Today we are enduring quite the coronavirus combo.
Variant infecting.
Insufficient vaccinating.
Impatient awaiting.
Ambiguous directing.
Weak revitalizing.
Uncertain supporting.
Tardy manufacturing.
Massive spending.
Defensive leading.
Foreign regenerating.
The generous read of the federal government’s handling of the worst public health menace in anyone’s lifetime is that it has been revealed wanting. A more accurate take is that it is at the moment a hot mess. An impolite description is it is a disappointment unbecoming us.
It is naturally easier to see now what wasn’t seen then; such is the way of crises as they evolve. But in part because there was insufficient transparency and inept accountability on his government, we have been hurt that Justin Trudeau could make his good and bad moves without the typical political, financial or electoral reins on power.
His government bet the bank on the wrong horse, then vacillated on the vaccine acquisition, and has since spent profusely on anesthetizing us with our money through the pandemic without providing a clear roadmap on how it intends for us to shake the addiction it wrought. It appears to favour prolonged dependence, which will both hamper a virile recovery and hobble future economic conditions.
It was naïve in turning first to the CanSino vaccine from China, not recognizing that Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou might be an eventual bargaining chip for that early supply from an aggrieved government. When the deal was quickly called off, when it was clear she would continue her Vancouver detention, Canada was flat-footed in securing timely provisions elsewhere.
Having missed buying the front-row seats, Canada gorged on buying in the nosebleeds. So, yes, we have more vaccines for our population than anyone: nine possible doses from six different sources. We just won’t get them before there are hundreds, likely thousands more deaths by dithering.
Mind you, the government was swift in a couple of respects: first, in rejecting early private bids to manufacture vaccine at existing facilities in favour of financing a still-under-construction plant under the National Research Council; and second, in approving then deep-sixing the now-nearly-forgotten scheme to splurge on the WE Charity to manufacture volunteer youth labour last summer.
Where that leaves Canada is behind countries we are ahead of in most every other respect of public health, life expectancy, economic development, education and environment. They will in many cases rejuvenate their health, reopen their economies and repair their psyches long before we will now. We will arrive unfashionably late to this party.
Within the week the United States – no pandemic paragon of virtue, it should be noted – will have vaccinated the equivalent of our entire population. We will have vaccinated less than 3% of it. Were we keeping per capita pace, today we’d be more than three times further; instead we will not be fully vaccinated until mid-2022, long after all of Europe.
We are the per capita global champions of hoarding and G7 leaders in spending. Who needs the Tokyo Olympics with such achievement?
We will, though, get our vaccines before Africa, in part due to Canada’s unconscionable request of the international COVAX reservoir of doses for developing countries. Our lamentable state of 1.5 million doses is nevertheless five times greater than that of an entire continent without the means to trample over others the way we are. We correctly note we have paid into the reservoir, but how does our moral compass guide us to believe we can cash in?
In the early days of the pandemic, despite its initial hesitation to adequately help, the Trudeau government earned proper plaudits for what even the skeptics could not readily disparage. But like any shooting-star stock that defies easy explanation, there is the inevitable reversion or regression to the mean – not the emotional mean, but the mathematical one, somewhat like water eventually finding its level.
In a way, the Trudeau government has come back to earth from its space flight and can no longer defy gravity as we orbit the sun for the second time in the pandemic. While we are a country of 13 jurisdictions and the other 12 leaders have had the wobblies along the path, the legacy belongs for better and worse to Trudeau.
He faultily made vital choices for our well-being as he made valuable ones. Now he stands to lead the country through its most frustrating, enervating period of the forlorn battle against the coronavirus. As we get toward summer we are likely to be landlocked – our beautiful country will remain ours only to enjoy, thanks to his decisions – and it is one of the more curious situations to understand why the prime minister would want to test the country’s resolve in such circumstance with an election.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
