Editor:
Re: Editor’s Note: Teachers deserve more (Optimist, Jan. 21)
I fully agree that teachers and students deserve to be in a safe and welcoming space.
They do deserve more; indeed we all deserve more.
Even though we are still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada should be planning for a Commission of Inquiry (Royal Commission) to examine all aspects of our collective response to the pandemic. Why? Because we will undoubtedly be faced with more pandemics and we need to do better, much better.
Health professionals and citizens across the country have emphasized a need for improvement. The Commission would examine aspects that have already been highlighted by many as deficient such as: long-term care, border closings and travel restrictions, automated mandatory contact tracing, transparency of public case data, enforcement of pandemic regulations, procuring and distributing vaccines and ongoing funding for virus and pandemic research. This is not an exhaustive list.
While there may be some differences in our pandemic response for certain regions of Canada, there are many aspects where we should have a common approach across the country and an expedited Commission would help identify these and set us on a path of improvement in 2022.
Contact your MLA and MP today.
We simply can’t have about 20,000 Canadians die from each pandemic.
Keith Munro
