The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC; ) is an agency of the Government of Canada that is responsible for public health, emergency preparedness and response, and infectious and chronic disease control and prevention.
History
The PHAC was formed because of a series of official inquiries about the SARS crisis in Canada which was particularly severe. For example, the province of Ontario inquiry and the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health both recommended that a new organisation be formed. It was so instantiated, by Order in Council in 2004 under the Minister of State for Public Health (Canada) of the Martin government and subsequently by legislation that came into force on December 15, 2006 under the Harper government. It is part of the federal government's Health Portfolio (along with Health Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and other organizations).
At the time of its creation in 2004, most of the agency's staff were located in the former Gandalf Technologies building in Nepean, south of Ottawa, and were part of Health Canada's Population and Public Health Branch. The first President of the PHAC and Chief Public Health Officer was David Butler-Jones.
In 2009, when the 2009 swine flu pandemic episode occurred, the PHAC had already been chartered for three years. In Canada, roughly 10% of the populace were infected with the virus, with 363 confirmed deaths (as of December 8); confirmed cases had reached 10,000 when Health Canada stopped counting in July. Canada began its vaccination campaign in October and vaccinated a higher proportion of its citizens than any other country. The pandemic was the subject of a review document, issued in November 2010.
The CPHO position was left vacant for 16 months until Dr Gregory W. Taylor was elevated to the post on 24 September 2014. Taylor had filled the position on an interim basis since the departure of David Butler-Jones.
Changes towards a bicameral management structure (2014) In the November 2014 omnibus budget bill, the 28th Canadian Ministry of Stephen Harper decided to reorganise the management structure of PHAC. Whereas formerly the deputy civil servant charged with the operation of the PHAC was identical to the CPHO, the omnibus budget bill instituted a parallel Presidential structure to govern the organisation that then could be staffed by non-medical and non-scientific personnel. The NDP health critic said at the time that: "To bury it in an omnibus bill says to me that they don't want people to know about it and they don't want questions," while Health Minister Rona Ambrose said that "the idea for the new structure came from the agency itself."
Official languages is a question of public health (2016) On 28 September 2016, the Commissioner of Official Languages (at the time Graham Fraser) told the Executive Committee of the PHAC that "official languages leadership is also a question of public health" in a speech authorized by President Siddika Mithani.
GPHIN "completely disbanded" (2019) In 2015, CPHO Taylor left vacant a Beijing position, which had until 2015 "stationed a Canadian doctor in the Chinese capital as a direct point of connection to Chinese health officials (and an independent observer). In the absence of its own early-warning system, Canada was forced to rely more heavily on the WHO." Adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and national security critic Wesley Wark laments that vacancy, and said "What we didn't have was the capacity – our own independent capacity – to verify" the state of affairs in China, which was the source of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak from which was drawn the raison-d'etre of the PHAC. This state of affairs came to light in various media at various times during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
On 24 May 2019, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) of PHAC was completely disbanded and a "department edict that all such alerts had to be approved by senior managers" of PHAC was issued. On 30 July 2020, the auditor general of Canada took notice of a Globe and Mail report in which whistleblowers had participated and launched an investigation into the scandal. The GPHIN had been part of Canada's contribution to the WHO, which described GPHIN as "a cornerstone" and "the foundation" of global early warning. In fact "approximately 20 per cent of the WHO's epidemiological intelligence" had come from GPHIN before it was silenced.