Earlier this month, Canada planned to receive 80 million doses by September. 107 million vaccines are now expected. A number that could continue to increase with the approval of other candidate vaccines, as was the case on Friday with AstraZeneca and Covishield.
Increasing the vaccination rate is burdening Justin Trudeau.
His liberal government did not have an easy February due to vaccine problems. Delivery delays from Moderna and Pfizer were highlighted with big red lines every day by opposition parties. Also from the provincial side, which had patients with folded sleeves, nurses with syringes, but refrigerators without vaccines.
It was a fair game and it was a good time for opponents of the government to take advantage of it, with the liberals in a weak period.
But with the acceleration of births, the start of mass vaccination in some governorates and the approval of new candidate vaccines, we can feel that political discontent is subsiding, at the same rate as anxiety about vaccinations among the population in general.
The opposition parties still have some nails to hit if they wanted to. For example, Ottawa failed to convince Washington to participate in vaccine production at this week’s Trudeau Biden summit. In fact, the issue wasn’t even raised during the meeting. Canada already knew it would receive outright rejection, at least until all Americans have been vaccinated.
However, Justin Trudeau must now hope that these new approvals and these new shipments, as in past weeks, do not arrive with much delay. Moreover, AstraZeneca is already indicating that it will have to reduce deliveries to Europe for the next quarter.
The more vaccine boxes enter the country, the more pressure on Ottawa’s shoulders will be and the more provinces appear. If the vaccines are delivered on time and in sufficient quantities, then it will be up to the provinces to demonstrate their ability to conduct vaccination without any hindrances, otherwise the goal of public dissatisfaction will be them.
