Trudeau blocks mayor’s plan to get Candians vaccinated with surplus US shots in border tunnel

The plan was rejected as Canada’s vaccine surplus is nearly outpacing the nation’s demand

Moderna Vaccine Kids (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A Canadian plan to use surplus American coronavirus vaccines to inoculate Canadians inside a tunnel connecting the countries has been shot down by the government.

The mayor of Windsor, Ontario, Drew Dilkens, proposed a plan that would have invited Canadians to the Detroit-Windsor border tunnel beneath the Detroit River, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The Canadians would have lined up along the border where they would receive the surplus US vaccines from American healthcare workers.

"We're not trying to send a man to the moon here. We're using the infrastructure to accomplish a shared goal," Mr Dilkens told the AP. "This is a sensible, reasonable alternative to vaccines heading to the landfill."

The Canadian government shot down the plan, which Mr Dilkens says is now "dead”.

According to the AP, the Canada Border Services Agency rejected the idea on the grounds that it would disturb traffic and pose "significant" security issues.

Border logistics further complicated the plan. As the healthcare workers administering the vaccines would be delivering the vaccines from the US, if any of them were to accidentally cross the border line into Canada it would violate Canadian law, as a vaccine cannot be legally imported into Canada without the consent of the country's health authority.

The vaccines would come from a surplus of 500,000 vaccines that will expire in August, according to the AP.

Though the plan would make use of vaccines that are set to expire, the country is not hurting for vaccines; the country's military general overseeing coronavirus vaccine distribution said that the nation's supply of vaccines is almost outpacing its demand.

According to CTVnews, Brigadier General Krista Brodie said that more than two million doses of the vaccine are being held back because provinces said they cannot use them due to a lack of demand.

According to Brig-Gen Brodie, the provinces have a surplus of nine million doses. She said that in a matter of weeks the country will have enough surplus vaccines to inoculate every eligible Canadian.

Canada's new plan will be to try to minimize vaccine waste by only providing doses when requested by the provinces. By conserving the vaccines, the government hopes to be able to donate unused doses to countries that are still in need of the vaccine.

The vaccination rate in Canada has significantly outpaced the US, with more than 79 per cent of eligible Canadians over the age of 12 at least partially vaccinated, with 54 per cent fully vaccinated.