Read on Twitter
Early morning of @cbcradio hits about the language of Ontario's new stay-at-home order and, wow, I am not a morning person. But it's my pleasure to get up early to talk about how communications can't fix bad policies.
Some quick thoughts, from the six (6!) convos I had this morning. First, although Ontario's premier says "there is no confusion" about his stay-at-home order, he doesn't get to decide what's confusing or not. The order IS confusing.
We're supposed to stay home except for "essential" reasons. But what's essential? According to Doug Ford's team, “The Government of Ontario cannot determine what is essential for every person in this province, each with their own unique circumstances and regional considerations.”
So, "essential" means whatever each of us want it to mean. This means that if I think it's essential to pick up a snazzy new sweater at a store doing curbside pick-up, then that's my business.
But it's not really just my own business. I can only go buy the snazzy sweater because the store selling it is allowed to be open. And, because employers are charged with deciding whether or not on-site work is essential, employees have to go into work to sell me the sweater.
Can the employee say no? Not if their jobs are at stake. Not if they don't have sick pay. So putting it to individuals to decide what's essential and what's not leads to policy and practice that are full of holes.
The thing is, good communication can't fix bad policy. It can't fix frayed trust. It can't address inconsistency and incoherence.
Of course, some of the problems *are* about communication. Ontario's switch from its earlier stage-based model to its colour coded system is clear as mud. Why is grey more serious than red? What's the difference between "restrict" and "control"?
Bailing on press conferences over the holidays is poor communication. Shaming and blaming is poor communication (and also bad policy). Telling people to do one thing while leaders do another is poor communication. (E.g., leaders going to the cottage, having family over, etc.)
But what's worse is when communications don't match the policies being communicated. Telling people it's an emergency but then allowing shopping until Boxing Day, shutting down vaccinations over the holidays, denying sick pay, and packing classrooms says the opposite.
If this truly is an emergency (and it is), then why place the blame on individual people when pandemic management requires robust public health and policy measures? Why do we not have a robust program to test, trace, and isolate? Why don't we have 24-hour vaccination?
Why are schools closed but film sets running? Why can I order random and unnecessary stuff online—requiring warehouse staff to work on-site with few protections (appropriate distancing, PPE, sick pay)—but not go for a walk outside a friend?
When policies don't make sense, people lose faith in those issuing them. We've been hunkered down for 11 months. We're tired, many of us are suffering economically, and we're looking for leadership. Instead, we get blamed for not following rules.
Yesterday, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health said: "if people would follow orders we would be out of this." How can we follow orders if they're inconsistent and unclear?
More importantly, though, we don't have the data to show, in detail, why and how the pandemic is spreading in Ontario so blaming the public for not behaving is a cheap shot, and also a deflection.
The Ford government has been trying to have things both ways—to curb the pandemic and keep the economy open. But these two things are fundamentally at odds. To curb the pandemic, we need to put distance between people, get them out of shared airspace, and isolate those infected.
The economy largely depends on people coming together to exchange goods and services. Emphasizing personal responsibility seems like the solution to this conflict but pandemics require robust, systemic, policy-based solutions, not individual choices.
