Briefing notes prepared by bureaucrats for federal ministers show just how quickly the COVID-19 situation evolved in Canada — with public health officials stating the risk of transmission in Canada was low right up until early March, only to recommend an ordered shutdown of economic life in this country some two weeks later.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Thursday that it could be as long as a year before normal life returns in Canada — a dramatic change in messaging, considering how Public Health Agency of Canada officials were advising policymakers less than two months ago that COVID-19 risks were low in this country, and that mandatory quarantines for returning travellers would be too difficult to enforce.
A March 10 department-drafted briefing note prepared for Health Minister Patty Hajdu ahead of question period said that, with just 12 cases being reported nationwide at that point, “the risk of spread of this virus within Canada remains low at this time.” The note also said the public health system is “well-equipped to contain cases coming from abroad, limiting the spread in Canada.”
A month later, Canada has more than 21,000 cases.
As the documents show, as early as Jan. 28 the World Health Organization (WHO) was describing the risk of COVID-19 transmission as “very high” in China and “high at the global level.”
Early messages from bureaucrats to Health Minister Patty Hajdu never hinted at the eventual scope of the pandemic. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
The tranche of documents, prepared by various government departments and tabled with the Commons Health committee late Wednesday, include many of the early planning memos that informed the federal government’s response to COVID-19 in January and February.
They show that while the government was seized with repatriating Canadians from China’s Hubei province and various cruise ships during that time, there was little talk of a possible pandemic.
Public health officials questioned the accuracy of media reports out of the city of Wuhan, in Hubei, suggesting that the virus was spreading through person-to-person contact.
“Based on the latest information that we have, there is no clear evidence that the virus is easily transmitted between people,” a Jan. 19 briefing note prepared for Hajdu said.
The documents also reveal that the government was reluctant to strictly police travellers arriving from Hubei, the region of China where the novel coronavirus is thought to have originated.
‘Next to impossible’ to stop COVID-19: minister
According to talking points prepared for a Jan. 30 call with her provincial and territorial counterparts, Hajdu said preventing the virus from arriving in Canada was “next to impossible” because of the nature of global travel.
“What really counts is limiting its impact and controlling its spread once it gets here,” the talking point reads.
Three days later, the U.S. barred all non-citizens coming from China from entering the country.
While there were information booths at major Canadian airports starting on January 21, the decision to collect personal contact information from inbound Hubei travellers was only made on Feb. 19 — information that could then be used by public health officials to follow up with people if an outbreak emerged.
Scenes from a pandemic: passengers arrive at the Calgary Airport after being briefed on mandatory self-isolation rules March 25, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)
The government relied on individuals to self-report to Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers if they were experiencing flu-like symptoms, long after temperature monitoring measures were commonplace at airports in Asia.
Between Jan. 22 and Feb. 18, 58,000 travellers arrived in Canada from China — 2,030 of them were coming from Hubei province.
Only 68 were pulled aside for further assessment by a quarantine officer and only three passengers were actually flagged for a medical exam — the other 65 passengers were sent away with a pamphlet.
It’s impossible to know how many pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic passengers were released into the general Canadian population.
Bureaucrats warn against mandatory quarantines
On Feb. 7, the government started recommending that inbound Hubei passengers start to voluntarily self-isolate for 14 days to prevent transmission.
In an undated memo to Hajdu sent in mid-February, department officials warned that Canadians may question the effectiveness of “voluntary” self-isolation measures for these travellers.
But the memo says “there is no ability to enforce or ensure compliance” with a mandatory isolation order without the use of the Quarantine Act — a measure the government would end up enacting weeks later.
The memo said it was best to leave all self-isolation measures as voluntary to ensure there is “less pressure on public health resources.”
The memo said public health officials didn’t have the capacity required to quarantine passengers from China; 20,000 such travellers were arriving in Canada each week at the time.
The Public Health Agency scrubbed any references to China in pamphlets disseminated to returning travelers starting on Feb. 24, after it was clear that there was community spread of COVID-19 in countries like Iran and Italy.
I think we’ve seen countries around the world caught off guard by the nature of this epidemic.– Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Calls between Hajdu and her provincial and territorial counterparts later in February focused on quarantine facilities for returning Hubei and cruise ship travellers in Trenton and Belleville, but said little about how the various jurisdictions would respond if COVID-19 escalated.
According to briefing notes for a Feb. 10 call, Hajdu said that while the country was in a “containment phase, we cannot ignore what comes next.”
The note states that the Public Health Agency of Canada was “doing advanced thinking and scenario analysis, including a pandemic scenario,” but it’s not clear if those scenarios were actually discussed with provinces and territories on that call.
The pandemic has made N95 masks rare and coveted objects. (Michael Wilson/CBC)
Health Canada expected Hajdu would be pressed by the provinces about the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) on the call. The department told her then there were ongoing “attempts” to secure devices like N95 and surgical masks for the national stockpile but “deliveries were staggered by industry due to mounting market pressures.”
It said it had procured only a “modest” amount of the masks — items that would be badly needed a month later.
By Feb. 26, when there were 78,000 COVID-19 cases in mainland China, public health officials continued to counsel Hajdu that “the public health risk within Canada remains low.” A month later, there would be 1,000 cases in Ontario alone.
Even after the number of suspected COVID-19 cases in Canada started to rise by mid-February, Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg did very few tests, with most of them reserved for travellers from China. It is now understood there was widespread transmission of the disease in Europe and in some U.S. hotspots like New York by this time.
By Feb. 17, the national lab had run only 461 tests — a marginal increase from the 367 tests run the week before.
By Feb. 25, Ontario and B.C. had provincial labs ready to test but the other provinces were still relying on sending samples to Winnipeg — a cumbersome process that made it difficult to identify and isolate cases in the other provinces early on.
Countries ‘caught off guard’: Trudeau
When asked Thursday what went wrong in the government’s COVID-19 planning, Trudeau said there will be time for reflection at a later date. He said he was confident the government made the “best decisions” with “the information we have.”
“I think we’ve seen countries around the world caught off guard by the nature of this epidemic,” he said. “The challenges we faced in terms of getting Canadians protected are echoed in challenges faced around the world.
Watch: Trudeau warns Canadians need to remain vigilant
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said normal life for Canadians will not return until a COVID-19 vaccine is developed 2:32
“I think Canada has done a good job of keeping on a path that is going to minimize as much as possible the reality we’re in right now. As we look back at the end of this, I’m sure people will say, ‘You could have done this a few days before.'”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
