Open Sources Guelph #308 - Janaury 7, 2021

It's a new year here on Open Sources Guelph, our seventh year to be precise, and it feels like not much has changed from the last. We've still got a pandemic, and we've still got pandemic problems, not to mention politician problems, which wouldn't be so bad if they were able to start ramping up vaccination. In the second half, we will talk about out lingering issues with you-know-who, and for something completely different, we'll talk about "demolition by neglect".

This Thursday, January 7, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Vacation Mental. We're back from our winter break having not gone anywhere or seen anyone outside our own households, you know, as instructed by all levels of government. From Ontario, to Alberta, to Parliament Hill, politicians across parties and across the country couldn't take their own advice and stay home, and many of them are now paying the political price. Why did so many politicans think that the rules protecting us from COVID are for thee and not for me?

Needle For Speed. It was supposed to be the moment we've all be waiting for, and the government had months to plan for its imminent arrival, but there still seems to be some difficulty actually rolling out the shots. In Ontario nearly three-quarters of the province's vaccine supply sits in freezers, and even a small province like P.E.I. has just vaccinated a little over one per cent of their population. Why has the easy part of fighting the pandemic ended up being so hard?

Sedition: Impossible. U.S. President Donald Trump is maximizing the scandals with his last few weeks in office by having another "perfect phone call", this time with government officials in Georgie whom he tried to press into overturning their election results. Meanwhile, several Republicans in Congress were threatening to make the pro forma counting of the Electoral College ballots on Wednesday a last ditch (and pointless) effort to overturn Joe Biden's victory. Is it January 20 yet?

Demolition? Man! Down the road in Cambridge, the holiday crisis was as much about heritage as it was about COVID. The Preston Springs Hotel, abandoned and deteriorating for over two decades, was demolished after an emergency order was issued on Christmas Eve. It's sad given the hotel's history, but was there any way it could have been avoided, and what about the circumstances of giving the controversial demo order right in the middle of the holiday season?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.