We are living in a national divide today.
Leading the one side is the federal government. Its response to the COVID-19 crisis is in the form of an endless stream of financial packages, trying to save commerce, trying to save the workforce and, lastly, trying to save the family.
Our federal government has become a sugar daddy, with money borrowed from the future. The voices asking for more help are getting more numerous and louder.
The provincial governments have less money but carry the work load. Their health budgets are already stretched to the limit, as are their personnel with the second wave of the pandemic relentlessly on its way.
The education issue remains unresolved. In the meantime, schools are open, children happy to be reunited with their friends after so many months, parents eager/worried to see them go, teachers overwhelmed by the unexpected new responsibilities. Some of the federal packages will reach the provinces.
On the other side of the divide are the municipalities and their communities. Their voice has been strangely quiet. They are the frontline.
Our councillors live in our neighbourhoods, send their children to our schools, their aging parents to our nursing homes, shop at our stores and travel our roads. They know generally what we do for a living, our financial circumstances. They know us since they are us. But they have limited power, few resources. They have no say in the national strategy.
Nor do the people. Our communities are filled with leaders – fire departments and health personnel, teachers, clergy, grocery store and gas station owners, service clubs and recreation centres, parents, student council presidents, among others. The enemy is in our midst. We are allowed no part in this war. Stay at home. Wash your hands. Wear a mask to step outside.
Meanwhile, people are divided as never before with fear, confusion, loneliness, family violence and alcohol sales booming. There is plenty of online help, if you can make your way through, and hot line numbers, if you want to wait.
Before COVID-19, when there was just the global warming issue, I asked a lad of 17, entering his last year of high school: If you thought the future was going to be really rough would you want to be taught a different set of skills? He paused a moment. Then he said: We don’t think it’s going to be that rough.
Neither, it seems, does Canada. Our leaders are doing their best while we wait for normal to return.
Our federal government has become a sugar daddy, with money borrowed from the future. The voices asking for more help are getting more numerous and louder.
What if we believed that the future was indeed going to be rough, that COVID-19 signalled the end of the good times? Might we send those national financial packages to the municipalities to put their own people to work in their own communities? There’s plenty of things to do, if we believe it’s time to batten the hatches and get ready for stormy weather. Get the gardens going, and seed banks, create local food hubs, create alternate sources of energy to back up the power company, encourage the growth of small local business to relieve dependence on imported essential goods, repair buildings and roads, link people living alone with buddies, make health a community affair with all pitching in to carry the load as the health personnel direct them in safe ways.
And the young? It’s time to bring them into the discussions. They have creativity, energy and physical strength lacking in so many aging communities. They need to learn practical skills, gain experience in the field.
The municipalities would be at the forefront of information from provincial and national levels. They would need their own information hubs, staffed for personal (masked and socially isolated) visits as well as telephone (no menus) and online help. They would be the source of true, reliable information. The hubs would serve other functions - counselling, practical advice in home management whether repair or preserving or woodlot management.
The municipalities would meet with their community leaders as a local council on a regular basis. To discuss local strategies. Health advice, updated daily, could then safely be tailored to individual communities and regions.
COVID-19 has thrown into stark relief how unprepared we are for a national crisis, much less a global one. Our current strategy is topsy-turvy. Our only hope of surviving is by giving the municipalities, and through them the communities, full reign in commanding the frontline. A national support.
Margrit Gahlinger is a children's librarian, fisherwoman, gardener and musician who lives in northern Cape Breton.
