In the province of Ontario, it is now legal to buy a doughnut, but illegal to eat it in the restaurant without the proper paperwork
Article content
In the last few days, seeking release from the high anxieties of living for six weeks during the most pivotal moment since 1945, I drove around the splendid rural Ontario countryside. It is a great thing about this Canada of ours that I can say that all Canadian provinces are beautiful, but every province is beautiful in its own way.
Advertisement
Article content
It’s a kind of medicine to drift on four wheels around even a bit of this splendid province, without a mask and identification beyond the traditional licence and insurance. It’s a real treat that does wonders when it comes to subduing negative emotions.
The recent vain monstrosity — they called it an election, but it would be better described as a carnival exercise to see if the Liberals could grab a majority during a confused and universally anxious time — suggested the need for some rural relief.
Alas, it was not to be.
At all the stops that have become shrines for Canadian motorists — A&Ws, the inevitable Tim Hortons and other highway landmarks — there was this fresh demand for a “passport” and ID, to ensure you are not some wild carrier of the virus seeking doughnuts as a cover for spreading the plague, or using a Teen Burger as an excuse to wreak medical havoc on the local townspeople.
Advertisement
Article content
All was exemplified during a rain storm, when I was visited by the familiar call for a Boston cream doughnut. I braved the deluge, went to a Tim Hortons, reached the door, put on a mask and entered. I had a plan. Coffee. A doughnut. Sit inside, out of the rain, and consume said pastry. Poor sad Canadian citizen I, seeking Hortons donuts and shelter.
At the counter, I learned Ontario was under a “vaccine mandate” and was told that in order to “stay inside,” I would need to show proof of vaccination: I must have a “certificate,” and produce a copy of my ID to back up the certificate.
Remember, I was not buying napalm. I was at a Tim Hortons negotiating the purchase and consumption of a Boston cream.
This absurd experience was repeated at several other stops. The staff at each place insisting on it were embarrassed to do so, and the customers agreeing to it did so, not in obedience to the insane edict itself, but out of courtesy to the poor workers forced to insist upon it. I want to underline this: people offended by the stupidity and insolence of the new decree did not, in my experience, take their frustration out on the workers who are tasked with enforcing the idiotic rules.
Advertisement
Article content
I will extend this narrative in my next column, but for now, I just want to convey a few conclusions that strike me as close to madness.
In the province of Ontario, it is now legal to buy a doughnut, but illegal to eat it in the restaurant without the proper paperwork. The threatened fines for “eating without a license” rival those that previously went to billionaire fraudsters operating pyramid schemes.
My second conclusion is that the present Ontario government has a hatred of all restaurants and food chains and all who work within them. Short of hiring a fleet of bulldozer operators to plow every one of these into the ground, they could not have done more than they have done over the last year and a half to put them out of business, drive their owners and operators into depression and their poor, harried staff into a permanent and hopeless melancholy.
Advertisement
Article content
My third conclusion is that the rickety, always changing, sometimes completely reversing and awesomely inexplicable policies they have been bringing in defy any consistent rationality whatsoever. Whatever COVID is, or whatever variation it mutates into, when it comes to Ontario’s response to it, there seems to be no design, no consistency of approach, gravely unequal treatment of various sectors of the economy, one rule for the lower class and another for those insulated by their vocation or wealth.
My final conclusion, for today, is that many COVID policies have no virtue beyond protecting the authorities that are supposedly managing the crisis, no appreciation for those they are harming in ways other than medical and usually come with wonderful exemptions for those who can skate above ordinary reality.
National Post
The big issues are far from settled. Sign up for the NP Comment newsletter, NP Platformed.
Advertisement
Rex Murphy: You want to eat that doughnut here? Show me your papers - National Post
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment