Pandemic

This pandemic is an unprecedented experience for most of us. It might seem pretty hard to prepare for things not recently expected, but there would have likely already been pandemic action plans in place at various levels of our government and health care. How they are implemented and adjusted on the fly is the day-to-day issue now for anyone in authority.

Mayor Clark recently announced he is running for his job but that he is not campaigning until September. He implied that he is hard at work to help manage this critical life and business threatening situation right now. Yet his first campaign step was to try to use the pandemic to advertise his own personal political brand. That is not the type of steady hand that we all deserve in this serious situation.

Since the Mayor may have to announce that the entire city will need to constantly wear masks at some future point, similar to what other jurisdictions have already had to start enforcing, is it not a conflict of interest somehow for Mayor Clark to maybe enforce mandatory mask use while trying to use the same for his own personal advertising?

If Mayor Clark stood on a street corner and handed out packages of generic masks to the general population, all without fanfare and advertising, he would have garnered nothing but respect from me. But this current action does not sit well in my way of thinking.

As for the Mayor’s desire to protect the public from a “threat to public safety”, his track record on this very issue clearly shows that when it suits his personal promotion, this can be easily sidelined. I am hopeful though that the next time the Mayor has a large public event on the Chief Mistawasis Bridge within the life-threatening chemical buffer, that he will follow suit by handing out Mayor Clark branded gas masks to every single person who attends and is at personal risk for doing so. Of course, logic suggests that if you did not push for the fanfare, a more level headed person would just not hold a public event where it is deemed dangerous and prohibited by the City’s own planning doctrine. But that is just my personal view.