Andrew Lawton:
Two years into the Covid era it may seem fruitless to call for nuance, let alone compassion. I hope you’ll permit me the opportunity to nevertheless try.
In law, there’s a nifty tactic known as arguing in the alternative, in which counsel can advance one (or several) backup arguments with which a judge might agree, on the off chance his or her primary line of attack doesn’t work. At least that’s my crude laymen’s understanding of it, and my approach to what follows.
Vaccine passports and more aggressive policies like Quebec’s financial penalization of the unvaccinated should be rejected on moral grounds alone, but these arguments are proving insufficient for those who see no issue with discriminating against people based on their healthcare choices and punishing those whose choices don’t align with what the state wants.
I’ve much respect for the civil libertarians who’ve stood firm against government overreach for much of the pandemic – indeed, I count myself among them – but in the interests of coalition-building, I’m going to approach vaccine mandates and lockdowns through lenses to which the political left typically lays claim: equity and compassion.
The equity point is an important one the latest round of revived restrictions, notably in Ontario and Quebec.
Lockdowns are for the poor, not the wealthy. The white-collar workers whose jobs can easily transition to a home office can actually come out ahead in lockdowns, financially speaking, given they no longer have to deal with commutes, fuel costs, downtown parking, and all the like. It’s those working in “non-essential” (to use the government’s derisive language) lower-waged jobs like restaurant servers and cinema ticket takers who are forced into unemployment every time we need to flatten another curve.
If you take the view that lockdowns exist to protect people against a deadly virus, which the government does, it’s another class of service workers who shoulder the risk. Grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, factory workers, and countless others continue to work while the wealthy can order food and other goods to their homes and wait it out.
Even the border closure was selective in scope. Canadians could always fly into the United States when the land border was closed. Some even drove to the border, shipped their cars across and then travelled over by helicopter to have the benefit of a vehicle on the other side for the drive down to Florida or Arizona.
Even with the border reopened, there are people priced out of travel because of the costly (and largely ineffective) pre-arrival PCR tests the Canadian government requires to return home.
This inequity doesn’t end with lockdowns, either.
The vaccine “health contribution” in Quebec, which will force the unvaccinated to pay a sizable sum to the state for the privilege of enjoying bodily autonomy, raises similar challenges. If money is no object, one can pay the fine and carry on without getting vaccinated. Conversely, those without discretionary income (perhaps because of perpetual government-mandated lockdowns) may have no choice but to get a vaccine they’ve otherwise avoided, for whatever reason, for the past year.
Much as the media and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau like to characterize the unvaccinated as a fringe group of knuckle-dragging, racist (somehow), misogynistic (again, somehow) anti-science loons, there is a range of reasons for which some folks have opted not to get a Covid vaccine. It’s curious, though not at all surprising, how the Liberal pledge to recognize diversity as Canada’s strength has not extended to the diverse communities with myriad reasons to be leery of state-imposed medical treatments.
Insofar as racial data are concerned, black Canadians remain the least likely to get vaccinated against Covid. Indigenous and Latino Canadians are also significantly less likely than the average Canadian to get jabbed.
McMaster University researcher Dr. Sonia Anand, who is studying vaccine hesitancy among Indigenous Canadians, said in December that a history of Indigenous people being used as medical test subjects is likely weighing on some in this community.
We can’t forget that forced sterilization of Indigenous women is a shameful part of Canada’s past with which the country is still reckoning. Those in government who shout the loudest about reconciliation seem to be among the most fervent in coercing vaccination in unwilling populations.
This isn’t an embrace of identity politics, but rather a display of the brazen hypocrisy among those who preach anti-racism yet are uninterested in the racial implications of policies like mandatory or coerced vaccination.
If, as Trudeau so often proclaims, diversity is our strength, perhaps he and his colleagues could act like it.
