Leaders ignoring those they serve
Your Thursday, Feb. 10 edition of the paper encapsulates the spectrum of public discourse on Covid restrictions. You may not have been aware of the irony of the article about the local restaurants which are protesting the continuation of vaccine passports and other restrictions on their ability to conduct profitable businesses and the article from our MP, Alistair MacGregor, castigating the truckers and their display of resistance to federal COVID restrictions.
The restauranteurs display a restrained, logical, factual, reasoned argument for dismantling the punitive restrictions imposed upon their industry. The passport mandate was intended to encourage vaccinations, but it has gone beyond its natural life because Omicron has passed the vaccine barrier and is now something we will have to live with, like flu and the common cold.
On the other hand, our MP, Alistair MacGregor would have us consider this argument to be undemocratic and lumps it into a polemic against hate, antisemitism, and far right extremism.
The fact that so many Canadians have supported the Trucker Convoy, contributed to the Go Fund Me appeal, and have stood on bridges and beside the highways to honk and wave flags suggests that a growing number of Canadian citizens are requesting more leadership on the move to dismantle COVID restrictions. Presently, our political representatives are not acknowledging this.
MacGregor is sitting idly by (his words) by not supporting small businesses, as well as health workers, arranging to meet with protesters rather than castigating them as law breakers, and recognizing that there are many scientific facts that our Health ministries, federal and provincial, are not acknowledging about vaccines and present measures. Those measures are not working against Omicron and we need to ensure that public policy does not punish those who would like to see an end to the present restrictions.
Bravo to the Maple Bay Lion Rampant Pub, the Small Block Brewery in Duncan, the Lake Cowichan Farm Table Inn and all other signatories of their plea to end COVID restrictions.
Yours truly,
Nancy Buan
Mill Bay