Trudeau Liberals unworthy of our support

Covering the embarrassment of having a few dozen politicians and senior bureaucrats caught in taking sunny vacations denied to us by COVID “recommendations” is too little too late. Trudeau is announcing fines for travelling to a few destinations as if travel to other international destinations is acceptable.

As usual, the restrictions are incomplete; anyone can travel to the U.S. and if local spots are not attractive, connect to another flight to their destination of choice. A quarantine on return will not deter those with sufficient funds to regularly holiday in resorts. It is window dressing designed to make the government appear to be doing something useful for change.

At over $2K for three days, the government is approving luxury hotels with exercise rooms, pools, room service and spas. Employing unused office space in federal buildings equipped with army cots and meal delivery by Subway would be a real travel deterrent.         

These measures were needed in February. 2020 and should have been in place no later than March. Announcing new locks on the door a year after the virus infected people from coast to coast is ridiculous.
Our medical experts and politicians ignored warnings from military intelligence in January 2020. The government has failed to explain why Canada’s highly respected Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) was changed in 2018-19 from monitoring global health trends to a domestic role. GPHIN had identified the threat posed by both the 2003 SARS outbreak and the 2009 H1N1 flu before other agencies.     

For eleven months, we have watched PM Trudeau and Dr. Tam pop up on television with new announcements on the virus battle. We ignored the reversals in direction and policy for the first few months as early effort glitches.

As summer wore on and announcements were about reactions to oversights, it was evident that there was no plan in place; the government was reacting to deficiencies in its virus containment policies as they appeared.

During the fall and early winter, many of us wanted to play whack-a-mole when Trudeau and Tam kept popped up to talk down to us as if we were unable to think for ourselves. Answering questions from the opposition and press with scripted talking points is an unacceptable evasion of accountability.

Why did the government announce that it chose not to exercise an option to buy an additional 16 million doses of Moderna on January 10 and that it had secured another 20 million doses from Pfizer on January 12? Since the Moderna vaccine is easier to manage and can be used in areas where the Pfizer product cannot, the actions are weird and require an explanation.

Our government repeats ad nauseam that it has contracted for more COVID vaccine doses than any other nation. The unanswered question is why did none of those contracts deliver even one dose of vaccine during the last week of January?

Health Canada has approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. According to the government, both have now announced reductions in scheduled vaccine shipments. We have no idea what the terms of contracts with vaccine manufacturers are or how much of the alleged shortfall is due to overly optimistic government propaganda.

Trudeau and his government act as if the truth is a liability. If there are shortfalls in contractual vaccine delivery schedules, produce the evidence. Failing to do so means this cabal of liars and manipulators is unworthy of our support.