Veteran Politician Preston Manning Appointed by Alberta Premier to Chair New Pandemic Panel

Preston Manning, founder of the Manning Centre, listens during the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa on March 22, 2019. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

EDMONTON—Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced on Jan. 19 that veteran politician and former federal Official Opposition leader Preston Manning has been hired to organize and chair a new pandemic committee.

Manning, who founded the Reform Party, said the new pandemic panel, the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel, will examine what legislation was used by the Alberta government during COVID-19 and what laws and statutes should be changed before the next health crisis.

In a column published in the Calgary Herald on Jan. 19, Manning said the premier “has expressed a strong desire to strengthen Alberta’s capacity to deal with future health crises.”

Manning, who previously founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy and authored five books, said he accepted the position “with enthusiasm.”

The panel will not “review or rehash the entire gamut” of the government’s response to COVID, said Manning. The panel instead will review the legislative framework that informed and authorized the government’s response to the public health emergency declared due to COVID.

The entire focus of the panel will be to answer the question, “What changes should be made, if any, to the laws of Alberta to better equip the province to cope with future public health emergencies?” said Manning.

He said that Canada often suffered from “wet blanket syndrome,” where the initial response to any new proposal for public action is “greeted with a welter of partisan sniping, negative criticism,” and “tweets as to why the proposed action is ill-considered, wrongly motivated, not worth doing, bound to fail.”

Manning said that rather than prejudging the benefits or outcomes of the proposed panel, he hoped Albertans would “judge them on the evidence of what they achieve or fail to achieve.”

Improve Future Response

In a Jan. 19 news release, the Alberta government said the panel would also “recommend changes necessary to improve the government response to future health emergencies.”

The review will include feedback from experts and the public on how the government can respond to future emergencies, “while mitigating impacts on the social well-being, mental health, civil liberties and livelihoods of Albertans.”

The public is being invited to share thoughts with the panel.

Some of the panel’s key issues to examine are how to improve the quality of medical advice in future health emergencies and how to improve communication with the public.

Manning said between now and Nov. 15, when a final review with recommendations will be submitted to the province, the panel will also consider if there are more effective ways to provide health protection for the population, while limiting the indirect and independent harms.

The panel is to consider general public health, mental health, child and student health and education, practice standards for health professionals, protection of rights and freedoms, employment standards, economic and financial impacts, and the effective implementation of emergency measures.

“There are valuable lessons we learned from the Alberta government’s response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. It’s important that we apply those lessons to strengthen our management of future public health crises, and the panel’s recommendations will be key in doing so,” said the premier.

The budget for the pandemic panel is $2 million and Manning will be compensated $253,000 as the panel chair. Manning will recommend other panel members for the final approval of Smith.

Manning led the Reform Party of Canada for more than a decade. His late father, Ernest Manning, served as premier of Alberta for 25 years, beginning in 1943.

Manning was also involved in the creation of a national, independent citizen-led inquiry, nationalcitizensinquiry.ca, which is to take place in 2023 in cities across Canada.