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QUEBEC CITY -- Quebec Liberal leader Dominique Anglade pointed to an exchange of emails published Wednesday in the media to once again call for a public inquiry into the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, Quebecor media published an email exchange between Premier Francois Legault, Health Minister Christian Dube and the director of public health, Horacio Arruda, among others.

These key players seemed completely unaware of the outbreaks of COVID-19 in Montreal bars last July, even after Montreal public health sounded the alarm.

But all indications are that the situation will never be investigated by the health commissioner charged with reviewing the network's performance in the first wave, the Liberals said Wednesday.

Government communications, including within the crisis unit, are not part of the announced investigations, Anglade lamented during question period in the Salon Bleu.

Neither the health commissioner nor the coroner will be able to investigate this aspect, "however, this aspect is important... to learn collectively from this crisis," she insisted.

According to Anglade, the emails published in the newspaper add a "new argument" that justifies the holding of an independent public inquiry into the overall management of the crisis.

"If there is no public inquiry, we will never know whether the contracts awarded during the crisis were justified, whether inter-ministerial coordination was effective. We will never know if the vaccination campaign was optimized, if the confinement could have been organized differently, if the rapid tests were used in the right way," she said.

Liberal health critic Marie Montpetit added that the emails demonstrate the "significant gap between the government and the management of the pandemic on the ground."

They highlight the fact that there was no clear chain of communication, and that decision-makers learned important information from newspapers, she said.

-- this report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2021.

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Quebec Liberals say emails show a lack of communication in dealing with the first wave of COVID-19 - CTV News Montreal

For these reasons, the labor-law professor Veena Dubal recently described Prop 22 as the most radical undoing of labor legislation since Taft-Hartley in 1947the Truman-era bill that curbed the power of unions and laid the groundwork for the adoption of so-called right-to-work laws across many states. If tech companies ultimately succeed in their quest to export the California model nationwide, they may hasten an even more profound transformation of Americas labor market. As The American Prospects Alexander Sammon has pointed out, Prop 22s almost immediate embrace by grocery chains is beginning to make companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash look more like traditional staffing agencies than innovative, high-tech products. Tantalized by the possibility of lower labor costs, businesses of every kind may convert to an independent workforce when laws allowpotentially cementing the gig economy and its ethos of precarity-enabled consumer convenience as the norm everywhere.

The ballot measures backstory is arguably as noteworthy as its contents. Although anti-worker policies have a storied history in relation to Republican governors and conservative ideology, the milieu that gave birth to Prop 22 was as blue as San Francisco Bay. Five Big Tech companies bankrolled the $200 million Yes on Prop. 22 campaign, but the idea has deep roots in the Democratic Party and in American liberalism as a whole.

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Most obviously, its core concept (the need for a third category of worker alongside employees and independent contractors) comes from a 2015 policy paper co-authored by former Obama Acting Labor Secretary (and presidential-campaign adviser to Joe Biden) Seth Harris. Harris, who departed the Obama administration for a perch at the employer-side law firm Dentons, argued that the flexibility nominally associated with gig workers (particularly the fact that employers like Uber dont technically fix their hours) sets them apart from traditional employees. Tony West, another Obama alum and a senior vice president at Uber, helped write the tech companies legal strategy, and also co-chaired Kamala Harriss 2016 Senate transition team. (West is also the now vice presidents brother-in-law.)

Despite their ties to Silicon Valley, both Biden and Harris did officially come out against Prop 22as did other prominent national Democrats (Californias Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, revealingly, stayed silent). Not clear yet is how vocal theyll be on the issue in office, although the prominence of personnel from the likes of Uber, Lyft, and Amazon during the recent presidential transition was certainly less than encouraging.

However these tensions ultimately play out in the new administration, the Prop 22 debate, which pitted gig companies against a badly outgunned alliance of unions and labor-advocacy groups, was also in a sense a battle between an older incarnation of liberalism and the form its taken since the 1990s. Although the Democratic Party has never been a straightforwardly labor-based or social-democratic formation in the mold of Britains mid-century Labour Party, its greatest lasting achievements (notably the New Deal) inarguably came, to quote the Princeton historian Matthew Karp, because it was a party of workers.

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Liberals Are Choosing Convenience Over Workers - The Atlantic

During the month of January the Daily Record hosted many letters begging for people to get along now that Joe Biden is POTUS. So I searched back and many of these same people were bashing Trump the last four years.

Your comments begging for peace make me sick. You called us deplorable, white supremacists, racist, uneducated, and many other things. Now like all bullies you want us to not bother you to play nice. Elephants never forget..They don't have the best eye sight but they never forget a face. I won't forget your nasty outrageous comments and name calling.

Then we have this post in the comment section. "Fennelle Miller: Jobs have not been lost when they are merely planned for the future." That has got to be one of the most degrading posts I have witnessed in the Daily Record.. Obviously, Fennelle has never had to make ends meet like the peasants do.. She also stated something about having two degrees. So let me explain something to you elite people.

Food, clothing and shelter. the basic to stay alive. Food, 99% comes from some form of farming or ranching..So my question to Miller is this: How many of those laboring in the fields across America have a college degree so you can eat? The loggers who cut the lumber for our homes? Not likely holding a college degree. Clothing made from cotton picked by the cotton pickers. You see folks without the "uneducated you would freeze and starve..So I don't think much of college degrees.. They are for people too lazy to get their hand dirty.

OK and now to Joe Biden, in June 2019 he claimed he would cure cancer if elected. Im pretty sure not one of you libs will hold him to his promise will you?

Liberals cry Trump murdered 400,000 people. Well I expect left-wing liberals have managed to overlook the 53,000 that Joe murdered in the first 20 days. Ellensburg/Kittitas County failed to keep its people safe. They allowed CWU to bring in thousands of people with no restrictions to keeping them on campus. People died!

Final note I cannot respond to the comments you to leave on this letter because Editor Mike says I must buy a subscription to comment in the Daily Record. So besides needing Facebook you need to pay to play. I have this in writing directly from Mr. Gallagher.

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Letter: Not willing to forget all the attacks waged by liberals - Daily Record-News

Its entirely possible that the last person I ever shook hands with was Steven Del Duca.

It was late on Saturday afternoon, March 7, 2020, and Del Duca had just won the Ontario Liberal leadership in convincing fashion, on the first ballot. I was anchoring TVOs gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Mississauga event, which we jokingly called The Corona Convention, because we were beginning to hear warnings about this new virus, which would come to dominate our lives.

Del Duca made his way to our broadcasting position and sat down for our interview.

I have only been fist-bumping all our guests until now, but let me make an exception for the new Liberal leader, I told him as I extended my hand and shook his. Immediately thereafter, I reached for some hand sanitizer and deposited a dollop in each of our hands.

Yes, it was a strange ending to one of Del Ducas best-ever days in politics but just the beginning of an unprecedentedly daunting year for new leader. The Ontario Liberals had been decimated in the June 2018 election, surviving with only seven seats (and Del Ducas seat in Vaughan wasnt one of them). They were dead broke and didnt even have official-party status in the legislature, meaning that all that extra money to hire staff and do more rigorous research wasnt available to them.

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As the realities of the pandemic became apparent, Del Duca came to realize hed need to raise more money and find more candidates than any of his 32 predecessors as Liberal leader, going all the way back to Archibald McKellar in 1867. And because of promises hed made as a candidate, fulfilling that mission was going to be even more challenging.

The election campaign is only 14 months away, Del Duca told me last week on a Zoom call. Ive served in cabinet before, so I can tell you, I know how quickly the time will go.

Del Duca promised to open up the party even more by ensuring that half his candidates for the 2022 election would be women, and further, that 30 would be under age 30. The party has started nominating candidates already but has almost 100 still to find. (There are 124 ridings to fill; Del Duca says hell contest his former seat in Vaughan, which is currently held by cabinet minister Michael Tibollo.) At this point, more than half his candidates are women; only three are under 30, and Del Duca admitted that keeping that commitment to the partys youth wing may be a bridge too far.

Its been a struggle to convince young people that partisan politics is the right vocation, he said. But many are kicking the tires on us.

In fact, Del Duca said, 400 people have requested candidate-application forms, which suggests the Liberal brand still has more than a bit of a pulse out there.

The hardest part of the job, of course, is to try to do all the things a leader has to do in the lead-up to an election and all of it from a living room. Del Duca joked that his wife has given up asking him to hang up his suit jackets, many of which are hanging on chairs in the familys dining room, the place where Del Duca does all his Zoom hits.

He takes former premier Dalton McGuintys well-worn admonition to heart Never too high, never too low. Just relentless and reminds himself that both McGuinty and David Peterson started on the opposition side of the house before becoming premier in 2003 and 1985, respectively. (They didnt, however, have the Everest-sized mountain to climb that the current leader is facing. Both McGuinty and Peterson led decent-sized official-opposition caucuses and had their own seats in the house. The 47-year-old Del Duca has neither.)

But hes trying to find the silver lining in that. Not being an MPP means he never has to worry about house duty, leaving him free to pursue candidates and money, the latter of which will be even tougher to find now that the current government has done away with the per-vote subsidy parties used to enjoy receiving.

Del Duca has farmed out the policy-development process to two of his leadership rivals: former cabinet colleague and Don Valley East MPP Michael Coteau (who came second) and London North Centre candidate Kate Graham (who, at just age 35, came third and captured a lot of attention for her thoughtful and energetic campaign).

Theyve been tasked with coming up with ideas that align with my values and those of Ontario Liberals, Del Duca said. Theyll make sure the platform is authentically me and will deliver a message thats compelling and relatable. The public wants to feel not just think that we get them.

The leader has also been fortunate inasmuch as several party veterans have emerged to lend a helping hand. For example, pollster and strategist Don Guy, who helped McGuinty and British Columbia premier Christy Clark win elections, now volunteers to assist Del Duca.

There will come a time, he said, when even if people are somewhat satisfied with the status quo, theyll want to see the alternatives. So Im working on myself and my own personal performance so theyve got a better choice.

Whenever Del Duca speaks about his hopes for Ontario, he always, and I mean always, talks about women and men. He never says men and women. I wondered why.

How we speak about issues matters, he explained. Ive been blessed to be surrounded by strong women my whole life. Both my grandmothers, from Italy and Scotland, have been through a lot in life. My mother has had many different careers. My wife is an immigrant whos got three university degrees and runs her own business. And weve got two daughters, and I want to make sure that nothing holds them back.

Its also true that the Liberals have no hope of getting back into government unless they improve their popularity with female voters. The Tories have a huge advantage in male voters. And Andrea Horwaths New Democrats, after recently shuffling their critic roles, now have women in the top six jobs in opposition: from the leader to the critics for all the top shadow portfolios.

Thats progress, Del Duca admitted. But in the next breath, he said that Horwath is auditioning for the job shes already got. They want to hold what theyve got rather than develop a road map for the future.

New Democrats would obviously disagree and suggest that, if people are looking for an alternative to the current government, theyre more likely to consider the party thats only 23 seats shy of a majority, rather than the one thats 55 seats back. Thats what happened more than three decades ago when Bob Rae took his NDP from third place (1985) to official opposition (1987) to government (1990).

But Del Duca has other ideas. I believe the Ontario Liberal party has been rejuvenated, he said, noting the most recent poll puts them in second place, close behind the Tories and ahead of the NDP. But I take nothing for granted. The public wants a leader they can trust. And despite his current circumstances and lack of profile, Del Duca insisted, Im getting there.

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Its never been harder to be Ontarios Liberal leader - TVO

The Liberal party faithful will not gather Saturday for the COVID convention to select a new provincial party leader and premier.

We would have much preferred no pandemic and all the usual bells and whistles but that just wasnt in the cards, party executive director Michael Mercer said this week.

Once that was apparent, which was immediately, we moved on to doing it the best we could. Everyone has been wonderful.

The everyone Mercer refers to are leadership candidates Randy Delorey, Labi Kousoulis and Iain Rankin, their families, the 8,100 delegates who voted for a new leader and party staff.

Of that group, only the leadership hopefuls, their immediate family and the party staff will be among the 60-plus people who will attend the muted convention at the downtown Halifax Convention Centre on Saturday afternoon and evening.

Were all in this together, Mercer said, adding that the party is very appreciative of the guidance from Dr. Robert Strang, the provinces chief medical officer of health, and the provinces health department for helping to organize convention protocol that is comfortable for public health and the party.

Its not ideal, none of it is for anybody, Mercer said. Certainly, were making the best of it.

Scott Pruysers, a political science professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said that leadership elections, under normal circumstances, are usually good business for the party.

These internal elections allow parties to recruit new members, attract lots of free media attention, energize core supporters, and, according to the empirical evidence, often result in a short-term boost in the polls, Pruysers said.

Even with COVID-19 restrictions that limited the travel of the leadership candidates and hampered the in-person recruitment of new members, the party added roughly 7,000 new members to its ranks. I suspect this would have been higher under more normal circumstances, but 7,000 new members is still a good thing for the party. New members provide financial support to the party through membership dues, donations, etc., and act as a good source of labour come election time."

We would have much preferred no pandemic and all the usual bells and whistles but that just wasnt in the cards. Once that was apparent, which was immediately, we moved on to doing it the best we could.

Michael Mercer, Liberal party

Pruysers said COVID is a challenge for political parties

The campaign was entirely virtual (online town halls, debates, etc.) and as a result, the party lost an opportunity to cultivate a sense of excitement among the public, and to provide long-term party members with some exciting party business to be involved in, Pruysers said.

With the convention and results being held virtually, we wont see the same kind of buzz as a result, Pruysers said.

The five dozen or so people who will attend the convention will arrive in separate groups, be COVID tested before entering and take their places in the family rooms, media or staff spaces.

Masks and social distancing will be enforced in all spaces at all times.

The convention itself will feature a video tribute farewell to Stephen McNeil, the outgoing Liberal leader and premier. The votes will be counted, with each delegate having listed their preferences from first to third. If a winner with 50 per cent of the first-place votes is not declared in the initial count, the second- and third-place votes will determine the winner.

No delegates will be in attendance but they will be able to watch online. The 8,100 delegates would have had to be a member of the party or become a party member before Jan. 6 and register before Jan. 12 as a delegate, which included a $20 fee, to attend the virtual convention, Mercer said.

Pruysers said the party is unlikely to be worse off as a result of the modified campaign and convention.

The party will still reap the benefits of a leadership election, they will just be muted by COVID, Pruysers said. The party is going to have thousands of new members, free media attention for the winner, and a modest level of excitement for long-term supporters.

Mercer said everyone involved with the party has had a good attitude about the campaign and convention restrictions.

There is no point dwelling on it, the whole world is in this, Mercer said. Were looking forward, were excited for the 8,100 folks that registered. We grew our party tremendously. The three candidates have been out working through Zoom or in person when it was allowed or safe or appropriate. We all feel that we managed this the best that we could and the final show on Saturday will be similar.

I havent heard any disappointment. I think folks understand, Nova Scotians and Canadians are being asked to follow advice and guidance and we have to do the same thing.

The new leader should be declared by 7 p.m.

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Liberals 'making the best' of COVID-muted leadership convention - TheChronicleHerald.ca