Ending Canada’s pandemic alert system was a mistake, internal government e-mails show

2020/10/07 Leave a comment

More details regarding this fail continue to emerge:

Internal government e-mails show at least one senior manager at the Public Health Agency of Canada believed the decision that caused the country’s pandemic early warning system to go silent last year was a mistake. In an e-mail sent to staff July 27 – two days after The Globe and Mail published an investigation into the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN – a senior department official acknowledged the shutdown shouldn’t have happened.

The investigation detailed how Canada’s globally respected pandemic alert system went silent in early 2019, after the department issued an edict requiring GPHIN’s doctors and epidemiologists to obtain “senior management” approval before they could warn of potentially deadly outbreaks.

That edict, which came as the department sought to reallocate GPHIN’s resources to other projects, effectively shut down one of its most critical functions. With no management approvals, the alert system went silent. And with it, much of the unit’s advance warning and intelligence gathering soon dried up – less than a year before the COVID-19 outbreak hit.

“I believe I can make the assumption that you’ve all noticed that The Globe did an article on GPHIN,” Christopher Burt, a senior manager at Public Health, told colleagues in the e-mail, which was obtained under Access to Information laws.

“You and I know the right answer was always to let the analysts issue alerts where they see fit.”

It is a surprising admission, providing a glimpse into the mindset of a department that has largely kept quiet about the GPHIN problems. It suggests that different layers of managers disagreed over the decisions that would ultimately hinder Canada’s pandemic warning and intelligence gathering.

In a statement this summer, the government initially denied the system had stopped working. However, The Globe obtained 10 years of internal GPHIN records that showed the alert system suddenly ceased operating on May 24, 2019, as a result of the decision.

After the edict was made, some of the analysts inside the highly specialized unit – whose job was to detect and monitor dangerous outbreaks around the world and issue warnings of potential threats – were reassigned to other work that didn’t involve pandemic preparedness. With no threats of a pandemic for years, the analysts were moved to domestic projects deemed more valuable to the government, such as studying the effects of vaping in Canada.

However, GPHIN’s role in pandemic preparedness is now being reassessed. Canada’s Auditor-General is investigating the matter and, last month, Health Minister Patty Hajdu ordered an independent federal review into the department’s oversight of GPHIN.

“The conversation around alerts is still a schmozzle,” Mr. Burt told staff in the July 27 e-mail. “That this conversation is even occurring is further proof that GPHIN remains an important and valuable tool – respected in Canada and around the world.”

Referencing The Globe’s investigation, Mr. Burt said, “It’s clear the reporter had a number of sources, all of whom seem to have painted a rather stark picture. Democracy is messy sometimes.”

He added. “From a policy effectiveness standpoint, all news is good news. Although the tone of the article is negative, I believe that the effect for GPHIN will ultimately be a positive one.”

Created in the mid-1990s when Canada realized it needed better advance warning of potentially dangerous global outbreaks, GPHIN’s role was to act as a sort of smoke detector inside the government, sounding alarms early and often – not merely when problems were initially detected, but also as they worsened. The idea was to inject urgency into government decisions by gathering intelligence on situations, so that officials could assess the threat early and take quick action to protect the country.

As an intelligence unit, GPHIN was also intended to help inform Canada’s risk assessments on a potential crisis.

The government has faced criticism over the accuracy of its official risk assessments. For much of January, February and March, Canada’s official position on the outbreak was that the novel coronavirus posed a “low” threat to the country, despite evidence the virus was spreading aggressively and that human-to-human transmission was a reality. Even after the World Health Organization changed its rating to “high” at the end of January, and warned countries to begin preparing, Canada maintained that low rating for another seven weeks.

Several Public Health employees, who The Globe is not naming because they are not authorized to speak publicly, have said the government preferred to rely on “official” information provided by the Chinese government and the WHO, and dismissed intelligence gathering as “rumours.”

Intelligence experts say this was a critical mistake, particularly since countries have been known to hide or play down outbreaks in the past.

“It’s invaluable to have a separate monitoring source so that you can know everything that’s possible to know about the course of the disease and what the country of origin, or city, knows about it,” said Greg Fyffe, the former executive director of the government’s Intelligence Assessment Secretariat from 2000 to 2008.

When word of the coronavirus outbreak leaked out of China through social media on Dec. 30 last year, GPHIN’s intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities had been significantly diminished. In his e-mail to GPHIN’s analysts, however, Mr. Burt expressed doubts that Canada’s response was slowed by the changes to the alert system.

However, that opinion puts Mr. Burt at odds with several of the scientists he oversees. One GPHIN employee said senior officials lacking a background in public health struggled to understand the purpose of the alert system.

Other internal department e-mails obtained by The Globe show Sally Thornton, vice-president of the Health Security Infrastructure Branch, and Jim Harris, director-general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, oversaw the decision that curtailed alerts. An e-mail from late 2019 explaining the changes to staff summarizes the instructions given by “Jim and Sally.”

Rebuilding the pandemic warning and surveillance system will fall to a new set of managers.

Mr. Harris has since left the department, while the government said in a statement last month that Ms. Thornton retired. She departed about a week before the government announced the sudden resignation of Public Health president Tina Namiesniowski. The government has declined numerous requests by The Globe to speak to department officials.

Source: Ending Canada’s pandemic alert system was a mistake, internal government e-mails show

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Lapse in early pandemic warning system ‘a colossal failure,’ says former federal Liberal health minister Dosanjh

2020/09/29 3 Comments

Appears, if Minister’s spokesperson correct, decision was taken at the official not political level:

Following the abrupt resignation of the Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) president Tina Namiesniowski on Sept. 18, a former Liberal federal health minister says the lapse in the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN)’s role under this government’s watch was “a colossal failure,” with the Bloc Québécois’ health critic saying the new president of PHAC will have to work hard to rebuild the agency “so that it can be more efficient in carrying out its duties [of] prevention, detection and management of public health crises.”

Former health minister Ujjal Dosanjh, who was in the role from 2004 to 2006 under then-prime minister Paul Martin, told The Hill Times that “the Public Health Agency isn’t an agency that’s supposed to sleep, ever. Its job is to continuously surveil, nationally, and internationally.”

“I think there is something the matter. If you are an activist minister, and you’re not just a politician who got elected, but you’re there to change the world even in the [most minute possible way], you would ask questions as to why GPHIN was folded. You would ask questions [about] when the information was coming from China,” Mr. Dosanjh said in a phone interview.

Canada was a leader in pandemic preparedness during his tenure, according to Mr. Dosanjh.

“I think it was a colossal failure on the part of government, and unfortunately no one is looking at these things because we are so wrapped up—and rightly so—dealing with the here and now, and we’re prepared to forgive the errors that have been made.”

“Whoever is responsible for it, it’s been a near fatal mistake in the pre-pandemic era which has come back to bite us in the pandemic era,” said Mr. Dosanjh, who also served as premier of British Columbia from 2000 to 2001.

“We would have been far better prepared, we would have had far more robust tools at our disposal, had we not put GPHIN to sleep,” said Mr. Dosanjh, who also noted that GPHIN was initially established following the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

“The infrastructure had been put in place before I got there, it was only completed when I got there, so I can’t take responsibly for it, but I’m somewhat saddened (which is not the best word), but knowing what I know, I’m angry,” said Mr. Dosanjh. “I’m actually sad at the kind of conflicting and unclear information that’s emanated from all of the responsible sources as COVID-19 started.”

Protecting the health and safety of Canadians ‘top priority’ 

According to Cole Davidson, spokesperson for Minister Hajdu, “protecting the health and safety of Canadians is our top priority.”

“Public health intelligence is vital to that goal,” said Mr. Davidson. “The minister was concerned to learn about the changes made to the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), and has ordered an independent review to look into these changes. The minister is expecting recommendations from this review in the next six months.”

“As the minister has said, these changes were made within the Public Health of Agency of Canada, not at the political level. These are serious and disturbing allegations—ones that we take seriously,” wrote Mr. Davidson. “When the minister became aware of these changes, she requested an independent review to investigate the questions that she had. GPHIN is an important tool for the government of Canada, and the analysts that serve this country must be empowered to do their work.”

PHAC’s president Tina Namiesniowski announced she was stepping down from the organization on Sept. 18, saying she was “now at a point where I need to take a break” and that she felt she “must step aside so someone else can step up” in a message to staff that day, according to multiple media reports.

Ms. Namiesniowski worked as a bureaucrat within the federal public service for decades, including stints as executive vice-president with the Canada Border Services Agency, as an assistant deputy minister at the Department of Agriculture, and as assistant secretary to cabinet, operations secretariat, with the Privy Council Office. She was appointed as president of the PHAC in May 2019.

‘There should be a strong public health capacity at different levels of government’

Dr. Paul Gully, a senior public health physician who was director of Health Canada’s population and public health branch and the department’s main spokesperson during the 2003 SARS outbreak, said he believes the Public Health Agency of Canada has responded well and continues to respond well to COVID-19.

“But I think lack of increased funding over the last few years, which probably goes back to the creation of the agency in 2014, is that it hasn’t been able to do a number of things,” said Dr. Gully. “One is to enhance its scientific capacity, while at the same time losing scientific capacity. It also hasn’t been able to deal with issues which have been well-known, such as the national emergency stockpile, for example.”

“There should be a strong public health capacity at different levels of government, that could then advise government and ensure that fiscal policies and all of the other policies are scientifically-based,” said Mr. Gully.

Government ‘asleep at the switch’ in ensuring strong PPE stockpile, says NDP’s Don Davies 

“I think the rapid removal of Ms. Namiesniowski and her rapid replacement is a clear acknowledgment that PHAC has been mismanaged for a long time now,” said NDP MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.), his party’s health critic. “The speed at which they replaced Ms. Namiesniowski, I think is also concerning.”

“Without casting any personal aspersions at the current appointment, the process makes me concerned,” said Mr. Davies.

“The Public Health Agency was slow to understand and acknowledge the risk level of COVID-19, they were slow to acknowledge community transmission, they were slow to acknowledge asymptomatic transmission,” said Mr. Davies. “They were also slow to acknowledge the efficacy of closing borders, and perhaps most egregious, they were completely asleep at the switch in making sure that we even had a good PPE stockpile.”

Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault (Montcalm, Que.), his party’s health critic, told The Hill Times that the “hasty and unexpected departure” of Ms. Namiesniowski will “definitely complicate the management of the current crisis.”

“But as the resignation of Mrs. Namiesniowski seems to be linked to personal burnout, it is difficult to blame her for this decision,” wrote Mr. Thériault in an emailed message to The Hill Times.“As for Mr. Iain Stewart, who has, it seems, a solid scientific profile, he will have to work hard to rebuild the Health Agency of Canada so that it can be more efficient in carrying out its duties [of] prevention, detection and management of public health crises. Especially since scientists warn us that such crises may be more common in the future because of increasing interference between human activities and nature, and accelerating climate change.”

Mr. Thériault also said that PHAC has shown “several shortcomings” in its handling of the COVID-19 crisis, and that the pandemic has shown that the agency isn’t adequately prepared to face such a crisis.

The government’s stock of masks and PPE was “clearly insufficient,” and PHAC erred by failing to heed warning from GPHIN about the pandemic, said Mr. Theriault.

“In addition, it was only two weeks after the onset of active community transmission and the rise in infections and deaths that the agency recommended social and economic restrictions, due to ineffective data collection,” he said.

“In short, PHAC must redefine its methods of preventing and preparing for future health crises, and it must make its responses to a public health crisis more rapid and effective. With the arrival of the new wave of COVID-19, it will have no room for error, as this wave had been expected for several months. We will be closely monitoring her actions in the face of this second wave.”

Mr. Thériault also said Quebec and the provinces were too much at the mercy of the ineffectiveness of PHAC.

“Indeed, they themselves suffer from systemic underfunding of their health system. That is why the Bloc Québécois, like Quebec and the provinces, is calling for an immediate [provision] of $28-billion in health transfers, an annual indexation of six per cent, and a federal contribution of 35 per cent,” said Mr. Thériault. “As health is a provincial responsibility, this will be the best way to prevent the different health systems from suffering once again from PHAC’s poor preparation for a future health crisis.”

Source: Lapse in early pandemic warning system ‘a colossal failure,’ says former federal Liberal health minister Dosanjh

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Public Health Agency head should have a science background, advisor says

2020/09/22 Leave a comment

Good summary of some of the issues regarding whether the head of PHAC should be a general administrator or one who also has a scientific or medical background (government announced the appointment of the president of the National Research Council, Iain Stewart, who also has extensive government experience):

With the government expected to name a new president of the Public Health Agency of Canada this week, a former top adviser says the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the department needs a person with a science background at the helm, not an administrator.

After the sudden departure of president Tina Namiesniowski on Friday, the naming of a new leader is under heightened scrutiny. The resignation followed a string of problems associated with Canada’s pandemic preparedness and response over the past several months that were recently made public.

The government has signalled it will name a replacement as early as this week, but Michael Garner, a former senior science adviser and epidemiologist at the federal department, said the lessons of the pandemic are that a background in public health should be a primary requirement for the job.

“We can have all the expertise in the world working at PHAC, but if the leaders don’t understand public-health science, our pandemic response will continue to suffer,” Mr. Garner said. “It’s someone who can ask the right questions of the scientists. They have to be able to rapidly adjust as they get new information.”

Mr. Garner, who left Public Health last fall, is speaking out to The Globe and Mail on behalf of some of his former colleagues, including doctors and epidemiologists who still work at the department and are not authorized to speak publicly.

Several Public Health employees, who can’t be named owing to fears they could face reprisals, have told The Globe that they often struggled to communicate urgent and complex messages up the chain of command inside Public Health. Because senior officials within the department lacked an understanding of the science, key messages often had to be “dumbed down” one scientist told The Globe this summer.

Ms. Namiesniowski, who previously worked at the Border Services Agency, after roles with Agriculture and Public Safety, came to the agency with a political-science background. Vice-president Sally Thornton, who also left recently, had a background in law, and served in the Treasury Board and Privy Council before being appointed to a senior Public Health role.

Both oversaw critical aspects of the country’s pandemic preparedness and response systems. That included the handling of Canada’s early warning and surveillance unit, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network or GPHIN, which had its operations cut back last year, and the national emergency stockpile, which came up short in supplying personal protective equipment.

In an e-mail sent to staff, Ms. Namiesniowski said she needed a break, and was stepping aside to spend time with family. The e-mail indicated a new president for Public Health would be named early this week, suggesting the government already had a replacement for Ms. Namiesniowski in mind when her resignation was announced.

The selection of a new president has taken on increased importance with Canada seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases, and signs of a second wave of the outbreak emerging.

Canada’s pandemic response has been criticized for delaying critical decisions, and for underestimating the threat of the virus, particularly as the country curtailed much of its intelligence-gathering capacity by early 2019. That led to the government’s official risk assessments of the outbreak repeatedly labelling the virus a “low” risk to the country, even as it began to spread aggressively around the world in February and mid-March, and new evidence emerged about human-to-human transmission.

A Globe investigation in July detailed the problems inside Public Health, including the concerns from staff who said that science had been “devalued” within the department. Health Minister Patty Hajdu told The Globe those revelations were troubling.

“The pleas from the scientists and the researchers [inside Public Health] were particularly profound,” Ms. Hajdu said two weeks ago, as she ordered a federal review into the department’s handling of the pandemic early warning and surveillance unit, which was cut back against the protests of the scientists inside the department.

“The review, hopefully, will get at why are these processes in place, and are there better ways to manage?”

The Auditor-General has also launched an investigation of its own into the oversight of GPHIN and the decisions surrounding the intelligence-gathering unit.

Mr. Garner and several employees working inside Public Health say the department underwent a crucial shift in 2014, when the Conservative government revised the Public Health Act. That decision moved the leadership of PHAC from the Chief Public Health Officer, which is a public-health doctor, to the role of President, which became a government appointee.

While the Chief Public Health Officer is the face of the agency, and speaks directly to Canadians, the structural decisions for the department, which have the greatest influence over how the various programs operate, are made by the president.

Though the Liberals opposed the move when it was made, the structure remained in place when the government changed.

“This decision set PHAC on a course that has gravely influenced its ability to put into place the foundational elements required to proactively prepare for and effectively respond to the coronavirus pandemic,” Mr. Garner said.

Ms. Thornton has been replaced as vice-president by Brigitte Diogo, who recently worked in rail safety for the federal government. A spokesman for Public Health told The Globe that Ms. Diogo has experience in safety and security policy at Transport Canada and the Privy Council, and risk mitigation while at Immigration Canada.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-public-health-agency-head-should-have-a-science-background-advisor/

 

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HHS Spokesperson Takes Leave of Absence After Disparaging Government Scientists

2020/09/18 Leave a comment

Posted given Canadian connection (Paul Alexander):

Michael Caputo, the top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services and a longtime ally of President Trump’s, is taking a 60-day leave of absence after a social media tirade in which he falsely accused government scientists of engaging in “sedition.”

HHS announced the leave in a news release Wednesday, which said Caputo decided to take the two months off as the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs “to focus on his health and the well-being of his family.” In a statement, Caputo described the situation as a medical leave for “a lymphatic issue discovered last week.”

The leave of absence effectively removes Caputo from government operations through November’s election. The statement also announced that Paul Alexander, whom Caputo had brought in as a scientific adviser, would be leaving the department altogether.

Last week, Caputo came under fire after reports that he and Alexander sought to edit and delay public health reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Emails from Alexander obtained by Politico complained to CDC Director Robert Redfield that the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report “hurt the President,” and described data-based publications on the risk of the coronavirus in children as “hit pieces on the administration” that undermined Trump’s school reopening plan. NPR has confirmed Politico’s reporting.

Regarding the reports of interference with the publication, “It’s very concerning, if people who are really motivated by politics and not by science and don’t have a scientific background are suddenly interfering,” said Erin Marcus, a physician at the University of Miami Health System and Public Voices fellow. “These actions have real effects on the health of our population and on our ability to function as physicians.”

In a Facebook Live video streamed on his personal page on Sunday, Caputo described a conspiracy in which policymakers, the media and “deep state” scientists are keeping Americans sick with COVID-19 to improve the Democrats’ chances of winning November’s presidential election. He accused “scientists who work for this government” of “sacrificing lives” for personal gain and of engaging in “sedition.”

His language echoed an Aug. 22 tweet from Trump accusing “the deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA” of deliberately delaying the recruitment of clinical trial participants for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines to hurt his chances of reelection. There is no credible evidence for these theories.

Caputo’s video, subsequently deleted, was first reported Monday by The New York Times. Clips from the video were later published by Yahoo News.

Caputo is a longtime Republican consultant who specializes in public relations. He joined HHS in mid-April at a time when the Trump administration was under heavy criticism over its handling of the pandemic. White House observersconsidered his appointment a move by the president to gain more control over the U.S. health department. In his five-month tenure as the top communications official, Caputo shaped messages from health agencies to align with the Trump administration’s political messaging in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caputo is considered a Trump loyalist who was a communications director for Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 — a role he resigned from after sending a public tweet celebrating Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s exit from the campaign.

While his social media tirade was highly unusual for a government spokesperson, Caputo promoted conspiracy theories about politics in Washington, D.C., before he joined the administration. In a March 13 episode of his former podcast Still Standing, first reported by Media Matters for America, he said Democrats wanted Americans to die from COVID-19 so they could unseat Trump in the next election. “How much does our economy have to die and how many Americans have to die for these Democrats to get what they want?” he asked rhetorically.

Caputo had previously been investigated over his ties to Russia, where he lived in the 1990s and was an adviser to the Russian government, during the Justice Department investigation into the 2016 presidential election campaign. In 2020, before joining the administration, Caputo released a book and a documentary called The Ukraine Hoax, pushing discredited claims that Ukraine’s government — and not Russia’s — had interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Source: HHS Spokesperson Takes Leave of Absence After Disparaging Government Scientists

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Ottawa appoints new management to ‘strengthen’ pandemic surveillance system

2020/09/16 Leave a comment

Needed given short-sightedness of PHAC-decisions regarding pandemic preparations:

The Public Health Agency of Canada has installed new management to oversee and “strengthen” the country’s pandemic surveillance system, a once-globally renowned unit whose capabilities were curtailed less than a year before the COVID-19 crisis hit.

In a statement provided to The Globe and Mail, the department said Brigitte Diogo, a senior official with 25 years of experience in government, has taken over as the vice-president of the Health Security Infrastructure Branch. The division oversees the government’s pandemic early warning and surveillance unit, known as the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN, among other operations, such as an emergency stockpile of medical supplies.

Sally Thornton, who previously served in that role, left the government last week, the department said. “After a long and distinguished career, Ms. Thornton is retiring from the federal public service,” Public Health spokeswoman Natalie Mohamed said in an e-mailed statement.

Ms. Thornton declined requests for an interview. Ms. Diogo was also not available for comment, the department said.

GPHIN has been at the centre of controversy since a Globe investigation in late July detailed how the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the government’s pandemic early warning system were reduced significantly in late 2018 and early 2019. That effectively shut down much of its surveillance work on international health threats less than eight months before the outbreak in China began to spread, and appears to have impacted Canada’s ability to gauge the risk of the virus.

Throughout January, February and much of March, the government judged the threat from the outbreak as “low” in its official risk assessments, even after the World Health Organization warned in late January that the risk to the world was high.

In her new role, Ms. Diogo’s mandate will include bolstering the surveillance system, although no specifics were provided.

“Ms. Diogo will lead efforts to maintain and strengthen Canada’s public health event-based surveillance system including the Global Public Health Intelligence Network,” department spokesman Eric Morrissette said in a statement.

In late 2018, believing that GPHIN was too internationally focused and could be put to better use on domestic projects, the department reassigned doctors and epidemiologists in the highly specialized unit to projects that didn’t involve pandemic preparedness. A once-prolific alert system operated by GPHIN, designed to track evolving health threats and inject urgency into government responses, was effectively shuttered when a new edict required that Ms. Thornton approve all such alerts.

With no approvals given, the alert system eventually went silent on May 24, 2019, according to 10 years’ worth of PHAC records obtained by The Globe. With it, much of the unit’s surveillance activities – designed to track early signals of an outbreak and inform government risk assessments – effectively shut down as well.

The alert system remained silent for 440 days, and was restarted only last month, less than two weeks after the Globe investigation. During the intervening months, employees inside Public Health say GPHIN’s intelligence-gathering abilities were a fraction of what they once were. Created in the 1990s, GPHIN had garnered international acclaim for its ability to detect and gather continuing intelligence on outbreaks of diseases such as H1N1, Ebola, Zika and others, helping the government formulate a response if needed.

In addition to GPHIN, Ms. Thornton also oversaw the national emergency stockpile of medical supplies, which came under heavy scrutiny this spring after it fell short of supplying the provinces and territories with badly needed personal protective equipment.

In April, Ms. Thornton testified before the House of Commons Health Committee that the stockpile held a “minimum level” of equipment, and wasn’t designed to handle the surge of a pandemic, raising questions about how it was being managed.

The Globe has made several requests since May to interview department officials connected to GPHIN, including Ms. Thornton. All of those requests were declined.

Last week, Health Minister Patty Hajdu ordered an independent federal review of the problems at GPHIN, saying she was troubled that scientists at Public Health told The Globe they were not being listened to within the department. The Auditor-General has also launched an investigation.

Scientists within Public Health told The Globe that over the past decade, the department has suffered from an influx of senior officials from other areas of the government, such as the Treasury Board, Border Services and others, who lacked sufficient grounding in Public Health. Epidemiologist Michael Garner, a former senior science adviser at the agency, said it became difficult for scientists to communicate urgent and complex messages up the chain of command, because those officials often didn’t comprehend the problems.

Ms. Diogo, who moves over from Transport Canada, has no science background, which may add to such concerns. However, Mr. Morrissette said she has extensive experience working on safety and security policy, and on program design and delivery.

“While a newcomer to the agency, Ms. Diogo understands the merit of a well-functioning, event-based surveillance system including the timely dissemination of information such as alerts, to inform decision-making in addressing public health threats,” Mr. Morrissette said.

According to information from the department, Ms. Diogo was director-general of rail safety at Transport Canada from 2015-20, and director of operations at the Security and Intelligence Secretariat in the Privy Council Office, where she oversaw matters related to national security from 2011-14. She also has a background in risk mitigation while at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the department said.

Source: Ottawa appoints new management to ‘strengthen’ pandemic surveillance system

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Bill Blair orders prison data to be turned over, but does the data even exist?

2020/09/11 Leave a comment

Good question in the header (follow-up article to Paul Wells’ Another farce on Bill Blair’s watch:

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says he has ordered Correctional Service Canada to hand over data to an independent panel reviewing its practises, nearly a year after the panel first requested the information. But new documents from the corrections agency reveal it may be failing to accurately collect the data altogether.

In an interview with Maclean’s, Blair vows that “we are working very hard to make sure that we are able to provide that information and access to what the panel needs before they would consider continuing their job.”

Anthony Doob, the former head of the panel, says he still hasn’t heard from Correctional Services and has not been convinced to continue his work. “I need to know that we can actually do our work,” he told Maclean’s.

Last month, the panel tapped by the Trudeau government to review the implementation of its Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) was disbanded. Its scathing final report pointed to a lack of cooperation from Blair and Correctional Services, which rendered the panel “powerless to accomplish the job that it was set up to do.”

The new SIUs were supposed to replace an existing solitary confinement regime, which courts in Ontario and British Columbia called unconstitutional and, possibly, torture. Yet when Doob and his panel tried to analyze whether the new units were complying with the court orders and a new legal regime, they were stonewalled.

Doob says the information is crucial to the implementation of these units and that “the bulk, or all of the data, that we’re asking for is stuff they should want for their own purposes.”

But Correctional Services was unable to turn over the necessary data before the panel’s appointment ended in August. It has yet to offer a timeline on when it might supply the statistics.

On Wednesday, Correctional Services posted a request for information to the Canadian government’s procurement platform, seeking companies capable of updating its offender management system. The system, which tracks every inmate in custody, was implemented in the early 1990s and last updated in 2002.

The system governs just about every part of Canadian prisons, and is responsible for tracking the accommodations and mental health status of inmates. It is also the system that monitors inmates placed in the Structured Intervention Units.

Correctional Services first identified the need to update the system in 2015. Today, the database is strained, the document reveals. The systems to input and check crucial information on inmates, including their risk of suicide, “are manual, cumbersome, redundant and open to potential human error in data entry.” Other indicators, such as social history, are “not well integrated into the overall process.”

Correctional Services also notes that, on several fronts including inmate discipline, the process is “cumbersome and relies on paper and humans to ensure that information is gathered.”

Doob says that while their computer systems may be “not ideal,” that technology is no excuse. “They do lots of research themselves using their old system to get data. And, as I’ve said many times, if they truly cannot get the data for the panel, that means that they don’t know what is happening, in a systematic way, in their institutions.”

Often, the only recourse for inmates to contest the conditions of their confinement is to file a grievance. As Correctional Services notes in the procurement documents, the “offender grievance process is approximately 90 per cent paper based. This process has resulted in delays in processing offender grievances from the 60-80 day policy prescribed timeframes to up to three years.”

The service did provide a batch of files to the panel in May but, Doob says, the tables were unusable, inaccurate and essentially worthless for his study. For example, he says, the data noted when an inmate had a mental health issue—but not whether it was noted before, during or after their stay in the Structured Intervention Unit. The service employee responsible for data analysis admitted the information was essentially worthless, Doob says.

Maclean’s asked Correctional Services about deficiencies in their inmate tracking system, but has yet to receive a response.

Blair acknowledges that “Correction Services Canada struggled to collect and then make available the information in a timely way.” The panel first alerted Blair to its issues obtaining data in mid-March, then filed an interim report, noting “this panel has not been allowed to do its work” on July 23, and filed its final report on Aug. 11.

It wasn’t until the details of the report were released by Vice on Aug. 26 that Blair’s office responded. The day after, Blair called Doob to discuss next steps.

Asked why he didn’t intervene sooner, Blair didn’t answer. “When it was brought to my attention, I immediately gave direction that the information was to be collected and made available to the panel,” he says.

Doob says that, even if Correctional Services produces the data, he’s not sure he’ll rejoin the panel. He wants assurances that he’ll be able to properly review the service’s practises, including on-the-ground access to the new cells. “I’ve heard zero from CSC,” he reports.

Zilla Jones, a Winnipeg-based lawyer and a fellow member of the panel, has clients who have been placed in the Structured Intervention Units at the Stony Mountain penitentiary in Manitoba. She says the upgrades to some of the cells have been limited to “cosmetic” changes, such as a new coat of paint and some posters.

In a series of court rulings declaring the old system unconstitutional, the courts of appeal in Ontario and British Columbia ruled that inmates must be given more than two hours outside their cell per day. As part of the new Structured Intervention Units, the Trudeau government vowed that 20 hours per day would be the maximum amount of time per day that inmates would be locked up.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Correctional Service Canada has locked some inmates—especially those who are awaiting tests for the virus, or who exhibit symptoms—in the Structured Intervention Units for upwards of 23 hours a day.

Blair disagrees that doing so has run afoul of the courts’ rulings. “That was not for the purposes of either administrative or disciplinary segregation,” he says. “It was medical isolation for those who were ill.”

Given that Correctional Services has not been collecting data on those put in these units, Doob and the panel have questioned if Ottawa even knows whether the new law is being followed.

Nevertheless, Blair is confident. “The law is explicit, in that it eliminates the administrative and disciplinary segregation in those institutions,” Blair says. “We have eliminated [solitary confinement].”

Source: Bill Blair orders prison data to be turned over, but does the data even exist?

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Health Minister orders review of pandemic warning system, concerns raised by scientists

2020/09/09 Leave a comment

Really hope the review will be truly independent, review all appropriate documentation, analysis and memos and identify what level and persons were responsible for the decision (i.e., was the decision made at the bureaucratic or political level):

Canada’s Health Minister has ordered an independent review of the country’s pandemic early warning system, after The Globe and Mail reported that the respected surveillance and research unit was silenced last year, several months before the COVID-19 outbreak hit.

Health Minister Patty Hajdu said the federal review will probe the shutdown of the system, as well as allegations from scientists inside the Public Health Agency of Canada that their voices were marginalized within the department, preventing key messages from making it up the chain of command.

“My hope is that we can get the review off the ground as soon as possible,” Ms. Hajdu said in an interview. “The independence of this review is critically important.”

A Globe investigation in late July detailed how the unit, known as the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN, was effectively silenced in May, 2019. The team of analysts – including doctors and epidemiologists specially trained to scour the world for health threats – were reassigned to other tasks within the government amid shifting department priorities.

Though GPHIN had garnered a stellar reputation internationally, and was dubbed a “cornerstone” of global pandemic preparedness by the World Health Organization, officials within Public Health decided in late 2018 and early 2019 that the operation was too internationally focused and could be put to better use working on domestic projects. The new work did not involve pandemic preparedness.

Those changes led to the shutdown of a special surveillance and alert system that helped Canada and the WHO gather intelligence on potentially threatening outbreaks, particularly in situations where foreign governments were trying to hide or play down the event.

Current and former scientists and doctors at Public Health also said they began to fear that their messages were not being heard, or understood, by layers of department officials who lacked a sufficient background in science. That made it difficult to convey urgent and complex information up the chain of command.

Responding to those concerns, Ms. Hajdu said her office has spent the past month looking into the problems at the departmental level, which led her to order the review.

“I’m concerned when there is an accusation that scientists are not being fully empowered, or in some way feel their voices are being blunted or muted,” Ms. Hajdu said in an interview.

“I can listen to those kinds of worries and do the kinds of things that I’m prepared to do, which is to order a review of the program and to determine whether or not the changes are actually resulting in the kind of information that Canada needs.”

Ms. Hajdu said she has asked that the review be done expeditiously, so that fixes can be identified and the recommendations implemented as soon as possible. She said that could mean having the recommendations back in six months.

“We’re working on [appointing] some professionals that would have the experience and the expertise to be able to do this review thoroughly, but also expeditiously … I don’t want this to be a two-year review,” the Health Minister said. The people leading the review are expected to be named in the coming weeks and will be independent of Public Health Canada.

Created as an experiment in the 1990s, GPHIN became a key part of Canada’s pandemic preparedness capacity after the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak, and was seen as a way to collect intelligence on global outbreaks. The point was not merely to identify the threat early, but also to monitor crucial developments and clues about the spread, often before official announcements were made by foreign governments, to speed up government decision-making.

With a team of roughly a dozen highly specialized analysts working in multiple languages, GPHIN was globally renowned for its ability to collect and disseminate credible information. It scoured more than 7,000 data points a day, including medical data, news reports, scraps of information on social media, and details on internet blogs to gather intelligence on outbreaks.

GPHIN had been credited with detecting some of the most important signals from the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico, outbreaks of Zika in West Africa, and a potentially catastrophic 2005 bird flu outbreak that the Iranian government tried to hide. As recently as two years ago, the WHO credited the Canadian unit for supplying 20 per cent of its “epidemiological intelligence.”

However, department changes effectively shuttered the operation, and limited the power of scientists inside the agency. The Globe obtained 10 years of internal GPHIN records which showed the system, which had issued more than 1,500 intelligence alerts about potential health threats over that time, went silent on May 24 last year. That coincided with a department edict that all such alerts had to be approved by senior managers inside Public Health. GPHIN analysts were shifted to domestic projects, such as tracking the effects of vaping in Canada, which effectively curtailed Canada’s surveillance of international health threats.

Past and present employees told The Globe that the system was designed to provide information to speed up Canada’s response to a dangerous outbreak such as COVID-19, including measures such as shutting down the border, quarantining travellers, enforcing physical distancing, and locking down long-term care homes.

“A lot of the work that we’ve done [over the past month] is to try to dig a little bit deeper into how this is working and why were these changes made,” Ms. Hajdu said.

GPHIN “has the potential to be a very valuable asset for Canada. It can’t be wasted,” the Health Minister said.

“The intent when there is an emerging pathogen is to close it off, to try and contain it as best as possible – at its source. So that you don’t end up in a pandemic like this again.”

The independent review follows a pair of other developments in recent weeks. Last month, the Auditor-General of Canada launched an investigation into the shutdown of the pandemic surveillance unit. And Public Health officials have restarted the GPHIN alert system.

COVID-19 has been a reckoning for governments around the world, exposing weaknesses in pandemic readiness and responsiveness. Ms. Hajdu said countries must now take stock of what needs to be done to implement stronger measures, including early warning and surveillance capacity, that will remain effective and not be eroded over time, when the memories of the crisis fade.

The federal review will look at “governance and what works best” for GPHIN, Ms. Hajdu said, adding that the messages raised by scientists inside Public Health, who took risks by speaking out publicly, resonated with her.

“In [The Globe’s] reporting, the plea from the scientists and the researchers that work in that team were particularly profound,” Ms. Hajdu said.

“There is still enough there to save, and to boost, and I think this independent review is going to be very helpful,” she said. “Obviously there is a lot of work to do.”

Source: Health Minister orders review of pandemic warning system, concerns raised by scientists

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UK: Culture wars now a proxy for political debate

2020/09/04 Leave a comment

UK perspective on culture wars and how they debase political debate and discussion:

Should those Shelbourne Hotel statues have remained in situ? Was Winston Churchill a great statesman or should he be viewed as a callous racist? Are the lyrics of Rule Britannia offensive or should Britons sing the patriotic number with pride? Are mandatory face masks a crude imposition on our basic civil liberties?

If you care about the answers to these questions you have – perhaps unwittingly – embroiled yourself in the latest instalment of the culture wars.

It seems nothing of late can escape our fervour for mud-slinging and social media spats over the cultural values we hold dear. Most recently the BBC has found itself at the epicentre of the tedious charade – with the broadcaster’s new director general, Tim Davie, reportedly believing the BBC’s comedy output is too one-sided and in need of a “radical overhaul”, thanks to its supposed left-wing slant (pray tell, what is a “right-wing joke”?).

For politicians, the answer to this question is an easy one

And only weeks earlier, when the BBC announced an orchestral-only version of Rule Britannia! would be played on the Last Night of the Proms, an almighty row was triggered over the propriety of the anthems lyrics (“Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” is the line that draws the most ire).

The BBC said the decision was due to the fact there will be no audience to sing along to the song (due to Covid-19 restrictions), while conflicting reports emerged that the conductor believed the lyrics to be inappropriate in view of Black Lives Matter protests.

In his first week on the job Davie reversed the decision and scrapped the orchestral-only version in favour of singers on the screen – in what has been gleefully described by right-wing pundit Dan Wootton as the “first major anti-woke move” by the new boss.

What is it with our inclination to reduce everything to a culture war? In the case of the Proms, what could have been a gentle dialogue about history, philosophy and patriotism is instead siphoned into a vituperative conflict between two groups: the anti-Woke brigade versus the enlightened progressives; the bleeding heart liberals versus the true patriots.

For politicians, the answer to this question is an easy one. The Proms was too good of a moment for Boris Johnson to pass up. Wading into the debate he said: “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions and about our culture, and we stopped this general bout of self-recrimination and wetness”.

As the culture wars emerge as a proxy for political debate, Johnson was smart to capitalise on the row. He could signal his political values, bolster his conservative credentials (credentials that, so far, have been lacking throughout his tenure), all the while avoiding substantive discussion on his patchy track record in government.

That the culture wars can provide a compelling distraction from the substance of politics might be true but there is something more sinister going on. Johnson’s political primacy may so far leave a lot to be desired, but this is a sacrifice his electorate ought to make (he might argue). Rule Britannia may just be a song, but what the row symbolised was something far greater. Patriotism, British values, a history to be proud of – these things require protecting at all costs, and Johnson is the only man who can do it. The deluge of policy failings that might come along with this brave stance will have to be tolerated for the greater good.

Way of life

If you were to ask Johnson why he was so keen to make his case on Rule Britannia he might reply: this is not just politics at stake, but our very way of life.

The Remainer vs Leaver divide, which emerged in a meaningful way in 2015, has consolidated this notion that our politics and our cultural values are inseparable.

“Remainer” emerges not just as a position you might hold on the function of the European Union to the British State, but as shorthand for the exact person you want to present as: liberal, urban, a champion of multiculturalism, you name it. No matter that this has eradicated vast swathes of nuance from the political landscape of the Brexit vote – nuance is the enemy of the culture warriors.

As the battleground before the electorate has becomes songs at the Proms, or the cultural capital you gain by being a Leaver or a Remainer, we are witnessing in real time cultural arguments overtaking economics and policy “as the driving force of our political debate” (as Helen Lewis put it two years ago in the Financial Times).

It is unedifying at best, dangerously and myopically divisive at worst. But it seems the nation’s favourite pastime is simply too tempting (for politicians, pundits and the electorate alike) to pass up.

Source: Culture wars now a proxy for political debate

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Software likely to blame for CSC’s ‘unfortunate’ failure to report solitary confinement data, says watchdog

2020/09/03 Leave a comment

Hard to understand why, if technical issues were the problem, why the radio silence to the independent panel. Hard to blame it only on incompetence. Look forward to an update by Paul Wells on his previous piece (Another farce on Bill Blair’s watch – Macleans.ca:

Technical issues and a new “Cadillac” software system to track inmates likely explains the Correctional Service of Canada’s failure to provide promised data to an independent panel monitoring the new system meant to end solitary confinement, says Canada’s prison watchdog.

The challenge rests primarily with a new tracking technology the Correctional Service of Canada picked that doesn’t yet blend with its existing “antiquated” software, though it was ultimately the right choice, said Correctional Investigator of Canada Ivan Zinger, echoing the CSC’s public defence after outcry last week over the panel’s term having ended without any work done.

In September, a volunteer panel was struck to track the prison system’s adoption of Structured Intervention Units (SIUs)—the Liberal government’s response to the court-mandated end to the use of administrative and disciplinary segregation in all federal correctional institutions. The legislation, Bill C-83, guaranteed prisoners a right to four hours daily outside of cells, and two hours of meaningful human contact. The United Nations defines solitary confinement as 22 or more hours a day in a cell without human contact, and 15 straight days in such conditions as torture.

A scathing report released Aug. 19 by the SIU Independent Advisory Panelwarned that the eight expert appointees were unable to complete any work.

“We cannot equate the fact that CSC cannot give the data with that there was no compliance or, or there was ill motive on the part of the service to provide the data,” said Mr. Zinger.

He said it’s often difficult to get information from the CSC, and it’s “very unfortunate” that was the experience of the panel, which he hoped could assure his office the service was living up to its promise. He remains concerned and critical of the “flawed” SIU model, which he said affects approximately 225 to 250 inmates and will likely face a court challenge, but his job is to ensure compliance with the law.

“CSC did the right thing initially, purchasing a computer system and software to ensure they could demonstrate compliance, they went for a Cadillac model,” he said, complete with cellphone technology and a remote keyless system at every cell door. “I think eventually it’ll be bulletproof.”

Nearing a year since the units came into use, panel members and critics argue the CSC should be able to prove compliance and report even basic data for the relatively small number of inmates, and say oversight is essential to ensure conditions the UN defines as torture aren’t occurring in Canada’s prisons. The CSC was not forthcoming throughout the now-shutteredpanel’s lifespan since launching in September 2019, said its chair Anthony Doob, a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of Toronto.

For example, the panel had expected its first data dump in February, with information like the average and shortest number of hours inmates were out of their cells, with updates every two months to determine improvements. By February, the CSC informed the panel that might not be coming. The panel in turn notified Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s (Scarborough Southwest, Ont.) office, but got no response, only to later get a “useless” batch of bad data, and then learn from the CSC that its information-management technology was out of date and it ultimately wouldn’t be sharing the requested information.

CSC spokesperson Marie-Pier Lécuyer said by email Sept. 1 that the CSC continues to “actively work” on the panel’s requests. She said the service has technology in place to track “what we set out to track,” but the two systems, one older and one launched for the SIUs, “limit the integration of the data, and we continue to work through this.”

Mr. Zinger said his office’s investigators have observed the system tracking data that he believes will eventually be available to the public—though he’s also not clear on when that CSC will have that capability, and neither the service nor the minister responsible, Mr. Blair, have committed to a timeframe.

Having the data in-hand is the only way Prof. Doob said he’ll be back on the job, pushing against Mr. Blair’s promise to renew the panel’s appointments so it can complete its work in the wake of the fallout.

Mr. Blair told The Hill Times by email he had spoken to Prof. Doob about the panel’s “serious concerns” and has asked his officials “to develop a work plan that will help ensure the panel gets all the information it needs to complete its work in a timely manner.”

That statement “was a little vague, to put it politely,” said panel member Ed McIsaac, who previously spent 18 years as executive director of the Correctional Investigator’s office.

There’s “no question” Mr. Blair shares some of the blame for the CSC’s failure to hand over data, said Mr. McIsaac. But while he was “terribly disappointed” the CSC failed to provide the needed data, he said he wasn’t surprised.

Panellist Alexander Simpson, chief of forensic psychiatry at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said he’s willing to come back because he believes the work is important, but the minister needs to provide public assurances that the issues will be addressed and make it “absolutely clear that the problem that we’ve encountered will not continue.”

The CSC also reiterated in its Sept. 1 statement that it gave the panel some data, an assertion Prof. Doob said is misleading when the agency months ago admitted the data it provided was essentially useless. It feeds into a feeling—shared by two other panelists The Hill Times spoke with—that they’ve been “jerked around,” he said.

“CSC has said a number of different contradictory things about the data and it’s unfortunate,” and the explanations don’t add up, he said. “We don’t have data… Nobody has any information about the way these units are actually operating. And we don’t even know when we’re going to get it.”

How CSC tracks compliance

Ms. Lécuyer stressed the SIUs have “not gone unchecked since their implementation,” as independent bodies were set up ahead of the new units, as required by the enacting legislation to work as oversight and accountability measures. One is a group of Independent External Decision Makers, who provide oversight related to an inmate’s conditions and duration of confinement in an SIU and review cases, she noted, and the correctional investigator also follows up on complaints.

Asked if it’s complying with the new laws surrounding the structured intervention units, Ms. Lécuyer said the service has “worked hard to implement the SIUs” which are a brand-new correctional model.

She pointed to more than 1,100 decisions and reviews completed by the Independent External Decision Makers, of which 75 per cent determined that the inmate should remain in an SIU. Of the IEDM reviews, less than 25 per cent led to recommendations that the CSC “take additional steps,” and less than 2.5 per cent resulted in an order to remove an inmate from the SIU.

As for how it records compliance, she said an application tracks several different data points, including every inmate who is transferred into and out of an SIU.

That application is loaded onto a guard’s handheld device so they track in real-time the number of hours an inmate spends out of their cell as well as their activities, such as participating in correctional programs, receiving interventions from parole officers or health services, or interacting with other inmates.

“Policy requires a daily review by a manager of all information that is logged in the application about an inmate’s daily time out of cell and their activities,” she said.

Record likely ‘abysmal’ amid COVID

If the data for the last six months had been turned over to the panel, Mr. Zinger said it would likely show failure to meet the requirements of the new law—at least four hours every day out of cell and “meaningful” human contact—a development he said is a separate, and troubling, matter tied to the pandemic.

“Since November [the CSC has] been struggling to train and comply, and they’ve put a lot of effort in place to get to a desirable level,” he said, and most prisons with SIUs were complying with the majority of their obligations.

“As soon as the pandemic hit, compliance went back to zero,” and by mid-March the SIU’s were on lockdown, said Mr. Zinger, whose office has made two COVID updates, the last in June, warning the new units had returned to their former function. “It was solitary confinement, [prisoners] were lucky to have an hour outside their cell, let alone the yards.”

The numbers will likely show implementing the SIUs, in part because of COVID-19, has been an “abysmal failure,” agreed Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada.

“I think it’s a rampant, flagrant violation of the law in terms of isolated confinement. They will try to justify this on the back of COVID,” she said, but “nothing, not even a pandemic justifies the wholesale violation of prisoner’s rights and that’s what we believe we’re seeing now.”

Many prisoner advocates were concerned the legislative regime the Liberals introduced was inadequate and lacked safeguards, said Ms. Latimer, and the government used the promise of an independent panel of respected people to allay those concerns.

She doesn’t accept the technology defence, saying it’s “absolutely essential” that data be provided to the advisory panel to verify and validate the extent to which the structured intervention units are following the law.

“If they’re not getting the data then we all need to be worried,” she said.

It leaves the public and prisoners in “a rather precarious situation,” agreed Mr. McIsaac, because if the CSC is proclaiming it’s running the units in compliance with the law, but there’s no data to support that, he’s not sure where to turn.

“I think there needs to be public concern expressed [and] perhaps a revisiting at the court level what is currently going on within these units,” he said.

If Prof. Doob doesn’t get the requested data and doesn’t return to the panel, Ms. Latimer said Canada likely needs a judicial review of isolated confinement at the CSC, and not just structured intervention units.

“We’ve just taken a giant step backwards and in a way that’s inconsistent with judicial rulings in Canada,” she said, calling the situation so serious that she considers Canada to be in the worst corrections crisis in the last 50 years.

“The challenge is that this is less visible to the public, and damage to individuals is less visible but  it is horrific.”

Source: https://www.hilltimes.com/2020/09/02/software-likely-to-blame-for-cscs-unfortunate-failure-to-report-solitary-confinement-data-says-watchdog/261887

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‘The Plot Against America’: A Dire Warning For Election Season

2020/09/03 Leave a comment

Having watched the series, agree:

The one problem with Philip Roth’s tour de force 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” is that it’s too feel-good.

I know this is a strange accusation to make about an alternative history about a fascist United States. In Roth’s version of the 1940 presidential election, Americans choose the Nazi-sympathizing aviator Charles Lindbergh, who goes on to institute insidious and then overt programs of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism. The nation is riven and people are killed.

But in the end, everything is set right. In 1942, Lindbergh goes missing while flying his airplane, a special election is called, and Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected against Lindbergh’s vice president, Burton K. Wheeler. The United States enters the war against the Axis, and history continues, more or less, on the track that we know.

It’s a sober, unsettling story, but it ends on a note of optimism in America’s ability to right itself — too easily, I would argue, given everything we saw before it.

Earlier this year, HBO aired “Plot” as a six-part series, adapted by David Simon, who is not known as one of TV’s great optimists. His best-known series, “The Wire,” was a five-season lament for American cities. His website is titled “The Audacity of Despair.”

Simon’s confident, chilling adaptation stuck largely to Roth’s story, with few changes. The biggest was to that ending, which he reimagined in ways that get more unsettling and relevant as our own election season goes on.

The final sequence begins on Election Day, 1942, which, because history has a sense of humor, was Nov. 3, just like this year’s. On the soundtrack, Frank Sinatra croons “The House I Live In (That’s America to Me).” Citizens line up in the Weequahic High School gym in Newark. They go into the booths and cast their ballots. The citizenry is turning out. America is showing its best side.

As Old Blue Eyes keeps singing (“A certain word / Democracy”), a few discordant notes begin to sound. A man with an F.D.R. pin is told he is “not on the list” at the precinct where he has voted for 20 years and is hustled out by police. More officers wheel away a voting machine, telling puzzled onlookers, “It’s broken.” In a country field, men open a car trunk, unload ballot boxes — marked with the number of an election district in which we just saw lines of Black voters — and burn the contents.

We cut to that evening, in the living room of the Levins, the Jewish family the story was told through. A host on the radio reports on the first returns from precincts on the East Coast. Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) — a mainstream F.D.R. supporter who believes the system is ultimately good and self-correcting — leans in toward the set. “We are seeing some conflicting results early on,” the announcer says.

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