Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

[W. K. Lis]

Nicely put Dougie

https://twitter.com/x/status/1351598475595698176

Habits from his high school days...

Psst! Have any vaccines? Is it the good vaccine?

From link.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Habits from his high school days...

Psst! Have any vaccines? Is it the good vaccine?

From link.

As someone with some experience in the field, I can't see Doug as having been a particularly effective, efficient, or prolific drug dealer. Though, I reckon he could get his money out of anyone when needed and may have been a decent bully and able to run a network of runners through intimidation alone.

Oh, Doug.......small time forever.

 

[PinkLucy]

I don’t think he is even a decent bully.

 

[SunriseChampion]

I don’t think he is even a decent bully.

Yeah, that's probably right. Hence my initial thought on his dealing days.

 

[Videodrome]

Ontario vaccine task force member resigns after holiday travel

Linda Hasenfratz, who is a member of Ontario’s vaccine task force, is resigning from the government-appointed group after she travelled outside the country over the holidays

www.theglobeandmail.com

Oh! Oh!

 

[Thinker]

Nicely put Dougie

https://twitter.com/x/status/1351598475595698176

Doug being Doug. threatening physical violence if he doesn't get his way. But oh.. shoving anything up anyone's ying yang without permission could be misconstrued as a sexual assault. Yup Doug being Doug.

 

[gabe]

Ontario vaccine task force member resigns after holiday travel

Linda Hasenfratz, who is a member of Ontario’s vaccine task force, is resigning from the government-appointed group after she travelled outside the country over the holidays

www.theglobeandmail.com

Oh! Oh!

Yeah I'm not surprised, Linamar is the Dollar-store of automotive companies. While she is having fun in the sun, her "essential workers" ( mostly all temps) are risking life and limb making car parts in her hell hole factories during a pandemic for minimum wage.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Doug Ford was Canada’s most pro-Trump politician — until everything changed​

From link.

There was a time when Doug Ford was probably the most unapologetically pro-Donald Trump politician in Canada.

The populist Ontario Premier once so revelled in the comparison that he suggested Trump had borrowed the Ford family’s shtick of using brash and simple slogans to woo working-class voters.

On his first official visit to Washington after winning the 2018 provincial election, Ford dined at Trump’s hotel at the invitation of Kelly Craft, then the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

Craft, a Trump appointee who will soon be replaced as the American ambassador to the United Nations, raved of her chance meeting with the premier at the Queen’s Plate — at Woodbine Racetrack in Ford’s Etobicoke North riding — that “we clicked.”

“I see this guy over there, and he’s got on a white polo shirt. And it was about 116 degrees (Fahrenheit) … I really liked that guy,” the American diplomat enthused at the time.

Ford, who lived and worked in Chicago for years and said he would have voted for Trump, also used to tout his warm relations with Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s chief trade negotiator on the NAFTA talks.

It was even suggested by a few especially optimistic Ford aides, who have since left Queen’s Park, that he could have made a trade deal with Trump if he only he had been at the table.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, threats of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, two impeachments and Trump’s misbehaviour have changed all that.

Ford now considers it an insult to be likened to the former president.

In September — two months before Joe Biden defeated Trump — the Premier let that be known during a discussion at the Ryerson Democracy Forum hosted by Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn.

When a Ryerson student suggested Ford was like Trump, he snickered.

“Boy, that was a real slap calling me Donald Trump. I’m anything but Donald Trump,” he said.

Ford also told Cohn he strongly disapproved of Trump’s attacks on Biden’s family members during the bruising televised presidential debates.

However, it was Trump’s threat last spring to stop Canada from receiving crucial personal protective equipment (PPE), such as N95 masks, that most rankled the premier.

“It was a real slap in the face when President Trump cut us off to the PPEs,” fumed Ford.

“I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat. We expect a good relationship and really focus on the economics. Ontario alone is the United States’ third-largest trading partner in the world,” he noted.

While Ford, a Progressive Conservative, would be closer to a Republican on the U.S. political spectrum, he has been quick to embrace Biden, a Democrat.

He was referring him as “President Biden” well before the new U.S. leader was sworn in.

Shortly after it was official Wednesday, Ford took to Twitter to welcome the new administration.

“Ontario and the U.S. both benefit from our strong economic partnership. Congratulations to President @JoeBiden and Vice-President @KamalaHarris,” the Premier tweeted.

“I am looking forward to building on our strong relationship and working together to grow our economies and create good-quality jobs.”

The Premier is also hopeful that the new president will help Canada in its hour of vaccine need.

“We need your support, we need it,” Ford pleaded Tuesday upon learning Canadian supplies of the Pfizer vaccine are dwindling.

“You have a new president, no more excuses. We need your support and we look forward to your support. And that’s a direct message to President Biden, help out your neighbour.”

 

[tiffer24]

Doug is turning into a real embarrassment this week.

NEW: Premier Doug Ford says "Pfizer let us down" by shorting vaccine order because of production re-tooling at Belgium plan. "I don't buy any of that crap...We have a contract, meet the obligations of the contract because lives right now are in jeopardy."

 

[lenaitch]

Doug is turning into a real embarrassment this week.

NEW: Premier Doug Ford says "Pfizer let us down" by shorting vaccine order because of production re-tooling at Belgium plan. "I don't buy any of that crap...We have a contract, meet the obligations of the contract because lives right now are in jeopardy."

I didn't realize "we"; i.e. the Province of Ontario, had a contract with anybody. If he meant we, the federal government, I don't know what the terms of the contract are and I doubt he does either.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Doug is turning into a real embarrassment this week.

NEW: Premier Doug Ford says "Pfizer let us down" by shorting vaccine order because of production re-tooling at Belgium plan. "I don't buy any of that crap...We have a contract, meet the obligations of the contract because lives right now are in jeopardy.

What part of "re-tooling" to INCREASE production does he not understand?

From link.

Pfizer and BioNTech, scaling up for 2B coronavirus vaccine doses, temporarily cut deliveries in EU, Canada​

Last week, Pfizer and BioNTech said they were boosting vaccine production to 2 billion doses this year. There's a catch, though: Scaling up a factory in Belgium to help meet that goal means supplies will run short temporarily in Europe, Canada and other places.

BioNTech late last week unveiled a factory upgrade that’ll allow the company and Pfizer to deliver "significantly more doses in the second quarter" but require a short-term disruption of supply. The disruption will affect Europe, Canada and a few other countries, The Wall Street Journal reports. The companies say deliveries will return to normal starting next week.

The manufacturing upgrade will start to boost output in mid-February, BioNTech said, leading to more deliveries in the first quarter and “significantly more in the second quarter.” The companies last week hiked their 2021 output target to 2 billion doses from a prior goal of 1.3 billion doses.

Pushback to the news came swiftly. Six EU countries wrote in a letter to the companies that the situation is "unacceptable," Reuters reports.

“Not only does it impact the planned vaccination schedules, it also decreases the credibility of the vaccination process," the letter reads, according to the news service.

Separately, Germany's government said Pfizer was failing to meet a "binding commitment" on its delivery schedule, the WSJ reports.

Still, the partners are “working relentlessly” on the scale-up, BioNTech said in a statement, “not only expanding their own manufacturing capacities but also by adding further suppliers as well as contract manufacturers to increase total manufacturing capacity.”

Across the Atlantic, deliveries are continuing in the U.S. and are disrupted in Canada, according to various reports. In Ontario, Minister of Health Christine Elliott said “Pfizer is doing some retooling at their plant in Belgium,” so Ontario will “see our supplies reduced for a period of time,” as quoted by the Toronto Sun.

Some municipalities are changing vaccination plans in response, GlobalNews.ca reports. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the effect of the disruption will be "huge," according to the Sun. He called on Canada's government to pressure Pfizer to increase deliveries.

On the same day BioNTech unveiled the upgrade, the biotech won approval to start manufacturing the vaccine at a German factory it purchased from Novartis in September, Hessenschau reports (German). The Marburg site employs 300 people and is set to produce up to 750 million doses annually, according to the German news outlet.

If the "re-tooling" will increase the production from 1,300,000 to 2,000,000 doses. Hopefully, the "re-tooling" will be short term.

 

[zang]

Doug Ford is a tool. Can he be re-tooled too?

 

[SunriseChampion]

Still not clear why they can't send vaccines from their Michigan plant.

I know it's fun to mock the dude, but he has a point, it's not entirely clear that Pfizer are being reasonable given what we know.

Or I missed somehting again.

Why no vaccines from Michigan in the interim?

 

[lenaitch]

Still not clear why they can't send vaccines from their Michigan plant.

I know it's fun to mock the dude, but he has a point, it's not entirely clear that Pfizer are being reasonable given what we know.

Or I missed somehting again.

Why no vaccines from Michigan in the interim?

I might be that the terms of agreement with Pfizer US and the US government precludes that. I assume it is a wholly owned subsidiary and able to conclude its own agreements. As we saw in other examples with PPE, etc., the US administration of the day was fond of exclusive, America first/America only agreements. Otherwise, dunno.

 

[SunriseChampion]

I might be that the terms of agreement with Pfizer US and the US government precludes that. I assume it is a wholly owned subsidiary and able to conclude its own agreements.

Aha! Now we're getting answers!

As we saw in other examples with PPE, etc., the US administration of the day was fond of exclusive, America first/America only agreements. Otherwise, dunno.

Sure, fair enough.

Block Yanks from coming up here to buy insulin then when the border opens up.

Strategic medical supplies can come in all forms.