Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler
Help me out here. When it comes to the timely delivery of COVID-19 vaccine into the arms of Canadians, is this country in good shape or not?
According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we are. He has repeatedly said that by the end of September all Canadians who want the vaccine will have it. And just a few days ago, he boldly declared, “Our plan is working”. Is it?
And if I may ask, what plan? Vaccinations for all Canadians by September is a goal, it is not a plan. And the likelihood of that goal being achievable is becoming more in doubt as each day passes. Compared to many other countries in the world, on a per capita basis, our progress in delivering vaccines to Canadians is abysmal. So, where is the plan?
The simple fact is that the novel coronavirus has not gone away. It has been controlled to some degree by the provinces, but there is no cure out there and until vaccines are available to the vast majority of Canadians, measures that seriously and negatively affect our personal lives, our national economy, and our mental health will continue to remain in place to one degree or another. It is much easier to blame the provinces for this, but the hard truth is that the federal government is failing in the timely delivery of vaccines.
Last week, every major newspaper in Canada, left and right in editorial inclination, criticized the Trudeau Government for its rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, an expression of agreement as rare as an eclipse. The Globe and Mail said this: “The country’s early vaccination rollout is collapsing.” It is.
According to a Toronto Star editorial, out of 32 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Canada ranks a dismal 24th in vaccine doses administered per capita. Behind countries like Poland, Romania, Estonia and Turkey. To quote the Toronto Star, “That’s a terrible performance.”
The Toronto Star also points out that to date, Israel (with no production capacity) has vaccinated 60.4 per cent of its population with at least one dose, Britain 15.5 per cent, The United States 10.2 per cent, and Canada just 2.63 per cent. Britain has vaccinated 90 per cent of its population over the age of 75. With the exception of long-term care homes, we haven’t even started.
At this point in the pandemic, Canada has the lowest vaccination rates, the biggest deficit, and among the highest jobless rates in the G7. How in heaven’s name has this happened?
To start with, I am not sure how well Prime Minister Justin Trudeau understood the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first place. Remember more than a year ago when countries world-wide were becoming acutely aware of the reality of a pandemic, the prime minister continued to roam around Africa in a failed attempt to gain a seat on the United Nations Security Council?
When the pandemic did have his attention, he “fixed” the vaccine problem for Canada by putting most, if not all, his eggs in one basket by striking a deal with a Chinese pharmaceutical company for what appeared to be a promising vaccine. That was at a time when China was (and still is) holding two Canadian citizens hostage in retaliation for Canada detaining senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, pending an extradition request from the United States.
Clearly the relations between Canada and China were strained then, and one would think that the Trudeau Government should have thought of that. It was poor judgement that they didn’t, and it should have come as no surprise when the Chinese Government put the blocks to the deal.
The sad consequence of that is when it became necessary to negotiate alternative large vaccine purchases with other major vaccine producers, such as Pfizer and Moderna, Canada was near the back of the line. Moreover, some of these arrangements were verbal and nowhere did they include guarantees of delivery times.
Subsequently, this has proven to be a very serious problem with major delays and a resulting inability to get vaccines into people’s arms. It will now be weeks or months before Canada has a steady flow of vaccines.
To add insult to injury, last week the prime minister announced Canada would receive 20 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine by June. Good news, except not accurate. Government officials have since indicated that Justin Trudeau “misspoke” and that the doses would be closer to 1.9 million and that there is no assurance of delivery or timelines until the vaccine is approved.
I am not sure of the context in which the word “misspoke” was used, but to me it must either mean that the prime minister was misleading us, or he had no idea what he was talking about. Either scenario is chilling!
The Trudeau Government is also arguing that the lack of a production facility in Canada is a large part of our inability to have an early and effective roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines. That may be true, but under the same circumstances, Israel has managed it, New Zealand has managed it, and so has Australia.
Unlike the United Kingdom, Canada has done nothing in the past year to increase their production capability. Instead, as an editorial in the Toronto Star says, they have made “a deal for next time”. This refers to an announcement by the prime minister that Canada has struck an agreement with the American pharmaceutical company, Novavax, to produce its COVID-19 vaccine in Canada. But they will not be in a position to even begin production here until at least the end of this year.
In the meantime, the Trudeau Government has turned down two Canadian proposals that could have produced more immediate results. PnuVax is a 30-year-old biopharmaceuticals company in Montreal that offered to manufacture millions of COVID-19 doses by the end of 2021 with “truckloads” out the door by Christmas. Sorry, no thanks.
Providence Therapeutics in Calgary has successfully blocked COVID-19 in mice. They have asked the federal government to begin human trials. The response? Again, no thanks.
Top all of that off with the Trudeau Government passing on an offer from Moderna for 16 million additional vaccines and instead becoming the only G7 country to take vaccine from a World Health Organization fund intended for developing countries, and you really have to ask yourselves if these guys in Ottawa really know what they are doing.
The headline on a recent article in The National Post by journalist Tristin Hopper states, “…Ottawa utterly botched Canada’s COVID vaccine acquisition”. I agree with that. To make it personal, we have family living in Great Britain and the United States. They have received at least one dose of vaccine. In Canada, most of us aren’t even close to being inoculated. We don’t know the plan. We don’t know the timeline, and we can’t trust what we are being told.
It’s nothing short of a national shame and there really is no excuse for that.
Hugh Mackenzie
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Good article. Hard to argue against the abysmal government response to Covid at all levels. I would not hang this around the PM’s neck exclusively. The Canadian government has been famously inept at procurement for decades. Let’s not forget naval ships, fighter jets, and that lovely Phoenix pay system. Accountability within the civil service in general plays a big part in this. A cashier at Walmart can lose her job if her till is short $20 at the end of the day, but a federal bureaucrat can lose $20 billion and keep their job and pension. If we want to route out incompetence, maybe we need to dig deeper.
Don: very well said and I agree.
I am finding all this discord – mainly political – quite depressing. I would not want to be in a decision-making position – provincially or nationally – with respect to responding to this pandemic. By the very nature of this disease we have had to “stickhandle” in our decision-making and, as anyone knows who has ever played hockey, “stickhandling” often results in losing the puck.
Mistakes in dealing with this pandemic which has had so many unknowns are inevitable. Have other countries like the US, Israel, UK and so on not made mistakes? Are we the only ones who have made mistakes? Would you who seem so certain of your positions with respect to this disease have not also made mistakes if you had been making decisions for the province or for the country? And, frankly, I don’t believe we will even know what the real mistakes have been until we are through this pandemic and have the advantage of hindsight. Only then will we be in a position to know if a certain decision was a mistake or, perhaps, an excellent decision. Personally, I will hitch my star to the leaders who I’m convinced have my best interests at heart and will pray that they will make as few mistakes as possible.
To defeat this disease we are completely dependent on each other doing the right thing. The constant criticism and undermining of the decision making is undermining my confidence that a good outcome is coming. What we need right now is to support each other and our decision makers and to show a little more understanding for the complexity of this pandemic. After a year of dealing with this I need to feel some hope that an end is near. Otherwise I will feel only despair and that may prove to be as dangerous as the disease itself.
Great article there HUGH! Politics or not this government has failed. My thoughts, Trudeau put most of his eggs in one basket, that was with a Chinese Company! We threw dirt in our allies faces by going with a communist country that is here for them selves and no one else! We had a Chinese citizen in jail here for the US! She is still in jail! They grab 2 Canadian gentlemen and throw them in jail on trumped up charges! There is not a chance I would have supported a Chinese company under these circumstances! The China government says no export to canada! Then Trudeau goes running back to his allies for help!!! You go to the bottom! We have no one else to blame but Trudeau! We need products made back in Canada, NOT china! They are buying up Canada companies, building schools here and have them working on campus in highly dangerous and secretive projects!
I do not support china anymore then i have to, everything you go to buy, the vast majority of it is made in China! Bring it home, china wants world domination in a quiet way, we are in trouble and the sooner we wake and realize the world doesn’t love Canada well we may be better off!
Politics or not lets get our country in shape, to look after ourselves and not depend on someone else to do it. Lets get a energy corridor across this country, not blame the US for closing down pipelines that feed us going through there property! Like really! Do you think we should have learned over SARS’s i would have but apparently not!
My thoughts, Trudeau has let us down again, bang on Hugh! Be safe to all and god bless the frontline workers from truck driver to store clerks!
Let’s all take a long, deep breath. It’s close to miraculous that after just a year into this awful Covid “plague” there are any vaccines available at all.
Some people writing in sound so ‘entitled’, comparing Canada to small countries like New Zealand and Israel etc.
Many of the arguments put forward are as has been mentioned disingenuous, misleading or incorrect. Thanks to a few commenters for mentioning some of these, particularly the country comparison.
Anyone who wants a vaccine will get it by the end of September. As I gather many Doppler commenters are seniors, I expect you’ll get your vaccine well before that. In the meantime stay safe with all recommended precautions.
Yes it’s hugely difficult for some people, some families, some immigrants and racialized people, people in poverty, for small businesses, for frontline workers.
None of this is anyone’s “fault” as this new pandemic crisis, and it’s possible solutions, changes quickly. Of course there are plans.
As an older person, I’ll get my vaccine in phase 2. As things change quickly and unpredictably without warning, plans will likely change.
Please stop the partisan political posturing on both sides. Again, take a breath and you’ll get your vaccine as soon as possible.
P.M.Trudeau has done the best possible overall in working to contract for vaccines for us. How is it his fault that two big Pharma companies Pfizer and Moderns needed to slow down production to rejig manufacturing plants in order to increase supplies for the long run? Would a Conservative or NDP or Green P.M. do any better in the face of external situations they have no control over?
What would you have done differently?..hindsight is always 20/20.
Thanks to Misters Whillans, Holland, and Barltrop for sound and reasoned comments.
Mr. Mackenzie, you do not mention any reasons for the federal government “turn downs” of vaccine from 2 Canadian companies – do you know why this is so?
If you are into details of the procurement and distribution plan, write Major-General Dany Fortin.
Finally, can you imagine where we might be now if Mulroney had not sold Connaught Lab in Toronto? Any idea as to why Connaught was sold? I suspect the lack of any long-range planning went into that decision.
Thank you, Mr. Holland,
For your more factual, better researched, and more balanced, not politicized analysis of the vaccine situation.
What happened to Sunnybrook hospital? They were on a successful journey last spring creating a vaccine. Never heard another word. If hospitals and staff were organizing this what is now a debacle, we would have most of the population immunized and vaccines would be readily available.
We have to continue to be diligent in our preventive actions or else we’ll all be in a worse mess. Dead! May God protect us from the total lack of caring from our leaders. Pray for them!
I am really disappointed that you, Hugh Mackenzie, have gone back to politicizing the corona virus pandemic. I am tired of all politicians , especially the provincial leaders from Quebec to Alberta, playing the name / blame game as they “play”to their political base.
After SARS ( 2003 ) which devastated the GTA ( Toronto, Markham ) , a plan was formulated for Ontario to be ready for the next pandemic . However, successive governments focused on cost cutting so there were not enough resources in public health when this corona virus pandemic arrived a year ago.
Below is an increasing positive account from Ontario.
” Ontario is reporting 1,022 new COVID-19 cases and 17 deaths on Tuesday.
Locally, there are 343 new cases in Toronto, 250 in Peel and 128 in York Region.
The province is reporting 30,798 completed tests and 12,462 more vaccine doses were administered.
As of 8:00 p.m. Monday, 398,633 total doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered. ”
Instead of taking an adversarial approach, we still need to work together to defeat this unseen foe. We are at war. Take the medical officer of health in BC , Bonnie Henry’s message to heart.
” Be kind. Be Calm. Stay Safe ”
John Barltrop
Markham, Ontario ( most diverse , inclusive city in Canada )
Paul Clayton there is a big difference in the uk between the news hour reading and whats really going on. My fiance lives in Leigh in Greater Manchester and atm is primary caregiver to his over 80 year old mother, she had her shot in the leigh infirmary, which was close. The next door neighbour who’s wife had a really bad stroke a number of years ago was told he was to take her to either Bristol or Chester they are both over 80. My fiances brother who had cancer, and is in the high risk category was at first to to go from Preston to York. So the stories about 10 miles are kind of a crock.
Well said Hugh. This not the governments only screw up. They blew the Asia Pacific deal, blew the pipeline deal, blew the deal with China, invited “irregular” immigration into Canada with the poor taxpayers footing the enormous cost. Liberals have alienated the United States, our largest trading partner, liberals pledged $400 million to education,not to Canadians but other countries., while our education system needs more money, pledged $24+ million to family planning, again not here for Canadians but around the world, $20 million donation to Clinton foundation. Liberals pledged $2.65 BILLION to climate change and now are trying to bully provinces into new taxes. $300 million to Rockingham refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own, pledged $640 million for six and reproduction health in HIti and around the world and here in Canada not everyone even has a doctor. I could go on but it looks and is proven that Canadians are the last people Liberals are thinking about or helping. Wish Imy finger wasn’t tired or else I would go on, 50 million Palestine flood relief when NB had some of the worst floods in decades, $10.5 million to a convicted terrorist and $30.8 million products to three others who say they were wrongly detained. Trudeau pressured Jody Wilson Raymond repeated and then got rid of her for doing an awesome job, I can’t go on it is too scarey and depressing.
Well said Paul Whillans. We are fortunate to have some excellent people working well together at the federal, provincial, and local levels and it is disappointing to see the level of shallow analysis, after-the-fact sniping, back-biting and pure drivel from some politicians and the media.
Yes Israel did a great job, but every country is unique. Israel is half the size of Nova Scotia and has the tightest border in the world. And the CEO of Pfizer gave precedence to Israel because his parents were holocaust survivors. I don’t blame him for that. It’s hard to compare that to the second biggest country in the world with 100,000 snowbirds and millions of sun-seekers that cross the longest border in the world every year. The bottom line is the Covid death rate. The Covid death rate per million is 564 in Israel, 546 in Canada, and 65 in Nova Scotia.
The truth is that every country is unique, and the effectiveness of the pandemic response, culminating in the death rate, depends on the sum-total of an entire range of decisions by those authorities, not just the vaccines. How long will it be after we re-establish vaccine production in Canada before some politician or journalist or think-tank looking for a way to cut taxes suggests it is wasteful for our small population to maintain something that hasn’t been used in 50 years? Hopefully, we will be able to accurately assess the overall effectiveness by this time in 2023. And I very much doubt that Canada, that is consistently rated among the best countries in the world, will be far down the ladder, or indeed will have “the biggest deficit”.
HEAR! HEAR! Mister Whilliams
Living in Ontario, my perspective is that both levels of government have let us down in this fight. The results of their efforts have been mediocre. We see seem content to look at the US and say ‘we are better than them’.
I would rather we look to New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan and ask why can’t we be more like them?
My guess is a states ability to respond well is directly proportional to the strength of it’s public health system, and the support it gets from government.
Before this pandemic our government focus was cost cutting and efficiency. When the pandemic hit there was not enough resources in public health, so governments had to improvise. Hopefully our lesson learned will not be vote for the other guy, but building up the ability of public health to respond to these types of crisis. They are not going away.
Censorship is alive and well in Canada even at the Doppler. We are no longer allowed to tell the truth, but having said that, sometimes the truth hurts. The National Post ran this article from a Doctor who over sees ICUs with other physicians on a rotating basis.
Opinion: Poor choices in vaccine prioritization and its unethical provision are troubling front-line doctors like me
We knew vaccine was coming, yet we seem unable to manage it effectively. Why has our leadership failed us?
Read in National Post: https://apple.news/AxKwqzZixRbOBG6pH7zuUgA
Shared from Apple News
Hugh, all good observations, well said. My Sister-in-Law has a saying “It is better to look good on the golf course than to play well”. I believe the Trudeau government has adopted her saying for their government. “It is better to look good doing nothing, than admit you are doing nothing” and I might add, even the LIBERAL MEDIA has caught them in their ineptitude, and said something about it.
the fault also lies with the Ford government. He has been full of promises, but short on delivery. Like Trudeau, he never tells us what we need to know. If he suddenly got a load of vaccine, does he have the means in place to use it? The UK had family doctors, pharmacies, town halls etc ready , so they were able to assure people nobody would have to travel more than 10 miles. What has General Hellier don? Why can’t he tell us?
Hugh, I normally like your commentaries, but this time I agree with Paul Whillans. What an aweful time to be a political leader and be handed the first major pandemic of our lifetime. Trudeau and Ford (provincially) can’t win, no matter what they do, but both are trying their best. Now if they could stop appearing on TV almost daily, I’d be happier. Clearly both are trying to boost their popularity by having a captive TV audience! Simple Press Releases are all we need.
Trudeaus fascination with China has been his achilles heel and now we are all paying the price. A real leader does not hide in a cottage only to offer scripted messages. Go back to parliament and face the music, it is your responsibility in case you have forgotten. If they are not nice to you don’t be surprised your actions are in need of scrutiny.
Our Prime Minister invested in China while our Southern neighbor invested money in their own country to procure a vaccine. Ottawa has thrown enough money around to build several facilities to produce vaccines. Why is outsourcing always the answer with this administration? Looking out of country to solve a problem when you have people in your own country that are capable of procuring vaccines. It seems that if you did not contribute to the Liberal party in the past you can not be considered a candidate for vaccine procurement. Several candidates were ignored by the governing Liberals and some are moving forward without any government funding. Now other countries have vaccinated millions and we are still waiting for vaccines to arrive.Now all these mutations are surfacing throughout the population from around the world. How will these late shipments work against all the variant strains? In Canada at the beginning of the pandemic it was considered racist to close your borders to a deadly virus, how pathetic.
Dr Jane Philpott was probably the most qualified MP to help us through this pandemic but gender politics got in the way and we all know how that turned out. So they put Patti Hadju in charge, but sadly she is not qualified for the position, she has no medical background. This puts the whole Ottawa vetting process in question again, are you starting to see a pattern. If our own government is reluctant to invest in Canadians, there lies the real problem.
This has to be the thinnest pretext yet to politicise the pandemic. While it true that as of January 6th, Canada was “46th” in the world in vaccination per 100 of capita ( with 2.69 doses per 100 of the population ..ourworldindata.org), it doesn’t take much digging to see that perhaps the author’s faux outrage is more than a little overdone.
Clearly, Israel (62.87 per 100); the UK (with its 7 “countries on this list at 17.51 per 100) and the US at 11.5 per 100) are materially and comparably being more successful. But after that it is a ridiculous comparison.
Notably, amongst the “top 20” are 7 UK “countries”; Malta; Seychelles Islands; Gibraltar; Bermuda; Cayman Islands etc. Are these relevant comparisons?
Country #21 is Spain with 4.07 vaccinations per 100 population. There is no material difference between the vaccination rates of country 21 through 46 (Canada).
If you look at the list (i.e. actually do you own research and not accept tainted reporting from your favourite “conservative” media outlets), you will see that Canada is being outpaced (dramatically) by Israel, the UK and the USA….period. Each of these has a longstanding and significant pharmaceutical industry, which as has been well reported Canada does not.
To then suggest that Trudeau’s trip to Africa (February 15th 2020) has any bearing on Canada’s current vaccination status is knowingly disingenuous.
As you will know, Canada does have sufficient and adequate contracts for Covid vaccinations from legitimate sources.
This article is exactly the the garbage that you have railed against most recently……playing politics with a national health crisis.
We need to develop a Canadian made vaccine quickly to cure the Nation of this dreaded variant called Novel Justin !
Here’s another, more informed, opinion…….Judging Canada’s vaccine fight must go beyond a few jabs in round one – thestar.com
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/02/05/judging-canadas-vaccine-fight-must-go-beyond-a-few-jabs-in-round-one.html
Great comments Hugh.
Hugh you are absolutely right. No wonder the government won’t be transparent with the so called agreements Like you I have several friends in the US who have received the vaccine it didn’t have to be this way. Procurement has never been a government strength