Dec. 31: Canadian airlines say there are still major challenges that need to be addressed before Ottawa rolls out a COVID-19 testing requirement for air passengers
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Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips in a video posted to his Twitter account on Dec. 24, 2020. Mr. Phillips is facing criticism for vacationing in the Caribbean despite officials urging Canadians to avoid non-essential travel to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Twitter
In the grocery store on Wednesday morning, people were talking about Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips’s trip to St. Barts. “Can you believe it?” a customer asked the cashier, who shook her head in disgust. Premier Doug Ford knows better than anyone how bad that moment was for his government.
The prediction comes from 1993 s Marge in Chains (an episode that has already been heralded for its prognostic powers thanks to its depiction of a coronavirus-like epidemic and swarms of killer bees). In the episode, Mayor Quimby claims to have cancelled his trip to the Bahamas due to a public health crisis, but then the camera pans back and reveals that he s on a tropical beach with a steel drum player.
As
Canadaland s Jonathan Goldsbie pointed out on Twitter, this storyline is eerily similar to the current scandal surrounding Ontario politician Rob Phillips, who spent the holidays on the Caribbean island of St. Barts despite his government s advice to avoid all non-essential travel due to skyrocketing COVID-19 numbers. Meanwhile, Phillips Twitter account had been pre-programmed with holiday messages to make it look like he was staying at home.
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Ontario Finance Minister (and apparent social media wizard?) Rod Phillips has returned home to Canada from the luxurious Caribbean island of St. Barts after more than two weeks of putting on sweaters for Zoom calls and otherwise trying to fool his constituents into thinking he d never left Ajax.
Phillips did, as we all now know, leave Ontario for a tropical vacation with his wife on Dec. 13, despite the federal government s warnings against all non-essential travel and his own government s repeated pleas for people to stay home amid the pandemic.
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Beleaguered politician Rod Phillips has resigned from his post as Ontario Finance Minister, according to Premier Doug Ford, after being caught in St. Barts amid a pandemic while actively encouraging his constituents to stay home for the holidays and then trying to hide his vacation through a series of sneaky social media posts. Today, following my conversation with Rod Phillips, I have accepted his resignation as Ontario s minister of finance, Ford said in a statement released Thursday afternoon, just hours after Phillips had returned home to Canada at the Premier s request.