The Candice Malcolm Show: The economic toll of COVID-19 pandemic
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Summary
Canadians are being quarantined at home, and the economy is in free fall. How bad is it going to be? Today, Candice talks about the economic impact of the crisis, and why she thinks it's worse than anything we ve ever seen.
Transcript
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Canada wildly underestimates the toll or potential toll of the coronavirus.
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Journalists and politicians continue to mislead us about this disease,
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plus some good news. I tested negative for coronavirus and we're going to go
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through a lot of fake news. Candice Malcolm here and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Thank you so much for tuning in. As promised, I am doing a live episode here,
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reporting live from quarantine, I guess. I am now in day, I think, 14 or 15 of being
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self-isolated here at home. I think it's probably good practice regardless of what the government
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tells you, regardless of how strict the measures are to impose sort of self-isolation or home
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quarantine measures. At this point, we know that there are lots and lots of outbreaks. There's
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lots and lots of new cases around where I live, for instance, here in Toronto, that even if the
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government wasn't telling us to stay at home, I probably would and I would encourage you to do
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the same just, you know, for concern for, you know, your own health and safety. But it's kind of
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interesting to watch the, you know, politicians push more and more pressure for us to stay indoors
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and for us to basically destroy our own economy, kill large sectors of the economy without any real
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solid plan. So I'm going to get into all of that. I know Justin Trudeau tried a power grab. He tried
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to sneak it in. They're debating all the emergency measures today. They're going to pass that 82
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billion dollar measure and Trudeau sort of secretly tried to throw in a bunch of measures to give
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basically his government unlimited power. Thankfully, the Conservative opposition kept him on his toes and
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hopefully they'll remove all that. So that's all happening today. I am doing another episode of the
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True North Update, which is a show where my colleague Andrew Lawton and I go through all of the news
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related to coronavirus. We've been doing it every day for the past week and we're going to continue
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to do it as long as the whole country is on self-lockdown. So I encourage you to watch that
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show. It'll be up later on this afternoon, probably around five o'clock. So I'm going to talk about that
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in that show. I'm not going to talk about this show today. I want to focus in on the economy, on what
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we are actually doing, the measures that we're taking as a country to prevent a potentially
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disastrous public health outbreak similar to what we've seen in China, what we've seen in Iran,
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what we've seen in Italy. We're trying to prevent that, but we really don't have a plan. We really
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have no idea what we're doing and what we know that we're doing is destroying our economy, destroying
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the livelihood of millions of Canadians. We're going to see just an absolute disastrous outcome in terms
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of bankruptcies, businesses going out of business, people losing their homes, families falling apart.
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Okay, this is going to be worse than anything that we've ever seen. And at this point, we don't even
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really have any idea on like a timeline. Like how long is this going to last? So the Conference Board of
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Canada came out with a report. They released this report yesterday, the economic implications of social
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distancing to August. So this is a scenario where Canadians are homebound essentially until August.
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August. So we're not talking a couple weeks here. We're talking five months, people. Five months of
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staying at home, nothing opened, everyone just kind of working from their bedrooms and hoping that we don't
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spread this disease to the point where our hospital system collapses. So what would the projection be
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if we were to continue these measures until August? Well, according to the Conference Board of Canada,
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I mean, so the report isn't actually released. They said they're going to release a full report
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on the 25th, which is tomorrow. But the sort of over, you know, the basic bullet point reading here,
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which is all we have is bullet points, is that in this scenario, they say the economy sheds 330,000 jobs
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over the second and third quarter, boosting unemployment to 7.7%. I'm sorry, they project
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that the total job losses for the country are only going to be 330,000. But we're already way past that.
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We know that just in one week, last week, after Justin Trudeau announced his emergency measures,
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that more than 500,000 Canadians applied for EI in just one week. So they applied for the employment
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insurance scheme that Trudeau introduced. So if 500,000 people are employed after just one week
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of social measures, how is it projected that we're only going to lose 330,000 jobs? I think that this
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report, I mean, I haven't read it because it hasn't been fully released yet. But from just, you know,
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what they've released so far, it seems absolute madness to say that we would only lose 300,000 jobs in
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the economy, that the unemployment rate would be 7%. Let's just remind everybody, just last month,
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in Alberta, the unemployment rate was 7.2% in February 2020, before any of these social distancing
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measures. So we're really supposed to believe that the unemployment rate is barely going to move
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in this country when they shut down every restaurant, you know, every bar, every theater,
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every sporting event, you know, they're shutting down the whole country. Anyone who works in the
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hospitality industry, anyone who works in tourism, they've basically shut down international flights.
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So lots and lots of people at airlines have been, have lost their jobs. I don't really understand.
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There was a report from Goldman Sachs down in the United States that projected that the economy was
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going to contract, the GDP was going to contract by 50% and that they expected a 30% unemployment rate
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in the United States. Canada's economy is so incredibly tied to the US economy that it's really hard to
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wrap your head around the idea that Canada would only have a seven percent unemployment rate,
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but that the United States would have a 30%. I can't imagine a world where the US's unemployment
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rate was 30% and Canada's is only seven. So if this is the basis of the reports that, of sort of the
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stimulus spending and the government spending that Justin Trudeau is introducing, that the Liberal
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government is introducing, is based on a report like this, you know, we are wildly out of touch with the
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reality of what is going to happen when you purposefully shut down the entire economy.
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And I think that the concern that a lot of people are really starting to have is,
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okay, you know, Justin Trudeau is kind of laying down the law. He's saying it's time for everyone
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to stay home. We really have to take social distancing seriously. Everybody work from home.
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Nobody go out and about. No one, you know, they've closed parks. They've closed all the schools.
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They've closed basically any public area. You know, they've banned any kind of gathering
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with more than 50 people. And, you know, they're cracking down a lot less than that. Like people
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who continue to have their stores open or their restaurants open are going to be targeted by
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apparently government officials fining people and arresting people. A woman was arrested in Quebec
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City for testing positive for this coronavirus and then being found walking around the town. So,
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you know, the whole idea is what, you know, what is the future of our country going to look like if we
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continue with these measures? And we're not really being told at this point how long it's going to
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last and what the economic repercussions are going to be. So, we know, for instance, that when people
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don't work, they can't pay their bills. They can't pay for their homes. People are going to potentially
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leave their homes. You know, I know that there's been all kinds of measures taken so that, you know,
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you can't evict people during this period. Banks are going to be giving a lot of forgiveness in terms of
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mortgage payments, late mortgage payments. But the idea still is that we know, just again,
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for instance, we know that unemployment rates are linked to suicide. So, this is from a CBC report.
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It was in Alberta. It said that the analysis looked at suicide statistics and unemployment data between
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2000 and 2017. During that time, Alberta's suicide rate was higher than the national average. It
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revealed that for every one point increase in unemployment, there's a 3% or 2.8% increase
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in suicide. And we know that unemployment causes about 45,000 suicides a year worldwide. So,
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you can't just tell Canadians that they're going to lose their job potentially indefinitely. Sure,
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we have boosted EI payments. The government is working. Well, if they pass this emergency spending
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bill today, the government will be working to provide about $1,800 a month to Canadians who have been
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laid off. Maybe that's enough to kind of cover the basics, maybe, if you're lucky. But still,
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a lot of Canadians will just simply not be able to make ends meet. They won't be able to afford their
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lifestyle. They won't be able to afford the life that they created pre, you know, this coronavirus
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outbreak. And I don't think those circumstances are being properly considered right now. You know,
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our number one concern is public health, as it should be, you know, protecting loss of life and
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protecting an infection spread the way that we've seen in Italy. But the problem is that there's just
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so much details missing. There's so much missing. And we just don't know, again, we don't know. So,
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the measures that we're taking, are they permanent? Are they permanent? We're just going to all stay at
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home for the foreseeable future? How is that going to, how is that going to be realistic? Are people really
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just going to be complacent and sitting in their homes all summer, all spring and all summer? What are
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you supposed to do with your kids? What are you supposed to do? You know, how are you supposed to
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stay at home with kids and also work from home, right? Like, it just, it just doesn't really make a
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lot of sense. It doesn't really add up. Now, I have a son, he's one years old, so he's not in any kind of
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school, not in any kind of daycare. But even still, in my life, you know, he's an active little guy. I like to
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take him out. I like to take him to classes. He has music class. He used to go swimming,
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go to church group, all that kind of stuff. So he has sort of no social interactions right now. And,
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you know, that's fine for now. But six months from now, I think we're all going to be a little stir
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crazy. And I don't think that you can really just ask Canadians to indefinitely wait for something,
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wait for a cure to be developed, wait for a vaccine to be developed, wait for different waves so that our
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hospital systems don't get overwhelmed. You know, we have to come up with some kind of a timeline
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here. We have to come up with a timeline. Otherwise, well, first of all, I don't even know how the
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government's going to continue to afford these massive payouts when you have 500,000 Canadians
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plus applying for EI for, you know, a $2,000 check every two months, every month, on top of all the
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business bailouts, on top of all the bank bailouts, all the, you know, money going, increased child
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care benefit. I don't quite understand the increased child benefit because so families with kids are
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going to get more money, but you can't even use it for daycare. You can't use it for preschool or for,
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you know, to sign kids up for more classes because everything's closed. So sure, you might be getting
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a little bit of extra cash every month, but you can't really even spend it. I mean, that's sort of
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more of a stimulus measure as opposed to an income adjustment measure, which is what the rest of the
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stuff was. So really, I'm seeing sort of a lack of an overall plan for what's happening with this
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coronavirus. Like, are we waiting for a vaccine? Is that what's going to happen? Because we could be
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waiting a year if that's the case. I think that, you know, in order for Canadians to just say,
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sure, you know, strip away a massive percentage of the economy, I think it's probably closer to the
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30% figure that Goldman Sachs put it at. 30% of our economy is just going to disappear, and that's
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everyone who works in hospitality, works in food and restaurants, hotels, you know, flights, and not to
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mention a significant cutback in other industries. Just, you know, tourism industries, people who come
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from other places to visit Canada in the summer, you know, think anyone who works at like an aquarium
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or museum or anything like that, car rental agencies, it's just, it's all interconnected,
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and it's all going to disappear. And we're supposed to believe that it's only going to result in a 7%
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unemployment rate. I think that that is wildly problematic. And, you know, one of the things
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that Justin Trudeau said in his press conference is that his government always lets, it always lets
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science and experts guide us, science and experts. Now, I think that's a cop-out, because, you know,
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you're a politician, you're the leader of the country, you're the prime minister, you have to be
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there to make tough decisions. That's the job, it's a public policy rule. So, you can be advised by
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scientists about, you know, best practices, but even within the scientific community, there's no,
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necessarily, there's no agreement. I see reports on both sides, I see there was a report from Stanford
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University of a professor saying, you know, we're kind of overreacting. Just look at the,
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look at the infection rate and the death toll. It's not that high at this point. And yet, look
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at the reaction that we've had, comparing it to other things. You know, other people looking at
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the data saying, no, no, no, it's about to get a lot worse, we need to be even more paranoid. So,
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there's not even sort of a universal opinion among scientists when it comes to this disease. Some
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people think that the numbers are really starting to level off, even in Italy, they're not growing the
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same way other people think, no, you know, we need to take more and more measures. So,
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again, they're saying that they're letting the scientists and the expert guys, but I think that
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there's a real problem in doing that. Because if you, if you just say that, you're kind of
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alleviating yourself of any responsibility, right? You're saying, well, it's not me that's making this
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decision. I'm just relying on the experts. Well, who are the experts, right? Who are the experts that
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you're listening to? Which scientists? It's up to you to choose, you know, to comb through the data and
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figure out which one is going to lead you. You know, just two weeks ago, the government was sort
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of laughing at the idea of open borders and saying, no, that's not what we believe. Open borders don't
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help. The virus has no borders, or sorry, open borders, closing our borders won't help. This virus
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has no, knows no borders. This is a global effort and we can't close ourselves off at this point.
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And then, you know, a couple days later, they did a complete about face and said, okay, now it's time
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to close the border, you know, way after other people were, had closed their border, way after.
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So just as an example, Donald Trump closed the United States to first two flights from China.
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He did that way before anyone, anyone else was doing it. And then when he announced the travel ban
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from Europe, this was March 13th, you know, the experts, the so-called experts condemned him.
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So right here, viruses don't carry passports. Why travel bans won't work to stop the spread
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of the coronavirus? So why is it when Trump issued a travel ban, the experts said, no, no, no,
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that's not going to help. But then when Trudeau does it, it's, you know, a necessary problem.
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It's a necessary solution. I don't understand how that is the case. And again, Canada's health minister,
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minister has you. She said the more countries that have outbreaks, the less relevant borders become.
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A virus knows no borders. And she said that closing borders can actually have a contradicting effect
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because it will allow people to lie and that people will still be able to get in regardless of whether
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the borders open or closed. So, you know, were they listening to the experts then or are they listening
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to the experts now that they agree and they've closed the borders? Again, this is the problem that I have,
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is that, you know, at the end of the day, you have to choose, you have to make a decision and to just
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say, well, it's not my decision. I'm just relying on the experts. Like who are the experts? Who determines
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who is an expert? There's so many people with differing views at this point. Are you going to listen
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to economists like the folks over at Goldman Sachs saying, you know, we're looking at a major,
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major collapse in the real estate sector. It could lead to a massive stock market crash even further.
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Think about how many people are going to lose their livelihood, lose their pensions, lose their
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savings, lose their house, lose their family. And then you have to weigh that with the health experts
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that are saying, you know, the only way that we beat this coronavirus is that everybody stay inside
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and nobody work. And it's like, okay, well, which one's going to look worse in the end? And you really
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do have to balance and you have to make a decision. So you can't just say, you can't just say, I'm listening
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to experts because there's contradictions within what the experts are calling for. And even in
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experts in any given field don't really agree. And I think when you have the news media kind of
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picking sides, you know, we've seen this throughout that if you are sort of more on the, like, if you,
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if you like Justin Trudeau, if you're a journalist who likes Justin Trudeau, you look at his response to
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this virus and you say, wow, you know, he is just a standup guy doing everything he can, makes me so
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proud to be a Canadian. You know, I saw, I've seen a lot of this on Twitter, the sort of liberal
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journalists and more, more pro-Trudeau journalists talking about how much they admire Justin Trudeau
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and how, how proud they are of his response. Whereas then you have sort of more of the skeptical crowd
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saying, well, wait a minute, what, you know, what is he doing? Does he have a plan?
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You know, I'm seeing so many contradictions between what he was saying a month ago, what he's saying
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now. And then you have the same thing in the United States, you know, you're trying to read through the
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news about what's happening with the coronavirus and every news article you read is tainted with
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this sort of anti-Trump derangement syndrome. You know, if I just want to find out what's happening,
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you know, reading an article, a news report, supposed to be a news report in the Atlantic or the Washington
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Post or the New York Times, you kind of have to have a filter and just ignore the like four paragraphs
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of complete Trump derangement just to, just to get through it. So, you know, people keep saying,
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now's not the time for partisanship. Now's not the time to play politics. Let's just focus at the task
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at hand. But it's really impossible to do that because if people hate Trump, they're not going to
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be able to write neutrally about what he's doing. And if people love Trudeau, likewise, they're not looking
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neutrally at what is happening. Someone on Twitter is saying, please discuss the housing market. Well,
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there was that report in Goldman Sachs. Let me see if I can pull it up because it was pretty scary,
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honestly. And I feel like one of the things I'm sort of concerned about is I read a lot of news and
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I'm a news junkie. I will read a lot of reports and I feel like there's a lot of information coming
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out in the United States. You know, there's a lot of projections. There's a lot of critiques. There's really,
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really thorough reports coming out, analyzing everything to do with this fallout. And then
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I look for the equivalent in Canada and it just doesn't really exist. It's not, obviously we're
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a smaller country and we don't have the same kind of like resources, social infrastructure of,
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you know, think tanks and, you know, news reports and just a pure number of people working on public
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policy. But, you know, to say I showed you the Conference Board of Canada report hasn't been
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released yet. It's really just a one pager with bullet points. It's not really comprehensive.
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Let's move on. I told you that I had some good personal news to share and I got tested over the
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weekend for coronavirus. So I will explain what happened and how I got my test. I know a lot of
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people have been complaining about the fact that the tests are very slow, that once you get tested
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it might take up to a week. I know people in Ottawa were complaining and I know that there has been a
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huge problem with a shortage of tests. I think I got kind of lucky in just the fact that I was able to
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test because I had been trying to get tested for two weeks. So if you normally listen to my show and
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you're watching right now, you can tell I'm congested. My voice sounds different. I have a cold, I guess.
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I was in California. I was in the Bay Area where there's a massive outbreak right now. There's been
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I think a thousand cases in the Bay Area. The Bay Area has been on complete lockdown. Like people
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aren't even supposed to leave their house at all. And I was there two weeks ago. I got back two weeks
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Saturday. And from the time I got back, I didn't really have any symptoms, but I was a little concerned
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just because not only when I was in California, you know, again, pretty busy. I had friends there,
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had my son. So I was taking them out to different classes. And then the night before I left, I went
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to a large fundraising gala. I went to the Make a Wish Foundation event in San Francisco and there was
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at least 500 people there. And so, you know, once I got home and sort of realizing that there was an
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outbreak there, I got a little paranoid. I also started testing myself and I had a fever. I had a
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low grade fever. So I decided to call the health officials in Toronto and also Ontario. I had a very hard
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time getting through to them. And once I finally got through on the line after waiting on hold for
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two hours, one night, they basically said, look, unless you're in Iran, Italy, or China, you can't
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get tested for this virus. So just stay at home and don't worry about it. A couple days later, they
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changed that and said, okay, you know, you can get tested if you're in the United States too, because
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there's now big outbreaks in New York City and California. They told me to call 811 in order to get
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tested. You call 811 and the line is busy over and over and over and over again. Everyone in
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my household was trying to call 811 so that I could see if I could get tested. Meanwhile,
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my fever was getting worse and it was kind of sustaining. When I say fever, it was like testing
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like 101 in that range. I got as high as 102. Anyway, Saturday morning, we finally got through on the
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line. We waited on hold for over four hours. When we finally spoke to an official, they transferred us to
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a nurse, talked to the nurse about my symptoms. She advised that I do get tested for coronavirus. So
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I went down to Toronto Western Hospital, which is the corner of Bathurst and Dundas, and they had
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created a whole new kind of center. It was just brand new, open, it kind of been refurbished to be
00:22:00.240
this testing center. It had just opened. It just opened on Saturday. So I was one of the first people
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to go in and get tested. It was really, really well done. My hat goes off to the frontline workers there.
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I know that they're really putting themselves and their own health at risk in order to address this
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issue. So I went in, everything was very sanitary. You know, they give you a mask and gloves,
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you go in one by one. So you're not even interacting with anyone and they're behind a plexiglass.
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So I gave them all of my, you know, my health card and all my information. They sent me to a private
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room. I waited there probably about 20 minutes. The nurse came by, she did the swab, which they swab up your
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nose and kind of did that. Then a doctor came by, you know, just regular kind of like a regular doctor
00:22:42.640
visit. I left and they emailed me the results of the test less than 24 hours later. Like by six
00:22:48.240
o'clock the next morning, I had the result. I was negative. So I'm very, very glad and very thankful
00:22:52.480
that I don't have it. And really, I think that the key to addressing this issue and solving it is that
00:22:58.560
everyone needs to get tested. The more people who get tested, the better, because then you have the peace
00:23:02.720
of mind and you know, if you're sick, you have to take quarantine really, really seriously.
00:23:07.120
And if you're not sick, then you can go out and you can continue to go to work and we can continue
00:23:11.680
to have an economy in this country. I think that that is a much better measure than what we're
00:23:17.440
doing now. It's basically what South Korea has been doing, which is testing everybody. Everybody gets
00:23:22.720
tested, focus the resource on making sure as many people get tested as possible. Because I think part
00:23:27.360
of the concern at this point is that we don't know how many people have it. We don't know how many people
00:23:32.320
potentially walking around, not really taking the quarantine measures very seriously, and they
00:23:36.720
have it. And then we know this thing spreads incredibly fast. We know how quickly it can spread
00:23:41.440
and how many people one person can infect. So if we had more knowledge, more people tested,
00:23:47.680
I think we'll be a lot better off. I wish that we were focusing on that as opposed to these crazy
00:23:52.880
deconion measures to shut down the entire economy. And I know we are going to be talking in depth
00:23:58.000
on my other show, The True North Update with Andrew Lawton, about the extent of the government
00:24:03.840
powers, how Justin Trudeau basically tried a power grab, got caught, and kind of had to walk away
00:24:10.160
with his tail between his legs and eliminate some of the things that he proposed. But let me just say
00:24:15.760
this, you know, we're sending out $1,800 in EI, basically welfare, to half a million Canadians or more.
00:24:25.920
Okay, that's a lot of money. It's going to add up incredibly quickly. So I think that the whole
00:24:32.800
$82 billion is really just a starting point. That might be like how much money we spend in March,
00:24:37.840
and then we'll have to spend that much money again in April, potentially, and May and June. And eventually,
00:24:42.880
we're going to have to pay that all back. Eventually, you know, unless we're going to just default, which
00:24:47.920
would be terrible for the economy, we're going to have to pay that back. And it is going to come
00:24:52.720
from you and me, my friends, from the taxpayer. So I wouldn't be surprised to see massive, massive
00:24:58.480
tax grabs and increases. It's kind of scary to imagine what might happen if you kind of look back to
00:25:04.560
the top tax levels back during the 1940s and 50s, when we were trying to pay back the war efforts,
00:25:10.800
you know, the whole idea of the income tax was supposed to be a temporary measure,
00:25:14.480
it was brought in as a temporary tax to help fund the First World War. It is not temporary at all,
00:25:19.760
it is still here. My colleague over at the Toronto Sun, Anthony Fury, has been looking a lot into this.
00:25:26.240
The idea that a lot of the measures that were introduced and that are being introduced right now
00:25:31.440
are things that the left has kind of always called for. They've always called for, you know,
00:25:35.840
increasing the ability of AI, or of EI, sorry, making it available faster, all these other kind
00:25:42.480
of measures. You know, we have to be vigilant, we have to be vigilant, these measures are temporary,
00:25:47.440
and that when this crisis is over, the government goes right back to the way it was, and that we
00:25:52.480
don't allow them to, you know, continue with some of the surveillance measures, or some of the power
00:25:56.960
measures, or some of the taxation measures, and spending measures, that could be really, really
00:26:01.760
potentially bad for our society. So I'm going to leave it at that. Like I said, my colleague and I,
00:26:07.520
Andrew Lawton, will be coming back to you a little later on this afternoon. We'll have a full update on
00:26:12.080
all of the announcements today, all of the latest with coronavirus and the response, and we'll talk a
00:26:16.800
lot in depth about the emergency spending and the House of Commons today, and what happens in Ottawa.
00:26:24.000
So thanks so much guys for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.