What was the excuse this time?

Mosaic Stadium was half empty, or half full depending on how you view things I suppose, for their West Division playoff game against Calgary on Sunday. This, despite the fact it was a very important game and the weather was perfect.

The fourth quarter and overtime was also highly entertaining.

Here is what I know - the Riders sold out their home opener and they also sold out Labour Day right before more restrictions (namely the vaccine passport) were introduced. Every home game crowd since then has been exceedingly low.

I was at a senior hockey game in Theodore on Sunday afternoon. Their crowd was low but they knew this in advance because of widespread interest in the Roughrider playoff game. People were engaged, but it was through the television.

I lost track of how many ‘free’ tickets I saw available online and yet still many went unclaimed. Go back to 2019 and prior to that….unheard of. In fact, you could probably sell your ticket for double the face value if you wanted to.

You can blame late night weekdays, bad weather, whatever you want. But the reality is this - as soon as vaccine passports were mandated, there wasn’t a single business that saw an uptick in customers. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite, Riders included. Whether it’s the Riders, junior hockey teams, restaurants, movie theatres, liquor stores, fitness centers, or wherever else you need to produce these things. The public has spoken. They have rejected this gross and, frankly, evil, attempt by the provincial government to segregate society.

As vaccine effectiveness shows to wane, the time to end this nonsense is right now even if you accept this crazy notion that it somehow slowed spread and helped ease the burden on a bare bones health care system that has been exposed as woefully managed by politicians and the public bureaucrats. But oh no. We are going to further desecrate businesses by extending health orders to January 31 and likely past that too based on the words of Scott Moe and his boss, Dr. Shahab.

Here’s where the Riders are in a unique position than any single junior hockey team or restaurant. They have a tremendous amount of influence on this province and the ball is now in their court to lobby for their own survival as well as that of some of their sponsors and customers all at the same time. They also have some apologizing to do for chasing away loyal supporters but that’s a topic for another day.

We’ve been at this for two years and there is a lot of evidence that should not be ignored but is by our overlords. I’m going to outline some of it, and the Riders should too - football stadiums in the United States are packed without any hint of it causing healthcare system carnage or creating super spread events resulting in mass casualties. Indoor venues are also filling up in a lot of states in a way that looks a lot like pre-March 2020. Cases to the east, in Manitoba and Ontario, are on the way up despite widespread mask usage and vaccine passport requirements. Yet, Saskatchewan claims those same mandates worked as opposed to just admitting this virus has, from the get go, produced waves regardless of stringency of the public health order.

They were bad ideas in March 2020 and they are showing to be every bit as bad today. Putting healthy people in quarantine, purposely demonizing certain individuals and dividing society into factions, and enacting crippling economic policy that has caused a great deal of financial strife and destroyed many lives has all distracted from the fact there are people who need to be careful when it comes to this virus (which I’ll outline in a paragraph below).

Why does my vaccine only work if you get yours too? That has never been explained to me ever. I understand the notion you can still spread the virus, but if I’m vaccinated why am I worried about getting Covid if my encounter with it is going to be mild due to the fact I’m vaccinated? For what it’s worth, healthy people who are not overweight, old, or dealing with an ongoing health issue that has them visiting the doctor on a regular basis will also have a minor run-in with Covid vaxxed or not but we’ve forgotten about that.

When the Riders agreed to enact vaccine passports to attend games, they believed it was what their fans wanted despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Social media was full of Karens laughing at the unvaxxed for being excluded from many aspects of society. They bragged that for every person that is unvaxxed, there would be half a dozen vaxxed people willing to go to the games because they’d feel a lot more safe. Some of them even said they were staying away from the sold-out stadium because it was just too risky but a vaccine passport system would make them feel much better and they’d have no reservations about attending. Not only was that a false claim, but a number of people vaccinated opted to take a stand against segregation and it has resulted in millions of lost revenue.

This isn’t going to sit well with some of you, but the Riders shouldn’t worry about people who are not their customers. Non-customers certainly aren’t looking out for the Riders.

What the government has failed to realize is that most people aren’t living in fear. No order or mandate, at this point, is going to keep anyone safe. People are going to live their lives and assume whatever risk they want. Also, as they become more and more exposed to normal life in the United States they become more and more suspicious as to what’s really going on. The only thing being accomplished now is financial and mental destruction of Canadian people by tyrants who no longer have an ounce of trust from the citizens. Even if this was super dangerous. At some point, don’t you just have to let people make their own choices when there are so many who want the government to just butt out of their lives? I guess not.

It’s time for politicians to admit mistakes. It’s time for some unelected people to be fired. And it’s time to dust off the pre-Covid pandemic plans that Saskatchewan had in place and give those a shot. I won’t hold my breath waiting for it to happen. But it would be the absolute best option at this point in time.

Stackhouse Soapbox

SMALL TURNOUT FOR RIDERS PLAYOFF GAME