A booster shot for Canada

Canada might be rounding a corner in the vaccine debacle

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Playing catch-up. This week marks the start of what will hopefully be a seismic shift in vaccine delivery to Canada. On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government has ordered 4 million more vaccines from Moderna, to arrive by the end of March, and inked a deal to secure more than 10 million additional doses from Pfizer between April and June. On top of that, Canada will receive a record-high number of vaccines this week . The news could be a saving grace for a government that faced a rough start on vaccine procurement, as both Pfizer and Moderna—the only drug makers whose vaccines have been approved by Health Canada—have cut back deliveries earlier this month. Ontario's head of vaccine administration, Rick Hillier, is taking Ottawa at its word, and said he hopes to start rolling out vaccines to the general public—starting with octogenarians—in early March.

Despite an awkward history of diplomatic tensions between the PM and the Indian government, the latter has agreed to send doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada once the drug gets approved by Health Canada. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country would "do its best" to ensure Canada gets its supply, while Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, tweeted yesterday that delivery would happen in "less than a month".

These vaccine developments came shortly after Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister revealed his province's plan to purchase two million vaccine doses from Alberta-based Providence Therapeutics. The company's CEO, Brad Sorenson, described to Maclean's his efforts to get the Canadian government's attention beginning last spring, in an effort to partner on a made-in-Canada vaccine—but he didn't have any luck. Sorenson told CBC News he'd have a call with Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne over the weekend.

Pallister nonetheless aggressively attacked the federal government on Sunday, alleging Ottawa's contracts with the drug manufacturers flat-out forbade them from dealing with provinces separately. Both AstraZeneca and the federal government have denied those claims. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is scheduling a premiers' meeting as early as this week to hash out the specifics of this new influx of doses expected over the next few months.

Just like old times. Anyone yearning for the thrill of visiting an amusement park this year can look forward to hitting up Canada's Wonderland. No, the country's biggest theme park won't actually be open to the masses like the good ol' days (at least not for certain); instead the site will be converted into a giant mass drive-thru vaccination site. But for anyone who's ridden the Leviathan in the good ol' pre-pandemic days, grumpily waiting in line for hours while you have to pee is all part of the wonderful Wonderland experience.

Postponing democracy. Newfoundland and Labrador was set to have an election over the weekend, but a surging number of COVID-19 cases caused it to scrap plans for in-person voting at the last minute. Instead, mail-in votes will be accepted until Mar. 5 . A spike in cases, caused by the U.K. variant, spread quickly through high schools and urban areas, forcing the government to lock down the province in its most stringent state, Alert Level 5.

Aside from the coronavirus, one of the biggest electoral issues in the Atlantic province has been the dreaded b-word: bankruptcy. For Maclean's, Aaron Hutchins spoke with Memorial University economist Wade Locke to figure out the ramifications of Newfoundland's precarious financial situation—for locals, of course, but also everyone in Canada.

In the latest instance of frustrated anti-lockdown Canadians lashing out, a few Niagarans in Ontario posted violent messages about Mustafa Hirji, the Niagara Region's acting medical officer of health. Someone posted to Facebook a devilish image of the man with the words "FIRE HIRJI" overhead, while several locals commented with threats such as, "Let's put his head on a stick." The outburst comes after Ontario, late last week, revealed which regions would ease lockdown restrictions, reverting to the colour-coded system from late 2020. Niagara was the only region outside of the GTA to remain in the grey zone, a.k.a. full lockdown, starting today. Police have launched a probe into the Facebook threats, while Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford both tweeted condemnations.

A federal agency, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, is reportedly working alongside controversial Chinese telecom company Huawei to fund tech research. According to a scoop by the Globe and Mail, the federally funded council is ponying up $4.8 million, while Huawei obliquely confirmed they're spending more than that. Ottawa has been cagey on whether or not to let Huawei, which has cozy ties to the Chinese government, help create Canada's 5G network; regardless, the telecom giant has created a vast network of relationships with Canadian universities and research groups.

Rematch. The leader of Canada's Green party, Annamie Paul, has decided to once again run for office in Toronto Centre. In last fall's byelection, she lost by about 2,300 votes to Liberal newcomer Marci Ien—the Liberal won 10,500 to Paul's 8,200—leading many to suspect the new face of the Green party would opt for a safer seat next time around, maybe in Guelph or elsewhere in Toronto. (Toronto Centre has been a Liberal stronghold for decades, represented by cabinet ministers Bill Morneau, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Graham, as well as former interim party leader Bob Rae , since 1993.) But as Paul told CTV on Sunday, any other seat would also be new territory for her; at least she's actually lived in Toronto Centre.

Befriending Biden. It's still too early to say what kind of relationship Trudeau will have with U.S. President Joe Biden, and the limits of cross-border travel have only exacerbated the ambiguity. So Paul Wells looked for clues in a little-reported phone call between Trudeau and John Kerry, Biden's Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. As Wells writes in his latest column for Maclean's:

I choo-choo-choose a weird political ad. On Valentine's Day, Alberta's United Conservative Party tweeted out a bizarre Valentine: Premier Jason Kenney saying, "I choo-choo-choose to get a fair deal for you!" Consequently, lovable Simpsons dumb-dumb Ralph Wiggum began trending on Canadian Twitter, owing to his prominence in the famously sad fourth-season Valentine's Day episode. Maybe next year, Kenney's comms team will choo-choo-choose a more flattering meme.

In other tweets, former Bank of Canada head Mark Carney made his first post to the social media platform yesterday morning. He candidly admitted he's doing it to plug his new book and because self-isolation has made him lonely. The bigger question: are those thistles or flowers looming over his head? Maclean's Jason Markusoff is on the case.

—Michael Fraiman

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