National Post (National Edition)
Call out for national pandemic standards
Canadian Public Health Association
tracing and data collection during the pandemic should be more uniform across the country with provinces following national standards, a new report from public health experts argues.
The Canadian Public Health Association released a review of the early months of the pandemic this week and called for new federal legislation to set standards for public health to ensure a better response to future disease outbreaks.
Ian Culbert, the agency's executive director, said they believe there needs to be a Canada Public Health Act, which would still let provinces run their own systems, but set a bare minimum standard that they would have to reach.
He said the federal government must set national rules to go along with funding to provinces or it can expect similar problems in the future.
“Legislated roles and responsibilities is about the only way we're going to accomplish this, because unless there's a stick to go along with the funding carrot — and the stick being legislation — we won't see real change.”
The public health association, which is made up of researchers and public health professionals across the country, reviewed the country's early pandemic performance focusing on the months between February and September last year.
Culbert said they found many areas where there is a need for greater coordination between the federal and provincial governments and a better understanding of responsibilities.
“We see it in the House of Commons almost on a daily basis that the federal government is being held accountable for issues over which they have no control and no jurisdiction.”
Even the basic data on COVID infections has been an issue throughout the pandemic, with provinces collecting data in different ways and not all provinces collecting detailed demographic information on people with COVID.
The association found that limited the government's ability to make decisions in the pandemic.
“This limits the quality of Canadian baseline data, the models used to predict the spread of the illness, and subsequent decision-making,” reads their report.
Culbert said the federal government is still dependent on the provinces choosing to share data.
“The collection of it at the national level is still fundamentally a cooperative effort. There is no way for the federal government to compel the provinces and territories to provide specific data in a specific format,” he said.
The association found the disparity also extended to testing, with provinces setting up different rules for who gets tested for the virus and under what circumstances. Some provinces allowed testing of asymptomatic people, while others restricted testing just to those with symptoms.
Provinces also pleaded with the federal government for more rapid tests, but several provinces simply left them to sit in warehouses after they were received.
Culbert said the lack of coordination also showed up in the stockpiles of personal protective equipment before the pandemic. The National Emergency Strategic Stockpile was overwhelmed with demand in the early days of the pandemic and had thrown out masks and other equipment in recent years after letting it expire.
Culbert said there needs to be better coordination so provinces and the federal government know what is in stockpiles. He said when they are not being used stockpiles can too quickly become a political liability.
“Stockpiles are the bane of your existence if there's nothing going wrong, because it costs a lot of money to maintain and it's hard to defend that investment until something goes wrong.”
He said in addition to the coordination issues, few people were planning for a pandemic of this scale, even with the recent warnings the world has received.
“Other than Bill Gates, not a lot of people were really thinking about a global pandemic of this magnitude. SARS was minuscule compared to this, H1N1 was still relatively small compared to what we see today,” Culbert said.
Culbert said Canadian society spends a lot of time in normal times worrying about crowded emergency room and surgical wait lists, but there needs to be a broader discussion about making sure people stay healthy.
“As a society, we don't necessarily value protecting our health or promoting our well being,” he said. “There are broader systemic issues that we need to be looking at.”
Looking to the end of the pandemic, Culbert said there has to be a broader effort to review failings and learn from what went wrong, but he said he is not hopeful.