Coronavirus Updates Canada: Trudeau Slams Racism After Tory MP Calls for Firing of Top Doctor

April 24, 2020, 9:17am

Updated at 11:30 a.m. (EDT): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has strongly denounced “intolerance and racism” after a Conservative MP made racist comments about Canada’s top medical doctor leading the country’s fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Tory MP for Hastings-Lennox Derek Sloan called for Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam’s resignation earlier this week and tweeted a video about Tam’s pandemic response to his supporters and asked: “Does (Tam) work for Canada or China?”

Videos by VICE

“Millions of Canadians of all different backgrounds who are working together—many, many of them on the front lines to help their fellow Canadians—deserve better than this,” Trudeau said in his daily briefing on Thursday.

Tam also responded to the comments on Thursday. “I’m a pretty focused person and I work really, really hard probably over 20 hours a day,” Tam said.

“My singular focus is to work with all of my colleagues to get this epidemic wave under control. I don’t let noise sort of detract me from that,” said Tam.

Some Conservative Party officials are also calling for the party to reprimand Sloan.

“Derek, with everything else going on in my community that I need to fight for, I can’t believe I have to use my platform to explain to you why what you said…is so profoundly wrong,” said Michelle Rempel Garner, an MP from Calgary.

An Edmonton-based Conservative MP, Tim Uppal, said, “Personal attacks against Dr. Tam are unacceptable and do not represent our party.”

A group that represents more than half of Sloan’s constituents is asking outgoing party leader Andrew Scheer to denounce Sloan’s comments—or expel Sloan from the party, if necessary, according to CTV.

In a letter to Scheer, Warden Rick Phillips and Chief Administrative Officer Jim Pine of Hastings County, which is in Sloan’s constituency, asked Scheer to demonstrate that the problematic comments don’t reflect the Conservative Party as a whole.

Scheer has repeatedly refused to condemn Sloan’s comments.

Trudeau announces rent relief for small businesses

On Friday, Trudeau announced more details about the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance, which will support small businesses struggling to pay rent.

They will cover 50 percent of the rent and commercial property owners will cover 25 percent, leaving businesses on the hook for the remaining 25 percent.

Small businesses that have been hit hard by COVID-19 and pay less than $50,000 in rent per month are eligible.

Trudeau said he will announce more support for large businesses in the coming days.

Ten percent of Canadians believe in COVID-19 conspiracies

Preliminary research from the University of Sherbrooke suggests that one in 10 Canadians believes in a conspiracy theory related to the virus, CBC News reported.

The university presented six false theories to 600 Canadians: the coronavirus and 5G technology are connected; coronavirus medication already exists; the pharmaceutical industry contributed to the spread of the virus; coronavirus was borne in a lab, by mistake; the government is hiding information about the virus; a lab made the virus on purpose.

Nearly a third of Canadians said they believe the virus was made in a lab, despite the fact that virologists have already denounced that theory. Researchers have found that the virus causing COVID-19 almost certainly originated in bats.

About 15 percent of respondents believe pharmaceuticals contributed to COVID-19.