Vaccines was once again the talk of the day yesterday, and while there was a whole lot of caterwauling about demanding dates for vaccine arrivals and rollout specifics – something that is impossible to determine at this point considering that a) no vaccine has been approved in any country yet, and b) distribution is a provincial responsibility in Canada, and some of those provinces have not got their plans in place, such as Ontario, which just hired former Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, to help them plan their logistics. So yeah – it’s pretty hard for Justin Trudeau to give any solid timelines with those particular factors in mind.

With this in mind, Maclean’s has a must-read interview with Dr. Supriya Sharma, Health Canada’s chief medical advisor, about the vaccine approval process – because a lot of people have been talking out of their asses about said approval process. And when you’ve finished reading that, here is a deeper dive into the vaccine manufacturing availability in this country – the delays at the planned National Research Council facility because they decided to upgrade it to be a fully-compliant Good Manufacturing Practice-compliant facility that will be more versatile and able to produce more vaccines once it’s up and running (probably later next year). As well, the two early promising vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, are both mRNA technology vaccines, and there are no facilities in this country that can produce them – because not all vaccine production is the same, and different vaccines require different technologies to produce them, and nobody seems to understand this basic fact as they demand to know why we’re not producing it here, or why we haven’t acquired the rights to produce it, given that we have nowhere that can produce it even if we did.

In other pandemic news across the country, Doug Ford’s government got raked over the coals by the province’s Auditor General when she examined the province’s early pandemic response (and while I have some issues with the fact that she seems to be straying outside of her lane, it is nevertheless reassuring to see that she has called out a lot of Ford’s lies about his actions or lack thereof). Ford also started the process of telling Ontarians that Christmas isn’t going to be one with large family gatherings, so at least he’s not trying for the same kind of “social contract” nonsense that Quebec is pushing in spite of the fact that it’s likely to cause more spread of the virus. (Then again, people seem to want to obstinately get together anyway, if Thanksgiving is any indication, so it may not matter). Meanwhile in Alberta, experts are calling out the half-measures of Jason Kenney’s “mockdown,” which is only going to lead to more deaths, and longer and deeper shutdowns to get the virus under control.

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1331654772282298369

https://twitter.com/LagassePhilippe/status/1331657172137238529

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau appointed former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler as a special envoy for Holocaust remembrance and combatting anti-Semitism.
• The government has tabled a bill to allow single-event sports betting after numerous failed attempts in previous parliaments.
• Sources Say™ that there will be funding for a federal childcare secretariat in the fiscal update (which one presumes will negotiate with provinces).
• Surprising nobody, documents from the Canadian Forces show that when the two Joint Supply Ships are built, there will still be capability gaps.
• CRA hasn’t referred any of the $450 billion in offshore transactions it monitored for criminal prosecutions even when there is non-compliance noted.
• The federal victims of crime ombudsman says that the five-year-old Victims Bill of Rights legislation is in need of an overhaul because it isn’t meeting objectives.
• A thinktank report says that universal childcare in Canada could generate between $17 to $29 billion per year in new tax revenue from women being in the workforce.
• The Mexican ambassador has slammed Erin O’Toole and Michelle Rempel Garner’s comments about Mexico getting vaccine doses before Canada does.
• Jagmeet Singh says that people sending violent messages and death threats to Bloc MP Alain Therrien (whom Singh called a racist) to focus their attentions on the PM.
• Heather Scoffield looks at some of the incoming US Cabinet picks and tries to divine how that will affect Canada’s role in the fight against climate change.

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