Message clear as mud

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/11/2020 (1463 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dr. Brent Roussin’s well-scripted, well-practised mantra — repeated over and over again at his media availability Thursday — was that the province’s “messaging” on restrictions for social gatherings was “clear.”

Unfortunately, no matter how many times the chief provincial public health officer said that, it didn’t change the fact that none of the recent messaging on social gatherings has been clear. It has been, in fact, a symphony of imprecise, incomplete bulletins that have left many Manitobans confused about some very important pandemic-control measures.

The trouble began Tuesday, the day before Remembrance Day, when Roussin and Premier Brian Pallister outlined new restrictions, including what appeared to be a ban on all social gatherings.

“Social contact is reduced to members of your household,” was the succinct, unambiguous language used in news releases, infographics and on the province’s main pandemic-response website.

On Remembrance Day, however, the language changed: “Social gatherings are not permitted, and gatherings of more than 5 people from outside a single household will be subject to fines.”

The CBC, followed by other news media, immediately began to raise questions why it appeared you could invite up to five people into your home and still remain on the right side of the public-health order.

The provincial government then began an aggressive social media campaign to discredit the report.

In a series of uncharacteristically prickly tweets Wednesday evening, Roussin said Manitobans “don’t have the time to waste on semantics and legal loopholes.” He also said “Manitobans don’t need a law to do what is right.”

A government spokesman later confirmed that while Roussin approves all posts on his Twitter account, they are, in fact, written by communications staff. As a result, it was hardly surprising when the same language showed up, verbatim, in a second wave of emails and social media posts from many, but not all, Tory MLAs and cabinet ministers.

The changes to the language around social gathering arrived so quickly, it caught some members of the Tory government off guard.

MLA Wayne Ewasko, chair of the Tory caucus, argued strenuously in a tweet that there had been no change to the rules, and that “social gatherings are not permitted.” However, he omitted the reference to allowing up to five people without facing fines. Clearly, even members of the government had no idea the social-gathering order had evolved.

Fast-forward to Thursday, where Roussin had an opportunity to explain why the social-gathering language had changed. One could imagine that, with little effort, he could have confirmed it was the government’s intent all along to allow some wiggle room in the ban on social gatherings. And that subsequent amendments to the language of the order were efforts to do just that.

Instead, he adopted a best practice exhibited frequently at the highest levels of the Pallister government and disputed the suggestion there was any confusion.

Roussin explained that it had always been the intent of the original order to include an allowance for up to five people to visit other households for tasks such as babysitting, caring for the elderly or disabled, or just checking in on someone living alone.

But he still hasn’t explained why the exceptions to social-gathering restrictions were not made more clear in the news release and supporting materials released Tuesday. He also wouldn’t explain why he is lumping social gatherings, which by definition are non-essential, into a category that includes child or elder care, which could be characterized as somewhat, or very, essential.

Roussin claimed it would have been counterproductive to list every possible scenario where people could visit each other’s home. But by creating a broad and vague exception, he did sow the seeds of confusion. All that Roussin needed to do was identify some broad categories of acceptable inter-household visits so that Manitobans understood that while they cannot have five friends or extended family over to watch The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, they are allowed to bring Nana some groceries and clean her bathroom.

It’s also increasingly difficult to understand why Roussin is still clinging to the idea that Manitobans “do not need a law to do what is right.”

That faith is misguided, at best. Roussin, and others in the Pallister government for that matter, continue to ignore the fact that Manitobans, like citizens of many other provinces and countries around the world, are so tired of pandemic restrictions they only hear what they want to hear, and are willing to push public-health orders past the point of their intent.

Ewasko, by all accounts a thoughtful and intelligent man, was clearly under the impression that all interactions between households had been banned. If he was confused, why wouldn’t there be others?

Roussin is going to have to acknowledge that when the chief provincial public health officer tells us that up to five people can visit your house without being fined, all that most of us can hear is that it’s OK to have five people over.

That’s clearly not what he wants us to do. All he needs to do now is own some of the confusion and promise to make the messaging clearer in the future. In this instance, and despite his protestations, the message was not clear.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca