Category: Columns

First published at True North on April 4, 2020.

Step aside Hanoi Hannah: it’s time for Politburo Patty to shine.

I can’t think of any other name for Canada’s health minister, who boldly hewed to the Chinese communist party line during a briefing by Canadian officials on COVID-19.

Asked about whether China’s official numbers, which were adopted unquestioningly by the World Health Organization, were trustworthy, Hajdu said Thursday there was no reason to distrust China’s figures.

“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way,” she said before accusing the reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories.”

Her comments led a columnist for China Daily, a newspaper owned by the propaganda wing of the Chinese communist, to call her a “role model,” albeit a “disappointment to those paparazzi journalists and fearmongers.”

While her finger-wagging to the reporter is still preferable to how the Chinese politburo deals with reporters who challenge the party line, it is still dangerous from a health official who has touted her government’s actions as being rooted in evidence rather than politics.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t go as far as Hajdu did. When he was asked earlier in the day whether he trusted China’s numbers, he simply said those were “questions…for future times.”

Hajdu merely revealed what has always been a significant China-sized blind spot in the Trudeau government’s approach to foreign policy.

Canadian foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne last week publicly thanked the Chinese for doing the “right thing” in response to a tweet from China’s embassy to Canada promoting a donation of medical supplies from the Bank of China.

I am all for giving credit where it’s due, but any supposed benevolent acts from China must be met with skepticism.

The shipment came as reporters were pointing out Canada had sent 16 tonnes of medical equipment to China when it was the coronavirus pandemic’s epicenter.

Champagne fell for what EU diplomat Josep Borrell called China’s “politics of generosity.”

At this point, it’s not even clear whether the shipment from China can be used. The Netherlands had to recall 600,000 subpar Chinese-made face masks. Spain found its Chinese-made test kits had only a 30% accuracy rate, making them even less effective than dollar store pregnancy tests. Several other countries have made similar findings about millions of units of gear.

To accept China’s numbers is, at best, naïve, and potentially far more insidious given China’s penchant for propaganda.

Despite Hajdu’s contention that we should take China’s data at face value, there is ample evidence China has been less than forthright throughout this crisis.

American intelligence officials concluded China underreported its case and death counts, according to a Bloomberg report. The British government similarly believes China’s coronavirus death toll could be 40 times the official tally, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

Chinese people have seen stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in the Hubei province – far more than the government’s numbers would warrant.

Interestingly, a Barron’s report suggests the data from China show a “near-perfect prediction model that analysts say isn’t likely to naturally occur.”

Even the Chinese regime acknowledged “shortcomings and deficiencies” in its handling of the coronavirus.

While these seeds of doubt are important, they shouldn’t detract from the broader point that China is simply unworthy of being given the benefit of the doubt about anything.

Canadian Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said as much when condemning Hajdu’s Chinese apologetics.

“Any government that operates in an autocratic fashion, a communist government that denies basic human rights to its own people, that stifles dissent and squashes the free press, should be distrusted,” Scheer said at a press conference Friday morning. “It’s puzzling to me why a Canadian minister would vouch for a country – a government of a country – that operates in that fashion.”

It’s less puzzling when you look at the pattern emerging with Trudeau’s Liberals, which even predates Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister.

In 2013, he became something of a punchline among Canadian conservatives when he lauded China for its expediency at the expense of democracy.

“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime,” he said at a 2013 campaign event.

I’m all for diplomacy, but this is an admiration Canadians can live without.

First published at True North on April 3, 2020.

Let no one say the private sector isn’t rising to the coronavirus challenge.

A subsidiary of British American Tobacco is working on a coronavirus vaccine featuring an unlikely ingredient: tobacco.

Specifically a protein extracted from tobacco leaves, Owensboro, Ky.-based Kentucky BioProcessing said in a release Wednesday.

The company plans to distribute its potential vaccine on a not-for-profit basis.

“KBP recently cloned a portion of COVID-19’s genetic sequence which led to the development of a potential antigen – a substance which induces an immune response in the body and in particular, the production of antibodies,” the company said. “This antigen was then inserted into tobacco plants for reproduction and, once the plants were harvested, the antigen was then purified, and is now undergoing pre-clinical testing.”

It may sound surprising, but the process is not as novel as you might think. Kentucky BioProcessing’s tobacco extraction was used in an Ebola treatment called ZMapp, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and used during the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The coronavirus vaccine’s developer says its plant-based process gives it “several advantages” over conventional vaccine production, such as faster accumulation of the necessary protein in the tobacco plants, and not requiring refrigeration.

With support from government agencies and third-party manufacturers, British American Tobacco says it could produce one to three million doses of vaccine per week, beginning as early as June.

“If the testing goes well, BAT is hopeful that, with the right partners and support from government agencies, between one and three million doses of the vaccine could be manufactured per week, beginning in June,” the release said.

BAT’s scientific research director, Dr. David O’Reilly, was unavailable for an interview, but said in the company’s press release that BAT is “engaged with the US Food and Drug Administration and (is) seeking guidance on next steps.”

The news from Kentucky BioProcessing puts British American Tobacco in a growing field of companies and research institutions racing to develop, test and implement a coronavirus vaccine.

Nearly three dozen organizations are known to be in the race, according to the Guardian. Of these, four have begun animal testing while at least one, a Boston biotech company, is set to begin human trials “imminently.”

First published at True North on April 2, 2020.

There’s “no indication” China’s numbers on coronavirus infections and deaths can’t be trusted, Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu said Thursday.

Responding to a question at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing Thursday, Hajdu downplayed concerns that China’s numbers were inaccurate, even going so far as to accuse the reporter who asked about them of “feeding conspiracy theories.”

“There’s no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified any way,” said Hajdu.

“Your question is feeding into conspiracy theories that many people have been perpetuating on the internet and it’s important to remember that there is no way to beat a global pandemic if we’re not willing to work together as a globe.”

In contradiction to Hajdu’s claims, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne suggested that the government has looked into the accuracy of the data.  

“We are very concerned about this information, I just had a call with NATO allies a few hours ago,” said Champagne. 

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said questions about China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and whether its stats could be trusted, were “questions…for future times.”

This comes on the heels of a Bloomberg report that the U.S. intelligence community found evidence China purposefully hid and falsified their coronavirus case data. 

“Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side, and I’m being nice when I say that,” said US President Donald Trump during a daily coronavirus briefing. 

According to the Daily Mail, advisors to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson have also questioned the current case numbers coming out of China and claim that they might be 15 to 40 times worse than reported. 

Reports from China of mass incineration and thousands of cremation urns outside of funeral homes have cast doubt on the Chinese communist government’s numbers, which have fed World Health Organization data.

First published at True North on March 19, 2020.

I’m baffled and disappointed that I even need to write this column, frankly.

If Canada were in the midst of a federal election right now, I have no doubt the campaigns would be suspended given the global public health crisis that COVID-19 is causing.

But for the Conservative Party of Canada, things are supposed to be business as usual.

The eight people seeking the Conservative leadership have until March 25 to pony up $300,000 and 3,000 signatures of active members to the party to secure a spot on the ballot. So far only four – Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan – have done so. (A fifth, Jim Karahalios, says he has done so but the Conservative party’s official registry doesn’t yet reflect this).

The others were plugging away raising funds and collecting signatures at events across the country but have suspended these activities while public officials recommend – or in some cases order – social distancing.

Retail politics is all about face-to-face interactions, which are, at this point, verboten in Canada. It isn’t just about logistics. People are hurting, and to shift priorities from survival to partisanship is just wrong.

The Conservative’s leadership election organizing committee is unmoved by this.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party of Canada sent out a fundraising email this week derided by the party’s own supporters as tone-deaf and ill-timed.

Going dark is easy for the candidates who have already guaranteed their spots on the ballot. For the others, human decency may be rewarded with elimination from the race.

Leadership candidate Rick Peterson halted fundraising but made phone and social media appeals for nomination signatures. Most campaigns shifted into virtual mode, while some were suspended altogether.

“I still fundamentally believe now is not the time to campaign, virtually or by other means,” said leadership candidate Rudy Husny in a statement Thursday. 

“If the Conservative Party of Canada wants to disqualify me on March 25th for being true to my values and refusing to campaign during this public health emergency, I will leave this race with no regrets as I believe it is the right thing to do and what real leadership is all about.”

Sarnia––Lambton member of parliament and leadership candidate Marilyn Gladu expressed a similar sentiment.

“If the Conservative Party chooses to disqualify me on March 25th because I refuse to impose upon Canadians working to ensure the health and safety of their loved ones, I will accept their decision with resignation and disappointment,” she said.

The Conservative party’s leadership committee deliberately set a high bar for entering the race. Whether the remaining four candidates would have cleared it without COVID-19 throwing a wrench into things is unknown.

Even so, those who would have merely squeaked by have been handicapped by rules that no longer reflect the circumstances of the country.

While there are those who say the lesser-known candidates aren’t relevant in a so-called two-horse race, in a contest decided by ranked ballots a bigger field can have a monumental impact.

We don’t know how long COVID-19 and its quarantines and public gathering limitations will last. It may be that the Conservatives’ planned leadership convention in June will have to be cancelled. It’s possible to crown a leader without a convention given ballots are being mailed to Conservative members. It’s possible to retain the race’s overall timeline while merely extending the ballot deadline by a few weeks.

Alternatively, the party could cancel the June convention and instead combine it with November’s scheduled policy convention. Whatever the solution might be, don’t believe anyone who says there aren’t options.

All of them are better than encouraging candidates to shake loose change out of the pockets of Canadians grappling with the coronavirus’s economic realities.

The party is out of alignment with its members here. As part of True North’s Conservative Leadership Series, I sat down with four of the candidates last week, before the country went into de facto lockdown.

While our audience is seeking COVID-19 coverage, I admit it felt weird to publish these interviews as we’ve been doing since they were recorded.

I would have loved to keep them banked until the worst of this crisis was behind us, though with the party maintaining its Mar. 25 cutoff, it would be unfair to the candidates to deny them access to our audience, even if the country’s attention is elsewhere.

Some things matter more than politics. Everyone except for the Conservative Party of Canada realizes COVID-19 is one of these things.

First published at True North on March 17, 2020.

The Canada Border Services Agency has paused deportations while Canada deals with the spread of coronavirus, the agency confirmed to True North.

“During this time-period while the openness of international borders and availability of international flights is rapidly changing, there has been a significant impact on removal operations,” said a CBSA spokesperson.

“In light of the current circumstances and in the best interest of officers and clientele, the Government of Canada, in conjunction with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has decided to stop carrying out removals at the current time.”

The spokesperson added that some removals may still take place with “serious criminal cases,” but these will be “via exception only.”

The directive includes the cancellation of previously scheduled deportations. The CBSA will be notifying those impacted by the cancellations in these cases.

CBSA didn’t confirm how long the pause will be in effect, though two immigration lawyers indicated they’ve heard it will last three weeks.

This comes just one day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a shutdown of the Canadian border to those who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The federal government has also ordered many international flights to redirect to the Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto airports to better control the flow of entry into Canada.

CBSA is using what it calls a “risk-based approach” to assess even Canadian citizens returning to Canada. Officers have been directed to remind people who enter the country that they must self-isolate for 14 days. The CBSA is also asking anyone with symptoms to disclose them to a screening officer.

On Sunday, a CBSA employee at Pearson airport in Toronto tested positive for COVID-19, though the agency didn’t know where or when the employee, who is currently in self-isolation, contracted the virus.