Quebec Taps Employers to Speed Vaccinations After a Slow Start

Business

Article content (Bloomberg) — Quebec is enlisting companies to help ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination campaign beginning in May, when all people under 60 are expected to become eligible for a jab. The province, which had the most virus deaths in Canada, is seeking as many as 50 businesses to host vaccination hubs. They’ll need to commit to inoculating 15,000 to 25,000 people over three months, including employees, their families and the surrounding community, Health Minister Christian Dube said. “Our health network is fragile at the moment,” Dube said at a news conference in a Montreal suburb, at the headquarters of CAE Inc., a simulation technology company that’s participating in the program. “During a war, at some point you need other people who come to take over.” Quebec, with a population of 8.5 million, has administered about 872,000 doses in the last three months. Like the rest of the country, its rollout was slowed by delivery delays, making Canada a laggard among its Group of Seven peers. Canada has now approved four vaccines, and the pace is expected to ramp up. Quebec Premier Francois Legault has said that initial doses would be available to all residents who want them by June 24, the province’s national holiday. To date, the government has operated mass vaccination sites, with pharmacies soon to follow. Company hubs will add a third pillar, which will be most needed in May and June and help bring daily vaccinations to 70,000 or more, according to Dube. Many large companies already have in-house health professionals, who will help the effort, he said. ©2021 Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg.com

G7 agrees to back expansion of IMF financial firepower

Business

Article content LONDON/WASHINGTON — The world’s seven largest advanced economies have agreed to support the first expansion of the International Monetary Fund’s reserves since 2009, a step meant to help developing countries cope with the coronavirus pandemic, Britain said on Friday. Britain – which is chairing the Group of Seven (G7) this year – said G7 finance ministers had agreed to support a “new and sizeable” increase in the volume of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), an internal currency used by the IMF. “Today’s milestone agreement among the G7 paves the way for crucial and concerted action to support the world’s low-income countries, ensuring that no country is left behind in the global economic recovery from coronavirus,” British finance minister Rishi Sunak said. The news was welcomed by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva who said the G7 finance ministers’ meeting was “productive.” Last year the IMF said it wanted the allocation of SDRs to rise to the equivalent of $500 billion from the $293 billion agreed at the time of the last expansion in 2009, just after the global financial crisis. That expansion was opposed by then-U.S. President Donald Trump. Last month U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she would like an expansion but wanted greater transparency about how the SDRs would be used and traded. Article content Sources in the United States familiar with the G7 talks said an increase of around $650 billion had been under discussion. Even if Yellen wins consensus for an SDR allocation that falls below the threshold requiring approval by the U.S. Congress – about $679 billion based on today’s exchange rates – the U.S. domestic politics are tricky. Congressional Republicans have already complained the move would fail to target the countries in most need of the funds but would provide free cash reserves to China, Iran and other countries seen as adversaries by the Trump administration. Senior Republican lawmaker French Hill said in a recent letter to Yellen that more SDRs “would deliver unconditional liquidity to some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.” Any expansion of SDRs will also need to be agreed with countries outside the G7, including China, before the IMF’s spring meeting in April. Credit ratings agency Fitch said an increase in SDRs to $500 billion would be equivalent to 0.5% of global annual economic output and represent 3.5% of global financial reserves. “It will help countries to deal with immediate external financing pressures, but is insufficient to alleviate broader debt service challenges,” Fitch wrote in a note to clients. Britain’s finance ministry said extra SDRs would help poorer countries “pay for crucial needs such as vaccines and food imports, and improve the buffers of emerging markets and low-income countries.” Anti-poverty groups welcomed the move but said more needed to be done for richer nations to share their unused SDRs with poorer ones. (Additional reporting by David Lawder in WASHINGTON Editing by Andy Bruce and Mark Heinrich)

Behind The Scenes Of Pandemic Governing: Colorado's Polis On Tests Of Leadership

Health

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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis opens the shipping box containing the state’s first shipment of COVID-19 vaccine at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Dec. 14, 2020, in east Denver.

David Zalubowski/AP

David Zalubowski/AP

A little more than a year into the pandemic in the U.S. and governors across the country continue to be thrust into the spotlight as they maneuver through vaccine distribution and decisions on opening up their states. During the public health emergency, governors have used extraordinary powers to shut down businesses and mandate masks and social distancing. No governor ever ran for office “expecting to lead a state through a pandemic,” says Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat. “Somebody has to be governor and I happened to be here at this time, so I’m just going to do my best to make the most informed decisions I can.” Polis, a 45-year-old former congressman and tech entrepreneur, has issued hundreds of executive orders of his own but says he believes that persuasion, more than written policies, may be more important for taming the pandemic. “The policies matter a bit, and people focus so much on those. Do you tell people they have to wear masks? Do you close down? What capacity do you have at restaurants? But what really matters is, are people wearing masks?”

Like any other state, Colorado has seen its peaks and valleys. At times, it had among the highest death rates in the Intermountain West, but hospitals were never overrun. The governor has had his share of critics, though. Some local health departments complained they were caught off guard by policies. Then, there were anti-lockdown protests and even a recall effort called “Dethrone Polis” that failed to gather enough signatures for a vote.

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An event at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo., billed as a “COVID Chaos” protest against emergency public health rules issued by Gov. Jared Polis to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Speakers at the rally derided the governor’s actions.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

Polis has stood in front of TV cameras more frequently than maybe any governor in Colorado’s history. All of those broadcast briefings have been a chance to provide facts, cajole, explain, and at times browbeat, the public into doing what he hopes they will do. Each time he’s addressed the state to release new data and implore Coloradans to stay safe, he’s known exactly who is his closest observer. “My mom always watches,” Polis says. Susan Polis Schutz, his 76-year-old mother, is no passive viewer. The governor’s communications director has gotten used to her instantaneous feedback. “My mom always texts in if there’s any problem at all. Like, ‘it showed the background too long,’ or, ‘There was a part you couldn’t hear.’ ” It’s just one way the governor’s personal and work lives have blurred over this unprecedented year, an experience familiar to many Americans. In the many high-level meetings that Colorado Public Radio observed, Polis is detailed and decisive. Early on in the pandemic, when states were scrambling to get respirators, masks and tests, he didn’t appear overly emotional or stressed. “You had every state competing against one another and often the federal government competing against us.” Polis’ quick decision-making was hard for some of his senior staff to get used to at first. “This sort of rapid decision-making, rapid ability to uptake information and make a decision, was certainly uncomfortable for me because I’ve been a person who wants to be very critically thinking about stuff,” says Stan Hilkey, the executive director of Colorado’s Department of Public Safety.

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Gov. Jared Polis poses for a selfie with health staffers at a mass vaccination clinic at the National Western Center in Denver on Feb. 6.

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

More than half of states are considering bills to limit governors’ use of executive powers — giving more say back to state lawmakers. But it’s harder for those policies to gain traction in places like Colorado where one party controls the government. Even so, Republicans pushed back against Polis’ broad use of executive authority. “People have asked, ‘Where is our legislature? Why aren’t the legislators doing things?’ ” says Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert, a Republican. For Polis, he says the toughest time personally was when he and his long-time partner, Marlon Reis, both contracted COVID-19. After a week of quarantining with their two young children, he thought they were almost through it. That’s when Reis’ condition got worse. “We had these little home oxygenator things they usually get people with COVID. It went down from normally 95, 85, 84. So they said, ‘You better come in.’ ” Polis says at that point he hadn’t driven in about a year because his security officers prefer to drive him. This time, he insisted. “I didn’t want to expose our troopers to COVID.” But there was just one thing he wanted to do before taking his partner of 17 years to the hospital. That was, propose. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Polis says. “I’d ordered the rings with an inscription from Isaiah and had them hidden and ready to go. He was going off to the hospital. I knew he’d probably get better,” but he says he didn’t want to take any chances. They’re hoping to hold a Jewish wedding in the fall and he says their six-year-old daughter is excited to be a flower girl. As the pandemic reached the one-year mark, Polis says he is still as busy as before. Rolling out the vaccine has come with enormous logistical challenges for states. On a daily basis, the governor’s administration is busy ordering doses, tracking and managing vaccine sites, monitoring new variants of the disease and trying to address persistent inequities over who is getting the vaccine. Despite the difficulties, Polis says it’s not a bad place to be. “Certainly [it’s] a more fun thing to contemplate than the dark days of the pandemic and hospital surges and [questions like] ‘where are these extra beds going to be and how are we going to fit all the patients?’ That’s a horrible, horrific thing to consider.”

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Gov. Jared Polis takes a swing at a piñata representing the COVID-19 virus, during a visit to the Adelante Community Development Clinic at Mile High Flea Market in Henderson, Colo. Feb. 26.

Bente Birkeland/CPR News

Bente Birkeland/CPR News

Polis does see a few good things coming from this incredibly difficult year. He thinks remote work and telecommuting have led to efficiencies, and families have found new ways to stay connected while apart. He recently attended a cousin’s virtual bar mitzvah. There have been moments of levity, too. On a recent visit to a vaccine clinic near Denver, volunteers presented Polis with a piñata in the unmistakable shape of the coronavirus. Instead of a stick, they handed him a large mock-syringe. In front of the laughing crowd, Polis whacked at the piñata again, and again, trying to break it apart. Eventually, one of his staffers had to pull him away.

China’s five-year plan focuses on energy security: Kemp

Business

Breadcrumb Trail Links PMN Business Author of the article: Reuters John Kemp Article content LONDON — In the 14th Five-Year Plan, approved by the National People’s Congress this month, China has outlined energy and climate policies for the next decade that are an extension of current strategy rather than a radical departure. The Five-Year Plan (FYP-14) recommits the government in very broad terms to “formulate an action plan for peaking carbon emissions before 2030” and to “anchor efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.” But at the core of the document are familiar concerns about reducing wasteful energy consumption, boosting efficiency, improving energy security, and curbing pollution that have been central objectives for 40 years. In the post-1949 era, China’s central economic problem has been a lack of enough affordable, domestically produced and non-polluting energy to satisfy the country’s modernisation and urbanization. “One of the main constraining factors in China’s quest to raise living standards, modernize, and become a major world power has been a persistent shortage of energy,” economic historian Elspeth Thomson wrote in 2003. “Energy shortages have greatly hindered the industrial, agricultural and social development of China”, she explained in a comprehensive history of “The Chinese Coal Industry” published in 2003. Advertisement Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content DEFAULT CHOICE China has abundant and easily recoverable coal resources near the surface in most areas, but especially in the north centered around the province of Shanxi (https://tmsnrt.rs/30XY15d). By contrast, easily exploitable sources of oil and gas have proved consistently disappointing and nowhere near enough to meet the country’s rapidly growing need for energy. As a result, oil and gas imports have become an increasing burden on the country’s balance of payments as a well as a threat to national security. The discovery and development of the supergiant Daqing and Shengli oilfields in the 1960s briefly promised to end the country’s heavy reliance on coal, and even turn China into a major oil exporter. By the late 1980s, however, production from Daqing and Shengli was peaking, and no further readily exploitable major discoveries had been made, forcing a renewed focus on coal. In 1993, China turned into a net oil importer as domestic consumption outstripped domestic production, and the gap has grown steadily since. China had become the largest importer in the world by 2019, importing more than 10 million barrels per day, and relying on imports to meet almost 75% of its consumption. For similar reasons, China has also become one of the world’s largest natural gas importers, relying on imports to meet more than 40% of its domestic needs. The problems with relying on coal as the primary source of energy have been well understood by Chinese and international policymakers since at least the 1980s. Advertisement Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Moving huge volumes of unwashed and unprocessed coal from mines to power plants has put immense pressure on the country’s rail network and periodically contributed to congestion. Coal’s contribution to urban air pollution, acid rain, and climate change was extensively analyzed in a landmark report on “China: Long-Term Development Issues and Options” published by the World Bank in 1985. But lacking affordable and secure alternatives, China was forced until recently to rely on coal for more than 70% of its total energy long after countries in North America and Europe switched to cleaner burning and more convenient fuels. WASTING ENERGY The other defining characteristic of China’s energy system has been its enormous consumption of energy per unit of industrial output and gross domestic product, far higher than in any other country (https://tmsnrt.rs/3tzvMGg). China’s energy consumption per unit of output was 4-6 times higher than European countries in the mid-1980s and of course of most of that energy came from burning coal, either to produce heat or generate electricity. For decades, China’s economy has had an unusually high share of industrial output in GDP, rather than services, and has specialized in energy-intensive industries such as steel, chemicals and cement. But even allowing for the country’s heavy industrial bias, energy consumption has also been extraordinarily inefficient because of the small-scale of many industrial plants, continued use of outdated equipment, poor operational practices, and lack of cost controls. Advertisement Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Since the launch of reform and opening in 1978, government policy has placed a high priority on curbing the growth in energy consumption and increasing energy efficiency. For the last four decades, energy use has increased at roughly half the rate of gross domestic product. Some of the improvement reflects growth of the service sector but there have been real gains in energy efficiency in the manufacturing sector. URBAN POLLUTION By the 1980s, the great migration from rural areas to the cities, combined with the use of small inefficient stoves for cooking and heating, was causing severe urban smog problems, especially in northern cities. The government’s initial response was to require industrial enterprises to retrofit higher smokestacks and other pollution controls and relocate major sources of pollution away from central urban areas. In the residential and commercial sector, individual stoves for cooking and space heating were replaced by district heating systems, which were more efficient and could be fitted with better pollution controls. The government subsequently encouraged more use of bottled gas and kerosene, as well as gas manufactured from coal, then eventually a shift to pipeline natural gas, to reduce pollution at street level further. Smaller, older and less-efficient power generating units were replaced by larger, more advanced and efficient units, fitted with pollution capture technology. Advertisement Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Replacement of direct coal burning by oil, gas and electricity for industrial, commercial and residential users, and boiler upgrades for remaining coal users, has contributed to a significant improvement in energy efficiency. FUTURE STRATEGY In most respects, the strategy outlined in FYP-14 is a natural extension of these earlier policies, and represents a cautious evolution rather than revolution (https://tmsnrt.rs/3r4tX2t). FYP-14 outlines new targets for increasing energy efficiency and reducing emissions (chapter 3 – main goals); reducing the share of fossil fuels in energy consumption (chapter 11 – building modern infrastructure); cutting air pollution (chapter 38 – continuous improvement of environmental quality); and increasing energy security (chapter 53 – strengthening national economic security). In recent decades, China has enthusiastically embraced zero-emission energy from wind, solar, hydro and nuclear, as well as the electrification of the energy and transportation systems, because it offers the chance to reduce the reliance on coal without increasing dependence on imported oil and gas. China is already the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric and renewable power because there is a compelling economic and national security case for moving to non-fossil fuels. If the promotion of non-fossil energy sources and emissions reductions allows China to claim a diplomatic benefit by showing the country is serious about tackling global warming that is an additional bonus. But most of the policies outlined in FYP-14 would be essential for the country’s economic development even if the government were not concerned about climate change. If FYP-14 is analyzed from a Chinese perspective, rather than a Western one, it is obvious the need to provide increasing volumes of secure, affordable and non-polluting energy to ensure continued economic growth and rising living standards is at the heart of the plan, just as it has been the core of plans since the early 1980s. (Editing by Marguerita Choy) Share this article in your social network In-depth reporting on the innovation economy from The Logic, brought to you in partnership with the Financial Post. 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