FIRST READING: Why nobody trusts the government anymore because of COVID

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TOP STORY

The World Health Organization met Friday to consider whether, after three tumultuous years, COVID-19 still officially represents a global health emergency.

Whatever they announce Monday, the disease itself isn’t going anywhere: COVID-19 will now rank alongside pneumonia and influenza as an endemic illness that is still killing thousands every week — but not at rates high enough to justify extraordinary measures.

The potential end of the COVID-19 emergency caps off the most expensive crisis in human history, and also one of its deadliest. With an estimated death toll of between seven and 28 million, COVID-19 likely ranks just behind AIDS as the fifth deadliest pandemic to ever strike humanity.

Naturally, this kind of calamity isn’t going to end without etching a lasting mark on our economy, culture and general psyche. Below, five ways in which COVID-19 has permanently changed Canada.

The golden age of global free trade is over

The years 1991 to 2019 will likely be remembered as a brief, golden age of relatively unfettered international trade. Borders were open, offshoring was easy and shipping was basically free.

But COVID-19 took an obscure economic term like “supply chain crisis” and made it a household word. Whether it’s Tylenol shortages, Rice Krispie shortages or just thousands of half-finished cars sitting in the rain because of chip shortages; the last three years have dealt plenty of painful signals that the old ways don’t work anymore.

The result? Governments getting way more suspicious of international trade in order to avoid leaving their economies vulnerable to the sudden closure of a sea lane or a foreign border. In the same vein, many corporations that are now practicing “nearshoring”; the closure of overseas facilities in favour of factories that are closer to their customer base.

This is actually one of the reasons that inflation is a problem across much of the world right now. Yes, rampant government spending caused the global economy to be top-heavy with cash. But another reason everything’s getting more expensive is the cold reality that making stuff just isn’t as cheap as it once was.

Downtowns have been laid waste

The late 20th century saw downtowns across Canada hollowed out by suburbanization and urban crime. By 2019, those downtowns were only just starting to recapture their stride after years of targeted revitalization. Then, in only a matter of months, much of that progress went up in smoke.

The most obvious was the business closures. COVID-19 took a scythe to the country’s restaurants, retail stores and entertainment venues, leaving behind entire blocks of vacant commercial space.

Then into the void came a massive expansion in tent cities, crime and civic disorder. COVID-19 closed many shelters, precipitating a ubiquitous coast-to-coast rise in homeless encampments. A side-effect of pandemic lockdowns was also the severe exacerbation of the opioid crisis, swelling the ranks of addicts on Canadian streets.

We’re all way more suspicious of science, government and the media

Perhaps inevitably, the chaotic and extraordinary circumstances of COVID-19 yielded an awful lot of institutional overreach and mismanagement.

Governments (particularly Canadian governments) pursued lockdowns that sometimes went too hard, for too long. And the scientific establishment often delivered inconsistent or contradictory directives, such as its seamless transition from “masks do nothing” to “masks should be mandatory.”

After three years, the citizenry doesn’t know who to trust anymore. This time last year, a survey by Proof Strategies found that only 34 per cent of Canadians still believed they lived in a society where competent and effective people were in charge. Just before the pandemic, that number had stood at a comparatively respectable 45 per cent.

Similarly, polls used to show a clear majority of Canadians who trusted their government to do what was right. Last March, an international Ipsos survey of societal cohesion revealed that a mere 43 per cent of Canadians still gave their government the benefit of the doubt.

It’s now socially acceptable to do everything by videophone

Take a look at the evening news, and you’ll see an endless procession of experts, politicians and newsmakers getting interviewed via low-resolution Zoom calls. It’s easy to forget how rare this was before 2020: With the exception of correspondents phoning in from a disaster area or war zone, TV producers typically wanted their guests in studio.

But the hard lockdowns of the early pandemic normalized the sight of conferences, classrooms, parliaments and even late night television comprised entirely of poorly lit heads on a webcam. Now, whole sectors of the economy have moved permanently online: Businesses are closing offices in favour of more work-from-home positions, universities are liberalizing the options for remote attendance and even psychotherapists have embraced the idea of doing much of their work through a screen.

One notable exception to this trend is high-level politicians. World leaders still seem to be regularly hopping jets to ensure they can see their counterparts in person — particularly when they’re going to climate change conferences.

Expect to see a lot more masks in public

In the first months of COVID lockdowns, there was a genuine belief that customs such as the handshake, the clinking of glasses or even open-concept office would not survive the crisis for epidemiological reasons. Most of those forecasts appear to have been overblown; within days of major lockdowns coming to an end Canadians went right back to hugging, crowding into bars and seeking out anonymous lovers.

But one obvious holdover is the public wearing of surgical masks. While many Asian cultures have long adopted the practice of wearing masks in public at the first sign of cold or flu symptoms, until 2019 it was virtually unknown in the likes of Canada or the United States. As recently as December, more than half of respondents to an Angus Reid Institute survey were fine with voluntarily donning a mask if the conditions warranted.

1. COVID misinformation may have caused thousands of deaths in Canada: report

2. Opinion: Draconian COVID measures were a mistake, let's not repeat them

IN OTHER NEWS

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that he had selected Amira Elghawaby, a veteran activist, to be Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. The move immediately made headlines in Quebec, since it was only three years ago that she declared in an Ottawa Citizen column that “unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.” Elghawaby told La Presse last week that she was misunderstood and that she “doesn’t believe that the vast majority of Quebecers are Islamophobes.”

The Supreme Court once again struck down a gun crime law based on a hypothetical scenario that never actually happened. The case before them was an Alberta man, Jesse Dallas Hills, who was handed a mandatory four-year prison sentence for reckless discharge of a firearm. Hills had taken a high-powered hunting rifle and fired it randomly at a home containing a family of four. None of this was denied at Hills’ Supreme Court hearing, but his lawyers asked the justices to imagine if their client had been armed with a paintball gun instead of a hunting rifle. If so, they argued, Hills would still have been eligible for the mandatory four-year sentence, which would be “cruel and unusual punishment” since he hadn’t actually endangered anyone’s life (although, again, this was all an elaborate hypothetical since Hills did endanger people’s lives). This all made perfect sense to the Supreme Court, which is why they decided to rule that it was unconstitutional to hand out mandatory minimum sentences for reckless discharge of a firearm. And yes, the Supreme Court has done this kind of thing before. 

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