Ever since Canada's vaccination effort started back in January, there has been an ongoing feud between the federal government (which is responsible for acquiring the vaccine from overseas manufacturers) and the provinces (which are responsible for actually administering the doses to individual Canadians).
More specifically, there has been a feud between Conservative Premiers (principally Doug Ford of Ontario, Jason Kenney of Alberta, Brian Pallister of Manitoba and Scott Moe of Saskatchewan) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Procurement Minster Patty Hajdu, with occasional but much less trenchant contributions from François Legault of Quebec and John Horgan of BC. Because most the noise is coming from Conservatives, it is pretty easy to conclude that this is a party political activity, and not one based on real logistical and healthcare concerns. It is about point-scoring and blame-shifting. Sad, but true. For either side to accuse the other of "playing politics" seems like the ultimate in duplicity, but that's exactly what they are doing.
The viewpoint coming from the provinces is that they are ready and organized, but they just don't have enough vaccine doses to administer, whch is all the fault of the federal Liberal government, and specifically of Justin Trudeau, as thpugh he is the guy running around with a forklift truck, physically wresting doses of vaccine from those stingy foreign suppliers.
Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Hajdu, on the other hand, maintain that they have worked miracles in obtaining as many doses as they have, and that they have distributed them all with a minimum of fuss to the provinces, which have then sat on their hands, hoarding doses, and administering them in a dilatory and lackadaisical fashion.
These narratives can not both be true, but whom are we to believe? A series of tweets from Patty Hajdu the other day gives a pretty comprehensive and apparently fact-based breakdown of how many doses the federal government has obtained and shipped out to the provinces, and how many of those doses have actually been administered by the provinces. For example: Ontario has received 4,022,875 doses and administered just 2,545,640 (63%) of them; 2,370,707 doses have been provided to the province of Quebec, and 1,552,215 (65%) of them have been used; Alberta has had 1,078,215 and administered 707,482 (65%) of them; Manitoba has reveived 364,230 and used just 210,088 (58%); etc.
On the face of it, then, the provinces do seem to be sitting on stockpiles of literally millions of doses (a million-and-a-half in Ontario alone), suggesting that their roll-out is maybe not as efficient as they claim. The provinces, for their part, are crying foul, and pointing out that these figures include shipments only delivered in the last couple of days - an unspecified number of doses - which obviously they have not had chance to use yet.
As with most of these things, both sides have their own figures, and never the twain shall meet. Statistics battle statistics, and no-one ever backs down, because that is politically unpalatable. Such is politics. But wouldn't it be nice if they could put the politics aside for once, and cooperate in this national emergency. Hah! Fat chance of that!
No comments:
Post a Comment