Stop picking and choosing health policies
Government must keep politics out of moves, give Shabab's office independence
According to Health Minister Paul Merriman, his Saskatchewan Party government was so committed to following recommendations from the federal government that it willingly held back the stingy supply of COVID-19 vaccines because it was more crucial to comply with Ottawa's recommendation.
Yet Merriman tells the Leader-post's Arthur White-crummey that when it came to recommendations emerging from its very own Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) in the form of October modelling numbers accurately predicting the nasty winter surge of COVID-19 cases, those were just recommendations the government could afford to ignore.
Such recommendations and forecasts are “a piece of the overall decision making process, but not the end-all and be-all,” said Merriman of the predictors of the current triple-digit case numbers — information the government balked at releasing publicly, but was eventually made available through a freedom of information request.
This goes well beyond bumbling by Merriman, who, as health minister, said in a December scrum that he was satisfied with his government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis because of polling numbers that actually showed a trending decline in public confidence of the Sask. Party government's handling of the pandemic.
Politics creeping into public health decisions — or at least, political spin on such public health decisions — is unhealthy.
It's time to reassess the role and function of the chief medical health officer with an eye to making it more independent.
This needs to be done with caution. Those who argue we can't have governance decisions exclusively dictated by non-elected officials have a legitimate point. Such concerns should go beyond the business community.
But given this government's penchant for only following recommendations when it seems to suit its political purposes, we need to see separation between the recommendations of the public health office and the decisions of government.
Could the answer be an independent CMHO office reporting directly to the legislature like the provincial auditor or privacy and conflict of interest commissioners? Wouldn't that especially make sense when we are under a public health order?
Given the penchant of Merriman and Premier Scott Moe to use current CMO
Dr. Saqib Shahab as a shield during this pandemic, it's high time we looked seriously at separating what Shahab recommends and what the government decides.
Leadership on the COVID-19 file is more crucial than at any time since the beginning of this pandemic when the initial lockdown was put in place.
As noted by the Starphoenix's Phil Tank on Saturday, Saskatchewan had the second, third and fourth highest single-day counts of COVID-19 cases, with record hospitalizations.
This was before the record day Monday with 412 new cases, increasing the seven-day rolling average of a record 308 cases per day — well above the 260 per day Shahab said would require tougher measures.
Also as of Sunday, Saskatchewan has had 3,172 identified COVID-19 cases in 2021 — a level we didn't reach until Halloween, 305 days into 2020. We've seen 57 Covid-19-related deaths in the first 11 days of 2021 — a figure we didn't reach until the 341st day of last year, on Dec. 6.
Again, how this growing crisis is dealt with, ultimately, is the responsibility of government. But isn't that all the more reason why Shahab's office needs to be independent? Is the current situation where Merriman or Moe — who hasn't actually been at one of the formal COVID news conferences since the announcement of the Christmas restrictions that are about to run out — keep massaging Shahab's messages by speaking over him at press conferences tenable?
As per White-crummey's story: “The premier's office said Friday that forecasts are planning documents that Dr. Saqib Shahab evaluates as one data source among others while making recommendations.” Merriman added that they are “an important piece, but it's not the determining factor.”
Yet we have repeatedly heard from both Moe and Merriman that restrictions — including the pre-christmas ones — were Shahab's decisions.
If Shahab's office had more independence, it actually might be harder for government to cherry-pick which recommendations it chooses to follow.