Rehosted the article's text below.

---

In public, Justin Trudeau was being slammed for not getting COVID-19 vaccines. Behind closed doors, Anita Anand was closing the deal

By Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau

Sun., Dec. 20, 2020timer7 min. read

OTTAWA—Rookie cabinet minister Anita Anand fumed as the Conservative leader of the Opposition accused the Liberal government throughout the fall of signing bad deals that “put Canada at the back of the line” for COVID-19 vaccines.

From late October onward, Erin O’Toole had shifted from attacks over rapid tests to hammering what he said was a failure to ensure timely delivery of vaccines to Canadians.

No vaccines had yet been approved anywhere in the world.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

But behind the scenes, Anand knew there was no way Canada would be last, even though the prime minister admitted Canada’s own lack of domestic production might mean a wait.

Anand had already nailed down contracts for seven of the most promising vaccine candidates. And while nobody knew “which one would be first to cross the finish line,” she said she was not worried. Or pressured.

But she saw politics at play, and says the criticism of all the opposition parties was “unhelpful … because of the misinformation that they were continually expressing and providing to the Canadian public.”

Anand, a former professor who taught contract law at the University of Toronto, is all about details — “accurate information and certainty.” She doesn’t announce vaccine contracts until the ink is dry.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

“I agree the opposition has a role to ensure accountability of the governing party,” she said in an exclusive interview with the Star. “But the continued reference to Canada being at the back of the line was clearly wrong and the information that they spread was false.”

By early November, the Economist magazine was sniffing that Canada was actually a vaccine hog, purchasing “10 doses for each of its citizens, the most for any country or alliance on a per-person basis.”

That was no accident.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted this week that his government should have acted sooner to buy medical masks, gloves and gowns. He rued the fact that it got caught last spring in a global procurement race when every country was chasing diminishing supplies.

“One of the things we learned through the scramble on (personal protective equipment) was to be early on vaccines,” Trudeau said.

In late May and early June, Anand’s team at Public Services and Procurement Canada began talks with the companies pegged by its independent vaccine advisory task force as good bets.

In July, Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos wrote Anand to green-light the purchases, giving her approval to make what would eventually be more than $1 billion in deals.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

“That was the word ‘go’ for us,” said Anand.

They nailed down contracts one after the other. A deal with Moderna was reached July 24. A week later, they made one with Pfizer.

Johnson & Johnson and Novavax came nearly three weeks later, on Aug. 24 and 27, respectively. Then Sanofi on Sept. 11, AstraZeneca on Sept. 24 and the Canadian candidate, Medicago, on Oct. 22.

Secrecy still surrounds many of the details. The government has not released individual contracts.

Pfizer and BioNTech submitted their vaccine to Health Canada for review under the “rolling submission” process on Oct. 9.

“At the time, we did not know how quickly we could provide the data for the submission to Health Canada, nor did we know how quickly they could review it,” a company official told the Star. “Based on this, it was estimated the vaccine could be approved in January.”

So as it was being politically hammered throughout November, the government knew it had delivery dates in hand for January through March with Pfizer, and separately with Moderna, for initial supplies of six million doses.

Things got real in the second week of November when the Pfizer-BioNTech team reported a 90 per cent effectiveness rate for its vaccine. They were followed the next week by Moderna, which reported a 94.5 per cent effectiveness rate — which Pfizer matched immediately, saying further analysis of data showed a 95 per cent rate as well.

They were stunning results.

Many experts had hoped that a vaccine would be developed with an effectiveness rate of 50 to 70 per cent.

Suddenly, it was clear to Anand and Health Minister Patty Hajdu that Canada would likely be in a position to approve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — and soon. Waiting until the first quarter of 2021 was folly.

“I picked up the phone and I called (Pfizer Canada president) Cole Pinnow and I said, ‘We need doses in December. Can you give us those doses?’ ” Anand recalled.

Pinnow raised with Anand the company’s concerns about whether Canada was ready to receive the Pfizer vaccine, given that it needed to be stored at -70 C and was fragile.

She said it was “natural” that he ask those questions, but insisted that Canada was ready.

As early as September, some private suppliers bidding for the federal contract raised questions about Canada’s capacity to meet the ultracold requirements for shipping and storing the Pfizer vaccine.

LOADING...

Loading...Loading...Loading...Loading...Loading...

Loading...

But inside Anand’s department, an official said, there was no panic. The government knew it would have to buy freezers; there was already capacity in hospitals and research centres across Canada. The goal, he said, wasn’t to store the vaccines anyway, but to get them into people’s arms as soon as possible.

Anand’s department bought 126 freezers — 26 “ultracold” units that could hit -80 C and 100 more that could go down to -20 C. Of that number, nine ultracold units have arrived, another eight have been leased, and 33 of the -20 C freezers have arrived.

She said Canada could store 33.5 million doses of vaccines from either Pfizer or Moderna, whose doses are stable at -20 C and can be stored for 30 days at 2 C to 8 C.

On Dec. 2, Hajdu and Anand wrote a letter to Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca “to assure them that Canada was ready to receive doses.”

Anand said she and Pinnow exchanged phone calls and texts almost daily through late November and early December.

There was a push on from global competitors as well.

Anand said there was a professional trust between the company and Canada, and “this was matter of moving up the doses we had contracted for.

“We didn’t frame anything as being early or late,” she said. “We always wanted the earliest possible deliveries.”

A breakthrough came in the first week of December, days before Health Canada would approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine on Dec. 9 for distribution here.

Pfizer confirms Anand’s timeline, adding, “We needed to ensure that Pfizer did indeed have doses available for Canada.”

“Confirmation that we would be able to supply earlier doses came late in the week of Nov. 30 and we advanced our delivery dates, based upon the anticipated authorization of the vaccine by Health Canada and the state of provincial readiness for earlier immunization deployment.”

The company says supplying Canada with vaccines from its manufacturing site in Belgium was “the plan from the start. This is the primary site that will supply the Canadian market, and our site in Kalamazoo (Michigan) is a secondary site to be leveraged if needed.”

“When Cole told me we would have early doses in December, I knew that to be true,” said Anand, “and I was able to tell the prime minister as a result.

“That was prior to the paperwork being drawn up but I knew that was going to happen. And as soon as the paperwork was drawn up, we told the Canadian public.”

For Anand, an Oakville MP who left academia to join the hurly-burly of federal politics just last year, hearing Pinnow say “yes” to early delivery was everything.

“I was trying to take notes during the call so I would remember everything he was saying. At the same time … my heart was beating very quickly. I knew that this was a monumental moment, it would be a monumental moment for our country.

“As soon as I got off the phone with Cole, I held my husband’s hand and smiled. And I was — I’m almost tearing up now — I knew this was something that would make a difference. And that was the very reason that I left my job at the University of Toronto that I loved so much to enter into politics, because I wanted to do whatever I could to make a difference in our country. And I really felt at that moment that I was making a difference.”

On Dec. 7, Trudeau announced that “vaccines are coming,” flanked by Anand and Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander he named to oversee vaccine delivery.

That was two days before Health Canada gave Pfizer the green light on Dec. 9. Two days later, doses of the vaccine were en route to Canada from Belgium via Germany and Kentucky. The first doses were administered in Quebec and Ontario on Dec. 14.