Corbella: Kenney's criticism of Dr. Tam is well deserved

Author of the article:

Licia Corbella

Publishing date:

April 16, 2020

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s recent criticism of Canada’s top physician, Dr. Theresa Tam, was a much-needed dose of reality during this COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, during an interview with CBC’s Vassy Kapelos, Kenney was asked about his plan to further ramp up Alberta’s testing for the novel coronavirus. Alberta already has the highest rate of testing in the world, recently surpassing Australia.

COVID 19 Update : 319 new cases, mass gathering restrictions in place for the summer

“The direction I’ve given our officials is that if we see a highly credible regulator of medications in a peer jurisdiction like the European Union, Australia or the United States that has approved a test or a vaccine or medication, we should pursue that. We should not wait for Health Canada to catch up,” said Kenney.

Kapelos then asked: “Dr. Tam today in response to your tweets said that they do have significant concerns about the quality of some of those tests. So if you instead defer to speed and you end up with tests that aren’t accurate — that becomes a health risk in and of itself, does it not?”

Kenney responded by questioning whether Tam was suggesting that the EU’s regulator of medications and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve things that are dangerous for public use.

“You know,” said Kenney, “this is the same Dr. Tam who was telling us that we shouldn’t close our borders to countries with high levels of infection and who in January was repeating talking points out of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) about no evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

For those of us who have done a considerable amount of reading about the timeline of this pandemic, Kenney’s comments come as a dose of good medicine.  According to a Feb. 15 report in The Lancet, the date of the first Chinese patient’s symptom onset was Dec. 1. Five days later, his wife, a 53-year-old woman who had no known history of exposure to the wet market in Wuhan, where the virus originated, “also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalized in the isolation ward.”

In other words, by the second week of December, Wuhan doctors were finding cases that indicated the virus was spreading from one human to another.

On Dec. 25, two medical staff at the hospital in Wuhan came down with viral pneumonia — more evidence of human-to-human spread.

A timeline with linked sources on China’s coverup was recently compiled by The National Review, and David Staples of the Edmonton Journal compiled a Canadian timeline. Both are must reads but they come with a warning — they are sure to turn your stomach and make you angry.

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As we now know, on Dec. 30, Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to other doctors in the Wuhan area warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled SARS, urging them to take measures against contagion.

Two days later, Li was summoned by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau, accusing him of “spreading rumours.” Li was forced to sign a statement acknowledging his “misdemeanour.” Seven other medical officials were arrested.

As China was clamping down on the truth, all sorts of vital evidence was flowing freely out of other countries, including Taiwan and South Korea, making it evident that COVID-19 was indeed being spread human-to-human. However, since Taiwan is not a member of the World Health Organization, because that would upset China’s leaders, its important medical evidence was not accepted. But it was known. Dr. Tam ignored it to the peril of every Canadian.

South Korean soldiers spray disinfectant at Guryong village in Seoul on March 3. YONHAP/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

How do we know that Dr. Tam knew the truth but ignored it? Because opposition MPs knew. People who read newspapers knew. On Jan. 27, Alberta MP Garnett Genuis asked in the House of Commons if the government would support Taiwan being allowed into the WHO, to learn from the stringent measures the island nation had instituted. Obviously, Genuis knew about the evidence  that Taiwan was so desperate to share with the world. The measures Taiwan implemented has meant that life goes on pretty much as usual over there. Schools, stores and business remain open.

On that same day, Conservative MP Todd Doherty asked federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu: “Every day thousands of passengers from China and elsewhere in Asia arrive at our ports of entry . . . China has quarantined whole cities and millions of people. The WHO has now listed the global threat as high. The safety of Canadians is currently dependent upon screening in China and self-reporting by infected passengers. When will the government institute a real plan that includes an enhanced screening process?

It was a great question but the answer was weak. The federal government just kept deferring to Tam — the expert who was supposed to be looking into the science but who in reality was deferring to China’s talking points.

Two days later, on Jan. 29, Tam actually publicly praised China — basically parroting propaganda propagated by that totalitarian state after China was known to have lied for almost two months about the virus.

Those who called for our borders to be closed, or at least to be heavily monitored and for travellers to be quarantined, were often described as xenophobic or racist and were criticized for contributing to the “stigmatization” of people of Asian descent. Tam seemed more concerned about the spread of stigmatization (and there was little evidence of that actually happening) than she was about preventing the spread of COVID-19.

On Feb. 3, Dr. Tam explained what she meant when she said a travel ban “may do more harm than good.” Having measures, she said, “that very negatively affect a certain country that’s trying very hard to do its best can impede whether this country in the future will ever share anything transparently with others . . . I think the idea is to support China.”

No, the idea should have been to protect the health of Canadians, not to molly-coddle dictatorial bullies. So, rather than chastising China for waiting so long to share the truth about the virus, Dr. Tam wanted to reward their bad behaviour so they don’t act even more anti-socially in the future. One has to wonder if that’s in her job description? 

A photo of Dr. Li Wenliang at a public vigil on Feb. 7 in Hong Kong. ANTHONY KWAN/GETTY IMAGES

On Feb. 7, Dr. Li, who blew the whistle on the coronavirus and was arrested for it died from it.  He was just 33 years old.

On the same day that Dr. Li died, Taiwan banned all foreign nationals who had travelled to China, including Hong Kong, in the previous 14 days, from entering the country.

The PRC’s talking points continued to be disseminated by all manner of government ministers for the next month.

It was announced on March 12 that Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau had contracted COVID-19 requiring the PM to go into quarantine for 14 days.

The next day both federal Health Minister Hajdu and the Prime Minister rejected again the idea of closing Canada’s borders to non residents.



“We will recall that a number of weeks ago in the beginnings there was discussion of whether or not we should entirely close our borders to China the way the United States did,” said Trudeau in front of Rideau cottage, where he was self isolating.

“We did not. We were able to manage it in a way that allowed for control and a non spread of the virus that gives us confidence that our public health officials are giving us the right recommendations for Canada.”

That smug comment and dozens more like it previously from Trudeau, other ministers and Dr. Tam, were rendered absurd and nonsensical just three days later when Canada finally shut down it’s borders to all non residents except Americans.

We all know what these delays have cost us — more than 1,055 Canadians have died, many more will do so in the weeks to come, our economy has almost completely shut down, children are out of school, people have lost their jobs, others will lose their businesses and homes, public debt that will saddle future generations for decades has ballooned and our inability to visit with loved ones, even when they are on their death beds, is what we all face because Dr. Tam and the WHO failed to act quickly and appropriately on the known evidence.

Yes, hindsight is 20/20. It’s understandable that Canada’s politicians initially deferred to Tam for her advice on this pandemic. She’s the expert. Trudeau rightly says that Canada should follow the best scientific advice available.

So who is Justin Trudeau really working for we  ask?