Some Current Oddities

Friends

During periods of lockdown and isolation, you find out that is better to spend it with a partner that is your best friend rather than with a great lover.

Sports

If major league baseball is any example, it is unlikely that any of the sports leagues currently trying to salvage a season will actually succeed in that.

WE objectively

Let’s look at the WE situation in a more objective light.  Despite naysayers who say that “volunteers” shouldn’t be paid, the idea of the student program was a good one.  The people who it was aimed at were not able to find summer jobs but in many cases need the money to be able to continue with their education.  So, the idea is good, now how to manage it to benefit students this summer.  If the government had tried to do it themselves, it would have taken weeks if not months to gear up staff and facilities to do it.  The government therefore had to find some organization that was ready to get started right away.  The first thought would have been a competitive procurement project.  The first thing on the agenda would have been the preparation of a Request for Proposal (RFP).  Now suppose that the work on that had started on the 1^st of March (a wildly optimistic date since the pandemic was not officially announced until over a week later, but let's just assume that date).  At a minimum it would have taken three months to prepare the document including the rules of the competition and evaluation criteria.  That brings us the end of May.  Then there would have been the time allowed for the bidders to respond.  That would probably be at least 2 months (we’re talking about a $900 million enterprise here).  That would take until the end of July.  Now we have to evaluate the bids, optimistically one month.  Now we’re at the end of August.  The decision must now work its way through the approval process of the responsible department, Treasury Board, the PCO and finally get on the cabinet calendar; one to two more months.  We’re now at the end of October, and still no contract has been awarded for a student summer program.  Doesn’t look very promising for the student for this academic year, does it?  The only way this program was going to fulfill its mandate was to find a willing partner right away and award a source contract. WE is a well-known Canadian organization with a presence across the country that appeared willing to get this program moving in a timely manner.  A good candidate to turn to. Until, that is, people had to make it an ethics and political issue.  I wish the students who would have benefited from this program the best of luck, but I think that there is going to be a lot of empty seats at colleges and universities this fall.

The threat

In my opinion the biggest threat to managing this pandemic is those people who plead that they have a constitutional right not to wear masks or physically distance.  They have no more “right” to such an excuse than I have to kill or rob someone.  Where it is required, it is required by law, the same as the prohibition against killing or robbing anyone.