The Lies Politicians Tell During a Pandemic
***Feb 07 Update – The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is reporting that the Federal Government is delaying their ‘Lock-Up the Travelers‘ program for a few weeks. Hopefully, some of the backlash from secretly abducting travelers like Ethan McDonald, Nikki Mathis, and Steve Duesing, whose stories are being widely publicized, gave the government something to think about moving forward. Canadian governments seem to operate mostly through gauging public opinion, so if they see the public getting into an uproar over a particular Covid policy, maybe we can get them to back down from some of the more egregious ones. Please share these stories while we have the momentum if you feel healthy Canadians should not be arbitrarily locked up until they prove they are not sick.
Western Standard has been good with articles on detainees. Here’s another man, Neil McCullough, who was detained at the same Calgary Westin Airport with Nikki Mathis. He got to spend 11 days cooped up with no representation courtesy of PHAC.***
***Feb 03 Update – Steve Duesing is now free, free that is to go and quarantine at home for another 14 days upon threat of a $1 million dollar fine or three years in jail. This, after two negative Covid-19 tests.***
***Feb 03 Update – Just reported by Joe Warmington for the Toronto Sun, Steve Duesing is still incarcerated in a Toronto hotel. Mr. Duesing reports that there appears to be lots of activity outside of the hotel and Health Canada has indicated they will give an update on Wednesday.
Ethan McDonald is now home with his mother Rebekah in Red Deer. Ms. McDonald created a series of Facebook videos to detail their ordeal and is linked here.***
***Feb 02 Update – Just reported now by Joe Warmington for the Toronto Sun, it appears that on Sunday a number of people were swept up by authorities at Pearson International. One man, Steve Duesing, spoke with the reporter about his ordeal and his fears that many people off his flight are in the same Covid jail.***
This past weekend, Canada joined the ranks of dictatorships such as Iran, China, or North Korea by forcibly kidnapping Canadian citizens at the Calgary Airport and whisking them away to secret quarantine detention centers. You may be forgiven for not being aware of this escalation of Covid enforcement because there has been very little media coverage. CTV News Calgary actually reported on the two people who were taken for forcible quarantine under the headline ‘Concern growing around mandated hotel quarantine restrictions‘. Global News Calgary has only wrote a piece about the hotel association being concerned about irate hotel ‘guests’ (prisoners) being irate with hotel employees. Nothing from CBC yet.
The Western Standard, the National Telegraph, & True North were all quick to report on the separate stories.
Faytene.TV did a long interview with the abducted woman, Nikki Mathis, (since released) so that the full side of her story plus more of the other abductee’s story, Ethan McDonald, could be told. It can be watched here and here. There is also another interview with Nikki and her husband here. Hopefully, enough heat will come to bear that politicians will finally listen and change course on a simply outrageous policy.
Getting back to the premise of the title of this article, let us delve a little deeper into the anatomy of political scandal. There are plenty to choose from during the best of times but during these unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic times, they are becoming close and personal for all Canadians.
Anatomy of a Political Scandal
- The Incident Occurs
The go-to response by politicians is to outright lie, obfuscate, muddy the waters, or deny the incident occurred. Actual government services such as the police when asked direct questions try to not outright lie as they could actually get into real trouble. They will issue terse, direct, factual statements until the higher ups see which way the wind is blowing before they elaborate further. For more sensitive events, they will refer spokesperson interviews higher up the food chain. They will not volunteer extra information as context.
As an aside, is it wise to employ a pathological liar let alone allow them to be in positions of political leadership? If this type of behaviour isn’t tolerated as a trait in your employees then why do we tolerate it in the people who lead our country?
Premier Jason Kenney, to his credit, actually responded to the abduction of the pastor’s wife with this FaceBook post:
Premier Kenney, or more than likely his PR Twitterer staff, is very clever with this tweet. There was some original confusion as to which health authority was involved, mainly because they refused to identify themselves. But this muddies the waters and gives credence to the reports are just ‘rumours’.
Of course, Kenney is not alone when it comes to following this script. Doug Ford outright lied over his knowledge of his Finance Minister’s Christmas Caribbean vacation. Prime Minister Trudeau and his Cabinet just literally spew talking points when point blank asked specific questions. But we are so used to the lying, the public doesn’t even care anymore (normally). It’s de rigueur.
- The Incident Grows
This is the stage where the incident grows some legs and starts to gather the ’15 minutes’ of fame. More information becomes available, usually because of media pressure, (sorely lacking in the Covid age as MSM seems to be in lockstep with the government narratives) and the lie starts to fall apart.
Now the politicians try to deflect blame and you get the classic run-around. It’s always someone else’s fault, somebody else is in charge of that, we weren’t aware of the situation, those people acted against my authority, or the classic, ‘We were following orders‘. As for the airport abductions, Kenney has this to say:
Rumours are now reports, it isn’t Alberta agencies to blame but Federal, and really this should be turned back on the people who were taken away. It’s really their faults as they didn’t ‘inform themselves’ properly. I left my comment in the post as it is indicative of the thousands of angry responses directed at the Premier. I am actually surprised that the posts are still available for viewing and commenting.
In dictatorships, they usually try censorship, arrests or executions to try and ‘make the story go away’. In democracies, they can try to let the story naturally run out of steam. This is highly dependant on how much life it receives from MSM. But if the regular news outlets refuse to cover the incident, as alleged by Stockwell Day in the following Tweet, then social media and fringe outlets have to take up the slack.
- The Incident Containment is Lost
This is where the lie has been totally blown apart and the public pressure becomes the most intense. Governments can fall at this point because the public is so fed up.
As we saw during the holiday season with travelling politicians and bureaucrats, there was white hot anger on the part of the long suffering Canadian Covid locked-down public. No amount of sorrowful apologies can smooth over the mob demanding blood and heads on a pike.
Savvy politicians, like Premier Pallister, know how to navigate the political minefields as he just punted the chair of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for non-essential travel. Boom, gone, no news cycle, no public uproar because clear decisive action was taken and the head is already mounted on the castle wall.
It will be interesting to see where these airport abductions finally end up at with regards to political and institutional fallout. This is hitting a nerve with Joe & Jane Canadian. They are already tired of never-ending and increasing restrictions to liberties as this ‘pandemic’ grinds along.
Politicians seriously misjudged the anger associated with the news of government officials travelling during the Christmas break. It’s entirely possible they will also miss the point where a critical mass of Canadians will stop putting up with their Covid shenanigans. Historically, it is not wise to push the people of this country too far.
There is one last detail every Canadian should think about for a few seconds. If we know that politicians are pathological liars, demonstrably so time and time again, then what else have they been lying to us about all through this period of crisis?
At some point, people and plain reality makes fools and examples of the liars.
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.