Conrad Black: Erin O'Toole promised boldness and change. We're still waiting

The leader of the federal opposition, Erin O’Toole, gave an important address to his Conservative partisans, anticipating a general election at his party conference in Ottawa on February 26. He lamented that his party had lost two elections in 5 1/2 years and had four leaders in that time and his prescription for winning was, “We must present new ideas, not make the same arguments … We need to be the party for all of Canada. We need to be a Conservative party with the courage to be bold. And a conservative party with the courage to change.” But he didn’t change and there is no boldness. Instead of handing the regime a blank cheque for reelection by saying “Spending to protect Canadians during the pandemic is the right thing to do and Conservatives have supported it,” he should have exposed the Liberal response to the coronavirus as the shambles and the disgrace that it has been. As of Friday, there were 3769 people hospitalized in Canada with COVID-19 of whom 1125 were in intensive care units, out of a population of almost 38 million, and the country is locked down. Why is O’Toole not attacking fiercely on the implicit failure and disconnection between these numbers? It was clear a year ago that, when factoring in that two per cent of cases result in death and 80 per cent of fatalities also had one comorbidity, recovery rates are approximately by my calculations 99.5 per cent for healthy people beneath the age of 65.-- More...