situation and punish the masses. Catchy propaganda phrases are designed to cow the population into submission.
Canadian governments should have aggressively quarantined people coming from hot zones immediately instead of belatedly bringing those policies in now. It was identified right from the beginning what age groups were most at risk. So why are there calls at this point to protect the nursing homes? I know for a fact that these homes are not being protected as well as they should be. Monitoring the numbers, it is obvious the virus outbreak peaked, the hospitals were never close to being overwhelmed, and the government’s main weapon, social distancing, appears to have had a limited effect.
So for Manitoba, if this entire episode with the Wuhan virus resolves itself and ultimately ends up being less deadly than a regular flu season, was it worth Manitoba going an extra $10 Billion in debt? Was it worth crippling our economy, throwing thousands out of work and into bankruptcy, and exponentially increasing people’s rates of anxiety, depression and ultimately suicide?
Other World jurisdictions have announced plans to start coming out of this ‘Great Pause’. Will Manitoba come to its senses and restart our economy or will they double down on their policy of keeping us locked down?
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.
***Original published in South Mountain Press, February 15, 2019***
Are
Manitobans Ready for the New Federal Carbon Tax?
As Manitobans shiver during this February deep freeze,
they probably will not be too keen on the imposition of the Federal Carbon Tax
which is set to take effect on April 1st. In fact, although Federal
Carbon Taxes are not being collected at present, as of January 1st
the meter is running for Manitoba industrial emitters who will be subject to a
Federal ‘backstop output-based pricing system’.
Premier Pallister is not buying the Trudeau government’s
Carbon Tax scheme and put the brakes on the Province’s own Carbon Tax plan back
in October. Hence, Manitoba was added to Trudeau’s ‘Naughty’ province list and
will impose the new tax.
For the sake of this article, I will put aside the arguments
of the advisability of government imposing a punitive, blanket ‘consumption’
tax which will result in dubious environmental benefits. Instead, the focus
will be on how the new tax will affect Manitoban’s wallets.
Let’s start with the obvious taxes that will hit on
April 1st. To begin, every combustible fossil fuel from Aviation
gasoline through to Combustible waste will be charged a yearly escalating tax
on a per unit basis. A Cessna passing through Erickson’s airport will be
charged an extra 4.98 cents/litre. Natural gas to heat Shoal Lake homes and
businesses will cost an extra 3.91 cents/cubic metre. Propane for the weekend
summer BBQ at the park will set you back another 3.1 cents/litre. Of course,
the big one will be gasoline which will hit every litre of fuel with an extra
4.42 cents.
Remember, these are the initial rates. As the
Liberal’s plan stands for now, the $20/tonne tax on fossil fuels will increase
to $50/tonne as of 2022. For example, for April 2022, the extra tax per litre
of gasoline will be 11.05 cents. Who wants to take bets that the rate will stay
static if the Liberals are given another mandate?
Years ago, the Rural Municipality of Yellowhead
Council was proud to have brought natural gas to the Town of Shoal Lake.
According to Manitoba Hydro, the new Federal ‘Carbon Charge’ related to natural
gas use for an average household will be an annual increase of about 13% or $88.
In three years, it will be an increase of over 30% as the price per cubic metre
climbs to an extra 9.79 cents. It will be even worse for businesses whose 2019 natural
gas costs will increase 15-30% depending on their customer class and
consumption levels.
Those parts of Manitoba’s industry who rely on fossil
fuels are going to get hit hard by this new Carbon Tax. Once their share has
been figured out, the amount charged will be retroactive to January 1st.
Compared to the rest of Canada, Manitoba emits
relatively little Green House Gases (GHGs) and has few Large Final Emitters
(LFEs). But the province does have nine LFEs who account for about 10% of the
Province’s GHG emissions. Some of the highest emitters on the list are the
Brandon Koch Fertilizer Plant, the TransCanada Pipeline, the Graymont Faulkner
lime plant, Vale Thompson Mining Operations, Husky Minnedosa Ethanol, Manitoba
Kraft Papers, and three large Winnipeg landfill sites.
Each of these sites have been identified as facilities
that emit at least 50,000 tonnes/year of carbon dioxide (CO2). By far and away,
the Koch Fertilizer plant which uses enormous amounts of natural gas to create
fertilizer, produces the greatest amount of GHGs at about half of the amount of
all the other manufacturing facilities put together. The final cost to these
facilities will be determined by complicated schemes, pricing systems, and/or
cap and trade systems.
There will be a few Carbon Tax exceptions for farmers
and commercial fishermen who will not pay extra tax on marked fuel. Other
relevant proposed targeted Manitoba relief measures will be directed at rural
residents, greenhouse operators, power plants generating electricity for remote
communities, and Indigenous Peoples.
The preceding points are the obvious and direct costs
associated with the new Federal Carbon tax. In fact, the government is claiming
that the average taxpayer will receive more back in income tax than what they
will pay in direct tax. As an example, an average Manitoba household should
receive an extra $336 on this year’s tax return.
It is the insidious nature of the new tax that will
make its true cost to the average Manitoban difficult to determine.
As an example, when the Koch Fertilizer plant gets
their new bill for their natural gas use, the higher cost of producing
fertilizer will in all likelihood be either wholly or partially passed on to
farmers. Government and industry have been cagey about the final price of farmer
input costs due to the new Carbon Tax. With regards to nitrogen fertilizer, one
estimate from Dr. Mario Tenuta of the University of Manitoba puts the 2019
costs at an extra $7.63/acre for standard fertilizer application rates,
climbing to $19.08/acre by 2022. Using 2016 Census data, the average Manitoba
farmer with 1300 cropland acres would see a 2019 fertilizer bill increase of
$10,000 growing to almost $25,000 by 2022.
On a smaller scale, this will be the same fate for every
Manitoba company or consumer. Due to the nature of Manitoba’s economy just
about every product, foodstuff, or service has a fossil fuel related component
which is going to cost more to produce, manufacture, or deliver. It would
almost be impossible to calculate the true costs of this escalating tax and you
would have to be particularly naïve to believe that it will end up being
revenue neutral.
Ostensibly, the Federal Carbon Tax is meant to wean
Canadians away from fossil fuels, embrace ‘Green’ technology and energy
sources, and to protect Canadians from the impacts of climate change. Soon
enough with a Federal election this fall, we will see if Manitobans will
embrace the Liberal’s vision of a CO2 free Canada despite the cost to the
pocket book and the financial hits to our industries.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of
None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to
add the title Blogger to the list.
