Canada enters vaccine abyss
Let’s start by acknowledging something that may seem unlikely, even impossible, today: it’s still possible that the federal government’s vaccine procurement strategy is going to work out just fine.
It seems an odd thing to say, given all the criticism the government is facing for delays and unanswered questions. But it’s true. We don’t have any details on where Canada lands in the priority queue for delivery of the Astrazeneca
vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the Novavax vaccine — all three of which are currently being reviewed for approval by Health Canada. If the federal Liberals catch a few breaks — rapid approval, high efficacy and swift delivery, without any export control issues from our allies — then a few months from now, we could be in a very different, far superior position than we are today. Then it’ll be up to the provinces to get their own acts together to distribute what Ottawa will be procuring.
AIRLINES HAVE... DRASTICALLY CUT BACK THEIR ROUTES.
— DIAS & HYDER
Let’s now acknowledge something very different: the opposite of all the above could be true.
The three vaccine candidates above might languish in health Canada review purgatory for months. Canada might be well behind other nations in delivery priority. Countries that produce vaccine may delay shipments to Canada (and others) until their own populations are vaccinated. And we may continue to run into supply challenges with the two vaccines that are already approved for use in Canada — the ones offered by Moderna (which is experiencing supply chain problems) and Pfizer (which has cut production output so they can expand their capacity).
both these scenarios are possible; as are any number of others that fall between these two extremes. We simply don’t have enough information to make any informed guesses as to how this will play out. (Though we can say, with high confidence, that the new vaccine production facility being built in Montreal won’t be of any meaningful help to us this year ... even after it’s built, it’ll need months to be certified and broken in, and only then can it start bulk production.) If we had a better sense of the agreements Canada had signed with the possible producers, we could make a more confident guess. but this is Canada, a country where “open by default” doesn’t mean what you think it would. So we don’t, and we can’t.
The Liberals have given a clear target. They say every Canadian who wants a vaccine will get it by September. Let’s discount the provincial challenges here for a second: the Liberals will clear this bar if they procure enough vaccine to achieve this target, whether the provinces can get organized or not. To be crass, if Ottawa secures the doses but the provinces screw up the injections, that ain’t on Trudeau. but this still means that Ottawa needs to procure tens of millions of doses, in spite of the growing danger of socalled “vaccine nationalism” among our foreign suppliers and production challenges among manufacturers.
Is it possible? Sure. Can we be confident? No, of course not. There is enormous downside risk to the September target, and if we miss our targets, we face the prospect of a third winter in a row battling with an uncontained, deadly disease.
It’s possible, of course, that the Liberals are simply being cautious and shrewd. All Canadians, regardless of their political preferences, should hope that this is the case, that the Liberals have taken a lesson from a fictional starship engineer and have quadrupled their estimate of how long the job will actually take, so they look like miracle workers when they finish early. That would have been the smart thing to do, of course.
Set a modest goal and then work like hell to beat it. The problem, of course, is that if this is what the Liberals are actually doing, it would make a sharp break from their usual approach to governing, which has been to overpromise, underdeliver and shrug, or blame Stephen harper, when they come up short. remember “deliverology”? No? Neither do they.
This isn’t about politics, though it’ll obviously be seen through that lens. Liberal supporters will be quick to explain, with much truth, that the erosion of Canada’s domestic vaccine production capacity has been a long-running affair that predates Mr. Trudeau’s time in office. Liberal critics will note, with equal truth, that the federal government, either out of a reluctance to overreact or simply because they were overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis, has been slow to react at almost every critical phase of the pandemic.
They were slow on borders, slow on PPE and slow on vaccine. The only fair metric for measuring their performance seems to be this: while it’s true that they started with many disadvantages, did they do the most with what they had, as quickly as possible? Time will tell, but remember, this isn’t just about fodder for the next round of campaign ads. Lives depend on this. delays mean death for vulnerable Canadians.
So while the Liberals are no doubt continuing to do all that they can to arrange for deliveries for Canadians from producers abroad, they also need to start managing expectations at home. With reports emerging on Wednesday afternoon of possible further disruptions to scheduled deliveries to Canada, the public is going to have a lot of questions, and mounting anger. If there’s a good news story for our government to share with the public, any cause for hope that might allay frustration and fear, now would be a good time to share it ... in detail, if possible, please.