Turns out flying to the UAE for a COVID shot is a no-no Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. It was a whirlwind weekend for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The arm's-length Crown corporation, which manages $475.7 billion in investments on behalf of 20 million Canadians, saw its CEO, Mark Machin, abruptly resign on Friday after news broke that he flew to the United Arab Emirates to get a COVID-19 vaccine. (That's two strikes in one: no international travelling, and no vaccine queue-jumping.) Within 48 hours, the CPPIB surprised market watchers by appointing John Graham to replace Machin. According to reporting by Bloomberg, Graham—a longtime research scientist who wound up as a senior managing director at CPPIB in 2018—was not seen as a natural successor to the role, but he's a smart, safe choice to quell a turbulent few days. For Maclean's, Paul Wells dissected Machin's cardinal sin and the subsequent outrage. Just like in December, when Canadian politicians found themselves in hot water by flying to Caribbean getaways, the optics here are arguably worse than the crime itself. Ah, but Machin got vaccinated! Surely he should have put up with global worst-in-class vaccine distribution like the rest of us? Well, again, careful what you mean by “rest of us.” I’ll get vaccinated in Canada on the first day I can by the rules, but lots of people are trying to figure out how to get relatives to a place where they can get the jab sooner rather than later. It’s like we used to say in Montreal: Canada already has two-tier health care; we call the second tier “Vermont.” On Friday, Health Canada finally approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Despite boasting an efficacy rating of just 62 per cent, Canada's regulatory body confirmed it's 100 per cent effective in preventing severe illness and death. Ottawa ordered 22 million doses of the shot, which should arrive between April and September. The news could speed up Canada's vaccination plans—if the provinces can figure out how to administer them quickly enough. Some regions, even municipalities, aren't waiting for their provincial overlords to get their acts together. Ottawa Public Health plans to to jump ahead by vaccinating residents over the age of 80 starting March 5. (The rest of Ontario will begin that phase on March 15.) How are they able to do it? Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson explained the process on CBC's The House yesterday: with vaccine stock waiting in their freezers, city officials are modifying existing municipal infrastructure, typically used to book flu shots online or by phone, and are opening mass vaccination sites across the city to administer them. He makes it sound so easy—hopefully his provincial counterparts are taking notes. Prime time. An interview with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aired yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press. (Watch the full 16-minute video here.) Trudeau was asked about Canada's relations with China, including whether Canada could be pressured into releasing Meng Wanzhou. (Trudeau says no, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later reiterated American support for releasing the two detained Michaels .) The PM also discussed Canada's relationship with the U.S., including the Keystone XL conundrum, shared climate goals and when the border might open. (Spoiler: Trudeau was cagey on just about everything.) Jail time. Canada's prison system is dangerous, racist and falling apart. In a lengthy investigation for Maclean's, Justin Ling dives into the myriad ways that the nation's penal system is not just failing, but actively making things worse. Over the past year, Maclean’s has spoken to dozens of current and former inmates, consulted a host of correctional officers, support staff and lawyers, and consulted thousands of pages of Access to Information documents. It all reveals a racist and discriminatory system that is in crisis. We, as a country, are warehousing our social ills, while offering little in the way of self-improvement, rehabilitation or redemption. Within weeks of allegations of misconduct surfacing around former top general Jonathan Vance, Admiral Art McDonald announced his "voluntary" resignation last week from the same role. Now it's up to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan to prove that real change is underfoot. While he's remaining tight-lipped about ongoing investigations into the two men, he appeared on CTV's Question Period to assure the public that the military and government are taking the whole situation very seriously . Over the next few months, it's safe to bet a whole lot of officials will continue taking the situation very seriously while saying little else of substance. In what may be a contender for the most precisely worded federal announcement of the year so far, Global Affairs Canada wants you to know that International Trade Minister Minister Ng is breaking some kind of ground today, as she delivers remarks on women's entrepreneurship at "Canada’s first women-led virtual trade mission to Taiwan". This occasional newsletter writer is admittedly not up on the who's-who of Canadian female-led trade missions, but he's willing to bet the "first" in that sentence is referring to "virtual". Back in 2009, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was one of the only world leaders talking openly about China's genocide against Uyghurs. Over the subsequent decade, however, Erdogan's temper has cooled. As his country isolated itself from both Western and Eastern allies, China emerged as a necessary evil in diplomacy and trade. As Adnan R. Khan writes in Maclean's, Canada could learn from Turkey's mistakes. Unlike Canada, Turkey faces a much more fraught predicament. Most recently, rumours have spread that China is using vaccine diplomacy—delaying delivery of the Sinovac vaccine—to arm-twist Turkey into ratifying an extradition treaty the two countries signed in 2017. Turkey is home to the world’s largest Uyhgur exile community, and much of the activism to bring attention to the plight of the Uyghurs, and preserve Uyghur culture, is centred in Istanbul. If that community is turned over to the Chinese, the last Uyghur-led resistance to China would potentially disappear. Remember this guy? Former U.S. president Donald Trump spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday, a hotspot for Republican activism and stepping stone toward most presidential candidacies. Trump ruled out starting a new political party, but not a third run at the presidency: "Who knows?" he asked, before bordering on self-parody: "I may even decide to beat them for a third time." Also noteworthy from the event: this nightmare-fuel golden statue of Trump holding what appears to be a magic wand. Happy March. —Michael Fraiman | 