Page - 91 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

CHAPTER A-5 Pandemic Data Sharing: How the Canadian Constitution Has Turned into a Suicide Pact Amir Attaran* and Adam R. Houston** Abstract For decades, public health professionals, scholars, and on multiple occasions, the Auditor General of Canada have raised warnings about Canada’s dysfunctional system of public health data sharing. Current, timely, and complete epidemiological data are an absolutely neces- sary, but not sufficient, precursor to developing an effective response to the pandemic. Nonetheless, it remains true that nearly two decades after data sharing proved a catastrophic failure in the 2003 SARS epi- demic, epidemiological data still are not shared between the prov- inces and the federal government. This is largely due to a baseless and erroneous belief that health falls purely within the jurisdiction of the provinces, despite the Supreme Court of Canada’s clear conclusions to the contrary, which has misled Canada to rely on voluntary data sharing agreements with the provinces that are not merely ineffective, but actually inhibit data sharing. As outlined in this chapter, there is no reason for this to be the case, since Canada already possesses statu- tory powers, under the Statistics Act and the Public  Health  Agency  of  Canada Act, to oblige provinces to share critical epidemiological data in a timely manner. It must exercise those powers, both in response to * Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. ** PhD Candidate (Law), Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa.