HALIFAX: The leader of the provincial New Democratic Party says there are a number of issues throughout the province which have been major issues for a long time but have only begun to come to the forefront in a way they hadn’t before the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
“I’m hopeful that attention and focus will continue to be the case,” Gary Burrill told The Reporter. “In the pandemic, there are issues that have always been present and always important, but for some reason, they have not quite registered themselves in the public mind, which have actually come to be seen and understood in a clearer and sharper way in the last six weeks.”
Burrill suggested the questions of the adequacy of people’s income and their ability to live has come into focus, along with the problem of homelessness, which hasn’t really riveted the attention of governments until this situation.
“One of the things we’ve seen during the pandemic is how government really does have the capacity to respond to problems at the level and with the speed that is required,” he said. “It was so striking the federal government was able to come up with the CERB program in virtually a matter of days; and we think about how for years people were arguing and pressing for a basic income.”
Burrill said that when the crisis has passed, that same capacity continue to grow and be put in force.
In a situation of national emergency, he said it’s important for opposition parties to be supportive of the government’s effort to provide leadership in a public health crisis, and at the same time, advance ways in which the government could do their work with some improvements.
“So much more of that is behind the scenes in a cooperative and non-partisan way,” Burrill said. “Every day, we meet around an all-party briefing table and put forward those issues that have come to the attention of our MLAs, those places where we’re looking for clarification, policy questions, and both criticism and suggestions we have where the government could be handling themselves better.”
The main thing to be said about the provincial response, he said, is that Nova Scotia has been receiving sound guidance from public health authorities from the outset of this crisis and people of the province can rightly put their trust and confidence in the guidance and judgments being offered.
He does however believe there are a few things the government could do to improve the management of the crisis; a comprehensive ban on evictions for anyone when there is a state of emergency, there should be a freeze on rent and all rent increases.
“No one should be put on the street during a pandemic for any reason,” Burrill said. “And we shouldn’t find people facing new rent for the places they’re living that they can’t afford and thinking they’re not going to be able to stay there.”
The NDP also is calling for a policy that nobody’s phone or Internet should be cut off for any reason when people need to stay home and stay connected.
As for his take on the province’s plan to re-open, Burrill explained this isn’t a question for a politician – this is a question for a professional in the field of epidemiology and the management of public health.
“A person is not qualified to give advice on neurosurgery because they know where the head is,” he said. “People are not qualified to have sound judgments on epidemiology just because they have a personal opinion about x, y, and z about what should be done.”
Burrill noted there are professionals who have dedicated their vocational lives to understanding the character of these situations, and what is the way forward.
“We have professionals in this field whose judgment we may trust,” he said. “And when they tell us it is the right time to ease the restrictions – in my judgement that is the right time and not before.”