It seems that prime minister Justin Trudeau has rejected a call by the premiers to release the details of the vaccine contracts – as well he should have. So much of the past couple of weeks’ panic over the delays in Pfizer and Moderna doses has been this self-assuredness that the federal government must have negotiated a bad deal, and they’re going to “prove it” by demanding to see what’s in the contracts. After all, most of the conservative-leaning premiers are still operating under the assumption that Trudeau is some kind of naïf who can barely put his own pants on let alone govern a country (while most of them believe themselves to be super-geniuses). Of course, all that making the contracts public would do is to allow other countries to start trying to outbid what we paid for our doses in order to get the companies to break the contracts in order to get their own orders faster.

With this in mind, I would point you in the direction of this longread from Maclean’s, which goes through the story of the procurement process for these vaccines, including talking to some of the players involved, and while no secrets are divulged, some of the calculations on the part of the companies is better fleshed out, including the fact that our public healthcare system ostensibly makes out rollout likely to go more smoothly, which is good for the companies because it means fewer wasted doses. Now, mind you, it’s not going to be even across the country given the disparities in health systems between provinces, and the varying levels of incompetence that some of the provincial governments display, but there are some good insights in the piece, so I would encourage you to take the time to read it through.

Good reads:

• A day-and-a-half into the COVAX story, the government gave a better explanation that the programme is not actually about poor countries. (Always too late).
• Here’s an explainer about the Novavax vaccine candidate that Canada will produce.
• Anita Anand explained that when Canada offered domestic production, the companies looked at our capacities and turned us down as not being worthwhile.
• Steven Guilbeault promises that legislation to make Google and Facebook pay media outlets for sharing news content will be tabled later this year.
• New government programmes to offer safe haven to people from Hong Kong already in Canada will open up on Monday.
• Military police have begun an investigation into General Jonathan Vance, and this and the previous government were aware of the allegations against him.
• The RCMP union is calling on their members to be prioritised for vaccination because they are essential workers.
• The new pay equity commissioner says that it may take up to three years for the raises associated with these equity claims to be negotiated.
• The move to create a three-digit suicide prevention hotline could take a year or two to get up and running, in spite of all-party support.
• The major airlines want clear guidelines on when vaccinated people can travel by air once again.

Odds and ends:

Apparently francophones in Quebec are less afraid of COVID than anglophones, and their response levels are fairly equivalent to Republicans in the US.

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