Inside the politics of COVID-19 at Niagara Region
Mayors lobby for multimillion-dollar COVID-19 lab plan that lacked key details, got data wrong
In the days leading up to last week’s public health committee meeting, where the COVID-19 pandemic would again be up for discussion, two Niagara mayors were busy on the phone, lobbying their colleagues on behalf of an unproven multimillion-dollar laboratory and testing scheme.
The idea — created by two executives from Niagara-on-the Lake Hydro — is to test all 450,000 Niagara residents in 50 days in a built-in-Niagara lab. They would be the project managers for the lab, billed as an economic opportunity for the region.
But the proposal by Jim Ryan and Tim Curtis lacked any supporting documentation, got local testing data wrong, claimed to have support from a top hospital executive that they didn’t and had no backing from any public health officials or epidemiologists.
Niagara-on-the-Lake Lord Mayor Betty Disero and Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati pressed on, working the phones to get the Ryan and Curtis proposal immediately endorsed by the committee — the first step to getting support from the full council this week.
“I’m for the concept of more testing,” said Diodati, who would not say if he supports randomly testing all Niagara residents, the core idea of the proposal. “The details can be worked out later. The important thing is to start.”
For her part, Disero said the proposal would increase “turnaround time” for local COVID-19 testing and the lab would “provide good-paying jobs for people in Niagara looking for work in a laboratory.”
She did not know how many qualified lab technicians are out of work in Niagara. Echoing what Curtis and Ryan said in the committee meeting, Disero claims “time is running out” for provincial funding and if the lab is not built in Niagara, it will be built elsewhere and the region would “lose out on the opportunity.”
Working with Disero and Diodati, Thorold Mayor Tim Whalen crafted a motion that would support the proposal. Worried the motion would commit the Region to an unworkable, unscientific plan, other councillors, including Region Chair
Jim Bradley, worked to craft an alternative motion that stopped short of endorsing Ryan and Curtis while voicing support for efforts to combat the pandemic.
That motion, put forward by St. Catharines Coun. Laura Ip and amended by Niagara Falls Coun. Peter Nicholson to include a generic reference to a lab, was passed. It heads to full council for ratification Thursday.
Although the motion makes no reference to Curtis and Ryan, Disero believes it gives them “the authority (from regional council) to go to the province” and ask for public funding. Bradley, on the other hand, said the motion does no such thing.
“It would be very difficult for them to claim, based on that motion, that they have the endorsement of regional council,” he said.
The proposal, which Ryan called “a moonshot” during the May 14 committee meeting, is scant on details.
The pair said the lab would cost $1.8 million a week, but provided no financial documents. They claimed only 7,000 residents had been tested when by that time the number was well in excess of 11,000 people and rising as Niagara has one of Ontario’s highest per capita testing rates, exceeding Toronto and Hamilton.
Their idea, to test every Niagara resident in 50 days, has no expert support and would require 9,000 tests to be done a day, at 375 tests an hour in a lab running 24 hours a day. Asked about logistics by Ip, they said they would establish 50 testing sites across Niagara, but could not provide any details.
Ryan and Curtis even said they had the support of Niagara Health, the hospital system doing the bulk of testing in the region, and its chief executive officer Dr. Tom Stewart. Only they didn’t.
“We do not believe there is a role for testing all citizens for COVID-19,” Niagara Health said in a statement to The St. Catharines Standard. “Dr. Stewart did not endorse this specific plan or provide Niagara Health’s support for it.”
Disero and Diodati said in interviews they still support the plan.
Asked about factual problems with the proposal, Diodati said “anything can be refined going forward,” adding the concept, not the specifics, is what is important.
He also disputed that Stewart rejected the proposal to test all Niagara residents when asked if he was concerned Curtis and Ryan claim they had the support of Niagara Health.
“That is not a factual statement,” Diodati said. “I have a text message right here from Dr. Stewart, in black and white, saying he is for ramping up testing.”
He would not answer a question about the difference between more testing and testing everyone and could not say how many more tests should be done.
Disero also would not say if she supports testing everyone even though she lobbied for the proposal, saying she wants to see tests processed faster.
Like Diodati, she took no issue with the errors in the proposal, saying Curtis and Ryan “could not access public health officials” when creating their PowerPoint presentation sent to the committee, and the details would be worked out after council gave its blessing.
However, the relevant COVID-19 data, including testing information, is publicly available.