, 03.30.2021 08:20 AM

My latest: little PMO shop of horrors

ACT ONE

[The scene: The office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in March 2020.]

KATIE TELFORD, CHIEF OF STAFF: Prime Minister, we have good news and bad news.

TRUDEAU [putting down mirror]: What’s the bad news?

TELFORD: Our vaccine deal with the Chinese fell apart. Which means most other countries will fully vaccinate their people months before we do.

TRUDEAU [irritated that the planned Instagram shoot will be cancelled]: What’s the good news?

TELFORD [brightly]: We won’t tell anyone for several months!

ACT TWO

[The scene: A boardroom at the PMO in January 2021.]

TRUDEAU [happily]: Yay! Mean old Donald Trump will soon be gone!

TELFORD [exchanging worried looks with other PMO staffer]: We don’t think that’s good for you, Justin.

TRUDEAU [bewildered]: But why, Katie? Nobody likes Trump! Joe Biden and me will be BFFs!

TELFORD: Two reasons. One, Trump may be a bad guy, but he’s vaccinating more than a million Americans a day.

 

TRUDEAU: Is that more than me?

TELFORD: Way, way more. And, Biden is promising to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of his presidency. But we don’t think he’s going to do it.

TRUDEAU [smiling]: That’s good, isn’t it?

TELFORD: No. We think he’s going to have 100 million Americans vaccinated in 60 days, not 100.

TRUDEAU: Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os.

ACT THREE

[The scene: The PMO situation room, in February, where staff are counting and recounting vaccine purchase orders.]

TELFORD [mopping her brow, closing her eyes]: Damn.

TRUDEAU [bewildered]: What’s wrong, Katie?

TELFORD: We simply aren’t going to get enough vaccines fast enough. We are going to have the worst vaccination record in the G7. And the data suggests we will be around 65th in the world for vaccinations per capita.

TRUDEAU: Is that bad?

TELFORD [exasperated]: It’s really bad. It means we can’t get back to a majority. It means we may even lose the election.

PMO STAFFER WITH NO MEDICAL OR SCIENCE TRAINING WHATSOEVER: I know! Let’s delay the second vaccine dose by months! That way we can vaccinate more people!

 

TRUDEAU: Is that safe?

PMO STAFFER: Who knows, who cares. We may lose a few elderly people, but they don’t vote for you anyway.

ANOTHER STAFFER: Good point.

ACT FOUR

[The scene: Trudeau and Telford are walking near Parliament Hill in March, a phalanx of RCMP security around them.]

TRUDEAU [waving merrily]: Look! Everyone is happy to see us and is waving at us!

TELFORD: I think they’re giving us the finger, sir.

TRUDEAU [crestfallen]: But how come? Nice Joe Biden is lending us a bunch of AstraZeneca vaccines!

TELFORD: That may be because the Americans aren’t sure that vaccine is safe.

TRUDEAU: Is it?

TELFORD: Um.

TRUDEAU: Well, just make sure you inject that mean Warren Kinsella guy with it, OK?

TELFORD [brightening]: Excellent idea, sir.

ACT FIVE: THE FINALE

[The scene: A private reception area at the Ottawa Congress Centre on election night.]

 

TRUDEAU: Katie, did we win?

TELFORD: [smiling, astonished as she looks up from one of her several devices]: I can’t believe it, but I think we did!

TRUDEAU [immediately adopting the Downward Dog position]: See? I told you, Katie! This nasty virus wasn’t going to defeat us! Yay!

TELFORD [whispering]: Well, just between us, Prime Minister, we screwed up getting vaccines early on. Then we didn’t get enough. Then we put people at risk by going against science on the second dose. Then we exposed them to even more danger when we injected them with vaccines we hadn’t fully tested.

TRUDEAU [confused]: But why did we win, Katie?

TELFORD [holding up a device with a photo of Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh in debate]: Because, against these two, you couldn’t lose, Justin.

TRUDEAU: Yippee! Let’s have some herbal tea!

THE END.

[Warren Kinsella was Special Assistant to Jean Chretien.]

30 Comments

  1. Lyndon Dunkley says:

    Justin is cruising around Ottawa with his sleeves rolled up today to remind his base how hard he is working.

    Election is nigh.

    • Lyndon,

      Well, Léger does have them up 7 points so they may very well go in the spring but of course, it’s a no-go as long as the new GG is not in place.

      Boy, will the advisory panel ever earn their bucks, if they aren’t volunteers! LOL.

  2. Steve T says:

    And the Academy Award goes to WK, for Best Screenplay Based on Real Events!

    Thanks for the great entertainment during an otherwise dreary week.

  3. Yes, Trudeau did a poor job at the difficult task of out competing other countries for timely vaccine delivery, but Ford is doing a terrible job of handling the exponential increases in COVID happening in Ontario by loosening restrictions when it is obvious tightening is required. The more it goes up the longer it will take to come down and the more people that will die.

    • Darwin,

      I would put it to you that doctors or no doctors there comes a point where you have to give up on serial shutdowns because each time we re-open there will be new spikes and if we do not close again, there will be new spikes. So, at some point, they have to throw in the towel and come what may. I can live with 2-3 shutdowns but after that no way.

      Quite deliberate genetic manipulation of a virus clearly originating in nature is an interesting beast. Course had it been meant for a viral war, it would have been of a far greater order of magnitude as regards genetic manipulation. They’re keeping that one in reserve for WWIII. Gives me something to look forward to…in my old age, that is, if we get there.

      • With the vaccines rolling out this should be the last shutdown. This one might have been avoided if the last shutdown had started earlier and lasted longer.

        There is no evidence of genetic manipulation of the virus.

        • Martin says:

          They are rolling IN ish. Not out. Vaccines in arms are all that counts and there are lots of countries with problems that have a lot more vaccines in arms than we do.

        • Darwin,

          You need to pay more attention to national security and intelligence circles. It’s common knowledge there now with even the WHO convinced that the Chinese have not been totally forthcoming but rather quite deliberately disingenuous, at best.

          • If there was genetic manipulation, there would be evidence in the DNA sequence.

          • Yet Another Calgarian says:

            I was seeing discussions between epidemiologists talking about how it was entirely possible that covid was the result of gain of function experiments LAST January based on its behaviour in China

            Reports which Biden’s State Department are now saying can’t be ruled out.

            That farce of a WHO investigation proves that we will never know one way or the other for sure though.

    • Walter says:

      Why does Ford not just administer the vaccines before Trudeau delivers them.
      Then Ontario could be at 100%.

  4. Robert White says:

    This website has taught me that I really do have a sense of humour and that I’m not really a witless dolt with zero sense of humour because I lack intelligence.

    I must be smart if I chuckling more often than not when I read this website. Thank you for finding my lost sense of humour, Warren. You get points for the discovery.

    RW

  5. Nobody says:

    There’s a small flaw in ACT THREE: PMO STAFFER: Who knows, who cares. We may lose a few elderly people, but they don’t vote for you anyway.

    Those old people, they have children who do vote and may not be happy on election day…often, the children are married so that’s 2 votes, and the grandkids may not be happy as well.

  6. Peter Williams says:

    TELFORD: Justin, we’re 65th in vaccinations.

    TRUDEAU: Katie, that’s terrible. We should be first in vacations. Let’s get Craig and Marc on it.

    TELFORD: (somewhat exasperated). That’s vaccinations Justin, not vacations.

    TRUDEAU: Oh… Well Katie that’s really not too bad. 65 is more than a passing grade.

  7. Yet Another Calgarian says:

    This is now the second time we have picked up reused AZ vaccines.

    Trudeau did the same with the AZ doses South Africa rejected in February saying they had low effect versus their particular circulating variant.

    Funny how we had ten doses preordered (allegedly) for every Canadian but we seem to be doing the equivalent of dumpster diving to actually secure them.

  8. dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack says:

    Totally unrealistic. There’s no way Justin would ever be allowed to attend a conversation in which decisions were being made about COVID. Even if he was, they certainly wouldn’t allow him to ask questions.

    • DSAUPH,

      At least he’s bright enough not to want to inject bleach? They’d rather stockpile it to whitewash Commons’ committee documents. Oops! What was I thinking?

  9. Full Retired Rambo says:

    And then and email showed up reminding certain party members that they’ve failed to yet make a donation in 2021.

  10. Gilbert says:

    My version is a little different. Though Erin O’Toole seems to have a lot of problems, in the end he does well in Ontario and convinces lots of women that he’s a very safe choice. Jagmeet Singh doesn’t do well, but that doesn’t surprise anyone.

  11. Douglas W says:

    Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Richard Wagner ) acts in place of the GG for matters like this.

    • Douglas,

      To say the very least, that would raise protocol eyebrows were the CJ suddenly to be enmeshed in parliamentary procedure related to an overtly political act, otherwise known as writ dropping. Simply not on. A definite No-No.

  12. Douglas W says:

    Libs know how to shape the ballot box question.

    Suspect Trudeau will come in around 192 seats.

  13. Michael Teper says:

    Oh what a circus, oh what a show!
    Poor old Canada has gone to town
    Over a tousle-haired actor named Justin Trudeau
    We’ve all gone crazy
    Electing him over and over again
    Though he didn’t impress us at all
    We never expected him to.

    Don’t cry for me dear Dominion
    The truth is I’m over my head now
    It doesn’t matter that
    Vaccines are slow in coming
    I broke my promise
    Go socially distance.

    And as for fortune, and as for fame
    I eagerly invited them in
    For the Kielburger brothers gave me all I desired
    But We was an illusion
    It was not the solution it promised to be
    So I threw them into the trash
    They messed up so I let them crash.

    Don’t cry for me dear Dominion…

  14. Mr Zee says:

    Perfectly acceptable in a Banana Republic though

  15. Andy Kaut says:

    Well done, sir.

    Tip of the hat, as we dance towards ignominy and death. 🙂

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