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The Service Canada centres have been shut down, after civil servants walked out, fearing for their personal safety. This despite the fact that “social distancing” measures had been put in place at the centres.
I can sympathize with their fear, but this is hard to forgive.
Clerks and shelf stockers are soldiering on in the grocery stores; pharmacists are still dispensing; truckers are still hauling. Doctors and nurses are risking their health hour by hour. We need essential workers to stay on the job, or things can quickly get much worse.
Many people are being thrown out of work, and suddenly urgently needing government services.
And the government itself is abandoning its posts. It is deserting in the face of the enemy.
This is a grave stain on Canadian honour; a breach of the Canadian social contract.
Yes, in theory, services are accessible online. But just try navigating them online at the best of times. Now imagine a disabled senior doing it. Not everyone even has internet access; and the libraries and the community centres, with free access, have been shut down.
A responsible government would be ordering civil servants back to work. If they refuse, they lose their jobs. If necessary, military personnel are brought in to replace them.
This dereliction of duty by the government should not be forgotten when the fog of war clears.
In China, meantime, there are signs of unrest as a result of the virus; I see a YouTube video of a mob overturning a car to break through a quarantine roadblock in Wuhan.
Riots are not rare in China; it’s probably nothing.
Most intriguing is that there are uniformed police in the shot, and they are doing nothing to prevent it. They look as though they might even be participating.
When the organized and armed forces, the police or the military, are no longer prepared to execute orders, things can turn quickly. I think of Ceausescu in Romania, who lost control of the nation in the middle of a speech.
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