From the Brownstone Institute

By Bruce Pardy 

Canadians shouldn’t have information about their wayward MPs, but the RCMP can’t have too much biometric information about regular people. It’s always a good time for a little fishing. Let’s run those prints, shall we?

Forget the members of Parliament who may have colluded with foreign governments. The real menace, the RCMP seem to think, are House of Commons pages. MPs suspected of foreign election interference should not be identified, the Mounties have insisted, but House of Commons staff must be fingerprinted. Serious threats to the country are hidden away, while innocent people are subjected to state surveillance. If you want to see how the managerial state (dys)functions, Canada is the place to be.

In June, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) tabled its redacted report that suggested at least 11 sitting MPs may have benefitted from foreign election interference. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme cautioned against releasing their identities. Canadians remained in the dark until Oct. 28 when Kevin Vuong, a former Liberal MP now sitting as an Independent, hosted a news conference to suggest who some of the parliamentarians may be. Like the RCMP, most of the country’s media didn’t seem interested.

But the RCMP are very interested in certain other things. For years, they have pushed for the federal civil service to be fingerprinted. Not just high security clearance for top-secret stuff, but across government departments. The Treasury Board adopted the standard in 2014 and the House of Commons currently requires fingerprinting for staff hired since 2017. The Senate implemented fingerprinting this year. The RCMP have claimed that the old policy of doing criminal background checks by name is obsolete and too expensive.

But stated rationales are rarely the real ones. Name-based background checks are not obsolete or expensive. Numerous police departments continue to use them. They do so, in part, because name checks do not compromise biometric privacy. Fingerprints are a form of biometric data, as unique as your DNA. Under the federal Identification of Criminals Act, you must be in custody and charged with a serious offence before law enforcement can take your prints. Canadians shouldn’t have information about their wayward MPs, but the RCMP can’t have too much biometric information about regular people. It’s always a good time for a little fishing. Let’s run those prints, shall we?

It’s designed to seem like a small deal. If House of Commons staff must give their fingerprints, that’s just a requirement of the job. Managerial bureaucracies prefer not to coerce directly but to create requirements that are “choices.” Fingerprints aren’t mandatory. You can choose to provide them or choose not to work on the Hill.

Sound familiar? That’s the way Covid vaccine mandates worked too. Vaccines were never mandatory. There were no fines or prison terms. But the alternative was to lose your job, social life, or ability to visit a dying parent. When the state controls everything, it doesn’t always need to dictate. Instead, it provides unpalatable choices and raises the stakes so that people choose correctly.

Government intrudes incrementally. Digital ID, for instance, will be offered as a convenient choice. You can, if you wish, carry your papers in the form of a QR code on your phone. Voluntary, of course. But later there will be extra hoops to jump through to apply for a driver’s licence or health card in the old form.

Eventually, analogue ID will cost more, because, after all, digital ID is more automated and cheaper to run. Some outlets will not recognize plastic identification. Eventually, the government will offer only digital ID. The old way will be discarded as antiquated and too expensive to maintain. The new regime will provide the capacity to keep tabs on people like never before. Privacy will be compromised without debate. The bureaucracy will change the landscape in the guise of practicality, convenience, and cost.

Each new round of procedures and requirements is only slightly more invasive than the last. But turn around and find you have travelled a long way from where you began. Eventually, people will need digital ID, fingerprints, DNA, vaccine records, and social credit scores to be employed. It’s not coercive, just required for the job.

Occasionally the curtain is pulled back. The federal government unleashed the Emergencies Act on the truckers and their supporters in February 2022. Jackboots in riot gear took down peaceful protesters for objecting to government policy. Authorities revealed their contempt for law-abiding but argumentative citizens. For an honest moment, the government was not incremental and insidious, but enraged and direct. When they come after you in the streets with batons, at least you can see what’s happening.

We still don’t know who colluded with China. But we can be confident that House of Commons staffers aren’t wanted for murder. The RCMP has fingerprints to prove it. Controlling the people and shielding the powerful are mandates of the modern managerial state.

Republished from the Epoch Times

From the Brownstone Institute

By David Bell, Ramesh Thakur  

If we were designing a new WHO now, no sane model would base its funding and direction primarily on the interests and advice of those who profit from illness. Rather, these would be based on accurate estimates of localized risks of the big killer diseases. The WHO was once independent of private interests, mostly core-funded, and able to set rational priorities. That WHO is gone.

The WHO was originally intended primarily to transfer capacity to struggling states emerging from colonialism and address their higher burdens of disease but lower administrative and financial capabilities. This prioritized fundamentals like sanitation, good nutrition, and competent health services that had brought long life to people in wealthier countries. Its focus now is more on stocking shelves with manufactured commodities. Its budget, staffing, and remit expand as actual country need and infectious disease mortality decline over the years.

While major gaps in underlying health equality remain, and were recently exacerbated by the WHO’s Covid-19 policies, the world is a very different place from 1948 when it was formed. Rather than acknowledging progress, however, we are told we are simply in an ‘inter-pandemic period,’ and the WHO and its partners should be given ever more responsibility and resources to save us from the next hypothetical outbreak (like Disease-X). Increasingly dependent on ‘specified’ funding from national and private interests heavily invested in profitable biotech fixes rather than the underlying drivers of good health,  the WHO looks more and more like other public-private partnerships that channel taxpayer money to the priorities of private industry.

Pandemics happen, but a proven natural one of major impact on life expectancy has not happened since pre-antibiotic era Spanish flu over a hundred years ago. We all understand that better nutrition, sewers, potable water, living conditions, antibiotics, and modern medicines protect us, yet we are told to be ever more fearful of the next outbreak. Covid happened, but it overwhelmingly affected the elderly in Europe and the Americas. Moreover, it looks, as the US government now makes clear, almost certainly a laboratory mistake by the very pandemic industry that is promoting the WHO’s new approach.

Collaborating on health internationally remains popular, as it should be in a heavily interdependent world. It also makes sense to prepare for severe rare events – most of us buy insurance. But we don’t exaggerate flood risk in order to expand the flood insurance industry, as anything we spend is money taken from our other needs.

Public health is no different. If we were designing a new WHO now, no sane model would base its funding and direction primarily on the interests and advice of those who profit from illness. Rather, these would be based on accurate estimates of localized risks of the big killer diseases. The WHO was once independent of private interests, mostly core-funded, and able to set rational priorities. That WHO is gone.

Over the past 80 years, the world has also changed. It makes no sense now to base thousands of health staff in one of the world’s most expensive (and healthiest!) cities, and it makes no sense in a technologically advancing world to keep centralizing control there. The WHO was structured in a time when most mail still went by steamship. It stands increasingly as an anomaly to its mission and to the world in which it works. Would a network of regional bodies tied to their local context not be more responsive and effective than a distant, disconnected, and centralized bureaucracy of thousands?

Amidst the broader turmoil roiling the post-1945 international liberal order, the recent US notice of withdrawal from the WHO presents a unique opportunity to rethink the type of international health institution the world needs, how that should operate, where, for what purpose, and for how long.

What should be the use-by date of an international institution? In the WHO’s case, either health is getting better as countries build capacity and it should be downsizing. Or health is getting worse, in which case the model has failed and we need something more fit for purpose.

The Trump administration’s actions are an opportunity to rebase international health cooperation on widely recognized standards of ethics and human rights. Countries and populations should be back in control, and those seeking profit from illness should have no role in decision-making. The WHO, at nearly 80 years old, comes from a bygone era, and is increasingly estranged from its world. We can do better. Fundamental change in the way we manage international health cooperation will be painful but ultimately healthy.

Authors

David Bell

David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. David is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.

Ramesh Thakur

Ramesh Thakur, a Brownstone Institute Senior Scholar, is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.