It's a never-ending gong show:
Internal e-mails show the Prime Minister’s Office was scrambling last summer to contain the fallout over the silencing of Canada’s pandemic early-warning system after learning it was curtailed less than a year before COVID-19 struck.
The e-mails, which provide a rare look at exchanges between the Prime Minister’s top political aides, show the upper levels of government were caught off guard when details about the silencing of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) were made public by a Globe and Mail investigation.
The internationally respected system was created to detect and monitor international health threats to help Canada and other countries respond faster and more effectively to a deadly outbreak. However, The Globe found that the operation’s alert system was silenced in early 2019 amid shifting government priorities.
During an exchange of early-morning e-mails on Aug. 13, advisers to the Prime Minister can be seen trying to figure out what went wrong with GPHIN, and whether the blame for its mishandling could be contained to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and decision makers within that department, without political ramifications for the government.
“Can you confirm all the decision are internal to PHAC?” Samantha Khalil, the PMO’s deputy director of issues management, said to a colleague in an e-mail at 8:33 a.m. “I’ve got a hard deadline of 8:45 now to update my senior team.”
That morning, The Globe reported the pandemic alert system was suddenly restarted about two weeks after it published its investigation that showed GPHIN had gone silent in 2019. The shutdown of the alert system, and its reinstatement, appear to have blindsided the government.
At 7:15 a.m., the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, sent an e-mail to PMO staff with the article attached, saying, “Front page of globe. How will we respond to this?” The replies to that e-mail paint a picture of the Prime Minister’s Office trying to find answers, and concerned with whether the blame will spread beyond the Public Health Agency.
Responding to Ms. Telford’s e-mail at 8:03 a.m., PMO senior adviser Ben Chin told colleagues: “The thing I’d like to understand better is whether all decisions on this are internal to PHAC. I understand there was no funding reduction.”
In another e-mail, Ms. Khalil asks a colleague: “Can you send me any background there is on why this was stopped and restarted? As well as your messaging on it.”
At 8:53 that morning, Cole Davidson, press secretary to the Minister of Health, responds to Ms. Khalil, “We’re working on getting specifics and answers to some questions. … When did this change happen? Why did this change happen? Who made the decision?”
The e-mails are among thousands of federal documents being disclosed in response to a production order for COVID-19 records that the House of Commons approved in October despite objections from the Liberal government.
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The Department of Public Works in self-congratulatory internal emails said it was “very proud” of doing a great job on pandemic management, “a great story for us.” The messages were exchanged as Covid deaths nationwide approached 9,000: “We’re everybody’s government!”
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A growing number of Canadians believe the Trudeau government has fumbled its efforts to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to the public in a timely manner, according to a new poll.
(Sidebar: why, it's like people think that he is an @$$hole for some reason.)
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Canada’s agreement with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Novavax has been released in regulatory filings, showing the drug maker has set delivery schedules, but also has broad leeway to miss them for a variety of reasons.
Novavax was the fifth vaccine maker to submit their COVID-19 vaccine to Health Canada for regulatory approval and could be given the green light as early as April. The company has a deal to provide at least 52 million doses and as many as 76 million doses of its two-dose vaccine to Canada.
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A Québec company received a quarter-billion pandemic contract to supply ventilators that repeatedly failed testing, internal records show. Cabinet justified the sole-sourced contract on a claim of “extreme urgency.” First deliveries of rebuilt devices are scheduled this week, eleven months after the contract was approved: “It was an emergency situation.”
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An Atlantic Canadian undergarment company that quickly retooled its factory last spring to make personal protective equipment is laying off 150 workers after failing to win a new federal contract.
Stanfield’s Ltd. of Nova Scotia, famed for its long johns and boxer shorts, switched to making medical gowns for front-line health workers at the outset of the pandemic.
But the historic Truro clothing manufacturer was left out of the most recent round of federal contracts.
All nine of the successful bidders on a new request for proposals for medical gowns are in Canada’s three most populated provinces: Ontario, Quebec and B.C.
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With a federal budget in the offing, premiers are stepping up the pressure on Ottawa to immediately boost health care funding by at least $28 billion a year.
They held a virtual news conference Thursday to reiterate their demand for a big increase in the unconditional transfer payment the federal government sends provinces and territories each year for health care.
The federal government this year will transfer to the provinces nearly $42 billion for health care, under an arrangement that sees the amount rise by at least three per cent each year.
But the premiers contend that amounts to only 22 per cent of the actual cost of delivering health care and doesn’t keep pace with yearly cost increases of about five per cent.
Starting this year, they want Ottawa to increase its share to 35 per cent and maintain it at that level, which would mean an added $28 billion, rising by roughly another $4 billion in each subsequent year.
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Duff says that she didn't book a hotel room, and was sent there without needing to pay. Although she requested vegan food and the hotel staff said they gave it to her, she says the food provided to her wasn’t vegan at all. Britany told me that the COVID testing kit provided to her was not sealed, and that the COVID agent gave her different instructions than the ones that came along with the test.
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