Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is the most sacred obligation of a government to protect its people, especially from threats they cannot see. Citizens must be able to trust their government to act responsibly and to act in the public interest in preparing to respond to long-term threats, to be ready with a plan so that we could pull that plan out if we need it.
However, if governments fail to plan for moments of crisis, when they ignore potential threats and bet that good times will last forever, then they violate the most sacred obligation and they break trust with the people they govern. When that trust is broken, public trust in our governing institutions is undermined. This COVID-19 pandemic, striking at this time and in this way, was an unknown, but it unfolded in a way that we should have been planning for, that we had every reason to be prepared for.
In 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the SARS outbreak, the Government of Canada created the Public Health Agency specifically to ensure that we were ready to respond in case of situations like this. SARS and COVID-19 are both part of the same family of viruses. They are both coronaviruses. We created a specific agency of government in response to the last coronavirus outbreak in order to prepare us for the next coronavirus outbreak, to build a plan and to amass resources to fight something like SARS—that is, another coronavirus.
However, in in the last four years under the Liberal government, a massive stockpile was destroyed and not replaced. The Public Health Agency spent money on climate change programs instead of on preparation. We sent vital supplies to China at a time when we were almost certain to face shortages here. It quickly becomes clear that there was no plan.
In the months leading up to the outbreak, the Minister of Health repeatedly told Canadians that the risk was low. She attacked those who said otherwise, accusing them of spreading misinformation and fear. She said in the House on February 4, with regard to how Canadians can be assured that we're getting the right information, that “One way might be if the opposition does not sensationalize the risk to Canadians”.
Instead of attacking the opposition for raising legitimate questions during the early months of this year, the health minister should have been busy preparing. She should have been preparing to roll out a plan that her government had already worked out long in advance. Being prepared to protect our country in the event of a crisis is a sacred obligation of government, and in spite of the lesson of 2003, the government had no plan for the next coronavirus pandemic. When it comes to this sacred obligation to keep Canadians safe, they let us down.
What would a plan have included? What would it have achieved and what could it still achieve even at this relatively late stage?
The data from the countries around the world that have been most successfully fighting COVID-19 identify five key elements of an effective strategy, elements that would have kept us safe while limiting economic devastation. These elements are border measures, masking, testing, tracing and distancing. We can learn from remarkable success stories like Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand and the Czech Republic, who effectively implemented some or all of these elements.
By border measures, I mean that ideally through limiting flights and through screening at the border, we could have kept COVID-19 out or at least bought ourselves some extra time to put systems in place. The health minister declared early on that border measures would not be effective. The government did eventually close the border, but it was too late, and even after we were told that screening was in place, massive gaps persisted.
Masks provide a physical barrier for the transmission of droplets that can carry COVID-19. There has been plenty of good science available for a long time to suggest that encouraging people to wear masks would limit the spread of this disease. Bizarrely, public health authorities in the U.S. and Canada were critical of mask wearing, even suggesting that it could be counterproductive. This bad advice, thankfully now reversed, represents a scandal of epic proportions. Why, without a shred of evidence, were supposed authorities saying that people shouldn't use a barrier to block droplet transmission? It is as if they imagined the droplets that carry COVID-19 have some mystical, spiritual properties that make them impervious to physical barriers. A droplet is a physical thing, obviously impacted by the presence of a physical barrier, which the officially designated authorities now acknowledge.
The science on masks, though, never changed. Nobody did a new study that immediately and dramatically reversed some previous conclusion. In reality, there was a shortage of masks, which led officials to present misleading information about their usefulness. Even with the shortage, people should have been advised much earlier to deploy homemade cloth masks, which do provide some level of protection, and many experts knew this all along. This government presented misinformation on the mask issue when lives hung in the balance.
On testing and tracing, effective systems of testing and tracing would mean that people were regularly and rapidly being tested for COVID-19, that new testing technologies were coming on-stream quickly and that we were using cutting-edge technology to trace the possible path of the virus every time we found a new case.
Tracing can be done in a way that respects civil liberties as long as there is appropriate independence from government and sufficient oversight. I am sympathetic to those who have concerns about this, but a tracing mechanism with appropriate safeguards is a much lesser infringement on personal liberties than an indefinite requirement that we all stay home.
Finally, there is distancing, something that we are all doing, but distancing alone isn't going to solve this because we cannot distance in the matter that we are at present for very much longer. People are frustrated with the seemingly never-ending quarantine of healthy people, not least because they increasingly have a hard time trusting the government when it comes to information. They are frustrated by a government that was wrong about preparation, wrong about risk levels, wrong about hoarders, wrong about masks, behind on testing and still has not put in place a national framework for tracing.
Now we're approaching the end of May. Where is the plan? Where is the public health plan for adaptation and management of this crisis post-quarantine?
Much could be said about this government's spending measures, but all of those things are ultimately downstream from fundamental questions about how the government is and is not managing the public health issue such that we will be able to re-energize our economy before we are in an acute debt crisis. Effectively targeted bridging measures are the right policies for a short period of time, but no community of people can enjoy prosperity for long without most of them working. As a result of this crisis and measures already committed to, generations to come will have to live with higher taxes, lower social spending or both. That too is why we need a real plan to fight COVID-19 as quickly as possible.
The government will no doubt respond to some of these criticisms by saying that they were following public health advice. Governments must always listen to a broad range of experts, including both those within the federal public service and those outside of it. Listening to the experts means experts in the plural. It does not mean turning one qualified expert into some kind of infallible authority. It does not mean ignoring the experience of public health officials in other countries who are pursuing a different set of policies and are having more success.
From our leaders we also expect precautionary decision-making. If some experts think border closures will work and some experts think border closures will not work, it is probably safer in the face of an impending pandemic to close the border. Experts can give advice on the likely outcome based on their models, but it is politicians who decide the degree to which we should apply precautionary thinking in responding to that advice.
What do we do now?
It's too late for some things. It's not too late for others. A couple of months ago, I co-authored a piece for The Epoch Times on this issue, in which I said the following:
Our current approach to fighting this pandemic emphasizes general isolation. With a limited supply of masks and limited testing, this is the only way.
In an ideal response, though, people could still leave their homes, but everyone would have access to and be encouraged to wear protective masks in most situations when out and about. Certainly, everyone would continue to be encouraged to regularly wash their hands. Anyone who thought they might be exposed to the virus would get tested immediately and get the results immediately. This way, those who had the virus would know right away and could stay away from others. In the event of errors in awareness or testing...masks, gloves, and hand-washing would still greatly limit transmission. When a case is discovered, those who had been in contact with or in the same area as that person could be immediately notified and immediately tested.
If we had these measures and practices in place, there would be much less of a need for people to stay in their homes. The virus could be tracked and contained even while life continued.
This piece was published on March 31.
This government has a sacred obligation to act to keep Canadians safe, and the government let us down. Public health and our economy have suffered as a result. Now we need to see the plan for adaptation and for reboot. Canadians are innovative. They are ready for a challenge, and I remain optimistic about the future of this country in spite of the challenges. We have overcome bigger things before, but real political leadership is badly needed now more than ever.
Thank you.