National Post (National Edition)
Liberals are too incompetent to get vaccines right
You may think we have a vaccination crisis in this country. And if you're not a paid or volunteer Liberal flak you may think it's about health not PR. But it's really a crisis of government competence. The reason they can't vaccinate is they can't do much of anything.
For instance buy sidearms or ships for the armed forces. Get guns away from criminals or tell criminals from law-abiding citizens. Decide when to lock us down or explain why. Deliver a budget or explain why they haven't. Balance the books. Fix health wait lists. Maintain infrastructure. Be transparent.
As someone observed on Twitter, it isn't surprising that a government that takes 15 years not to purchase a military sidearm struggles to vaccinate. I can't quote it because of the now quasi-obligatory vulgarity in our overlapping crisis of manners. But consider two headlines from last Wednesday's Post: “Made-in-Canada vaccines won't be ready until end of the year” and “More delays expected for navy's new fleet”. Six pages and apparently worlds apart. But connected by a combination of ineptitude and smugness.
For years patronizing talk of “evidence-based decision-making” has called to mind Emerson's “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons” because these pompous politicians, public servants and pundits seem strangely uninterested in that painful branch of reality where we check promises against performance.
For instance in the long-running naval procurement comic opera, the head of procurement said everything was fine while the navy's commander, Vice-Admiral Craig Baines, burbled “right now, based on all our estimates on the conditions of the ships, we're very comfortable that we'll be able to transition with this plan.”
Word salad. Transition to what? When? What plan? The “plan” back in 2011 was for Irving Shipbuilding to start delivering ships in the mid-2020s for $26 billion. Now it's meant to cost $60 billion and take over 20 years. Longer than both World Wars combined. Stop that whining noise. We're the best.
Not by coincidence, the sidearms the military is trying to replace actually date back to World War II, when Canada was competent and grown-up and helped beat Hitler then hold off Stalin. Today, the problem isn't the bungling, appalling as it is. It's the lack of surprised outrage.
Two days later the PM promised 20 million doses of one vaccine by June on camera and blew off criticism as “noise”. That afternoon nameless peons walked it back. How could he not know? Why doesn't anyone care?
The first step in fixing a problem is to quit the denial. Instead Chrystia Freeland's latest inspiration was asking high school students for budget advice. Doesn't she at least grasp the optics? No. She just flunked the Dunning-Kruger test grotesquely.
Remember when the Liberals refused to produce a budget because the situation was uncertain? Unless it was a flat-out lie, they literally didn't realize the situation had been uncertain for past budgets, including during world wars, and past budget projections were usually fish-wrap within months. Instead they decided they could manage the nation's finances brilliantly without a silly old budget. So our deficit is now like whatever man and we're hoping some high schooler knows how many zeros there are in a billion.
It's not just the feds. I see where Iain Rankin, about to become Nova Scotia premier, claims his selection as provincial Liberal leader “is about what people want to see next. They want to see action on climate change. They want to see us continuing down the path of righting historic wrongs”. Yeah. As opposed to coping with the budgetary train wreck, the sluggish economy and this pesky coronavirus. Unless he thinks they're under such control he also has time to change the weather and the past.
Didn't someone warn repeatedly of a “crisis of governance” in Canada? Oh right. Me. For instance in the Ottawa Citizen Nov. 17, 2006, the National Post March 20 2015 and the Post again Feb. 7, 2018. And while I realize Cassandra didn't get invited to a lot of parties, there comes a point where it matters who was right not just who sounded good.
It's easy to get fatigued or numb. Remember, on COVID alone they destroyed PPE, sent much of the rest to China, called border closings racist and masks ineffective. Now they're sitting on rapid tests, thrashing on the prescribed two-dose schedule, can't administer what vaccines we do have, are paying more for less, and still boasting.
We live in a land of childish make-believe instead of coming to grips with the adult reality of human frailty and the irrevocable nature of some mistakes. It's up to voters to wake up and shake the politicians awake on everything from health care to geopolitics.
Otherwise, if you think this is a crisis, just wait.
THE FIRST STEP IN FIXING A PROBLEM IS TO QUIT THE DENIAL.