I do think there are significant difficulties with regard to data collection that are produced by the federal/provincial and territorial split. But I do think that the federal government itself can make sure it gets its own data house in order.
It is surprising that we have a census and that in our census we do not collect from everybody information on socio-demographic, race and ethnicity. We collect it from only 20% of people, on the long-form census, rather than from 100% of people, including on the short-form census. If we were able to change the short-form census so as to get a full picture of Canada, we would be able, possibly, to link that census data to other data in order to get a good picture of our pandemics, a better picture of our pandemics. It is possible to do these things but at a federal level, and it is also possible for the feds to insist that the provinces produce data.
At the moment, the feds pay a lot to the provinces. Maybe the feds should be thinking about what data the provinces produce in order to demonstrate that their responses are actually equitable. Very few people would give money to a company or a service without being very clear about what they're getting in return. At the moment, sometimes federal transfers are not transparently linked to productivity, especially not to productivity based on equity.