GOLDSTEIN: Big government failed in COVID-19 pandemic

It has been suggested that the big government failed in the COVID-19 pandemic, and contrary to myth, Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has not been an argument in favor of the big government, but a savage accusation.

Certainly, the massive amounts of public spending undertaken by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that will be paid by future generations to deal with the health and economic consequences of COVID-19 do not demonstrate the value of big government and massive bureaucracies. That being so, it demonstrates the enormous price Canadians are paying for the failure of the big government to do its most fundamental job of protecting Canadians’ health and well-being.

More explicitly and in simpler words, it could be said that thousands of Canadians could have been saved from death and tens of thousands would have been saved from infection if Canadian governments of all kinds had done their job competently in recent years. Two decades. Even so, there are many who excuse themselves expressing that “nobody could have seen COVID-19 coming”, which could be established as a really absurd response.

Canada was not ready for another pandemic

It is important to mention that since the 2003 SARS epidemic and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Canada, there have been at least five major federal studies that warned that Canada was not prepared for another highly contagious pandemic. In fact, all the problems they identified, from insufficient storage of medical supplies to inadequate testing capacity and the lack of coordinated data exchange between federal, provincial and, municipal governments, have happened again with COVID-19.

Likewise, if governments had simply followed the advice of their own experts in multiple reports they commissioned 17 years ago, instead of ignoring their recommendations once the immediate crisis passed over and over again, far fewer patients and healthcare workers would be sick and dying today. Thus, it has been indicated that the greatest government failure of all has been in nursing, retirement and, long-term care facilities in Canada, where almost half of all COVID-19 related deaths have occurred and between 70% and 80% in the most affected provinces, Ontario and Quebec.

Read more.

Source: Lorrie Goldstein | Toronto Sun