Canada’s public health response to COVID-19 pandemic was slow getting off the ground, largely due to complacency and a focus on optics over substance on the part of federal bureaucrats, a health economist says. Livio Di Matteo, a professor of economics at Lakehead University, says Canada’s system developed to provide early warning of infectious disease outbreaks had been quietly deactivated prior to the pandemic. On top of that, stockpiles of protective equipment were allowed to decline, which led the country to be “not terribly well-prepared” when the pandemic struck. “Canada was hit by SARS circa 2004, along with a number of other countries. And in the wake of SARS, Canada was very concerned. They had numerous reports and studies and they began to take measures to deal with future pandemics, including stockpiling health supplies, etc.,” Di Matteo said in an interview. “But something seems to have happened between roughly 2007–2008 and …