Ontario was not ready.
That is what Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk concluded in her report, evaluating the Government of Ontario's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Obsolete structure, a broken network of labs, limited capacity to do testing and contact tracing, lack of clear directives to local authorities, fuzzy lines of communications, too few specialized staff. Such was the state of play.
Worse, Lysyk said that all of these serious failures should have been avoided if Ontario had learned the main lessons of the SARS crisis, over a decade ago. The Ministerial Emergency Committee, which includes the Premier and eight MPPs, had not met in five years, so it was unable to fulfill its mandate. In essence, the province did not have an up-to-date, ready-to-roll plan for a pandemic
No doubt, Canada's response to the first wave was slow, with politicians willfully blinding themselves to worldwide reports and health authorities contenting themselves to wait for the data. Better be sorry than safe, I guess.
But Ontario appears to have been the worst province, according to the AG. She concluded that Ontario's response to the first wave was slower, more inconsistent and more disorganized than that of other provinces.
In early 2020, Ontario judged the risk posed by COVID-19 to be low, despite the virus spreading elsewhere in the world. The Commission's fundamental lesson on SARS was not learned, which is the precautionary principle the need to act quickly if there is evidence. There was no sense of urgency. The Ford government waited until February 28 to create a command group and even initially encouraged out-of-province travel for spring break: "Go away, have a good time, enjoy yourselves," Premier Ford said at the time. "I just want families to enjoy themselves right now."
Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, David Williams, has also shown a lack of leadership and refused to make decisions without the political green light from the Ford government, abdicating the exercise of his powers under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. The results: delayed decisions, confusing messaging, and incoherence abounded.
Williams has been finger-pointed before. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario called for his head back in September, saying Williams was a poor communicator and too slow to act. A few days earlier, Williams had blamed health care workers for getting infected.
Yet despite Dr. Williams' lack of leadership, or perhaps because of it, Doug Ford is quite keen to extend his tenure. Williams should remain at the helm, even though he is clearly not steering the ship. After while Health Minister Christine Elliott admitted that the provincial emergency plan has not been updated in years, of course it's not their fault: she lays the blame solely on the previous Liberal government.
Instead of accepting the blame, Elliott accuses the AG of misrepresenting the situation and claims that the government has always followed the recommendations of Dr. Williams. The numbers are helping the Tories make their case: despite everything, of all Canadian provinces and states in the United States, Ontario has the lowest number of COVID-19 cases ratio per inhabitant, except for the Atlantic bubble. Better be lucky than safe, I guess.
And now with Christmas around the corner, the Ford government is once again being unclear about what is allowed and what is not. They are "asking" people to celebrate only with their own household. They want people to "avoid" big holiday parties. They are "recommending" against visiting family and friends.
The second wave is just beginning.
Photo Credit: Bloomberg
