Judging by the reactions of some commentators to Liberal MP Joël Lightbound’s outing in good standing against his own government, we are still very far from the end of the “politicization” of the vaccination issue denounced by the MP. If Mr. Lightbound remains a member of the Liberal caucus in Ottawa for the time being, it is undoubtedly because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does not want to generate more sympathy for the member for Louis-Hébert by ousting him from the party, as he had done so by expelling Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal ranks in 2019. But that does not mean that dissent is now tolerated within the Liberal Party. Mr. Lightbound will know his sentence in due time.
Some interlocutors suspected Mr. Lightbound of acting in the name of political motives himself, and of fearing to lose his constituency in the next election. Others have accused him of hypocrisy for choosing now to denounce the Liberals’ “strategy” of “dividing” Canadians when he seemed to support this same strategy during the last election campaign. Still others dismissed Mr Lightbound’s criticism saying the unvaccinated outright deserved the ostracization the Liberals are trying to inflict on them.
However, Mr. Lightbound’s intervention must be placed in context. The social climate has deteriorated considerably in Canada since the last election campaign. Several Canadian cities are currently besieged by demonstrators, certainly incited by extremists who exploit their discontent, but who also show real frustration. What seemed to be a political strategy among others a few months ago has become harmful to living together. It should have ended. The opposite happened.
The federal Liberals have not been the only ones trying to lay all the blame for the prolonged pandemic on the backs of the unvaccinated and conservatives who oppose mandatory vaccination. But Mr. Trudeau has gone much further than other politicians by equating the unvaccinated with infrequent people, unworthy of the respect of their fellow citizens. First there was his statement on the Julie Snyder show during the final days of the election campaign, when he called people “fiercely opposed to vaccination” “often misogynistic, often racist”. He gave it during the first days of the occupation of the streets of Ottawa by cross-border truckers opposed to the vaccination obligation by seeming to associate all the demonstrators with a fringe of racists and conspirators. Mr. Trudeau made a serious mistake in thinking that on the pretext that more than 80% of Canadians are vaccinated, they would be comfortable with such generalizations.
Indeed, the arrival of the Omicron variant has shaken up certainties and sown doubts in relation to vaccination. According to a study done in British Columbia, for example, while the unvaccinated accounted for two-thirds of hospitalizations during the previous wave of the Delta variant, older people who received two doses of the vaccine have been filling most hospital beds for two months. Vaccination remains by far our best tool against the pandemic, reducing the risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19. But whether we like it or not, the arguments in favor of compulsory vaccination no longer have the same resonance with the population, given the transmission of the Omicron variant by people who have been doubly vaccinated.
This partly explains why campaigns to get people to get a booster dose seem to be running out of steam. Thursday, just over 30,000 doses of vaccine were administered in Quebec. Only 46% of eligible Quebecers received a third dose of the vaccine, a figure similar to those in other provinces. The politicization of vaccination seems to have contributed to a certain weariness of the population.
Almost everywhere in the West, public health authorities are making the same observations. That health restrictions have shown their limits. That the proportion of the population that supports the restrictions is decreasing day by day. That you have to learn to live with a virus that won’t disappear anytime soon. That vaccination remains essential, but cannot protect everyone in all circumstances. That our health systems must adapt to it.
This is the context in which Mr. Lightbound intervened. He spoke for several of his colleagues saying he was uncomfortable with his government’s approach to the unvaccinated, a “dividing and stigmatizing” approach. The fact remains that his intervention hurt his leader very badly. And in the liberal dynasty, such acts of lèse-majesté are generally not condoned.