Canada caused its own vaccine issues

Re: Managing the vaccine flood; Trudeau offers help giving shots as Ford defends Ontario's vaccination backlog, April 7

I cannot understand why the media compares Canada's vaccine percentages to the U.S. or the U.K. I am frankly surprised that we have any doses at all. We are not manufacturing any, we rely on purchases from other countries and we are lucky to get any until those countries who have invested in the private pharmaceutical industry have completed their vaccinations.

I would love to blame PM Trudeau but it is successive governments that have virtually eliminated the private pharmaceutical industry in Canada. We want generic drugs, cheap and plentiful, and we expect that will suffice.

It is fine for historical diseases, but as we have seen this past year, we need to react quickly and will likely have to again. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh wants any pharmaceutical industry in Canada to be a crown corporation, but it is private industry driven by the evil prophet, profit, that will make this work. Without government support, this will never happen because the large pharma will simply go elsewhere.

Greg Urton, Calgary