This is the first in a series looking at some of the lessons learned from the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic and how Canada moves forward.
This year has given new meaning to the old expression “hindsight is 2020.”
Three months ago, Canada’s government closed the land border with the U.S. just days after closing its airports to international flights — a move that followed weeks of government assurances that border closures to limit the spread of the pandemic don’t work.
As the U.S. experience has shown, money and power provide little protection against the pandemic unless there is a competent government to harness them. Some of the world’s worst-hit countries have issues of citizen mistrust, government dysfunction, corruption, inefficiency or partisan gridlock (Italy, the United States, Brazil and Russia).
The democracies that have achieved the very best outcomes tend to have smaller populations and good governance — and tend to be surrounded by water (Iceland, Taiwan, Ireland and New Zealand).
“It’s probably not a coincidence that those places are islands,” said Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “Not having a land border just gives you a lot more control over the influx of people.”
Both P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador used strict travel restrictions to beat back the pandemic. But being an island doesn’t help if you don’t take advantage of your geography — as the example of the United Kingdom demonstrates.
“I think countries that don’t have that luxury of being an island being cut off by the sea can maybe still learn from that about … more stringent controls at the border,” Fisman said.
The Australian experience
“In Australia the situation is very good. It looks to be completely under control, with a focus on contact tracing and masks to prevent the spread,” said Valentina Constantino, a biosecurity researcher who advised the Australian government in the early days of the pandemic. Her team’s research in January contributed to Australia’s early decision to close the country to all traffic from mainland China on February 1.
Australia’s pandemic has closely tracked her modelling. Her team’s analysis, published in the Journal of Travel Medicine, suggests that Australia experienced only 14 per cent of the infections it would have faced if borders with China had remained open.
Surfers walk along Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia on April 28, 2020, after pandemic restrictions were eased. (Rick Rycroft/The Associated Press)
As February turned into March, the ban was extended and Australia added South Korea, Iran and Italy. Many in Australia were deeply concerned about the border closure’s effects on the economy.
But today, said Constantino, the same modelling would recommend re-opening Australia to travellers from China because the costs of closure are outweighed by the benefits of admitting what is now a low-risk population. She said she expects Australia to keep its borders mostly closed for the rest of 2020, but to re-admit students sooner.
The time factor
“Time is the most important variable in this,” Constantino said. Australia acted at a point when more than 90 per cent of its cases could be directly linked to overseas travel.
“For example, if the U.S. implemented a travel ban, it’s not going to fix anything now, because most of the transmission is local,” she added.
Canada’s COVID-19 experience differs from Australia’s in that cases entered Canada from a broader range of locations. But Canada does have a fairly well-controlled border with only one country, and the vast majority of travellers from outside the U.S. must reach Canada by air. Could Canada have taken Australia’s path and avoided needless deaths and hardship?
On the day Australia closed its borders to China, Canada had four confirmed COVID-19 cases, all linked to travel from China. At the time, the Trudeau government was still committed to the idea that travel bans don’t work and even suggested that those proposing them might be racist.
Minister of Health Patty Hajdu looks on as Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam responds to a question during a pandemic news conference in Ottawa April 2, 2020. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
The U.S. had declared a public health emergency the day before, and the New England Journal of Medicine had published a report saying that COVID-19 could be spread by asymptomatic carriers. Health Minister Patty Hajdu said Canada saw no need to declare an emergency and that Health Canada had seen no evidence of asymptomatic spread.
“We’re comfortable that we’re completely up to date in terms of our approach and what the science says. There is a very low risk to Canadians,” Hajdu said on Jan. 31. “We’ve been following closely the recommendations of the World Health Organization.”
The ‘lost months’
On February 3, the U.S. followed Australia’s lead and froze travel with China. Asked in the Commons why Canada was not doing the same, Hajdu denounced “the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society” and called on the opposition to “not sensationalize the risk to Canadians.”
Wesley Wark is one of Canada’s leading experts on intelligence. He said Hajdu’s low-risk assessment would dominate government thinking for at least another four weeks, as documented by the daily situational reports produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“(The reports) said throughout that the risk posed by COVID-19 to Canada and Canada’s interests was low,” Wark said.
“That is, in my view, an astonishing failure of judgment, and it means as far as I’m concerned that a radical rethink has to take place in how we do global health surveillance.
“January 2020 and February 2020 were effectively lost months for Canada in terms of us preparing for the impacts of COVID-19.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Ronald St. John was the first director general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada, and national manager for Canada’s response to 9/11 and SARS.
‘A bit slow’
He’s also the founder of Sitata, a company that runs a travel safety app that monitors health information from open sources. Sitata first notified its subscribers of the risk of a new virus on January 2, when COVID-19 was still just a mysterious local outbreak in one part of China.
St. John said it’s important not to be too harsh when judging the actions of officials who faced an unprecedented situation with few good or easy options available to them. Nevertheless, he said, he “personally” thinks Canada’s response in January “was a bit slow.”
“We already knew by that time that the disease had spread to South Korea, that Japan was reporting a few cases, and we knew that this was a respiratory disease, a virus,” he said. “And a respiratory virus is probably one of the easiest things to get transmitted all over the place …
“It probably should have been taken a little bit more seriously than it was that time.”
First in, first out
Australia and New Zealand are now reaping the benefits of their early, aggressive border action. They are planning to create a “Trans-Tasman travel bubble” allowing for free movement between the two countries, although New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern warns that “we will not have open borders for the rest of the world for a long time to come.”
Ardern was able to begin rolling back lockdown measures on April 27, while the pandemic was still growing rapidly in most parts of the world.
On June 8, New Zealand declared itself “COVID-free.”
Here in Canada, gene sequencing and contact tracing have revealed that many Canadian COVID-19 cases were linked to travel from Europe, while other early cases involved travel to Iran.
No one will ever know how many COVID cases entered Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadian snowbirds on March 16 that it was “time to come home,” triggering an exodus from Florida straight through the American COVID-19 epicentre of New York and New Jersey.
Ottawa changes its mind
Canada began to close its borders to international travel that day, but exempted U.S. citizens. Ottawa announced it was closing the border to non-essential travel on March 20.
It was a remarkable turnaround for a government that previously had insisted that travel bans did not work. Hajdu was still denouncing border closures as late as March 13: “Canadians think we can stop this at the border,” she said. “But what we see is a global pandemic, which means that border measures are highly ineffective and, in some cases, can create harm.”
“[The World Health Organization] advises against any kind of travel and trade restrictions, saying that they are inappropriate and could actually cause more harm than good in terms of our global effort to contain,” Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said on Feb. 3.
The government has been accused of being too subservient to a WHO that was advising against border closures at the start of the epidemic. Its actions may also reflect an internal conflict between ideology and epidemiology.
In February, Hajdu told CBC News she feared COVID-19 would provoke racist reactions.
Watch: Health Minister Patty Hajdu on the pandemic and racism
Federal cabinet minister Patty Hajdu joined CBC’s Wendy Mesley on The Weekly to discuss the rising fear and racism against the Chinese-Canadian community due to online misinformation about the coronavirus. 3:31
Although there have been ugly incidents of pandemic-related racism, none have resulted in fatalities. The virus itself, however, has killed thousands of Canadians and crippled the economy.
The experience of the countries that closed their borders early has effectively ended the notion that travel bans don’t work. But while Canada may have learned that lesson, it will still have to innovate in order to reopen its borders at a later date.
Countries that depend on tourism from Europe to the Caribbean are admitting foreign travellers, but some are choosy about where they can come from (Greece will accept Japanese and Germans but doesn’t want any Canadians yet). Accurate intelligence about the state of the disease in foreign countries is critical to informing those decisions.
Reopening the border safely
Antigua has opened its borders to every country in the world. But anyone entering the country must undergo much more rigorous procedures than those in place at Canadian airports, including an overall health check, temperature readings and a COVID swab.
Many European countries that have reopened to their neighbours require travellers to produce recent negative COVID molecular test results.
Will Canada have to adopt one of those approaches at its airports and land border as it reopens? Given the alarming state of the pandemic in the United States, said Fisman, Canada doesn’t really have a choice.
“I’d love to see stronger efforts to, for example, test truckers, folks who were coming across the border into Canada bringing essential goods and supplies and going down to the U.S.,” he said.
“Anecdotally, they’ve been a group that’s been relatively hard hit. Embrace technology for that in terms of keeping track of people and keeping in contact with people.”
He said Canada also should see airports and the border as ideal places to gather public health intelligence.
“I think the airports being open provides an excellent opportunity to gain situational awareness about what’s happening with COVID in other countries because you can swab travelers as they’re coming in,” he said.”That’s what they’ve been doing in Taiwan … gaining that knowledge by testing travelers as a condition of entry to the country.
“As disease activity declines in Canada, as I expect it to, that will become more and more important in terms of limiting large scale importation of disease.”
Braxton Whitehead said Friday he has verbally committed to Arizona State, making him the first member of a Canadian Hockey League team to attempt to play the sport at the Division I U.S. college level since a lawsuit was filed challenging the NCAA’s longstanding ban on players it deems to be professionals.
Whitehead posted on social media he plans to play for the Sun Devils beginning in the 2025-26 season.
An Arizona State spokesperson said the school could not comment on verbal commitments, citing NCAA rules. A message left with the CHL was not immediately returned.
A class-action lawsuit filed Aug. 13 in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, could change the landscape for players from the CHL’s Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. NCAA bylaws consider them professional leagues and bar players from there from the college ranks.
Online court records show the NCAA has not made any response to the lawsuit since it was filed.
“We’re pleased that Arizona State has made this decision, and we’re hopeful that our case will result in many other Division I programs following suit and the NCAA eliminating its ban on CHL players,” Stephen Lagos, one of the lawyers who launched the lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an email.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Riley Masterson, of Fort Erie, Ontario, who lost his college eligibility two years ago when, at 16, he appeared in two exhibition games for the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. And it lists 10 Division 1 hockey programs, which were selected to show they follow the NCAA’s bylaws in barring current or former CHL players.
CHL players receive a stipend of no more than $600 per month for living expenses, which is not considered as income for tax purposes. College players receive scholarships and now can earn money through endorsements and other use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The implications of the lawsuit could be far-reaching. If successful, the case could increase competition for college-age talent between North America’s two top producers of NHL draft-eligible players.
“I think that everyone involved in our coaches association is aware of some of the transformational changes that are occurring in collegiate athletics,” Forrest Karr, executive director of American Hockey Coaches Association and Minnesota-Duluth athletic director said last month. “And we are trying to be proactive and trying to learn what we can about those changes.
Karr was not immediately available for comment on Friday.
Earlier this year, Karr established two committees — one each overseeing men’s and women’s hockey — to respond to various questions on eligibility submitted to the group by the NCAA. The men’s committee was scheduled to go over its responses two weeks ago.
Former Minnesota coach and Central Collegiate Hockey Association commissioner Don Lucia said at the time that the lawsuit provides the opportunity for stakeholders to look at the situation.
“I don’t know if it would be necessarily settled through the courts or changes at the NCAA level, but I think the time is certainly fast approaching where some decisions will be made in the near future of what the eligibility will look like for a player that plays in the CHL and NCAA,” Lucia said.
Whitehead, a 20-year-old forward from Alaska who has developed into a point-a-game player, said he plans to play again this season with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League.
“The WHL has given me an incredible opportunity to develop as a player, and I couldn’t be more excited,” Whitehead posted on Instagram.
His addition is the latest boon for Arizona State hockey, a program that has blossomed in the desert far from traditional places like Massachusetts, Minnesota and Michigan since entering Division I in 2015. It has already produced NHL talent, including Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord and Josh Doan, the son of longtime Coyotes captain Shane Doan, who now plays for Utah after that team moved from the Phoenix area to Salt Lake City.
A community legal clinic in Kingston, Ont., is denouncing the mayor’s calls to clear an encampment and close a supervised consumption site in the city following a series of alleged assaults that left two people dead and one seriously injured.
Kingston police said they were called to an encampment near a safe injection site on Thursday morning, where they allege a 47-year-old male suspect wielded an edged or blunt weapon and attacked three people. Police said he was arrested after officers negotiated with him for several hours.
The suspect is now facing two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
In a social media post, Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson said he was “absolutely horrified” by the situation.
“We need to clear the encampment, close this safe injection site and the (Integrated Care Hub) until we can find a better way to support our most vulnerable residents,” he wrote.
The Kingston Community Legal Clinic called Paterson’s comments “premature and misguided” on Friday, arguing that such moves could lead to a rise in overdoses, fewer shelter beds and more homelessness.
In a phone interview, Paterson said the encampment was built around the Integrated Care Hub and safe injection site about three years ago. He said the encampment has created a “dangerous situation” in the area and has frequently been the site of fires, assaults and other public safety concerns.
“We have to find a way to be able to provide the services that people need, being empathetic and compassionate to those struggling with homelessness and mental health and addictions issues,” said Paterson, noting that the safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub are not operated by the city.
“But we cannot turn a blind eye to the very real public safety issues.”
When asked how encampment residents and people who use the services would be supported if the sites were closed, Paterson said the city would work with community partners to “find the best way forward” and introduce short-term and long-term changes.
Keeping the status quo “would be a terrible failure,” he argued.
John Done, executive director of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic, criticized the mayor’s comments and said many of the people residing in the encampment may be particularly vulnerable to overdoses and death. The safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub saves lives, he said.
Taking away those services, he said, would be “irresponsible.”
Done said the legal clinic represented several residents of the encampment when the City of Kingston made a court application last summer to clear the encampment. The court found such an injunction would be unconstitutional, he said.
Done added there’s “no reason” to attach blame while the investigation into Thursday’s attacks is ongoing. The two people who died have been identified as 38-year-old Taylor Wilkinson and 41-year-old John Hood.
“There isn’t going to be a quick, easy solution for the fact of homelessness, drug addictions in Kingston,” Done said. “So I would ask the mayor to do what he’s trained to do, which is to simply pause until we have more information.”
The concern surrounding the safe injection site in Kingston follows a recent shift in Ontario’s approach to the overdose crisis.
Last month, the province announced that it would close 10 supervised consumption sites because they’re too close to schools and daycares, and prohibit any new ones from opening as it moves to an abstinence-based treatment model.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
