Other Politics

It is one thing to be caught by surprise by a fast-moving virus, as most of the world was by COVID-19. It is quite another, and more serious, thing to be woefully unprepared to deal with such a crisis when it does occur.

Canada, like the United States, was taken was by surprise, although neither should have been. The Washington Post reported last week that the Trump administration received formal notification on Jan. 3 of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China. Within days, warnings from U.S. spy agencies were being included in the President’s Daily Brief.

Who is, or was, Joe Biden?

The question is not entirely rhetorical. Just a month ago, Biden – Barack Obama’s vice-president – was the talk of every town. On March 3, he won a majority of Super Tuesday delegates and, building on momentum generated in South Carolina three days earlier, was poised to claim the Democratic nomination and challenge Donald Trump for the White House.

“We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations. The cracks in our medical and financial systems are being splayed open like a gashing wound. No matter how this plays out, life will forever look a little different for all of us.” – Dr. Cornelia Griggs, critical care specialist at a 4,000-bed New York City hospital, writing in the New York Times, March 19

There will be many lessons to be learned from COVID-19, and two big ones are already staring us in the face.

Canada’s Conservatives and the Democrats south of the border have two things in common, aside from being on the outside looking in.

First, both parties are lost, confused about their identity and unsure which way to turn find the path to power.

Second, both parties, although defeated, actually won the popular vote in their last elections – yet neither has any confidence that the leader they are about to choose will lead them to victory.

John Carnell Crosbie, who died at 88 in St. John’s at the end of last week, was not a politician like the others – not like any other I have ever come across.

He was very smart, witty, opinionated, at times outrageous, sarcastic, chauvinistic, and contemptuous of those among his fellow politicians who got ahead by going with the flow. Crosbie was not a “going with the flow” sort. He was his own person, an independent thinker and unpredictable performer, fearless (or foolhardy) when it came to spurning political correctness.