Download This PaperCoronavirus Emergency Response: Risk Assessment and Risk Management
Toronto Law Journal, Forthcoming
13 Pages Posted: 13 Apr 2020
Date Written: April 12, 2020
Abstract
Governments, corporations and organizations must implement risk assessment and risk management policies to combat coronavirus in the short term, but also in the long term. Risk assessment will produce two potentially competing calculations:
(1) Risk to health and safety from the virus; and
(2) Risk to the economy from the cancellation of events, remote work, and impacts on the stock market and banking.
This is where the problem starts. In the early stages, governments and organizations will identify risks to both health and the economy, but may lack direction on how to prioritize these two sectors. This article argues that risk to health must take priority over risk to the economy for legal and philosophical reasons.
First, section 217.1 of the Canadian Criminal Code requires that organizations take reasonable steps to prevent harm to workers and consumers arising from work.
Secondly, applying the work of John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, from behind the veil of ignorance it can be asked what rules would you choose, not knowing whether or not you might fall into the class of persons more vulnerable to suffer serious consequences or even death from coronavirus? The first rule that you would choose is that regulatory measures must promote human health and safety as a first priority. Applied to industries such as telecommunications, government regulation should ensure that there is the equivalent of an “emergency lane” on broadband networks, for health, safety and security-related traffic; Government policy should attract investment in the market that will maintain and enhance the infrastructure for the “emergency lane” in the future. Social and economic inequalities in any “pay for priority” internet fast lanes are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.
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