Trudeau bats away questions about WHO

PM won’t wade into debate around agency’s response to COVID-19

WASHINGTON—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused Wednesday to join the escalating global debate about the World Health Organization’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, insisting Canada remains focused on working with experts around the world to combat the pandemic.

Trudeau repeatedly batted back questions about Donald Trump’s plan to halt funding to the UN agency and review what the U.S. president says was a failure to properly assess the threat posed by the novel coronavirus back in January.

“My priority and the priority of our government right now is to do everything we can to protect Canadians and ensure the health and safety of people right across the country,” the prime minister said during his daily briefing outside his Rideau Cottage residence.

“That means working with experts here in Canada and around the world, and we will continue to do that important work for Canadians.”

In the U.S., which has been hit hardest by COVID-19 and is the WHO’s single largest financial supporter, Trump is accusing the UN agency of botching its initial response to the outbreak and covering up the extent of the threat as it emerged from China.

Pending the results of a review, Trump says, the U.S. will halt funding for the WHO, which depends on the country for nearly a quarter of its annual global assessments, along with hundreds of millions more in voluntary contributions that fluctuate from year to year. Canada’s annual support, by contrast, is in the “tens of millions,” Trudeau said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, last week urged the world to resist the temptation to politicize the pandemic. He defended his organization’s work at a news conference Wednesday in Geneva.

“When we are divided, the virus exploits the cracks between us,” Tedros said, expressing “regret” at Trump’s decision.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has raised red flags about the organization’s handling of the crisis, the accuracy of its data and the extent of its ties to China, where the outbreak originated in December. And he assailed the decision to drop Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist who headed a WHO mission in China earlier this year, from the witness list for Tuesday’s House of Commons health committee meeting.

Scheer said the government is basing its decisions on fighting the COVID-19 outbreak on information from the WHO, so it needs to hear how those decisions are being made.