Jordan Peterson: Open the damn country back up, before Canadians wreck something we can’t fix

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I spent more than three hours on the phone this weekend trying to reach the online security department of one of Canada’s leading banks. One of my accounts was closed (because I had the nerve to log in from Alberta, an event too unexpected for the bank’s security systems). They put me on hold endlessly, subject all the time to the idea of ​​music from the corporate world (to calm me down). I was then offered a callback, which I duly received, 45 minutes later. Then they put me on hold over and over and over again. This all happened after my patience had already run out after trying to fly in Canada.

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Like so many Canadians, I have not been able to see many of the people I love who are tolerant enough to return the feeling for almost two years. Blockages Restrictions. Limits to personal and social gatherings. Precautions Precautions Precautions

But everything had been opened enough, in principle, that flights for such purposes were, in principle, once again possible. So my wife and I took the opportunity on the last day of 2021 to fly first to Comox, British Columbia, and then several days later to our joint hometown of Fairview, Alberta. However, the airline with which we had arranged our flights canceled or delayed the six flights that we had scheduled. Also, they had no staff available in a full wing of the Edmonton airport. This made reprogramming prohibitively difficult. We were delayed a full day on the trip to British Columbia, and then another day on the trip to Alberta (and there were more delays on our way home to Toronto). This took a large part of an eight day trip. All of this from an airline that not long ago was a model of efficiency.

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Like most people in Canada and the Western world in general, my wife and I are used to systems that work. When we have booked flights in the past, with rare exceptions, we arrived safely and on time. When we used our banking systems, online, we gained access to our accounts. When we had to call security, due to a login problem, we were able to speak to someone who was able to help. And, because we were spoiled Westerners, we expected it to be consistently and consistently that way. Why? Because, in general, our systems worked. Miraculously good. The electricity (and the heat, it’s minus 40 degrees here in northern Alberta, and it has been for three weeks) always worked. The planes took off and landed on time. The banks were open, efficient, and honest.

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But there are empty shelves in the grocery stores here in Fairview. The supply chain that provides our food, just in time, is severely stressed. While I was here, I spoke with a local restaurateur who operates the pizza place I worked for forty years ago. Barely hold on. This is true for most local businesses.

I was on the phone for three hours trying to resolve a minor banking problem, after a full day’s delay while flying, after having suffered a similar delay just four days earlier. And, as I am a Westerner with rights, used to my privileges, I complained. I have a banker who takes care of my affairs, and I sent him and his partner a series of complaints about the service I was receiving. They responded, apologetically, and told me that they can barely function with the COVID restrictions, the assistant staff shortage (also caused by illness), and their inability to attract new employees – a problem that plagues many industries right now.

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I am not used to feeling special sympathy for the tribulations of large and successful companies – banks, airlines, utility companies, and the like. I expect a certain level of service so that I can conduct my own business effectively, and I am impatient when unnecessary delays arise in the normal course of things. However, the letter from the bank stopped me and made me think. It wasn’t just the bank. It was also the airline. It was the empty shelves at the grocery store in northern Alberta. She was the daughter of the man I once worked as a cook for when I was a teenager. It was the merchants and small merchants that I spoke to on this trip.

We are pushing the complex systems that we depend on that are miraculously effective and efficient in their often thankless operation to their breaking point. Can you think of anything more unlikely than the fact that we can get instant and seamless access to our money online, using systems that are virtually free from bribery and corruption? Imagine how much work, confidence and efficiency it was and is necessary to make that happen. Can you think of anything more unlikely than a fast, reliable and economical jet trip, nationally and internationally, with absolute safety? Or the constant supply of almost every consumer goods imaginable, amid abundant, varied and inexpensive food?

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These systems are shaking now. We are seriously engaging them with this never-ending and unpredictable stream of restrictions, lockdowns, regulations, and curfews. We are also undermining our entire monetary system, with the endless bounty of government coffers, to ease the stress of the COVID response. We are playing with fire. We have demolished two Christmas seasons in a row. Life is short. These are rare occasions. We are preventing children from attending school. We are sowing mistrust in our institutions in a seriously dangerous way. We are scaring people to comply. We are producing bureaucratic institutions that hypothetically hold public health in the highest regard, but subordinate all our properly political institutions to that end, because we lack leadership and ultimately depend on unreliable opinion polls to govern political policy on a large scale. . Never before in my life have I seen a breakdown of institutional trust on this scale.

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I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee. No locks. No masks. There are no COVID regulations to speak of. People go about their lives. Why might that be the case in Tennessee (and other US states, like Florida) when there are curfews (curfews!) In Quebec, two years after the pandemic started, with a vaccination rate of almost 80 percent? When does BC keep limiting social gatherings? When we are putting tremendous and unsustainable pressure on all the complex systems that have served us so well and made us feel so comfortable in the midst of the problems of our lives?

The remedy has become worse than the disease.

I have spoken with senior advisers to provincial governments in Canada. There is no end game in sight. The idea that Canadian politics is or should be governed “by science” is not only untrue, it is also not possible, as there is no simple path from the facts of science to the complexities of politics. We are deciding, by opinion poll, to live in fear and to become more and more authoritarian in response to that fear. That too is a danger, and it is becoming more and more real. How long are we going to hang around, hiding behind our masks, fearful of sending our children (who are in no more serious danger than the flu) to school, charging college students full tuition for an “education?” “10th rate online? pitting one relative against another for the vaccine policy and, what is more serious, compromising the great economic engine on which our health also depends?

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Until we decide not to.

There are no risk-free paths forward. There is only one risk or another. Choose your poison – that’s the choice life often offers. I’m tired of living under the increasingly authoritarian dictates of a politics hyper-concerned about risk and oblivious to everyone else. And things are shaking around us.

Enough, Canadians. Enough, Canadian politicians. Enough of masks. Enough of social gathering limitations. Enough of restaurant closings. Enough of undermining social trust. Make the damn vaccines available to those who want them. Stop using force to ensure compliance by those who don’t. Some of the latter may be insane but, in general, they are no more insane than the rest of us.

Put a date. Reopen the damn country, before we destroy something we can’t fix.

Time for a little courage.

Let’s live again.