Liberal failures will mean more deaths

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement this week that the federal government has struck a tentative deal with American vaccine-maker Novavax to produce its yet-to-be-approved coronavirus vaccine at a yet-to-be-completed plant in Montreal would have been welcome news six months ago. Now, it’s too little, too late.

The National research Council (NRC) facility in Montreal where the vaccine is to be produced was supposed to be completed this July, but Innovation Minister François-philippe Champagne now says it probably won’t be operational until “the end of the year,” long after the government’s oft-stated goal of having enough doses to vaccinate every Canadian by September.

Trudeau himself seemed to suggest that domestic production will likely be used to deal with any variants of the virus that crop up in the future and for export to other countries, saying that, “As we see new variants rising, we see a virus that will continue to be present in many places around the world … What we’re very clear on is Canada will be developing domestic manufacturing.”

Given that the pandemic won’t truly be over until we’ve reached herd immunity around the globe, having the ability to contribute to the global supply of vaccines is certainly a noble cause. but the Liberal government’s pandemic strategy has been littered with noble goals that have failed to stop the growing death count, and in some cases even contributed to the number of Canadians in body bags.

It was one year ago — on Feb. 9, 2020 — that Global Affairs Canada sent out a press release saying that over the preceding five days, our government had sent 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China. If sending Canadian supplies to China could have helped stop the disease in its tracks and prevented the pandemic, it would have been totally worth it.

but the Chinese government had spent far too long trying to cover up the outbreak and by the time we shipped our valuable PPE overseas, the coronavirus had already landed on our shores: the first case of COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 25; by the time the federal government started shipping PPE to Wuhan, there were already multiple confirmed cases in Ontario and british Columbia. As a result, Canada was left with severe shortages of PPE throughout much of the first wave.

The effects of this pandemic could have been mitigated at a number of points, if we had a federal government that consistently took decisive, early action to ward off emerging threats. but ours has continually dropped the ball.

The announcement last month that travellers would be required to produce a negative COVID test before boarding a flight to Canada made perfect sense, but why did it take nearly 10 months to implement such a simple solution?

Likewise, last week, the government announced a series of new measures that will see incoming travellers forced to take another test and quarantine in an approved hotel until a negative result will allow them to self-isolate at home. It’s a plan that has worked elsewhere and may very well help stop new coronavirus cases from being imported into the country, but it was announced well after we started seeing the concerning new variants of the virus from such places as the united Kingdom and South Africa circulating in Canada.

Once again, the government missed the mark, and lives will be lost as a result.

This follows a series of failures and missed opportunities on the part of the federal government that may have been prevented if the prime minister and his cabinet had spent less time blocking the opposition parties from looking into the We scandal, banning single-use plastics, planning new carbon taxes and working on other initiatives that would have been totally in keeping with a Liberal agenda during normal times, but should have been put on the back burner during a time of national crisis.

The government was late to sign vaccine contracts, which may have contributed to our current shortages. It was behind other countries in coming up with a plan to distribute vaccines. It placed too much hope on a Chinese-made vaccine that — predictably, given our diplomatic rift with that country’s Communist government — fell apart, while failing to properly fund promising candidates that are being developed by Canadian companies. And it failed to uphold its promise to expand an existing NRC facility in Montreal by last fall, which could have been producing small quantities of vaccines by now.

It is starting to become clear why Trudeau seemed so gung-ho to trigger an election in the fall: he knew he had a limited window to secure a majority government before all these failures caught up with him.

Well now they have. And this week’s announcements about the government’s plans to create domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity — including the Novavax agreement and investments in a facility at the university of Saskatchewan and another in Vancouver that will not be up and running until 2023 — while welcome, should be seen for what they are: an attempt to put window dressing on this government’s long list of failures.

Canadians should not fall for it. This government could be forgiven for its missteps in the beginning, when the whole world was scrambling to try to understand and contain this outbreak. but after almost a year, the Trudeau government must wear its failures. Lives are at stake, and continued incompetence is completely unforgivable.

BUT AFTER ALMOST A YEAR, THE TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT MUST WEAR ITS FAILURES.