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I often argue that Canadian politics is too concerned with what politicians think and believe, as opposed to what they do. But this is a case where we need to know why politicians acted on the timeline they did.

Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

The answers will not necessarily reflect badly on them. We should want politicians to take advice from experts, and it seems quite a bit of received public health wisdom is being rewritten on the fly. Remember “travel bans don’t work”?

Nor should any government take lightly implementing what British Conservative MP Steve Baker described on Monday night in the mother parliament as “a dystopian society.” Among many other things, the package of emergency measures granted royal assent in the U.K. on Wednesday extends the legal retention period for fingerprints and DNA, allows for the detention and testing of anyone suspected to be infected, and empowers governments to prohibit any public gatherings and close any businesses, schools or childcare centres they see fit — for two years. Baker unsuccessfully lobbied for half that.

“Libertarian though I may be, this is the right thing to do,” he said, his voice shaking. “But, my goodness, we ought not to allow this situation to endure one moment longer than is absolutely necessary to save lives and preserve jobs.”

With the Trudeau gang, sometimes things are just inscrutably weird

Generally speaking, though, our Liberals are not especially zealous when it comes to protecting civil liberties. I haven’t detected any reluctance in their incremental rollout of anti-coronavirus measures. Rather, at each stage, I have sensed a familiar sense of supreme confidence. The ludicrous power-grab they attempted in implementing their own emergency measures package this week suggests they aren’t very angst-ridden about going too far.