Military began monitoring COVID-19 in early 2020 but still failed to predict pandemic's path, documents show
CBC
Newly-released documents show the Canadian military was concerned enough about the initial spread of COVID 19 to begin monitoring and planning for a response in late January 2020.
Experts are now asking whether that early advantage was squandered when it came to forecasting the trajectory of the pandemic and its impact on both troops and the general public.
The records, obtained by CBC News, show the first planning meeting for what later became Operation Laser — the military's overarching pandemic campaign — took place on Jan. 23, 2020, almost two months before the operation was called upon by the federal government.
The partially redacted documents, obtained under access to information law, also show the military began around the same time to gather intelligence on pandemic disinformation — and later debated whether the coronavirus could be turned into a bioweapon.
The documents also reveal that Canadian military intelligence officers met regularly with their allied counterparts in the health equivalent of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — known as the Quadripartite Medical Intelligence Committee (QMIC) — to discuss the unfolding pandemic.
Despite what seems like a hive of activity at the time, experts say it appears the Armed Forces was no better informed and no more nimble in its response to the global pandemic than the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
Hundreds of pages of briefings and assessments by Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) and the Canadian Forces Health Services Group (CFHSG) underline just how little the threat was understood and how pandemic early warning needs to be taken more seriously, said Wesley Wark, a University of Ottawa historian and one the country's leading intelligence experts. He's been a fierce critic of the federal government's response to the pandemic.
Intelligence regarding foreign interference sometimes didn't make it to the prime minister's desk in 2021 because Canada's spy agency and the prime minister's national security adviser didn't always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a recent report from one of Canada's intelligence watchdogs.