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Alberta will soon launch an independent review of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Health Minister Jason Copping will announce the review “very soon”, Prime Minister Jason Kenney said on his regular Corus radio show this weekend.
But the government will not commission a public or judicial inquiry to examine Alberta’s handling of the pandemic, a decision Kenney said was made to reduce the costs and timeline of a review.
“Often these legal investigations become multi-year projects where lawyers make a fortune, tens of millions of dollars are spent, and the focus is on the process and people often forget what they were supposed to do. when it’s all over,” Kenney said.
“I don’t think a judicial investigation is the right approach, but we have to learn lessons for sure. I hope the feds do something similar.”
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The united Conservative government has only launched one public inquiry since its election in 2019: the Public Inquiry into the energy campaign against Alberta. The $3.5 million investigation led by Steve Allan was marred by delays and controversy, and finally found no evidence of wrongdoing of parties that opposed Alberta’s energy sector.
But University of Calgary health law expert Lorian Hardcastle said a public investigation has some benefits over one commissioned by an independent third-party firm.
“The main benefit of a judicial investigation is the level of independence a judge has from someone you hire to write a review for you,” Hardcastle said.
“When you hire someone and pay them to do something for you, it may not be as critical as a judge advised by other experts would be, since the person you hired will probably want to be hired again in the future.”
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Hardcastle said critical judicial investigations can help governments take a holistic view of their actions and any mistakes made to better respond to future events.
Governments are also legally bound to make judicial investigations public, something that is not the case with third-party reviews.
The provincial government commissioned a 126-page, $475,000 review from consulting firm KPMG into Alberta’s handling of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. That document was made public following media scrutiny after being withheld for nearly six months. months.
“Judicial reviews tend to be very public, very high-profile and can’t go unnoticed, as that review almost passed, which wasn’t really particularly critical,” Hardcastle said.
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“Kenney talks about length and cost, but I think there’s a balance there. I think the reason those reviews often take longer and cost more is because of the variety of experts they use.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, Alberta has recorded 4,694 deaths from the virus and nearly 600,000 laboratory-confirmed infections.
The province has imposed some restrictions on public life in response to the spread of the virus during the pandemic, aimed at protecting hospital capacity, but has largely avoided the strict “lockdown” measures seen in other parts of Canada.
Twitter: @jasonfherring
