While the current state of the COVID pandemic is still a matter of great debate among many people – some believe it is over and in our rearview mirror, while others are still very much at risk of catching the disease – one opinion should be universally held, and that is the need for a Royal Commission into this country’s response to the pandemic.

So many areas need to be explored – the initial lack of personal protection equipment or PPEs, the delay in acquiring a vaccine, public health restrictions on businesses and individuals, testing, the decision not to allow family doctors to vaccinate their patients, and – most importantly – the absolute failure to protect residents in long-term care and retirement communities from the disease.

Australia and New Zealand are also contemplating a national post mortem on their respective country’s response to the pandemic. In Australia, the chair of the COVID response review panel believes a Royal Commission is needed to examine why and how Australia’s federal and state governments “failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes”. It’s a good question which needs to be examined here as well.

Liberal backbencher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has already tabled a Private Member’s Bill that would compel the health minister to create an advisory committee to examine the need for a potentially broad study of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That committee would also review the actions of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the federal department of health. And it would look at the responses of provincial and municipal governments and “analyze the health, economic and social factors relevant to the impact of the pandemic in Canada”.

The bill will be debated later this month. We can only hope that it will be passed and a Royal Commission established.

In 2003, the provincial government of the day established an independent commission headed by Ontario Superior Court Justice Archie Campbell to investigate how the SARS virus came to the province, how the virus spread and how it was dealt with. Similarly, the federal government of the day established the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health.

Both investigations were helpful in learning lessons and making recommendations to aid in addressing future viral outbreaks. Unfor-tunately, many of those lessons and recommendations were soon forgotten about, or ignored altogether.

We can not and should not let history repeat itself. The first step to doing that is to establish a Royal Commission. Only after a full and complete examination of this country’s response to the COVID pandemic is done can we look toward the future with any confidence the mistakes and missteps that happened won’t happen again.