Jarnhamar said:
That was my take on it too. Brihard has a good point about the FVEY but does the the warning from our own CAF to the government fall under FVEY stuff?
She answered but didn't answer. Theatrics for sure. I think that's my first time seeing Freeland live. She kinda seemed likeable and down to earth there.
With the government handing out money I suspect people care even less about how preventable this was or how unprepared we were.
Generally speaking, when a FVEY partner nation develops intel, they'll decide how it's to be shared. It might be kept for their country's eyes only; it might be shared only with select partners, it might be authorized for dissemination to all of FVEY. They maymaintain 'originator control' on dissemination, e.g. if yous intelligence service wants to use the data for any purposes other than just gaining intel, they may need to seek permission because use of that intel could potentially reveal sources and methods.
So - and this is me speaking purely hypothetically - lets say the US had some good HUMINT or SIGNINT from China that gave some better indicators of how bad the situation actually is. That might be shared as TS//compartmentalized//FVEY material, and get kicked over to the appropriate medical intelligence group within CAF to assess. They could potentially assess that, request permission to disseminate, get limited permission to disclose to government, generate vetted int reports, and brief them up either at the same classification level or in a redacted form that reduces the classification of the material as a whole- but you're still talking classified stuff. That could well makes its way into departmental or cabinet briefings. Who's to say how much of it ultimately came across once the nature of sources and methods were concealed? Further to same, would it have come across as 'there are credible indicators of significant underreporting of total cases and fatalities', or 'sources indicate there were in fact approx 473,000 cases and 20,000 deaths in Hubei province'? We're obviously not in a position to know the level of detail, and consequently what could have been done with it. We can't know if the information coming out was sufficiently technical as to meaningfully inform efforts here.
So yeah, all said and done, we'll learn more in time about what was known when... But it won't be in question period, not if it deals with classified int.
And, of course, regardless of what we knew, we could not have prevented our own citizens or permanent residents from reentering the country. Given how utterly ineffective the flight bans from China ultimately ended up being in the US, I'm not going to slam our government for not doing something like that.
