With things in a particularly…fragile state around the vaccine rollout, leaking numbers without context should be seen as a Very Bad Thing, and yet that’s what happened yesterday morning, when it appeared to look like Pfizer was cutting the number of vials they were sending us before the end of our Q1 agreement, and there was a freak out. Premiers started demanding federal action (as though Justin Trudeau can just strong-arm Pfizer into producing more doses somehow), or badmouthing Pfizer itself (because that’ll help). And it turns out that it was all for naught.

It turns out that with the possibility that the vials of vaccine will be re-labelled to say that they contain six doses instead of five (which apparently is not uniform, and requires either a skilled operator or different syringes which are in short supply right now), Pfizer decided to rejig the math so that there are the same numbers of doses, but just in fewer vials. Health Canada has not agreed to this re-labelling, and has no timeline on when such a decision could be made, but Pfizer apparently jumped the gun in sending new numbers that got misinterpreted (and misrepresented once the context was actually known), and this government can’t communicate its way out of a wet paper bag at the best of times, so its inability to properly communicate these new figures only made things worse (especially as they didn’t smack it down during Question Period). And if Health Canada doesn’t relabel the vials? Pfizer still sends us the contracted-for number of doses. So the freak-out was for nothing – except maybe yet another kick in the ass for this government to get in the game when it comes to getting ahead of these things.

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Meanwhile, we also found out that Ontario had mis-reported its vaccination figures, and they’ve only vaccinated half as many as they said they did, which really puts the province’s hue and cry into the fact that it was running out of doses into a new light – and also the fact that they have been so desperate to blame the federal government for everything. It’s the “look over there” strategy, that certain members of the media seem to keep falling for, every single time. The absolute incompetence of the Ford government never fails to astound.

Good reads:

• The government has declared January 29^th as a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting.
• Marc Miller announced plans and funds to co-develop legislation that would give First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities control over their own healthcare.
• Apparently Julie Payette objected to the fact that members of her RCMP detail were included in the workplace investigation, and it may also have included military staff.
• The report into Rideau Hall also highlights the bigger problem of harassment and systemic barriers within the civil service, which is not being tackled fast enough.
• New Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Art McDonald, had his first international outing at a NATO virtual meeting.
• Here’s a look at what the effect of designating the Proud Boys a terrorist group might have – and it may not do much for its Canadian membership.
• The Court Martial Appeal Court is hearing a challenge to whether or not the military justice system is truly independent following an organizational restructuring.
• The new intelligence commissioner has tabled his first report on authorizations for domestic spying, saying CSIS and CSE need better justification for their requests.
• The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the government may have underestimated the cost of their two-billion-trees program, but his numbers are based on Ontario’s.
• After Derek Sloan’s ouster, firearms advocates in the Conservative ranks are worried that they may be next if they are seen as too controversial.
• Anthony Koch reminds Conservatives that they need to stop pandering to their established base if they hope to get enough seats to one day form government.
• Kevin Carmichael evaluates the appointment of yet another new chair of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank board, Tamara Vrooman.
• Heather Scoffield reads through the BC Basic Income report, and summarizes its key argument – that a universal basic income won’t effectively fight poverty.
• Susan Delacourt briefly interviews Justin Trudeau about the Rideau Hall report, and Trudeau’s assertion that no one is too powerful to fail as a workplace boss.

Odds and ends:

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