Poilievre says media should stop quoting ＂experts＂ who caused the drug crisis
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew takes a deep dive into one of Canada's most galvanizing political issues: drug use and crime. He discusses the growing problem of drug use in Canada, and how the media and politicians are contributing to it.
Transcript
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this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north
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hello and welcome to you all this is the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent
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talk show on true north on this thursday july 25th just after one o'clock eastern 10 a.m on
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the west coast a lovely 2 p.m in the afternoon for most of you in atlantic canada 2 30 for those of
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you in the lovely province of newfoundland if you go to saint pierre a michelagh i don't know if
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saint pierre and michelagh are hosting any olympic events now that paris is the official olympic host
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but i the only thing that i have talked about on the show and will talk about as far as the olympics
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are concerned i believe is those outfits and we did that earlier this week so you are olympic free
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now although i i did know just on a complete aside there has been this brewing scandal where
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apparently someone who was on the canadian soccer team in some capacity was filming the new zealand
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soccer team as they were practicing which as i understand it is a bit of a no-no and then i was
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also reading a story this morning about i forget the exact number but i i think it was like the
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100,000 or something condoms that are going to be distributed to athletes in the Olympic village,
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because apparently in the Olympic villages, there is always just copious amounts of sex going on.
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And all that I could think of was the problem with having sex at the Olympics that you find
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out after the Canadian soccer team was filming you. So take from that what you will. That's my
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one Olympic joke. I can't do sports humor in any other context because I don't know it well enough.
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But I do know a lot about politics. So we'll stick to my wheelhouse here this morning.
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conservative Pierre Polyev, leader Pierre Polyev was in my neck of the woods, not for me. I just
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happened to be like 15 minutes away from where he was holding a press conference. So I'll share
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some details about that with you on this show, because I wanted to do a deeper dive into what
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has increasingly become one of the most galvanizing political issues that we have in the country right
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now, which is crime and related to that drugs. Now, these are technically two separate issues,
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But you have to view them really as one in the same because the rise of hard drug use in communities across the country has coincided with the widespread proliferation of crime.
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And while, yes, organized crime, extortion, things like that cannot necessarily be directly linked to drugs in every case, oftentimes organized crime is fueled by and also fuels the drug trade.
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And more importantly, when you look at the property crime, theft, vandalism, so much of this is related to the rise in drugs.
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And it's amazing that over the last decade, over the last decade, we have seen a massive, massive rise in all of these so-called harm reduction initiatives, the expansion of so-called safe supply.
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I put a lot of so-calls in when I talk about drugs for obvious reasons.
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Pierre Paulyad this morning called someone a so-called doctor.
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but all of these things have happened and it's amazing the problem has gotten worse
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so I think it's something that we need to unpack a little bit here now we can talk about the
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problems with safe supply so-called safe supply we will discuss that in a little bit Adam Zivo
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is going to be back on the show momentarily but I also want to talk about the discussion of this
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the media narrative around this because Polyev this morning when he was delivering his remarks
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talking about rising crime and there were further numbers from Statistic Canada which came out this
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morning that violent crime is up 50% since 2015. There have been 572,572 incidents of violent
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crime in 2023, which is massive compared to the 382,000 in 2015 back when Justin Trudeau took
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office. But all of this is to say that we are looking at a problem that everyone in the country
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is seeing. Everyone in Canada is seeing. People that live in communities across the country are
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seeing the drug and crime issues but the so-called experts are the ones who aren't so polyev took aim
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at the way that the media treats these so-called experts this is the so-called edition of the show
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it's the so-called experts the so-called safe supply the so-called harm reduction all of this
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but he looked at the media and said you are part of the problem here take a look
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so uh the dev the evidence is in and it's final and uh you know i would also encourage the media
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to be more responsible. It is just so irresponsible for you to go and quote people who profit from
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the ongoing drug crisis as though they are experts. They are not experts. If they were
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experts, their policies, which have been implemented over the last nine years, would not
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have caused 40,000 deaths, would not have seen an over 100% increase in opioid overdoses.
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they the last thing they want is for the crisis to end because they're doing they're making so
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much money off of it we've got to stop feeding the activist class and start providing treatment
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and recovery i would encourage you if you're going to be if you're going to cover this drug issue
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stop talking to the people who caused the problem start talking to the recovery centers
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i would ask why don't you ask the people when you when you interview them why don't you ask them
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how many people have you got off drugs call them up the local public authority public health
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authorities ask them how many people they've gotten off of drugs because it's interesting
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the media rewards these people for the carnage that they're causing they call you call them
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experts they're not experts they're expert only at one thing and that is perpetuating
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the drug crisis their policies have been implemented for the last nine years and we
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see the results the experts are the people at places like harvest house in ottawa or the oak
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center in winnipeg where they bring people in and get them off of drugs let's start quoting
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them as the experts thank you and of course the criticism of the media did not stop there
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Pierre Polyev continued. And at one point, a reporter from CTV London asked him questions
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about this. And it led to one of those quintessential Polyev v. reporter exchanges
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with this particular journalist. And the whole thing we've posted, True North has posted it on
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our X account and probably our YouTube page at some point today. But so the whole thing was like
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over four minutes. But I'll share with you a snippet that shows the contrast here and shows
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more importantly I think how significant the framing is on this issue and why the euphemisms
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the terms including safe supply are inherently political and why using these things unquestioningly
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actually contributes to some of the problems we're seeing in society right now where anyone
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who criticizes these programs is deemed as being anti-science when the program has really just had
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this delightfully euphemistic positive sounding name put on it that doesn't bear out with how
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these programs are manifesting but this was that altercation in london this morning
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compromise here you you've drawn quite a line this morning but is there any compromise opportunity
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where you could work with some of these folks come up with a modified plan or is there strictly
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one option here in your mind are you talking sorry on what what subject are we talking now
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drugs or crimes i'm talking safe supplies well again you know how can you possibly report on
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the story when you're already using government propaganda it's not safe yes that's the problem
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you're using the term they're using how can you so you've decided you've already made up your mind
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you're going to report their statements as though they're true well why are you using their language
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oh yes there are of course so you're just being force-fed talking points by the authorities who
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caused the problem in the first place this is exactly this is exactly this is exactly the
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problem this is exactly the problem exactly the problem how is it working i'm just asking you to
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answer the question whether or not there's any room to work with these other agencies or not
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and whether you're going to stick to your your proposals which are your proposals that's all
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i'm asking sir my proposal is recovery and treatment am i going to give more money to
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these agencies that have caused the crisis no they're not going to get any more money
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they've caused the mayhem have you been around have you seen the tent cities
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lived in this very neighborhood for eight years have you seen the tent cities
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okay and you think that these agencies are doing a good job
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i think there's sir it's my job to debate a federal leader on this issue sir but i will
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Are you think they're doing a good job when you go to see the 10 cities that are popping up everywhere in the country?
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I agree with you on that, the community, but the agencies are different than the community.
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And again, you're repeating their talking points.
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I mean, there was a time when reporters believed their job was to hold government accountable, not regurgitate their talking points.
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Who needs hard drugs when you can just watch those exchanges?
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The only drug I need is a Pierre Poliev press conference.
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Because these things, they are so infuriating when you see stories that unquestionably hold
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up some people as quote-unquote experts, while denigrating anyone who has disdain for them
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This was the same attitude we saw during the COVID pandemic, where the government would
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put up certain experts who oftentimes had financial skin in the game on whatever the discussion was
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or were themselves quite ideological and all of these so-called harm reduction activists and I'm
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talking when I say all I don't actually mean all let me let me distinguish between uh the few that
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tend to dominate the discussion these ones are very heavily invested in this they run programs
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that get a ton of money for doing this they are ideologically motivated they don't seem to be too
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motivated by the science and the data and they don't actually have room for compromise so even
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then the question to conservative leader pierre polyev will you work with these folks i don't
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think they want to work with him any more than he wants to work with them which seems to be not that
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much because they have two drastically different visions the vision that you've seen championed by
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the polyev conservatives by alberta's government with danielle smith and dan williams who's the
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addictions minister there is one that says we need to get people off of drugs and that's been
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what's so frustrating when you talk to or watch interviews with some people in again the so-called
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harm reduction space they don't actually discuss getting people off of drugs it's really about
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accepting that people are going to be on drugs and not being bothered by that it's giving up on
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people it is actually giving up on people which is the least compassionate thing that you can do
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You are giving up on people instead of offering help.
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I have never once spoken to someone who regretted it.
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I saw in my Twitter mentions or my ex mentions,
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people who said the only reason they went to treatment was because they felt forced into it
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in a couple of cases people just told me online and i don't know who these people are
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that they had treatment that was court ordered and that was the only reason they did it so it
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actually led me to ask polyev a question that i had not heard him speak on which is whether he
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would take the alberta approach which has been proposed there and admittedly i think the details
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still need to be ironed out and look at a national version of that this was my question and his
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response good morning andrew lawton true north i know you're familiar with alberta's approach to
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drugs which similarly to you is very much against so-called safe supply but they have proposed a
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forced intervention and in some cases really using the mechanisms of law to push drug users
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into treatment under certain conditions would you support something like that nationally i don't know
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i need to study it more i need to understand how it would work
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i would i want everybody who's on drugs to be in treatment and rehab to get off drugs
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what i haven't been able to figure out is if someone doesn't want to be rehabilitated can you
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require them to be i don't know i'd like to see some evidence for and against before i make a
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a judgment. Tracy Gray from BC is an MP in our caucus, a common sense conservative, who's proposed
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that we have treatment in the prisons and that judges have the ability to make it part of a
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sentence that drug-related offenses have drug treatment as part of the sentence so that the
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offender who perhaps they were involved in theft we know the theft was linked to their addiction
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the judge the judge could say while you're in prison you're required to be drug free and we're
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going to provide you with high quality treatment behind bars that makes sense to me because they're
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already going to be in prison anyway they might as well be cleaning up their body and their souls and
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and their addictions um but i don't know if you can take someone off the street who has not
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committed a prison offense and successfully rehabilitate them. If we can, I'm open to it,
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but I need to see more evidence at this point. By the way, I would just say, I don't know
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is an answer you don't hear often from politicians. And I actually respect that he was willing to
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work through his thought process, at least in some way publicly, which, look, I wrote a book
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on the guy. That's not normally how he is on these things. He likes to deliberate internally
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and speak out when he has an answer. But I appreciated that. He's saying, listen, I'm open
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to it. I want to see the evidence. And maybe Alberta is a bit of a test case for the rest of
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the country in that case. But I can tell you one thing, that this is an issue that really goes
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across political lines. I can't remember if I mentioned it on the show before or if it was in
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another interview, but I was at a social gathering in some way and I was talking to someone that was
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very not conservative, didn't like Danielle Smith, did not like Pierre Polyev, did not like the
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conservatives on anything. And I was like, oh, this is going to be a terribly painful dinner.
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And then the person volunteered, although I will say about Danielle Smith, I love what she's doing
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on drugs, because they realize that drugs are ravaging their communities. And you have so many
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people in quote unquote officialdom who are doing nothing but furthering this problem. And the news
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that has come out including in London from the London police the diversion is happening is really
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just reaffirming what people paying close attention to this that aren't bound to their
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ideological support for these programs had have known for a while and one of those is Adam Zivo
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who again was probably the least surprised by the London police announcement because he was
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reporting on it before I don't even know if it's cool now but he was certainly reporting on it
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before anyone in officialdom was acknowledging the problem he joins us on the line now columnist for
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the National Post and founder and director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policies. Adam,
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always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on here. I don't know if you saw those
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two clips I played from Pierre Polyev, but the one in particular I found interesting was
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he put aim on the media here and said the media has to stop elevating this certain class of
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experts while really ignoring that these people are so heavily invested in the status quo. I was
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wondering what your thought on that was. Well, I think that's a very fair criticism. We have to
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it's pretty obvious that many journalists within Canada are not doing their job responsibly when
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it comes to addiction policy. So they only consult with a very small number of quote-unquote experts
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who often don't even have a background in addiction medicine. Oftentimes they're public
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health experts who come from a different educational background, which is much less
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rigorous than addiction medicine. And they don't have a lot of clinical experience treating people
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who are struggling with addiction um and so this this small group of ideologically minded activist
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scholars are cited again and again and again in most canadian media while addiction physicians
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who are actually on the ground are largely ignored on top of that many journalists uh don't really
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analyze their data really carefully so what happens is that you often have them citing studies
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which are very low quality. And the journalists will just go and parrot the conclusion of the
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study, but they'll pay zero attention to the methodology. There's a great study that came out
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in January in the British Medical Journal that actually showed that safer supply didn't work,
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but that the data was reframed to imply that it did work. And there was a lot of missed media
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management there, which was an excellent case study of this. I'd love to talk about that later
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if we have the time. Yeah. And I would say in general,
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there's a shortcoming in a lot of science and health journalism and that you have people that
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are not science and health experts. And again, one of the things that's great about journalism is
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that you can develop a proficiency and a knowledge of something without having gone to 12 years of
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school. But it means in a lot of ways, you're beholden to the data you take in. And if you're
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getting in bad data or bad insights, or you're getting expert opinions that themselves are
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co-opted in some way or very heavily biased, the output is going to be that way as well.
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and the reporter may not even know that. Well, that's the thing. And then the problem here is
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that also many journalists don't have enough time or resources to properly evaluate these studies
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that are presented to them. So I'm going to use the BMJ article that I mentioned earlier as a case
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study. So that study followed around 4,800 drug users in British Columbia over 18 months. And
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they claimed that safer supply patients had a 55 to 91% reduction in mortality the week after
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accessing safer supplies so they claimed that safe supply was remarkably effective at saving lives
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but then i contacted seven physicians and a statistician and we spent about a three weeks
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analyzing this this study and we realized that it was junk science that the underlying data actually
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showed no statistically significant reduction mortality but that the researchers have relied on
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you know one week outcomes instead of one year outcomes and it failed to fully filter out
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confounding variables to inflate the positive effects of safer supply and you know that kind
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of work takes a lot of time uh but many journalists they don't want to do that so all they'll do is
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just you know parrot what's in the conclusions which is unfortunate and even though you know my
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analysis has come out uh many journalists just continue to cite that study uncritically which
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suggests that they're not even interested in understanding the methodological flaws of harm
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reduction. It's concerning, the amount of laziness and willful blindness we see in this space.
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I think that people like Sharon Koivu, who I know you and I, well, you were alongside her on a panel
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I had on the show a while ago. She's probably one of the most effective commentators because she
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does not have skin in the game in any other sense than she is a healthcare practitioner. And I think
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her testimony has always been valuable because she was a big supporter of these policies and
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just did what scientists and researchers are supposed to do, which is realize this isn't
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working, it's making problems worse, and then she's backed away. Because I do think Polyev's
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criticism of experts that have skin in the game is incredibly valid. I mean, people don't realize,
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and I was hoping you could shine some light on this, how much money there is being made
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by the status quo. Well, I mean, we have to keep in mind that safer supply is very profitable for
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certain doctors and certain pharmacies. If you're coming in to get your safer supply drugs every
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single day then the pharmacy is charging the government a dispensing fee every single day
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and i've spoken to a few physicians who have crunched the numbers and they've discovered that
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uh one pharmacy with 100 or more safer supply patients can make a million to 1.5 million dollars
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off of that right off of that alone so that's nothing to do with you know giving people viagra
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or beta blockers or anything else that's just on the safe supply yeah and this of course creates
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pernicious financial incentives to keep people on safer supply rather than to get them on addiction
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medications that stabilize them and lead them to visit pharmacies less often for example
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supplicate is a monthly injectable quasi vaccine essentially for drug use uh it's essentially like
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it's like a like a methadone it was like suboxone but then it just dissolves in your body over the
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course of a month so you know if you're on supplicate you're there for you know you come
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to your doctor once a month you come to your pharmacy once a month there's much less money
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to be made off of you and of course many pharmacies are reluctant to support it because they can't
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profit off of it um it is concerning that some pharmaceutical interests are very invested in
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propagating safer supply i know that shoppers drug mart provided about two million dollars if
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if I recall correctly, to the British Columbia Center
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on Substance Use to help fund training on safer supply.
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providing financing to an ostensibly independent research
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body to support safer supply that happens to be profitable
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that people should treat harm reduction research done
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tobacco companies on on vaping i mean you have to look at where this research is being funded and
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i i would ask you about the other side of this which is that no one seems to be talking now in
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these halls of officialdom which is the term i've been using on this episode about getting people
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off of drugs and you know i remember about a decade ago when when i first started to see
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the harm reduction discussion in london and even elsewhere ramp up there was always that
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that promise that, okay, and once we get people into the system, we can then look at getting
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them off of drugs. I just don't hear that conversation at all taking place. And I
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certainly don't see any data to support that any of these mechanisms are getting people off of
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drugs. Do you? No. And here's the underlying problem. So many of the policymakers and public
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health experts who are in control of addiction policymaking in Canada are beholden to radical
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drug activists who are often in active addiction so in vancouver the vancouver area network of drug
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users van do is highly influential and has close relationships with a number of really prominent
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policy makers so if you as a policy maker are listening to people who are actively using drugs
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under the auspices of you know listening to people with lived experience or living experience
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then maybe you're not going to prioritize getting people off of drugs because the people you are
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listening to uh are using they want to keep on using they conceptualize their drug use as a
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human right uh it's interesting i was talking to a british reporter or rather photojournalist who
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did that big piece in the telegraph recently about vancouver and he was expressing shock to me
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because when he spoke with van du and when he spoke with harm reduction activists about a month or two
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ago they told him that they didn't feel like there was any problem with addiction they said it was
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oppressive to expect people to live uh fulfilling lives or at least that's what he told me
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So how do we reorient this? Because obviously some of the proposals on the table from the
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Conservatives are ending funding for so-called safe supply programs. That doesn't outlaw these
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programs. Provinces could still step up. I mean, theoretically, community organizations could.
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I don't know if they will, because I think there really does need to be a government gravy train
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keeping this alive. But one attitude that we've seen in Alberta is really even putting forced
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intervention on the table. And I think we need to see a little bit more about what that would
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look like. And Polyev this morning said he'd be open to that nationally, but hasn't yet committed
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to it. But what other resources are available to deal with this? Well, I think on the surface level,
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we should be investing far more heavily into recovery. If someone wants rehab, if they want
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detox, that should be available to them right away. And it should be free. And it takes several
00:26:00.560
tries for someone to get off of drugs, right? So like, if it's expensive, if it takes forever,
00:26:07.400
if it takes a month to get into a program, that's not going to happen. So at the surface level,
00:26:10.320
that's what needs to be fixed. But on the more foundational level, we need to think about
00:26:14.540
reforms for education and reforms in our bureaucracy. Our public health bureaucracy
00:26:19.780
is a cesspool of radical ideology. In Ontario, I know that public health bureaucrats are very much
00:26:27.660
pushing for these radical policies against the will of the provincial governments. And if you
00:26:31.660
change government, that's not going to be fixed. And those policymakers are coming from schools
00:26:37.040
that are once again highly ideological. So if you have graduate programs that aren't committed
00:26:44.580
to evidence-based policymaking, that think that drug prohibition is just structural racism,
00:26:50.540
and then that filters into the bureaucracy, we have a problem. So it's going to take a long time
00:26:55.320
to shift our underlying political or I guess governmental understructure, which leads to
00:27:03.400
these disastrous addiction policies. Yeah, I just before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about
00:27:08.160
that because you had a piece in the hub to that effect that to Bonnie Henry, who's the chief
00:27:12.440
public health czar in British Columbia, criminalizing drugs is white supremacy.
1.00
00:27:18.000
Yeah, I mean, that is the most profoundly stupid thing I've ever heard. So look, you can argue that
1.00
00:27:23.300
individual laws in certain contexts may have racist intentions or outcomes that's fair
00:27:28.820
laws are just a tool that we use to order society and any tool can be abused but they were arguing
00:27:33.460
that drug prohibition in general is rooted in white supremacy and anyone with even a cursory
0.94
00:27:39.700
understanding of history let alone like the current global landscape can see that that's ridiculous
00:27:45.060
i mean we have sharia law which is uh banned the consumption of mind-altering substances since the
00:27:51.700
seventh century so you know if islamic scholars and lawmakers from the very beginning supported
00:27:57.060
prohibition how do you attribute that to white supremacy uh china in the 19th century advocated
00:28:03.940
strongly for prohibition because opium was destroying its citizens and then of course
00:28:08.740
the british came in and forced china to end prohibition with its warships so by by by the um
00:28:15.460
the harm reduction anti-racist framework you can basically argue that you know the british
00:28:20.500
sent their anti-racist warships to decolonize china's drug policies it's absurd and even today
00:28:28.100
racial like minority communities tend to hate this kind of stuff they hate drug liberalization
00:28:33.940
uh in vancouver and in san francisco asian like communities are the ones that want change that
0.99
00:28:40.420
want prohibition in across the world today east eastern and middle eastern countries are the ones
0.58
00:28:46.020
that most strongly ban drugs and now we have some you know let's be honest upper middle class
00:28:50.500
white progressive bureaucrats saying actually this is racist you should probably listen to
00:28:55.500
racialized communities if you're going to claim to be an anti-racist yeah i remember when that
0.59
00:28:59.540
one white protester was yelling at a guy from hong kong to go home at a city council meeting
00:29:04.240
and i think it was vancouver or whatever a couple of weeks back but uh it was exactly the point here
00:29:08.980
adam zeebo always good to talk to you sir thanks for coming on today well thanks for having me on
00:29:12.620
again all right thank you you're welcome anytime and i will say also that you you can't unpack
00:29:18.880
this from the crime issue so when you're seeing rising crime rising drug uses this is absolutely
00:29:24.960
related and i will talk about health care too in a broader sense in this episode and actually timed
00:29:30.780
in quite well because our good friends at secondstreet.org have a new documentary out
00:29:35.440
saying we need to have a wholesale national conversation about health care reform the
00:29:40.860
documentary is called health reform now let's take a look at the trailer here if we can
00:29:46.080
poured out very recently citing the Canada's the second best healthcare system in the world.
00:29:51.600
We begin tonight with the agonizing pain patients are facing. I've seen wait times
00:29:56.860
lead directly to people dying including children. She has lost two daughters due to long wait times
00:30:04.200
in the healthcare system. When you have elective surgery they elect to stall you off as long as
00:30:15.400
possibly can. What kind of a healthcare system is that? I already waited seven years. Can you
00:30:21.160
imagine two more just to see the specialist? So the last thing the chief financial officer
00:30:28.760
of a hospital wants is patients. Is it normal to see so much patient suffering in a developed
00:30:46.920
The documentary just out, available at healthreformnow.ca, produced by secondstreet.org, whose president
00:31:03.700
well reform is one of these tricky words because it can mean anything and nothing depending on who
00:31:09.140
says it and you know there are many ways you could reform the system some for the better some for the
00:31:13.780
worse what is it that this film is trying to tell people well anyone who follows health care debate
00:31:20.740
in this country knows that canadians love the idea of having a universal health care system
00:31:26.340
the problem of course is that it's not working we spend a lot of money we're one of the highest
00:31:30.900
spenders in the world we have a lot of good people working in the system too uh the problem is the
00:31:35.540
structure of the system is broken it's not conducive to getting uh good results for patients
00:31:41.780
on a consistent basis and you know certainly some people have good experiences with the
00:31:45.780
healthcare system that's wonderful but the problem is too many patients are falling between the
00:31:50.500
cracks and so really what we do in the documentary is we look at other better performing universal
00:31:58.020
health care systems particularly in europe and we examine five policies that are in place in those
00:32:04.260
types of countries so that you ultimately would see better policies here in canada so basically
00:32:10.580
we can copy what people are doing much better than us and then we can bring those good results to
00:32:14.980
canada one of the big challenges we see in this country is that people cling to this idea of
00:32:22.820
health care the health care system being something that it really isn't and and i'll say perfectly
00:32:28.660
candidly that the utopian version of the health care system is fantastic it's something that's
00:32:32.900
free anyone can access it no matter where you are in the country you can go and get it but
00:32:36.900
if you scratch even just a tiny little bit below the surface that's not the experience that canadians
00:32:42.740
have with the system and look i've had many run-ins with the health care system uh whenever i have
00:32:48.660
needed emergency treatment i have zero complaints whatsoever i i've been able to get it the issue
00:32:54.420
is not with emergencies the issue is with these things that are very pressing for people but
00:32:59.220
might not rise to the level of you know your organs are falling out all over the floor and
00:33:03.940
that category the stats are just horrendous yeah and jerry alluded to this as you would have seen
00:33:10.260
in the the trailer just now when you have elective cases in particular they elect to make you wait
00:33:16.420
because they can't um and it's not right there's so many people that are suffering because of this
00:33:23.700
people that are literally stuck in their apartments dealing with chronic chronic pain
00:33:29.300
it's brutal you know grandmas and grandpas they can't pick up their grandkids or babysit them or
00:33:35.860
be part of their lives because they can't keep up with them and and uh you know if the grandkids
00:33:40.980
crawl on them then it causes too much pain you know just the horrible stories like that
00:33:45.220
people walking around with cloudy vision while they wait for cataract surgery um and you know
00:33:50.580
we've actually heard um you know some bad cases in emergency rooms too where you know in one case
00:33:55.540
in winnipeg they reported that the situation was so bad earlier this year that they had to double
00:34:01.220
bunk two patients on a single stretcher um in the hospital like it's just it's gotten to a point
00:34:09.780
where it's really really unacceptable in this country and i think some people have become
00:34:14.900
a little bit numb to just assuming well this is how it is or we have the u.s system and and what
00:34:21.540
we talk about in the documentaries that no it that doesn't have to be the choice let's look
00:34:26.340
to europe let's look to australia and other developed nations that have better performing
00:34:31.700
universal health care systems because if we copy what they do we can ease patient suffering so
00:34:36.420
that people aren't measuring their wait times in years and maybe get back to weeks you know which
00:34:41.540
is where it should be in a developed country such as ours in the shioli case in quebec which was one
00:34:47.860
of the most frustrating examples of our legal system at work because this was the case where
00:34:53.860
the supreme court basically ruled that access to a waiting list is not access to health care which
00:34:58.340
is a crucial ruling but they basically found the exact opposite in another case that has basically
00:35:04.740
found that you only have a right to alternatives in quebec and nowhere else in the country so
00:35:09.620
we can talk about the legal aspect there but but that fundamental point there that came out of that
00:35:13.380
case that access to a waiting list is not access to health care that seems to be the missing
00:35:17.620
recognition by the government across the country is it not yeah it is um you're not providing
00:35:26.820
health care if someone's on a waiting list for a year or two they're dealing with chronic pain
00:35:30.820
and they're getting addicted to painkillers and all the horrible side effects that i just talked
00:35:34.180
about it's not ethical but for some reason we've just allowed that to continue and you know i think
00:35:40.900
political parties of all stripes have largely been guilty for 30 years of throwing money at
00:35:47.380
the problem and hoping it would go away because they haven't been prepared to have that conversation
00:35:51.940
with canadians about reform uh it is a delicate issue but public opinion is in favor of reform
00:35:59.220
people i think have watched this story play out they're saying it's not working this approach
00:36:03.140
where we throw money in the system it's not working we spend a lot we're not getting the
00:36:06.580
results we need so the public is actually on side with reform we haven't seen enough
00:36:12.020
political parties and politicians sort of run with it now and say okay here's what we're going
00:36:17.300
to do we're going to try out some new things like that have been effective in other countries in
00:36:21.380
europe and australia and other other countries uh and that's i think the stage where we need to be
00:36:27.300
we're seeing a bit of that there's some positive signs in this country where we're seeing some
00:36:30.820
reform measures happen but it's not quick enough and until we start to see a greater push in that
00:36:36.340
direction we're going to continue to see people suffering in health care so when you say colin
00:36:41.380
that the public is on board with reform that in a lot of ways flies in the face of what the
00:36:46.980
conventional understanding is which is that this is a political third rail and i think we see bits
00:36:51.620
of this anecdotally anytime a politician is even so much as hinted at the idea of private delivery
00:36:58.260
you get this just absolute you know holy hellfire from liberal and new democrat parties and some
00:37:03.620
activist groups talking about switching to some you know pay-to-play healthcare system and so are
00:37:09.460
you saying that those attacks are not representative of where canadians are because i would have
00:37:13.460
actually thought it would go the other way the canadians really are uncomfortable with the idea
00:37:17.140
of a change even if they don't love how things are yeah so we've done a lot of pulling on this
00:37:22.020
it's all on our website if anyone wants to see it secondstreet.org. I think the public overwhelmingly
00:37:28.500
supports what we're seeing in different parts of the country where the government
00:37:33.140
will contract with a non-profit clinic or a private clinic and pay them to provide care
00:37:39.940
to treatment to patients in the public system. The public supports that. John or Joe patient
00:37:46.980
doesn't care who is like flicking the switch of the x-ray machine they don't care if it's a
00:37:53.780
government employee or a private sector employee or if they're unionized or non-unionized or if
00:37:58.100
they have black hair or brown hair or whatever they don't care about any of that they just care
00:38:02.340
that they get the quality treatment they also don't want to pay for um directly with the bill
00:38:07.620
when they when they walk out of course everything is paid for with uh their taxes and and so that's
00:38:13.060
what we're seeing in provinces like Ontario where the government is now partnering more with private
00:38:18.100
clinics and non-profit clinics to provide those services to the public and the public overwhelmingly
00:38:23.860
is supportive of doing that if it can be done in a cost-effective way and help more patients.
00:38:29.060
The public is on side with that. You mentioned the Chow Lee decision. The public is overwhelmingly
00:38:34.820
on side. It's in the 60s, 70s percent range. When you ask the question, should we keep the public
00:38:40.820
healthcare system, but allow people to pay for private options if they don't want to use the
00:38:45.840
public system. The public overwhelmingly supports that. There's other policies that we talked about
00:38:52.380
in the documentary that the public is on board with. What you see in Europe, where a patient in
00:38:57.940
one EU country can go to another EU country, pay for treatment, and then get reimbursed by their
00:39:03.220
home country. This is how you can avoid long wait times at home. If you happen to be facing one in
00:39:09.320
Europe, you can go to all these other countries in the EU, suddenly you've got hundreds if not
00:39:14.140
thousands of options for care instead of just relying on what is available locally. The public
00:39:19.780
loves this idea of bringing that policy to Canada. So you could maybe go to another province and pay
00:39:25.480
for treatment to south of the border or to maybe you go over to Europe, whatever. So the public is
00:39:31.400
definitely there and ready for health reform, but we're not seeing the political class move quickly
00:39:37.540
enough to uh to recognize that with promises yeah i mean i'll be the first to say the united states
00:39:43.860
healthcare system has a lot of flaws and and most people that have the discussion you and i are
00:39:47.700
having right now are not saying we should replace our system with the us when there are so many
00:39:51.460
better examples around the world but when i cross the border you know at port here on an hour from
00:39:56.420
where i live in michigan and you see the billboards on the interstate uh advertising you know mris and
00:40:02.580
x-rays to canadians you know that something is not working in canada otherwise there would not be
00:40:08.420
this booming marketing industry in border communities to provide health care services
00:40:13.300
to canadians yeah exactly yeah hundreds of thousands of canadians every year get into
00:40:19.300
their cars drive to the us they get into airplanes and they go to the us or other countries for
00:40:24.500
healthcare i mean we've talked to patients that have gone over to i think it was lithuania germany
00:40:31.620
mexico the united states china um thailand you name it canadians are going all over the world
00:40:39.300
to get the treatment all right well people can check out this issue in far more detail at
00:40:45.940
healthreformnow.ca uh the documentary produced by our friends at secondstreet.org is health reform
00:40:52.900
now colin craig always good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thanks for the chat today
00:40:57.220
All right. Appreciate it. Best of luck with that. We will talk to you all next week with more of
00:41:02.660
Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. I will be back in the driver's seat for Off the Record,
00:41:07.380
though, which comes out tomorrow on True North. If you want to go even just a slight notch more
00:41:11.200
irreverent than we are on this show, depending on who's on. Actually, I don't even know who I'm on
00:41:15.760
with this week, so it may or may not be. It'll be more irreverent. I'll make sure to bring something
00:41:19.480
to you. But anyway, that does it for us for today. We will talk to you on Monday, folks. Thank you.
00:41:27.220
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:41:29.560
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.