NEW: SENATORS/Pandemic Prep Bill

Canada's Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Bill (C-293) has passed third reading in the House of Commons and is now before the Senate. Should it pass SECOND READING, it can soon be put into law.

Liberal Ontario MP Nathaniel B. Erskine-Smith first proposed the bill in 2022.

While much of the bill's content seems wise and unproblematic, here are key concerns that we hope Senators raise:

1) the requriment that a thorough review of Canada's COVID-19 response be undertaken PRIOR to making recommnedations for future pandemics has been REMOVED from the Current draft. 

To see MP Erskine-Smith's original wording and to compare that with the current draft, see https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-prevention-and-preparedness-act. Senators could vote to have that requirement added back in. Or they could recommend that the extensive review of Canada's COVID-19 response already completed by the independent National Citizens Inquiry could be substituted AND the many recommendations produced by the NCI could be added to the text of the Bill before its final approval. Please see: https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/commissioners-report/ 

2) The "solutions" are centralized and top-down