It might have been the annual event celebrating Saint Valentine, but Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats should be suspicious of all the cards he received from conservative MPs. The rationale for all this lovey-dovey, kuchi-koo business from the conservatives could only be that they need Jagmeet and his NDP caucus to support them if they call for an election in the spring.
The Bloc Québécois have already blown them off. The Bloc are hardly likely to encourage an election when Trudeau and his liberals are riding high. And that would probably include the greens and independent MPs.
The election, that could happen in June, could be a desperate attempt by conservative leader Erin O’Toole to save his neck and that of his party before the liberals get too high in the polls.
It could happen. Was it not Trudeau who did the end-run and ask his friend Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, to facilitate getting some life-saving vaccines from India? After all, when India needs to vaccinate 1.3 billion people, you can always slip 20 million or so doses to your buddy in Canada.
The Serum Institute in India is already licensed to produce a billion doses of the U.K.’s AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in cooperation with Oxford University. They are committed to use half of those billion doses in India and the other half to be supplied to low-income countries without the funds to acquire vaccines. There are two other vaccine producing operations in India, so, technically, the doses sent to Canada could come from these producers.
The only problem is that the AstraZeneca vaccine has yet to be approved in Canada. What counts most though is the needles in arms in time for an election and the end of these lock-downs.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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