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Canada is scaling back its COVID-19 vaccination efforts because of a looming shortage of shots, with some provinces ordering a halt to nearly all first-dose appointments outside of the country’s hard-hit seniors’ facilities.
Provincial governments, hospital executives and local public-health officials spent the weekend scrambling to ration doses after vaccine-maker Pfizer-BioNTech announced on Friday that it would halve shipments to Canada in late January and the first three weeks of February while the company expands a manufacturing plant in Belgium.
The news threw a wrench into vaccination plans across the country.
Read more:
André Picard: Should coronavirus vaccination be mandatory for health workers?
Alberta completes COVID-19 vaccination of all long-term care residents, staff
Nurse Venus Lucero administers the first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Civic Hospital to Jo-Anne Miner at a vaccination clinic in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada December 15, 2020. Adrian Wyld/Pool via REUTERSPOOL/Reuters
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Ottawa, Alberta vow to press Biden on the Keystone XL pipeline
Ottawa and Alberta are not giving up on the Keystone XL pipeline, and say they will work to persuade U.S. president-elect Joe Biden of the benefits of allowing the project to proceed.
But that message may be too little too late, because news reports said on Sunday that Mr. Biden plans to terminate the project’s construction permit as one of his first acts once sworn into office this week.
“All we ask at this point is that president-elect Biden show Canada the respect to actually sit down and hear our case about how we can be partners in prosperity, partners in combatting climate change, partners in energy security,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told media yesterday.
Read more:
Adam Radwanski: How Canada should respond to Joe Biden’s Keystone XL decision
John Ibbitson: With a more important fight to win, Trudeau is prepared to surrender in the fight for the Keystone pipeline
Opinion: Keystone XL is dead. But who can Jason Kenney blame now?
The movement Trump built isn’t going to vanish overnight
After covering Donald Trump’s America for five years across 19 states, I am convinced that the movement he built is not going away. His base is tied together by threads of deep-seated cultural conservatism and a fervent conviction that the United States is under siege by foreign countries, visible minorities and resurgent Marxism. It is driven by an alternative-reality view of the world shaped by a long-standing right-wing media ecosystem and the President’s conspiracy theories.
Mr. Trump leaves office Wednesday, and Congress may bar him from ever running for federal office again. But the U.S. will be living with his legacy for a long time. He has shaken the foundations of the world’s most powerful democracy, undermined the limits on presidential power and left a base that believes the entire system, including Mr. Biden, is illegitimate and deserves to be overthrown. The Globe’s Washington correspondent Adrian Morrow takes a look back on the past five years.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Ontario’s decision to keep students at home questioned by critics: Ontario’s decision to keep many of its students at home and learning remotely – setting it apart from the rest of Canada – is under the microscope as the debate intensifies around transmission rates among children and the harmful social and academic effects of school closings.
Also: Teachers voice concerns over parents interfering during online classes
Erin O’Toole moves to oust Derek Sloan from caucus over white supremacist donation: Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole wants to oust MP and failed leadership candidate Derek Sloan from the Tory caucus over his campaign’s acceptance of a donation from a white supremacist.
IIHF drops Belarus as co-host of world hockey championship: The International Ice Hockey Federation said it has dropped Belarus as one of the two countries that will host the 2021 World Hockey Championships “in the face of the growing safety and security concerns related to both the rising political unrest and COVID-19.”
Also: Opinion: Standing up for human rights in Belarus is moral duty, not political interference
Russian opposition leader jailed on return to country: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was ordered jailed for 30 days by a judge after returning from Germany where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blames on President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Presumed consent around organ donation takes effect in Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia is now the first jurisdiction in North America to implement presumed consent around organ donation, a move health officials believe could see a significant rise in the number of donors over the next few years.
MORNING MARKETS
World shares climb: Global shares climbed and the U.S. dollar eased on Tuesday ahead of Janet Yellen’s Treasury Secretary confirmation speech, in which she is expected to bolster the case for heavy fiscal stimulus in the world’s largest economy. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.12 per cent. Germany’s DAX gained 0.18 per cent. France’s CAC 40 slid 0.05 per cent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.39 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.7 per cent. New York futures were higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 78.59 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond: “To end racism, we have to name it, speak up and shut it down – calmly, with kindness and with the goal of creating safety for all. All of us need to take active measures to identify and remove racism in our society and all public services. We must stand together for respectful treatment of Indigenous people and First Nations, something that’s long overdue and unquestionably a pressing priority.”
Gordon Pape: “But the bottom line is that, absent some calamity, the path to recovery looks more encouraging than it has in some time. Markets will shrug off day-to-day headlines, as they did the Washington riot on Jan. 6, unless things get completely out of hand.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
Brian GableBrian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Funny, not funny: One great sitcom and a bunch of losers
Dry January? That could well describe new TV comedy of the traditional kind. At least there is one reliable comedy on-air now. Season 5 of Kim’s Convenience arrives and, as John Doyle says, it’s a darn miracle this new season exists at all.
MOMENT IN TIME: JAN. 19, 1962
Immigration Minister Ellen Fairclough takes a final look at new immigration regulations in her Parliament Hill office on Jan 20, 1962, just a few hours before they were announced in the Commons.The Canadian Press
Canada dismantles its discriminatory immigration policy
On this day in 1962, Canada’s first female cabinet minister introduced a new immigration policy designed to eliminate racial discrimination and select immigrants based on their skills.
Ellen Fairclough, an accountant from Hamilton, was the sixth woman elected to the Parliament of Canada and the first named to cabinet.
Appointed secretary of state by prime minister John Diefenbaker in 1957, by January, 1962, she was minister of citizenship and immigration, a portfolio that had become politically contentious. Unemployment rose from less than 5 per cent in 1957 to nearly 8 per cent in 1961, and there were rumblings about a surplus of unskilled labour.
The new regulations decreed that immigrants would be assessed on their education and training, not their racial or national origin.
“This means that any suitably qualified person from any part of the world can be considered for immigration to Canada entirely on his own merits without regard to his race, colour, national origin or the country from which he comes,” Ms. Fairclough said.
The changes brought federal policy in line with Diefenbaker’s 1960 Bill of Rights. But to this day, the process of choosing who gets in remains a source of political debate. Joe Friesen
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