Canada’s public health response to COVID-19 pandemic was slow getting off the ground, largely due to complacency and a focus on optics over substance on the part of federal bureaucrats, a health economist says.
Livio Di Matteo, a professor of economics at Lakehead University, says Canada’s system developed to provide early warning of infectious disease outbreaks had been quietly deactivated prior to the pandemic. On top of that, stockpiles of protective equipment were allowed to decline, which led the country to be “not terribly well-prepared” when the pandemic struck.
