Page - 101 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

101Pandemic Data Sharing: How the Canadian Constitution Has Turned into a Suicide Pact it clear that the intended follow-up of an information-sharing agree- ment between PHAC and each province and territory was completed.25 Not until 2014, over a decade after SARS and following the lis- teriosis and H1N1 influenza outbreaks, was this MOU superseded by another intergovernmental pact, the Multi-Lateral  Information  Sharing  Agreement (MLISA).26 The language of MLISA sounds legalistic— Ottawa and the provinces are “Parties” in the style of a treaty—but it is misleading, because MLISA’s so-called “mandatory obligations” to share information lack any legislated foundation and are non-binding. The trickery is not surprising: MLISA was drafted by Alberta, notori- ously opposed to federal powers. Whether it has been signed by other provinces is unknown; PHAC refuses to say. Yet foolishly, PHAC behaves as if MLISA were binding anyway, including certain “mandatory” provisions intended to neuter PHAC’s ability to publish timely, important analyses such as disease models and forecasts. Clause 20(f) stipulates that before publishing any anal- ysis of data sourced from a province, PHAC must first give the prov- ince “thirty (30) calendar days from receipt of the notice and Analysis to provide its comments.” Worse, if the analysis makes use of sub- provincial data—by region, city, or postal code, for example—then PHAC must “obtain the written permission of the Originating Party before it may Publish the Analysis,” which is tantamount to a veto. MLISA has thus made the sharing of timely epidemiological information worse since SARS. No competent public health planner wishes to confront a rapidly shifting pandemic using an epidemiolog- ical analysis that is a month obsolete—assuming that provinces grant permission for the analysis at all—just as no sane captain would set sail using last month’s weather forecast. Yet the bromide that “health is provincial” is such a strong dogma that, although constitutionally wrong, PHAC thinks this natural. Thanks to MLISA, several months into the pandemic, PHAC has failed to publish an epidemiological model of the COVID-19 crises unfolding in the country, provinces, or cities, though it unveils crude, 25. Canada, Standing Committee on Public Accounts, “Government Response to the Report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts Chapter 5, Surveillance of Infectious Diseases—Public Health Agency of Canada of the May 2008 Report of the Auditor General of Canada (18 September 2009), online: <https://www.our- commons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/40-2/PACP/report-12/response-8512-402-83>. 26. Pan-Canadian Public Health Network, “Multi-Lateral Information Sharing Agreement (MLISA)” (2014), online (pdf): Pan-Canadian Public Health Network <http://www.phn-rsp.ca/pubs/mlisa-eng.pdf>.