VANCOUVER—Amid social isolation, separated from friends and family, Canadians have been asked to continue accepting the curbing of civil liberties as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and some advocates say not enough transparency has taken place in return.

As the public is asked to sacrifice in the name of health, governments across the country have refused to divulge key information in what some experts tell the Star amounts to a public relations exercise at the expense of people’s right to information during a crisis.

“We’ve always had a father-knows-best government in Canada,” said Sean Holman, a journalism professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary and right-to-information advocate.

Advocates for public information, government ethics and communications say the refusal to release information shows an overbearing, in some cases “paternalistic,” approach at time when Canadians should be told everything they need to be safe and trust the government.

“That paternalism is accelerated at a time of emergency,” Holman said. “The public needs this kind of information so that they can feel more certain and more in control at a time of profound uncertainty and lack of control.”

In some cities bylaw officers are now able to ticket people for violating social distancing policies and provinces have ordered non-essential businesses to close to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Whispers that the federal government should institute the Emergencies Act, which would suspend some civil liberties at the order of the federal government, have also whipped throughout the political landscape.

But, Holman said, as the government asks people to accept such measures, in return it has not done enough to improve its transparency practices.

Some questions governments have declined to answer publicly include:

- How many ventilators are needed to make it through the pandemic?

- Initially, how many Canadians might die during the pandemic?

- When would the government send repatriation flights for thousands of Canadians stuck abroad after borders closed?

- Why are specific locations of cases not being revealed?

Ventilators

On March 19, Toronto Star asked the federal government how many ventilators and critical care beds Canada needs to weather the COVID-19 storm and save lives. Ottawa would not divulge the numbers.

Instead, Health Minister Patty Hajdu said it would be “misleading” to cite such figures and insisted the federal government was working hard to ensure Canada has all it needs.

Ventilators are considered essential equipment to treat seriously ill patients and a shortage of them in Italy has resulted in doctors being forced to pick which patients should receive them, leaving others to die, according to media reports in the country.

Modelling

The number of people who could die has also been withheld by some governments.

While some provinces, such as Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, had earlier released modelling on how many people they expect could succumb to the deadly virus, the federal government refused until late last week.

The numbers showed anywhere from 4,400 to 44,000 people in Canada could die, depending on how well the country responds to the crisis. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said they show that life will not get back to normal until a vaccine is produced.

Prior to Ontario actually releasing its figures, Toronto’s chief medical officer Dr. Eileen de Villa called them “deeply concerning,” while Premier Doug Ford worried that releasing them would “create panic.”

The inability of the government to tell Canadians the measure of the threat posed concerns Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto.

“We don’t want to instill panic, but people have the right to understand the situation as deeply as they possibly can to protect the health and well-being of themselves, their families, their communities,” Bowman said. “People have a right to know what level of danger they’re facing.”

Masks

Last week saw an announcement from health authorities in Toronto that 62,000 medical masks from China in the city were defective. Similar problems have happened in countries in Europe, including the Netherlands, which have recalled 600,000 faulty masks from China, Agence France-Presse reported.

Trudeau had earlier announced millions of medical masks were coming to Canada from China. When reporters asked what make and model the masks were to check whether they were the same as faulty ones received by other countries, the Public Health Agency of Canada would only say there were “various makes and models,” adding “that is all we can say at this time.”

Bowman said the rational for withholding information about medical supplies and health threats echoes similar approaches during wartime, when information on government stockpiles could be vital knowledge for an enemy to exploit, but at the time, the rationale for not sharing that information was one of national security. Such a threat doesn’t exist now, he said.

Privacy act

In the middle of March after Justin Trudeau told Canadians abroad it was time to “come home” Canadians around the world headed his words and rushed to buy plane tickets as borders closed and flights were cancelled.

Soon, three million Canadians outside of the country were scrambling to find a way back to Canada. Close to 5,400 of them were in Peru. The country’s borders were closed and a lockdown was in effect as Canadians in the South American country pleaded for repatriation flights.

But when the Star asked Global Affairs Canada if it would help Canadians specifically in Peru, the federal department invoked the privacy act.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“We are aware of Canadian citizens in Peru and are providing consular assistance,” said GAC’s Angela Savard in an email to the Star on March 20. “Minister Champagne is in touch with his counterpart. Due to the provisions under the Privacy Act, Global Affairs does not disclose information pertaining to specific consular cases.”

Three days later, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne tweeted that the flights were on their way.

Executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association Jason Woywada said while the government does need to balance the public’s right to know with individual privacy concerns, the privacy act shouldn’t be used in such a situation.

“This isn’t a zero-sum game where it’s privacy at the expense of something else,” Woywada said. “It shouldn’t be the default answer to why we can’t say something.”

Locations of cases a mystery

In B.C., the province has refused to divulge the location of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Last week, Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry issued a statement explaining why the province won’t reveal outbreak areas.

“It would be irresponsible to mention only a few communities and give people outside those areas a false sense that they are not susceptible or at lower risk,” Henry wrote in the statement widely published in the province. “Every health region in British Columbia has people with COVID-19.”

She said all communities are at risk in the province and stressed the actions people take is what will help keep them healthy, not knowing where cases have occurred.

But Holman said it’s possible for people to know where cases are while at the same time remaining cautious.

“It can only fail to coexist together if you make an assumption that the public isn’t mature enough to behave responsibly in this particular emergency,” he said. “The more you infantalize people, they more they act like infants.”

He said knowing where cases are can help people make decisions about how they will live their lives as the crisis continues.

The approach really amounts to a growing problem of government simply deciding Canadians shouldn’t be told the facts, Holman said.

“What we have seen in Canada over time is a massive expansion of the public relations state and PR techniques have permeated almost every single element of the bureaucracy and the political system within this country,” he said.

The result has been a government seeking to control the flow of information regardless of the affect such an approach has on public health or democracy, he said, with the aim to create control and certainty for the government.

If the public only has access to information the government chooses to voluntarily provide, it makes governing easier by limiting the public’s ability to hold those in power to account, Holman added.

Bill Tieleman, a former government communications director for B.C. Premier Glen Clark and communications consultant said there are times government should withhold information.

“Any information a government has that is incomplete or early stage that might have a negative impact as opposed to a positive impact if people acted on it shouldn’t be released prematurely,” Tieleman said.

One recent example of a bad public reaction to poor information was the hoarding of toilet paper and disinfectant items, he said. The public somehow believed there was a threat to toilet paper stockpiles and acted accordingly by buying it up.

What the public didn’t realize, he said, is that there is plenty of toilet paper, but grocery stores only have a limited amount on hand at a given time because it’s a bulky item that takes up space.

There could “unforeseen and unintended” consequences in the effort to be transparent, Tieleman said.

Holman said governments across Canada should take this opportunity to re-examine their approach to information dissemination, but lamented that they likely won’t.

Read more about: