Canada Falling Further Behind In Vaccination Race As Federal Procurement Lags

No amount of government spin will change what people are seeing.

The gap between what the federal government says about Canada’s vaccination effort, and the reality of that effort, is growing wider by the day.

While initially seeking to shift blame to the provinces, it is turning out to be increasingly the case that federal vaccine procurement is falling short.

In many cases, provinces have been able to rapidly distribute vaccines, when they have those vaccines on hand.

But getting the vaccines is the responsibility of the federal government, and the government is simply not keeping up.

“Thursday vaccine tech briefings are back. Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo highlights that the Pfizer purchase announced this week means that there will be enough shots for everyone by September. Note that the vast majority of those shots arrive in Q3”

“One Canadian out of every 100 has received a COVID a vaccine. In the USA it is 3 out of every 100. In the UK 4.5 and in Israel it is 23. These are just some of the countries we are behind. The fault lies with the @JustinTrudeau government. Read & RT”

Major General Dany Fortin, one the leaders of the vaccine distribution effort, noted today that it will be months until vaccine distribution really picks up, with the country starting to get about two million weekly doses in April.

Meanwhile, in other developed nations including the UK, Israel, and the US, things are moving much more rapidly.

As noted by Brian Lilley, a key part of the reason for this is that the Trudeau government made an early bet on partnering with China, a bet that clearly didn’t pay off:

“LILLEY: Canada lags because of Trudeau’s inaction “Big problem was signing deal to develop vaccine w/Chinese firm that cut Canada out of the system months after May announcement. Trudeau didn’t start signing deals with other vaccine companies til Aug.””

“Also as we now know the Chinese vaccine is the least effective of them all. Only 50%. On what grounds was it ever a good idea for Canada to do an exclusive deal with the Chinese? Our long dark winter ahead had its start here”

https://twitter.com/LindaFrum/status/1349687537254739968

And, it’s not partisan or ‘negative’ to point out that the responsibility for this lies with the federal government. It’s simply the facts:

“[Ouch. By a guy who knows what he’s talking about] “The provinces have worked out their logistics issues and are not the problem. The problem is clearly that the federal government is not able to procure significant doses of vaccine until April.””

The federal government can and will try to spin their way around this, but Canadians are going to increasingly see other countries moving back towards a semblance of normality, while we remain mired in the crisis, and that isn’t going to sit well with many people.

Spencer Fernando

Photo – YouTube