My question - and it is a serious one - is simply this:

 

If each Province had such a detailed plan in place - the EMO as outlined by the most credentialled gentleman - why was such an eminently suitable such protocol (set of protocols) not followed? 

 

Why too were the various people in the chains of command not speaking of such matters at the time - and why is it only now - some three years hence that anyone is really speaking up? 

 

The assumption that would have prevailed at the time was that Governments were doing two things at the time.  The First - acting out of panic because there were no such plans or protocols in place and so the actions were being made up on the fly. Or two that there might have been some plans - but that they simply failed to apply to the situation as it unfolded?

 

The learned Gentleman assures us that perfectly suitable plans were in place and had always been in place. He also assures the gathered audience that many things were known with a certainty at the time - things that at the time were not actually known with any certainty... Which is it?

 

Hindsight is always perfect. 

 

But truly I have questions. Why did every Premier in every Province abandon such eminently sensible protocols and practices if such plans and protocols and expertise hierarchies were in place at the time and well oiled and well prepared?

 

Why did no one with the authority to say so say anything at the time?

 

How is that there can be so much blame put on the Federal Government for something that should have been tackled responsibly at the Provincial Premier level? Did we manage to elect idiots and incompetents into all of the Canadian Provinces and Territories at one and the same time - and was there somehow some collusion amongst the leaders of all the free western Democratic Nations at the same time such that they all abandoned well established and thoroughly researched and well oiled protocols and practices at one and the same time?

 

Or is it that there was never such a well oiled machinery in place at all? Which illusion is the right one?

 

But still - where were the voices at the time - why were they (if present) muted? And if muted - what does that say about the character of those who remained silent - and of those who lead the seemingly incompetent responses?

 

There are many issues at fault here - the biggest one seeming to be abject cowardice by so many in the face of intimidation and fear of loss of a job by standing up to idiocy?

 

Either facts were known at the time - or they were not. Which really is it and which is simply a projection of certainty from the present back into an uncertainty that existed in the past?

 

GS (Just musing out loud here?)