But he did not dare fire them during a pandemic and cause a giant scandal, any more than Donald Trump had the cojones to fire the troublesome Dr. Fauci. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. Canada’s provincial and local medical officers of health, of course. ... Share on Twitter; Forward by Email (D) to remove the source of infection; (ii) by order Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. Meanwhile, Alberta hit a record-breaking 919 cases in a single day and called off contact tracing outside of high priority settings such as hospitals, schools, or continuing care. Other medical officers of health, like Dr. Eileen de Villa in Toronto, have issued some gentle closure orders, but shied away from doing everything they say is necessary. In April, Rock appointed Martine Lagacé, a professor in the communication department, to head up a Diversity and Equity Office that will report directly to the president on diversity and equity issues. In her words, “the chief medical officer of health is not a decision maker,” but rather just “is an adviser and someone who recommends.”. He has staunchly refused to impose restrictions, instead telling partygoers to “knock it off” and adopting a “personal responsibility” approach to public health. The researcher spoke to the Citizen on the condition neither his name, nor the letter would be published, calling the grievance a private matter between him and the university, and saying he didn’t want to jeopardize the possibility of a positive resolution. A firefighter can order occupants out of a burning building. In the Peel region outside Toronto, for example, the medical officer of health prohibited wedding receptions, restricted restaurants and bars to seating people from the same household, and closed meeting and event spaces. The University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual (English-French) university in the world. There was an error, please provide a valid email address. At the time, the University of Ottawa said it, unlike other universities, was required to consider a candidate’s bilingualism in addition to other merit-based criteria. … Amir Attaran is a lawyer, biomedical scientist, and Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Here are four things that must change. Amir Attaran, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, sent out a string of tweets on Wednesday saying the provincial government is purely at fault and Alberta should pay for the hospitals. But there is more. But overzealous abuse has not proved to be today’s problem. He is still awaiting a response. The next issue of Posted Newsletter will soon be in your inbox. A letter signed by over 70 doctors asking for a two week lockdown to damp down the cases and allow contact tracers to catch up was ignored. Attaran has also named his union in the grievance, alleging the APUO ratified a collective agreement in May that is “intentionally discriminatory,” according to the lawsuit. None of the allegations against the university or the union has been tested in court. They seem not to notice the long QUOTATION from a pollster whose data show that Cons are, comparatively, less educated. “We have to redouble our efforts because equity and diversity are important to us as a university and a community.”. A medical officer of health’s order can clearly target a specific individual or establishment, and they routinely impose these orders with little quarrel. These medical milquetoasts deserve at least as much scrutiny for the current predicament as the premiers—and arguably more, considering that public health is their only job—so it is important to discard their haloes and hold them accountable. Professor Attaran is by training both a lawyer (LL.B., Vancouver) and a biologist (D. Phil, Oxford; M.S., Caltech; B.A., Berkeley), whose research covers the gamut of both fields to explore different drivers of human well-being. While Dr. Hinshaw has expressed “concern” and made recommendations, she seems unwilling to rock Kenney’s boat. In June 2020, Attaran wrote on Twitter: "In my experience as a brown guy at a bilingual university on the Quebec-Ontario border, there is plenty of racism, and more often than not when it speaks to me the first word is “Bonjour”." We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Attaran believes his case is supported by the similar experience of a fellow CRC chair, who is also a visible minority, and was likewise recently denied advancement of his university-appointed CRC at the conclusion of his term. Lately she joined the mayor to lobby against the closures and said, “We need something that allows people to stay open, not close and open”. Amir Attaran—professor in the Faculty of Law and School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa—said: “They acted callously, they acted in a way they knew was unsafe, they acted with hatred, they acted with negligence and they killed a woman after uttering racist comments.” “We are at 90 per cent of our target and will actually surpass it by year end,” wrote university spokeswoman Isabelle Mailloux-Pulkinghorn. A police officer can order a disorderly crowd to disperse. His views are rooted in western ideas, stem from our most ancient myths and legends, and embrace the Christian hero story of self-sacrifice as the ultimate strength. Please try again. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings. Where there is a “public health emergency” such as COVID-19, a medical officer of health has a blank cheque to “take whatever other steps are, in [his or her] opinion, necessary in order to lessen the impact of the public health emergency.” Legal language tantamount to this is found in other provinces too (not just Alberta) and it authorizes a medical officer of health to order any steps at all, so long as it rests on a good faith medical opinion. Dr. de Villa pleaded last month with Ontario’s government to order people to stay at home except for essential trips, but when she was rebuffed, rather than order it herself, she refused. (B) prohibit a person from engaging in the person’s occupation, or No wonder that no medical officer of health has ever been held personally liable by a court. Despite this, Attaran claims all three fellow CRCs in his faculty — who are all white — were advanced to Tier 1 positions at the conclusion of their Tier 2 term. And the fear is overblown: for Dr. De Villa to be personally liable, angry Torontonians would have to persuade a court that she intentionally flouted the law and acted out of malice or bad faith rather than health protection—which is just impossible. Dekker would not confirm the sanction, nor disclose any internal union matters, citing a confidentiality agreement, while noting Attaran is also bound by the same agreement. That cavernous legal mandate is enough, for example, to order masks worn, to order schools closed or to order businesses shuttered. Like firefighters watching a lashing inferno and nibbling donuts, they are abandoning their authority and moral duties in the pandemic. Photo by Jean Levac / Postmedia Network / Files Google Scholar Our collective agreement prohibits discrimination, we have a joint committee with the employer on equity, diversity and inclusion, and we have a subcommittee that is working on discrimination in the context of the Canada Research Chair program. Thus Doug Ford, Jason Kenney and Brian Pallister met no significant resistance in opening their provinces, and keeping them open as the number of COVID-19 cases shot into the stratosphere. Rather the more surprising—and perilous—problem is underzealous abuse, because most medical officers of health are only rarely using their powers in the second wave, or worse, they are doing so only with the consent of politicians. “Viral evolution can’t be bargained with,” Amir Attaran, a biologist and professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa, said in a recent Twitter thread. Much like Dr. Tony Fauci staring down Donald Trump, each of these officials has a moral duty to speak truth to power and an ethical duty as a physician to follow science rather than political whim. This old complaint is against the employer and not against APUO. The fight against COVID-19 is in a new, unprecedentedly dangerous phase. Consider Dr. Vera Etches, who is Ottawa’s medical officer of health. New cases are trending upwards, the percentage of positive tests is increasing, ICUs are becoming more full, and public health officials are increasingly unable to trace cases of COVID-19 back to particular sources—meaning it’s waiting to get you everywhere. Prof says he was denied promotion because of racial bias, launches lawsuit against University of Ottawa, Prof. Amir Attaran, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, February 14, 2011, Ex-nurse forced into AA says his religious freedom, as an atheist, was violated: ‘We were told to pray’, Waterloo man rejected for job with note that said being Somali embodies ‘a culture of resistance to authority’, First lesson: You’re racist. Following a landmark 2006 settlement by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, all Canadian universities are required to meet “equity targets” in four under-represented groups – visible minorities, women, people with disabilities and indigenous people – when filling CRC positions. It never should have been this way. The law is crystal clear: “If a [public health] order is necessary, especially in circumstances where the risk is high,” explains Ontario’s Divisional Court, “then its financial impact is irrelevant”. — Amir Attaran (@profamirattaran) July 6, 2019 UPDATE: Hundreds of Conservative trolls are irked by my tweet. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Join the mailing list to receive daily email updates. 'There is a systemic problem with not enough visible minorities, women, disabled and aboriginal people getting into Canada Research Chairs,' Amir Attaran said. You don’t need to be a lawyer to grasp this, and Alberta’s law is pretty typical in saying that a medical officer of health: (i) take whatever steps the medical officer of health considers necessary The researcher sent the letter in June, and requested a meeting with university officials to discuss the issue. “But in addition to that, they’re behind even other universities that missed all targets.”. This is clearly stated by the CRC,” stated Mailloux-Pulkinghorn. © 2021 National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. Amir Attaran, Professor of Law & Medicine at the University of Ottawa, says he's personally embarrassed to be associated with the school. The suit claims Attaran was “systemically denied equal inclusion” in the university’s CRC program. She argued against closing bars, restaurants, and other infection hotspots mere days before the city shattered its record for daily COVID-19 cases in October. Amir Attaran is a biomedical scientist, a lawyer, and a professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Your life, and those of people you love, depend on them not chickening out. That is why our society entrusts them with sweeping legal powers. “Generally, Tier 2 chairs are not meant to feed to Tier 1 chairs. Dekker said APUO “is working in various ways to tackle discrimination at the University of Ottawa. That said, the day may come when the government’s leaders wish they had. The same goes for medical officers of health. November 13, 2020, Ford arrives at a press conference at Queen's Park during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Nov. 3, 2020 (CP/Nathan Denette), Amir Attaran is a lawyer, biomedical scientist, and Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa, Lorian Hardcastle is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. By Amir Attaran May 31, 2020 (A) to suppress the disease in those who may already have been infected with it, Police instructor pushes new recruits to face subconscious biases head-on, tap here to see other videos from our team. The collective agreement contains mandatory equity provisions for women but, according to Attaran, those provisions are “merely optional” for visible minorities, people with disabilities and indigenous people. Some medical officers of health have shown courage and saved lives. Kenney, Shandro, and Hinshaw chose this. “There are more than 3,000 academics and exceptional researchers at the University of Ottawa and we have only 77 CRC chairs.”, While the university said it has appointed 14 women to CRCs (toward an equity target of 19 chairs), the university would not share exact numbers of visible minorities (target of nine chairs), people with disabilities (target of two chairs) or aboriginal people (one chair), invoking the Privacy Act, which, according to Mailloux-Pulkinghorn, “prohibits disclosure of small numbers for each designated group.”. 9354 ( 2003): 341 –344. Where medical officers of health have had their COVID-19 orders challenged in court in Ontario and Newfoundland, they have won. (C) to break the chain of transmission and prevent spread of the disease, and Dr. Etches explains she is “advocating … because of the harm potentially to businesses”. He was caught by surprise at a union meeting last week when he was met with a motion for censure, and after the vote passed “with some debate,” the professor claims, he was asked to leave the room. They can order just about anything to shut down a pandemic, without asking permission, and whether or not the government agrees. Now these powers are obviously vast. “The program expects that institutions, when managing their CRC allocations, will develop a succession plan for their Tier 2 chairs to help them transition to a regular faculty position after the end of their terms.”, Attaran “is a full professor with all the privileges and responsibilities that entails,” wrote Mailloux-Pulkinghorn.
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