This report has confirmed what many people have already known: The response was incompetent in multiple areas, yet the same incompetent individuals remain in charge.
The Auditor General has released their findings into federal governments pandemic response.
It is quite a devastating portrayal, noting the government was “not adequately prepared” for the pandemic, failed to effectively use the pandemic warning system (which the government had gutted), and failed to track whether incoming travellers were actually quarantining.
What this means is simply to confirm what many people had said early on: When the government had a chance to contain the virus, they instead spent their time virtue-signalling about ‘racism’ and ‘prejudice,’ left the country wide open, and failed to get tough when being tough could have done something.
Only long after it was already spreading in the country and it was far too late to really do anything, the government ruthlessly cracked down and infringed on civil liberties, destroyed countless small businesses, and used the virus as a pretext to massively expand centralized government power.
You can read the key findings of the report below:
“Since the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the Public Health Agency of Canada has further developed plans to guide a response to a pandemic. In particular, the agency worked with its federal, provincial, and territorial partners to develop the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Public Health Response Plan for Biological Events. Moreover, since the beginning of January 2020, the Public Health Agency of Canada has worked collaboratively with its provincial and territorial partners to support Canada throughout the COVID‑19 pandemic. But 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.
The agency was not as well prepared as it could have been because it had not resolved long-standing issues in health surveillance information, including shortcomings that impeded the effective exchange of health data between the agency and the provinces and territories. Also, the agency did not regularly update or test all plans for a national health response to a pandemic, especially one of such magnitude as the COVID‑19 pandemic. For example, the agency did not complete test response elements of the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Public Health Response Plan for Biological Events with its partners prior to the COVID‑19 pandemic. We found that the agency’s Global Public Health Intelligence Network did not issue an alert to provide early warning when the virus was first reported but did email a daily report to domestic subscribers with links to related news articles. Although the agency prepared rapid risk assessments, these did not consider the pandemic risk of this emerging infectious disease or its potential impact—information necessary to guide decision makers on the public health measures needed to control the spread of the virus. Despite these gaps, we recognize that the agency quickly adapted the plans it had and continuously adjusted its response to COVID‑19 as the pandemic progressed.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the agency has made strides in collecting surveillance data from the provinces and territories to support a national public health response. However, although the Public Health Agency of Canada put in place a data sharing agreement with its provincial and territorial partners, important parts of the agreement set out in technical annexes had not yet been finalized. In addition, the agency’s outdated information technology infrastructure issues still need to be addressed to help ensure its ability to inform a consistent national picture of COVID‑19 infections in Canada to support an effective response to the COVID‑19 pandemic and future infectious disease outbreaks.
The Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency worked collaboratively to implement emergency orders to restrict entry into Canada and require incoming travellers to quarantine. However, the Public Health Agency of Canada did not know whether two thirds of incoming travellers followed quarantine orders. The agency referred few of the travellers for in-person follow-up to verify compliance with orders.”
In a reasonable world, this would all be grounds for Patty Hajdu and Bill Blair to resign.
But that won’t happen, since Hajdu has been kept around no matter how badly she fails at her job, and Blair is kept around to make Trudeau look like he cares about border security despite all the evidence.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
