Contamination of common sense

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2023 (790 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2002, Judge Dennis O’Connor released his inquiry report into the failure of the water treatment system in Walkerton, Ont.

E. coli contamination of the water system sickened 2,300 Ontarians and killed seven, and the blame for the crisis reached as high as the premier’s office. Judge O’Connor’s report specifically included Premier Mike Harris and his government’s sweeping cost-cutting plan for setting the stage for the disaster, saying the government’s “distaste for regulation” was a fundamental cause.

Admittedly, 2002 was a long time ago. But it’s hard not to be reminded of Walkerton every time a government, provincial or federal, pronounces that gatekeepers, regulators and “red tape” are to blame for slowing down the natural competitiveness of business.

It’s also hard not to remember Walkerton whenever there’s a major E. coli outbreak: it is, after all, an opportunistic bacterial infection that usually causes outbreaks when public health systems fail to catch it. It turns up when restaurant fridges are too warm to prevent bacterial growth, when animal feces make their way into direct contact with farmed lettuce, or when, like in Walkerton’s case, manure finds its way into the water we drink. It arrives when we let our guard down, or fail to apply preventative methods that, done right, always work.

Right now, Alberta is facing a particularly large E. coli outbreak among children from daycares that were using the same central kitchen — a kitchen that had been cited for health violations in the past, but that was continuing to operate. To what extent there were regulatory failings in the process is not clear yet: right now, provincial health officials are focusing on containing the outbreak, which (not unexpectedly, given the bacteria’s ease of transmission and the general lack of sanitary techniques in toddlers) is now spreading to siblings and parents of those first affected.

That the outbreak is in Alberta, under Premier Danielle Smith, is significant: Smith, after all, fired the province’s chief public health officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, because Smith wanted to take COVID prevention in a different direction, saying she would get “new advice on public health.”

Smith also removed the Alberta Health Services board saying, “It’s meant to accelerate things that we already know should be implemented.”

It’s one of the most recent examples of politics extending itself into areas of specialization that it is, fair to say, should probably be left to professionals in the field.

Why? Because political success in an election is not interchangeable with superior knowledge and experience in every and all areas.

Making things simpler and faster in government is a laudable goal. But it should be pointed out that today’s governments — and governments-to-be — also do not have a monopoly on good sense and practical decision-making.

Laws and regulations, after all, were put in place by governments that also used good sense and careful decision-making to address public issues.

So when those who seek power claim we need to be more nimble and quick, that we are overrun with gatekeepers and red tape, let’s make sure that there is some fundamental pragmatism in the analysis that examines why regulations came to be in the first place. Getting rid of rules just because we don’t like them is both an unsafe practice and false economy — because, in the end, disasters like Walkerton, and the current Alberta situation, end up creating hefty public costs.

The baby can be thrown out with the bathwater in headlong rushes to strip away regulation.

Or, maybe more significantly, the bathwater can be contaminated — something with even more severe hazards for baby.

It’s just common sense.