Law and Public Policy

D21 - Covid Politics

Date: Jun 5 | Time: 03:30pm to 05:00pm | Location:

Covid-19 Vaccine funding and Public Choice Theory: Lydia Miljan (University of Windsor)
Abstract: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government invested over $1 billion in vaccine procurement to secure a domestic supply. Despite this investment, all distributed vaccines came from foreign providers. This paper tells the story of how the only mRNA vaccine in Canada was sidelined in favor of foreign-produced vaccines, and how non-mRNA candidates were prioritized within Canada. Using the lens of public choice theory, I will argue that political leaders focused more on electoral success in Quebec than on the public good in their Covid-19 vaccine procurement strategy. The Covid Vaccine Taskforce, comprised of experts and industry leaders, informed decisions on which vaccine candidates to support. The committee’s mandate was to advise on prioritizing vaccine projects for activities in Canada and to support effective research and development for COVID-19 vaccine projects. Confidentiality agreements protected the committee’s work. This paper seeks to discover which projects were funded and why. Using publicly available materials obtained through Access to Information, this paper examines the work of the expert panel and their recommendations to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s (ISED) Strategic Innovation Fund.

Les politiques de lutte contre la pauvreté au Canada : de la pandémie, à l’inflation jusqu’à l’austérité: Marion Perrot (Université de Montréal), Olivier Jacques (Université de Montréal), Gabriel Gosselin (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: La COVID-19 a eu des conséquences profondes sur les systèmes de santé et les économies mondiales, affectant directement les niveaux de vie. Le Canada n’a pas échappé à ces défis. Pourtant, les investissements significatifs des gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux pour soutenir les revenus des populations ont permis une diminution notable du taux de pauvreté durant la pandémie. Néanmoins, cette diminution semble éphémère. La guerre en Ukraine, l’épargne accumulée des ménages, une demande excédentaire et les goulots d’étranglement dans les chaînes d’approvisionnement mondiales ont engendré une période d’inflation sans précédent. Malgré les politiques de soutien au revenu, l’inflation et l’accumulation de la dette liées aux mesures anti-pandémie ont entrainé des déficits budgétaires importants. Dans ce contexte, notre étude vise à recenser les actions prises contre la pauvreté depuis 2019 par le fédéral et dans les quatre provinces les plus peuplées : l’Alberta, la Colombie-Britannique, l’Ontario et le Québec. Aucune étude n’a évalué systématiquement l’action sociale des gouvernements pendant et après la pandémie. En utilisant une approche d’analyse comparative fondée sur les données scientifiques et les rapports gouvernementaux, nous dressons un portrait des politiques affectant la prédistribution et de redistribution des richesses pour lutter contre la pauvreté. Nous soulignons les variations interprovinciales importantes ainsi que les politiques fédérales et analysons leur impact sur l’évolution des taux de pauvreté. Cette analyse est essentielle pour synthétiser les efforts et les impacts des politiques de lutte à la pauvreté, et pour éclairer les décideurs politiques sur l’efficacité des mesures mises en place.

Who is responsible? Discourses of risk and responsibility in Canadian provinces during the COVID-19 pandemic: Katherine Boothe (McMaster University), Katelynn Kowalchuk (University of British Columbia), Adrienne Davidson (McMaster University)
Abstract: The paper compares discourses of risk and responsibility during the 2020-2021 COVID-19 school closures in Ontario and Alberta. It asks how risk is described over time, what types of evidence are used to support or legitimize this risk assessment, and how responsibility for mitigating risk is assigned. We pay particular attention to how different speakers (politicians or public health officials) offer reassurance, assign responsibility, and attribute blame. This paper draws on our archive of official briefings on school closures during the 2020-2021 waves of COVID-19 in Alberta and Ontario. It analyzes the way premiers, ministers of health and education, and chief medical officers of health talked about risk and responsibility during these early periods of the pandemic. We coded the briefings for indicators of risk and references to personal versus collective responsibility as well as the jurisdictional buck-passing characteristic of Canada’s federal system. This allows us to explore two dimensions of responsibility across provinces and over time. This research contributes to the growing literature on blame avoidance in federations during COVID-19 (Marvot and Sarger 2024, Fernandes et al 2021, Rozell and Wilcox 2020). It considers not only the dynamics of governments blaming one another, but also governments blaming citizens in the context of a crisis with initially very little information for either politicians or the public. It complements this institutional analysis with an in-depth investigation into the way risk and responsibility was framed by different officials, contributing to literatures on narratives of crisis and solidarity (Abdelrahman 2021, Fahlquist 2021).

Too old to have rights? Understanding human rights of older adults in care settings in Ontario: Poland Lai (York University)
Abstract: This research project examines how the human rights of older adults are understood in health and social care settings during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. The research question is: How do government documents from diverse perspectives understand and describe the human rights problems of older adults in Ontario and what are the recommendations they propose (if any)? This paper will proceed as follows. After a short context and background section, the theoretical perspective section outlines the key concepts that guide our analysis of government documents, in particular ageism and human rights approach to care (Blackham, 2023; Byrnes, 2020; O’Rourke, 2024; Simmonds, 2021). The research methods section explains sampling of documents for analysis. The documents are issued by institutions grouped into three categories: arms-length agencies established by the government, executive branch of the Government, and independent officer of the legislature. The Findings section summarizes the following themes: health care system challenges, care-related ill-treatments, problems associated with access to consensual care, and government and other supports to meet care needs. The preliminary research findings will show that in Ontario, Canada, older adults and their supporters were placed in inadequate or harmful care situations they were powerless to avoid during the pandemic. The experiences of older adults were rarely addressed as human rights issues. Crucially, existing mechanisms (such as complaint) do not necessarily function to provide access to the consensual care that they required and may in fact serve to legitimize their precarious situations as legal procedural safeguards have been met.