Politics Briefing: No Pfizer vaccines expected in Canada next week

Hello,

The federal government says today that the looming shortage of Pfizer-made COVID-19 vaccines will begin next week.

In fact, the government says, Canada will receive none of the hundreds of thousands of doses it expected to receive next week.

This means that provinces, which were just starting to ramp up their vaccination efforts, will immediately pump the brakes.

When asked at his midday news conference why Canada appeared to be getting hit harder by shortages than other countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shrugged off the concern and said other world leaders get criticized for their handling of the COVID crisis, too.

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TODAY’S HEADLINES

With COVID-19 cases high across the country, provinces’ different approaches to lockdowns are providing public-health experts an opportunity to see whether schools fuel outbreaks.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is moving to kick Ontario MP Derek Sloan out of the party for accepting a donation from white supremacist Paul Fromm.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the latest province to hold an election during the pandemic.

In light of some high-profile artists being exposed for improperly claiming Indigenous identity, a Haida filmmaker is calling for new legislation that could see “pretendians” get fines or face jail time.

The federal and Alberta governments are asking U.S. president-elect Joe Biden to at least hear them out before he blocks the Keystone XL pipeline expansion.

And The Globe’s Washington correspondent, Adrian Morrow, looks back at five years of covering Trumpism and comes to the conclusion it’s not going away soon.

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on Biden’s upcoming move to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline: “Mr. Trudeau will protest, but eventually give way, for several reasons. First, he wants to establish strong relations with the Biden administration, and a protracted fight over Keystone would not be a good start.”

Max Fawcett (The Globe and Mail) on Alberta’s part in antagonizing U.S. Democrats: “It could not have escaped the Biden team’s notice that the Kenney government has made attacking environmentalists and undermining climate policy one of the foundational elements of its political strategy. "

Brahma Chellaney (The Globe and Mail) on Biden’s foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific: “Today, a rules-based and democracy-led order in the Indo-Pacific has become more important than ever to ensure a stable power balance. If the region’s major democracies, from Canada to South Korea and Indonesia, leverage their growing strategic bonds to generate progress toward a broader concert of democracies, the vision of a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific may be realized.”

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