Public officials' arrogance and illogic cost Canadians dearly
Flip-flopping will be part of the retelling
Here is the sort of thing Liberals were saying a few days ago, after Ontario Premier Doug Ford demanded incoming foreign travellers be tested upon arrival.
❚ Kingston, Ont., MP Mark Gerretsen: “Don't let (Ford) distract you from his own failings during this pandemic. Last month only 0.31 per cent of COVID-19 cases in Ontario were related to travel.”
It's far more than that: 1.1 per cent of cases in November, 0.6 per cent thus far in December.
❚ Public Safety Minister Bill Blair: “We have imposed some of the strongest (travel) measures of any country.”
If you don't count enforcement, this is arguable.
❚ Also Blair: “We are one of the few countries in the world that restricts all non-essential (cross-border) travel.”
❚ True: Most countries imposed blanket international travel restrictions only temporarily. Mind you, here is the sort of thing Liberals said in March when opposition critics called just for targeted border restrictions.
❚ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “There is a lot of knee-jerk reaction that isn't keeping people safe. That is having real, challenging impacts on communities, on community safety.” Health
Minister Patty Hajdu: “Border measures are highly ineffective and, in some cases, can create harm.”
Here is the sort of thing Liberals said after they changed course 180 degrees over the course of a single weekend.
❚ Trudeau: “This is something that we need to move forward on to protect Canadians.”
And here is the sort of thing Liberals are saying after Wednesday's announcement that travellers will soon require a negative PCR test result to board a flight to Canada, and that a testing “pilot project” will be implemented for those arriving at Toronto's Pearson Airport.
❚ Blair: “Right now, the greatest concern that we have heard among Canadians is the impact of international travel at our airports.”
If they had just done air-traveller testing to begin with, they could have spared Canadians that concern and themselves a headache.
It is a central fact of Canadian politics that Liberals can deride and defame any given idea and its proponents for weeks, months or years, then suffer not at all when they wake up one morning and adopt it themselves.
To wit, here is what Liberals used to say about rapid testing, before they began saying other things:
❚ Hajdu: “Around the world, there are very high-profile examples of how rapid tests have actually added confusion and increased the risk of infection. They are not a silver bullet.”
And here is the sort of thing Liberals began saying once they turned another 180:
❚ Trudeau: “We delivered rapid testing to all the provinces and hopefully soon some … will start deploying those.”
To be fair, though, when the Liberals cited public health advice to justify their original positions, it was entirely credible. That advice has also been a huge part of the problem.
Here is the sort of thing public health officials used to say about masks:
❚ Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer: “What we worry about is … the potential negative aspects of wearing masks” — people touching their faces, neglecting to wash their hands, and so on. Dr. Bonnie Henry, Tam's counterpart in British Columbia, on the question of making masks mandatory in public places: “Many of the (transmission) settings that we are talking about are settings where people would not naturally wear a mask, like in your home or at a party.” That was in mid-november.
And here is the sort of thing some public health officials say about rapid testing even now.
❚ Henry: “It is not a panacea. It is not what is going to solve our issue, because the tests have faults and limitations.”
The idea that “masks are worse than useless” was, at least, mainstream medical thinking back in February and March. The opposite was also mainstream medical thinking, however, and made a hell of a lot more sense. Some of these other failures, though, stem from alarmingly basic failures of logic.
There is the “not a panacea” fallacy, as if there's ever a panacea for anything, and the related “not a big problem” fallacy, as if relatively small problems and threats ( like foreign travellers) aren't worth addressing. These are the sorts of cheap arguments politicians make to justify themselves. Doctors should not be trafficking in them.
The idea that less accurate rapid testing is ill-advised, especially when Canada isn't testing nearly enough people via any method, is based on similarly inexcusable and rigid thinking. The Oxford/ Astrazeneca vaccine is “only” 70 per cent effective — considerably better than the flu jab. Would Health Canada turn up its nose at it if our Pfizer and Moderna orders fell short?
For politicians themselves, I think the problem has been threefold. First there is the allparty Canadian preference for incrementalism: No problem shall ever be addressed in a fashion anyone might consider too aggressive. Second is a simple failure of imagination, compounded by that special Liberal arrogance. It was absolutely inevitable that Canada's borders would close, for example: Even the (always dubious) research backing up the idea that travel restrictions “don't work” concedes they are a political necessity. Yet the myth of Canadian (and Liberal) multilateralist exceptionalism rendered the idea unthinkable … until it wasn't.
In 2021, a strong dose of humility and foresight would go a long way helping us end this nightmare as quickly and painlessly as possible.