Canada is being battered by an especially bad flu season. None of this should be particularly surprising, since we had data from the southern hemisphere’s flu season to suggest once winter reared its head here we would be in for the same flu-induced misery as our cousins below the equator. 

In a normal country, this kind of advance notice would mean that we would take the necessary precautions to shore up our defences, like making sure we’ve got a robust PSA campaign informing people to get vaccinated and ensuring hospitals are well resourced and staffed to deal with any surge-capacity issues due to increased hospitalizations. Canada, however, is not a normal country anymore — and now several provincial healthcare systems are under strain. 

As doctors, hospital associations and public health officials urge the public to get their flu vaccine, we haven’t heard the same from our political leaders. In Ontario, this is especially galling given that three children between the ages of five and nine have been confirmed to have died from the flu in the last few weeks. 

This past week, when asked by reporters to comment on Ontario’s flu season, provincial Health Minister Sylvia Jones 

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