The government instituted COVID-19 travel bans too late and Canadians hold them responsible, according to a survey commissioned by the federal government.
In early 2021 the Department of Finance paid Quorus Consulting Group Inc. $59,775 for their findings, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“In terms of what the federal government got wrong, many felt the government should have closed the borders sooner than it did,” the Department of Finance report read.
On January 11, 2020, the first COVID-19 death was announced in China. Taiwan, the United States and Australia all restricted travel from China within weeks. Meanwhile, on January 29, 2020, the Public Health Agency insisted it was safe for Canadians to travel to China and vice versa. Approximately 1,796 travellers arrived in Canada from Wuhan over that time.
Closing the border and banning international flights was initially frowned upon by the Liberal government out of concern for “discrimination” against Chinese-Canadians. Health Minister Patty Hajdu’s notes from a February 12, 2020 teleconference stated: “We remain concerned about social anxiety, misinformation and discrimination in the Chinese-Canadian community with the coronavirus.”
The lack of travel bans is just one example of how the Trudeau government bungled Canada’s COVID response.
As late as March 29, 2020, Health Minister Patty Hadju was claiming that “the risk of spread of [COVID-19] within Canada continues to remain low.” Hadju later went on to dismiss those skeptical of China’s COVID-19 statistics as “conspiracy theorists,” emphasizing the need to “work together as a globe.”
When China confessed that its numbers were wrong, Hadju doubled down and refused to admit she had made a mistake by trusting the communist regime.
Despite China’s false data, the Trudeau government continued to trust the regime. While multiple countries were developing vaccines, the Canadian government chose to only pre-order doses from CanSino Biologics, a Chinese company under scrutiny by intelligence agencies.
Canada also faced shortages of face masks, forcing the government to buy at inflated prices on the open market. For some orders, the government was paying as much as $10 per unit. It was later revealed that the Public Health Agency of Canada destroyed 2 million N95 masks from the national stockpile in 2019. While the agency claims the masks expired, new masks were never ordered.
“[The COVID-19 pandemic] remains central to the lives of Canadians and plays a significant role in how they view the federal government and the role it should be playing in the short and medium-term,” the government report read.
