natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and hurricanes reveal the little-noticed cracks in our physical infrastructure as buildings, highways, dams and other structures fail under the extraordinary stress .
similarly, the stresses of the coronavirus have revealed little-noticed cracks in our public health, social and community infrastructure that has suffered from under-investment .
public health agencies in many parts of canada have struggled to provide basic pandemic-related services such as testing. across canada, we don’t count covid-19 cases and deaths consistently , and we still lack strong testing and tracing programs necessary to reopen in a safe manner.
social support programs — such as employment insurance and social assistance — are outdated and unsuitable for providing support for laid-off workers in our modern gig economy. the result has been numerous temporary emergency programs .
under-funding combined with weak and unenforced regulation of long-term care for our elderly has caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths.
health and safety protocols have failed to protect workers in many sectors, meat-packing in particular . our ability to protect vulnerable women and children experiencing intimate-partner violence has faltered just when that protection is most needed . the list could go on.
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why have we failed as a society to invest in this crucial infrastructure? human nature is partly to blame. in the competition for scarce public resources, investments in infrastructure for prevention and early intervention lose out to the demands of immediate, identifiable crises . change is also hard. inertia causes programs to stagnate in the face of the ever evolving health, social and economic problems they are meant to address.
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and on government financial statements, the completed bridge increases the value of government assets. the infrastructure to deliver a vaccination program, however, is not recorded anywhere. all these factors create a bias against investment in intangible social infrastructure .
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new zealand’s wellbeing budget and reporting process offers a useful example.
it’s time for canada to do the same.