I can offer a few things.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has criteria that would have called for an alert to be issued in this instance. There were alerts issued in the past. There was an alert issued for H1N1 and for SARS. It's not clear why an alert was not issued this time.
You correctly identified that there was a significant decrease in the number of alerts issued. However, I will note that throughout the pandemic two alerts were issued. One was for, I think, a virus from a tick bite coming out of China, so clearly alerts were still being issued.
The alert is not just domestic, but it's also to alert our international counterparts. I think this is where I don't think anyone could speculate what might have been different if our international counterparts had received the alert from GPHIN earlier on. Would their response have been different? Would then our response or the spread of the virus be different?
Those are all speculative, and I don't think anyone could really say for certain. That is why I think it's important that the Public Health Agency decide what it expects from the global public health intelligence network, make it very clear when and how it should be used and then use it as intended. In our view it was not used as intended, and I just alluded to all the reasons.