To many Canadians, it seemed decidedly strange. Canada’s initial coronavirus vaccination program progressed at a majestic pace during the winter, while vaccinations in the United States advanced rapidly. But Washington was unwilling to share any part of its stock of tens of millions of doses of a vaccine that it had not yet approved for use by the Americans.
This week, that changed. After weeks of suggesting that any vaccine diplomacy was in the future, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday that the United States planned to share 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and 2.5 million doses with Mexico.
[Read: U.S. to Send Millions of Vaccine Doses to Mexico and Canada]
The White House ad seemed to catch Ottawa officials off guard. Hours passed before Anita Anand, the minister responsible for purchasing vaccines, issued a statement that looked more like an insurance policy than a thank you note.
“After several discussions with the Biden government, Canada is in the process of finalizing an exchange agreement,” he said in part.
Mrs. Anand and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had little more to add on Friday afternoon, saying only that the negotiations were still in progress and that the details would come later.
Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford appeared to hear about the White House announcement through a question from a reporter during a news conference. His reaction was more effusive.
“This is what real neighbors do,” he said. “You help each other in a crisis.”
As he did publicly pleading with President Biden to release vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech to Canada from a plant in Michigan earlier this year, Ford offered to personally drive his truck to load the vaccine.
“We can get all the vaccines you can give us,” he said.
From Ms. Psaki’s remarks, it appears that the United States will officially only lend the vaccines to Canada and Mexico. It is not clear whether they will have to be replaced in kind or whether the loan will be forgivable in nature. She also said that the United States may soon share surplus from other vaccines.
So far, all of Canada’s vaccines have come from Europe or India. While it has been widespread, based mainly on statements by former President Donald J. Trump when he was in office, that Washington has banned vaccine exports from American factories, the situation is a little more subtle than that.
Ms. Psaki said vaccine manufacturers are free to export anything to anywhere, as long as they fulfill their vaccine contracts with the United States government. The vaccine mountain that grows in Ohio was created with money from the Defense Production Act. So it belongs to the United States government, not the company.
It was widely anticipated last year that the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed at the University of Oxford, would be one of the first vaccines to be approved and injected. Although it really became the backbone of Britain’s vaccination campaign, my colleagues Noah Weiland and Rebecca Robbins reported before Thursday’s announcement that a series of errors had hindered the company’s relations with American regulators.
[Read: The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs]
Although Canada and more than 70 other countries have approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, the manufacturer has not even applied to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. Things have now reached a point, Noah and Rebecca write, that “the United States may only briefly, if ever, need AstraZeneca doses.”
The AstraZeneca vaccine was also the focus of attention this week for another reason. Several European countries have suspended its use due to a possible connection with blood clots. Canadian authorities do not share these concerns, and at the end of this week, the European Medicines Agency declared the vaccine safe.
In addition to a possible new source of supply, the AstraZeneca inoculation received another boost in Canada this week, when the federal immunization advisory panel suspended its earlier recommendation that it should not be given to people 65 and older.
And after many weeks of slow movement, Pfizer and Moderna have substantially increased their shipments to Canada.
Despite remembering that vaccine production is a complicated business that can easily be delayed or stopped even by the smallest degree of contamination, the arrival of spring can mitigate discontent in Canada.
Trans Canada
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Michael Spavor, one of the two Canadians widely held hostage by China, was tried for secret spying by a Chinese court on Friday. No verdict followed the brief hearing, which Dan Bilefsky and Javier C. Hernández reported had been widely condemned as “a farce and a flagrant demonstration of hostage diplomacy”.
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One of the most prominent women in the Canadian Armed Forces resigned this week and issued a poignant resignation letter in which she said she had been “disgusted with the ongoing investigations into sexual misconduct among our top leaders”. I spoke with two veterans about their constant struggles against sexual harassment and even sexual assault while in the army and what they want to see emerging from investigations into the current head of the defense team and his predecessor.
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From a makeshift studio in his Toronto basement, Matt Granite, the Deal Guy, “now broadcasts daily on Amazon Live, sometimes several times a day, covering everything from kitchen appliances to snow blowers,” writes Jackie Snow . “Below each video, there is a merry-go-round with the products he is discussing. When a viewer clicks on that item and buys it, Mr. Granito receives a share. “
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The stealthy F-35 fighter remains in contention as a Canadian Forces replacement for their CF-18 jets, despite Trudeau having killed a conservative bid and restarted the selection process. The Times’ editorial board argues that the United States military should drastically reduce its purchases of expensive, high-tech aircraft.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has been reporting on Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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