The Liberals maintain a healthy lead in the latest opinion polls , but that advantage is at risk as the government’s vaccine roll-out fails to meet public expectations.
Good news has been as rare as butterflies at sea, with Canadians left crippled by vaccine envy, as they watch their American neighbours receive their injections.
Pfizer has cancelled all shipments this week and reduced deliveries next month as it expands its plant in Belgium; the European Union has warned it might impose controls on drug exports; embarrassing new details have been released about the Trudeau government’s abortive deal with a Chinese vaccine maker; and a Canadian manufacturer has complained about lack of support to produce a made-in-Canada vaccine solution.
In an emergency House of Commons debate on COVID vaccines on Tuesday evening, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole took aim at the Liberal government, saying there was “no plan B because there was never an effective plan A” for the distribution of vaccine.
New documents tabled in the House suggest there was a plan A — it just wasn’t very effective. The government’s first inclination was to rely on the Chinese to supply a vaccine that could be manufactured in Canada.
But Ottawa discovered there were problems with the CanSino deal, just as Justin Trudeau started promoting the partnership last May.
The National Research Council signed a deal with CanSino on May 6, 2020, to conduct clinical trials, use and produce the vaccine at its site in Montreal.
Before the month was out, the federal government was aware that shipments of the vaccine were being held by China’s customs agency at Beijing airport, even though other countries were receiving doses to trial.
By July, it was clear the CanSino deal was dead, presumably nixed by the Chinese authorities because of the on-going tensions with Canada over Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
It wasn’t until Aug. 5 that the government’s plan B became public, with the agreement to buy vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna.
The Pfizer deal started to look less prescient, with the news that the supply of vaccine will dry up temporarily, even as the U.S. continues to see its 100 million dose contract honoured by the company from its plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., just 200 km from the Canadian border.
The slowdown in supply has seen Canada slip from the top 10 to 20th place in the league table of countries, ranked by doses administered per 100 people, behind peer countries like Germany, Spain, Italy and the U.K.
Only 114,695 Canadians have been fully vaccinated, after the number of vaccine administered slipped to just 15,213 doses last Sunday.
The approval of new vaccines would be a game-changer for the government
To compound Trudeau’s problems, Brad Sorenson, the CEO of Canadian biotech company Providence Therapeutics, has been telling media that his company couldn’t get the government’s attention last spring. The NRC supported phase one trials with $4.7 million of funding but would not back Providence’s proposal that it take over the NRC’s plant in Montreal, which had been earmarked as the site to produce the CanSino vaccine. Sorenson took issue with Trudeau’s contention that there is no domestic vaccine capacity in Canada.
“Eventually the Canadian government will recognize that we have the capacity and talent to do this,” he told CTV’s Power Play.
The deluge of unwelcome news has not dented Trudeau’s optimism. Things are in “good shape,” he insisted, and vaccine doses are still “very much on track” — even though all of Canada’s supply comes from Europe.
Trudeau told O’Toole during question period on Wednesday that he spoke to the European Union Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who assured him that any action would not affect Pfizer and Moderna deliveries to Canada.
The prime minister has risked his credibility on Canadians receiving six million doses by the end of March — and on vaccinations being available to anyone who wants one by the end of September.
“It is very, very clear that Canadian contracts have been signed and the delivery schedule we have laid out will be respected,” he said.
The prime minister should have learned his lesson from the CanSino experience — that politics rarely operates to delivery schedules and politicians everywhere have become vaccine nationalists.
But maybe he knows something we don’t. Anita Anand, the procurement minister, released projections that suggest up to 23 million Canadians, or 61 per cent of the population, could be vaccinated by the end of June, if new vaccines currently under review are authorized. Is that a hint that good news is coming?
Canada has a contract for up to 38 million doses of Johnson and Johnson’s single dose vaccine, which is expected to deliver clinical trial results next week.
Anand told the House on Tuesday that Canada’s vaccine strategy has been “deliberate, strategic and comprehensive.” That may be true behind the scenes but the public face has been disorganized, indiscriminate and chaotic.
The approval of new vaccines would be a game-changer for the government — some rare good news that might signal better times to come, like a crocus poking its head through the snow.
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