53,000+ Canadian Covid deaths is only one reason why a national public inquiry into governments’ pandemic response is needed

Canadians deserve answers about how this unprecedented national emergency was handled by all levels of government.  This can only be achieved by holding a transparent, independent, and impartial public inquiry examining all aspects of the federal and provincial governments’ pandemic response.

 

By Fareed Khan

The Hill Times (OP-ED)
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/09/04/canadians-deserve-a-pandemic-inquiry/395917/

 

The Covid19 virus is not done killing Canadians or disrupting lives as reports of a new Covid19 variant (EG.5) are hitting Europe and North America.  This latest mutation of the virus now accounts for almost a third of infections across Canada.  As the medical community warns of a surge in new infections ahead of the cold and flu season (after a period of declining infection rates) it gives added impetus to calls for a national public inquiry about the pandemic responses by the federal and provincial governments, and the mistakes made which led to so many deaths.

 

 

Since the pandemic was declared in early 2020 more than 53,000 Canadians have died due to the virus, and almost 4.7 million Canadians have been infected, as of the beginning of August.  The virus continues to circulate in the population, and it continues to affect the lives of millions across the country where it is free to mutate into new variants, despite the vast majority of Canadians being fully vaccinated.

 

The Covid death rate in Canada at present is 1372 per million, far exceeding the global average of 855 per million by 60%.  To gauge the magnitude of Covid deaths in Canada all we have to do is compare them to the deaths of the 42,042 Canadian military personnel who perished during World War 2.  The number of Covid related casualties is more than 11,000 higher than the number of Canadians who were killed in the worst war in human history.  Despite the unprecedented number of deaths for some reason they are not seen as significant enough neither by the federal nor provincial governments to warrant a national inquiry.

 

Recently a group of Canadian doctors called for a national inquiry in Canada’s pandemic response when more than a dozen of them joined with health care advocates to publish a series of articles in the British Medical Journal about various facets of the pandemic.  The articles directed attention to Canada's "major pandemic failures", from the devastation in long-term care homes, to vaccine hoarding, to higher death rates among lower-income communities.  It was noted that the 2003 SARS outbreak impacted more Canadians than anywhere else outside of Asia but Canadian governments did not heed lessons from that event and so were ill prepared to deal with Covid19 and all the problems it laid bare in Canada’s health care infrastructure.

 

In addition to doctors calling for a national inquiry an overwhelming number of Canadians are also in favour of holding one according to a poll conducted by British Columbia research firm. The results showed that 66% of those surveyed supported a federal public inquiry into how government managed the pandemic.  The poll also found that more than 60% favoured public inquiries at the provincial level, with a majority of people in every region of Canada backing the concept of provincial inquiries regardless of whether they lived in regions with high support for their provincial government’s pandemic response.  The results also revealed that 82% of Canadians believe that Covid19 remains a very real threat across the country.

   

 

While life has seemingly returned to some semblance of “normal” for a majority of Canadians the Covid virus continues to take lives.  And given the high rate of Canadian deaths compared to the global average this alone should be ample justification as to why a national inquiry is needed.  After the pandemic revealed how unprepared federal and provincial governments were for this crisis, and despite repeated commitments by them over the past two decades to fix key problems in the health care system Canadians continue to navigate a health care ecosystem that is severely damaged and unable to meet their health needs, a system which has been mismanaged and underfunded by provincial and federal governments for years, and one which is not getting better with the speed needed to address the health concerns of Canadians.

 

The pandemic also showed Canadians the weakness of the health care supply chain when Canada could not domestically produce enough personal protective equipment and other health care products Canadian needs.  Years of outsourcing production of the products that hospitals and doctors depend upon to companies outside Canada meant that there were not enough supplies to meet demand from domestic sources when the pandemic landed with full force on Canada’s borders.

 

In addition, we discovered that Canada had no capacity to produce its own Covid vaccines, and so had to depend on acquiring them from pharmaceutical companies in the United States and the European Union, where the main priority was to provide vaccines to their own jurisdictions first.  At one time Canada was a global leader in the supply of vaccines, but beginning in the mid-1980s that production capacity was hollowed out and eventually disappeared as foreign pharmaceutical corporations were allowed to take control of Canadian owned companies and shift production of major drugs and vaccines to plants outside of Canada.

 

Canadians also experienced what it was like to see the economy come to a grinding to a halt and pushed to the brink of an economic depression were not for the government and Bank of Canada taking extreme measures to keep the economy afloat.  With hundreds of thousands of Canadians suddenly unemployed, millions of Canadians not spending, and those designated as “essential” workers pushed to the limit of their endurance while working for wages that were far below the household average across Canada, There was a social and economic crisis the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

 

The fragility of Canada’s civil society was also laid bare as the anger and frustration of Canadians, egged on by right-wing and Conservative politicians, and right wing extremist voices on social media, boiled over resulting in protests and demonstrations against governments, and even an attempt to overthrow the federal government.

 

When the convoy occupation of Ottawa and the blockades of the Canada-US border in Ontario and Alberta occurred a national inquiry was held into the invocation of the Emergencies Act to end them (a government decision which lasted a little over a week).  The pandemic lasted almost three years, and continues to affect Canadian society, and it has had an exponentially greater impact on the entire nation and every Canadian in a way that the invocation of the Emergencies Act did not.  So to hold an inquiry relating one and not the other makes absolutely no sense.

 

It would be remiss not mention that the thousands of Canadians who lost friends and family members to Covid19 deserve answers in particular.  Many who lost loved ones, whether in hospitals or in underfunded and provincially regulated seniors’ facilities, had to sit helplessly as family members died alone and with no family close by to comfort them during their final hours due to restrictions on gatherings during the first year of the pandemic.  Thousands of Canadian families lived this experience, and many were not able to mourn their loss in the company of friends and family due to those pandemic restrictions.  They, more than anyone else, deserve answers which can only come through a national inquiry.

 

 

Even though politicians, as well as many Canadians, want to put the pandemic behind them for differing reasons, we all deserve answers about how this once in a lifetime national emergency was handled by our governments. The pandemic is a crisis that affected Canadians in every corner of the country, all aspects of society, and its legacy continues to affect us. 

 

Consequently, Canadians need answers about why the death rate in this country continues to be considerably higher than the global average, why Canada’s health care system nearly collapsed during the pandemic, why certain profitable companies made out like bandits due to pandemic aid provided by the government, and much more.  The federal government and all provincial and territorial governments need to learn from the mistakes made during the Covid19 pandemic, in a way they did not learn from the 2003 SARS outbreak, in order to plan for a similar calamity in the future.  This can only be achieved by holding a transparent, independent public inquiry examining all aspects of the federal and provincial governments’ pandemic response with impartiality and without political interference.  The inquiry should be initiated during the fall session of Parliament without hesitation.  An unwillingness to do so given the pandemic’s impact on every Canadian would be morally unacceptable and the height of political irresponsibility.

 

Fareed Khan is a human rights activist and founder of Canadians United Against Hate.

 

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