This Report draws attention to 2020-22 excess deaths in Canada and suggests that these have been caused by the indirect impacts of Canadian government Covid lockdown policies. This Report concludes that any evaluation of the success of Canadian governments’ responses to the Covid pandemic must also thoroughly consider the harms caused by those responses.
Canadian governments, media organizations, and medical associations are now assessing the success of the Canadian response to the Covid pandemic. High vaccination rates, high public compliance rates, and low Covid mortality rates are often cited as reasons to assume that Canada’s response to the pandemic has been successful. Further, this narrative of success is often cited as a model for future policy responses (e.g., additional lockdowns and vaccination mandates) to the developing Covid pandemic. In this Report, we challenge this narrative, showing instead that any assessment of the success of the Canadian response must include reference to the excess deaths caused by (what appear to be) the most stringent and sustained lockdown policies in the world.