As Australia plunged into its wintry third wave amid the deadly Delta reign, a world away in Canada the mostly vaccinated Canucks are enjoying an endless summer with mostly minimal restrictions.
Having far exceeded its American neighbour, Canada has the eighth-highest vaccination rate in the world. More than 70% of people 12 and over are fully vaccinated, and almost 80% have received their first dose of the four vaccines offered: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Australia approved all four of these vaccines too, and is also home to 12 million fewer people than Canada. So what exactly did the Canadians do better than us?
A bigger menu
What set the two nations apart from the beginning was the number of deals — Canada hedged its bets with no fewer than seven vaccine manufacturers. It was a sign of the times: by December 2020, Canada was reeling from 580,000 total cases, compared with Australia’s 28,000.
The deals meant Canada secured more than 400 million vaccines last year — five times what was needed to inoculate its 37 million residents. In Australia, the government ordered just three vaccines — Pfizer, Novovax and AstraZeneca — which equalled about 135 million doses, or almost three times the population.
The Canadian government’s decision proved to be the smarter move. Australia was actually one of the first countries to lock in AstraZeneca, but a tussle with the EU saw part of the order held back.
At the same time, Australia’s local supply from CSL fell flat. Months later, AstraZeneca’s associated blood-clotting condition meant it was mostly down to Pfizer to be the silver bullet in Australia, placing strain on the country’s skinny supplies.
The early bird special
Canada’s vaccine rollout began at the end of 2020, three months before Australia’s. Canada’s first shipment of Pfizer arrived on December 9, just days after its version of the TGA approved it. Two weeks later Moderna was approved too. Compare that with Australia, where Pfizer didn’t arrive until mid-February, and Moderna was approved here just eight days ago.
By July, Australia was administering about 350,000 Pfizer vaccines a week, and even fewer AstraZeneca, making it the third-worst OECD nation for vaccinations. Canada had received more than 66 million vaccine doses by that time — enough to fully vaccinate every eligible person in Canada — which was two months ahead of its original September goal.
Military-led vaccine operation
Eyebrows were raised June 4 when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced John Frewen to head the national vaccine taskforce, taking over from retiring health associate secretary Caroline Edwards. But Canada’s top military officer, Major-General Dany Fortin, was running the country’s rollout since the beginning (he was replaced by Brigadier General Krista Brodie in May after sexual misconduct allegations were levelled at him).
There was also a military approach in Ontario, the country’s most populous province, where retired Canadian armed forces commander Rick Hillier led the vaccine task force until April. The Canadian government’s health department actually partnered with the CFA in deploying vaccines across the country.
And they’ve done a pretty good job — more than 23.6 million Canadians are fully vaccinated. Still, Canada has hardly squashed COVID — the country recorded 1973 cases on Monday, and five deaths.
More want it, and more need it
Canada’s health department says about 22 million doses haven’t been used yet, as 20% of the population older than 12 remains at least partially unvaccinated. But vaccine hesitancy is low. One survey put the strongly hesitant group at about 10%, compared with about 21.5% hesitancy in Australia.
That means Canada is free to go a lot harder on mandating vaccines. Morrison has said he would not back compulsory vaccinations beyond aged care and health workers. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that by the end of October all employees in the federally regulated air, rail and marine transport sectors must be vaccinated or face losing their job.
Banking on citizens’ collective spring-in-their-step as Canada’s warm weather coincided with slightly eased restrictions, Trudeau called an early election this week — describing the widely anticipated move as necessary to give his government a mandate to continue the COVID-19 recovery. But critics have said Trudeau could have waited until 2024.
Although voting is not compulsory in Canada, voting during a pandemic is undeniably risky. Trudeau’s forthrightness is a sure sign that the third-term Liberal Party expects to win in a landslide as Canada saunters out of a lazy summer.
Time will tell if the fourth wave will be a cold shower for the COVID-confident nation yet.
I didn’t find his premise of “we want a mandate to make big decisions that will have big and long term ramifications for the future of canada” unreasonable. All parties now have the task to promote their vision of the future and the people can decide which way they want to go.
What those visions will be will be interesting, imagine a major party here in Australia articulating a long term vision, one can only imagine.
And hope!
Scovid Morri$sinner is in election mode, well he is all the time, whether it’s holding a hose full of bleach for Craig Kelly or issuing a travel exemption for the Hillsong fugitives Pastors Bobby and Brian Houston fleeing the serving of a CAN notice.
He’s announced a purpose built quarantine facility for WA starting in Oct and completed in March, so expect an election thereafter, that is of course if the announcement is ever acted on. Of course the only reason this announcement was made in the first place is to save the seat of the alleged rapist Christian Porter by a feeble attempt to win over a thoroughly happy voting populace in WA who kicked his party onto a scooter, there’s that many of them in parliament nowadays.
What did Canada do better than us, simple, they elected a good confident charming Prime Minister.
Australians elected a failed advertising man, a man who was sacked from every portfolio he held.
It took a Pandemic for Australian voters to work out he is a dud.
There is another difference between Canadians and Australians; Canadians (most) follow rules and police each other whereas Australians view a rule as a challenge.
This is certainly true I lived there for 12 years.
Wish I was still there.
about 18 per cent of Canadians are still vaccine-hesitant. About one in 10 holds very strong views in this regard.
Our latest data indicates 11.8% of adult Australians are not willing to be vaccinated and a further 9.7% are unsure.
These quotes are directly taken from the links in the article. Not sure how it amounts to vaccine hesitancy is low
compared to Australia.
Why do we go on about it. If you have not been vaccinated you do not get to play in the sand pit. – Simple.
Many years ago I was involved in a campaign to have health workers receive vaccination for Hep C. There was NO employee opposed to it as it was their health. The objection was from the employer whom was expected to, but did not want to, pay for the vaccination. All sounds familiar.
There is NO difference between safety glasses and mask and vaccination – The employer has an obligation to ensure the safety of their employees. A contraction of a disease at work associated with the workplace makes the employer liable to the extent of any injury incurred.
The nefarious arguments we seem to be having is to the extent of a second person causing the infection of the first person at work, as to whether the second person is civily or criminal liable. Just have patience – it will come.
Thus the statistics become irrelevant.
I agree vaccination should be mandated. But misuse of statistics helps nobody.
Peter Wotton
1 second ago
Mandated vaccinations for workers is simply an extension of occupational health and safety ( hard hats on construction sites?). Businesses with any contact with customers owe those customers a duty of care! That is why airlines in particular are demanding vaccinations as also will the insurance companies.
Some years ago, when travelling to Borneo for a month in the jungles , the government of that region and my travel insurance both demanded proof of a range of vaccinations, including Typhoid, Yellow fever among others
And seat belts for that matter…
Sorry replied to the wrong post, but you get the gist!
Yellow fever? In Borneo?
Maybe it’s another of the benefits of rapid international mass air travel?
A pity that the oft derided – by the ignorant – custom procedure of AQIS (Quarantine of) boarding each landed international passenger jet in order to spray the cabin and overhead lockers was dropped 20yrs ago.
Yes it’s a mystery. I would offer two words, media and clickbait.
Hi woopwoop. I also clicked through to that article in The Conversation.
“But vaccine hesitancy is low. One survey put the strongly hesitant group at about 10%, compared with about 21.5% hesitancy in Australia.”
The article states that currently 10% were unwilling to be vaccinated, ergo, exactly the same. The other group, unsure, is an entirely different cohort.
The article was published by two professors (one of economics) and a research fellow, but the analysis was woeful. Firstly, lumping those two groups together to come up with a figure for ‘hesitant’ has virtually no bearing on who will actually end up getting a vaccine, they are just stated intentions at the time of the survey. Further they completely missed the BIG takeaway from the survey, that being that those who were ‘unwilling’ to have a vaccine had halved over a period of a couple of weeks, now down to 10%.
Compiling data is useful, but analysing it is a whole other ball game and they’ve missed the elephant in the room. As it now seems likely that we will all eventually come in contact with Covid due to NSW stuffing it up, the bigger question is just how many people will maintain their vaccine ‘unwillingness’ and not get a vaccine as case numbers soar and hospitals are filled up. I’ve estimated on other forums in Crikey that the truly committed anti-vaxxers probably come in around the 2-3% mark (it’s an educated guess, no survey could fairly establish the number). There is another small cohort who can’t get a jab for health reasons.
We should be aiming for 95% of all over 12s vaccinated. The holdouts will come around except for a very small and deeply deluded group.
Agree with this, I’d aim a bit lower, say 90%, eventually, but I’d be releasing restrictions gradually from 70%
Canada’s got Trudeau – we gotta put up with “Fauxdough” ….. I wonder if they’d swap?
You would do that to them?
The Romans wouldn’t take him….. what have the Canadians ever done for us?
To us?
To shay?