Juno News - Person of Interest

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

00:00:06.700 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.860 Coming up, my fictitious brush with the law, the left is coming for Queen Victoria,

00:00:17.900 and look at COVID misery in Canada and around the world.

00:00:23.760 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:34.460 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, and I am Andrew Lawton, or better known now as Person of Interest

00:00:40.720 Andrew Lawton.

00:00:42.040 Yes, I've had to append that prefix to my name for reasons that will become clear very shortly.

00:00:48.300 And I should say, just as a bit of a preface to this story, that this isn't just about me,

00:00:54.020 but I am going to inject myself into this and use myself as an example of quite a significant

00:00:59.820 problem that I think speaks volumes about where we are as a society right now, and where in

00:01:05.140 general Canada and Canadians are in the fight to reopen.

00:01:09.600 Just as a bit of context here, we have seen in my province of Ontario, a so-called reopening

00:01:15.220 plan that doesn't actually have reopening contained in it.

00:01:18.980 And these really ridiculous and arbitrary delays from one stage to the next stage, where I can't

00:01:26.100 even get a haircut until July, which I don't know if you can see, is kind of something I

00:01:29.840 need before then.

00:01:30.960 Not that the haircut is the biggest deal in my life, but haircuts have kind of been the

00:01:35.340 barometer, if you will, of how open or closed a society is.

00:01:39.640 And now you have some little crumbs of liberty that are being handed out, like, oh, you know,

00:01:44.320 five people can get together outside.

00:01:46.560 Well, gee golly.

00:01:47.740 Meanwhile, we look overseas and see, you know, thousands of people in concert venues, nightclubs,

00:01:53.620 sporting events, while in Canada, we just wait for our overlords to hand us the right to have

00:02:00.060 a friend over on your back deck.

00:02:01.980 And we get excited and celebrate that as though we've been given some gift, like manna from

00:02:07.320 the heavens above.

00:02:08.660 Jeez.

00:02:09.860 So bringing it back to this story now, I've talked on this program a number of times about

00:02:14.880 Elmer, Ontario, which in a lot of respects became kind of a battleground for the lockdown

00:02:20.980 fight.

00:02:21.820 It started just over a year ago with the Church of God in Elmer, led by Pastor Henry Hildebrandt.

00:02:28.100 This church was really on the cutting edge in making sure that outdoor services were permitted

00:02:34.020 and they actually won that fight.

00:02:35.560 The Ontario government relented.

00:02:37.520 But since then, it has been all downhill.

00:02:40.520 Last week, the Church of God was in court as the court tried to extend its right to lock

00:02:46.900 the church out of its building.

00:02:48.460 And one of the things that was interesting, Lisa Bildy, the lawyer representing Church of

00:02:54.220 God, and we had her on the show to talk about some of the religious liberty fights just a 1.00

00:02:58.280 few days ago.

00:02:59.200 She had said that the government has kind of taken its fight against this church as an 0.57

00:03:04.280 obsession.

00:03:04.860 She said they are relentlessly pursuing this church, firing ticket after ticket after them

00:03:09.580 without actually going after many other situations that are very similar.

00:03:14.540 So she says it's become basically a state vendetta.

00:03:18.120 And it's in that context that I become involved in this.

00:03:22.280 Now, here's what's interesting.

00:03:23.580 I was given a document, a package of documents that were disclosure documents filed to an

00:03:29.240 individual I've never met, but it was someone connected to the Church of God and it made

00:03:33.700 its way to me.

00:03:35.400 The disclosure documents were police in Elmer, Ontario, giving their supposed evidence about

00:03:41.020 why this individual person, who I'm not going to name because they have the right to go through

00:03:45.020 the process and fight this in court, but what police believed was their infraction.

00:03:50.020 And it was a whole bunch of evidence from officer statements and stuff like that, that police

00:03:55.040 were putting towards this case about this one individual person.

00:03:59.380 So how do I factor into this, you might ask?

00:04:01.860 Well, you scroll down in the document and there is a witness statement put forward by one particular

00:04:08.080 Elmer police officer who I have, to my knowledge, never met in my life.

00:04:13.100 And this police officer testifies to being an officer in good standing with the Elmer police.

00:04:18.200 She says that on Monday, January 25th, she was working a scheduled shift in Elmer.

00:04:25.280 And during that shift, she was investigating a social media video of a church service that

00:04:31.460 she says took place the day prior on the Sunday, January 24th at the Church of God.

00:04:37.140 This, by all accounts, appears to have been an outdoor service.

00:04:40.500 There was a flatbed trailer.

00:04:42.220 There were sermons.

00:04:43.060 There were speakers.

00:04:43.720 And she says that she watched the video of this in its entirety.

00:04:47.680 She describes all the things she said she saw, including at one point near the end, a

00:04:52.320 bunch of people who were outside went inside.

00:04:54.840 And the officer says she saw 100 persons seated side by side, not wearing masks, who began to

00:05:00.600 sing joy to the world.

00:05:02.160 And then she says this, from this investigation, I began to utilize open source media, police

00:05:10.180 information, police intelligence, and anonymous public information to positively identify those

00:05:17.960 in contravention.

00:05:20.480 Now, when she says those in contravention, she's talking, of course, about the so-called

00:05:25.800 Reopening Ontario Act and the limits that are placed, especially in January, on attendance of

00:05:31.680 worship services, and in general, public gatherings.

00:05:34.340 And she said that she has used all of these means, police intelligence and anonymous public

00:05:39.160 information, open source media.

00:05:41.060 I think that's social media, basically.

00:05:43.200 And she's identified those who were in contravention of the order.

00:05:48.800 And then there's a list.

00:05:50.980 Now, you see that there are blackouts beside the names.

00:05:55.220 Now, those blackouts are from the police document.

00:05:57.980 And I believe it's just dates of birth.

00:05:59.740 That's what I've been able to glean.

00:06:00.900 I have censored the names themselves because these people, I don't want to draw attention

00:06:07.120 to whatever police are accusing them of.

00:06:09.160 That's for them to fight.

00:06:10.240 So I just want you to understand that the police ostensibly blacked out the stuff on the right.

00:06:14.840 The stuff on the left, those are names which I've blurred out, except for one that you can

00:06:19.180 see here.

00:06:19.800 And that is number 25.

00:06:21.880 Look familiar?

00:06:22.820 It's right here.

00:06:24.280 Andrew Lawton, person of interest.

00:06:27.500 Now, I don't think they're just saying that I'm an interesting person.

00:06:30.620 Maybe they are.

00:06:31.260 Maybe they just are big fans of the show.

00:06:33.160 They think it's interesting and I have good things to say.

00:06:35.320 But Andrew Lawton is a person of interest.

00:06:38.220 Now, how on earth am I a person of interest in connection with a supposedly illegal church

00:06:44.160 service at a church that I have never in my life attended?

00:06:48.740 I've interviewed Pastor Henry Hildebrandt.

00:06:50.900 I have never stepped foot on his church property.

00:06:53.680 In fact, I haven't even been to Elmer, Ontario, the ground zero for this in, if I am recalling 0.99

00:06:59.580 correctly, about four years.

00:07:01.760 Four years ago, I was in Elmer for a night emceeing an event.

00:07:05.000 I have not been to Elmer since.

00:07:08.040 But somehow, I'm a person of interest.

00:07:10.000 I'm named as being found in contravention.

00:07:12.840 Well, that sounds scary.

00:07:13.940 There are 61 people named on this list.

00:07:17.640 I was part of the initial round.

00:07:19.100 They added a couple of other people after apparently further investigation.

00:07:23.940 And then it says this at the bottom, which I find particularly interesting.

00:07:28.040 Participants identified, so that's the list above, were charged in contravention of fail

00:07:33.060 to comply with a continued order contrary to the reopening Ontario Act.

00:07:37.840 And provincial notices were created and attempted to be served.

00:07:41.560 Part one summons were created for those identified as not residing within the Elmer geographical

00:07:48.860 area.

00:07:49.340 Now, I live in London, Ontario, not far from Elmer, but not in Elmer.

00:07:52.820 So the way this is worded, there may have been a summons created for me that was never

00:07:58.520 served on me.

00:07:59.640 Now, I should be clear.

00:08:00.780 I have never had anything served on me.

00:08:02.580 I've never had a police officer talk to me about this.

00:08:05.520 I've never had any interaction whatsoever.

00:08:07.840 And when I saw my name on this list, initially, I was going to reach out to the

00:08:11.560 Elmer police and say, what gives?

00:08:13.340 And I backed off because I realized it's on them, not on me.

00:08:16.880 If they want to attempt to pretend that I was at a service at a church I've never set

00:08:22.120 foot on or around, then it's on them to come to me and make that assertion.

00:08:27.340 But there's something quite cowardly in not serving me and putting my name on this list,

00:08:32.440 claiming in a document that presumably will be filed in court if it has not already been

00:08:38.880 that I am connected by virtue of a police officer claiming a police officer claiming that I have

00:08:47.300 been identified in contravention with something that I've never formally been accused of.

00:08:52.760 Now, this means that I can't actually clear my name.

00:08:56.280 Police are able to say you're a person of interest if you are of interest to them for whatever

00:09:00.320 reason.

00:09:00.740 And again, I like to think sometimes I have interesting things to say, but I'm actually

00:09:04.480 quite a boring person, but that doesn't make for good police speak.

00:09:07.900 So if police are naming me in this forum, they actually are not giving me an opportunity

00:09:12.520 to clear my name and to respond to these allegations.

00:09:17.940 And that's why I made sure we blurred out the names on the left, because for all I know,

00:09:22.520 those people were as well included on this list by virtue of the creation of fiction,

00:09:27.060 not because they were actually suspected of doing anything or actually subject to evidence

00:09:32.560 that they've done anything.

00:09:34.820 Now, stuff like this is very difficult.

00:09:36.980 I have been a sincere defender of police and still am by and large.

00:09:41.660 When police stood up and said no to doing random spot checks of citizens when Ontario's

00:09:47.060 government gave them the right to do that, I commended every single one of Ontario's municipal

00:09:52.020 police departments, including Elmer, by the way, for standing up and saying, we are not

00:09:56.560 going to do this.

00:09:58.320 So I am prepared to defend and continue to defend individual police officers who put themselves

00:10:04.260 in a tremendously risky situation, who become political punching bags, who are forced into

00:10:09.560 situations in which they don't want to be by the state.

00:10:12.820 But my patience wears quite thin when I am accused, and potentially dozens of others

00:10:21.180 are accused, of something that simply never happened.

00:10:25.700 And by the way, I must say in unequivocal terms, in no uncertain terms, this is not me defending

00:10:31.600 my right to be there.

00:10:33.060 This is not me saying, well, yes, but that's an illegitimate law.

00:10:36.800 I've talked about my issues with that law and with that regulation.

00:10:39.800 I'm saying, full stop, I was never there.

00:10:43.320 And for anyone to claim that I am at all a person of interest and connection with this

00:10:48.480 is an all-out lie.

00:10:50.960 Now, I have interviewed Pastor Henry Hildebrand.

00:10:53.580 I spoke to him last April when his initial battle about drive-in services was taking place.

00:10:58.840 I spoke to him again in November, which is, again, a couple of months before this thing

00:11:04.180 that I was alleged to have attended.

00:11:05.920 And I've never, never met the man in person.

00:11:10.120 I've never met the man in person.

00:11:11.500 I've met his son, but I've never met him.

00:11:13.780 And when I met his son, it was years ago and in no connection with the Church of God's

00:11:18.280 fight with the government and, by extension, the government's fight with the Church of God.

00:11:23.640 And the reason I share this with you is to explain that when Lisa Bildy, the lawyer for

00:11:29.400 the Church of God, says in court that the state has, it seems like, an obsession with

00:11:33.940 this particular church.

00:11:35.480 I've seen that firsthand by looking at the fact that my name appears on a list that I

00:11:40.060 can only describe as just a netcast so wide as to include anyone who might have at some

00:11:47.440 point been interested.

00:11:48.880 I mean, are they assuming that because I've interviewed Pastor Hildebrandt, I must have

00:11:54.280 been there, so let's just include him anyway?

00:11:56.800 That's the best thing that I can think of.

00:11:59.220 Is there someone who looks like me that they found in video, in which case I feel very bad

00:12:03.880 for the person, not only if they look like me, but also if they're being confused with

00:12:08.020 me, because that is not a fate I would wish upon my worst enemy to be confused by me, especially

00:12:13.420 if this is how the Elmer police have decided to view me as a person of interest in this.

00:12:19.360 And this is something that I don't even know.

00:12:22.660 And I've talked to a couple of people about this.

00:12:24.280 I don't even know if I have the ability to fight it, to clear my name, to get exonerated.

00:12:28.700 The best that I could hope for is Elmer police saying we were wrong, or in fact, we made it

00:12:34.260 up.

00:12:35.040 But I don't think that's going to happen.

00:12:37.440 But there is, in fact, a standoff taking place between the government and between the

00:12:42.440 Church of God.

00:12:43.120 And I don't mean that in some sort of violent Waco-esque standoff.

00:12:46.840 I just mean that the government has very much decided to throw everything it has at

00:12:52.440 this particular church, a couple of others as well, including the Trinity Bible Chapel

00:12:57.040 in Waterloo, whose pastor, Jacob Rayom, we spoke to a couple of weeks back.

00:13:02.240 And they don't even get the chance to really fight their constitutional arguments until October.

00:13:08.240 So a lot of the things that are happening to them, millions of dollars, tens of millions

00:13:12.080 of dollars in fines are going to continue between now and October.

00:13:16.980 And this was something that came up in that court hearing that I wrote about for True North.

00:13:22.060 You can check that out at tnc.news last week, where the lawyers for the Attorney General were

00:13:28.580 saying to the court, I mean, we need, we're running out of things we can do here.

00:13:32.220 In fact, the judge said that we're running out of things we can do.

00:13:34.720 These people aren't complying.

00:13:36.360 We can just add more and more fines.

00:13:37.960 And ultimately, what happened to them was the Attorney General had served a notice of

00:13:44.840 appearance in court with Lisa Bildy of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms that

00:13:49.000 morning with the court hearing that afternoon.

00:13:52.300 So no time to prepare whatsoever.

00:13:54.220 So Lisa had said, can you at least give us, give me, you know, a week and a half on this.

00:13:58.340 So they're going to be back in court on Monday, May 31st.

00:14:02.140 And this is, again, because the government was trying to lay even more fines against them

00:14:07.760 while they're already fighting the existing fines.

00:14:10.520 So, you know, this is where we're seeing this unfold and wonder whose interests are being

00:14:16.220 served here.

00:14:16.960 So I have no doubt that even when Ontario moves through this so-called reopening plan and people

00:14:22.760 are allowed to assemble and allowed to have church services, the government is still going

00:14:26.840 to continue to be targeting the people it's decided to vilify over the past 15 months.

00:14:33.600 We've got to take a break.

00:14:34.680 When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:14:37.900 Person of interest, Andrew Lawton, back in a moment.

00:14:41.560 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:45.300 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:46.900 I should say, I hope you all had a great Victoria Day weekend.

00:14:50.540 I know it's like supposed to be the May 2-4 weekend as after, you know, a giant 24 pack

00:14:56.040 of beer that you can enjoy with your friends.

00:14:58.080 But no one can enjoy anything with their friends now.

00:15:00.600 And I don't drink beer.

00:15:01.600 So Victoria Day weekend, it shall be until the day I die, which I mean, I may not actually

00:15:07.200 get my way on this because not about the death thing, but about it being called Victoria

00:15:11.300 Day weekend in perpetuity.

00:15:13.340 My friend and colleague, Candice Malcolm, had a great piece about this.

00:15:17.200 She said, this may be the last Victoria Day weekend with the way things are going.

00:15:21.860 Every now and then, I mean, you get all of these stories about the left trying to cancel

00:15:25.860 John A. McDonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Sir Hector Louis Langevin and basically everyone,

00:15:32.260 anyone and everyone they're trying to cancel.

00:15:34.640 And then you kind of assume, I do anyway, naively, that some people are going to be immune

00:15:40.260 from being canceled.

00:15:42.260 I just didn't think the mob was going to go for Queen Victoria.

00:15:46.420 I mean, if you want to look at it through a feminist lens, she was a badass. 1.00

00:15:50.400 This is a woman who for a time was the longest serving monarch who did tremendous things, presided

00:15:56.000 over the British Empire in a Canadian context, the very first sovereign of a confederated Canada.

00:16:02.120 And well, the mob is coming for her.

00:16:04.700 Not just in Toronto, where we have the Toronto District School Board entertaining a proposal

00:16:10.140 to get rid of her because of the racist legacy that apparently this woman, Queen Victoria, has. 1.00

00:16:17.920 They want to get rid of Queen Victoria Public School, which has, by the way, been around since 1887

00:16:24.840 when Queen Victoria was the sovereign.

00:16:28.560 I mean, this is a school that has a tremendous history in Toronto, in Canada.

00:16:32.960 Queen Victoria was the sovereign.

00:16:34.400 It is a public school, which means that her direct descendant, her, I think, great-great-granddaughter,

00:16:40.640 Queen Elizabeth II, is actually the owner in right of the school.

00:16:44.620 But you know what?

00:16:45.520 We got a racist legacy afoot.

00:16:47.000 We got to scrub Queen Victoria's name off of that building and replace it with something woke. 0.89

00:16:52.240 We got to put a black indigenous person of color's name, which is fine.

00:16:55.900 But why don't we put their names on new schools?

00:16:57.920 Why do we have to strip off the names from old schools of people who have a significant

00:17:03.280 role in Canadian history?

00:17:05.180 And if we decide we are going to take Victoria's name off of things, well, why not the capital

00:17:11.220 of BC?

00:17:12.500 Victoria, British Columbia, the capital of BC.

00:17:14.680 Actually, no, wait.

00:17:16.400 They might even come after British Columbia at this point.

00:17:21.120 What's that?

00:17:22.160 Oh, no, they already have.

00:17:23.860 Okay, BC politicians want to change the province's name and flag to reflect diverse society.

00:17:31.720 Diverse is such a code word.

00:17:33.700 It means that we hate everything historic and we want to just completely rip it to shreds.

00:17:38.420 The flag of British Columbia is, of course, one that includes the Union Jack and also the

00:17:43.840 crown to represent the British of British Columbia.

00:17:47.140 The province itself was named after the Columbia River.

00:17:50.200 And to bring it all full circle, Queen Victoria gave it the name British Columbia so as to

00:17:55.620 avoid confusion with Columbia as in Bogota, Columbia.

00:18:00.640 And British Columbia, again, a very rich history in this country and confederation.

00:18:06.680 To be honest, I'm actually surprised that Victoria and BC have lasted until now.

00:18:11.240 But this is from a group of politicians with the Lower Mainland Local Government Association.

00:18:16.360 They've adopted a resolution considering change of provincial name, coat of arms, and flags.

00:18:21.920 They want everything gone.

00:18:23.200 They want it just completely destroyed.

00:18:25.100 And a lot of the woke mob types are not interested in building.

00:18:28.480 They're only interested in destroying and leaving, quite frankly, a vacuum through which they've

00:18:34.760 obliterated everything because it doesn't cut the mustard for 2021.

00:18:40.180 But the only real sin here, I mean, no one is talking about what Queen Victoria has actually

00:18:44.960 done wrong, the sin here in their eyes is simply that she was alive in a time before now.

00:18:51.860 I mean, fast forward 150 years and all of the people that are woke approved right now 0.74

00:18:55.920 are going to be canceled for some other reason.

00:18:58.740 You can guarantee it.

00:18:59.840 It's just a shame we won't be around to actually see it.

00:19:03.340 But here's the thing.

00:19:04.520 This is why it's so important to actually dig our heels in and defend Canadian history,

00:19:09.400 which Justin Trudeau is not interested in doing.

00:19:12.320 Here's a guy who stripped the name of the Langevin building off of Langevin building.

00:19:17.400 Here's a guy who replaced it with the not particularly succinct office of the Prime Minister and

00:19:24.420 Privy Council, I think, because Sir Hector Louis Langevin, well, we don't get to pay respect

00:19:29.200 to him anymore.

00:19:30.240 Same reason his name was stripped off of the Langevin bridge in Calgary.

00:19:34.400 Or sorry, I got to tell a story about this.

00:19:36.740 I was guest hosting on a Calgary radio station years ago, and I had not lived in Calgary.

00:19:42.020 I was doing it from outside the province.

00:19:44.220 But you don't want to draw attention to that.

00:19:46.380 And I was talking as this debate was going on about the Langevin bridge, the Langevin

00:19:50.160 bridge, because it is named after Sir Hector, or was named after Sir Hector Louis Langevin.

00:19:55.520 They've now changed it to, I believe, the Reconciliation Bridge.

00:19:59.460 In any case, I think I got through like 10 minutes of this, and I gave some just really

00:20:03.820 fiery points about it.

00:20:05.400 And then I had someone call in and be like, it's called Langevin, you Easterner. 1.00

00:20:09.240 So the jig was up.

00:20:10.280 They knew that I was just masquerading as an Albertan.

00:20:13.820 But they call it Langevin, or called it, well, now they don't call it anything.

00:20:17.800 But anyway, that's my Langevin story for all of the confused Albertans right now.

00:20:23.060 And yeah, Trudeau said that was gone.

00:20:25.040 And this past weekend, he didn't actually honor Victoria Day.

00:20:29.220 Not a single statement on Victoria Day.

00:20:32.120 Not a tweet, not a statement.

00:20:33.280 Not even like wishing Canadians a happy long weekend.

00:20:36.680 And why this is significant is because Victoria Day, which is, I pegged for Queen Victoria's

00:20:42.380 birthday, is in Canada the birthday of the reigning sovereign officially.

00:20:47.940 And I know it's confusing because the Queen's actual birthday is in April.

00:20:51.800 In Britain, her official birthday is in June.

00:20:54.540 In Canada, her official birthday is on Victoria Day.

00:20:57.900 And Charles' birthday when he's king.

00:20:59.580 Anyway, story for another day.

00:21:02.520 He is going to have his birthday officially celebrated on Victoria Day in Canada.

00:21:07.520 So not even like a happy birthday from Justin Trudeau to the head of state, which is very

00:21:12.960 much in poor form, but unsurprising when now standing up for Queen Victoria and Canada's

00:21:18.940 history means standing against the woke mob.

00:21:22.640 And I should say, I'm not typically one for virtue signaling statements and tweets and

00:21:27.360 all of that.

00:21:27.800 I'm not typically I don't care what politicians say, but the absence of it from a guy who

00:21:33.340 will tweet and post about any day imaginable is noticeable.

00:21:38.520 For example, on Tuesday, the day after Victoria Day, Justin Trudeau issued a statement commemorating

00:21:44.700 Africa Day and another one commemorating the 75th anniversary of Jordan, which, OK, if that 0.88

00:21:50.920 floats your boat, commemorate those.

00:21:52.340 But it seems weird to have a 75th anniversary for Jordan message and not a happy Victoria

00:21:58.420 Day and happy birthday, your majesty message.

00:22:00.720 But that's just me.

00:22:01.820 In any case, have to take a quick break here.

00:22:04.520 We will be back to talk about COVID misery in just a couple of moments.

00:22:08.460 Stay tuned.

00:22:09.040 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:22:10.560 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:22:20.980 We have been talking for the last, what, 15 months now about the havoc that COVID has unleashed

00:22:27.940 on societies around the world, on communities across Canada, certainly included in that.

00:22:33.080 But missing from the discussion in a lot of cases has been the impact that the response

00:22:39.140 to COVID has had on communities.

00:22:41.640 We've talked about this on this show, but I think certainly in a lot of the public health

00:22:45.380 dialogue, the effect on the economy, the effect on just individual livelihoods has not

00:22:51.340 really been told.

00:22:52.380 But there's been a fantastic project by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute called the COVID

00:22:57.040 Misery Index, which doesn't mince words.

00:23:00.180 It is misery, let's not deceive ourselves here.

00:23:03.900 But they look at not just what COVID has done, but also what a lot of the government's

00:23:08.660 responses to COVID have done around the world, including in Canada.

00:23:13.760 One of the contributors to this is a Memorial University of Newfoundland professor of health

00:23:18.360 statistics and economics, Professor Richard Ottis.

00:23:21.520 Professor, good to talk to you.

00:23:22.580 Thanks for coming on today.

00:23:23.880 Thanks, Andrew.

00:23:24.460 Thanks for having me.

00:23:25.740 Now, even by the way, I must say your title, I really like in this because a lot of the

00:23:30.160 times we get people that are just focusing on the health and not the economics, whereas

00:23:34.360 you've actually, through this, looked at both of these.

00:23:37.640 Obviously, the disease has had an impact, but how governments have responded to the disease

00:23:41.840 has kind of brought differing levels of misery across different provinces and different countries.

00:23:46.660 And of course, the economic fallout.

00:23:48.400 And one thing that's been pretty remarkable about COVID-19 has been obviously the huge effect

00:23:54.380 it's had on the economy.

00:23:55.280 Now we sort of seem to be moving towards our recovery, although the recovery is not even.

00:24:01.400 Some provinces bouncing back more quickly than others.

00:24:04.100 And then finally, looking at the public health responses, again, every time we go into lockdown,

00:24:09.920 that makes us a little bit more miserable.

00:24:12.180 The speed with which we can get out of this situation largely through vaccines or even aggressive

00:24:17.880 testing patterns, again, reduce the misery that's heaped upon us.

00:24:21.780 So again, what we wanted to do was take a holistic look or as holistic a look as we could do with

00:24:26.820 the data that's available and actually see where, of course, in this case, looking across

00:24:31.080 Canadian provinces and seeing which provinces have done reasonably well and which provinces

00:24:35.860 have been a bit more miserable or quite a bit more miserable in some cases.

00:24:40.060 And I should say, this is not a truly global index.

00:24:43.220 There are 15 countries, all developed nations, that are on this list, which I think emphasizes

00:24:48.140 the point that Canada is not exactly in a position to be proud of here.

00:24:52.000 We have the chart up on the screen there.

00:24:53.960 Canada, 11 of 15 for total misery ranked, a few notches below where the global average

00:25:00.120 is situated on this.

00:25:01.680 Do you find that there are one or two provinces that are really dragging Canada down?

00:25:05.840 Or do you find even with the differentiation from one province to another, Canada is generally

00:25:10.480 in that pretty consistently in that realm?

00:25:12.560 No, there's actually been pretty big differences across provinces.

00:25:16.060 And I think the way you experienced COVID-19 is pretty different if you live in Alberta,

00:25:20.600 Ontario, or Quebec, who are the three, we'll say, most miserable provinces or experience

00:25:24.560 the most misery as compared to Atlantic Canada.

00:25:27.940 So in Atlantic Canada, the situation has been quite different.

00:25:32.560 Case counts have been relatively low.

00:25:34.500 There's been some returns to normalcy, again, with various incidents that are causing a return

00:25:40.300 to lockdowns when necessary or when deemed necessary.

00:25:43.460 And so I do think that the differences, what you experienced was very different in Alberta

00:25:49.080 compared to what you would have experienced in Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia.

00:25:54.220 And again, I think that you actually sort of look at the countries or provinces like Nova

00:25:58.160 Scotia, Prince Edward Island, kind of look a lot more like Australia and New Zealand,

00:26:02.300 who've done quite well during the pandemic as compared to Ontario and Quebec, which kind

00:26:07.800 of look more like the UK or some of the Western European countries that haven't done quite so well.

00:26:13.220 Is disease misery an apples to apples comparison to COVID response misery?

00:26:17.920 Because looking at just Canada and the US, for example, here, the US has a disease misery

00:26:23.280 on this index of more than double what Canada's is, but it has a COVID response misery level

00:26:29.900 that's a little over half of what Canada's is.

00:26:32.440 A lot of people, if they were just looking at death rates, for example, would say that those

00:26:36.140 two aren't even in the ballpark, but the US is actually scoring a bit better overall than Canada.

00:26:41.480 Yeah.

00:26:41.800 And I think that some of that narrative, I think, does come out from early in the pandemic

00:26:45.720 where clearly the US got it wrong and was very slow to respond.

00:26:51.440 But certainly what the US has done has, at least since then, although I think the evidence

00:26:55.620 is suggesting it might be slowing down a little bit, but absolutely knocked it out of the park

00:26:58.920 when it comes to vaccines.

00:27:00.100 I mean, they were one of the first countries to approve vaccines.

00:27:02.780 They very aggressively rolled out vaccines.

00:27:05.240 And of course, in the US and following the US media, as I do, they're very much looking

00:27:10.960 at a pretty normal summer with restrictions being lifted, case counts dropping day over

00:27:18.200 day, death rates declining.

00:27:20.660 So again, I think that, yeah, it's been a pretty miserable experience for the US for

00:27:24.440 sure.

00:27:24.780 But over the last four or five months, they really have kind of gotten their act together.

00:27:29.740 And I think when we look at the total of what's occurred, COVID is going to have a longer tail

00:27:36.180 in Canada because we're going to be longer getting people vaccinated and certainly getting

00:27:40.140 things back to normal.

00:27:40.960 From the get-go, Sweden became somewhat of a political football in this fight.

00:27:47.100 It was held up, I think, by both sides as the example, in one case of what we need to strive

00:27:52.360 towards and in the other case of what we need to ensure we never replicate.

00:27:56.640 And it's interesting that now looking at this more than a year later, Sweden actually ranks

00:28:01.780 pretty highly on this, just one step below Australia.

00:28:06.160 And I find that interesting because Australia was very well known for how severe a lot of

00:28:12.180 its restrictions were as far as quarantine, people were stranded abroad, even if they

00:28:17.680 were Australian citizens, whereas Sweden was kind of open season in a lot of ways, yet

00:28:22.160 they both look very similar to each other.

00:28:24.060 What accounts for that?

00:28:25.160 Yeah, I mean, I think, again, the disease sort of manifests itself slightly different in

00:28:28.880 different climates in different parts of the world.

00:28:31.240 I think, you know, again, the Swedish situation, although I think their response did change

00:28:35.860 over time, I think their initial response, obviously, was to a bit more of a sort of

00:28:40.180 relaxed attitude, shall we say, towards, you know, locking down and things like that.

00:28:43.300 Over time, they have sort of changed their, you know, their approach to it, and they have

00:28:47.840 become a little bit more conventional in terms of what, you know, what's gone on in other

00:28:51.720 parts of the world.

00:28:52.540 I do think that essentially, you know, that, you know, I think particularly the Swedes, you

00:28:57.920 know, generally, I think, you know, even though they haven't sort of locked them down,

00:29:01.260 they've been able to do things like maintain social distancing, you know, mask wearing,

00:29:05.720 things like that, all of which, you know, or most of which is voluntary there, or a lot

00:29:09.620 of which is voluntary there.

00:29:10.760 Again, they just kind of got on with it and took the restrictions that were necessary.

00:29:15.400 I think in other places, you know, these things had to be mandated by law, and that, you know,

00:29:19.640 and that created some, you know, some different challenges.

00:29:21.600 And, of course, there's also, even though the legal lockdowns in some places, you know,

00:29:27.340 have existed, you know, there's been lots of, you know, instances of people sort of,

00:29:30.560 you know, skirting the rules or, you know, not quite adhering to them.

00:29:33.920 And again, of course, the disease doesn't, you know, it doesn't really, it doesn't really

00:29:36.780 care whether you sort of observe the rules or not.

00:29:38.860 It just, you know, if it has an opportunity to transmit itself, it does.

00:29:41.760 And again, so I think that there, you know, if we could have counted on everybody to sort

00:29:45.500 of, you know, to do the right thing, I don't think we would have necessarily had to go into

00:29:48.740 lockdowns the way that we did.

00:29:50.200 But again, I think that wasn't, you know, I think there's pretty big differences from country

00:29:54.080 to country on those issues.

00:29:56.140 When we look at the data, do they tend to show that you either have a really strong disease

00:30:02.320 misery level or a really strong economic and response misery level, or have there been

00:30:08.060 some different balances we see there?

00:30:10.700 Yeah, I mean, there certainly have, you know, certainly have been some different balances.

00:30:13.820 You know, when we look across countries, you know, the level of Norway, which comes out

00:30:16.820 on top of our list, where admittedly the disease count was lower than a lot of other countries,

00:30:21.060 but not, you know, not radically dissimilar, but they had very little economic impact.

00:30:25.040 They were able to basically, well, they were able to use their tremendous sovereign wealth

00:30:28.320 fund to kind of keep things going there.

00:30:31.060 And, you know, in other cases, you know, we saw, you know, countries where, you know,

00:30:35.000 for instance, say here, I'm actually in New Zealand, we had very few cases, but actually

00:30:40.920 the economic fallout has been still been pretty large.

00:30:43.920 Again, the tourism industry largely shut down here, you know, pretty big, you know, massive

00:30:47.920 amounts of public borrowing to go in place to largely to keep tourism operators kind of,

00:30:54.160 well, in position or the people who work in them in post for an eventual return to tourism.

00:30:59.760 So I think in some cases, you know, a country, like say here, like in New Zealand, where we've

00:31:03.760 had a pretty massive, you know, economic hit, but very little disease, it suggests that, you

00:31:08.640 know, there are some, you know, imbalances in those things.

00:31:11.900 Now, we've certainly seen a lot of discussion in Canada, rightfully so, about the very slow

00:31:17.880 pace at which vaccines have been rolled out.

00:31:20.220 And of course, the four-month interval between the first dose and the second dose in Canada

00:31:24.600 is going to be putting Canada at a tremendously, tremendously lagging level when it comes to

00:31:29.880 the rest of the world and getting their populations vaccinated.

00:31:33.240 How much is a vaccine rollout affecting numbers?

00:31:37.100 Because it does seem like in Canada, there's actually been, I don't know if I would say an

00:31:41.140 uptick in deaths, but an uptick in a death metric that you use called excess deaths.

00:31:46.960 Yep.

00:31:47.420 Well, a couple of things about that.

00:31:48.980 I mean, number one, I mean, I think that the vaccines seem to work and they seem to

00:31:52.900 be very effective.

00:31:53.660 And if you look at, I think the UK is the best example of that.

00:31:56.240 I mean, that was a country that was a complete, complete basket case.

00:31:59.560 And now, you know, things are very much getting back to normal.

00:32:01.820 Fans are going back to watch.

00:32:02.300 Yeah, they've got like 5,000 people in nightclubs now.

00:32:04.860 Well, exactly.

00:32:05.860 And, you know, sending 10,000 and 15,000 people to football matches and things like that.

00:32:09.520 So again, you know, very much, so the vaccines there have, you know, and it very much

00:32:12.880 been the path back to normalcy.

00:32:14.820 And certainly that's what we're looking at in the US where you look at the case counts,

00:32:17.880 which, you know, day over day are, you know, a fraction of what they were a few months ago.

00:32:21.860 So again, I think in that case, you know, the evidence is that the countries that were

00:32:24.520 able to get vaccines to people, you know, have been pretty effective.

00:32:28.160 Still, you know, jury's still out on what's going to happen, whether the sort of the length

00:32:32.020 of your time delay between first and second shot is going to make a big difference or

00:32:36.240 not.

00:32:37.480 You know, so that's what's what the UK did.

00:32:38.900 And that's what a lot of Canadian provinces are doing as well.

00:32:41.720 Whereas the US is, you know, is opted to try to get second shots into people kind of

00:32:44.880 more, you know, a little bit more closely to the, you know, to the scientific guidelines

00:32:48.920 which suggest, you know, three to four weeks should be, is the appropriate duration

00:32:53.220 between shots.

00:32:54.820 So, you know, I do think that, you know, that this is something that is going to, you

00:32:58.520 know, that is, that, you know, will have an effect over the longer term.

00:33:01.120 And of course, until people get that second shot, they haven't got that full level of

00:33:04.380 immunity.

00:33:05.340 So again, they're still at, you know, at an elevated level of risk.

00:33:08.540 You know, certainly the evidence suggests the first shot is valuable and useful, but

00:33:12.380 you know, you get better, better benefit from, from that second shot.

00:33:15.320 So I think as soon as people can get those, the, you know, kind of the better we are and

00:33:18.480 the better off we are and the sooner we'll get back to normal.

00:33:21.740 From a longitudinal perspective, I have to ask you, Professor, I mean, you're an economist.

00:33:26.380 How long do you think a lot of this damage is going to last when we look specifically

00:33:30.860 at the economic response and, and to some extent, the COVID response misery level?

00:33:36.080 Yeah.

00:33:36.500 I mean, I think that the economic impact is going to be felt for a very long time.

00:33:40.060 I mean, you know, you look at the amount of money that governments have borrowed to kind

00:33:43.360 of get through this and, and, and not suggesting it's necessarily the wrong thing to do.

00:33:46.780 I often use the analogy that, you know, but if the roof blew off my house and I had to

00:33:50.320 go get a payday loan to, to get it fixed, well, that would be the right thing to do,

00:33:53.700 but it doesn't, doesn't change the misery involved with it.

00:33:55.880 You know, I think, you know, governments were, were quite right to, you know, to go out and

00:33:58.800 spend money to, you know, to keep, you know, to keep people from going back to work and,

00:34:02.520 and, and, and potentially to, you know, to keep businesses that will be viable in the

00:34:06.160 future, you know, still going.

00:34:07.900 But, you know, the, the, the amount of money that's being spent here is, is almost that

00:34:10.980 sort of at a World War II type level.

00:34:12.460 I mean, it really is, you know, a massive amount of expenditure that, you know, in Canada,

00:34:17.300 we look at what, you know, the provincial governments, but then also what the federal

00:34:19.660 government is, has taken on for debt.

00:34:21.480 And it's going to be, you know, it'll be decades, you know, paying that debt off and

00:34:24.520 unless there is, you know, a terrific amount of economic growth that, you know, that, that

00:34:28.000 is sustainable for the future, but I don't think that's as terribly likely.

00:34:32.000 So, you know, I think that, you know, this is something that we're going to be paying

00:34:34.220 off and our, you know, it's likely our kids will be still paying off the, you know, the,

00:34:37.200 the, the interest on this one sometime in the future.

00:34:40.300 Yeah.

00:34:40.620 And I'd be interested to see the effect on the tax base.

00:34:43.940 I mean, we know certainly a lot of high income earners who have the flexibility of being able

00:34:47.900 to work from home won't direct, weren't directly affected in the same way as others, but we

00:34:52.060 know tons of businesses, tens of thousands of businesses in Canada have gone under.

00:34:56.300 We've got some projections from organizations like the Canadian Chamber of Commerce that are

00:35:01.000 suggesting tens of thousands of more of those.

00:35:04.360 The effect that has on employment is, is pretty straightforward, but to, to really get a

00:35:09.400 sense of how long we're going to be dealing with those repercussions is not really something

00:35:14.020 we can answer yet, is it?

00:35:15.700 No, I mean, although, you know, it's, it's something that, you know, we do see that,

00:35:18.620 you know, the loss in economic activity and the amount of money borrowed.

00:35:21.200 I mean, you know, we're looking at, you know, federal government taking on levels of debt

00:35:24.340 kind of tenfold larger than, you know, you know, you, you, you hear a budget deficits of

00:35:29.320 30 billion or, or, or, you know, 25, 30 billion as being, you know, pretty high.

00:35:33.140 And of course this year, they're looking at, you know, hundreds of, you know, two or

00:35:35.320 $300 billion.

00:35:36.680 So again, you know, taking on 10 years worth of debt in a single year, you know, it's, it's going

00:35:41.700 to take a long time to pay that off.

00:35:43.380 And, you know, I think even the, you know, even the cleverest of economists can't really

00:35:47.200 tell you what, what the economy is going to be doing 10 years from now.

00:35:50.700 But, you know, certainly, you know, it's, it's, it's quite likely that, you know, there,

00:35:54.540 there will be some hangover in terms of debt repayment, you know, you know, well beyond

00:35:58.560 the next 10 years.

00:35:59.400 So, you know, it is something that's going to be that, that part of it is going to be with

00:36:02.260 us for a long time.

00:36:03.220 And, and again, not to say it wasn't necessarily the right thing to do, but when the next crisis

00:36:07.180 comes and the next crisis will come, you know, it does limit our capacity

00:36:11.360 to, you know, to, to, to use fiscal tools to, to try to, to, you know, to spend our way

00:36:15.780 out of it.

00:36:16.200 So whether it's a financial crisis or if it's a climate change induced crisis, there's going

00:36:20.300 to be something that's going to come along where governments are going to need to spend

00:36:22.860 money and it's going to be very difficult to, you know, to, to, to, to, to pay for that.

00:36:28.240 Well, we've all been living the misery.

00:36:30.140 So quantifying the misery seems like the most productive thing we can do in the midst of all

00:36:34.960 of this.

00:36:35.320 You can check out the COVID misery index for yourselves over at mcdonaldlaurier.ca.

00:36:40.260 Health statistician and economics professor, Richard Ottis from Memorial University of

00:36:46.100 Newfoundland joins me now from New Zealand professor.

00:36:48.260 Thanks so much for your work on this and for joining me today.

00:36:51.000 Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:36:51.920 Really appreciate it.

00:36:54.000 I got to say, I love the name, the COVID misery index.

00:36:57.700 That's a load of what it is misery.

00:36:59.580 And you know what?

00:37:00.340 I'm glad that unlike a lot of what we get from the so-called public health advisors, this

00:37:05.960 actually looks at the economic harm and the harm on individual lives, which very much need

00:37:11.580 to be acknowledged.

00:37:12.220 And as I said, at the top of the segment have been in so many respects, missing from the

00:37:16.800 discussion and missing from the narrative that we get from the leaders imposing a lot

00:37:21.680 of these responsive measures.

00:37:22.920 So my thanks to the Mcdonald-Laurier Institute and professor Ottis for putting this out.

00:37:28.100 We will be back in a couple of days time with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:37:33.200 This is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:37:35.340 Thank you.

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00:37:39.540 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

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00:37:48.660 Take care.

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00:37:51.040 I'm good for him.

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Juno News - May 26, 2021

Person of Interest

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