Okay.
Smaller provinces have aimed for zero COVID and attempted to eliminate community transmission and quickly manage any new outbreaks. This has involved tightly managing their respective borders to prevent new infections entering their safe or green zones.
If we look cross-nationally, the countries that have aimed for zero COVID—New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, Iceland, Vietnam and so on—have been able to live comparatively normal lives over most of the year. Since we arrived in New Zealand in January, our son, who's just turning nine today, has been in school constantly with no masks and no social distancing, but with lots of play and social interactions. We go to dinner parties, movies and volleyball matches. This has been the case, as you've heard from Dr. Dean Knight, for over a year, with some brief windows of very short lockdowns to stamp out possible community spread.
Most Canadian provinces have not aimed for zero COVID, but instead have stated that their goal has been to reduce cases to a level where hospitals are not overwhelmed. By having this as a goal rather than trying to eliminate transmission, most Canadian provinces have thus accepted a certain level of death and disease, mostly in the elderly in long-term care institutions and those living in racialized and poor communities. In Canada around 25,000 people have died. If New Zealand had adopted Canada's policy instead of what it did, then 3,600 New Zealanders would have died instead of the 26 who actually did.
Canada's goal of “bending the curve”, as they describe it, has not worked on its own terms. The problem has been that as soon as the curve has bent—that is, there's been some improvement in infection numbers—provinces have rushed to reopen without a serious mitigation strategy in place, causing a new cycle of lockdowns and reopenings, prolonging pandemic suffering for Canadians. The federal government and the big Canadian provinces have pinned their hopes instead on vaccines. Fortunately, science has delivered on this. Canadians from coast to coast, despite many barriers, are rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated.
As the vaccines roll out, there is the inevitable clamour to open up again. Restaurants and shops, schools and camps, universities and faith-based organizations, opening up the U.S. border for travel—everyone has a good reason that their particular group or venue should be able to open up now. But great caution is required. Canada has already lost so much physically, emotionally and economically that I don't think Canadians can afford or tolerate yet further cycles of lockdowns and reopenings for short-term political gain or because of a short-sighted economic outlook.
In this regard, I make a plea to the federal government to do a much better job than is presently being done of ensuring that new variants of concern do not enter Canada and undermine all the gains we have made in recent months with vaccinations, at least not until we are certain that vaccinated individuals are protected against them. We know that in parts of the world, such as Brazil, India and Iran, COVID-19 is still on a rampage, with no vaccine path in sight. We still do not have great science on the extent to which the vaccines will protect against the variants that are emerging.
Now, I realize that there's a lot of politics about border management and a lot of politics about fed-prov and who should be doing what, of course, but Canadians themselves are amazing. They are resilient. They are getting out there. They're getting vaccinated. Soon, widespread vaccinations will drive transmission rates low. But once we largely have the forest fire of COVID under control through the miracle of vaccinations, imagine that we allow variants of concern into the country with the potential to evade immunity. To me, this is akin to the federal government permitting more small fires around the perimeter of the forest and hoping the forest rangers are not too tired to put them out.
In managing its border, Canada will not abandon its humanitarian and other values—and we can speak about that during the questions—but Canada should not permit those crossing land borders to circumvent any requirements for management at the border. All Canadians coming from countries or regions of concern where there are variants emerging must be required to enter through a managed border. If the science emerges—and I hope it comes quickly—to show that our available vaccines prevent transmission of variants of concern, then some of these requirements could be softened for returning Canadians or other travellers, with the recognition of vaccine passports and rapid testing. However, we need the science first.
I've run out of time to speak to my second point, but I hope we have some time to come back to it in questions. Thank you for your time. I'm sorry about this stupid headset that died.