Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me here today to speak with you.
My name is Michael Garner. I am an Anglican priest and an infectious disease epidemiologist. I worked at the Public Health Agency of Canada from 2006 to 2019. I was invited here today to expand on my comments in the July 25 edition of The Globe and Mail.
When the Public Health Agency of Canada was created in the aftermath of SARS in 2004, the government of the time decided that the chief public health officer should be the deputy head of the agency because then the authority and responsibility for public health in Canada would reside in one person who would be an expert responsible for the public health resources of the federal government. This leadership structure echoed most other national public health institutes around the world.
I trust you have all read the recent Auditor General's report on the performance of PHAC in the pandemic. The Auditor General's conclusion confirmed the reality of what all Canadians have been living. It said, “The agency was not adequately prepared to respond to the pandemic, and it underestimated the potential impact of the virus at the onset of the pandemic.”
Despite identifying a myriad of issues at PHAC, the Auditor General failed to identify the root of the problem. At no point did she ask why the systems were allowed to go untested. Why didn't the risk assessments from January to March of 2020 look adequately at the potential for COVID-19 to become a global pandemic?
Plainly, we have a national public health institute that is run by non-experts.
Six and a half years ago, the Harper government moved the leadership of PHAC from the CPHO, who is a public health doctor, to a president who is a career bureaucrat. This decision set PHAC on a course that has gravely influenced its ability to put into place the foundational elements required to proactively prepare for and effectively respond to the coronavirus pandemic. It also created a cascade where public health experts are no longer present at the senior levels of the agency. They have been largely forced out and replaced over time by generic bureaucrats with no experience in or understanding of the very basic principles of public health science.
Perhaps even more troubling was that in the midst of the pandemic, when faced with the need to install a new deputy head of PHAC in September of 2020 and with the failures of responding to the crisis evident to all Canadians, the Prime Minister, rather than installing a doctor with expertise and experience in public health and pandemic response, picked another career bureaucrat with no credentials in public health, who would have to learn on the job in the midst of the biggest health crisis of the last century.
Interestingly, the United States' CDC faced a similar situation of needing a new director. It replaced the outgoing director—a physician and virologist—with a physician and public health expert.
In the midst of the catastrophe of the federal response to the pandemic, the government has continued its long practice of devaluing expertise and subject matter competency in favour of bureaucrats. However, I would suggest to you that the failures in the PHAC response to the pandemic should not be pinned solely on the bureaucratic leadership of PHAC. If I was put into a cockpit of an airplane and the lights began to flash, I wouldn't understand what to do because I wasn't trained to be a pilot. It is unfair to expect Mr. Stewart or any of the other non-experts running PHAC to adequately manage the Canadian response to the pandemic. They don't have the training or experience required.
As we emerge from the pandemic—as we surely will—I hope this committee and others will initiate a re-examination of where public health experts are needed in the federal government. I hope the Public Health Agency of Canada Act will be restored to its original form, with the position of president of the Public Health Agency removed and that power restored to the CPHO role.
Ideally, this will initiate a new cascade, where public health training and expertise is valued over the ability to work the bureaucracy for personal gain. It is the decisions of the Harper and Trudeau governments over almost a decade that have led us to the depths of this crisis. The decisions of Mr. Harper and Mr. Trudeau have had a cost—a cost that has been paid for with the lives of Canadians who have needlessly died from COVID-19.
Thank you. I look forward to our discussion.