Public Health Agency of Canada failed to connect the dots on COVID
Newly uncovered emails reveal Canada’s so-called ‘top doctor’ forwarding alarming Chinese reports internally, while reassuring the public there was 'nothing to worry about' — even as soldiers returned sick from Wuhan.
In the frantic early days of what would become the global COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians were expected to look to Dr. Theresa Tam, then Chief Public Health Officer, for straight answers.
What they received instead was a troubling disconnect between private awareness and public messaging.
On January 7, 2020, Tam received an email titled “Chinese News coverage of the Wuhan disaster,” according to internal government emails obtained through access-to-information requests.
She promptly forwarded it to her senior communications advisor at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Anna Maddison, noting the mention of Maddison’s name in the Chinese-language article with what reads like a casual gloat: “Your name in a Chinese newspaper.”
Maddison replied, hoping the coverage was positive. Tam responded simply: “Yes, factual.”
The article from Ming Pao Canada, translated from Mandarin, highlighted concerning developments in Wuhan, including an unidentified respiratory outbreak, and flagged concerning increases in flu data from Toronto Public Health specifically.
At that point, Canada’s official line was that no similar cases had been detected domestically, no Canadians had fallen ill abroad, and existing travel advisories were sufficient. Maddison was quoted as saying the federal government was “closely monitoring” the situation in coordination with provinces and the World Health Organization.
This was January 7. Just weeks later, on January 20, Tam continued to project calm in public statements, claiming low risk to the public.
Yet the timeline raises serious questions about what officials knew — and when.
It wasn’t long before that Canadian Armed Forces members were returning from the Military World Games in Wuhan in late October 2019, some isolated on flights home with severe respiratory symptoms.
Canada’s 2019-2020 flu season intensified in mid-November, bringing waves of pneumonia-like illness that many Canadians, including myself, remember vividly: brutal coughs, hospitalizations among otherwise healthy children, and a sense that something more than a typical seasonal bug was circulating.
It wasn’t until December 31, 2019, that PHAC’s Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) received its first alert of a novel pathogen, and notification to key departments followed the next day.
Still, by the end of January 2020, the public message remained reassuring: no cases in Canada.
While Tam’s team downplayed domestic risks, Canada shipped approximately 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment (including masks, gowns, gloves, face shields) from the national emergency stockpile to China in early February 2020.
Frontline workers would later scramble to find suitable PPE as the virus spread and Canada faced a shortage.
Tam also pushed back against early calls for border measures, warning that criticism of the response or references to the “Wuhan flu” carried undertones of racism or xenophobia. The virus was soon rebranded COVID-19, softening focus on its origins.
By late January 2020, when Canada’s first official cases emerged, opportunities for early containment had already narrowed.
These emails and timeline paint a picture of officials who had intelligence from Chinese media, their own global networks, reports from returning military personnel, and yet maintained a public posture of low risk.
What ensued was years of frantic hysteria, unprecedented civil rights infringements, and a level of psychological and economic manipulation that many Canadians still struggle to process.
Investigations by the U.S. Congress have since concluded that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory-related incident in Wuhan. Yet China has stonewalled every serious attempt at a transparent, independent investigation — refusing to hand over critical data, blocking access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and punishing scientists who dared speak out.
What becomes clearer with hindsight is the human cost of delayed action, mismatched messaging, and supposed ‘officials’ who were either dangerously incompetent at best, or negligent, at worst.
Canadians deserve accountability from the public health leaders entrusted with protecting them, not Order of Canada accolades.
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COMMENTS
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John Butkans commented 2026-07-21 15:52:41 -0400 FlagTam also fought to keep passenger Airplanes to keep landing here in Canada.
