Provinces wait for PM’s testing plan
Trudeau had no formal proposal in call with premiers, sources say
TONDA MACCHARLES
OTTAWA— Provinces are awaiting more detail on what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said was a federal proposal for a national framework on testing and contact tracing.
A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday that Ontario officials had received “a very preliminary document on collaborating on testing capacity and contact tracing.”
“Premier Ford welcomes the federal government’s interest in supporting provinces with testing and contact tracing,” said Ford spokesperson Ivana Yelich in a statement to the Star.
“As we reopen our economies, we need to maintain and increase our robust testing regime. We need a united approach to sharing data and tracking cases, especially as people start travelling across the country and eventually across the U.S. border,” Yelich said.
“We want to get this right — ensuring that privacy is respected, and that the data helps the work being done by public health units. We look forward to continuing this conversation with the federal government as they provide more details about their support for provinces.”
Ford has been calling for a national plan on contact tracing since May 4.
Two sources in provincial leaders’ offices suggested there was no formal proposal per se that was set out on a call with Trudeau, but that there was a discussion during which the prime minister indicated the federal government was prepared to help provinces ramp up their data, testing and contact tracing capacity and efforts.
Several premiers were said to have made clear on the call to Trudeau that they are responsible for testing decisions, but would welcome more federal funds.
Contact tracing is “a more complicated discussion because different provinces are at different stages of their epidemics,” said one source. “Ideally, there would be some coordination (and) interoperability among systems as travel increases.”
Most premiers’ office referred questions about what the national framework is or might look like to their health officials.
But there was little clarification offered on any details about what Trudeau described as a proposal he made to the premiers on a phone call with first ministers last week.
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball’s public health office said that province “is in favour of a national testing strategy” and its officials have engaged with federal and provincial counterparts on it.”
Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said, “I think the prime minister offered resources, support to the provinces as needed to ramp up their capacity.”
Tam said officials are weighing how to widen “surveillance” systems, including more testing of asymptomatic people; ramping up laboratory-based PCR testing to detect active infections; and increasing the ability to do “point of care” testing (where test results can be instantly processed at clinics or testing sites and not shipped out to far-flung labs) especially in rural and more remote areas.
Finally, she pointed to the eventual ability to do broad serology (or blood antibody) testing to detect how much of the population has been infected and may have developed immunity.
Tam said provinces have to do a better job of gathering and reporting up to national policymakers more in-depth data on how COVID-19 is affecting different populations across the country.
Data is currently reported to Ottawa on patients’ age, gender, whether they are seniors or have underlying medical conditions, she said, “but there is a need to have First Nations, Inuit, Métis data as well as racebased data … because if you’re fine tuning your policies to support vulnerable populations that’s important.”
University of Ottawa Prof. Amir Attaran told a Commons health committee on Wednesday Trudeau’s proposal to try and devise a national framework on testing and contact tracing comes “much too late. We need it now.”
“A pandemic is not normal times, and there comes a point where the federal government must step in — the point where provincial actions are killing Canadians. If our country cannot show that once-in-a-century flexibility, then yes, we are turning the Canadian Constitution into a suicide pact.”