Whose fault is the delay in delivering Pfizer-Biontech’s COVID-19 vaccines delay to Canada? The current debate makes it impossible to say.
The debate also offers excellent lessons for communicators.
Provincial premiers like Ontario’s Dougie Ford blame the federal government—but in Dougie’s newfound low-key style, he offers useful advice like, “I’d be on the phone call, up the guy’s ying-yang with a firecracker so fast, he wouldn’t know what hit him.”
And a day later, Dougie spreads the blame to the company itself: this time, the advice he offers is “to bed on the guy like an 800-pound gorilla.”
Yep. That’s something we can all use.
Obscuring the facts
While provincial premiers—not all of them, but some—blame the federal government for a shortfall in vaccines, the feds have blamed provinces for problems with administering the vaccines to people.
The federal government have also assigned responsibility for the shortfall, without actually blaming anyone, to the manufacturer. Pfizer is supposedly holding back on production for enough time to increase its output capacity.
The manufacturer, Pfizer-Biontech, has laid its share of blame, too. They threatened to withhold deliveries if provinces delayed second doses longer than the manufacturer’s research suggested.
The trouble is, these arguments and counter-arguments leave most of us, who don’t have any more information than what we get from the news, with more questions than answers.
Questions like:
- If the delay in vaccine delivery is due to production delays, why aren’t all countries affected the same way?
- Will we face future delays, or will the shipments be steady after resumption?
- If the final goal of vaccinating everyone (who wants a vaccine) by September remains unchanged, does that mean the rate of vaccination will increase once shipments resume until we catch up?
- There were reports of 70,000 missing vaccines in Ontario alone in December; what happened?
- If Pfizer is delayed, why are we not substituting faster deliveries from other suppliers, such as Moderna and Astra-Zeneca?
There are many, many other questions that Canadians have, and we are not getting answers.
Stumbling over their own words
Worse, when our political leaders try to answer these questions, we can see them stumble over their answers. That’s because they’re not saying everything that they know.
They’re not being candid, and the result is loss of trust by the public.
It’s obvious that ministers know more than they’re saying. And it’s always been true that politicians calculate their words to damage their opponents, and burnish their own images, as much as possible.
The take-away
Holding back information because it might make you look less than perfect is never a winning strategy; we can all see through it.
What your grandfather told you is true: honesty is the best policy. We all need accurate, complete information that we can use. Lies and secrets always get exposed, and in today’s information environment, that happens faster than ever before.
The best advice a communications professional can give: just tell the full truth.
Or the truth will bite you in the ass.