"Unforeseeable" things that were entirely predictable: 2022 Canadian Edition

Most people saw these things coming - so why did they happen?

Open any news site this week, and you're bound to come across at least one year-in-review column that describes one or more of the year's major events as something that "no one could have foreseen." 

But most of these so-called unpredictable events were entirely predictable. 

So let's flip the script. This year-in-review piece outlines the most egregious use of spinning "no one could have seen it coming" to justify horrendous responses to various Canadian crises in 2022.

Next week, I will post a few of the top entirely foreseeable but utterly-ignored concerns that could create significant problems in 2023 and beyond.

Without further adieu, here are the major Canadian events in 2022 that have been spun as unforeseeable but were anything but:

1.) The Roger's network outage

In July 2022, over 12 million Canadians found themselves without a connection to the internet for nearly 24 hours due to a massive outage of Roger's telecommunications network. The outage impacted emergency services operations, dozens of industries, shutdown digital payment services, and more. One analyst conservatively estimated the cost to the Canadian economy at $150M.

Rogers tried to spin the event as a one-off, unpredictable event. The problem with this take was that Roger's had experienced major outages in the past but never faced significant reprisal or restructuring of the government-mandated telecommunications oligopoly in which it operates.

Spinning a massive service outage that brought the entire country to its knees as something unforeseeable ignores the fact that Canada's telecommunications services are provided by a limited number of corporations that control the non-market-based regulatory environment that allows them to provide shoddy service at some of the highest prices in the world. Moreover, it ignores the fact that the aggressiveness and pervasiveness of the Canadian telecommunications lobby makes the American gun, carbon energy, and defense lobbies look like amateur-hour outfits by comparison. And it ignores that these telecommunication corporations control legacy media outfits that conveniently avoid reporting these facts.

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 10/10

2.) Children's Tylenol shortage

After three calendar years that saw at least some form of pandemic restrictions and mandates on school children, fall 2022 saw children freely co-mingle. The resulting spike in outbreaks of severe viruses like RSV pushed demand for pediatric pain relievers and fever reducers. Shelves were stripped bare, and they stayed that way.

After watching Canada fail to produce and procure medical-grade personal protective equipment and vaccines during 2020, it should have been no shock that there could be a shortage of medications during an entirely predictable wave of children's respiratory illnesses. Yet, even so, the prevailing political narrative tried to explain these things away as either misinformation or one-off, unforeseeable events.

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 11/10

3.) The trucker convoy

City of Ottawa police, the RCMP, and the federal government expressed shock and surprise when protestors gridlocked the downtown core of Canada's capital city and illegally blockaded major border crossings in January and February 2022. 

They expressed this sentiment after they watched the following:

• The 2019 United We Roll convoy gridlock Ottawa for days;

• an acrimonious 2021 general election descend into name calling and campaign violence over the issue of vaccine mandates;

• many Canadians grow angry over seemingly endless pandemic restrictions;

• the government persist in enforcing said restrictions long beyond their utility; and

• social media provide a platform to unite those angry at the government over these issues.

That the federal government and law enforcement agencies were incapable of resolving the illegal blockades in short order can be attributed to many things, but unforeseeability is not one of them.

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 14/10

4.) System-wide, ongoing travel failures

In 2022, Canadian airports and airlines were among the worst for delays, cancellations, chaos, and long waits at security and customs counters.

While the government has tried to downplay the chaos at Canada's airports and the impotence of Canadian airlines as a pandemic hangover, Canadian airports and airlines were poor performers long before the pandemic restrictions were a thing. A usually slow-to-act government even went as far as putting forward legislation designed to provide rights to air travelers before March 2020 (the application of this legislation was since watered down). 

Suggesting that the systemic failure of Canadian airport (and rail) systems are a one-off, unforeseeable thing ignores operational problems that predate COVID. This approach also overlooks the staff that airlines, airports, and airport security and border services agencies lost during the pandemic that have yet to be replaced. They also ignore a foreseeable post-pandemic restriction spike in demand for air travel and winter in Canada.

(Honourable mention as an addendum to foreseeable air travel woes - in 2022 many Canadians couldn’t get a passport due to system wide government failures.)

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 19/10

5.) Critical failure of Canada's urgent care system

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, public health officials across Canada enacted lockdown measures to "bend the curve" of COVID infection in a bid to prevent Canadian emergency rooms from being in situations seen in China, Italy, and the United States in the early days of the COVID pandemic.

Rather than the initial two weeks suggested by health officials in March 2020, school, business, and restaurant closures and travel restrictions persisted into 2022, long after government reports suggested they were no longer sustainable or necessary. Despite all this time, governments did not make enough systemic changes to prevent emergency rooms from being completely overrun during the past few months as people interacted with each other and contracted respiratory illnesses en masse.

Chronic staffing shortages, a broken medical credentialing system, lack of diagnostic imaging equipment, system inefficiencies, antiquated data management and billing systems, and lack of interoperability between and resources for medical professionals were all acute problems before the pandemic. Pandemic preparedness planning in Canada before COVID often highlighted these issues.

To suggest the strain that COVID and COVID restrictions put on the Canadian healthcare system was unforeseeable is uber negligent.

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 21/10

6.) Rampant inflation

The Bank of Canada based its monetary policy at the start of 2022 on a 2% forecast for inflation. It ended up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%.

Throughout 2022, defenders of this giant cock-up tried to suggest there was no way the Bank of Canada could have predicted that sizable delta between forecast and actual results.

In 2021, while the Canadian government was busy dumping large amounts of borrowed cash directly into the hands of consumers for a period that extended well beyond the first year of the pandemic, one of the country's most significant sources of imported goods (China) had most of its workforce under strict lockdown restrictions. Those conditions also affected global transportation networks. It doesn't take genius-level mastery of economics to grasp that when a bunch of money is pumped into an economy but the supply of goods doesn't increase, inflation happens. However, it was in the government's best political interest to try to deflect attention to this issue.

There are political and social advantages in Canada for someone in Macklem's role to set monetary policy that enables a far-left populist approach to government spending. It would have taken a lot of courage to go against the narrative set by the Liberal government that massive deficit stimulus spending was both necessary and without major consequence and preside over a much different forecast at the end of 2021. 

Macklem chose not to.

Entirely predictable but spun as unpredictable fail rating: 27/10