Poor Little Canada
Was happy to receive a call from my friend@JustinTrudeau. Assured him that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada. We also agreed to continue collaborating on other important issues like Climate Change and the global economic recovery.
"I can highlight that India has been a great partner in fighting COVID, whether it's helping us with delivery of other pharmaceuticals or whether it's working together on potential vaccines.""We're going to continue to build on the strong relationship between Canada and India and ensure that we're looking out for our citizens, while at the same time we're looking to recover the global economy and create opportunities for everyone."Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
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| Left: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Right: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Amir Cohen, Blair Gable/Reuters) |
Those over 80 in Canada will likely not be vaccinated until April. Seniors and the health-impaired and their caregivers in long-term care facilities were scheduled to be the first, along with frontline health-care workers, to receive the vaccine doses received from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, and while the undertaking had begun, Canada was advised by both pharmaceutical companies that there would be delays in providing the entire anticipated tranches as scheduled. A setback which has idled the vaccination enterprise.
Canada turned to the UN-inspired COVAX program, meant to provide under-developed and poor nations with vaccines. Not a good look. A wealthy country like Canada which has, albeit tardily, pre-ordered tens of millions of doses of COVID vaccine from a variety of producers, even while it has back-of-the-line status because it took so long to begin its ordering. A wait that occurred as a result of making an ill-fated agreement with CanSino to co-develop a vaccine which Beijing ultimately refused export to Canada.
Leaving a desperate government of Canada, to look elsewhere, anywhere, for vaccines in a world becoming increasingly nation-specific-vaccine-aggressive. Where producing countries are looking, for obvious reasons, to ensure that their own populations are inoculated before allowing vaccines to be shipped elsewhere. In the precarious situation Canada finds itself in, the current government sees its vote-potential for a near election plummeting.
Motivating the government to frantically call upon vaccine manufacturers to come to its aid. India is investing its energy in supplying have-not nations, and along comes Canada to ask for special dispensation. India, a country with which Canada had good relations, but between them now diplomacy has taken a hit. Prime Minister Modi strikes a delicate balance between suspicion of a Canadian prime minister who has quite a few Sikhs in his party and in his Cabinet suspected of sympathy for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan, and maintaining friendly relations with Canada.
Moreover, this is a Canadian prime minister who has not hesitated to embarrass his Indian counterpart by commenting critically on interior government matters in India, aside from the fact of an embarrassing state visit a few years back when Justin Trudeau made an absolute ass of himself, as an embarrassment both to Canada and to India; with a lack of diplomatic prudence in bringing along an avowed Khalistani sympathizer and supporter of Mr. Trudeau's Liberal party.
So far, 3.06 Canadians per 100 people have been vaccinated. The Trudeau government insists that by September all Canadians wishing to be inoculated, will be. A promise that looks highly unlikely to be fulfilled. Most Canadians, keeping abreast of conditions and the lack of vaccine shipments now anticipate that full inoculation will only take place by halfway through 2022, leaving Canada far, far behind its wealthy-nation counterparts. A hugely disappointing performance.
Labels: Government of Canada, Government of India, Novel Coronavirus, Vaccines
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, February 14, 2021
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