Travelling pols and $1000 payments
In general local news, the question of government paying returning vacationers $1000 to self-isolate has overtaken the other story, of politicians buggering off to sunny climes after government begged us not to travel.
As someone tweeted, if you shopped carefully for a plane ticket you could get the federal government to subsidize your vacation. But as someone else observed, if it costs $1000 to keep people from bringing home new, more contagious strains of Covid, we should do it.
PO 13:12 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
I’m more than a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the government would pay someone to stay home after they disregard the anti-travel guidelines. Even if the cost to the federal government is negligible, it will still infuriate a massive part of the population.
If someone had the vacation time and money to fly out of the country, surely they would have known whether they can afford the 2 weeks of lost pay when they return…
And while I agree with you Kate that at this point money might be well spent if it reduces the chance of bringing further spread of the virus, can I trust that people who are being asked to self quarantine… Will actually self quarantine? If someone feels confident enough to vacation during a pandemic, I suspect they’re not the type of people who are going to bother to properly isolate for 14 days.
I’m neither for or against this at this point, but there are millions of people in Canada who’ve diligently stayed home and made sacrifices by rigorously following the government guidelines. This feels like the kind of thing that will swing people back to the conservative party if they feel they’ve been subsidizing the vacations of people who chose not to make sacrifices in an effort to curb a pandemic.
Risky territory.
steph 13:15 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
I’d like a 1000$ please. Can we make it 10,000$? While we’re printing money, can we make it a neat 100,000$?
Daniel 13:23 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
The sense of entitlement re: traveling astounds me. Not just among politicians — although, we can expect a renewed trickle of that news in a few weeks when they think the furor has died down from this recent round — but among ordinary folks, too.
Is it so much to ask that people forgo their week in Mexique? I know it’s cold here, but eesh!
DeWolf 13:34 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
The social shaming is a distraction from the failure of the government’s travel policy. From the very beginning, Canada should have followed the example of Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. by requiring all incoming travellers to quarantine at a designated hotel. No exceptions. Instead we got an honour system that invites abuse. If you open a loophole, people will exploit it. Instead of wasting time and energy by getting mad at those people, focus on why the loophole exists in the first place.
Daniel 13:56 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
DeWolf, that’s a good point. The government travel policy should absolutely be tightened.
Until such time, can I fall back on social shaming? 🙂
Chris 20:15 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
Also, let’s not forget that it’s not *illegal* to travel. The government could have chosen to make it so, and they didn’t. The minimum required behaviour in society is to follow the law. Sure, there’s social pressure to not do legal things, not just in the covid realm, but in the environmental realm, and every other realm too. We all heed that pressure sometimes, and sometimes not.
Ephraim 20:50 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
All I have to say is… learn from Taiwan. Lock them up in a hotel for 14 days, deliver them meals, not let them leave the hotel under $10K (or higher) fine. Require that they carry a call phone for tracking and that the phone is called at random times to see if they are there. If they are local, let them do the 14 days at home, but require them to show daily receipts for their meals… and yes, I mean daily receipts… no grocery shopping, no going out, you have to order your meals and show receipts or you are fined.
You went out of the country, you pay for the risk to society.
Uatu 09:06 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
I agree with Daniel. The sense of entitlement among the politicians is disturbing especially since I read an article that links fraud with a mindset of entitlement.