An Erin OToole-led pandemic plan would look like Albertas COVID crisis Trudeau says

With Alberta now in the grip of another public health emergency after a summer largely free of COVID-related restrictions, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said today Canadians can't trust Conservatives to run the country during a pandemic.

Pointing to Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole's past praise for the Alberta government's handling of the pandemic, Trudeau said Canadians should take a pass on a leader who has expressed admiration for a failed approach to the pandemic.

"Just a few days ago, Mr. O'Toole was still applauding (Alberta Premier Jason) Kenney for his management of the pandemic. That's at the heart of the choice Canadians need to make in this election," Trudeau said at a campaign stop in Montreal.

"He's not the right leader to put an end to this pandemic," Trudeau said of O'Toole in French. "Do we stand up even stronger in our fight against this pandemic, or do we give into anti-vaxxers in the Conservative Party and go ahead with half-measures?"

Last fall, O'Toole said Premier Kenney had "navigated this COVID-19 pandemic far better than the federal government has," and praised Kenney's push to procure more rapid testing options to help keep schools and businesses open.

"And when it comes to getting our country back on track, the federal Conservatives can learn a lot from our UCP cousins," O'Toole said, referring to Kenney's United Conservative Party.

On Sunday, at a campaign stop in Vancouver, O'Toole said "the best contact tracing efforts in our country in the first wave were in Alberta" and claimed the federal government's COVID alert contact-tracing app had lost its relevance.

"How has that gone? It's another example of everything [Trudeau] promised on his doorstep â€" he failed to deliver," O'Toole said, referring to Trudeau's Rideau Cottage press conferences in the early months of this pandemic.

Speaking to reporters at a campaign stop in St. John, N.B., O'Toole dodged multiple questions about his past praise for Kenney and his government's approach to pandemic management.

"I will work with all premiers regardless of stripe," O'Toole said, while chastising Trudeau for prompting this federal election during a fourth wave. "I would never call an election in the middle of a health crisis."

With his province struggling with high caseloads, stressed intensive care units, a mounting death toll and a comparatively low vaccination rate, Kenney is facing criticism from all sides over a pandemic response that seems to have satisfied no one.

The premier has lurched from strident opposition to vaccine passports to implementing a province-wide proof of vaccination program. After months of promising Alberta would stay open for business, his government moved Wednesday to clamp down on social and economic life to stop the pandemic from spiralling further out of control.

Which explains why Trudeau is seeking to make O'Toole's past support for Kenney's pandemic response a political liability for the Conservative leader â€" with just five days left to go in the federal election.

Trudeau said a vote for the Conservatives threatens the public health picture because O'Toole is opposed to mandatory vaccines for federal public servants and the travelling public. He has accused O'Toole of deferring to the "far right, anti-vax" fringe elements of the Conservative Party by opposing these measures.

"We can't afford the lack of leadership of Mr. O'Toole. He knows the way through the pandemic is through vaccinations but Mr. O'Toole is still letting anti-vaxxers within his own party run the show," Trudeau said Thursday.

"He won't demand that all his candidates get vaccinated. He doesn't criticize his candidate who wasn't fully vaccinated who goes into a seniors' home. He has multiple candidates who have been spreading anti-vax disinformation in their communities," he said. "That's not the leadership we need in Ottawa to end this pandemic for good."

With his "disinformation" comment, Trudeau was referring to Ted Falk, a Conservative candidate in Manitoba who apologized after he was quoted in a local newspaper spreading misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

Asked to comment on Alberta's about-face on pandemic restrictions now that health care capacity is so stretched, O'Toole said other provinces also have had to change course.

"All the provinces have tried to balance keeping public health paramount and balancing off the economic needs," he said.

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