As we look down the barrel of a COVID-19 winter, many of us would rather skip ahead to summer and what will hopefully be a (generally) vaccinated populace. Now facing the effects travel during the Thanksgiving holiday, many areas in the US are buckling under increased outbreaks on top of already staggering case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths. How have we not learned the lessons of the spring’s first wave?

This month we sat down with the editors of Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19, a volume rapidly assembled this past spring that covers Canada’s response to the pandemic as well as zooming out for a global perspective. Our first two episodes of the series are with Colleen Flood and Vanessa MacDonnell, both of the University of Ottawa, who looked at the nuances of Canadian federalism, accountability, and civil liberties in the face of COVID-19.

This first episode dives into the history of Canada’s Emergencies Act, and how it complicates the possibility of a united, national response to public health crises. Colleen and Vanessa also discuss the transparency needed in order to gain compliance over mask or travel mandates, and the positives and negatives of Canada’s swift—though closed-door—federal action taken in the early days of the pandemic.