The Canada Science & Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic has declared we’re at a point to move on.
Taking its own advice, the committee, assembled by a think tank outside of government, has published a comprehensive strategy for Canada to leave the COVID-19 pandemic behind, including recommendations to immediately repeal many of its most intrusive restrictions.
The detailed spreadsheet identifies eight major systems that have been affected by the pandemic and outlines measures these systems can take to recover and return to normal across a four-month period.
Some of the immediate measures include lifting vaccine passports, removing mask mandates, scrapping testing measures and lifting all provincial and international travel restrictions.
The Exit Committee – created by the Institute for 21st Century Questions – includes experts in medicine, education, economics, politics and more.
In an interview with True North’s Andrew Lawton, co-chair of the Exit Committee Irvin Studin spoke about the group’s goals and methodology.
“It is a policy lead, the science informs that,” he said. “And we’re at a point both through vaccination… the passage of the virus through mutations…where we’re ready to exit quite easily across the systems.”
Studin noted Canada has been relatively slow to drop pandemic measures and that the committee’s declaration of the pandemic being effectively over is more in line with countries including Singapore, Israel, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and others.
“They’re no less smart than we are,” Studin said.
Studin also talked about taking leadership in the absence of government action, saying “they’re [the government] just unable to say what is obvious to a policy community that is observing this nationally and internationally.”
Among its recommendations, the Exit Committee stressed the importance of reintegrating ‘third bucket’ children who have not been attending in-person or online classes as a result of COVID-era school policies.
Around 100,000 children in Ontario alone have been displaced, and the Exit Committee recommends the launching of a door-to-door campaign to get these children back to school as quickly as possible.
While provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan have led with the dropping of pandemic restrictions and mandates, other provinces including Ontario, British Columbia, and the federal government have been slower in taking action to drop COVID measures.
As of Friday, British Columbia remained the only province that had not committed to dropping its vaccine passport.
