The Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent speech to the British parliament, was highly critical of Canada for over-ordering Covid-19 vaccines. He said that we have five times what we need in the pipeline.

The view from this end of the pipeline is quite different. The pipeline ran dry the week before last and the proportion of people vaccinated so far is much less than many other countries. The vaccines are supposed to start trickling out of the pipeline again next week, but there are great uncertainties about how long it will take to receive enough for all of our population.

The Canadian government has no plan to vaccinate us all five or ten times, nor to stockpile more than we need so other countries cannot get what they need. They are just trying to get enough, from whatever source they can. They have ordered from a number of different companies. Many of those vaccines are not even approved as yet.

I don’t want to seem disrespectful of the Most Reverend Mr. Welby, but I wish he would have shown a little more respect for the facts.