Canada under siege

  

Canada under siege
by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU E. CHISU, CD, PMSC,
FEC, CET, P. Eng.
Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East
   As the Coronavirus pandemic ravages the country, Canada's political leaders gesticulate wildly, taking erratic measures of their own accord in desperate attempts to confine the spread of the disease.

The two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have declared states of emergency and respective curfews, introducing drastic limitations to personal movement, hoping that these measures will stop the pandemic.

The arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine in Canada was the first truly good news since the pandemic began nearly a year ago. But it was also a false dawn.

That small glimmer of hope may have obscured the daunting challenge and the profound personal suffering that still stand between us and a new day.

So while the new year started with several days of fussing over how fast vaccine doses are being distributed, the announcement of new epidemiological modelling and new restrictions on businesses and individuals in Ontario and Quebec should remind us that this pandemic is not yet under control and will not pass easily according to the predictions of various medical advisors.

The recent dialog between federal and provincial governments over vaccination began when a concern was raised about the seemingly sluggish pace at which provinces were injecting the vaccine doses that the federal government had distributed. In Ontario, for example, most vaccinations paused for three days around Christmas.

So we are again subjected to political spin around the pandemic instead of action in the best interest of the nation.

After picking up the pace of vaccinations, several premiers are now insisting that the problem might soon become one of supply. "We're all hopeful the federal government will get us more vaccines," Ontario Premier Doug Ford said last week. "Without them, hospitals will have to start cancelling appointments and all the progress we've made getting our daily vaccine numbers up will be lost."

Premier Jason Kenney of Alberta said that his government was exploring the possibility of purchasing its own vaccine supply from manufacturers that currently don't have a deal with the federal government. "I want to be clear, this is not a blame game," Kenney said - before suggesting that blame might ultimately be directed at the federal government. "But we're just saying that Alberta's health system has stepped up in a big way here and we need more doses, bottom line, it's very simple."

The federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc replied to these concerns that it was a "bit simplistic" for provinces to claim that they were in danger of "running out" of vaccine doses.

If there is a faster way for Canada to acquire 37 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, no one has explained it yet at the federal level. Also no one should have been under the illusion that vaccinating the entire population would happen quickly. However, there is certainly pressure on the Trudeau government to show that it is at least holding its own in the global vaccination race. The federal government is forecasting that vaccine shipments will continue to increase on a weekly basis through February and it continues to insist that a sufficient number of doses to cover every last Canadian should be available by September.

As we stand today on both a per-capita basis and in terms of total vaccinations, Canada ranks tenth among the world's 193 countries. Among the G7 nations, Canada's rate of inoculation is fourth - behind the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, but ahead of Germany and France. (Japan has not yet started to vaccinate its citizens.)

Even though vaccines now available and on their way to citizens, the Covid -19 numbers are still on the increase. So here we see some wavering among politicians. They don't really know what to do.  It seems they are unable to combine medical advice and common sense.

We citizens must do our share to contain the pandemic and our political leaders must do reasonable things. We need to avoid unnecessary meetings with other people, wear masks when social distancing is not possible and stay home as much as possible.

Coercive measures promoted by governments might well be counterproductive.  Instead, they should concentrate on assuring testing, contact tracing, case management, monitoring self-isolation and quarantine, supporting people to stay home, and effective communication in multiple languages and across multiple platforms for the purpose of advising people of the best practices to contain the spread of the virus.

If we focus exclusively on vaccination over the next few weeks, there's no doubt that thousands of Canadians will die unnecessarily.

The rate of infection in Canada's largest province is already far above what it was last spring. The curve has yet to flatten and the question looming over the Ford government is whether it should have moved faster and further to restrict unnecessary activity.

According to new projections, Ontario's daily case count could reach 10,000 by mid-February if the current rate of spread continues. A new and more contagious variants of COVID-19 is now on the rise. And while so much attention was being paid to the arrival of vaccines, another 198 residents of long-term care facilities and two staff members have already died this year in Ontario - months after Ford's government vowed to build an "iron ring" around such facilities.

Other provinces might take comfort in the fact that their second waves have been less dire, but surely no government can assume that the weeks and months ahead won't be difficult.

Nearly a year later, in the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders are contending with much more public fatigue and impatience and should be careful to make fewer mistakes. Since the existence of a vaccine might help consolidate the public's resolve to accept some new restrictions, political leaders might give more thought to balancing concerns over public health and the economy.

The ultimate goal here isn't just to ensure that every Canadian gets the vaccine, it is to ensure that as many Canadians as possible are still alive to receive the shot.

Be safe!