COVID-19 Control: Nothing as Straightforward as Could be Hoped

"I lose sleep over this daily. Everybody needs the money. It's really discouraging because I know what's going to happen."                                                                  "I know that as soon as those schools open ... that these elderly and vulnerable people are going to start dying again."                                                              "We're all really scared for these people that we support."                                   Unnamed woman working in developmental services sector

"[There are no rules] prohibiting staff from working in external locations, and we have not received any direction from public health or the ministry that this measure should be taken."                                                                                            "According to legal advice received, we are unable to impose these types of restrictions on employees in the absence of a specific public-health directive."  Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Laura Walton,  custodial staff on casual supply lists. (CBC)

"We have raised it [with the ministry], and said, 'What do we do'? At this point, there doesn't seem to be any indication."                                       "This is an indication of just how low-paid these jobs are. For far too long, this government and previous governments have chosen to balance books on the backs of public services ... And I think, as a result, they're a little bit more hesitant to actually address the issue that they know they themselves have created."                                             Laura Walton, president Ontario School Board Council of Unions

"Our staffing situation is critical right now, and it is the thing that keeps us up at night."                                                                                                                   "[With temporary solutions to LTC staffing shortages winding down, the] pandemic pay [wage boost --] anything that takes any more people out of our system just makes us that much more vulnerable."                                                                     Donna Duncan, CEO, Ontario Long-Term Care Association 

"You can't blame the individuals, who are simply trying to cobble together a living [wage]. It's something that's very difficult for us to tackle other than to advocate for an increase in pay that would prevent them from having to double up on work in that fashion."                                                                                                       "There needs to be a solution that safeguards students, safeguards the people in the other congregate-care settings, safeguards the families that these people go home to, but doesn't punish the individuals by depriving them of the ability to make a living."                                                                                                                    "It would be absolutely irresponsible for anybody to stick their head in the sand when this issue has been raised."                                                                            Harvey Bischof, president, Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation

A custodian cleans a classroom in Brubaker Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa. Not having enough staff to clean and maintain Ontario public schools was an issue even before COVID-19, according to the Ontario School Board Council of Unions. (Charlie Neibergall/The Associated Press)

It is a problem with menacing ramifications. The huge death rate out of long-term care institutions during the first wave of the coronavirus sweeping through Canada resulted from conditions in the homes where residents shared sleeping facilities, bathroom facilities, where distancing was difficult to achieve, where an alert and preparations to control the contagion were absent, where personal care personnel were improperly trained, and often brought the virus with them into the homes unaware that they were infected, and the result was a high mortality rate among the vulnerable inmates, elderly and health-impaired.

Now, suddenly, with the re-opening of schools as a new school year presents itself next week, the focus is on school custodians and other support employees of schools who spend the school day supporting students in a vital job that is low-paid. In contrast school teachers themselves make a truly handsome salary in compensation for their vital job teaching students. Education costs are sky-high, a major portion of which is dedicated to teaching staff salaries. Their unions never stop agitating for wage increases. The situation is one of injustice, the difficult and vital work of teaching aides and custodians fails to be adequately financially compensated.

One can imagine the horrified response of someone like Mr. Bischof should government, careful of tax dollars, recommend that teachers be satisfied with their munificent salaries to allow lesser-paid employees of equal merit in their positions to be offered a long-overdue increase in their salaries. Which could result in those low-paid employees no longer feeling it necessary to head out to another job after school closes for the day, to augment their school board salaries to make up for a living wage.

Dr. Christopher Labos says there is little value in testing every child for the coronavirus before school starts and he speaks to concerns about keeping kids apart in the classroom.

Now, alarm bells are pealing as schools are resuming in an atmosphere of doubt and fear, with parents on tenterhooks, having to return to work and grappling with the options open to them; continue home-schooling and forego that career (obviously mothers) or send the child back to school and hope for the best. In either instance, as long as the coronavirus remains a threat grandparents can no longer be counted on for after-school care. The 'bubble' that worked well in the past few months has been pricked in the face of social distancing problems as children converge on their schools.

Suddenly the very real impact of separation and care have met head on; and the possibility of COVID-19 transmission through concurrrent employment in education and congregate care has come to the fore, even if a little late in the game. The government of Ontario took steps in the wake of horrendous deaths at retirement and long-term care homes to ensure that workers would adhere to new guidelines mandating that they work at only one such home rather than as in the past trying to supplement incomes incommensurate with their roles, to provide a living wage.

That having been made clear, that going from one home to another turned out to be a contagion-nightmare, failed to take into account that the measure was specific to the homes, nowhere mentioning the situation whereby those working in school settings seek to top up their income by working as well in long-term care and retirement homes, among the vulnerable, setting the stage for the previous massive death toll where Canada's entire death rate due to COVID was 82 percent represented by the steep mortality rate seen in such homes.

The restrictions relate to working in more than one retirement or long-term care home. Nothing in it addresses the likelihood of a worker seeking employment in areas outside health care, such as education. Workers with jobs in both areas now present as an entirely new headache, one not readily solved other than to deprive low-paid education workers with the opportunity to top up an inadequate wage with taking a second job in a field of medical and long-term care badly in need of workers.

The situation where daily death rates in long-term and retirement homes shocked the public and led governments throughout the country to pledge to solve the problem resulted in a stabilization. And that situation is now on the cusp of resurging. The executive director of Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills considers the situation 'challenging'. The group operates eight residential group homes employing close to two hundred front-line staff asking of them that any who will plan to work for a school board inform them. And should an outbreak of COVID-19 occur at a school, immediate updates would be required.

Assassin Unknown?

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny  Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

"It's essentially an attempt to remove him as a threat. They consider this with a classic KGB mentality: 'no man, no problem'."  "By removing him [Navalny] personally, they aim to kill the brand and end the team. ...[But] it's a grave mistake by the Kremlin to think that without him the movement stops." "Look at Belarus. It is a YouTube revolution. Tikhanovskaya is the Belarusian Navalny."                                                                         Vladimir Milov, former Russian deputy energy minister 

"[Navalny's reply to the question, 'Why do you think  you're not being killed and what happens if you are?' was: 'it's a dangerous place and that's why I'm talking to you -- in the hope you can work on our common cause']. So this was something he already had in mind."                                                                                           "He's the only threat the ruling party is facing."                                                          Sergei Gurlev, professor, Sciences Po, Paris

"He really got under the skin of people who have big country houses and lavish mansions, but I wouldn't say he was such a threat to the regime that it had to bump him off."                                                                                                                     "If there isn't a convincing public investigation the opposition will point the finger at the authorities. If they weren't involved, it shouldn't be hard to get to the bottom of it and find some sort of scapegoat, and that could be absolutely anyone. There are a fair number of crazy people sitting in the woods with grenade launchers."             "But it's definitely not Putin and it's definitely not the government.  At least I hope so. That would really be beyond the pale."                                                     Unidentified go-between with senior Kremlin officials

"We don't know for sure whether it was personally ordered by Putin. But we understand that he created the conditions where this can happen and the people responsible won't be punished or suffer any repercussions."                            Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director, Navalny's foundation

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a stretcher  Alexey Malgavko/Reuters

Once the howls from the international community and their leaders became sufficiently intense, bolstered by person-to-person persuasive arguments by telephone between the two most influential EU heads of state, and a personal intervention by Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, Russia's Vladimir Putin agreed to engage in a pursuit for the identity of whoever it was that was responsible for the attempted murder of Alexei Navalny, the irritating gadfly who was so rudely attempting to unseat Mr. Putin and his party from power.

Sergei Skripal, daughter Yulia, targeted with Novichok, 2018. Getty/Michael Howard

According to a public statement that followed from Russia's parliamentary speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, a separate investigation would be led by him to determine whether the poisoning was "an attempt by foreign powers to harm the health of a Russian citizen with the aims of creating tensions within Russia and making yet more accusations against our country". Progress can be seen in that Mr. Putin and his Kremlin allies no longer deny that Mr. Navalny was poisoned. Regression to the same old is recognized in Mr. Volodin's outrage that an 'outside entity' such as a "foreign power" would dare to harm a Russian citizen, much less purpose to wreak unrest within the country.

And though German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined with French President Emmanuel Macron to offer medical services and asylum to the victim of a poisoning attack, and Ms. Merkel whose Germany is now hosting Mr. Navalny at the Charite hospital in Berlin, has no intention of estranging Russia from Germany, intent on maintaining open diplomatic ties and with the diplomacy firm political ties in the belief that open lines must be required as a requisite for persuasive relations with Russia.

Emergency oxygen respiratory bed Charite Hospital  Michele Tantussi/Getty

Alexei Navalny, 44-year-old passionately committed political activist is so detested by Russia's presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov that he refers to him singularly not by name -- a curse that will not pass his lips -- but as 'the patient', a truly pejorative curse spat out in disgust. But then, Mr. Navalny is not only a political activist, but a socially moral one, outraged by the corruption of Russian oligarchs amassing great fortunes at the expense of the ordinary Russian citizen in a collaborative arrangement between themselves and government.

As a result, he is detested not only by the Kremlin and Russia's president, but by powerful men whose intimate contacts where they count, and whose uncountable wealth is under attack by this painfully annoying upstart. Alexei Navalny's activism and direct appeal to ordinary Russians to expect more from their political leaders - than to build up arms, contest the West, interfere with other nations' civil wars and insurrections, and enrich themselves and their allies at the expense of the general public when they should be governing justly with fair outcomes, lifting the population into security -- has gained him the support of the public.

Litvinenko met with former KGB contacts, London, 2006 Getty Images

In the past five years six violent attacks have taken place against Russian dissidents. The international notoriety that Russia gained when the eyes of the world swivelled to Britain at the attempted murder by poisoning in Britain of former double agent Sergei Skripal with the nerve agent novichok, following on the earlier murder of Alexander Litvinenko with the use of polonium-210, left no doubt that Russian government hardball against those the Kremlin considers traitors is real and it is deadly.

Mr Nemtsov shot on a bridge in view of St Basil's Cathedral & the Kremlin AP

And of course, in 2015 opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was put out of contention as a potential threat to Vladimir Putin's plans to govern uninterrupted for the rest of his life when he was shot four times in the back ensuring he would never again contest Russia's presidential reign in perpetuity by a man who brooks no criticism. In this bold and shocking killing by an unidentified gunman, President Putin took personal control of the investigation to discover who might have been behind the dastardly plot to remove a formidable political opponent of the president. Still under investigation.

State efforts to silence Mr. Navalny grew in lock-step with his popularity, when over the course of the years he was jailed on thirteen occasions for protests directed against Mr. Putin, and finally sentenced to six years in prison on embezzlement charges (!) in 2013; whatever it would take. He was subjected to violent attacks; a chemical substance thrown at him, blinding him in one eye. He also  believes that when he took ill during one of his jail sentences an attempt had been made to poison him.

 Anna Politkovskaya shot dead in Moscow. Getty/Michael Howard

According to the Levada Center, an independent pollster, a June survey found that Mr. Navalny was viewed as Russia's second most "inspirational" leader following directly after the number-one candidate, Vladimir Putin. In Belarus over two weeks of mass protests followed the corrupt re-election of Alexander Lukashenko who has ruled the country for the past 26 years, backed by the Kremlin. There, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky built a YouTube following modelled on Navalny's modus operandi.

Germany has offered asylum to the combative, but now still-comatose Navalny whom the Kremlin continues to deny having had any intention to harm. For an example of the kind of courage that Navalny possess, one only need look to the example of the man whose campaign against corruption reflected Navalny's own. Sergei Tikhanovsky was arrested in Belarus, leading his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to run in the election for her husband, becoming the focal point of the protests.

"I can give you 120 percent that he will never do that [accept Berlin's officer of asylum]. He will stay in Russia and continue to do what he does. The biggest gift we could give to those people in the Kremlin is if we got up and ran", stated activist Vladimir Kara-Murza another Navalny colleague who had survived two attempts on his own life.

Alexei Navalny, pictured here at the centre of a 2018 rally, is expected to survive the poisoning but remains unconscious in a serious condition. Anti-Putin protesters in the far east of Russia now chant Navalny's name, demanding justice.  Credit:AP

Life As Usual In Israel

Israeli soldiers stand near artillery units deployed near the Lebanese border northern Israel on August 26, 2020. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90.

"In response, overnight, the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] attack helicopters and aircraft struck observation posts belonging to the Hezbollah terror organization in the border area [between Lebanon and Israel]."                                                Israeli military spokesperson 

"Our message to Hezbollah is sharp and clear: We will continue to thwart its attempts to gain achievements."                                                                                    Brig. Gen. Shlomi Binder, commander, IDF Galilee Division

"It is our assessment that the choice of location by Hezbollah [for the sniping attack] was not accidental ... probably in order to [draw] Israeli retaliation towards a United Nations position or near it."                                                                            "I would emphasize that this was a very dangerous and cynical practice to deliberately locate their combat troops close to U.N. positions and then engage against the IDF, violating U.N. Resolution 1701 [which bans the presence of armed Hezbollah cells in south Lebanon] … and probably hoping for there to be U.N. casualties as a result of Israeli retaliation. The IDF is very much aware of the location of U.N. troops, and does [its] utmost not to affect them."                               "Our objective is not to escalate the situation, but to protect our civilians, uphold sovereignty and allow hundreds of thousands of Israelis enjoying [he] last days of summer to vacation in northern Israel."                                                                 Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, Israeli military spokesman 

An IDF labeled view showing the proximity of the Hezbollah terror squad to UN peacekeeping forces and the Israel-Lebanese border. Source: Screenshot.

Palestinians  release balloon-borne explosive to Israel  Fadi Fahd/Flash90

"One device was found next to a playground and a second was found in a tree. In both cases, a police sapper was called. No damage or injuries were caused." Eshkol Regional Council spokesperson

"Following the continued violation of security stability, and following the decision to close the Kerem Shalom Commercial Crossing with the exception of humanitarian equipment, it will be noted that the import of vehicles, which has so far been carried out through the Erez Crossing, was stopped as well starting today."                                                                   Spokesperson, Erez crossing with Gaza

Oh, did Lebanon just several weeks back suffer a horrendous Beirut-dock explosion that killed 200 people, injured thousands and made hundreds of thousands Beirutis homeless, causing thousands of Lebanese to march in the streets demanding their Hezbollah-driven government step down? If so, the magnitude of the catastrophe has not yet penetrated the minds and consciences of the Hezbollah elite who far prefer to provoke Israel by attacking its soldiers across the blue line in Israel in hopes of inciting a lash-back to harm UN representatives keeping the 'peace' to enable an 'incident'.

The Israeli military responded as it must, striking Hezbollah posts with no loss of life, in the knowledge that the incident was a ruse to place UN personnel within the nearby peacekeeping post at risk. According to a Lebanese army announcement Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a local environmental group center. The following day the Israeli military gave the all-clear to Israelis living near the border -- instructed to remain indoors -- that they might now resume normal activities. Israel's north and Lebanon's south are on uneasy terms.

An attempt by Hezbollah operatives the month before to infiltrate Israel failed. Within Israel itself, Palestinians find the opportunity to stab Jews, sometimes causing grave injury, and sometimes causing death as happened last week when an Israeli rabbi was stabbed to death in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva, leaving four children without a father. The attacker, father to five children, will now face Israeli justice, and his family will be left homeless when their house is destroyed.

Incendiary balloons launched from Gaza have caused dozens of fires in Israel in recent days  AFP

Attacks by Palestinians on Jews, though routine enough, and incited by the Palestinian Authority which claims the attackers to be Palestinian heroic 'martyrs', are not the only means of violence committed against Israel. Incendiary devices attached to helium-filled balloons are regularly released by Palestinians over the border from Gaza into Israel, where vast acreages of forest and farmland are burned. Other balloons carrying explosive devices wreak carnage of the type that exploded into a home in an Israeli town last week, its occupants miraculously escaping harm.

Israeli aircraft and tanks last Friday retaliated by striking Hamas facilities in Gaza while Hamas responded by firing a half-dozen rockets into southern Israel. No casualties were reported despite the exchanges, on either side, Israel or Gaza. According to Israel, the military struck underground infrastructure and a military post belonging to Hamas, as well as a Hamas armed training camp. This time, it is Israel's south and Gaza's north where the neighbourly exchanges are taking place.

Israel has responded to the attacks by bombing militant targets  Reuters

These are pressure tactics used by Hamas to 'persuade' Israel to open the blockade of Gaza, to allow Hamas free reign to bring in materials to continue building tunnels, and arms to continue posing its existential threat to Israel. Israel, despite the blockade, opens the Erez crossing daily to ensure that vital supplies enter Gaza. The cement and other building materials that Israel will not permit entry other than in limited amounts, is smuggled into Gaza by Hamas and  used not for civilian infrastructure but for more tunnel-building.

The endless cycle of threats and violence plays its course through the relationship Israel labours under, with its neighbours who place low value on quality of life for ordinary Palestinians and Lebanese and high value on destroying stability for Israelis, with the intention of  ultimately bringing violent destruction to the nation, cleansing the historical heritage Judean landscape of the presence of Jews in a Jewish state, renewed with the intention of defending Jews in their own homeland restored, from a world that has repeatedly proven it has no place for them elsewhere in the diaspora.

What other nation on Earth has its legitimacy and sovereignty challenged continually by its neighbours in never-ending attacks? What other nation must defend its population from ongoing threats of attack leading to death from violent terrorists, the world looking on with detached interest, while segments of that world rise to the defense of the attackers claiming them to have been ill done by, refusing to condemn the violence, and expecting Israel to escape condemnation by restraining its military from imposing the full strength of its defence against indomitable hatred and hostility threatening to annihilate the country?

An Israeli soldier battles a blaze close to the southern kibbutz of Nir Am that was apparently caused by a balloon-borne incendiary device launched from the Gaza Strip, August 23, 2020. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

Expectations of Europe's Second Coronavirus Surge

"The resurgence in cases will go for quite a few months. [But] it will probably never get to the same level as the first big wave in spring."                                       "Although we've seen hospitalizations going up in some countries, it is not anywhere near the situation in March and April. ICUs are not clogged and health services now have much better planning and response times. So, I am optimistic we will not see the big, horrible scenes we saw in March and April, but we will see a lot more cases."                                                                                                      "I don't see the need for moving back to a full suppression strategy. That was justified when the ICUs and hospitals were full, but that is not the case now. As long as hospitals can cope, there is no need for such drastic measures."              "Because most plans were geared towards flu, they were mostly mitigation plans. They didn't have suppression tools, with measures like lockdowns and so on."      "In around 2015, the World Health Organization came out with the concept of the famous Disease X; the idea we should plan flexibly for a novel pathogen. That was much closer to what we're seeing with COVID-19, and the countries that bought into that kind of planning did have the suppression idea in their pandemic plans. The countries that implemented very tough measures early were the ones with better preparedness plans."                                                                                     "In a way, we're lucky. It's nothing like the 1918 Spanish Flu or smallpox and cholera in the 1800s. The problem is we didn't take very seriously the plans of Disease X. This is something that, in the future, I think we are going to take much more seriously."                                                                                                                Sergio Brusin, principal expert, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

He's the man. the lead expert co-ordinating Europe's response to the global pandemic. And in his great knowledge, he predicts a "continued resurgence" of cases this winter across Europe, but remains "optimistic" that another spike in the death rate will not occur. The "horrible scenes" witnessed throughout Europe, but particularly in Italy and Spain, as the virus overwhelmed hospitals in March and April weren't likely to see a repeat, not in the face of experience that has resulted in improved health-care capacity and planning.

This expert credits the public heeding the best advice of epidemiologists and other health experts who persuaded their various governments to go into lockdown, convincing their populations to practise diligent social distancing and to react at various levels of government to local outbreaks for gaining control of the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2. He was the leading European expert, and from his official post surveilling and recommending response strategies, he warned the U.K. in early March that Britain would succumb to the same trajectory as did Italy, urging the government to react swiftly to avoid that outcome.

It took two weeks, until March 23 for government to act, and by that time community transmission of the coronavirus was widespread. According to Dr. Brusin, what distinguished states in Europe in their coping mechanisms was the degree to which the pandemic plans were "up to date", and how swiftly brought into play. The degree to which national plans accepted expert strategies for "suppressing the virus" rather than just "mitigating" the impact was critical.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was initiated for the purpose of coordinating disease outbreak response in Europe following the 2003 SARS epidemic, and since then it has played a vital role in response to COVID-19 in the area of data and information sharing, and strategy formation, recommending from the outset how most western European countries proceeded in ramping up social distancing and similar containment measures, in accordance with how widespread the virus became locally. Determined by thorough testing and contact tracing.

Britain's first action was to adopt a strategy of "contain, research, delay, mitigate". Which was transitioned to now reflect the ECDPC approach, following the spring crisis. Countries across Europe have utilized the ECDC's latest weekly data set to track the epidemic and adjust their international travel policies. The once-weekly data set indicates that infection rates across the continent increased continuously for the 31 days to August 19.

Hospital admissions were increased in six of the 18 countries that had seen a rise in confirmed case numbers, while deaths had risen in Belgium and Romania. A country's ability to maintain case numbers under control this winter, according to Dr. Brusin, would be determined by a population's behaviour. And, as far as he is concerned, Europe could have been hit by a much more lethal pathogen than COVID-19.

"What is really driving the [current] resurgence is the fact that we have still quite a few gatherings of people. In most of the countries where the resurgence is significant, it comes mostly from weddings, bars and discos; places where quite a lot of people are mixing. It is also relevant that a lot of the new cases are among young people. They are less vulnerable, but they will pass it to older groups. There is a particular need to protect the vulnerable."

Governing Wisely in a Time of Crisis -- or Courting Bought Votes?

"We're now sitting in August. We've had two extensions of CERB [Canada Emergency Response Benefit] with no change in eligibility. So if we're making that argument in April [government claiming its focus in aiding the population was on getting the money out the door as quickly as possible], I think it's a very different dynamic than five months later."                                                                      "There's a whole lot of people who don't need assistance or whose need is much less, who are not only getting assistance, but they're actually being made better off than they were last year."                                                                                       "We have a world class Department of Finance and I just have to believe that they were raising some concerns about the degree to which the approach we were using on so many of these new programs, was actually going to get money to people who needed it."                                                                                              "I don't know the rationale to send money to seniors who have household income of up to $200,000. We're not getting enough money to that single mom or single dad, who is in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. At the same time, we're giving money to people who again, I just think at best, their need is questionable."      Jason Clemens, executive vice-president, Fraser Institute (think tank) 

When the Canada Emergency Response Benefit was rolled out it was ostensibly and for all purposes meant to give badly needed financial assistance to the many Canadian workers who lost their employment as a result of the country shuttering schools, businesses and all commercial enterprises with the exception of pharmacies and grocers, as essential industries for obvious reasons. Questions soon began to arise when word got out that there was no caution and no oversight over the applicability of registrants for the CERB. And those administering the program were specifically told not to look too deeply into the applications to find issues of incompatibility with guidelines.

Infograph, Fraser Institute

In fact, whenever such applications clearly reflected that the applicant did not fall into the category of entitlement to receive the relief payments, instructions were to approve them regardless. Including thousands of applications that had been flagged as ineligible. In service to the greater issue of providing relief funding to people who needed it. That at some future date an investigation into entitlement under the guidelines would be undertaken, and any who had applied inadvertently or with the intention of defrauding the system, would be held to account, the incorrectly received funding to be returned to government coffers.

The newly released study by the Fraser Institute estimates that up to $22.3 billion may have been disbursed to people who would not have qualified for the CERB; those who had no real need of funding in the presence of the novel coronavirus and its unemployment fallout. CERB was one of several programs that the government had issued as an emergency measure to help Canadians cope with the extraordinary new world they found themselves in; laid off from permanent or part-time or temporary work with bankruptcy staring them in the face.

According to the study, $81.6 billion in COVID recession spending has been remitted to students, parents and seniors, along with people who found themselves peremptorily out of work when stores, restaurants and other small businesses closed as a result of the pandemic. CERB to the rescue. A program that seemed to make sense at its introduction, first launched in April when the country was in its second month of shutdown. Then came two extensions, with no change to the program such as revisiting eligibility rules.

Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Jason Clemens, coauthor of the Fraser Institute report, used Statistics Canada data in his analysis to determine the number of people who were classified either as dependent children or spouses in families with incomes in excess of $100,000. Had any of the people making application to receive CERB earned at least $5,000 in 2019, then lost income as a result of CERB, they would be seen to qualify for CERB. The study estimated a maximum of $11.8 billion may have gone out to  young people with part-time jobs, who are dependents in families with household incomes over $100,000 annually.

That is with the assumption a part-time income in 2019 was lost or had hours reduced in 2020 and those people applied for CERB. Another $7 billion could have been sent out to spouses in circumstances quite similar, living in families earning over $100,000 annually. Government could have chosen to make relatively simple, common-sense changes to the application form to disqualify people who were dependents where there was no diminished family income.

The top-up payments for seniors who receive the Old Age Security (OAS) pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, also went under the microscope in the study. Government, stated Mr. Clemens should have forwarded that funding to GIS (Guaranteed Income Supplement) recipients only [as without the GIS they fall under the poverty line], since the benefit was meant to specifically aid low-income seniors. The reality being that a senior couple can conceivably have a $260,000 annual income and still qualify for OAS.

Fraser Institute

No Middle Ground in Transgender Discussions

"The original piece in question was a difficult and frankly irresponsible read -- especially in light of the fact that 21 trans people have been murdered in 2020 so far [the vast majority of whom are Black trans women]."                                          "It makes me question the motivations and priorities of an author who wishes to come out in support of Rowling, rather than using their platform to demand justice for the lives lost due to transphobic violence."                                                           Jules Purnell, trans person, associate director, sexual-violence prevention, Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania

Dr.James Cantor

"No compromise, no in-between is allowed. they're not even thought crimes. It's 'Oh, clearly you're on the other team. If you don't belong to my religion, your religion is not allowed to speak."                                                             "My 27-year association with SSSS must come to an end.  In the present culture war between science and popular appeal, the SSSS Board of Directors selected the latter. This is not the first time the SSSS Board abused their authority to silence science opposing their personal political views, and no valid organization can be in the name of science in name only.  I am grateful to the other sexuality scientists who have resigned in sympathy, both publicly and privately."                                                                 "To acknowledge the facts: I have long posted news items and opinion pieces to SSSS’s member listserv.  In July, I posted an essay of my own, When is a TERF not a TERF, challenging the extremism that has taken over public discussion of trans issues, pointing out, for example, that the unwillingness ever to recognize anyone’s transition is different from citing the research suggesting children should wait until age 12 to transition."  Dr.James Cantor, sex researcher, Toronto

"Many members of the Board felt that Dr.Cantor had demonstrated a pattern of harassment against several other members -- even after those other members had repeatedly asked him to stop."                                                                             "The Board determined that Dr.Cantor's unwillingness to be responsive to other members' requests to cease his argumentative and harassing posts violated the guidelines of the listserv."                                                                                           Psychology professor, Indiana University Zoe Peterson, president, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

"James can be provocative, but he's always very fact-based. I understand from a psychological perspective that to some people words are experienced as violence. [But] I'm not so sure that a professional listserv is the place that needs to accommodate this particular sensibility."                                                                   "I believe in the creation of safe spaces, but sometimes we all have to step out of our safe spaces."                                                                                                        Dr.Jack Drescher, Columbia University psychiatry professor, gender-identity expert, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

Dr.Cantor posted an essay on the online forum of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality of which he had been a member for 27 years, as a highly respected, high profile researcher into transgenderism. His essay on listserv complained of "extremists" castigating those who question some of the tenets of the transgender movement, in particular that children who identify with another gender begin transitioning before they reach puberty.

Without doubt Dr.Cantor would have understood from past experience that questioning one of the canons of the transgender movement would garner an instant, defamatory response, and his most certainly did, leading him to resign his membership, with yet another complaint, that the group he had long been associated with as a leading scientific expert on transgender issues capitulated to popular acceptance rather than scientific evidence on the trans issues of the day.

He was accused of encouraging hatred, to the point of inciting violence toward trans people. As far as Dr. Cantor is concerned, and he counter-charged as much, it is attitudes such as that, typifying a form of "emotional blackmail" disqualifying people with views that sit between the extremes of anti-trans hatred and militant trans activism that lie at the heart of the problem between both communities.

Formerly a professor at University of Toronto, currently in private practise, Dr.Cantor is clearly not a conformist, comfortable with merely surrendering to the hard-position stance of dedicated trans activists. When the fray ignited and controversy arose, and the scientific group he was part of chose to chastise him by denying him posting privileges for the site as a consequence, he decided to post an open letter of resignation.

Thousands rallied outside Brooklyn Museum in New York to support trans rights on Sunday, June 14, 2020.  CNN

In which he stated his position and accused the society of succumbing to popular appeal, preferring to leave science in the dust as a result of the "culture war" between the two. Dr.Cantor observed that his commentaries on sexuality-related topics have been posted on the listserv for the past 20 years, never coming up against reactions of the type he was latterly confronted with. And the reason is obvious enough; after struggling as society's underdog Historically, the trans community is now enjoying the abject abnegation of mainstream society.

Others of his colleagues, also members of the society, chose to stand on the dignity and veracity of science as opposed to the acceptance of popular opinion and the flavour of the day's favoured causes, and followed suit in resigning membership. Prominent gender-identity experts decided the society's reaction and handling of the episode failed to cover them in glory as a leading group of scientists, capitulating to emotion over reason.

Transgender rights rally, New York REUTERS/Demetrius Freeman

Dr.Cantor's reputation resided in his studies at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for research on pedophilia. His studies with the use of MRI scans suggested that the predilection of pedophiles was hard-wired. In private psychological practise, he has raised his voice against transphobia, he has promoted a transgender bill of rights, but he believes that gender dysphoria - a sense of not being in the right biological gender -- is not as common as claimed by activists. 

It is his belief that surgical transitiioning is unnecessary for some people, likening the willingness of clinicians to accept gender-identity disorder as the cause of mental health illness as similar to the belief that once prevailed in repressed childhood sexual abuse memories, long discredited but for a few rare instances. While he argued in the much-criticized essay that no defence exists for discrimination of transgender people in  housing, employment, sports and public washroom access, he is dismissive of trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term used to discredit popular author J.K.Rowling, along with those who claim children should not begin transitioning before age 12.

About 15,000 people attended the Black Trans Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn   Getty Images

Inhibiting Free Discourse in Russia : Critics of Government Will Be Silenced

"We don't believe that the patient suffered poisoning. Poisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified. Probably, the diagnosis of 'poisoning' remains somewhere in the back of our minds. But we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning."                                                                           Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief physician, Omsk hospital, Siberia

"Another broad analysis has been initiated [while Mr. Navalny remains in a medically induced coma but] there is no acute danger to his life."                  "Longer-term effects, especially in the area of the nervous system, cannot be ruled out."                                                                                                                                Charite Hospital statement

Mr Navalny is being treated at the Charite hospital in Berlin Reuters

"Cholinesterase inhibitors block a crucial enzyme which regulates messages from nerves to muscles. The enzyme is called acetylcholinesterase. Inhibition of the enzyme interferes with nerve to muscle messaging and muscles are no longer able to contract and relax. They go into a sort of spasm."          "All muscles are affected with the most crucial being those which affect breathing. As breathing is inhibited individuals may become unconscious."                                                                    Alastair Hay, Professor (Emeritus) of Environmental Toxicology at Leeds University

''According to the medical team at the Charite [hospital], the clinical findings point to poisoning of Alexey Navalny. Given the prominent role of Mr. Navalny in the political opposition in Russia, local authorities are now urgently called upon to clear up this crime to the last detail -- and to do so in full transparency."                       "We hope that Mr. Navalny can recover fully. Our good wishes also extend to his family, which is undergoing a severe test."                                                           German Chancellor Angela Merkel/German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas

Independent laboratories confirmed that a toxin believed to be a cholinesterase inhibitor was used to poison prominent Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, to still his voice critical of the Kremlin and of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The toxin blocks an enzyme -- cholineserase -- required for the  normal functioning of the nervous system. The precise substance used to poison Mr. Navalny has not yet been identified other than generically as a cholinestrase inhibitor.

Atropine, a medication utilized in the treatment of certain types of nerve agent and pesticide poisonings is being administered to Mr. Navalny to counteract the negative consequences of the poison that had been covertly administered in an effort to silence a critic. Stricken Thursday during a Siberia-to-Moscow routine flight, the 44-year-old, according to his spokeswoman along with others, was directly targeted by a state-ordered silencing, yet another victim of a method which the Kremlin and its chief executive officer have found convenient to silence inconvenient opponents.

Protest in Khabarovsk, eastern Russia, 'Navalny was poisoned' (Igor Volkov/AP)

It is a situation well known to western intelligence, given Moscow's penchant in sending state emissaries abroad for the express purpose of silencing critics, generally those with inner-circle intelligence and military experience who know whereof they speak when they alert the world community to the Kremlin's covert plans to reassert Russian influence, particularly among the former satellite countries, neighbours of Russia which became unwilling 'partners' within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Moaning in pain, Mr. Navalny lost consciousness during the Thursday flight which the pilot then aborted, making an emergency landing in Omsk where two days were spent being stabilized in hospital. Emergency physicians took immediate action to place him in a medically induced coma. Doctors at the Omsk Hospital appeared to backpedal on the poison theory, claiming instead a sudden drop in blood sugar had incapacitated the Kremlin clinic.

"Organophosphate insecticides poisonings are common worldwide, as farmers sometimes mishandle them. But some organophosphates are far more poisonous than insecticides and have been used for military purposes e.g. sarin, VX and Novichok. We're talking about a very broad range of materials."

"[The inhibitor acts on the nervous system in place of the critical acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzyme, which transmits signals within biological systems.]" "The inhibitor attaches itself in the same place where the enzyme should be and the enzyme becomes irreversibly blocked."  "It's one of the first things they should have checked in Omsk. There are a number of symptoms that accompany this poisoning including various types of muscle paralysis, contraction of the pupil in the eye, blood tests, and so on." "If you don't act quickly you could have long-term damage associated with the nerve system."  "Navalny was treated and kept alive, yes, but whether or not he'll have further damage remains to be seen." Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry, University College London

Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a substance that disrupts the nervous system, according to the Charité hospital in Berlin. Navalny has been in a coma since Thursday. Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Image

Despite Mr. Navalny's family's request that he be allowed to leave the Omsk Hospital to be medic-evacuated to a hospital in Berlin, arranged by a human-rights charitable organization, Omsk doctors balked at discharging their patient, while at the same time denying he was a victim of poisoning. Eventually his release was approved, he was handed over to the custody of three German doctors who had flown in on the evacuation plane, and taken to Berlin, then admitted to the Charite Hospital.

The conclusion reached by the Charite Hospital directly contradicts the Omsk doctors' insistence that no evidence exists to link Mr. Navalny's condition to an administered poisonous source. His associates in the opposition movement are convinced that the Omsk doctors deliberately blocked their patient's move to Berlin, under pressure from Russian authorities determined to hinder foreign investigation into the event. Mr. Navalny is now under the protection of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, the very same source that provides security to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The European Union strongly condemns what seems to be an attempt on Mr Navalny's life. It is imperative that the Russian authorities initiate an independent and transparent investigation on the poisoning of Mr Navalny without delay."

"The Russian people, as well as the international community, are demanding the facts behind Mr Navalny's poisoning. Those responsible must be held to account."  European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

German army emergency personnel load the stretcher that was used to transport Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny into an ambulance on August 22, 2020 at Berlin's Charite hospital

Fateful Seconds of Living Hell, Then Death

"Nineteen seconds after the first missile hit the plane, the voices of pilots inside the cockpit indicated that the passengers were alive ... 25 seconds later the second missile hit the plane."                                                                                 "Therefore, no analysis of the performance and effects of the second missile was obtained from the aircraft's black box.”                                                                 "The data analysis from the black boxes should not be politicized."                           "What is evident is that Iran has accepted the responsibility for the mistake and therefore the country is ready for negotiations on paying full compensation."       Touraj Dehghani-Zanganeh head, Iranian Civil Aviation Organization

In this file photo from January 8, 2020, authorities stand near the wreckage of a Ukraine International Airlines plane that Iran said it accidentally shot down near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. © Abedin Taherkenareh / EFE

Flight PS752 was struck when two missiles 25 seconds apart hit the plane just moments after it left Tehran's main airport on January 8, with 176 passengers and crew aboard. After initially denying that it was responsible for the downing of the passenger jet heading for Ukraine on a regular route, Tehran finally had little option given the evidence, but to admit an 'accident' had occurred and indeed members of its al Quds branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down the plane.

They had been on high alert for incoming missiles from the U.S. military it was explained and mistook the airliner for a threat. No one survived the destruction of the civilian airliner. That very night Iran had launched a ballistic missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq, responding to a U.S. targeted drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani on January 3 in Baghdad. A great hero in Iran for his terrorist exploits against the Islamic Republic of Iran's 'enemies', his death might be seen as a preventive against further attacks such as he had engineered.

Iranian citizens demonstrated their anger at the  shooting down of the airliner with its massive loss of life by taking to the streets and vociferously blaming the regime and the IRGC. Most of the victims were Iranian civilians of whom 55 of the total were Iranian citizens of Canada, others Iranian students travelling to Canada to take up academic studies at Canadian universities. Other nations, Ukraine and France among them, lost citizens and await compensation from Iran to go to the families of the bereaved.

What is staggeringly beyond belief is that the regime's elite command military could have been so oblivious to the danger they were placing a commercial airliner and its passengers in, so consumed with its enactment of vengeance attacks they failed to take common-sense precautions, the most elemental of which would have been to close their air space to civilian aircraft at a time of such high tensions between Iran and the U.S., instead of placing so many lives in jeopardy.

Investigators at the scene of the wreckage.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi/File)

The second missile to bring down Flight PS752 hit the aircraft mere seconds after the first had struck. the gap of time between the two hits, estimated at 19 seconds captured on the black box recordings reflecting the damage the jet sustained from the first missile hit. Difficult to contemplate is the conclusion that the passengers were all alive after the airliner was struck by the first missile. The second one that was dispatched for whatever reason, extinguished all lives. It is the brief intermission between the two strikes that expresses the horror that would have struck all aboard with the realization that their lives were over.

"Our important questions regarding the reason for the delayed takeoff and the pilot's communications within that hour, which should have been included in the report of the black boxes, have also been left conspicuously unanswered." Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims

The flight crew of the aircraft consisting of two pilots and an instructor travelling in the cockpit had exerted a desperate, last-minute effort to maintain control of the plane -- until the last possible moment, pointed out the Iranian spokesperson. United Nations aviation rules that call for investigations whose aim is solely to prevent future accidents separate from any judicial process, represents the guidelines under which Iran's investigation is being carried out. 

The Civil Aviation Organization of Iran on Sunday published a report on the downloaded data from the Boeing 737 flight and voice recorders which emerged as a focal issue to fully comprehend the prevailing circumstances at the time Flight PS752 was shot down. According to the report released through the French investigation, the recorders had but 19 seconds of conversation following the first explosion, despite the second missile -- according to Dehqani-Zangeneh -- hitting the plane 25 seconds afterward.

Two missiles hit the plane, less than half a minute apart.(AP: Ebrahim Noroozi)