A retired Lieutenant Colonel, formerly in charge of emergency management, said governmental responses to the pandemic in Alberta and other provinces were misguided and harmful.Lt. Col. (ret.) David Redman served 27 years with the Canadian Armed Forces in Europe, the US, across Canada and the Middle East.He developed expertise in emergency management during that time. He later ran the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, designed a provincial counter-terrorism strategy after 9/11, and co-wrote the Alberta pandemic influenza response plan in 2005, receiving input from ten deputy ministers.During a Thursday round table discussion hosted by lawyer Shawn Buckley of the National Citizens Inquiry on COVID-19, Redman said previous emergency response bodies and plans were “thrown away” during the pandemic, leading to predictably bad results. “Step one is you immediately use confidence from your leadership, you never use fear. And what we saw in this pandemic is fear was used from day one as the major tool from every elected official and every MOH [Medical Officer of Health],” Redman said.“They should have defined a task force that brought all the expertise from across all of society, including our schools, including our businesses, including each type of walk of life, into a room to do what we call task analysis, to build all of the things you need to handle. And from that, you then go through a process to figure out how you're going to address each of the possible impacts.”Instead, the governments relied on the “inappropriate use” of 15 “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs). These included “things like wearing masks, school closures and closing business…and it was known that none of them for a virus like SARS-Cov-2 would have any positive impact in things like transmission.”Redman said such measures were wielded “like a club on all of our society, and the outcomes were well known in advance. We still have fear in our society, fear that is driving people every day, we have huge mental health impacts, huge societal health impacts. Our health care systems are under stress because of what we did."“Our…children… their academic education and their socialization was crushed. And they will carry that damage with them till they die unless we help them with a response plan.”Other negative consequences outlasted the pandemic, Redman said, “all outcomes of the terrible use of the NPIs that we should never have done if we had followed our emergency management process.”These included massive inflation and “massive crushing [public] debt that our country will now carry for generations” and “the destruction of our democratic institutions…our legislatures, our legal and court systems, the destruction of our media, lack of faith in our police, lack of faith in our military, lack of faith in our medical systems, lack of faith in our national security,” Redman said.Redman, who fully retired from the military in 2013, was one of six members on Alberta’s Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel headed by Preston Manning. Shawn Buckley, a lawyer for the NCI, asked Redman what the response should have been.“You should have, number one, tried to reduce the impact of the virus on society. To do that, you needed to see who is most at risk. Seniors were most at risk. We ignored our long-term care homes...In the first wave, 81% of the deaths in Canada happened in long-term care facilities...and the healthcare system was saying it was going to be overwhelmed. Bull----,” Redman said.“COVID was a beautiful virus because it was really age related. And so for anyone under the age of 65, COVID wasn't an issue. And we knew that in February of 2020.”Redman said the second aspect of a proper response would have protected critical infrastructure.“To the best of my knowledge, no provincial legislature in Canada went to their critical infrastructure and asked them what would happen if 60% of their staff didn't show up because of illness one day. In fact, what we did, for instance, in the hospitals, is, we sent healthy people home."“People who are exposed to a virus are never sent home. The odds of them actually coming down with a virus are slim to nil. And if they do in the case of SARS-Cov-2, if they were under the age of 65, it was like the common cold.”The third important aspect was to ensure the economy worked “at its maximum possible outcome to pay for all the special measures that you're doing for part one and part two,” Redman said. “You want to make sure that you have a resilient population at the end of your SARS-CoV-2 and start working right away on a recovery plan." "So, we did none of the above, we destroyed our economy, we destroyed our children in their schools, we did everything we possibly could to imagine that we could stop the transmission of an extremely transmissionible virus.”Vaccines never should have been touted as the answer, Redman said.“A vaccine takes three to five years, minimum, with known technology to produce a safe and effective vaccine...if one is even possible. And there isn't one for a virus like SARS-CoV-2. It's the cold, folks. We don't have a vaccine for the cold, this is the same, but even if there is one, you will have gone through enough waves that you will have reached herd immunity without a vaccine." "The vaccine is for the next generation, not for this generation. So an emergency manager knows you never count on a vaccine.”Redman said when he was co-authoring Alberta’s Emergency Management Act, the premier was clearly in charge, but he could not trample on personal rights and liberties.“One of the things we recognized was you never deny a charter right, or freedom unless absolutely necessary. And I mean, you never do it. The reason is, if you did, then the terrorists just won because the terrorists were trying to destroy our freedoms and our rights,” he explained.“Before they could deny a charter, right, or freedom, they had to prove it would do far less harm than good. That's why they chose not to use the Emergency Management Act and used the Public Health Act, because there's no similar restrictions…But if you do it for terrorists, for crying out loud, you should do it for a virus.”
A retired Lieutenant Colonel, formerly in charge of emergency management, said governmental responses to the pandemic in Alberta and other provinces were misguided and harmful.Lt. Col. (ret.) David Redman served 27 years with the Canadian Armed Forces in Europe, the US, across Canada and the Middle East.He developed expertise in emergency management during that time. He later ran the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, designed a provincial counter-terrorism strategy after 9/11, and co-wrote the Alberta pandemic influenza response plan in 2005, receiving input from ten deputy ministers.During a Thursday round table discussion hosted by lawyer Shawn Buckley of the National Citizens Inquiry on COVID-19, Redman said previous emergency response bodies and plans were “thrown away” during the pandemic, leading to predictably bad results. “Step one is you immediately use confidence from your leadership, you never use fear. And what we saw in this pandemic is fear was used from day one as the major tool from every elected official and every MOH [Medical Officer of Health],” Redman said.“They should have defined a task force that brought all the expertise from across all of society, including our schools, including our businesses, including each type of walk of life, into a room to do what we call task analysis, to build all of the things you need to handle. And from that, you then go through a process to figure out how you're going to address each of the possible impacts.”Instead, the governments relied on the “inappropriate use” of 15 “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs). These included “things like wearing masks, school closures and closing business…and it was known that none of them for a virus like SARS-Cov-2 would have any positive impact in things like transmission.”Redman said such measures were wielded “like a club on all of our society, and the outcomes were well known in advance. We still have fear in our society, fear that is driving people every day, we have huge mental health impacts, huge societal health impacts. Our health care systems are under stress because of what we did."“Our…children… their academic education and their socialization was crushed. And they will carry that damage with them till they die unless we help them with a response plan.”Other negative consequences outlasted the pandemic, Redman said, “all outcomes of the terrible use of the NPIs that we should never have done if we had followed our emergency management process.”These included massive inflation and “massive crushing [public] debt that our country will now carry for generations” and “the destruction of our democratic institutions…our legislatures, our legal and court systems, the destruction of our media, lack of faith in our police, lack of faith in our military, lack of faith in our medical systems, lack of faith in our national security,” Redman said.Redman, who fully retired from the military in 2013, was one of six members on Alberta’s Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel headed by Preston Manning. Shawn Buckley, a lawyer for the NCI, asked Redman what the response should have been.“You should have, number one, tried to reduce the impact of the virus on society. To do that, you needed to see who is most at risk. Seniors were most at risk. We ignored our long-term care homes...In the first wave, 81% of the deaths in Canada happened in long-term care facilities...and the healthcare system was saying it was going to be overwhelmed. Bull----,” Redman said.“COVID was a beautiful virus because it was really age related. And so for anyone under the age of 65, COVID wasn't an issue. And we knew that in February of 2020.”Redman said the second aspect of a proper response would have protected critical infrastructure.“To the best of my knowledge, no provincial legislature in Canada went to their critical infrastructure and asked them what would happen if 60% of their staff didn't show up because of illness one day. In fact, what we did, for instance, in the hospitals, is, we sent healthy people home."“People who are exposed to a virus are never sent home. The odds of them actually coming down with a virus are slim to nil. And if they do in the case of SARS-Cov-2, if they were under the age of 65, it was like the common cold.”The third important aspect was to ensure the economy worked “at its maximum possible outcome to pay for all the special measures that you're doing for part one and part two,” Redman said. “You want to make sure that you have a resilient population at the end of your SARS-CoV-2 and start working right away on a recovery plan." "So, we did none of the above, we destroyed our economy, we destroyed our children in their schools, we did everything we possibly could to imagine that we could stop the transmission of an extremely transmissionible virus.”Vaccines never should have been touted as the answer, Redman said.“A vaccine takes three to five years, minimum, with known technology to produce a safe and effective vaccine...if one is even possible. And there isn't one for a virus like SARS-CoV-2. It's the cold, folks. We don't have a vaccine for the cold, this is the same, but even if there is one, you will have gone through enough waves that you will have reached herd immunity without a vaccine." "The vaccine is for the next generation, not for this generation. So an emergency manager knows you never count on a vaccine.”Redman said when he was co-authoring Alberta’s Emergency Management Act, the premier was clearly in charge, but he could not trample on personal rights and liberties.“One of the things we recognized was you never deny a charter right, or freedom unless absolutely necessary. And I mean, you never do it. The reason is, if you did, then the terrorists just won because the terrorists were trying to destroy our freedoms and our rights,” he explained.“Before they could deny a charter, right, or freedom, they had to prove it would do far less harm than good. That's why they chose not to use the Emergency Management Act and used the Public Health Act, because there's no similar restrictions…But if you do it for terrorists, for crying out loud, you should do it for a virus.”
