Tag Archives: Procurement

Roundup: Zero doses mean new histrionics

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News hit yesterday morning that some of those Pfizer shipments will be a little less than anticipated – namely zero doses, which had a bunch of people in a panic. Making things worse is the fact that some European countries will still get some doses while Canada isn’t getting any, which has even more people in a tizzy (never mind that most of those countries are far behind Canada in terms of their own vaccinations, while our provinces can keep on rolling out second doses). Ontario premier Doug Ford went on television to say some boneheaded things, including a public appeal to Joe Biden to send Ontario a million doses out of the goodness of his heart, and the media cycle went into full distraction mode.

Never mind the assurances from Justin Trudeau, Anita Anand, or Major-General Dany Fortin that with their retooled production lines, Pfizer would be able to deliver more doses faster in February to catch up with the missed shipments and keep the contracted doses for the end of the first quarter, no, the opposition parties all demanded serious accountings and timelines, as though this government could provide them – especially in light of just how fluid this situation has proved to be, and the fact that the zero-doses notice came that morning.

Something else I found a bit off-putting throughout this was media personalities trying to demand that the prime minister personally get on the phone with the CEO of Pfizer to demand that something must be done. I fail to see what this could possibly accomplish other than the theatrics of hysterically demanding, nay, weeping into the phone in desperation as though that were the key to making Pfizer’s retooling happen faster, or more doses appearing by magic, because apparently, we deserve them more than countries who are further behind in their vaccinations than we are – but that seems to be what everyone is demanding. We have become so inundated with pandemic theatre, with demands that won’t meaningfully have any impact, or dramatically introduced half-measures that aren’t doing enough while infections continue to climb. To demand more theatre seems to me to be an indication of the state of debasement we find ourselves in, but when all you worry about is optics over substance, then I suppose it makes a certain amount of twisted logic.

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Roundup: The rot in Alberta’s witch hunt

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The Alberta government’s $3.5 million special committee into Un-Albertan Activities “foreign-funded special interest groups” opposed to the energy sector has posted their list of commissioned studies, and they are a collection of climate deniers, and foreign-funded special interest groups – oil companies – who write boosterism for the sector. Oh, and there’s also a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense in there as well. And yes, they paid thousands of dollars for those reports.

This is what the government spent $3.5 million on, at a time when they are complaining that they are so broke (because they relied too much on a high price of oil) that they are looking to slash and burn public services in the province. The fact that they are funnelling money to hucksters and charlatans, and that they accepted the work of a conspiracy theorist to launch the whole committee in the first place, is par for the course in the province, unfortunately. This whole exercise is a kind of distillation of the absolute rot in Alberta politics that its potency would be fatal if you ingested it. One wonders what the straw that breaks the camel’s back will wind up being (and it may yet be those MLAs’ pandemic vacations), but this particular farce is absolutely galling.

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Roundup: More pandemic theatre

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The horror show of COVID infections continues apace in Ontario, and premier Doug Ford has decided to get really serious and issue a “stay-at-home” order, which amounts to little more than the mockdown that is currently in place already. In spite of his promises of an “iron ring” around long-term care facility, there are now outbreaks at forty percent of facilities. Ford won’t do anything about the sick days that are necessary for people to stop spreading infections at workplaces, and he won’t do anything about evictions from commercial landlords. So he’s totally handling this with aplomb.

So really, what Ford is offering is more pandemic theatre – the close cousin of security theatre. And most of the restrictions and exemptions don’t actually make sense. They’re not going to do enough to curb transmission – especially as newer variants start making their way into the community – because he won’t do the hard work of closing the large workplaces where spread is happening, because that would be harming the economy – as though rising infections and deaths won’t do worse economic damage. Ford continues to shirk his responsibilities and let this pandemic get worse, and more deaths to pile up, as he tries to shift blame and try and to get people to blame one another than acknowledge his own culpability. The “Uncle Doug” schtick isn’t working, and he keeps hoping it will, and here we are, waiting for things to get worse before he institutes more half-measures. Welcome to Ontario – yours to discover.

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Roundup: O’Toole’s Rebel problem

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Tongues were wagging over the Twitter Machine yesterday as the Rebel boasted that they had an “exclusive interview” with Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, in which they discussed why the China People’s Daily was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, while the Rebel and other similar outlets were not. Of course, even that premise was false, as the People’s Daily is not a member of the Gallery. Oops. It quickly surfaced that O’Toole didn’t actually give an interview – questions were emailed to his communications team, who responded with answers that could be attributed to O’Toole, but it wasn’t an interview per se.

Nevertheless, there are troubling questions to be raised, such as why they thought to respond to the Rebel in the first place – though afterward they said that they wouldn’t in the future. But that aside, something that O’Toole stated in the piece is also deeply problematic, because he is rooting for the so-called “Independent Press Gallery,” which is a start-up organization founded by True North Initiative’s Candice Malcolm, which is essentially Rebel Lite™, and said organization includes True North and the Rebel. So O’Toole is cheering for the Rebel to get accreditation (which, it needs to be made clear, party leaders have no say over. Accreditation is about access to the building for the purposes of reporting, and while the Press Gallery is self-governing, it goes through the Speaker and Sergeant-at-Arms to gain that accreditation).

What this stance O’Toole is making demonstrates is what I talked about in my weekend column – that his party is still happy to turn a blind eye to racists and white supremacists when they think they can use them to score goals against Trudeau. It also brings to mind Andrew Scheer’s farewell speech as leader, when he told party followers to trust outlets like True North and the Post Millennial for their news rather than mainstream sources, which is alarming because of the fact that much of their “reporting” is not actually that, and has been a driver of misinformation. Also of note is that the Post Millennial is in part controlled by the professional shitposters on O’Toole’s payroll – so that gives you an idea about what they are actually looking to promote and gain accreditation for. That O’Toole says they won’t respond to Rebel inquiries in the future is not comforting, because this demonstrates that they still considered this an audience worth engaging with until they got caught.

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Roundup: Expired election-rigging accusations

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Over the past few days, there has been a bit of uproar over a Conservative Party webpage that decries attempts by the Liberals to “rig the next election in his favour,” in light of everything that we are seeing in the US. The page has since been taken down, but most people have forgotten that this pre-dated the last election in 2019, when the Conservatives objected to the last round of Elections Act changes, because of the pre-writ limits that imposed, while claiming the government could keep spending and advertising and that only the opposition was hobbled. That’s not actually correct because governments can’t be doing partisan activities (such as wearing a Conservative Party t-shirt to a government announcement, like Pierre Poilievre would do when he was briefly a minister of the Crown), and using government or even House of Commons resources for partisan activities is prohibited.

Nevertheless, it is a reminder that we are not immune to these kinds of accusations in this country, even if they are in a slightly different form or context from the Gong show that is the US post-election, and the utter mendacity of those who claim that it was “stolen.” Meanwhile, here’s CTV reporter Glen McGregor on what election law breaches have been like in Canada over the past decade, and lo, they have been from the Conservatives.

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Roundup: Ford fails, flails, and falsifies

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As the numbers of this second wave of the pandemic continue to climb, Ontario premier Doug Ford continues to flail and grasp for any bit of cover that he can. Yesterday, while warning that the next set of modelling data are truly terrifying – but not actually doing anything about it – he tried to once again shift blame. And the not doing anything – making vague promises that he’ll consider more actions for Monday or Tuesday, rather than immediately, despite the fact that the current mockdown isn’t working and ICU capacity is at the red line in most of the hot spots, means that Mr. “I won’t hesitate” is once again hesitating, and there will be more lives lost on his watch.

As for the blame-shifting, Ford (along with a couple of other premiers) are howling that they’re running out of vaccines, after the slow roll-out – so slow that Ontario is already starting to give people their second doses. But, running out of vaccines is a good thing, because it means they’re going into arms. And more to the point, he knows that there are thousands of more Pfizer doses coming next week, the week after, and then again, the week after that, plus another bulk shipment of Moderna vaccines – and deliveries are expected to scale up further in February. They know this. This has been communicated for a while now, but he’s trying to deflect the attention to Trudeau once again to divert away from his own incompetence. (And apparently there were some hurt feelings among the premiers during Thursday’s first ministers meeting because Trudeau dared to criticize the provinces for their role in the slow roll-out. The poor dears).

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1347570045178818560

Meanwhile, here’s a roundup of vaccine plans and timelines being put out by the provinces and territories (assuming that they will actually meet them).

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Roundup: Fundraising off of blame-shifting

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has opted to keep up his little pissing match with the federal government over the border and what he claims are insufficient measures or testing, in spite of all evidence to the contrary – or of the fact that using rapid antigen tests at the border wouldn’t necessarily give proper results because they don’t work as well when someone is pre-symptomatic, meaning they would be just as likely to give a false sense of security with arrivals that may very well be unwarranted. And to top of all off, Ford is using this exercise in blame-shifting in order to send out fundraising appeals to his part’s donors – but remember, he’s “not playing politics.”

Speaking of Ford “not playing politics,” he tried to clap back at Ottawa’s mayor over concerns that the city wasn’t consulted before the mockdown was announced, and the fact that we are in the twenty-eight-day zone rather than the fourteen-day zone despite having the lowest positivity rate in the province and zero cases in ICU. Ford’s response – that he’s trying to save lives, and the mayor must not care about body bags piling up on his doorstep. Excuse me? Ford sat on federal money that should have gone to increasing testing and tracing capacity, and dollars for making schools safer, and for long-term care facilities – which he promised he’d put an “iron ring” around and then did nothing about it, and who has hesitated for month before doing a necessary lockdown – and even then didn’t do a proper lockdown, opting instead for a half-measure mockdown that does nothing about workplace infections – and he’s lecturing others about body bags? Sorry, no. He’s the one going to be held to account for the thousands of death on his watch, not the mayor of Ottawa.

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Roundup: The weekend year-enders

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The main networks had their year-enders with prime minister Justin Trudeau air over the weekend, and I’m not sure that we’ve learned too much more that’s new, but nevertheless, here we are. To CBC, Trudeau said that they need to be ready for an election regardless, given that it’s a hung parliament, even if he doesn’t want one, but wouldn’t rule out calling one himself (which is fair, given that there may be a situation where he may not have a choice to clear a logjam in Parliament. Things happen). He also says that it’s possible that he did contract COVID when his wife had it, but he was asymptomatic the whole time and was in self-isolation throughout.

To CTV, Trudeau defended his vaccine strategy given the scramble for PPE early on, slammed the NHL trying to jump the queue for vaccines, gave some more explanation as to the rationale behind the planned stimulus spending once the pandemic ends (and again promised to balance the budget after temporary benefits programmes are wound down), deflected on his ethical blind spots, and stated that he wasn’t ready to decriminalise all drugs yet, despite some sectors calling for it as a way to deal with the opioid epidemic.

Meanwhile, the PM’s private photographer, Adam Scotti, offered his year-in-review, and there are some amazing photographs in there. Take some time to wander through them and it will take a while, because there is a lot to go through from the year that was. I think what I was most taken with were the photos of the full House of Commons from early in the year, and how strange that looks now given the current circumstances. Highly recommended overall.

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Roundup: More year-enders, more bland assurances

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The year-ender interviews with the prime minster continue to roll out, so we’ll see how much in there is actually newsworthy. Still from The Canadian Press’ year-ender, Trudeau said that the government is trying to find “balance” with its ability to be transparent while still able to have no-holds-barred closed-door discussions like they do in Cabinet, all in response to questions about why the government is so slow at its promised reforms to the Access to Information system.

From the CBC, Trudeau said that the 500,000 Canadians who got “educational” letters from the CRA about their CERB payments won’t need to repay by the end of the year, as some had feared – never mind that the government created this problem when they weren’t clear about what the eligibility criteria were.

To CTV, Trudeau said that the target date of having Canadians vaccinated by September is something of a conservative estimate – it could happen faster, but it could also happen more slowly, depending on supply chain issues like those that have hit Pfizer already. He also said that he’s less concerned about the comparisons with the US as having plans to inoculate people at a faster per-capita rate, noting that they have much bigger challenges in their healthcare system, hinting that their estimates may be overly optimistic.

Monetary policy

Andrew Scheer is back at shitposting, this time spreading lies about the Bank of Canada and their use of quantitative easing during the pandemic recession. Quantitative easing is not actually just “printing money,” and it’s not going to cause runaway inflation. In fact, we’re running so far below our inflationary targets that the Bank should be running expansionary monetary policy – and yes, the Bank has a helpful primer on quantitative easing for people like Scheer and Pierre Poilievre if they cared to learn. But they don’t, and are jeopardizing the independence of the central bank by keeping up this particular policy of lies and shitposting to try and score points.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339640374751596544

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1339643586204348418

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Roundup: Unleash the year-ender interviews

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It’s year-end interview season, and prime minister Justin Trudeau had a number of them yesterday, so let’s dig through what he had to say in them. To CityTV, Trudeau said that if he could do anything over again, it would be that he would act faster on procuring more personal protective equipment for front-line workers (and here I would have thought he’d say he’d step back from the whole WE Charity/Canada Student Grant decision). This also appears to have been an influence in the decision to hedge bets when it came to vaccine procurement and get options on a wide variety of options from a variety of suppliers in a wide variety of countries. When asked when he planned to get the vaccine, he said that he wouldn’t until they open it up for healthy people in their 40s.

To The Canadian Press, Trudeau hinted that provinces who don’t sign on for national standards to long-term care won’t get additional funding to meet those standards, which sounds like a much tougher stance than the provinces are hoping to get away with. Of course, we have enough instances in recent memory of provinces who took health transfers and spent them on other things, or other transfers to address “fiscal imbalances” that got turned into tax cuts, so you can bet that federal governments are going to be gun-shy about provinces who think that they should get money without strings attached. On the subject of the next Chief of Defence Staff, Trudeau said that he expects their priority will be to address systemic racism in the Forces, which sounds about right.

Finally, the year-ender for Global’s West Block won’t air until this weekend, but they released a preview clip wherein Trudeau says he’s hoping for good news on the two Michaels in Chinese custody before the year is out. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, but it’s certainly on-brand for Trudeau to try and strike an optimistic note about it.

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