Keystone XL and Covid-19

 Keystone XL and Covid-19

by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU E. CHISU, CD, PMSC,
FEC, CET, P. Eng.
Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East

   As the pandemic continues to rage with ferocity and our vaccine supply flutters in limbo, the economic picture of the country is becoming bleaker.
When the new President of the United States cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline project within hours of taking office, he put a big question mark over Alberta's economic recovery. The Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, became understandably upset because his government had invested quite a lot of money in this project.
Conversely Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed only a mild reaction to the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline project, saying that he was "disappointed" at President Biden's action.
That was a fairly tepid reaction to losing an infrastructure project billed as a job-generator and an essential prop for a struggling Canadian energy sector.
But Trudeau doesn't really have an incentive to take on the Biden administration over Keystone because economic and environmental arguments for and against the project notwithstanding there simply isn't much of a political case for fighting for it any longer.
With the NDP and the Greens jubilant over the news of the cancelation, and the liberals needing their support in securing a majority in the upcoming election, we will not see too much political action from the liberal government to fight for the Keystone pipeline project.
So here we are. Alberta, once a well-heeled province that contributed immensely to the federal coffers, has apparently been abandoned by the federal liberal government to have-not status. We will certainly see future repercussions from this issue.
With the Parliament of Canada resuming its session we can expect to see the old rhetoric with nothing changed from the previous one.
As the lockdown in various provinces of Canada continues, it has emerged that there will be a slow down in the deliveries of Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer, an European Manufacturer.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that he spoke earlier in the day with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and "was reassured to hear that the transparency measures taken by Europe will not affect Pfizer and Moderna deliveries to Canada."
These assurances did not please the provinces, however, especially Ontario, which are in charge of administering the vaccine.
In the meantime Pfizer and BioNTech will cut back on the number of vials of COVID-19 vaccine they send to Canada this year if the federal health regulator agrees to change the vaccine label to say every vial contains six doses instead of five.
Medical professionals in the United States were first to discover in December that they could get six doses from each vial by using smaller syringes or special ones that trap less vaccine around the needle after an injection.
Initially heralded as a way to stretch the precious vaccine even further, the company stepped in to note its contracts are for doses, not vials: If a recipient can get six doses instead of five, then Pfizer and BioNTech can ship fewer vials and still fulfil their contractual obligation.
Pfizer pushed the U.S. and Europe to change the label information on the number of doses per vial and both did so in early January. Last week, Pfizer asked Canada to follow suit, and Health Canada's vaccine regulatory team is now considering the request.
"The final decision on the label update will reside with Health Canada," said Pfizer Canada spokeswoman Christina Antoniou.
If Canada agrees to the change, Canada's 40 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine will be shipped in about 6.7 million vials. Antoniou said if Canada does not, then the existing deliveries will continue based on five doses per vial, for a total of eight million vials.
"We will supply to Canada in line with our supply agreement and the label valid in the country," she said.
Health Canada told medical professionals they could use sixth doses if they can get them from single vials, but advised against taking partial doses from multiple vials to make one dose due to the risk of cross-contamination. However, to get six doses from a vial you need special syringes, of which there is a shortage.
Getting that extra dose requires the use of smaller syringes that allow less vaccine to go to waste with each injection. The best version is called a low-dead-volume syringe, which leaves less room for vaccine to get trapped in the needle and syringe after the plunger is pushed in all the way.
Those syringes are not as common as the three- and five-millilitre syringes commonly used in Canada's vaccine campaign now, and the smaller ones have become the latest hot commodity of COVID-19.
Public Services and Procurement Canada tendered contracts last year for 145 million syringes, 95 million of which are of the three- or five-millilitre variety.
There are 50 million one-millilitre syringes on order, including 37.5 million low-dead-volume versions.
The department wouldn't say how many syringes of each type have arrived in Canada. A tender for one-millilitre syringes issued in October set a deadline for the first 15 million to be delivered at the end of this month and the rest by the end of March.
But whatever contract was awarded, the terms have not been made public, including who the supplier is, how much it is worth, or when the supplies will be delivered.
So with these technical issues on the roll, let us hope the vaccination campaign will go on with speed. Let's hope for the best.
Another issue rising on the horizon in the background of the pandemic, is the censorship of free speech practised by the big IT companies Google, Twitter, Facebook and more, under the excuse of containing hate speech. This is concerning and adds to the already difficult societal issues we are experiencing, but more about this in a future article.
For the moment stay safe and hope for the best.