Commentary — Why Canada Needs a “Deep Prevention” Approach to Pandemic Preparedness

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Published on July 11, 2025

A shift from a reactive to proactive approach to address health risks on the horizon is imperative, argue researchers from York University’s Faculty of Health.

Published in Policy Options, the commentary examines Canadian governance capacity to prepare for and respond to health emergencies following the COVID-19 pandemic, given rising cases of avian influenza H5N1.

Research assistant Ryan Gray, post-doctoral fellow Raphael Aguiar, and Interim Director Professor Mary Wiktorowicz from the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research re-envision Canada’s reactive approach to health emergencies.

“The Canadian Government places itself on the defensive by focusing most of its effort on bolstering Canadian capacity to develop vaccines, personal protective equipment, and other medical countermeasures domestically” says Gray. “The Canadian Government now has the opportunity to place itself on the offensive by investing in preventing emerging diseases and strengthening population resilience and resistance against these threats”.

The authors caution that reactive approaches accept some level of risk and vulnerability that is partly avoidable and reduce our latitude to maneuver during the onset of emergencies, locking in a reactive approach.

“The limitations of a reactive approach may be seen through the curtailment just months before COVID-19 emerged of the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, which monitors global developments with the potential to create disease outbreaks” the commentary states. “Canada might have experienced less morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 if the network’s surveillance, early warning and response capacities had been maintained and leveraged instead.”

The authors argue that innovative governance is needed to shift to proactive approaches that aim to prevent zoonotic pathogens spilling over from animals to humans as the source of recent pandemics.

The authors recommend the creation of a One Health branch within Health Emergency Readiness Canada staffed “on loan” with representatives from other federal government departments and agencies.

This arrangement would enable public servants “to contribute to the new branch while staying in their home departments their remaining time – reporting vertically to their respective ministers as well as horizontally to the new branch,” the commentary states.

“Addressing zoonotic spillover and other health threats requires rethinking governance mechanisms that move beyond reactive approaches, towards shared governance that is transformative and reimagines the conditions under which One Health is possible,” says Aguiar. The researchers note that other emerging infectious diseases, including Antimicrobial resistance, face similar issues in policymaking and implementation and would benefit from better coordinated governance.

“Just as SARS led the Public Health Agency of Canada to be to established, SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) could hasten the shared governance approach imperative to effectively prevent and mitigate risks on the horizon including the silent pandemic of microbes resistant to antibiotics,” emphasizes Wiktorowicz.

Read the commentary “Why Canada needs a “deep prevention” approach to pandemic preparedness”.

Gray, Ryan, Aguiar, Raphael, & Wiktorowicz, Mary. (2025, July 7). Why Canada needs a “deep prevention” approach to pandemic preparedness. Policy Options. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/juillet-2025/pandemic-preparedness-canada/

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