issue 30// vol 46 rey tet tes eae tee Be)

Medical life after corona

» Many aspects of the system need change now

Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor

here is a certain optimistic hope that

we are past the worst of what may be the first run of COVID-19; it’s now time to begin to consider the lessons learned and future actions needed to prevent another massive economic and health care disaster. From one end of the country to the other, a light was shone on the current state of our health care system; though it is never far from us, it is often overlooked in our day-to-day existence. However, as personal protective equipment (PPE) ran low or out around the country with no foreseeable replenishments, the nation was forced to an unfortunate reckoning. And, as some long-term care centres around the country lost their patients in swathes and their ability to cope, another hole in our system was ripped open. What deficiencies can be solved soon to prevent a repetition of this abysmal state?

One of the worst things a graduate could face as they leave their school is an assurance that they will not have a job. Worse still would be if that job was one they had spent the past ten years training for. This exact situation faces hundreds of Canadian medical school graduates who do not have residencies at the time that they finish school. The issue is so bad that groups like the Canadian Federation of Medical Students have fallen to lobbying the government to increase their prospects

in order to combat the year after year increase in unmatched graduates. Of

the many things we have learned during this pandemic, we should see that these unmatched students are wasted resources. As if that wasn’t bad enough, citizens trained outside of Canada have resorted to suing the government in order to get residencies as well (granted this preference exists so that Canadian school graduates don’t end up unemployed). All this before we speak about foreign trained and certified immigrants unable to practice

as nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals.

For the doctors and nurses trained and working in the field, there comes a new and potentially more horrendous situation: the possibility of a PPE famine. As detailed in a National Post article, some health care professionals are concerned about the chance of a supply shortages and being unprotected. Though the federal government has placed orders for millions of dollars worth of equipment, the fact that this is not a situation unique to Canada and

Illustration by Sonam Kaloti

An ineffective but popular ban

» When good ideas do nothing

Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor

O n April 19, Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people over 13 hours while impersonating a police officer. As the community grieved and the rest of the nation looked on in horror, it became evident to many that it was long past

time to ban certain firearms. A viewpoint apparently shared by Prime Minister Trudeau, and on May 1 he moved to ban all “military-grade” and “assault-style’” rifles. But is the ban designed for the ideal effect? Are there better uses for the promised $600-million? And was the bill wrongly passed without proper debate—possibly due to the pandemic?

When PM Trudeau announced the ban, he stated that it was to prevent a similar tragedy from being repeated on Canadian soil—a noble and completely unobjectionable goal. Only the most nefarious of individuals would have designs against that goal. But does this ban really make that dream more likely? Given the details of the tragedy that initiated it, this ban would have been completely ineffective. The RCMP has come out recently to announce that all but one of the guns used by the shooter were likely purchased illegally from America and even the gun of possible Canadian origin was obtained illegally. Therefore, had this ban

been in place years ago, this tragedy would have been undeterred. Instead, this ban is but a rose thrown to the progressive masses with legal gun owners as the sacrificial lamb. In a move that shows Trudeau's understanding of how ineffective this ban is, legal owners will have two years to turn in their guns—a timeframe that hardly shows any real sense of urgency.

With a promised $400-million to $600-million dollars, one should seriously wonder what better uses there are for this money. Seeing as the ban itself will not deter the gun deaths that occur, what use will the money have? Well, we know that this money will not be used to stop the flow of illegal weapons over our border as premier Doug Ford, MP’s Dan Albas and Mel Arnold, or even numerous legal gun owners have called to do. We know that the money will not go to improving and expanding our mental health resources that will not only benefit Canadians at large but will also identify and help address potentially violent individuals before they rise to murderous rampages. We even know that this money will not brush against current gang prevention programs; instead, up to $600-million dollars will be funneled into taking guns out of the hands of nonviolent citizens who would not be using them for criminal purposes in the first place.

Worse still is Justin Trudeau’s use of the current pandemic to slip the bill

through uncontested. He was able to pass a bill that, by the government's own 2018 report, would have a negligible effect on gun violence in Canada seeing how most gun crime is committed with illegally- obtained guns. With all normal workings of government suspended or impaired, our Prime Minister passed a bill that satisfied the majority of Canadians while affording literally no one a single additional ounce of protection. Though the bill may sound good to many it only acts to criminalize the few law-abiding citizens that possess the weapons in question. As a matter of fact, “assault-style” and “military- grade” have no legal definition in Canadian law and this point would have been rightly criticized for being opaque fear mongering had the bill gone through the proper process.

Not one sane, civil, or reasonable person opposes preventing mass shootings; Canadians and most humans at large have enough general empathy to oppose such senseless killings. But, we must be more concerned with the success of these bills and laws rather than simply the buzzwords they use. It must be more important to the population at large that

is unsettling.

Heartbreaking pictures of the extreme isolation that many care homes have been forced to mandate have filled the news. But with these pictures come with shocking tales of long-term care homes with COVID-19 positive patients. For reference, anew study published in The Star states that 82 percent of all Canadian COVID-19 deaths come from elderly in long-term care. As of May 6, 3,436 care home residents had died of COVID-19g—making upa huge chunk of the 4,167 Canadians who have passed due to coronavirus. We are now forced to see how the warehousing of the elderly has continued to fail some of the most vulnerable.

The pandemic may continue to plague us in the years to come, but Canadians must begin to look at the steps necessary to fortify us against future epidemics. If that means allowing students to complete their residencies outside of Canada and prioritizing moving immigrants with medical degrees into more suitable careers, now is the time to begin that debate. If emergency production laws need to be reconsidered and PPE manufacturing increased in the nation, it is clear that it can only help us in the future; with the rapidly aging Canadian population, there’s no doubt that safety in care centres needs to be improved. Hopefully as a country we can change these things before it is once again too late.

taxpayer dollars go to programs that would actually address their fears. We should look at the actual origins of the weapons and craft something to prevent their repeated appearance; Canadian citizens of all political leanings should be outraged that the normal bounds of our democracy were circumvented in a time of need. Though there is no way to restore the lives that were taken, we must take care to properly ensure this won't happen again.

Illustration by Athena Little