Bruce Arthur: Ontario’s auditor general stuck to the facts in criticizing COVID response. Doug Ford didn’t take it well

Wednesday, Doug Ford appeared to be under siege. He attacked Ontario’s auditor general, who had that morning on the province’s response to the pandemic, and traced how it has been cumbersome, reactive and political.

The premier was not happy. The premier blew his top. Ford has always loved savaging watchdogs, all the way back to Toronto city hall.

“I’m really glad the auditor general just got a health degree and became a doctor over the last year or so,” Ford later said, sarcastically, in response to a question about organizational structures and decision-making processes. He said, “this does nothing but undermine our entire health team.”

There wasn’t much, however, in terms of factual disagreements. The central tenet of the report is that the government has a muddled command structure, has not put public health at the forefront of its response, hides public health advice, and has alternately ignored its own experts or listened to the weaker ones. When the auditor general asked for correspondence detailing public health advice, by the way, the request was ignored.

The provincial government pointed out that the report lauds British Columbia even though Ontario has fewer active cases than B.C. in the second wave, though the government failed to mention it included comparative death rates — 19 per 100,000 by Aug. 31 in Ontario to 4 per 100,000 in B.C — in the first.

The province points out that of course the premier and cabinet are responsible for decision-making, rather than chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams. But the report notes how weak Williams has been, and how the province often put public health in a backseat while it ignored its own experts and listened to its less qualified ones.

Meanwhile, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk patiently explained that key stakeholders in government signed off and responded to the report, which included interviews with many on medical front lines, in public health and in government.

“These reports have been vetted for factual accuracy, and I’ve letters signed by all the senior people within the province that attest to the accuracy of the information, have agreed to the recommendations, and have incorporated their responses,” said Lysyk, who has held the post since 2013, and is an independent officer of the legislature. “If that is changing now, then I guess some people signed letters and gave them to us and represented factual accuracy when that isn’t the case. And that would be a problem.

“My hope on this report is people look at it and focus on what needs to be done to go forward.”

This is where we could turn this into he-said she-said theatre, political scoreboard watching, horse-race stuff. Premier blasts auditor general report! Auditor general fires back! Who can possibly tell who is correct?

Let’s stick to the facts. We knew that under the decade-plus reign of the provincial Liberals, the lessons of SARS — which still haunts medical professionals who saw it up close, 17 years later — were in the name of year-to-year budgets, and a lack of imagination about what might happen. We knew labs withered, hospitals ran over capacity, emergency preparation was a luxury. As with , or , or , some of the failures of the pandemic long predated this government, and were just exposed by COVID-19. The pandemic, again, is a mirror.

Notably, the government did not take issue with those conclusions.

Then there is this government’s pandemic response, and the report mostly confirms that it has succeeded only relatively, and if so, despite itself. Like how the much-mentioned health command table — which like a lot of the response, was co-ordinated by outside consultants at considerable fees — was not a decision-making body, and was in fact , with over 80 people on what was a group phone call through July, and then a Zoom call after that. Or how there are loads of sub-tables that the province .

Or how Williams does not make his advice public, despite Minister of Health Christine Elliott claiming in the legislature on Wednesday, falsely, that he does. Or how Williams left masking mandates to local medical officers of health, and has both deferred decisions to MOH’s who to their own devices, .

We knew that advice on ceasing asymptomatic testing in the summer — which burned through valuable reagent and staff hours with almost no discernible benefit — was ignored, and that funding commitments on expanding lab capacity in time for September . The report estimates it meant missing approximately 119,000 COVID-19 infections.

We knew the thresholds for the province’s new framework were four times the level recommended by Public Health Ontario, though we still don’t have absolute confirmation on who moved the numbers. We know Williams and the cabinet and the premier , though, .

Ford can say Ontario is currently doing better than the rest of Canada’s bigger provinces, or the ghastly United States, and that’s true. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing well. It only means we’re not doing as badly as everyone else.

So yes, we know this government has somehow not driven this thing all the way onto the shoals yet. But when you look at how it’s built — how collective advice still leads to gut-based political decision-making with hidden public health advice from a weak and pliable CMOH, using a flawed framework, leaving local public health to fend for themselves when they don’t always share best practices, as noted in the report — you wonder how they won’t. Some in the medical community saw the premier’s siege-mentality reaction as an attempt at intimidation towards those who spoke to the auditor general.

Well, at least the province well in advance of the Christmas season, after being late and confused at earlier holidays. It smartly recommended that people should stick to their immediate household for the holidays, or for people who live alone, to one other household. That is important, necessary advice.

“Please don’t have big holiday parties, don’t have large gatherings,” said Ford. “Most importantly, follow the guidelines for your region as outlined in the province’s COVID-19 framework.”

Under the framework you can have 10 people indoors in a private gathering, or 50 indoors in restaurants or bars or casinos or meeting spaces, all the way to the red zone, one before lockdown. Look, Ontario is muddling through, is what we’re doing, and the province believes it’s doing very well as it plays with fire. We didn’t need a report to confirm that. But it did.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: