Any Canadians here? Curious about different public reactions to DC visit to his family, and similar visits by Canadian leaders

[questionzzz]

Hi, just that really. What are the cultural/political differences? Why are the British public so outraged by DC breaking lockdown rules, but the reaction to various Canadian leaders doing basically the same is more or less uninterest, certainly no calls for dismissal? Is it that DC is just a more unlikeable, divisive figure? Canadians more "sheeply"? Or alternatively more prone to understanding human weaknesses? Political debate just less vicious in Canada? Covid hit the UK (much?) harder than Canada? All/none of the above? The longer the DC debate goes on, the more I find myself wondering this.

I'm from the UK originally but been in Canada for 15 years now. It seems that the lockdown has been much stricter in the UK than here (speaking for BC). That might be the issue? Or maybe that the Tory leaders in the UK are so sanctimonious and so blatantly behaving as though they are untouchable. There might be a lot of anger in the UK as to mistakes that were made in handling the crisis e.g. the utterly misunderstood notion of herd immunity they were going for at first, and DC's actions have kind of looked like giving the UK public the middle finger.

Yeah there seems to be a lot of anger in the UK towards the political elite. Not so much in Canada, even though some pretty shitty things have happened, eg re senior homes.
Also agree the lockdown seems much sticter than Canada, so breaking it is accordingly more consequential.

Are you talking about the prime minister going to his cottage? I think there was initially some outrage but it was then explained that he had been separated from his wife and children for 3-4 weeks as she’d tested positive but had mild symptoms. He’d clearly been working very hard and it was understandable they would want to reunite. In Ontario the premier checked on his second home which is allowed and was done independently in 1/2 a day.

I think both the prime minister and most premiers have worked with scientists and shown compassion. They have mainly allowed public health professionals to be the experts. We’ve seen parties working together to move on bills.

Canada has different rules re lockdown which differ from province to province and I believe have generally been upheld. The virus has mainly been confined to senior care homes which have some major issues to address.

That being said I think that we are reaching a stage in Ontario where people are reaching their breaking point so it will be interesting to see what happens next. We have some of the strictest rules and the second most cases.

That being said I think that we are reaching a stage in Ontario where people are reaching their breaking point so it will be interesting to see what happens next. We have some of the strictest rules and the second most cases.

As a fellow Ontarian, I agree with this statement. And the statements about the PM and Doug Ford's actions. One of the reasons people in Ontario are getting tired of it is because 76% of cases are in the GTA area. There are now calls to allow specific regions to take control over opening.

The PM did have a lot more people questioning him. Ford's was very simply him checking on his cottage to make sure pipes hadn't burst, which had happened in the past and he had said maintenance was fine (probably knowing he'd have to do it himself).

The PM told people not to see their families and went out to his. But the argument there is that he stayed at his "workplace" and he went "home" for Easter weekend. Some people do still call him out for his actions though.

But we've definitely not had lockdown as bad as the UK and that helps. Most our officials are leading by example.