Canada needs a pandemic post-mortem — now, not later

It would be unfair to blame anyone — doctors and nurses, political leaders and health officials, average Canadians — for wanting to never think about COVID-19 again. Even if the pandemic isn't actually over, the desire to move on is evident in every dropped restriction, every maskless face.

But it would be a mistake to not look back. The enormous and fast-moving event that consumed the last two-and-a-half years of our lives — posing profound challenges to society, public policy and institutions — practically cries out for careful, retrospective examination.

And we can be sure that there will be another virus eventually, another pandemic. It would betray the Canadians who face that threat to avoid learning the lessons of this pandemic.

Given the stakes, it's surprising that no royal commission or national study has been announced already. But later this fall, the House of Commons will consider at least one proposal — this one from a Liberal backbencher — to launch a review.

"I can understand that reviews like this can be politicized and every expenditure can be politicized. And that's really not my goal here," Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith said in an interview this week.

"The goal is, let's learn the lessons for better and worse in order to inform our efforts going forward, so we are on the absolute best footing going forward to prevent future pandemics and to prepare for future pandemics."

The bill Erskine-Smith has tabled would compel the health minister to create an advisory committee that would pursue a potentially broad study of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.

That committee would review the actions of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the federal department of health. It also would look at the responses of provincial and municipal governments and "analyze the health, economic and social factors relevant to the impact of the pandemic in Canada."

There's a lot to investigate here.

COVID-19 has been, first and foremost, a health crisis with deadly consequences. But it also has tested public policy in many ways that were relatively novel (at least at this scale). And while it was tempting at times to say political differences had been put aside during the pandemic, nearly every aspect of the public policy response eventually was second-guessed and criticized by one side or another.

To understand what worked and what failed — and to settle some of those debates — a truly comprehensive review would start with the state of pandemic preparedness in early 2020.

It would then move on to consider all the public health issues that came to the fore in the weeks and months that followed: border controls, contact tracing, masking, public health restrictions on businesses and individuals, data collection, the procurement of personal protective equipment, rapid tests and vaccines, long-term care, federal-provincial coordination and the use of vaccine mandates. 

But a proper study would look beyond the public health response to consider the unprecedented fiscal response, largely led by the federal government. The most recent official tally says the Liberal government spent $352 billion on supports and assistance for individuals, businesses and provincial governments.

A proper study also would have to explore how the pandemic intersected with race and wealth to expose and exacerbate inequality.