Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses here today. I also want to congratulate the Auditor General for reaching an agreement and ending the strike in the audit services group.
I want to begin by providing a brief context for the role that the government played in its delayed response that facilitated the spread of the virus.
There has been the damning observation that the government has been consistently slow to take the necessary steps to slow the spread of the virus. Here is the first example that came to us that outraged people deeply.
It was the mayor of Montreal, Ms. Valerie Plante, who, faced with the absence of any border control, had to send city people to try to delay the arrival of travellers at one of Canada's busiest airports, Montreal-Trudeau International Airport. Absolutely nothing was done and the federal government just waited.
On March 15, 2020, the mayor called Montreal's airport a sieve and deployed about 60 employees from Montreal's public health department to offer travellers clearer guidelines on health measures. This is the first finding.
Then the government established a 14‑day quarantine, and that was fine. However, this is where I think the Public Health Agency of Canada could have made a bigger contribution.
Canada has always lagged behind. After several months of the pandemic, and given the evolution of knowledge, many countries, particularly in Europe, were now imposing a 6‑ or 7‑day quarantine, while Canada's was still 14 days. After almost a year of the pandemic, science was telling us that things had already evolved. In these countries, there was a test on the first day, and another one after a week. If both tests were negative, the traveller was free, whereas in Canada, we still had the old measures and were extremely cautious. The Public Health Agency of Canada had not transmitted the data or, alternatively, the government had decided simply to do nothing about it.
I experienced this situation very personally. My father and uncle, on day 10 and day 12 of their quarantine respectively, were unable to say goodbye to my grandfather. This could have been avoided. The Public Health Agency of Canada could have done a much better job of monitoring and putting better practices in place.
There have been improvements, and I thank the Office of the Auditor General for conducting a number of studies on controls and so on. Even in the measurements, there was a lot of progress to be made and we were still lagging behind. This is unacceptable for a country as developed as ours.
On that basis, my question is this, Ms. Hogan. In your opinion, could the data and information collected during these quarantine and screening programs have helped to correct or improve the measures decreed by the government?