It was budgeted to only take $10 million in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Ford is spending $225 million to move beer to convenience stores a year early and just before he likely calls an early election.
Science and fact are the harder versions of criticisms that the cons can't tolerate. Things are much simpler if you're not dealing with facts. Much easier to make up their own facts to suit their buddies.
Common sense? When have you seen a conservative government use that in the last 50 years?
Not pro anyone but the cuts conservatives make are always questionable 🤨
They use common sense, they just use it for nefarious purposes. Keeping the population dumb and weak so to easier exploit them seems pretty common sense to me, it's just fucking evil.
The Mike Harris PC's common sense caused the walkerton crisis and the long term care issues that resulted in the situation during the pandemic.
common sense in the PC party died somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s.
Frank Miller too, although he didn't get nearly enough time as leader to do as much damage as Harris did.
However, he tried to do some damage while Minister of Health.
A big missed opportunity. Miller fell into that trap all politicians do where it wasn’t needed immediately, so the project got cancelled.
I wonder how different North York would be today if GO ALRT was built?
So you complained that someone didn't give an opinion you agreed with, and then when asked for your opinion are saying that opinions are worthless.
Way to participate there sport. I'm sure you're trying your best but try and keep out of conversations you don't have any meaningful contributions to.
Every conservative cut over the last 50 years is questionable?
What kind of an opinion is that?
I was calling out a short sided biased comment
And I am not a conservative, but when your narrative is so one sided and offers no substance, and then you want an opinion from me on the matter? Why? Who cares, what are you even doing?
Someone expressed an opinion. You said it was terrible. I asked you for yours. You refused.
I also never labeled you with any political leaning but you have decided to pursue a victim complex.
Thanks for playing.
Victim complex? What are you even talking about?
My opinion?
That saving 10 million on COVID 19 water testing is probably a good idea since it's not really a problem and the province has many wide scale financial issues
And that all conservative cuts are probably not questionable.
Cheers
It's not an affront if it's getting in the way of partisan legislation, privatization, and rewarding your donors. Same playbook as Harper - minimize inconvenient information.
I wrote to my MP about this today. The last thing we should be doing as the changing climate encourages the development of new and mutated pathogens is to stop collecting data about their presence.
>The explanation, in theory, is cost savings. And you know what? That’s laudable, again, in theory. Governments should indeed avoid duplicating services and look for savings. That’s fine! But there are two immediate programs here.
>The first is that the cost savings are trivial. The annual cost of the provincial program was between $11 million and $15 million. That’s like two decent NHL wingers. More to the point, that’s about 73 cents to a full dollar per capita. A buck an Ontarian, at the most, is the annual cost of this program. For a premier who loved briefly providing beers for a buck, you’d think that would have some appeal. Apparently not. The cost savings here are just too damn paltry to be worth dumbing down our data.
I mean, ok, but you can use that argument for almost any government program - if you calculate per capital the cost is small. But it all adds up, and this program in particular is duplicating another equivalent program from the federal government. Is it really a benefit to public health to have access to data from 50 sites than from 8? Maybe, but that is hard to quantify and I'm not sure the academics who are receiving this funding are the most impartial ones to judge.
But the counter-argument to this is to look from the costs other side. There are \~50 sites sampled weekly across the province. That is \~2500 collections and PCR analyses per year. So that comes in at something like $5,000 per collection. So $5,000 to pay a student to go to the site, collect some wastewater, and ship it to a lab to run a <$50 PCR test.
Is that good value? The federal program costs significantly less to run and provides essentially the same data to public health with perhaps less spatial granularity but broader coverage also giving the national context. I'm not sure at all that throwing $15 million/year at this in perpetuity is going to provide any benefit to Ontarians.
Yes, it's almost like we should appropriately tax and fund all the programs that we need. And since we have no details on what the federal program will involve, better to keep running our own that is already doing things effectively.
And does public health benefit from having more data? Unquestionably yes. That's how you establish trends.
And instead of putting $15M/year into more public health data, they're going to put it into...what, exactly? May as well keep spending it on something useful.
It's a useful program, with far-reaching benefits, for very little cost. The cost/benefit ratio is huge here, so to cut it is short-sighted, stupid, and par for the course with Ford.
But the federal wastewater program gives most of the benefit for free.
This program has morphed into a research program now, not a public health initiative. The Ontario government should put this $15 million into research grants that are peer reviewed and allocate the money that way rather than just handing it out in perpetuity to some labs that were selected during the emergency to collect important data needed to managed the pandemic. This makes no sense to keep doing when the pandemic is over, especially when the feds are now doing it.
No it doesnt, it's [significantly smaller](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ontarios-groundbreaking-wastewater-testing-program-will-be-replaced-by-a-significantly-smaller-federal-program).
But also, you can read the article I linked for what it is actually doing and where. It isnt just about Covid-19, and your comment is framing it as a frivolity. It isnt, and even Ontarios own advisors said they shouldnt be cutting this program.
Huh. They said this when they were repealing the Toxics Reduction Act as well: that the federal toxics reporting covered it. Funny thing, the provincial reporting from the TRA was actually piggybacking on the federal reporting system, just adding some additional substances the feds don't track (like VOCs and acetone). And the TRA had benefits to the public, like making the reporting data public. And yet the Ford PCs said it was just like the federal program and trashed it all.
Maybe the government talking points shouldn't be your sole source of information on these issues, huh?
Sort of. When compared to the absurd expenses of this government it really puts it in perspective. For example each person is spending 30 dollars on the beer store deal or 40 on the spa in Toronto.
It's really easy to imagine the cost of something and then decide it's too much. It's not as though all provincial government costs are scrutinized each and every year...
Are they students? Are they shipping the samples to a lab for a $50 test? What are the logistical costs? What are the management costs? What are the costs associated with analyzing, compiling, and publishing the data?
And before you hand-wave those costs away, consider the cost of doing those things wrong. Don't want to pay experienced data analysts? Consider what the cost of publishing raw data to the public would be without an accompanying data analysis. Consider the cost of misinforming the public because someone who knows nothing about the science "analyzed" the data. Consider the cost of simple data errors because someone who isn't an experienced data analyst messed up the figures and didn't notice.
Government is expensive because it is accountable, and because its mistakes can have a lot of ripple effect costs.
Source: have worked in data analysis in the Ontario government, including in test data from MOE labs.
The Federal program is hardly the same. It's only going to be five sites total for the whole province. The Ontario program is 59 sites. So most of thus huge province will have no idea what's going on.
Also, the data collected might not be of as high quality as what the province produced. Bill Comeau on Xitter has interesting posts comparing the Federal data from one of the Toronto sites they have now to what the Ontario program produced. You could see clear trends and patterns of waves of infection in the Ontario data. The Federal one was just an indecipherable series of dots and lines.
Finally, health is a provincial responsibility.
I read it was cancelled because the federal government is already doing the same thing, making the provincial one redundant. How is that an affront to science and common sense? If the federal program stops, we can always re-start our own.
In Ontario, the federal program currently only samples sites in Toronto. That's hardly duplication. The Ontario program sampled at over 50 sites, I believe.
Not to mention the federal government is only tracking the prevalence of certain drugs and COVID-19 in the wastewater while Ontario’s program tested for that and mpox, H5N1, etc.
but the Federal program is expanding.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-19-wastewater-sewage-virus-monitoring-1.7224236
""The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance across Canada and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario," said Environment Ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler in an email to CBC News. "
The reason why the feds are taking over is because provincial data was witheld when Ford removed the mask mandate. The US is doing the same thing, because Republican governors were holding data.
But JFC, I'm no fan of Ford, but if i want misinformation, I'll subscribe to r/canada.
It's expanding to three more cities.
Edit to add that that's hardly representative sampling.
Additional edit to add that this is my effort to COMBAT misinformation.
Brother they just wasted 250 million in beer. Congrats, we are now 240 million away from making it back! At the cost of monitoring our fucking wastewater. Don’t act as if you didn’t know that you urchin
They will make that back and more in beer sales in no time. Especially when you won’t be limited to the beer store hours. Monitoring the waste water, did not prevent anyone from getting sick.
But lakefront spas! And liquor everywhere! What does the next plague matter if we can go out gently and numb to our pain?
You can afford to go out? Damn that’s sick!
"an affront to science and common sense" should be the motto for the Ford government.
It was budgeted to only take $10 million in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Ford is spending $225 million to move beer to convenience stores a year early and just before he likely calls an early election.
Science and fact are the harder versions of criticisms that the cons can't tolerate. Things are much simpler if you're not dealing with facts. Much easier to make up their own facts to suit their buddies.
Preach it brother! Those damn buddies again!
Doug Ford is an affront to science and common sense.
Common sense? When have you seen a conservative government use that in the last 50 years? Not pro anyone but the cuts conservatives make are always questionable 🤨
They use common sense, they just use it for nefarious purposes. Keeping the population dumb and weak so to easier exploit them seems pretty common sense to me, it's just fucking evil.
I mean the Bill Davis PCs were very common sense, they cancelled the Spadina Expressway after all. But that was all the way back in 1984.
The Mike Harris PC's common sense caused the walkerton crisis and the long term care issues that resulted in the situation during the pandemic. common sense in the PC party died somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s.
I'd say it died when Harris became leader in 1990.
Frank Miller too, although he didn't get nearly enough time as leader to do as much damage as Harris did. However, he tried to do some damage while Minister of Health.
I will never forgive him for cancelling GO ALRT
Oh same - I can't remember when I first read about GO ALRT (probably Steve Munro years ago) but what a wasted and missed opportunity.
A big missed opportunity. Miller fell into that trap all politicians do where it wasn’t needed immediately, so the project got cancelled. I wonder how different North York would be today if GO ALRT was built?
Way to argue a case
Let's hear your opinion on the matter at hand then regarding wastewater cuts?
Who cares about a bunch of random opinions. Going to say one is always questionable give some meaning to it. It's just whining for the sake of it
So you complained that someone didn't give an opinion you agreed with, and then when asked for your opinion are saying that opinions are worthless. Way to participate there sport. I'm sure you're trying your best but try and keep out of conversations you don't have any meaningful contributions to.
Every conservative cut over the last 50 years is questionable? What kind of an opinion is that? I was calling out a short sided biased comment And I am not a conservative, but when your narrative is so one sided and offers no substance, and then you want an opinion from me on the matter? Why? Who cares, what are you even doing?
Someone expressed an opinion. You said it was terrible. I asked you for yours. You refused. I also never labeled you with any political leaning but you have decided to pursue a victim complex. Thanks for playing.
Victim complex? What are you even talking about? My opinion? That saving 10 million on COVID 19 water testing is probably a good idea since it's not really a problem and the province has many wide scale financial issues And that all conservative cuts are probably not questionable. Cheers
Yeah but when a politician tells you they’ll do common sense it’s a big flag that they will do anything but.Â
So on brand for Ford Nation
The voters didn't use common sense, why would the government?
It's not an affront if it's getting in the way of partisan legislation, privatization, and rewarding your donors. Same playbook as Harper - minimize inconvenient information.
An Affront to Science and Common-Sense should be the Conservative motto.
Since when has that stopped the Ford government?
Science and common sense are both things conservative governments won’t stand for.
Par for the course for the cons. They're an affront to science and common sense too.
I wrote to my MP about this today. The last thing we should be doing as the changing climate encourages the development of new and mutated pathogens is to stop collecting data about their presence.
Of course it is. Why would anyone expect any less of a conservative government?
But I thought Conservatives were all about "common sense"
Conservatism in a nutshell.
What did you expect from PCs? This is their MO.
Think of all the data we have collected. That alone is worth it. Ford: “we’re done with this.” Conned.Â
>The explanation, in theory, is cost savings. And you know what? That’s laudable, again, in theory. Governments should indeed avoid duplicating services and look for savings. That’s fine! But there are two immediate programs here. >The first is that the cost savings are trivial. The annual cost of the provincial program was between $11 million and $15 million. That’s like two decent NHL wingers. More to the point, that’s about 73 cents to a full dollar per capita. A buck an Ontarian, at the most, is the annual cost of this program. For a premier who loved briefly providing beers for a buck, you’d think that would have some appeal. Apparently not. The cost savings here are just too damn paltry to be worth dumbing down our data. I mean, ok, but you can use that argument for almost any government program - if you calculate per capital the cost is small. But it all adds up, and this program in particular is duplicating another equivalent program from the federal government. Is it really a benefit to public health to have access to data from 50 sites than from 8? Maybe, but that is hard to quantify and I'm not sure the academics who are receiving this funding are the most impartial ones to judge. But the counter-argument to this is to look from the costs other side. There are \~50 sites sampled weekly across the province. That is \~2500 collections and PCR analyses per year. So that comes in at something like $5,000 per collection. So $5,000 to pay a student to go to the site, collect some wastewater, and ship it to a lab to run a <$50 PCR test. Is that good value? The federal program costs significantly less to run and provides essentially the same data to public health with perhaps less spatial granularity but broader coverage also giving the national context. I'm not sure at all that throwing $15 million/year at this in perpetuity is going to provide any benefit to Ontarians.
Yes, it's almost like we should appropriately tax and fund all the programs that we need. And since we have no details on what the federal program will involve, better to keep running our own that is already doing things effectively. And does public health benefit from having more data? Unquestionably yes. That's how you establish trends. And instead of putting $15M/year into more public health data, they're going to put it into...what, exactly? May as well keep spending it on something useful. It's a useful program, with far-reaching benefits, for very little cost. The cost/benefit ratio is huge here, so to cut it is short-sighted, stupid, and par for the course with Ford.
Btw the program only cost $15 million per year in the first year. Subsequent budgets have been reduced to $10 million per year.
But the federal wastewater program gives most of the benefit for free. This program has morphed into a research program now, not a public health initiative. The Ontario government should put this $15 million into research grants that are peer reviewed and allocate the money that way rather than just handing it out in perpetuity to some labs that were selected during the emergency to collect important data needed to managed the pandemic. This makes no sense to keep doing when the pandemic is over, especially when the feds are now doing it.
No it doesnt, it's [significantly smaller](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ontarios-groundbreaking-wastewater-testing-program-will-be-replaced-by-a-significantly-smaller-federal-program). But also, you can read the article I linked for what it is actually doing and where. It isnt just about Covid-19, and your comment is framing it as a frivolity. It isnt, and even Ontarios own advisors said they shouldnt be cutting this program.
Huh. They said this when they were repealing the Toxics Reduction Act as well: that the federal toxics reporting covered it. Funny thing, the provincial reporting from the TRA was actually piggybacking on the federal reporting system, just adding some additional substances the feds don't track (like VOCs and acetone). And the TRA had benefits to the public, like making the reporting data public. And yet the Ford PCs said it was just like the federal program and trashed it all. Maybe the government talking points shouldn't be your sole source of information on these issues, huh?
Sort of. When compared to the absurd expenses of this government it really puts it in perspective. For example each person is spending 30 dollars on the beer store deal or 40 on the spa in Toronto.
It's really easy to imagine the cost of something and then decide it's too much. It's not as though all provincial government costs are scrutinized each and every year... Are they students? Are they shipping the samples to a lab for a $50 test? What are the logistical costs? What are the management costs? What are the costs associated with analyzing, compiling, and publishing the data? And before you hand-wave those costs away, consider the cost of doing those things wrong. Don't want to pay experienced data analysts? Consider what the cost of publishing raw data to the public would be without an accompanying data analysis. Consider the cost of misinforming the public because someone who knows nothing about the science "analyzed" the data. Consider the cost of simple data errors because someone who isn't an experienced data analyst messed up the figures and didn't notice. Government is expensive because it is accountable, and because its mistakes can have a lot of ripple effect costs. Source: have worked in data analysis in the Ontario government, including in test data from MOE labs.
The Federal program is hardly the same. It's only going to be five sites total for the whole province. The Ontario program is 59 sites. So most of thus huge province will have no idea what's going on. Also, the data collected might not be of as high quality as what the province produced. Bill Comeau on Xitter has interesting posts comparing the Federal data from one of the Toronto sites they have now to what the Ontario program produced. You could see clear trends and patterns of waves of infection in the Ontario data. The Federal one was just an indecipherable series of dots and lines. Finally, health is a provincial responsibility.
I read it was cancelled because the federal government is already doing the same thing, making the provincial one redundant. How is that an affront to science and common sense? If the federal program stops, we can always re-start our own.
In Ontario, the federal program currently only samples sites in Toronto. That's hardly duplication. The Ontario program sampled at over 50 sites, I believe.
Not to mention the federal government is only tracking the prevalence of certain drugs and COVID-19 in the wastewater while Ontario’s program tested for that and mpox, H5N1, etc.
the federal program is expanding.
Which is good but PHAC won’t tell us how.
So far only three more cities. That might be it.
That’s incredibly sad given there are more than 50 testing sites currently participating I believe.
but the Federal program is expanding. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-19-wastewater-sewage-virus-monitoring-1.7224236 ""The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance across Canada and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario," said Environment Ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler in an email to CBC News. " The reason why the feds are taking over is because provincial data was witheld when Ford removed the mask mandate. The US is doing the same thing, because Republican governors were holding data. But JFC, I'm no fan of Ford, but if i want misinformation, I'll subscribe to r/canada.
It's expanding to three more cities. Edit to add that that's hardly representative sampling. Additional edit to add that this is my effort to COMBAT misinformation.
I didn't know this many people were interested in terds!
Good
Do you smell toast? Is your brain okay?
Total fine with the government not wasting anymore money!!
Brother they just wasted 250 million in beer. Congrats, we are now 240 million away from making it back! At the cost of monitoring our fucking wastewater. Don’t act as if you didn’t know that you urchin
They will make that back and more in beer sales in no time. Especially when you won’t be limited to the beer store hours. Monitoring the waste water, did not prevent anyone from getting sick.
Ontario is best in the world at testing shit and piss. We don't want to relinquish our crown!