Difficulties gathering federal data on the spread of COVID-19 has hampered Canada’s response to the pandemic, experts told Members of Parliament over several hours of scathing testimony Wednesday.
The criticism of Canada’s method of gathering crucial information about the number of cases came from several witnesses at the House of Commons health committee.
Canada has struggled to get real-time epidemiological information about how many people have the disease, who they are and what kinds of people are affected the most.
The problem is not new, said University of Toronto epidemiologist David Fisman, who has for a long time found the lack of data-sharing among provinces in Canada astounding. “I’ve called it a culture of ‘data hugging’ in