Opinion: This cannot happen again

Mistakes have been made. Lessons must be learned. This cannot happen again.

combines the economic shocks of the Spanish Flu, the ‘Dirty Thirties’ and World War II all into one. The impact on people’s lives, the global economy and society will echo for generations.

COVID-19

Despite 20 years of worldwide disease outbreaks - SARS, H1N1, MERS, Zika – we and our leaders in politics, public service, business and labour were too wrapped up in a Cassandrian world view to see, acknowledge and prepare for the axiomatic truth: this pandemic was coming.

Just watch the 4 minute-2 second clip of President George W. Bush on YouTube from November 2005 at the U.S. National Institutes of Health: his 3-point plan was not followed by any government and his predictions applied to our current state are, prophetic.

Ah life, where evolution abhors arrogance and reality humbles hubris, sans exception.

So, even as health professionals and poorly paid essential services workers risk their lives, politicians and civil servants unveil sweeping support programs, public health issues daily directives, and scientists race to validate antiviral treatments and create a vaccine, we must turn our thoughts to this Fall or Winter and lay the groundwork for the unavoidable ‘come to you-knowwho’ conversation.

A Royal Commission must be established with a clear, non-partisan, non-backside covering mandate: prepare Canada for the next, inevitable, global pandemic.

A growing erosion of trust is evident in daily news coverage and the conversations on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn which are the proxies for coffee shop, water cooler and dinner party chatter now so absent from daily life. What started as a “we’re good, #InThisTogether” chorus has been supplanted by a “what else will they — aka some top-level government and health officials — change/get wrong next” malaise.

Consider the record of public health and elected officials since lateJanuary about the low risk of disease transmission, repeated assurances that stockpiles of PPE were flush, the supposed folly of closing our borders, and outright dismissal of those who asked if we should wear masks in public.

Part of this is due to an over-reliance on the guidance of the WHO, which fostered early timidity in public health declarations and further fueled the political incrementalism that has driven our body politic, with a shortlist of policy exceptions, since the days of Mackenzie King. Let’s be blunt: our democracy is too driven by dissent over small stuff, by debate of short-term policy minutiae, and by decisions to confer advantage in the next election instead cultivating the ambition of the next generation. Post COVID-19 we cannot tolerate a return to this superficial, spiteful and splenetic inertia in parliamentary affairs.

To leave this existential ‘come to youknow-who’ exercise to the theatre of Question Period and charade of parliamentary committees would be inadequate and irresponsible. A Royal Commission must be established with a clear, non-partisan, non-backside covering mandate: prepare Canada for the next, inevitable, global pandemic.

Its lines of inquiry should be simple and straightforward: What did we get right? Where, when and why did we go wrong? And how do we guarantee we will be 100 times better next time?

All orders of government along with leaders from business, labour, healthcare, academia, and NGOs should be invited – and if need be, compelled – to testify. As well, governments must open the proverbial kimono. Absent real and legitimate national security concerns, Access to/Freedom of Information obstacles for document production and 20-year prohibitions on revealing Cabinet memoranda, minutes and decisions must be lifted as a rule, not an exception.