Weekend Coffee Talk Feb. 28, 2021: Didi, Seven

 

Yo, Hadrien! A special Coffee Talk for this last day of February wishes a truly Happy Birthday to the littlest Trudeau — a budding Canadian funny person in his own right, in the spirit of Candy and Levy. Party hearty! The very jubilant "Didi" as he's often called, turns seven years old today!

Posted to Sophie's Instagram, that's him with big sister Ella (who also had a birthday this month) going sledding in the pre-COVID times of last January, which already seems like seven hundred years ago.

I'm still trying to remain in good spirits in the hopes Daddy hasn't yet gotten sick of all the undeserved flak he gets, and embarked on his own "walk in the snow." For as Justin once said of his own papa, pretty good PM... even better dad.

But for now, I'm sending out a big birthday wish to the sweetest little photobomb prince of Rideau Cottage. Bonne Anniversaire, Didi. May bright lights forever surround you.

OK, maybe not like that. 😊

Dearest Justin: Amazing Ella-Grace

 

A very special Dearest Justin this week wishes a Happy 12th Birthday to miss Ella-Grace Margaret Trudeau!

 

And that's it for me for the next couple of months or so (except for an upcoming post celebrating Didi's birthday on the 28th), until fortunes hopefully start looking brighter for Daddy leading into the spring.

 

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Bonne Anniversaire, kids. May you reside in the Home of the Prime Minister for many years to come!

A Lone Voice in the Wilderness

 

As I've mentioned frequently, I hate the Globe & Mail. I hate the propaganda push on behalf of their deep pocketed business owners, gearing up to once again endorse the Cons in the next federal election. So I'm hanging on for now to this lone contrarian opinion, from columnist Gary Mason.

 

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Mason knows who's really at fault for Canada's "COVID controversies": not Trudeau. I mean, he works for a Thomson rag, so he has to throw in some caveats about the strawman issue of shutting down foreign travellers, but that seems to be the limit of where Trudeau's liability rests. The headline is bothsides trash and the lede is buried two-thirds down the column, but the gist of it is pretty clear:

Part of me can almost sympathize with Mr. Trudeau. Almost every analysis of how countries are doing when it comes to fighting COVID-19 puts Canada in the poor-to-middling category. That’s not entirely the fault of Ottawa. In fact, the provinces deserve most of the blame.

If Mr. Trudeau were to even hint at bringing down the power of the federal government through the Emergencies Act – something that would be necessary to halt interprovincial traffic, for instance – there would be a full-on mutiny by many premiers, most of them of a conservative persuasion.

Canadian politicians outside the Maritimes want it both ways: keep the economy humming and slay the virus at the same time. Doesn’t work that way. It hasn’t worked that way anywhere in the world.

In short, the fault is not in our stars but in federalism itself. Which has been pointed out repeatedly to deaf ears. Why? That doesn't sell papers or generate clickbait shoutrage like pointing fingers at Justin Trudeau! It also doesn't serve the partisan narrative that the garbage gazillionaires are wanting to push.

I'm glad Gary Mason was willing to point this out, and so was Althia Raj, albeit only on Twitter (which should make for some fireworks with Cousin Coyne on At Issue tomorrow night). But the rest of their colleagues are all-in on the groupthink fearmongering and Trudeau-bashing yet again.

Good GAVI — er, gravity — uh, gravy, my head hurts from all the stupid, and it's only the middle of the first week of the month. Wake me up when February ends.

Chain of Fools

 

Things keep getting worse on the "vaccine panic" front for Justin Trudeau, made so because of the hair-on-fire media's relentless push to blame him for things which aren't in his purview. Now Moderna seems to be the one pulling out the rug, where last week it was Pfizer. It really infuriates me. How do the haters expect him to grab the reins of things which are outside of his control?

It's been repeatedly explained over and over that Canada does not have manufacturing capacity, is not in a position like the powerhouses of the U.K., E.U., and U.S., and was never expected to be "at the front of the line" nor should it be relying solely on vaccines as a panacea.

That's not good enough for the federal Cons, the lazy premiers, and their pet press, who are pointing fingers and shouting at Trudeau that he didn't do enough, isn't doing enough, yada yada yada.

As though it was really that easy to just whip up a special kind of vaccine overnight. Spoiler: It's not.

Here's another scientific explainer confirming this.

AND THE OTHER PARTIES HAVE NO IDEAS!!! 

Hiccups are to be expected. Trudeau does not have a crystal ball. This week-by-week horse race narrative is ludicrous, narcissistic navel-gazing. February might suck right now but things are slated to pick up towards March. There is light at the end of the tunnel even if it flickers from time to time. Remember, six months ago a vaccine wasn't even in sight.

The difficulty will be in hanging on until that point when the provinces are drowning in vaccines. It's bad enough that Ontario has something like 60-80K just sitting in freezers and has done SFA to administer them. Canada keeps sliding down the list because Ford, Kenney et. al. are intentionally slow-walking the rollout to sabotage the federal Liberals for their Con acolytes who have nothing else.

Admittedly, this Moderna hiccup was not a welcome surprise. But that doesn't change the fact Pfizer, last week's boogeyman, is still on track to deliver more than 700K vaccines for the last two weeks of February. As well, Canada is slated for an increased top-up from the COVAX program, and shipments from the E.U. are arriving as we speak. Approvals for Astra Zeneca and J&J should come soon this month, with shipments shortly thereafter. It may seem like forever but it's not. It just feels like it.

I should add, the CEO of Novavax just said, incidentally, that Canada is "doing it right."

But good news doesn't sell, especially not when the owners of those "news" (propaganda) outlets have a campaign to run and a narrative to push, for their preferred party.

I mean what do they expect Trudeau to do? There is no manufacturing capacity at present. Most of the health measures are provincial, and Ford, Kenney, Legault, et. al., have completely abdicated responsibility. They're using their media friendlies to deflect from their failures by putting all their bets on vaccines. Invoking the Emergencies Act can't be done without provincial buy-in, and only in cases where they're overwhelmed. They are not; they just don't care. Moreover, there would be howls of outrage that Trudeau is being a "dictator" in a minority government. Do they want him to threaten Moderna's CEO now with firecrackers up the ying-yang?

It infuriates me more that they're even pushing the asinine "Biden in the basement" narrative about Trudeau ("coward in the cottage"), while lauding Ford as a man of the people for stunts like this:

 

I hope Justin gets a miracle or a stroke of luck soon enough, because these idiots are hell-bent on riding ignorance straight into the gutter. February is sure getting nasty and brutish. But it's not Justin's fault if Canada falls short.

February is the Cruelest Month

Well, I did say the enemy would go back on the attack, and I was right. Just as soon as Justin Trudeau and his team made a bunch of positive announcements about the vaccine push (and got some positive polling), out pops the M$M to try and shoot them down. The story in the Globe & Mail is false.

 

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What I find really disgusting about this obvious attempt at manufacturing consent is that even the ostensibly liberal Toronto Star got into the mix. Clearly, that "ostensibly" modifier has vanished. Now they're just sucking up to their new propaganda ownership. Robert Benzie reports at Queen's Park. But he won't say boo about Drug Ford, who has eighty thousand vaccines in his ice cream fridge waiting to be doled out. "ToryStar" indeed.

They used that biased Kouvalis poll which showed that the other half don't blame the feds, and gave no breakdowns of the demographics for those who do. (When even Bogus Reid is beating you on the "transparency" front, you know you're nothing but a shill.)

This is intentional, and it's blatantly obvious except for those who refuse to see.

They can't fucking wait? All of this because the con premiers abjectly refuse to implement proper restriction protocols so that they don't look like the "bad guy" keeping people under lock and key for public safety reasons. They continue to get a free pass because economy, economy, economy is all that matters. That, and indulging their hate fetish towards the Liberals and particularly Justin Trudeau.

As I've written here numerous times, the Canadian media aren't only biased but pig-ignorant. They're also blatantly racist. Why else would they ignore the success of how Indigenous communities have the highest rates of vaccination and their case numbers are sharply dropping, while brushing aside a very smart brown woman who calls them on their bullshit?

Not to mention ignorant of jurisdictional provisions (or willfully obfuscating, which appears to be the case) to run interference for those pig-ignorant premiers? Number of doses administered is a provincial responsibility, so where the fuck is the criticism of Kenney and Ford?

 

 

They're pack hounds. They're hyenas. They're a menace to society.

 

They're fascist scum.

My two cents is that the billionaires want to become trillionaires. They no longer support facts. They support lies that benefit their bottom line. They're also incredibly short-sighted because all they think about is the next quarter's earnings. (But not the next quarter's vaccine load. Let alone the next 50 years.)

 

The government is expected to focus on something far more important than supply chain hangups today: declaring the Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups terrorist organizations. Considering the fact that Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was employed by Ezra Levant, who the Globe gave op-ed space to whine that his free speech was being censored, if it were up to me the government would declare CTV Globe Bell Media a terrorist sponsor too, expropriate the assets of the Thomson family, and throw the whole lot behind bars.

I know they won't, but that doesn't prevent me or anyone else from looking at them like the fascist filth they are. Let's all cancel the Globe & Mail. It's nothing but a sensationalist rag. Der Sturmer in a suit.

All Talk, No Action

 

I'd wanted to say something about Bell Let's Talk, so I wrote a piece over at my blog on MAiD and mental health. But some new developments got me thinking about a different angle: how can Bell Media claim to care about mental health, as its business practices are literally driving Canadians nuts?

 

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Ever eager to report on sad news about its "competitor," Global News reported recently that Bell Media, part-owner of CTV/Globe (its other foster parent being the gazillionaire Thomson family), was embarking on a round of layoffs to its news division that some observers are calling a "bloodbath."

This even as their C-suite continues to amass hordes of wealth, and even took advantage of some of the COVID-related aid programs meant to help struggling businesses in Canada.

So not only are they contributing to the poor mental health of their now-former employees by jettisoning their jobs, they're destroying Canada's already abysmal journalistic landscape by gutting local coverage, while keeping their "star-power" opinion hacks like Solomon and Fife on the payroll.

 

In short, Bell talks out of  both ends of its receiver. Empty words, a busy signal.

The lack of local coverage in Canadian media is in part why there's so little attention paid to the malfeasance of provincial governments, while Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals get all the (overdone) scrutiny. It's also why the Canadian media hyperfocuses on one story and one story only (SNC, WeGhazi, etc.) and circlejerks with pollsters and pundit panels until its collective palms turn raw.

 

For one thing, pollsters and pundits are cheap. For another, they figure if they decimate the ranks enough, they run the risk of Hillary's Email-ing Canada into a TrumpliCon hellscape that's good for their corporate class and bad for the little folks below. Which would be very bad for Canadians' mental health. But it's all intentional, of course. As CBS honcho and accused sexual predator Les Moonves said of the U.S. media's incessant and sensationalistic Trump coverage, "[Trump] may be bad for America but he's been damn good for CBS."

Ratings, that's all they care about. Ratings, nothing more than ratings.

Talk radio and pundit panels get people juiced up and angry. Good for ratings; bad for mental health — and for democracy. It's modeled on sports analysis, which is geared at getting the audience revved up to argue in favour of their "team." There's never any solutions offered, no constructive critiques and certainly no collaboration. It's just all shouting all the time, the guy in the red tie yelling over the guy in the blue tie. Evan Solomon, Roy Green, Jerry Agar, these types offer what's known as jock journalism.

 

It's not meant for you to think, which is why they let Evan Solomon be an idiot all the live long day. It's meant for you to get mad. It's certainly not meant to uncover truth or "hold government accountable." It's aimed at generating phony scandals and shoutrage stories, the likes of which at this point in time might as well be called Justin Trudeau's version of the Tom Brady "Deflategate." He wins too much. Gotta knock him down a peg to keep the fans happy.

I should also note that Bell for years was perfectly happy to sponsor WE Day events, until the Cons and their enablers (with help from deranged, disgruntled Jesse Brownshirt), working hand in hand with same shoutrage media, effectively destroyed the organisation with their Clintonesque smear as the "Trudeau Liberal slush fund." They let Charlie Dingus run roughshod over Margaret Trudeau and demean her mental health advocacy as graft, that she got to do for no other reason than riding the coattails of her husband and son's last name. In doing so, they effectively terminated a mental health podcast project that Margaret was working on with Sophie. She was really looking forward to doing it.

They silenced and abused two high-profile women advocating for a cause at the focus of their telethon, just to score dunks on the prime minister, deflate his balls. Probably they were jealous. I have no idea.

And, as if all that wasn't bad enough, Bell sucks ass in terms of providing a lifeline to incarcerated people, many of whom are behind bars because of infractions committed while not in the soundest of psychological arrangements. It's obvious they're not big on rehabilitation. Pandemic notwithstanding, so much for "reach out and touch somebody's hand."

 

(Yes, I know that was AT&T. So sue me.)

 

Finally, in 2017 they fired a New Brunswick local radio host for... opening up to her employer about her mental health struggles. I'd say "physician, heal thyself," but they're not physicians. They're a phone company.

 

Now that being said, I'm not entirely opposed to a "Bell Let's Talk" type of awareness/action campaign, albeit with some tweaks (that I plan on writing more about over at Hiki Wiki). Suffice it to say though, as I wrote in a comment over at Dale Smith's site earlier, on a post regarding the MAiD law making its way through Parliament, that perhaps Bell Media should come out publicly in support of Bill C-7 if their goal is to commit journalistic hara-kiri.

Suicide is painless, and you can take or leave it as you please.

Partly Sunny Ways

 

Good news, Liberal groundhogs! Justin Trudeau didn't see his shadow, and neither did the Canadian critters (in a dissenting view from Yankee Phil). Which can only mean one thing: Sunny ways really are on the horizon, complete with a vaccine made from Conservative tears.

As I told you yesterday polls are for dogs and sometimes you need to get a second opinion if the temperature check (which is not a forecast, mind you) appears off. Turns out I was right:

I'm holding onto this for the moment too. Expect the cons to screech even louder to defund the CBC:

"The Conservatives have been unable to make any headway."

"The Conservatives have ticked down to their lowest level since Erin O'Toole became leader at the end of August."

Obviously this is all Justin Trudeau's fault, and the cons need to double down on their accusations that he's been a failure at everything and should probably commit sudoku on live TV. Stonewalling aid bills should help too. So will threatening war with Europe, attacking Joe Biden because reasons and Jason Kenney, complaining that you can't heckle over Zoom, and having no plan as an alternative to what they claim is a "botched" vaccine rollout.

By the way, speaking of that "botched" vaccine rollout...

[Canada] has signed a memorandum of understanding with Novavax to produce its #COVID19 vaccine at the National Research Council of Canada’s Biologics Manufacturing Centre in Montréal.

 

Pending Health Canada approval, millions of doses will be made here.

 

Also announcing up to $25.1 million to biotech company Precision NanoSystems in Vancouver to expand our ability to produce vaccines & future genetic medicines in [Canada]. They’ll build a new manufacturing centre to produce vaccines & therapeutics for disease prevention & treatment.

 

And: up to $14 million to Edesa Biotech, a biopharmaceutical company based in Markham, to advance work on a monoclonal antibody therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is the leading cause among #COVID19 deaths.

I just have two words for Lyin' Brian and Scumbag Steve:

(OK, four words in French: Mangez de la merde.)

 

UPDATE: Eric the fool can eat shit too, because Yurrop just said they're honouring their end of the bargain. Turns out there are some situations where a handshake (or elbow bump) is a valid agreement.

And while the manufacturing ramps up over the coming months and years, for the long-term (as in, future pandemics, which will happen, so Canada doesn't get fooled again)?

 

Here's what's happening today as we speak. Doug's ice cream truck is gonna get full real soon.

 

And lest anyone claim that Trudeau "didn't plan ahead" and rushed to do a slipshod job because he was feeling the heat from the feckless opposition? Turns out these facilities were already under way as of 2018. A Sanofi plant in Ontario; Medicago in Quebec; and VIDO-Intervac in Vancouver.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but burned pretty fast. It takes time to build back better.

Now of course, today's announcement leaves the pundits and press gallery hyenas with nothing legitimate to complain about — which doesn't stop them from complaining anyway, because they can never give Trudeau a break or the credit he deserves. Fortunately, Dale Smith is around to put paid to their dreary OK Doomer-ism:

Now I want to fault Mulroney and Harper for cutting off development of the Avro Arrow DeLorean.

 

But hey, speaking of back seat drivers, Jesus Martin Murphy, take the wheel:

 

 

Good to see that JT23 has no patience for Eric the fool's attempts to play TB12. Fantasy football is fun until you get sacked. And when those responsible for sacking the ones who were previously sacked, get sacked. (Møøse bites kan be pretti nasti.)

Oh, and about that other helmet-head, Yves-François Blanc Cheque? Who Grenier points out has been losing ground in Quebec putting the Liberals ahead? Yeah, that guy gambled bigly on ginning up Islamophobia against Omar Alghabra and lost. Wingnut heads will explode when Canada's first Muslim transport minister has his first chat with the United States' first gay transport secretary. Yay for Omar and Mayor Pete!

 

And good on Trudeau for sticking up for his buddy. Bad Yves-François, the cokehead racist, for being a bad cokehead racist. (Alleged cokehead; confirmed racist. Also "alleged" "racist" with a p instead of the c...)

Hang onto all of this for now, because the enemy is sure to attack again. But today, at least, was a pretty good day. Light is poking through the shadows at last. So keep social distancing, wear your (layered) masks, wash your hands, and hold on for one more day. Speak moistly and carry a hockey stick.

Pandemic Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day, and whether or not the skittish rodent sees his shadow, many people are saying we could be in for six more weeks of COVID winter anyway. But as a matter of fact, there are reasons to anticipate light at the end of the burrow — er, tunnel.

 

Yes, even if you're a skittish Liberal. Like me.

As Dr. André Picard writes in one of the Globe's rare worthwhile op-eds, things are looking up in spite of what he and other specialists calls the "pandemic paradox." We're halfway to the home stretch, even though it feels like we're repeating the same insanity over and over again with the same results. Here's the good doc with a healthy dose of reality for the doom-and-gloomers pushing a bitter pill:

In Canada, we have contracts to purchase 398 million vaccine doses – enough to vaccinate the population at least five times over – and yet we have a dire shortage, with only 1.1 million of those doses having been delivered to date.

The vaccine puzzle is not that puzzling ... To date, only two vaccines have been approved in Canada – ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. In the coming weeks, however, we can expect approval of more products from AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson.

It takes time to manufacture billions of doses and, whether or not there’s a signed contract, not every country can be first in line for shipments. There are economic and political realities that determine who gets dibs, and it’s not going to be a country such as Canada, which has a small population and no domestic coronavirus vaccine production.

Canada’s supply problem will be resolved with time. By summer, we will likely be swimming in vaccine and, instead of bemoaning lack of supply, the provinces will be complaining that they don’t have the fridge space for all the doses Ottawa is sending their way. (Rule No. 1 of federal-provincial relations: The glass is always too empty or too full.)

So February is the cruelest month for this government on a usual basis, but doubly so due to the pandemic — and yet, much of it may just be COVID fatigue mixed in with the usual midwinter grousing that Canadians (and others in dark northern climates) are prone to this time of year.

As I said, nasty, brutish... and short.

 (Apologies to T.S. Eliot Trudeau and Calvin Thomas Hobbes.)

But what's really being missed in all of this seemingly endless grousing is just what a remarkable achievement it is for a vaccine to exist at all, a mere year after a worldwide pandemic of catastrophic proportions broke out. As Dale Smith of Routine Proceedings reminds us

It’s a once-in-a-century pandemic and new vaccines have been created in record time. The fact that there are hiccups in early roll-out should be expected. Why are we lighting our hair on fire over each one of them? Seriously, guys.

and Globe journalist Carrie Tait told Ryan Jespersen on his podcast, Real Talk:

It's shocking we even have access. We don't have manufacturers. There's frustration but this is a global shortage. Everybody wants one thing...that didn't exist six months ago.

Which is probably why an actual vaccines expert gave Canada a pretty good B on its rollout, rather than the disqualifying F-minus the media and uninformed rage-punchers would slap on Justin's head. She's not just any "vaccines expert" from the school of Twitter University, either:

With COVID-19 vaccine shipments from both Pfizer and Moderna delayed or cut in recent weeks, the Trudeau government has faced criticism for its procurement and distribution process. But given the challenges, Dr. Noni MacDonald says the rollout has so far been relatively successful.

If Dr. Noni MacDonald were to grade the federal government on its COVID-19 vaccine rollout so far, she would offer a "solid B, if not a B-plus."

"Given what we have to deal with ... our provincial/territorial responsibility for health [and] our relatively small population for our huge geography, I think we're doing pretty good," said MacDonald.

She is the pediatrics professor at Dalhousie University's School of Medicine and a founding member of the World Health Organization's global advisory committee on vaccine safety.

As I've said before: per the old Canadian expression, the Trudeau government is doing as good as possible considering the circumstances.

People seem to have the memory of goldfish. Does anybody recall when the top-of-mind issue that was going to define the year/bring down the Trudeau government last February was the railway protests? Or the infamous Lagavulin Whiskey affair the February before that? I forget, when was National Lampoon's A Passage to India? I think that was February 2018. And I believe February 2017 was the fauxtrage over the Aga Khan's Gilligan Island. By February 2022, the panic of the day will probably be Trudeau's socks again. Eventually the cloud passes, because it's all just overblown bullshit.

It’s pandemic Groundhog Day. (The rodent-watching tradition, it’s interesting to note, can be traced back to Candlemas Day, a Christian festival where candles were burned in the dark days of winter to ward off illness and plague.)

(Insert requisite Canadian beaver joke here.)

But hey, that's not all: look what else is on track for later this month, per a brand-new phone call between the two most powerful alumni of (their respective) Montreal high schools:

[The PM and the VP] also discussed plans for a MEETING IN FEBRUARY between PM Trudeau and President Joe Biden. Details are still being worked out on whether it is in person, or virtual. Dates are still being nailed down, I am told.

Did I mention they talked vaccines? And reminisced over a Gino Vannelli ballad, about Degrassi High. 🎶 When I think about those nights in Montreal... 🎶

The bromance is back, baby, and this time it's a diplomatic double date!

Sunny ways will be here again, my friends. As the old saying goes, it;s always darkest before the dawn.

 

So always look on the bright side of life...

Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Evan's Door

 

Evan Solomon is an idiot. I'm sorry but he just is. The counterpart Ken to Broadcast Bias Barbie, aka Mockingbird Mercedes Stephenson over at CanWest Shaw Corus Goebbel News. Complete abdication of fact-checking responsibility, the kind of gross dereliction of duty that makes Daniel Dale sad.

 

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And... no surprise, Dorian Grey, the self-portrait dealer with the shit-eating grin who I'm sure would love to see his former employer defunded lest Rosie Barton and Catherine Cullen outdo him in both ratings and talent, has a radio comedy act. Amid serious discussions about the vaccine war (and by "serious discussions" I mean "what can we blame Trudeau for today"), the himbo version of Sean Hannity was able to come up with such genius conundrums as this:

 

Paraphrasing Billy Ocean for a moment here, did I wake up and suddenly... there's an AIDS vaccine? And it's available for free? Oh, wait, there isn't one. Must be Trudeau's fault too.

I'll give him partial credit for his occasional Tucker Carlson-esque facial contortions when O'Foole mouths he kind of nonsense that breaches even his threshold of tolerance —

 

 

but other than that, this guy throws so many softballs he'd be a shoo-in for the Babe Ruth league. Judging by his capability for hard-hitting journalism (or lack thereof), I'd say he got beaned by a few dingers too. (For that matter, same goes for O'Foole.)

Real bench strength in the Con senate bullpen that is Bell Media Thomson Reuters Globe CTV. Somewhere, Mike Duffy is having a laugh. Maybe think twice about putting your thumb on the scale against the drama teacher, Evan — ya coulda been an actor, but ya wound up here.

The Big Lie: A Shot in the Dark

 

Joseph Goebbels himself once said that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes indistinguishable from the truth. That seems to be what the Fox North narrative pushers are doing with the vaccine rollout, to a certain degree of success. But fear not, for there's some pretty big caveats at play here.

 

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A second new poll, this time from the firm Campaign Research, seems to indicate that "the majority of Ontarians" blame the federal Liberals for the (temporary) delay in vaccines. This after two whole weeks of nonstop barrage of media saying that the temporary delay in vaccines is Trudeau's fault.

The first poll indicating that Trudeau's government might take a hit on this issue came from Bogus Reid. This one is from yet another Con operative (and overall thug with a history of lying and B&E charges), Nick Kouvalis, working hand-in-hand with the new ownership at the ToryStar.

That being said, both of those polls are from self-selecting opt-in online panels with a heavy Con bias. So chances are someone with more impetus to answer angrily would have chosen to respond to this poll A different poll in this timeframe, from EKOS Research (which randomly dials Canadians), showed no such damage, and even Bogus Reid still gave Trudeau an overall positive approval rating in spite of a wobble on the vaccine story.

 

What it does show, however, is that the media has done a piss-poor job pointing out who is really to blame: previous Conservative governments that slashed Canada's manufacturing capacity, and the manufacturers themselves. Neither of these polls offered that as an option, for obvious reasons.

I mean way to bury the lede here, ToryStar.

Production delays and worldwide demand have hindered shipments of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the only two currently approved for use by Health Canada. The shortfall is expected to persist for another two weeks.

You got your pound of flesh, so now you admit that it isn't his fault???

 

The one salve I can take from that is "another two weeks." During which time more vaccine approvals are likely to happen. Doesn't mean it'll be an easy ride, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, February for this government is often nasty and brutish... yet short.

The other salve I take from it is, the opinions are roughly split: Forty-seven percent don't blame the feds (fifteen say it's the provinces' fault, while thirty-two — a full third — are "unsure"). Without a proper breakdown beyond the toplines, there isn't a clear picture, just clickbait. Are some people mad? Yes, but like that Reid poll showing it was mostly Cons (and older ones at that), what matters is who and where.

The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said. Words matter, and there's plenty to take away depending on your perspective. Truth is rarely so black or white as the opinion-shapers would have it.

(EDIT: The other other salve I take is that in spite of all the consent manufacturing, Nick still couldn't get the Cons to be ahead!)

 

But even if Trudeau does take a mild (temporary) hit, I should also point out also that it's not just him facing an onslaught in bad faith from the peanut gallery. Even Mutti Merkel herself is said to be "cracking under pressure" over the vaccination rollout, after her own government pretty well stabbed her in the back on the way out:

With the chancellor under fire publicly for a lack of Covid-19 shots and her strategy of delegating responsibility to the European Union looking misguided, she snapped when pressed for answers by German state premiers during a closed-door meeting in early January.

Getting angrier than those involved had ever seen, she threatened to retaliate and make the officials’ mistakes public, shocking the participants into silence. On other occasions, she’s come close to tears in public in recent weeks.

Merkel at least has the luxury of calling it quits in September. Trudeau obviously doesn't want to do that. Which is why his government is making contingency plans for if the mother continent decides to break their word and fuck things up even more. And no, it doesn't involve withdrawing from NATO or invading Belgium for its waffles.

The moral of the story is, as I've written here on a number of occasions (and John Diefenbaker was fond of saying), polls are for dogs. They're not prognostications; they're periodic temperature checks, and sometimes the occasional fever spikes. Sometimes you need to get a second opinion from a more reputable health professional. The whole thing (especially in Canada) is a sham, a massive incestuous psy-op from the manufacturers of consent.

 

This too shall pass, just like the WeGhazi issue — which was also supposed to be the death knell for Trudeau's career way back when (so was SNC, Aladdingate, National Lampoon's A Passage to India, etc.). I'm sure the Liberals are not cavalier about anything, but it's still early in the game. Check back in March or April when the budget is set to land and the country is practically drowning in vaccines.

 

It's just a shot away. It's just a shot away.

 

 

The Marketplace of Ideas

 

While the unserious partisan whiners in Parliament and the media continue to throw shit at the wall and complain about Canada's COVID vaccine program, it's worth noting yet again that a healthy and constructive discussion of the subject is possible — if you know where to look. Ask David Fisman. What's up, doc?

 

Pity that Doug Ford and not Justin Trudeau has Dr. Fisman as the doctor on call, when Trudeau would be more likely to take his advice...

I bookmarked this thread from the embattled (thanks to Dug and Postmafia) Dr. Fisman, in which he asks some thought-provoking open-ended questions about the issue of Canada's lack of vaccine-producing capacity (a Conservative casualty dating back some 30 years, and a mess which Trudeau is trying to clean up now).

 

Interestingly enough, he posits that simply having a made-in-Canada public lab like the vaunted Connaught Labs might not be sufficient in the era of global competition and major crises like the COVID pandemic. What he wants is for Canada to make itself an attractive location for the "big players" to not only invest in but share their output on the global market:

I'd be curious what others with more experience in the innovation/commercialization world think, but it seems to me that we don't want to go back to the type of "vaccine nationalism" we had when Connaught was a crown corp or a [U of Toronto]-owned entity. The world has changed a lot

 

Given the tremendous resources and quality control that you need in order to compete on the world stage in vaccines, the two streams would be: 1. Lots of support for Canadian startups with great ideas (e.g., Medicago) that allows them to expand and compete, but also...

 

2. Making Canada a really attractive place to do vaccine science, and working with the big global players (Pfizer, GSK/Sanofi, Moderna now, Merck, J&J, etc etc) to make us a hub for research AND manufacture

 

Having global entities producing vaccines has some advantages: e.g., the ability to trial a vaccine in multiple countries at once. That's been really valuable with novel VOC's.

 

It's also a very competitive industry and it's tough to get market share. Development is expensive and as we're seeing with the covid vaccines, some candidates fail. Liability issues (doing something to healthy people which may harm 1/100,000) are always there.

 

And perhaps uniquely, vaccines are a product which, if good enough, can actually put themselves out of business (c.f. smallpox vaccine). As someone who doesn't know this world at all, this seems like something that requires big portfolios, deep pockets, and an ability to take risk

 

Curious what the knowledgeable folks have to say about this.

What I like about Dr. Fisman is that he's humble enough to say he doesn't know, and invites people with expertise in supply chains and R&D to contribute their expertise. Obviously that's not going to happen over Twitter, but it's a welcome and refreshing attitude to have nonetheless.

It's also a complete 180-degree opposite to the arrogant know-it-all Amir Attaran, who (big surprise) was called before the Health committee by the Cons to savage the Liberals' pandemic response as he's been doing for months, never missing an opportunity to get his name in the papers or his punchable face on TV. This is your daily reminder that Attaran isn't even an epidemiologist but a lawyer. He's a Twitter shitposter who barks at anyone who pokes holes in his myopic narrative (especially if they're female). His "tough love" answer to provinces being uncooperative or slow is for Trudeau to impose martial law and stiff them of PPE and vaccines until they buckle. Which is totally not a Trump move at all, and wouldn't inflict equally as much suffering as Ford and Kenney are doing now. 🙄

So of course the Cons invited Attaran to concern-troll and indulge his (and their) fetish of Trudeau-bashing. The guy is such a narcissistic armchair quarterback that he's a competitor to Tom Brady in his own mind. And of course Ford sicced his Postmafia goons on Fisman as a side project while they're attacking Trudeau on the daily. They don't have any nuanced answers and they're unwilling to invite criticism or debate from people more knowledgeable than they are. It's my way or the highway; shoot (the needles) first, ask questions later.

But I digress. Getting back to Fisman's thread, while I don't pretend in the least to be knowledgeable of the subjects he's inviting input about, an armchair analysis that doesn't require specialized expertise is that when companies like Astra Zeneca and Pfizer look for "attractive" places to set up shop, they're not going to be looking at... a lot of places in Canada right now, and that's not Trudeau's fault either.

 

The fact is that when Cons like Ford and Kenney give away money to oil companies and beer stores, while slashing things like education and tech investment, they're sending a signal that Canada is a playground for morons (or at least some of its provinces are anyway). Kenney shuttered a "superlab" that was being developed because he knew it would piss off Rachel Notley. That's it. Ford, meanwhile, is waging war on teachers (and so is Kenney). Where do you think the bright minds of tomorrow are going to come from, to do R&D at these companies? Not Deco Labels or the LCBO, that's for sure.

 

Ford hates teachers (teachers, you know, like... Justin Trudeau) because Ford is stupid, like Trump. Cons like Ford and Kenney want the populace to be just as stupid, so that they'll keep voting for stupid people. Kenney riles up the base to attack any other industry as a threat to the sacrosanct oil patch. The lesser provincial acolytes like Moe and Pallister are no better, and the federal Cons are just as bad if not worse. Eric O'Foole doesn't get it. It was his party that chased away Connaught (Mulroney) and, later, Pfizer, GSK and Sanofi (Harper), the former due to sacrifice at the altar of privatization and the latter due to an ideological war on science. Why would a research company want to invest anywhere their "product" is being met with hostility bordering on (and driven by) religious fervour?

The other factor in play is the asinine inter-provincial animosity that has become a hallmark of the disease known as "western alienation," and which Kenney gleefully panders to so he can stay in power. Medicago, the laboratory that the Liberals are investing in with hopes of bringing back some of Canada's formerly world-class vaccine research capacity, is in Quebec. If those companies are going to partner someday with Medicago, they're not going to want to be under attack from Wexit idiots bitching that they won't take vaccines coming from the "gay-ass leftist French." Anytime investing in Quebec engineering gets mentioned, the ReformaCons will screech about SNL-Laugh In.

 

"But his oui-mails!"

 

Now, the guy in charge of a Calgary-based lab, Providence Therapeutics, has also become something of a self-made TV news celebrity, with his incessant complaining that Trudeau's government didn't give him enough money to upgrade his lab to meet demands. But as it turns out, that lab is only in phase 1 trials to begin with, he has gotten funding from the feds, and bashing Medicago or Trudeau on Evan Solomon's increasingly insufferable pundit-punching blabfest isn't going to make things go faster.

The problem all-around seems to be egotism in place of the common good. So if I were to answer Dr. Fisman, I'd say someone needs to ask some brilliant scientist to reengineer human nature so that assholes don't keep rising to the top. Which by definition, would mean a remedy for conservatism.

Now that would be a miracle cure.