Federal transgressions and the pandemic

The federal government is overstepping its constitutional jurisdiction in the name of the Covid-19 response.

What started as a health emergency has now turned into a governance crisis that is testing all three tiers of government. When the federal government imposed a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, it failed to gauge basic human behaviour—that families seek each other out for support during times of stress. The reverse migration of hundreds of thousands of people, travelling for several days on foot from various cities and towns to get back to their homes, could hardly be prevented by policing highway checkpoints. A mechanism for safe travel, coordinated with the respective provinces and municipalities, could have prevented the tragic scenes that made international headlines. The limitations of policing citizens into following directives should have been quite clear to the government by then.