Trudeau’s top doctor finally admits government waited too long to close borders

Tam said that borders should have been closed to foreigners earlier, adding that the government acted slowly.

"I think that in hindsight, yes, I think people could act faster and maybe in the future we will take different decisions."

The Trudeau government did not ban foreign travel until March 18, a full week after the WHO declared a global pandemic.

The border to the US was closed on March 21, and now remains closed through June 21.

"The virus itself traveled across the world very fast," said Tam. "At that time, because there were very few cases, we were doing incremental measures."

"In retrospect and maybe looking forward, the world might be a very different place in terms of whether this kind of measure is enacted... So, we will learn."

Tam had said in the past that border closures were not a particularly effective way to curve the pandemic, saying that "the virus 'had already travelled somewhere else."

"At the same time, I think there were countries that did more," Tam added.

"And in the end it wasn't that effective, if you actually think about the countries in the end that were impacted, because I think from a public health perspective we always knew that the border was just one layer of additional measure."

Health Minister Patty Hajdu also called border closures ineffective, stating on February 17: The long-term implication of shutting down borders is, one, they’re not very effective in controlling disease... In fact they’re not effective at all.”