Monday, February 14th: An intense day for Canada and for Ontario

Dear colleagues,

Monday, February 14th, was a hugely intense day for Canada and for Ontario, and not exactly because of Valentine’s Day.

Two events took place:

1) The Emergencies Act was invoked. The Act is a law passed by the Parliament of Canada in 1988 which authorizes the federal government to take extraordinary temporary measures to respond to public welfare emergencies, public order emergencies, international emergencies and war emergencies. PM Justin Trudeau and his team announced their intention to use powerful actions such as freezing financial assets and revoking automobile insurance (in my view these will suffice to put a stop to the madness). PM also stated that the Act will be in effect for 30 days and no military action will be taken. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh supported the measure, and Premier Doug Ford expressed support for the measure.

There is an important aspect of invoking this act that has received little media attention and is critically important. Invoking the Act dictates the need to follow-up, within a year, with an inquiry and a report on why the act was invoked. On this later point, RNAO will be pursuing Police Reform.

Kindly, consider giving an RT to this tweet

2) Ontario government's announcement to ease more public health measures on Feb. 17 and again on March 1 (including the vaccine certificate system). RNAO's stance is as follows: "Given Ontario’s continued nursing crisis and the catastrophic backlog of surgical procedures, it is crucial the government maintains mandates to allow the health system to stabilize and resume health services for all, not only persons with COVID-19." Take a moment to read the full media release (scroll down to read).

Please RT RNAO's tweets here and here and here.