Juno News - Poilievre says media should stop quoting ＂experts＂ who caused the drug crisis

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:15.460 this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true north

00:01:19.980 hello and welcome to you all this is the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent

00:01:29.820 talk show on true north on this thursday july 25th just after one o'clock eastern 10 a.m on

00:01:35.840 the west coast a lovely 2 p.m in the afternoon for most of you in atlantic canada 2 30 for those of

00:01:42.640 you in the lovely province of newfoundland if you go to saint pierre a michelagh i don't know if

00:01:48.580 saint pierre and michelagh are hosting any olympic events now that paris is the official olympic host

00:01:53.200 but i the only thing that i have talked about on the show and will talk about as far as the olympics

00:01:58.200 are concerned i believe is those outfits and we did that earlier this week so you are olympic free

00:02:03.220 now although i i did know just on a complete aside there has been this brewing scandal where

00:02:09.740 apparently someone who was on the canadian soccer team in some capacity was filming the new zealand

00:02:15.480 soccer team as they were practicing which as i understand it is a bit of a no-no and then i was

00:02:20.740 also reading a story this morning about i forget the exact number but i i think it was like the

00:02:25.800 100,000 or something condoms that are going to be distributed to athletes in the Olympic village,

00:02:32.540 because apparently in the Olympic villages, there is always just copious amounts of sex going on. 0.94

00:02:38.760 And all that I could think of was the problem with having sex at the Olympics that you find 0.83

00:02:42.040 out after the Canadian soccer team was filming you. So take from that what you will. That's my

00:02:46.140 one Olympic joke. I can't do sports humor in any other context because I don't know it well enough.

00:02:50.020 But I do know a lot about politics. So we'll stick to my wheelhouse here this morning.

00:02:54.420 conservative Pierre Polyev, leader Pierre Polyev was in my neck of the woods, not for me. I just

00:03:00.500 happened to be like 15 minutes away from where he was holding a press conference. So I'll share

00:03:05.360 some details about that with you on this show, because I wanted to do a deeper dive into what

00:03:11.040 has increasingly become one of the most galvanizing political issues that we have in the country right

00:03:16.860 now, which is crime and related to that drugs. Now, these are technically two separate issues,

00:03:23.060 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.

00:03:34.600 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.

00:03:47.140 And more importantly, when you look at the property crime, theft, vandalism, so much of this is related to the rise in drugs.

00:03:54.380 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.

00:04:06.920 I put a lot of so-calls in when I talk about drugs for obvious reasons.

00:04:10.780 Pierre Paulyad this morning called someone a so-called doctor.

00:04:13.120 So it's not just me.

00:04:14.020 but all of these things have happened and it's amazing the problem has gotten worse

00:04:18.520 so I think it's something that we need to unpack a little bit here now we can talk about the

00:04:23.920 problems with safe supply so-called safe supply we will discuss that in a little bit Adam Zivo

00:04:29.260 is going to be back on the show momentarily but I also want to talk about the discussion of this

00:04:33.880 the media narrative around this because Polyev this morning when he was delivering his remarks

00:04:38.540 talking about rising crime and there were further numbers from Statistic Canada which came out this

00:04:43.740 morning that violent crime is up 50% since 2015. There have been 572,572 incidents of violent

00:04:53.520 crime in 2023, which is massive compared to the 382,000 in 2015 back when Justin Trudeau took

00:05:01.340 office. But all of this is to say that we are looking at a problem that everyone in the country

00:05:08.300 is seeing. Everyone in Canada is seeing. People that live in communities across the country are

00:05:13.420 seeing the drug and crime issues but the so-called experts are the ones who aren't so polyev took aim

00:05:19.360 at the way that the media treats these so-called experts this is the so-called edition of the show

00:05:25.500 it's the so-called experts the so-called safe supply the so-called harm reduction all of this

00:05:29.460 but he looked at the media and said you are part of the problem here take a look

00:05:33.360 so uh the dev the evidence is in and it's final and uh you know i would also encourage the media

00:05:41.620 to be more responsible. It is just so irresponsible for you to go and quote people who profit from

00:05:49.580 the ongoing drug crisis as though they are experts. They are not experts. If they were

00:05:55.500 experts, their policies, which have been implemented over the last nine years, would not

00:06:00.800 have caused 40,000 deaths, would not have seen an over 100% increase in opioid overdoses.

00:06:08.060 they the last thing they want is for the crisis to end because they're doing they're making so

00:06:13.260 much money off of it we've got to stop feeding the activist class and start providing treatment

00:06:20.040 and recovery i would encourage you if you're going to be if you're going to cover this drug issue

00:06:24.440 stop talking to the people who caused the problem start talking to the recovery centers

00:06:29.720 i would ask why don't you ask the people when you when you interview them why don't you ask them

00:06:35.960 how many people have you got off drugs call them up the local public authority public health

00:06:41.860 authorities ask them how many people they've gotten off of drugs because it's interesting

00:06:47.220 the media rewards these people for the carnage that they're causing they call you call them

00:06:53.880 experts they're not experts they're expert only at one thing and that is perpetuating

00:06:58.400 the drug crisis their policies have been implemented for the last nine years and we

00:07:05.360 see the results the experts are the people at places like harvest house in ottawa or the oak

00:07:11.880 center in winnipeg where they bring people in and get them off of drugs let's start quoting

00:07:18.080 them as the experts thank you and of course the criticism of the media did not stop there

00:07:25.760 Pierre Polyev continued. And at one point, a reporter from CTV London asked him questions

00:07:31.760 about this. And it led to one of those quintessential Polyev v. reporter exchanges

00:07:37.040 with this particular journalist. And the whole thing we've posted, True North has posted it on

00:07:42.180 our X account and probably our YouTube page at some point today. But so the whole thing was like

00:07:47.460 over four minutes. But I'll share with you a snippet that shows the contrast here and shows

00:07:52.300 more importantly I think how significant the framing is on this issue and why the euphemisms

00:07:58.240 the terms including safe supply are inherently political and why using these things unquestioningly

00:08:05.280 actually contributes to some of the problems we're seeing in society right now where anyone

00:08:10.060 who criticizes these programs is deemed as being anti-science when the program has really just had

00:08:16.140 this delightfully euphemistic positive sounding name put on it that doesn't bear out with how

00:08:21.100 these programs are manifesting but this was that altercation in london this morning

00:08:25.300 compromise here you you've drawn quite a line this morning but is there any compromise opportunity

00:08:31.280 where you could work with some of these folks come up with a modified plan or is there strictly

00:08:35.640 one option here in your mind are you talking sorry on what what subject are we talking now

00:08:41.740 drugs or crimes i'm talking safe supplies well again you know how can you possibly report on

00:08:49.700 the story when you're already using government propaganda it's not safe yes that's the problem

00:08:57.120 you're using the term they're using how can you so you've decided you've already made up your mind

00:09:02.180 you're going to report their statements as though they're true well why are you using their language

00:09:08.980 oh yes there are of course so you're just being force-fed talking points by the authorities who

00:09:18.560 caused the problem in the first place this is exactly this is exactly this is exactly the

00:09:23.720 problem this is exactly the problem exactly the problem how is it working i'm just asking you to

00:09:32.700 answer the question whether or not there's any room to work with these other agencies or not

00:09:37.140 and whether you're going to stick to your your proposals which are your proposals that's all

00:09:41.900 i'm asking sir my proposal is recovery and treatment am i going to give more money to

00:09:47.000 these agencies that have caused the crisis no they're not going to get any more money

00:09:53.680 they've caused the mayhem have you been around have you seen the tent cities

00:09:58.540 lived in this very neighborhood for eight years have you seen the tent cities 0.98

00:10:01.820 okay and you think that these agencies are doing a good job

00:10:07.680 i think there's sir it's my job to debate a federal leader on this issue sir but i will

00:10:13.820 I'm asking you a question.

00:10:15.120 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?

00:10:20.120 I agree with you on that, the community, but the agencies are different than the community.

00:10:24.580 And again, you're repeating their talking points.

00:10:27.300 I mean, there was a time when reporters believed their job was to hold government accountable, not regurgitate their talking points.

00:10:37.900 Who needs hard drugs when you can just watch those exchanges?

00:10:41.680 The only drug I need is a Pierre Poliev press conference.

00:10:45.380 That's the attitude.

00:10:47.080 Because these things, they are so infuriating when you see stories that unquestionably hold

00:10:53.200 up some people as quote-unquote experts, while denigrating anyone who has disdain for them

00:11:01.220 or anyone who has a different opinion.

00:11:03.520 This was the same attitude we saw during the COVID pandemic, where the government would

00:11:07.900 put up certain experts who oftentimes had financial skin in the game on whatever the discussion was

00:11:13.160 or were themselves quite ideological and all of these so-called harm reduction activists and I'm

00:11:18.560 talking when I say all I don't actually mean all let me let me distinguish between uh the few that

00:11:23.140 tend to dominate the discussion these ones are very heavily invested in this they run programs

00:11:30.160 that get a ton of money for doing this they are ideologically motivated they don't seem to be too

00:11:35.060 motivated by the science and the data and they don't actually have room for compromise so even

00:11:40.020 then the question to conservative leader pierre polyev will you work with these folks i don't

00:11:44.420 think they want to work with him any more than he wants to work with them which seems to be not that

00:11:49.940 much because they have two drastically different visions the vision that you've seen championed by

00:11:54.900 the polyev conservatives by alberta's government with danielle smith and dan williams who's the

00:12:00.100 addictions minister there is one that says we need to get people off of drugs and that's been

00:12:05.880 what's so frustrating when you talk to or watch interviews with some people in again the so-called

00:12:10.780 harm reduction space they don't actually discuss getting people off of drugs it's really about

00:12:16.220 accepting that people are going to be on drugs and not being bothered by that it's giving up on

00:12:23.440 people it is actually giving up on people which is the least compassionate thing that you can do

00:12:29.160 to those who are in a crisis,

00:12:30.840 whether it's those with mental illness,

00:12:32.340 whether it's those with drug addiction.

00:12:33.900 It's the same mentality.

00:12:35.480 I know there are different issues,

00:12:36.480 but it's the same mentality

00:12:37.640 as people that think assisted suicide

00:12:39.880 for those with mental illness is appropriate.

00:12:41.840 You are giving up on people instead of offering help.

00:12:45.360 And I have never,

00:12:46.200 I have spoken to people

00:12:47.240 who have recovered from drug addiction.

00:12:48.820 I have never once spoken to someone who regretted it.

00:12:52.280 And I have spoken to people,

00:12:53.580 and even this morning,

00:12:54.400 I saw in my Twitter mentions or my ex mentions,

00:12:56.940 people who said the only reason they went to treatment was because they felt forced into it

00:13:01.400 in a couple of cases people just told me online and i don't know who these people are

00:13:05.200 that they had treatment that was court ordered and that was the only reason they did it so it

00:13:10.260 actually led me to ask polyev a question that i had not heard him speak on which is whether he

00:13:15.080 would take the alberta approach which has been proposed there and admittedly i think the details

00:13:19.680 still need to be ironed out and look at a national version of that this was my question and his

00:13:25.220 response good morning andrew lawton true north i know you're familiar with alberta's approach to

00:13:30.900 drugs which similarly to you is very much against so-called safe supply but they have proposed a

00:13:37.220 forced intervention and in some cases really using the mechanisms of law to push drug users

00:13:42.740 into treatment under certain conditions would you support something like that nationally i don't know

00:13:48.580 i need to study it more i need to understand how it would work

00:13:53.940 i would i want everybody who's on drugs to be in treatment and rehab to get off drugs

00:14:00.580 what i haven't been able to figure out is if someone doesn't want to be rehabilitated can you

00:14:08.340 require them to be i don't know i'd like to see some evidence for and against before i make a

00:14:14.500 a judgment. Tracy Gray from BC is an MP in our caucus, a common sense conservative, who's proposed

00:14:24.080 that we have treatment in the prisons and that judges have the ability to make it part of a

00:14:31.380 sentence that drug-related offenses have drug treatment as part of the sentence so that the

00:14:41.220 offender who perhaps they were involved in theft we know the theft was linked to their addiction

00:14:45.760 the judge the judge could say while you're in prison you're required to be drug free and we're

00:14:51.700 going to provide you with high quality treatment behind bars that makes sense to me because they're

00:14:56.500 already going to be in prison anyway they might as well be cleaning up their body and their souls and 0.79

00:15:00.800 and their addictions um but i don't know if you can take someone off the street who has not

00:15:08.420 committed a prison offense and successfully rehabilitate them. If we can, I'm open to it,

00:15:18.700 but I need to see more evidence at this point. By the way, I would just say, I don't know

00:15:25.000 is an answer you don't hear often from politicians. And I actually respect that he was willing to

00:15:31.520 work through his thought process, at least in some way publicly, which, look, I wrote a book

00:15:36.640 on the guy. That's not normally how he is on these things. He likes to deliberate internally

00:15:40.420 and speak out when he has an answer. But I appreciated that. He's saying, listen, I'm open

00:15:45.000 to it. I want to see the evidence. And maybe Alberta is a bit of a test case for the rest of 0.99

00:15:49.920 the country in that case. But I can tell you one thing, that this is an issue that really goes

00:15:55.160 across political lines. I can't remember if I mentioned it on the show before or if it was in

00:15:59.820 another interview, but I was at a social gathering in some way and I was talking to someone that was

00:16:05.260 very not conservative, didn't like Danielle Smith, did not like Pierre Polyev, did not like the

00:16:09.660 conservatives on anything. And I was like, oh, this is going to be a terribly painful dinner.

00:16:14.140 And then the person volunteered, although I will say about Danielle Smith, I love what she's doing

00:16:18.620 on drugs, because they realize that drugs are ravaging their communities. And you have so many

00:16:24.700 people in quote unquote officialdom who are doing nothing but furthering this problem. And the news

00:16:31.440 that has come out including in London from the London police the diversion is happening is really

00:16:35.800 just reaffirming what people paying close attention to this that aren't bound to their

00:16:40.760 ideological support for these programs had have known for a while and one of those is Adam Zivo

00:16:45.800 who again was probably the least surprised by the London police announcement because he was

00:16:50.580 reporting on it before I don't even know if it's cool now but he was certainly reporting on it

00:16:54.700 before anyone in officialdom was acknowledging the problem he joins us on the line now columnist for

00:17:01.020 the National Post and founder and director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policies. Adam,

00:17:05.840 always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on here. I don't know if you saw those

00:17:10.000 two clips I played from Pierre Polyev, but the one in particular I found interesting was

00:17:14.840 he put aim on the media here and said the media has to stop elevating this certain class of

00:17:20.140 experts while really ignoring that these people are so heavily invested in the status quo. I was

00:17:26.960 wondering what your thought on that was. Well, I think that's a very fair criticism. We have to

00:17:30.680 it's pretty obvious that many journalists within Canada are not doing their job responsibly when

00:17:36.180 it comes to addiction policy. So they only consult with a very small number of quote-unquote experts

00:17:41.760 who often don't even have a background in addiction medicine. Oftentimes they're public

00:17:46.720 health experts who come from a different educational background, which is much less

00:17:51.020 rigorous than addiction medicine. And they don't have a lot of clinical experience treating people

00:17:55.560 who are struggling with addiction um and so this this small group of ideologically minded activist

00:18:01.400 scholars are cited again and again and again in most canadian media while addiction physicians

00:18:08.680 who are actually on the ground are largely ignored on top of that many journalists uh don't really

00:18:15.720 analyze their data really carefully so what happens is that you often have them citing studies

00:18:20.680 which are very low quality. And the journalists will just go and parrot the conclusion of the

00:18:26.660 study, but they'll pay zero attention to the methodology. There's a great study that came out

00:18:31.640 in January in the British Medical Journal that actually showed that safer supply didn't work,

00:18:37.140 but that the data was reframed to imply that it did work. And there was a lot of missed media

00:18:41.740 management there, which was an excellent case study of this. I'd love to talk about that later

00:18:45.120 if we have the time. Yeah. And I would say in general,

00:18:48.600 there's a shortcoming in a lot of science and health journalism and that you have people that

00:18:52.720 are not science and health experts. And again, one of the things that's great about journalism is

00:18:57.320 that you can develop a proficiency and a knowledge of something without having gone to 12 years of

00:19:01.880 school. But it means in a lot of ways, you're beholden to the data you take in. And if you're

00:19:06.020 getting in bad data or bad insights, or you're getting expert opinions that themselves are

00:19:12.140 co-opted in some way or very heavily biased, the output is going to be that way as well.

00:19:16.720 and the reporter may not even know that. Well, that's the thing. And then the problem here is

00:19:20.520 that also many journalists don't have enough time or resources to properly evaluate these studies

00:19:25.180 that are presented to them. So I'm going to use the BMJ article that I mentioned earlier as a case

00:19:30.240 study. So that study followed around 4,800 drug users in British Columbia over 18 months. And

00:19:38.860 they claimed that safer supply patients had a 55 to 91% reduction in mortality the week after

00:19:45.200 accessing safer supplies so they claimed that safe supply was remarkably effective at saving lives

00:19:52.240 but then i contacted seven physicians and a statistician and we spent about a three weeks

00:19:57.280 analyzing this this study and we realized that it was junk science that the underlying data actually

00:20:02.240 showed no statistically significant reduction mortality but that the researchers have relied on

00:20:08.080 you know one week outcomes instead of one year outcomes and it failed to fully filter out

00:20:12.480 confounding variables to inflate the positive effects of safer supply and you know that kind

00:20:19.760 of work takes a lot of time uh but many journalists they don't want to do that so all they'll do is

00:20:25.440 just you know parrot what's in the conclusions which is unfortunate and even though you know my

00:20:30.160 analysis has come out uh many journalists just continue to cite that study uncritically which

00:20:36.240 suggests that they're not even interested in understanding the methodological flaws of harm

00:20:40.160 reduction. It's concerning, the amount of laziness and willful blindness we see in this space.

00:20:47.680 I think that people like Sharon Koivu, who I know you and I, well, you were alongside her on a panel

00:20:53.000 I had on the show a while ago. She's probably one of the most effective commentators because she

00:20:58.300 does not have skin in the game in any other sense than she is a healthcare practitioner. And I think

00:21:03.800 her testimony has always been valuable because she was a big supporter of these policies and

00:21:08.260 just did what scientists and researchers are supposed to do, which is realize this isn't

00:21:12.220 working, it's making problems worse, and then she's backed away. Because I do think Polyev's 1.00

00:21:16.440 criticism of experts that have skin in the game is incredibly valid. I mean, people don't realize,

00:21:22.760 and I was hoping you could shine some light on this, how much money there is being made

00:21:26.700 by the status quo. Well, I mean, we have to keep in mind that safer supply is very profitable for

00:21:32.600 certain doctors and certain pharmacies. If you're coming in to get your safer supply drugs every

00:21:36.940 single day then the pharmacy is charging the government a dispensing fee every single day

00:21:42.700 and i've spoken to a few physicians who have crunched the numbers and they've discovered that

00:21:46.940 uh one pharmacy with 100 or more safer supply patients can make a million to 1.5 million dollars

00:21:53.260 off of that right off of that alone so that's nothing to do with you know giving people viagra

00:21:58.300 or beta blockers or anything else that's just on the safe supply yeah and this of course creates

00:22:02.940 pernicious financial incentives to keep people on safer supply rather than to get them on addiction

00:22:07.740 medications that stabilize them and lead them to visit pharmacies less often for example

00:22:13.580 supplicate is a monthly injectable quasi vaccine essentially for drug use uh it's essentially like

00:22:21.180 it's like a like a methadone it was like suboxone but then it just dissolves in your body over the

00:22:25.340 course of a month so you know if you're on supplicate you're there for you know you come

00:22:29.660 to your doctor once a month you come to your pharmacy once a month there's much less money

00:22:33.340 to be made off of you and of course many pharmacies are reluctant to support it because they can't

00:22:38.860 profit off of it um it is concerning that some pharmaceutical interests are very invested in

00:22:46.940 propagating safer supply i know that shoppers drug mart provided about two million dollars if

00:22:51.740 if I recall correctly, to the British Columbia Center

00:22:56.660 on Substance Use to help fund training on safer supply.

00:23:00.860 So you have this big corporate interest

00:23:03.060 providing financing to an ostensibly independent research

00:23:06.240 body to support safer supply that happens to be profitable

00:23:09.420 for that corporation.

00:23:11.780 Yeah, and I think that when we look at this,

00:23:14.660 I mean, to be honest, that should

00:23:16.520 be treated with the same level of skepticism

00:23:18.280 that people should treat harm reduction research done

00:23:21.060 tobacco companies on on vaping i mean you have to look at where this research is being funded and

00:23:26.180 i i would ask you about the other side of this which is that no one seems to be talking now in

00:23:32.100 these halls of officialdom which is the term i've been using on this episode about getting people

00:23:36.900 off of drugs and you know i remember about a decade ago when when i first started to see

00:23:41.620 the harm reduction discussion in london and even elsewhere ramp up there was always that

00:23:46.340 that promise that, okay, and once we get people into the system, we can then look at getting

00:23:51.180 them off of drugs. I just don't hear that conversation at all taking place. And I

00:23:55.820 certainly don't see any data to support that any of these mechanisms are getting people off of

00:24:00.120 drugs. Do you? No. And here's the underlying problem. So many of the policymakers and public

00:24:06.340 health experts who are in control of addiction policymaking in Canada are beholden to radical

00:24:12.960 drug activists who are often in active addiction so in vancouver the vancouver area network of drug

00:24:18.800 users van do is highly influential and has close relationships with a number of really prominent

00:24:24.080 policy makers so if you as a policy maker are listening to people who are actively using drugs

00:24:29.440 under the auspices of you know listening to people with lived experience or living experience

00:24:33.760 then maybe you're not going to prioritize getting people off of drugs because the people you are

00:24:37.760 listening to uh are using they want to keep on using they conceptualize their drug use as a

00:24:43.760 human right uh it's interesting i was talking to a british reporter or rather photojournalist who

00:24:49.200 did that big piece in the telegraph recently about vancouver and he was expressing shock to me

00:24:53.520 because when he spoke with van du and when he spoke with harm reduction activists about a month or two

00:24:57.920 ago they told him that they didn't feel like there was any problem with addiction they said it was

00:25:02.400 oppressive to expect people to live uh fulfilling lives or at least that's what he told me

00:25:07.760 So how do we reorient this? Because obviously some of the proposals on the table from the

00:25:14.880 Conservatives are ending funding for so-called safe supply programs. That doesn't outlaw these

00:25:20.060 programs. Provinces could still step up. I mean, theoretically, community organizations could.

00:25:24.780 I don't know if they will, because I think there really does need to be a government gravy train

00:25:28.780 keeping this alive. But one attitude that we've seen in Alberta is really even putting forced

00:25:35.600 intervention on the table. And I think we need to see a little bit more about what that would

00:25:38.760 look like. And Polyev this morning said he'd be open to that nationally, but hasn't yet committed

00:25:43.600 to it. But what other resources are available to deal with this? Well, I think on the surface level,

00:25:48.860 we should be investing far more heavily into recovery. If someone wants rehab, if they want

00:25:54.940 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

00:30:35.800 country like Canada.

00:30:46.920 The documentary just out, available at healthreformnow.ca, produced by secondstreet.org, whose president

00:30:54.580 Colin Craig joins us now.

00:30:56.600 Good to talk to you, Colin.

00:30:57.660 Thanks for coming back on.

00:30:58.780 Congratulations on the launch.

00:31:00.760 Well, thank you, Andrew.

00:31:01.960 It's always, always enjoy chatting with you.

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.

00:41:24.340 God bless and good day to you all.

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.

00:41:57.220 We'll be right back.

00:42:27.220 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 25, 2024

Poilievre says media should stop quoting ＂experts＂ who caused the drug crisis

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