Health minister: Campaign responsibly Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. The health minister said Tuesday a federal election would be safe despite the threats of a fourth wave of COVID-19, City News reports. “Elections Canada has indicated that they are prepared and ready, should an election get called, to do so safely,” Patty Hajdu said. She parties must campaign responsibly: “We all have a responsibility as leaders, elected leaders, to act appropriately based on disease epidemiology in our region.” A parliamentary committee that studied a possible pandemic election came to a different conclusion. Hadju was in Fredericton with Green-turned-Liberal MP Jenica Atwin to announce a research grant on access to abortion in New Brunswick, CBC reports. Liberals holding steady: A Leger poll released Tuesday shows the Liberals holding a steady lead, the Canadian Press reports. LPC: 29, CPC, 24, NDP, 16, BQ 7, GPC 4, PPC 3. The results suggest there has been little movement as many observers anticipate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling an election this month, which Leger executive vice-president Christian Bourque says could be a problem for the Tories and New Democrats. “If you’re the Conservatives, the concern would be that if the writ really is dropped in mid-August, you’re coming into it without any momentum,” he said. “Usually parties like to come into an election campaign with a little bit of wind at their back. But that’s not happening right now for the Conservatives nor for the NDP. That’s why the Liberals are holding steady.” Not so fast: Veteran pollsters Darrell Bricker and Frank Graves tell the Hill Times that the outlook is anything but sure for the Liberals. Bricker: “The question is: would the risk be higher or lower now, or two years from now or a year from now? What we don’t know is how Canadians are going to respond to an election being called for no apparent reason, in the middle of a pandemic.” Graves: "Honestly, the only reason for calling a snap election [is] unless you have extremely unusual circumstances, like, you need a mandate to deal with, whether you sign a free trade agreement or something of that magnitude, none of which exists right now. The main reason that snap elections are called is because the people calling them think they’ll win a majority.” Call me maybe: Paul Wells breaks down the latest call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Trudeau, and the curiously divergent read-outs put out by their offices. It points to a break down of what was supposed to be a renewed Canada-U.S. relationship, and some unhappiness on the American side with Ottawa: Half a year into the Biden presidency, we’re left with the impression of cordial relations across the border, not more. I’m given to understand the Americans are frustrated by this. The Biden administration is plainly doing whatever the heck it wants on supply chains and Line 5, but it doesn’t take a friendly government to the north for granted. Its fondest wish is that Canada and the U.S. might work together on shared priorities in the rest of the world—that these occasional top-level phone chats over hockey bets might become more than a list of (apparently almost always uniquely Canadian) requests for exemptions from assorted bilateral irritants. What would excite Biden tremendously, in other words, is some burden-sharing. Time for the stick: Writing in Maclean's Scott Gilmore says it's time to put away the carrot and bring out the stick to convinced the unvaccinated to roll up their sleeves and do their part to end the pandemic. Who are these people? The University of Sydney conducted a study of the unvaccinated in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. It found that, in comparison to the population at large, these people tended to have “less agreeable personalities”, be less cooperative with others, more selfish, and more extroverted. (In the vernacular, the term is “assholes”.) Adding to this mix we also have the gullible, people who believe Anthony Fauci created the pandemic, or that Bill Gates is putting tracking chips in the vaccines. And, there are of course the misled. It is not a coincidence that Fox News viewers are far less likely to believe the vaccine works, according to a recent Axios/Ipsos poll. Facts, patiently explained in infographics and with simpler and simpler soundbites, do not reach these people. And if they do, they are drowned out by the cynical clamouring of conservative media. Worse yet, it is a well-documented psychological irony that people who hold an unpopular opinion will only dig in further when presented with evidence to the contrary. Writing in the Post, Tasha Kheiriddin makes the same point, without using any bad language. In the Globe, health columnist André Picard points out that the unvaccinated are making it hard to end the pandemic. The pandemic has become a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Recent Ontario figures tell this story eloquently. Between June 12 and July 21, the unvaccinated made up 95.7 per cent of new COVID-19 cases, 97.4 per cent of hospitalizations, 99.5 per cent of intensive care admissions, and 95.8 per cent of deaths. (These numbers come from COVID-19 data cruncher extraordinaire, Dr. Jennifer Kwan.) Data out of the U.S. about breakthrough infections are also quite telling. Between Jan. 1 and April 30, there were 10,262 breakthrough infections recorded among 11.8 million infections. That’s the story we have to retain: If you are fully vaccinated, you have a minimal chance of getting infected, getting sick or dying of COVID-19. Manitoba opens up: Manitoba is removing mask mandates and dropping capacity sooner than expected, CBC reports, thanks to low case counts and a high vaccination rates. Ontario releases back to school plan: Ontario plans to put all students back in class this fall, although they will have to wear masks in class, CTV reports. — Stephen Maher | 