Canadian Failures by Alex Benay

Author:Alex Benay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

“Shipping Issues” Are a Lame Excuse … When the FBI Calls

It wasn’t long before the location of the lab in Winnipeg delivered its first failure, necessitating a decision on my part to act quickly. With the decision having been made to locate the lab way outside of the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa corridor, and some distance from the smaller Atlantic provinces, and with the pride of Manitoba resting my shoulders, it was my job to prove the critics wrong.

“This is the FBI,” came the voice on my phone one Wednesday morning just a year after starting the job. My ever-present flip-phone lit up as I entered the NML via the rear carpark entry. A man with an American accent confirmed that I was “Dr. Plummer,” provided his credentials, and then let me know that the FBI had become aware, via back channels, that a suspicious white powder had been found in an envelope in a hospital in New Brunswick.

Alarming enough for those who received the envelope and opened it, the white substance evoked heightened concern for two reasons. The envelope had arrived in the mail from Chile — the source country of anthrax-laced mail that had been sent to the United States shortly after 9/11 — and it had been opened in a space that shared its heating and air conditioning system with the hospital’s intensive care unit and oncology ward. Exposure to patients in these wards, already in a weakened state, would certainly result in the loss of life if the substance entered the hospital’s ventilation system.

Once we confirmed the call, we contacted the public health authorities in New Brunswick. They went to work to courier a specimen of the powder to the NML, a trip that would take a few hours with Winnipeg more than two thousand kilometres away. Time passed quickly that day. By the end of the business day, the specimen had not arrived. Nor did it arrive by the end of the day on Friday — sixty hours later. The weekend was looming, and the specimen had not yet reached Winnipeg. “Shipping issues” was the reason given to me for the delay.

With political pressure for answers mounting, “shipping issues” was a pretty lame response, and not something I was willing to communicate to Ottawa regarding what was potentially a national crisis, and before I had taken action to correct the situation. Managing panic at higher levels is one of the key jobs of the head of lab during a public health crisis.

With my head on the political chopping block, and the pride of the province resting squarely on my shoulders, the adage “it is easier to ask forgiveness than to beg for permission” guided what I did next. In fact, it became a necessary part of the job. With lives on the line, the “Oh shit!” moments of my job require that I gather the facts as quickly as possible and use my judgment to direct the necessary action as soon as “the call” arrives at the lab.

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