Juno News - Canada needed to reopen yesterday

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.540 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.480 Coming up, some places around the world are lifting restrictions, but Canada is doubling down.

00:00:17.580 Is this what Canadians want?

00:00:19.380 Plus a new alternative to the science tables that have been imposing these restrictions.

00:00:25.840 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:36.240 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:38.620 It is Thursday, January 20th, 2022.

00:00:42.620 Good to have you aboard.

00:00:43.680 We're going to be talking later on with Irvin Student, who's basically launched,

00:00:48.580 it's kind of an interesting initiative, a private sector science committee.

00:00:54.000 So you know all these science tables and science advisory boards

00:00:57.120 the governments are relying on to impose mask mandates, further lockdowns, vaccine passports.

00:01:02.640 He's launched one outside of the government, and he's assembled real bona fide scientists,

00:01:08.760 doctors, public policy experts, and he's basically running a shadow science table.

00:01:14.240 And unlike the real science tables that work for governments,

00:01:17.300 he's actually got a way on his committee to get out of the pandemic.

00:01:20.680 So we're going to be talking to Irvin Student about that later on in the program.

00:01:24.500 But first, I want to take a little look around the world at where things are with some of the

00:01:28.760 restrictions, because you'll have no doubt been aware by now, if you've listened to this show

00:01:32.900 over the last few weeks, I've been covering all of these different countries, all these places

00:01:36.640 that are moving forward with vaccine mandates.

00:01:39.420 It started with Turkmenistan back in the summer.

00:01:42.080 Then in November, December, we saw Austria.

00:01:45.280 And then there was just a wave of countries like Greece and the Czech Republic and Italy

00:01:49.660 and Germany was mulling one.

00:01:51.940 Countries that started to impose a range of measures, and Quebec, by the way,

00:01:55.780 that would in some way penalize or target the unvaccinated beyond just saying you can't go to a

00:02:01.340 restaurant, but actually with a financial penalty or worse.

00:02:06.080 Well, there's a little bit of good news on the horizon here,

00:02:08.400 because the Czech Republic has now walked that back.

00:02:11.460 So under the previous plan, the Czech Republic was going to find, I forget the exact amount,

00:02:16.360 but they were going to find people who were police officers, firefighters, medical students,

00:02:21.340 and healthcare workers, as well as anyone over 60, if they did not get vaccinated.

00:02:26.540 But a new government has come in, a new government has come in, and this new government is saying,

00:02:32.220 you know what, we are not at all going to do that.

00:02:34.640 They've said that COVID vaccination will not be mandatory.

00:02:38.660 So this is actually an incoming government, and it's a coalition, so like anywhere in Europe,

00:02:43.180 there are a number of parties represented here, but they looked at the landscape,

00:02:46.720 they saw that it was creating deep division in society, and they also realized that pretty much

00:02:52.500 90% of the people that would have been covered by the mandates have already gotten vaccinated.

00:02:58.180 So if the point is just to get that number up to a very, very high level, they've already got that,

00:03:03.120 as does Ontario, as does Quebec, as does Canada at large, and other places that are putting these

00:03:08.140 measures forward. And the government is not just saying it's no longer medically necessary,

00:03:12.360 they're very aware of the social aspect of this. The government said they're trying to avoid

00:03:18.340 the deepening fissures in society. So good on the Czech Republic, perhaps other places around 0.79

00:03:23.920 the world will look at that and learn from that. We also have in the UK all COVID restrictions,

00:03:29.400 are virtually all COVID restrictions about to lift. Prime Minister Boris Johnson made the

00:03:34.100 announcement yesterday in the House of Commons. Take a look at this clip.

00:03:38.320 This morning, the cabinet concluded that because of the extraordinary booster campaign,

00:03:42.520 together with the way the public have responded to the Plan B measures,

00:03:45.920 we can return to Plan A in England and allow Plan B regulations to expire.

00:03:51.680 As a result, from the start of Thursday next week, mandatory certification will end.

00:04:00.300 Organisations can, of course, choose to use the NHS COVID pass voluntarily, but we will end the

00:04:05.860 compulsory use of COVID status certification in England. From now on, the government is no longer

00:04:11.500 asking people to work from home. People should now speak to their employers about arrangements

00:04:17.360 for returning to the office. Having looked at the data carefully, the cabinet concluded that once

00:04:24.920 regulations lapse, the government will no longer mandate the wearing of face masks anyway.

00:04:32.740 Mr Speaker, from tomorrow, we will no longer require face masks in classrooms and the Department for

00:04:55.600 Education will shortly remove national guidance on their use in communal areas. In the country at large,

00:05:02.280 we will continue to suggest the use of face coverings in enclosed or crowded spaces, particularly

00:05:07.240 when you come into contact with people you don't normally meet. But we will trust the judgment of

00:05:13.140 the British people and no longer criminalise anyone who chooses not to wear one. The government will

00:05:20.240 also ease restrictions further on visits to care homes. And my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State

00:05:25.920 for Health and Social Care, will set out plans in the coming days.

00:05:30.540 Now, while I'm happy that the restrictions are being lifted, I'm going to give it two thumbs down for one

00:05:37.260 major reason. I was watching that and you see behind Prime Minister Johnson, who I actually met in Israel some

00:05:43.640 years back. And that's not relevant to the story. It's just a fun fact. I was wandering around in Jerusalem and

00:05:49.880 ran into Boris. Yeah, there's the photo of me with Boris Johnson in Jerusalem. And my colleague Candace Malcolm was

00:05:56.280 also on that trip to Israel. There were a lot of journalists there. And she and I, she got her picture

00:06:01.560 as well. I don't have a copy of that one to show you. But it was a fun trip. But anyway, Boris Johnson, I don't

00:06:07.020 even know why I went down that road. It's like not even a name drop because like everyone hates Boris Johnson

00:06:11.180 now. But in any case, Boris Johnson announced this. And as you see behind him, all of the masked members

00:06:18.000 of Parliament. And I was expecting because this is what you do. I mean, this is like if this were

00:06:22.980 Donald Trump, this is what would happen. All of these people are talking. He says we're going to

00:06:27.040 lift the restrictions. England is a free country again. And then everyone just rips the masks off

00:06:32.120 at once, throws them on the ground or makes it like a graduation ceremony, you know, where they

00:06:36.080 they throw the hats up. Everyone just throws their masks up or something. That's what they should have

00:06:40.800 done. If they were going to commit to it, they should have had just everyone rip them off and say,

00:06:44.740 you know, I hereby declare Britain is open. But that didn't happen. Of course, it was a bit

00:06:50.720 lackluster. It's well, they're set to open where we're making changes. I can't help but suspect a

00:06:56.400 big part of this is Boris Johnson trying to deflect from the ongoing challenges against his leadership

00:07:02.180 right now. Because here's a guy who was party. He was I mean, he was like all the other politicians

00:07:07.060 in Canada and the US. He was partying it up at Downing Street while everyone else was locked down,

00:07:12.320 which is why people are calling for his resignation. So now he's just throwing, you know,

00:07:17.140 the peasants a few breadcrumbs saying, okay, fine, reopening. And we're going to see more and more of

00:07:22.580 this. We're going to see more leaders like in Ontario, Ontario is going out of lockdown and

00:07:27.060 moving to a more modified, semi restricted area. We're going to see more and more governments start

00:07:33.300 announcing these great reopenings. And people are going to be happy. They're going to do the George

00:07:38.640 Bush thing. They're going to say mission accomplished. They're going to say they vanquished the

00:07:42.060 COVID, that their work is what led us here. And that only now can we reopen. And you can never

00:07:48.120 say, well, could we have done this sooner? Because they say, no, no, no, it's only now that we can.

00:07:54.220 And I'm never, ever going to knock a reopening. I'm never going to knock when a government says,

00:07:59.740 okay, fine, you can get back to normal now. But I am going to say something here. Do not let them

00:08:04.600 convince you that they're doing you a favor. Because that seems to be the trend. When I've seen

00:08:10.240 governments do this in the past, and granted, there haven't been all that many of them,

00:08:14.240 the citizens kind of look to it and start like patting themselves or not patting themselves on

00:08:18.420 the back, the government officials start patting themselves on the back and look to the citizens

00:08:22.580 and saying, okay, you know, we, here's what we're giving you. And the problem with this is that it

00:08:27.900 reinforces that it was government's right to take it away in the first place. So I'm not going to give

00:08:34.780 a government a gold star for doing what they should have done months ago. I'm not going to give the

00:08:39.420 government a gold star for doing what should have happened already. I'm going to accept it. I'm

00:08:46.360 going to be glad about it. I'm going to be happy about it. But I'm not going to be thankful for it.

00:08:50.820 And I don't think you should either. And you know, maybe I'm being overly harsh, but I don't really

00:08:55.840 care at this point. Because it is not acceptable to feed into this idea that these liberties, these

00:09:01.500 freedoms are governments to take away and give back at will. Like, you know, like Prince Andrew's

00:09:07.500 royal titles or something like that. Like, you can just say, you know what, we're going to take these

00:09:10.680 off your back now. So no, I'm not going to thank them. I'm not going to roll out the red carpet. I'm

00:09:15.180 not going to give them a gold star. I'm going to say, okay, next. And that's what a lot of people

00:09:20.080 should be doing in these situations, whether it's in the UK, whether it's in Canada, whether it's

00:09:25.040 anywhere else in the world. Because eventually, and this is where we get to the longer term

00:09:29.540 implications of this, there's going to be something else that's going to come up, where people are going

00:09:34.440 to want to go right back to the COVID-19 toolbox and fish around in there. Okay, what do we get?

00:09:39.900 We've got vaccine passports. We've got lockdowns. We've got restrictions. We've got flattening the

00:09:44.860 curve. Okay. Yeah. What do we need now? And maybe it'll be for a bad flu. Maybe it'll be for COVID-22.

00:09:50.140 Maybe it'll be for something else entirely. But when you start creating these mechanisms and levers

00:09:55.860 and giving them to government, they're going to use those because government has derived great power.

00:10:02.080 And a lot of very sadistic people have derived great purpose from lockdowns and keeping lockdowns

00:10:07.400 going indefinitely. Just, I mean, one silly example of this is that Canada Post employees may be sent

00:10:15.200 home if they choose to wear an N95 mask. So they have to wear masks, but if they don't use the one

00:10:21.780 issued by Canada Post, they could be sent home. Now, you know, depending on who you believe on the mask

00:10:27.580 stuff, a lot of people are saying that N95s are better than a lot of the other standard masks that

00:10:33.000 people are wearing, including the ones that Canada Post is distributing. So if a Canada, a diligent

00:10:38.240 Canada Post employee says, you know what? I prefer to wear an N95. They'd be sent home, not because

00:10:44.220 they're not wearing a mask, but because they're not wearing the right mask, even though theirs is

00:10:48.840 supposedly better. So there is hugely an argument here that it is not about health. It's not about

00:10:55.280 science. It is about control. It's about uniformity. It's about conformity. And these

00:11:01.080 attitudes will persist because they're now ingrained in society. They're now ingrained in

00:11:05.340 the culture. They're no longer controversial premises. The idea of penalizing the unvaccinated 1.00

00:11:11.760 is no longer a radical, unheard of concept. It's something that's been done. It's one of those options

00:11:17.260 in the toolbox. You may have seen last week, whichever show it was, I was talking about this poll that had

00:11:24.000 been done at the time that the majority of Canadians were supportive of the idea of doing

00:11:29.900 what Quebec had done and finding the unvaccinated. And that there was a clip of that that was

00:11:34.740 circulating and people were criticizing, saying you're wrong. I don't know who you're talking to.

00:11:38.640 Everyone that I know is against it. And I've seen other polls showing the opposite. And I want to make

00:11:43.460 a point here. So the poll that I was referring to was a Meru poll commissioned by the Toronto Sun.

00:11:49.380 It was done in the scientific way where you take a random sampling that's representative of the

00:11:54.080 population and you ask them whatever questions. And then you extrapolate from that what it would

00:11:59.400 mean for the general population. And these are not foolproof. They have a margin of error,

00:12:04.000 but there is a scientific formula attached to them. A lot of the conflicting polls that people were

00:12:10.640 sending me were not real polls. They were website polls like CTV did one where they just ask at the

00:12:15.720 bottom of a story, do you think people who are unvaccinated should be fined? Yes or no? Anyone can

00:12:21.300 go. You can vote multiple times. That is not a real poll. It certainly is a reflection of anger,

00:12:27.020 but those things are not real. They're just done to drive clicks to websites. So the fact of the matter

00:12:32.880 is, yes, there was a scientific poll that said the majority of Canadians would support fining the

00:12:38.760 unvaccinated. Now you may reject that poll. It may be wrong. That's fine. But when I say that I 0.67

00:12:45.300 believe it, I'm not saying that I want to believe it. I'm saying that it does not surprise me at this

00:12:51.000 point, given what I've seen, what I've heard, and a lot of the emails I get from Canadians that are

00:12:56.080 all too willing to hand over their liberties to government. It brought me no joy to report on that.

00:13:02.460 I was not endorsing it. I'm simply saying, yes, I entirely believe it. And that brings me to this

00:13:07.940 poll as well. Also from Meru, 27% of Canadians, 27% of Canadians say they support jail time for the

00:13:16.820 unvaccinated. Jail. So they asked them, would it be okay to go so far as to jail anyone who's

00:13:22.680 unvaccinated for up to five days? 27% said yes. Again, not scientific. If you've got a family of four,

00:13:32.200 one of you might support sending the unvaccinated to jail. Now, I mean, obviously that your family 1.00

00:13:37.680 might be on the right side. And there are some families where probably all of them are on the

00:13:41.420 wrong side of this. But this was a survey of 1,506 Canadians. Again, margin of error, plus or minus 2.5%.

00:13:49.020 But even so, that means we're looking at 24.5% to 29.5% of Canadians who believe that the unvaccinated

00:13:58.420 should be jailed. That you do not, as an individual citizen, have the right to choose your medical

00:14:03.180 treatment. And you also do not have the right to being free from arbitrary detention. Although it

00:14:09.940 wouldn't be arbitrary because I guess the government would be rather systematic about it. So two-thirds,

00:14:16.340 two-thirds of Canadians in this poll said they are in favor of mandatory vaccination. So, I mean,

00:14:21.320 that's the benchmark there. If you were to just go to the grocery store and ask three people,

00:14:25.520 supposedly two of them are going to say they would support mandatory vaccination.

00:14:29.860 Now, again, I don't know how correct or incorrect that is, but I think it's certainly plausible.

00:14:35.400 Because remember that all these governments are beholden far more to politics than they are to

00:14:40.260 science, I think. And that's my big fear, that when they're imposing restrictions and lockdowns,

00:14:45.480 that they're listening to polling that are telling them that that is what Canadians want.

00:14:51.340 That's the big fear. And I guess we'll know soon enough. Remember, even just to use Ontario as an

00:14:57.120 example, because there's an election coming up in just a couple of months there. In Ontario,

00:15:01.800 you're going to get politicians that are running against Doug Ford, the premier,

00:15:06.360 and their argument is going to be, you should have locked down more. You should have locked down

00:15:10.200 sooner. You should have locked down more quickly. You should have acted more quickly to mandate

00:15:14.600 vaccination. He's getting hit by people that said he should have done more. Same as Jason

00:15:18.620 Kenny in Alberta. I mean, now both, like any conservative premier right now is in the middle.

00:15:24.060 They're getting criticized from both sides of this. But the main political opposition is saying,

00:15:29.360 why are you not locking us down? Oh, dear leaders. So yes, when a poll comes out and says,

00:15:34.960 you know what, one in three people are okay, or one in four people are okay, throwing the unvaccinated 1.00

00:15:39.840 in jail does not surprise me at all. Just take a look at this clip, which was on Quebec television.

00:15:44.820 This is Julie Snyder, who is the animatrice, as we call them in Quebec. I say we, I've never lived

00:15:51.080 Quebec a day in my life, but as one calls them in Quebec. And just take a look.

00:16:14.820 Now there were some errors in the subtitles that I want to correct here, because one of them in

00:16:38.240 particular was that young girl who looks, you know, adorable, well-behaved, quite precocious,

00:16:42.900 saying that people need to submit. That little by little, you need to make them submit. And then

00:16:48.680 all the hosts, all the adults in the audience are cheering and cheering and cheering and whooping and

00:16:53.080 hollering because they support this. They support not only the premise being advanced by the kids to

00:16:58.960 arrest the unvaccinated, but also that the kids are falling in line, that it's children who are making 0.53

00:17:05.960 this point. And Julie Snyder, she has on Twitter apologized for this. She says she never should

00:17:12.700 have asked, and she's very apologetic for doing that, but I don't buy it at all. She did ask.

00:17:17.780 She did make that choice. And more importantly, she made the choice to respond. And the parents of those

00:17:23.920 children made the choice to inject that thinking into the kids, or it might've been their teachers,

00:17:29.940 or it might've been television, or it might've been Justin Trudeau who had appeared on September

00:17:34.840 on that very show and talked about how the unvaccinated are racist misogynist. You remember

00:17:40.480 that clip that was on that show in Quebec. So what's happening here is you've got a generation

00:17:48.000 that in addition to the other brainwashing that's taking place in education, you can now add onto that,

00:17:53.320 the brainwashing that the unvaccinated are just dirty, evil people that should be arrested and thrown

00:17:58.820 behind bars. And yes, when I see that clip, and when you see that clip, I hope that you can understand

00:18:06.900 why I am buying a lot of that polling, which for all of polling's faults is suggesting that Canadians

00:18:13.340 will go along with this. Now, again, that's not to me a Trump card against liberty. We do not live in

00:18:22.120 a majoritarian society. We have a democracy, sure, where government has to be accountable to

00:18:26.680 a plurality. That's not at all controversial, but we're not majoritarian. The idea of having a

00:18:32.300 constitution is that you cannot have just because a majority bands together. Put it this way, 99%

00:18:40.300 of people cannot vote to kill 1% of them because that 1% still have the fundamental right to their

00:18:46.880 own life and right to their own liberty. And this is why rights are so important. This is why constitutions

00:18:52.340 which manage to uphold those rights are important. Again, my frustrations with the Canadian constitution

00:18:58.460 notwithstanding, because ours is proving to just be a piece of paper that is not defending Canadians

00:19:04.520 against the heavy hand of government, but is actually empowering government. So I hope Quebec's

00:19:10.640 vaccine fine gets challenged. I hope it gets overturned. But again, the best defense is always going to be 0.57

00:19:16.480 the individual. Individuals needing to stand up for your rights. Now, again, you can entirely be

00:19:22.420 pro-vaccination and be fully vaccinated and against vaccine mandates, against mandatory vaccination. This

00:19:30.680 is not at all a difficult thing to square. It's a position that I take. It's a position that a lot of

00:19:37.440 people I know take. It should not be difficult to walk that line. So if you are telling your children,

00:19:44.840 because again, they're not making this up, they're not just pulling this out of thin air, if you're

00:19:48.340 telling your children, yeah, arrest the unvaccinated, what on earth is wrong with you as a parent? Are 1.00

00:19:54.840 you delusional? Are you just so fearful? Because some people are victims. I get that. Some people are

00:20:00.540 victims of the paranoia. They're victims of the media narrative. There was actually, interestingly

00:20:07.080 enough, and I'm talking about this tomorrow on Fake News Friday, there has been a little bit of

00:20:12.580 honesty from CBC on the vaccination front. So I don't follow CBC on Instagram, but a friend of mine,

00:20:19.400 I try to keep it like my politics-free zone, but a friend of mine flagged this for me and I went and

00:20:24.120 looked it up and found, yes, it was in fact real. CBC had a couple of Instagram stories telling you to

00:20:30.480 prepare to get COVID. And there were a couple of things in there that were quite good. Number one was

00:20:35.100 the acceptance that everyone is going to get it, or most people will get it. So they say their

00:20:39.960 experts say most Canadians will be exposed to the virus at some point. Here's how to make the

00:20:44.960 isolation and illness a little easier if you get sick. And then it says this, some health helpful

00:20:50.740 tips. To be prepared for a COVID-19 infection, consider keeping on top of chores so you're not

00:20:56.800 dealing with them while sick. Stocking up on soups, decaf teas, honey, lemon, and lime to help nourish and

00:21:04.300 hydrate yourself. Purchasing lozenges in case you get a sore throat. That's it. And then the next one

00:21:11.780 was like, I don't know, something about sports or whatever. So CBC's three tips are make your bed,

00:21:17.340 have some tea, and get some lozenges. That's how you're going to get through COVID. And that's a

00:21:21.620 great place to be. If the Omicron variant is something you can weather by doing those three

00:21:26.440 things, perhaps we can drop the paranoia we're seeing in other stories about hospitals being filled up,

00:21:32.300 ICU capacity surging, which by the way, is not happening. It is not happening at levels it has

00:21:38.160 previously. So this is great. I mean, the first week, how many waves are we at now? The first few

00:21:43.380 waves were Pfizer and Moderna that we needed to get us out of it. Now it's gotten to a fisherman's

00:21:48.520 friend and Ricola. And don't forget your booster lozenge. When the one you have in your mouth gets

00:21:53.520 just so brittle it's about to break, it's time for a booster lozenge. And you just keep popping the

00:21:57.980 booster lozenges until you are out of isolation and you're fine. So two fisherman's friends to

00:22:04.680 flatten the curve and we'll all be back to normal before long. So I was glad to see that surprising

00:22:10.420 honesty from CBC. It was buried in the Instagram stories, but still credit where credit is due.

00:22:16.580 We've got to end things there, at least for this segment, but we'll be back in a couple of moments

00:22:20.500 time with Irving Student here on The Andrew Lawton Show. Stay tuned.

00:22:27.360 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:22:33.040 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show. I mentioned at the beginning of the program here that

00:22:37.500 all of the science tables, the science advisory committees have tended to approach the pandemic

00:22:43.160 with a one track mind that looks at getting case counts down, even at the expense of economic

00:22:50.000 welfare, mental health care, effect on children, child development, all of these other things

00:22:55.760 which are absolutely critical and I think by and large have gone ignored or certainly undervalued

00:23:01.780 through the course of the pandemic. Kids being pulled out of school yet again in many provinces

00:23:06.300 is a great reminder of this. Well, all of these science advisory committees have had this narrow

00:23:11.520 focus. So there's now a private sector alternative, if I can call it that, a group that's assembled

00:23:17.000 together to bring together experts, scientific experts, and public policy experts to achieve

00:23:22.920 the lofty goal of exiting the pandemic. This is the Canada Science and Policy Committee to Exit the

00:23:28.780 Pandemic, which launched yesterday. And the co-chair of this is Irvin Student, who again, I'd use the

00:23:34.180 whole show if I wanted to give him a proper introduction. He's a Rhodes Scholar. He's done lots

00:23:39.020 of work. He's a former soccer pro. He's of course helming the Institute for 21st Century Questions.

00:23:44.380 But in this context, he's the co-chair of the Canada Science and Policy Committee to Exit the

00:23:49.040 Pandemic. Irvin, it's good to talk to you. Thanks very much for coming on today.

00:23:53.040 It's a real pleasure. Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:23:55.500 One of the big things we've been so mired in for the last two years has been how we live

00:24:01.380 through the pandemic. It was originally going to be, as you know, two weeks and then a couple of

00:24:05.580 weeks longer. And now we're looking at basically the third calendar year of the COVID era.

00:24:10.660 Why have the discussion now about what it means to exit this whole thing?

00:24:16.240 Well, we're not having a discussion and we're not searching for meaning. We're actually meaning

00:24:20.260 to exit. So we've struck up a national committee, properly national, across all the province,

00:24:27.380 all the regions, all the territories, to choreograph and exit from the pandemic for the entire country

00:24:34.440 in the coming months. And I do mean in the coming months. What we've done with the new Canada

00:24:39.160 Science and Policy Committee, which is based out of the Institute for 21st Century Questions,

00:24:43.320 one of Canada's leading think tanks, is that we brought together the two solitudes, the two

00:24:48.520 intellectual solitudes of this pandemic, the scientific and medical community and the policy

00:24:53.540 community. And operating in silos and solitude, we've had disintegration on the ground. We bring

00:25:01.020 them together. We need to map out a holistic exit across the systems of society, across our multiple

00:25:06.840 crises. And practically, I mean, we mean business. We're not there as a science experiment. We're not

00:25:12.400 there for narcissism or fun. We're there to exit because otherwise the country will not survive.

00:25:18.100 A lot of the science advisory committees that we have giving their guidance to provincial governments

00:25:23.300 right now are digging deeper and deeper into lockdowns and into restrictions. What is it that

00:25:29.200 your experts are seeing that they aren't? Well, first of all, we make several shifts that I think

00:25:37.200 are missing. First of all, we bring together again the scientists and the policy people. One of my

00:25:43.340 fundamental diagnoses of our catastrophes, and we have multiple catastrophes in the country, is that

00:25:47.940 the politicians are illiterate on science, but the science and medical community stinks at public

00:25:53.520 policy. So we bring them together. We try to make up for each other's weaknesses and advance each

00:25:59.620 other's areas of expertise. It is a policy lead. First of all, that's one of the major shifts of this

00:26:05.260 national committee to exit. It is a policy lead, not a science lead. The science supports it. It is one

00:26:11.820 of many inputs, but it is not a science project. It is not a research project. We are not following the

00:26:17.860 science. The science informs the policy. We are not, as one Ontario official said, looking at the

00:26:23.580 virus as in charge. We can't do anything. The virus is in charge. Nay, this is a policy lead. It is to

00:26:29.280 exit. It is to choreograph an exit that has been already choreographed in many other advanced and

00:26:34.140 less advanced countries, no less. The other shift is that we are doing real systems thinking across the

00:26:40.380 systems. Andrew, you'll appreciate that in our country today, we don't have one single crisis. We

00:26:46.220 actually have six or seven crises of system nationally. We have the pandemic. We have public

00:26:52.300 health writ large. The pandemic becomes the minor crisis before long. We have a massive education

00:26:57.520 crisis. We have an economic crisis of historical proportions. We have a national unity crisis. We

00:27:02.660 have an international crisis. We have an institutional crisis. And we have a growing social crisis, one

00:27:07.220 of broken norms. We need to work across all these systems and exit in the coming months. Many

00:27:13.380 countries in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, and Latin America are already

00:27:18.260 exiting. This is a unique committee in that it's practical. We bring together really properly

00:27:24.180 national experts across all the disciplines representing all parts of the country. That's

00:27:29.020 the other unique thing. It is really national. And we plan to exit because the country needs

00:27:34.200 it desperately. And we will provide both the advice and the courage and the vocabulary and

00:27:38.780 the frameworks to do so. Is this plan one that only governments are in a position to accept

00:27:45.280 or reject? Or is there something here that businesses and individuals can take from as well

00:27:50.620 as they move forward? In the end, of course, it's a government exit because government is choreographing

00:27:57.340 a lot of the moves. So it's a policy exit informed by science, but all these other areas, economics,

00:28:03.840 social policy, psychology, education, of course, I should say the media plays a major role and

00:28:11.780 individual leaders in communities, civil society, and institutions play a major role in changing

00:28:17.400 the psychology. We must not over sentiment, over sentiment, over sentimentalize the last two

00:28:23.840 years and lick our wounds about where we are today. That's one of the big weaknesses in

00:28:28.780 our national response. We must be purposeful and bold, and we must exit as a mature country.

00:28:35.860 In fact, if you look back at some of the diagnoses, and I think this will be the case when we look

00:28:39.660 back a number of years hence on where we've been weakest, we say that we not only overreacted,

00:28:46.300 but we didn't properly gauge the nature and the measure of the crisis. And in world historical

00:28:52.780 terms, this was not a major crisis, God forbid, there should be one. And countries that have

00:28:57.460 endured far larger crises acted with much more maturity, because they said, you know what,

00:29:03.060 this is a crisis, it's a pandemic, here's the measure of the pandemic. And here's how we respond,

00:29:08.300 given all our other tragedies in the past. Fortunately, for Canada, we haven't had major

00:29:13.380 public catastrophes at this scale, over the last 100 years, even almost since Confederation,

00:29:19.680 if I may be so bold. So our reaction has been non-systematic, immature, overly sentimental,

00:29:27.480 and we're here to be strictly practical, to exit. And we mean to exit because as proud Canadians,

00:29:35.960 we realize that if we continue, the forward scenario is not status quo, it is continued

00:29:41.500 disintegration, including the possible collapse of the country. So we need to reverse that energy,

00:29:46.360 and we mean to do it in the coming few months. So let's talk about a parallel universe here in

00:29:53.660 which your committee is the one driving public policy in Canada or in one or all of the provinces

00:30:00.260 here. What's the day one action that you'd take to implement this plan? What do you put in place

00:30:05.300 right now? And what does the next few months look like?

00:30:08.460 Well, first of all, let's talk about when the exit actually happens, when we declare that this is

00:30:16.960 over for all practical intents and purposes for Canada. I believe it has three parts. One is that

00:30:23.140 COVID becomes largely endemic and seen thus. And I believe the Chief Medical Officer of Health of

00:30:29.040 Canada, Theresa Tam, declared that we're trending towards that even yesterday. A number of countries

00:30:34.240 are already there. A number of countries are extrapolating to that. So the pandemic becomes

00:30:38.260 endemic. It has seasonal intensity. But you don't think Canada is there just yet, you're saying,

00:30:43.620 correct? We're very close. Second point is that the pandemic, even in the endemic form,

00:30:51.040 becomes properly gauged. That is, we deal with people with comorbidities, aged people, the vulnerable,

00:30:57.400 in a specific class of treatment, intervention of various intelligent forms, like we would have in

00:31:03.780 2019. We would treat them as vulnerable and we intervene maturely. But for the rest of the society,

00:31:09.640 starting with the young and the able and everyone else, we work, work, work, build, build, build,

00:31:16.200 and learn, learn, learn, and play, play, play for the young people. That's fundamental. And the final

00:31:21.500 point on the exit is that on a proper systems view, we begin to understand the pandemic. If we imagine

00:31:27.640 we have six or seven or eight balls in the air in a society as massive and complex as Canada,

00:31:33.360 the pandemic is just a part of one ball. It is not the totality of our crisis, not the totality of

00:31:38.980 our imagination. And we don't imagine that there's just one exit from for all these crises, including

00:31:44.940 that one little ball. So it's a systems apprehension that we will impose on the both decision makers

00:31:51.260 and the societal understanding of the crisis. And that's a threefold exit. And we'll get there

00:31:55.380 soon. In terms of the general choreography of the short term, we must restore the rhythm of our

00:32:01.660 society. All those things that we knew in Canada to be part of the daily bread must be restored with

00:32:08.020 great deliberation, consideration, choreography, starting with the children in school, without

00:32:14.920 restriction, without inhibition, play, play, play, learn, learn, learn. It's one of the fundamental

00:32:20.380 rhythms of the society, the rhythm of sport, of culture, of restaurant, all of that needs to be

00:32:27.460 restored with, in my preliminary assessment, with great energy, not zombying out of the condition as

00:32:34.780 if we've been struck about the head five times. It's actually counterintuitive, but we need to punch

00:32:40.220 back with high energy, not low energy. We need to come out with a statement, very much like at the end

00:32:45.600 of a war. There would be a parade here. We're not talking about a parade. We're talking about restoring

00:32:49.620 the rhythm of society, which is deeply ingrained in us. We've forgotten how to live elegantly in

00:32:55.140 Canada. And the committee, I hope, will give both the choreography and the courage to say,

00:33:00.120 back we go. You know, we're a sophisticated, advanced, old society in political terms.

00:33:06.260 We've been living inelegantly over the last two years. The inelegant living is not our

00:33:12.480 our default equilibrium. We're coming out, but we need a higher energy level to get out of there.

00:33:18.380 We've stuck here, and we created a storyline that is overly sentimental and self-congratulatory. This

00:33:24.880 is our lifestyle. Aren't we suffering? We need to go higher, but that requires work, that requires

00:33:32.480 more thinking, and that really requires energy push to get us to that higher equilibrium that we

00:33:37.920 enjoyed so much over the last hundred years. Now, when you talk about restoring that rhythm

00:33:44.140 of society, are you talking about lifting things like mask mandates and vaccine passports and

00:33:49.080 basically returning to life, you know, March 1st, 2020, or even November 1st, 2020, or 2019, I guess?

00:33:56.860 I think my own preliminary thinking and the early thinking of the committee is, of course,

00:34:00.980 there will be deliberate actions that say, we're back, life is back to normal. We're not

00:34:07.460 zombying again out of this where we say all of these legacy things that were there purposefully,

00:34:13.820 sometimes competently, sometimes less competently, sometimes accidentally to manage the pandemic,

00:34:19.620 that these are legacy items with which we'll need to learn to live. No, no, no. This is a deliberate

00:34:23.760 statement that we're exiting and exiting in the full sense. And might I add, Andrew, that because we've had

00:34:30.980 so many crises, we're not exiting back to 2019 living. That rhythm of 2019 should be there, but

00:34:36.960 it will require that much more work to get out of the multiple crises. So the pandemic, in my

00:34:42.600 assessment, will be the minor crises of our six or seven crises. And therefore, we require work across

00:34:48.060 education. We have 200,000 children out of school permanently in Canada. We need to get them back to

00:34:54.040 school. We have huge tens of thousands of businesses that have disintegrated. We have a social

00:35:00.720 crisis whereby you have to negotiate the norms, the restaurant to restaurant, community to community,

00:35:05.020 household to household, complete breakdown and province to province, no less. We have a national

00:35:10.360 unity crisis. The civil services and political class of the country have not seen the country

00:35:15.740 in two years. They don't know what's happening except for on their Twitter feed or on Facebook

00:35:19.860 or what they might get on a text message or phone. All of that rhythm needs to be restored

00:35:25.240 by statement, deliberately, not accidentally. And the political class right now is slightly

00:35:33.300 in the realm of deer in the headlight, a little bit traumatized, confused, and we will give them

00:35:39.120 that direction and courage to effectuate that choreography that we're seeing already in other

00:35:43.740 countries. I know it's early. You just launched this committee this week formally, but has there been

00:35:49.780 any political leaders? Have there been any political leaders provincially or federally that seem to be

00:35:54.920 approaching this with an open mind? We're in touch with a lot of them, if not all of them, on both the

00:36:01.060 political and scientific sides and, of course, on the policy side. And we're strictly non-ideological,

00:36:08.700 non-partisan, always practical. Very much in the tradition of the Institute for 21st Century

00:36:13.980 Questions, the mandate of the committee is strictly practical. We will give advice.

00:36:17.760 We will speak to everyone. And we will, I expect, give courage to the country to declare an exit in

00:36:25.820 the coming months. That is the plan. That is my expectation.

00:36:31.940 Well, that is my hope as well. Joining me is, of course, the chair of the Worldwide Commission to

00:36:37.160 Educate All Kids, the president of the Institute for 21st Century Questions, and the co-chair of the

00:36:42.600 Canada Science and Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic. And I didn't mention him earlier, but

00:36:46.860 the other co-chair is Dr. Kwadmo Kiramatang, who's been phenomenal on this as well. So glad to see

00:36:52.280 he's involved. Thank you very much, Irvin, for your time today. Really appreciate it.

00:36:56.540 Thank you, Andrew.

00:36:57.780 Irvin Student, thanks again for your time. Listen, he's got some great names on there. Dr. Martha

00:37:03.420 Fulford, who's been a solid advocate, especially on the school reopening aspect, as has Dr. Kwadmo

00:37:10.200 Kiramatang, who has the quadcast, which is something you should definitely listen to. Again,

00:37:14.620 he's been a doctor that's pushed back against a lot of those who just want lockdowns indefinitely.

00:37:20.020 So I was very glad to see his name there. And also public policy people, former politicians,

00:37:24.880 current politicians, people that have an eye for public policy, where a lot of the medical

00:37:31.320 advisors and science advisors have not. One of the biggest problems I talked about earlier on in

00:37:36.320 the pandemic was that people with a one-track focus on one particular outcome, who are unconcerned with

00:37:42.140 economic outcome, unconcerned with child development and child welfare, and all of these other things.

00:37:48.120 We're directing policy based on one particular metric, which was an important one, but not

00:37:54.260 something that you can take at the expense of all of these other things. So I would say we could

00:37:59.180 probably expedite that exit from the pandemic sooner. Like I said, a couple of weeks ago,

00:38:03.160 the pandemic is over when people say it is. But I'm glad to see some intellectual and academic

00:38:08.760 gravitas coming towards that perspective that politicians have to just put their line in the

00:38:13.700 sand and say, you know what, we're leaving this thing. We've got to end things there. My thanks to

00:38:17.420 all of you for tuning in to The Andrew Lawton Show today. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you,

00:38:21.580 God bless, and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:38:25.560 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - January 21, 2022

Canada needed to reopen yesterday

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