Juno News - December 04, 2020“We’re all in this together, you idiots!”
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Summary
Coming up, Brian Pallister's Oscar-worthy performance about lockdowns, the importance of vaccine choice, and people dying on waiting lists in Canada. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now on The Andrew Lawrence Show.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, Brian Pallister's Oscar-worthy performance about lockdowns,
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the importance of vaccine choice, and people dying on waiting lists in Canada.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, still an essential service in the dominion of Canada,
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at least for the time being. I think I used that joke on Monday, but it's not a joke at this point.
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You got to keep clarifying that you are essential and make sure you are because all of a sudden
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you're going to find that the lockdown police, and the lockdown police are actually the politicians,
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more on that later, that they are out to get you pretty much no matter what.
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I've seen stories from people in Manitoba about like just pretty much anything and everything
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being declared non-essential, including at one store, sweaters. Their interpretation I had read
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on Twitter was that sweaters were non-essential, so they were cordoned off and you couldn't get them,
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which I've never been to Manitoba in the winter, but from everything I've understood,
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I'm going to say something that has probably never been said in the history of the world before,
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which is I think Brian Pallister is the most important thing right now.
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And with all due respect to people in Manitoba, the premier right now is so high on his horse,
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it's a wonder he can see anything, which is pretty rare for him given that he's already,
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But I want to play this clip and it's going to be a couple of minutes, but I've already shrunk it
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down here because the original was four minutes and there was a lot to it, but I want you to hear,
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I'll just talk about it on the other side. I want you to hear what Brian Pallister said in his address
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Know this about me. I did not get into politics for the adulation.
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I got into politics to do the right thing, try to save my town, try to help people.
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I do what I believe is right. I do what I believe is necessary. This is who you need right now.
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I am that person. I will do what I believe is right. And right now we need to save lives.
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If you don't think that COVID is real, right now you're an idiot. You need to understand
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that we're all in this together. You cannot fail to understand this. Stay apart.
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So I'm the guy who has to tell you to stay apart at Christmas and in the holiday season you celebrate
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with your faith or without your faith, that you celebrate with normally with friends and with family
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that where you share memories and build memories. I'm that guy. And I'll say that
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I'm the guy who's stealing Christmas to keep you safe
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because you need to do this now. You need to do the right thing
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and we'll celebrate this year if we do the right thing this year.
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I hope in years to come you might respect me for having the guts to tell you the right thing.
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And here's the right thing. Stay safe. Protect each other. Love each other. Care for each other.
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You got so many ways to show that. But don't get together this Christmas. Thank you.
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Okay. So I don't know what the worst part of that is. I don't know if it's Brian Palliser's
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martyr complex, if it's him choking up as he tells everyone that he is the leader they all need,
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or if it's him calling people idiots in the same breath as saying we're all in this together.
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Listen to this. I want you to listen to the gap. It wasn't even a full second between one and the other.
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If you don't think that COVID's real, right now you're an idiot.
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You need to understand that we're all in this together. You cannot fail to understand this.
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We're all in this together, you morons. That's basically the Brian Pallister message when it comes to 2020.
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Now, listen, I am all for the understanding that politicians have had to make tough calls
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and that in many cases it may not bring them any joy or delight to do it.
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But let's be perfectly frank here. You are not the hero when you have to tell everyone that you're the hero.
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And more importantly, you're not a hero to the people who are literally being charged by police
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at the direction of you, at the direction of your government, for the supposed crimes of working and worshipping.
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These things are illegal and non-essential for a great many people in Manitoba right now.
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So I'm not going to buy into this myth that Brian Pallister is peddling that he's the real victim here.
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The I'm the guy that's stealing Santa Claus, oh woe is me.
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And I mean, he's trying to do this sort of faux stoicism
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to deflect from the people whose livelihood has been thrown into a lurch because of him.
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Because of him taking a course of action that not only has not been proven,
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All of the data available are showing that lockdowns do not work,
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which is why we are in the place that we are in right now.
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So for him to do the most overzealous lockdown in Canada,
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this is not something that will have a net positive consequence.
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I saw a satirical article this week that made me chuckle.
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Pallister closes province after Manitoba deemed non-essential.
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That was in The Screaming Goose, which is a newer satirical publication
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And look, I mean, no offense to people in Manitoba,
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but if this is what passes for good governance there,
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Certainly we can declare Brian Pallister non-essential
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and then we wouldn't have to deal with these overdramatic pieces.
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I read this week that the Oscars are still going ahead
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So maybe Brian Pallister is looking for a last minute nomination or something.
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And you know, the idea of lockdown versus liberty
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is one that, all joking aside, needs to be understood
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as being the real battleground for politics right now.
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And I think every conservative politician needs to be doing
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what Jason Kenney is doing, which is standing up and saying,
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listen, we are not going to lock ourselves down into success.
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We're not going to lock ourselves down into victory against the pandemic,
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And I asked Aaron O'Toole last week about this.
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He had a press conference, he was talking about a number of things.
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And I asked him this question, and I want you to listen to the response.
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In the last week, we've had a pastor, an Ontario legislator,
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and numerous other Canadians ticketed for attending anti-lockdown protests
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And I'm wondering what your thought is on these actions
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by law enforcement officials and by provincial governments.
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Well, as you know, I think it's important for all Canadians
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to heed the advice of public health authorities.
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that Canadians can be proud of over the last 10, 11 months.
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Our country has rallied around some of the advice
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from public health officials, from elected officials.
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we need to give Canadians even more information.
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I suggested this to Dr. Tam in one of my briefings.
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We need to allow Canadians to make even smarter decisions.
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Where are transmissions taking place so that they can guard themselves?
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We've now practiced distancing, mask usage, hand washing,
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and other things which were the early direction in the pandemic.
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We need to equip and trust Canadians with more information
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on that transmission point because that will allow us
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to keep potentially more economic activity going.
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That will allow Canadians to be even more prepared
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to avoid the transmission risk in certain circumstances.
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And I appreciated that Dr. Tam took my question, my advice,
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because I think Canadians need more information, not less.
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Now, I know O'Toole has been dragged a fair bit online for that,
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and I think with good reason because there was not an answer in that.
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There was not a response to that in the question.
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And listen, I know Aaron O'Toole is a new leader.
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But I would like to see conservative politicians
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listen, it is possible to both take the virus seriously
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while also not legitimizing this incredibly coercive
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and ineffective approach that the enforcement-minded people have taken.
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And that, I think, is a completely defensible position
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I spoke on Monday about the criminalization of everything,
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and a barbecue restaurant owner as being the emblems of this idea
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that's going on right now, the lockdown mentality.
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And the level of misinformation that's gone around about these incidents since my show,
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not because of my show, but just since that time and those stories,
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is pretty ridiculous, including people trying to say
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that, well, you know, Randy Hilliard wasn't charged
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for dissenting with the government or protesting.
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This was from Toronto Police in response to a criticism from right-wing MBS.
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A right-wing MBS had gotten a good answer out of Toronto Police here
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And Toronto Police said each case would have to be investigated differently,
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so long as you adhere to social distancing laws or have an exemption.
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And Randy Hilliard was charged for organizing the protest.
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So what Toronto Police are saying here is that you're allowed to go to a protest,
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but you can't organize a protest that people could go to.
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So if a protest just comes about organically, that's fine.
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If Randy Hilliard were to go to a neighboring protest,
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So the only answer I can think of to this is just to have dueling protests set up.
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Where, you know, let's say Randy Hilliard does a protest in one block,
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and then a few blocks over someone else does a protest,
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I don't know if they still get ticketed for organizing a protest.
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But the absurdity of this, that you have a right to assemble,
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you have the right to free speech, you can go to one,
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So it means that what the government is trying to do here is say
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I mean, because again, if they're trying to say that no one should be allowed
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they're really trying to say they don't want you to attend.
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if they come in and start ticketing absolutely anyone and everyone under the sun,
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which it's increasingly looking like is happening in a broader context here.
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Manitoba had in the span of just one week, last week,
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Some of those were for not adequately enforcing social distancing in a store.
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but the reality is $181,000 taken from businesses
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or have had to severely restrict their operations.
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And the idea that we are now going after these businesses
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who have very little discretionary cash lying around
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oh, you know, that's $5,000 to old Brian Pallister's enforcement officers there.
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That's what a lot of these fines are going for,
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which is just absolutely asinine in a province that is,
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I don't even know if Manitoba is pretending it stands up for business right now,
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but in a country where we should all be standing up for business,
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but I want to just put into perspective some of the things that are happening here,
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where a bar owner who defied coronavirus restrictions was arrested.
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So they sent undercover officers into Max Public House on Staten Island.
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They all just, you know, pretended they were having a good old time.
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and then, you know, talk about a great bill at the end of it,
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because the, you know, the guy realizes that he's now been charged.
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The people he's been serving were actually partaking in an undercover investigation,
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This is not where you want law enforcement's priorities to be.
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I believe there were probably some other criminal actions taking place
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at the same time that might have taken priority.
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the big NYPD surveillance van parked around the street.
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I don't know how many people were involved in the operation,
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One is too many to have in something like this.
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We're now just transforming our culture into this snitch culture.
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As I joked last week, we went from we're all in this together to snitch on your neighbors,
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we're all in this together, you idiots, which is actually my favorite.
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And you could just, there's something for everyone in that line, I assure you.
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Not just for Pallister, but I get a bit of joy out of it as well.
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So Max Public House, their whole thing was, I thought, pretty great.
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They had declared themselves an autonomous zone.
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So they had, remember when Chaz was around, the autonomous zone,
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and not Chaz Bono, the autonomous zone out in the West Coast,
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where they were deciding to just basically allow the anarchists to run the show for a few days,
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which is why it didn't work, because these people can't actually run anything.
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The politicians were saying, we don't want to challenge this.
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So the bar decided it would declare itself an autonomous zone.
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And again, I think that's a novel idea, a good way to skirt lockdown.
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Didn't work, as we learned from the police doing the undercover investigation there and the operation.
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There was also in the UK a tequila bar that decided it would do what I thought was, again, quite novel,
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So not that I view tequila as necessarily a form of worship,
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but they decided that, hey, if bars are non-essential and churches are essential,
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this bar thing isn't working out for us right now.
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I'm not sure if their status has been approved or denied yet.
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But they're reiterating, I think, a very genuine problem,
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which is that these people are kind of desperate right now.
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They don't have other options available to them.
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When the state just keeps saying, no, you cannot be a business.
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You cannot run your operations, despite the fact that these places are not the problem.
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The cases, the transmissions are not coming from bars and restaurants.
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I know it's my own city, but a lot's been happening here.
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There was an outbreak, and multiple outbreaks actually, at the hospital.
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And the people being blamed for this are staff, are a lot of nurses and people working in the hospital
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who decided they were going to get together on different floors, have a potluck or something like that.
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I don't think that it's important or good to vilify healthcare workers or any frontline workers.
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But for all of the people in businesses in Ontario that have been told,
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I know you can't have your restaurant, you can't have your bar,
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you can't have your church service the way you want it.
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And now here we have the essential healthcare workers
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who are responsible for outbreaks in a hospital in multiple units.
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the places that are being scapegoated are not the problems.
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We're going to talk about the vaccines when we come back here on The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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So this is, I realize, a polarizing topic to the audience here.
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So I'm interested in hearing what you think about it.
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And that is the COVID-19 vaccine that is being rolled out to basically everywhere in the world,
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The UK is sending it out, I think, within the next couple of days.
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The US is going to have it within the next couple of weeks.
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Canada will have it at some point by the end of 2021, maybe, if we're lucky.
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Now, I know there are a lot of people that are skeptical of the vaccine.
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And I know there are a lot of people that are skeptical of the government.
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And when you have the government, which is responsible for acquiring and rolling out the vaccine
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and not particularly doing a good job, I get it.
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I think those are entirely reconcilable positions.
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I will have no issues taking a COVID-19 vaccine, but I would never in a million years force other
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And that's a position we need to see more of, which is just saying, hey, I trust other
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people to make decisions that are right for them.
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And the whole nature of vaccinations is that if it's important to you, you get it.
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If it's important to you, you get it and you protect yourself if that's what you're after.
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So the idea of taking aim at people who want to ensure it remains voluntary, I don't buy
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And this is what's happening with a petition that Derek Sloan, former conservative leadership
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Now, by the way, when an MP tables a petition, a lot of the time, it's not necessarily a reflection
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Sometimes it's just that a constituent handed an MP this big giant petition and they say,
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And that's been an excuse that the Green Party and the NDP have used whenever they've been
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But in this particular case, the petition looks at a number of things connected to a COVID-19
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vaccine, raises issues about the rushed nature of it, the fact that some manufacturers are
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being granted legal immunity, the fact that the long-term adverse effects may not be known
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The petition calls on the government to say that it preserves and protects legal, ethical
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and moral right to inform consent, legally ensure vaccines are voluntary, require that
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safety studies comply with standards, create a committee with stakeholder representatives and
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so on and so forth, and develop a vaccine injury compensation program.
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So even if you disagree with some of the preambulatory clauses of this, such as the safety issues or
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whatever the case may be, all this petition is really calling for is, hey, make sure they're
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And those are things that are not or should not be controversial.
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But again, the amount of people that are now pushing towards something that is looking like
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a push for mandatory vaccination is pretty concerning.
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But at the same time, I'm also of the mind that if people want this, they should have it
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And it's a tremendous failure on the part of the Canadian government that this isn't happening.
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Look at what Seamus O'Regan tweeted the other day.
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He said, every Canadian will have access to an effective and free vaccine once it's ready.
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Yeah, the operative clause of that is the once it's ready, because the government just
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And that was the CanSino project, which ended up going nowhere.
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The real success has come from Pfizer, from Moderna, from Johnson & Johnson.
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But the Chinese Canadian vaccine project went nowhere.
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But that was pretty much the entirety of the Trudeau government's vaccine plan.
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So now we're left with our tail between our legs without the vaccine that everyone else
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And we're supposed to be happy that as the Moderna CEO or spokesperson said, we're not
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Well, gee, but I mean, second last doesn't seem like anything to celebrate.
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Meanwhile, listen to what the Americans are getting.
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What is your expectations come June for how many Americans will have had this vaccine?
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A hundred percent of Americans that want the vaccine will have had the vaccine by that
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We will have over 300 million doses available to the American public well before then.
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Everyone in the United States who wants it by June will have had it.
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That is the vaccine czar, the Operation Warp Speed leader in the United States.
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Now, maybe it takes a month or two extra from that.
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But we're talking about a, generally speaking, pretty successful and well-planned rollout that
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And Brian Lilly, I have to point this out in the Toronto Sun, had a great story about this,
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And he found in a planning document signed by Chief of the Defense Staff, General Jonathan
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Vance, and obtained by the Sun that Canada has announced agreements with seven leading
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vaccine manufacturers to procure enough doses to potentially immunize all Canadians against
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So there's a lot in that, both the potentially and the end of 2021 part, which contradicts
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what the government has said in some cases, which is that we'll start getting stuff by
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But then it's like that will just be minimal and we shouldn't be too excited.
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You've got provinces lining up to say, hey, we're ready to receive it.
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So this is starting to be an absolute gong show.
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And I don't think this is what is keeping with the government's desire to tell Canadians
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And I mean, just look at the kind of abdication of responsibility that's taking place here.
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So you've got this one story that says the military is saying it will be ready to deploy
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vaccines as soon as they're approved by Health Canada.
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But it's not about Health Canada's approval as much as it's about delivery, because the
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first doses will account for, they say, just 3 million Canadians in the first three months
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But there still hasn't been a plan distributed that deals with exactly who's getting it first,
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who's getting it second, who's getting it third, how it's going to be accessed and
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And again, there's a big question mark about whether those numbers will actually come about.
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I would be very surprised if 3 million people have vaccine doses in the first three months
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of 2021, given everything we've learned, unless someone can pull a rabbit out of their
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But I don't think that's coming from the Trudeau government.
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But I go back to this important point here, which is that the reason I'm comfortable taking
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And I understand there is a limiting factor to that right now.
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And that a lot of the world is going to be structured around vaccines.
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Now, that will be the issue for a lot of people, is that even if we do not have state-mandated
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vaccines, we will have culturally mandated vaccines.
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I mean, we already had the Qantas CEO a few weeks ago saying that they may make vaccinations
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Britain has this bizarre thing called a freedom pass, where they may allow people who can prove
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they've got negative tests to go and do things that they want in their life without being
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Well, it would be conceivable that something could happen where a vaccine, proof of vaccination,
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became a freedom pass of sort in countries that don't care about protecting your privacy
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But the way we navigate it is not by just resisting for the sake of resisting.
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So I defend the right of people who don't want to get vaccinated to make that call.
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But I also withhold my own right to say, yeah, I'm OK with it.
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But right now, I'm going to use that right to point at Justin Trudeau and say, how on
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earth have you bungled this so much when you've had nine months?
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And we're supposed to believe and accept that this is the way things are supposed to
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All for the prime minister who told us Canada's back.
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Up next, going to be talking about health care, non-COVID health care.
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People dying on waiting lists in Canada, in a country where the government tells you it's
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We'll talk about that with Colin Craig from Second Street in just a couple of moments
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So obviously, we've been talking a fair bit this show and in the past several months about
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But issues that existed before the pandemic and will continue to exist after are still
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And one of the big ones, which we have talked about on the show in the past, is the issue
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of wait times, health care wait times, not just in isolated provinces, but across the
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This was put into sharp focus by a report that was just put out this week by Second Street,
00:26:02.760
died on a waiting list, a name that I think is exactly as blunt as it needs to be here.
00:26:08.540
The report's author, Colin Craig, the Second Street president, joins me on the line now.
00:26:16.600
Now, one thing that I think is important to put into perspective here before we delve
00:26:20.980
into the story that's being told, this is not wait list to do with COVID.
00:26:25.260
This is an issue that existed before the pandemic, correct?
00:26:29.500
The data that we obtained was from the 2018-19 fiscal year.
00:26:38.880
Well, we've certainly heard for many years now, Andrew, cases where patients sadly have
00:26:47.420
You know, one very popular, well-known example from Ontario was Laura Hillier, a young 18-year-old
00:26:56.940
She had a bone marrow donor lined up and ready to go.
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A surgeon was ready, but the government hadn't rationed enough funding for health care to get
00:27:12.440
And, you know, stories like that that are pretty heartbreaking.
00:27:15.480
We thought, well, how big is this problem in Canada?
00:27:18.060
So we filed freedom of information requests with health regions and hospitals across the
00:27:24.900
How many surgeries have been canceled because the patient has passed away?
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And we also sought some additional information.
00:27:30.620
And we ended up finding that there were 1,480 cases where patients died in that one year because
00:27:39.360
And that figure came from hospitals and health regions that cover less than half of Canada's
00:27:46.180
So if you extrapolated across the country, the real figure is probably closer to around 4,000.
00:27:53.180
So this is important to note here that we have in your numbers almost 1,500, but not at
00:27:59.060
all exhaustive as far as the country or the hospitals in the country are concerned.
00:28:07.520
Because I know FOIs, freedom of information requests, are oftentimes hit or miss when dealing
00:28:12.200
with a lot of sensitive figures, which I think are important.
00:28:15.360
Yeah, it was actually pretty challenging because, first of all, a lot of hospitals and health
00:28:20.420
regions, they just don't even track it, which seems incredible in its own right that they're
00:28:25.120
not tracking data on why particular procedures are being canceled.
00:28:29.920
I would think it would be important to know if the patient had died, especially if they had
00:28:33.700
died longer than the medically recommended maximum waiting period.
00:28:37.540
But that was the case, you know, 29 out of 50 health bodies that we contacted just simply
00:28:44.360
And then the ones that did have the data, sometimes they had good data, which was pretty
00:28:50.360
And then a lot of them just kind of had like little dribs and drabs of data, but they were
00:28:55.660
So there's really a lot of room for improvement here.
00:28:59.500
I know it's difficult with that sometimes spotty data to really understand the whole story,
00:29:05.700
but I want to see, I mean, as much as you can, are we talking about cases here where
00:29:13.320
Because we know there are situations, however rare they might be, where someone could on Monday
00:29:20.000
And on Wednesday, they get into a car accident and die or something like that, whereas the
00:29:24.480
cause of death might not have been prevented or even related.
00:29:27.660
Do we know or do we have the ability to know how many of these surgeries could have or would
00:29:36.500
And we do discuss that a bit in the report because it is important.
00:29:39.780
And I don't want to leave your viewers with the wrong impression.
00:29:41.760
We're not seeing that all 1,480 of these people died because they didn't receive surgery
00:29:51.260
The types of surgeries that people were waiting for ranged from procedures that could have
00:29:56.180
saved their life to procedures where it would affect their quality of life.
00:30:01.340
So it would be everything from, say, some kind of heart procedure to something like getting
00:30:08.800
So, you know, you may not die because you don't get your hip or knee done in a fast or short
00:30:14.660
But it would certainly affect your quality of life if you're stuck for the final year
00:30:18.960
or two or three or whatever it is of your life, stuck in your apartment, living in immense
00:30:22.900
pain because you haven't received hip surgery or knee surgery.
00:30:28.860
Did you find that there were any particular provinces that had a better or worse record
00:30:36.380
Or was it really more specific to individual hospital groups or individual hospitals and
00:30:44.800
Yeah, it's really hard to compare because the data was just, to be blunt, really bad.
00:30:52.480
Nova Scotia actually had very good data and their numbers were not good.
00:30:59.020
There were, I believe, it was over 400 patient deaths during that one year while they were
00:31:06.040
And in most cases, they had waited longer than the maximum medically recommended time period.
00:31:10.840
So the numbers weren't good from Nova Scotia, but the quality of the data was good.
00:31:15.720
So I think, you know, if any province that had poor data or is looking for someone to copy,
00:31:20.840
we'd say, well, look at what Nova Scotia is doing because they at least have good data.
00:31:23.960
When you have good data, you can understand where the problems are and you improve accountability
00:31:30.280
And one other thing I would note for your viewers is that the amount of time that patients
00:31:36.700
In some cases, they had only been on the waiting list for a short period of time.
00:31:40.760
And then on the other end of the spectrum, some patients had been on the waiting list for
00:31:45.700
And those were a couple outliers, but it goes to show you that there's a real range in
00:31:53.640
Was there a median or at least a kind of a general area of where a lot of them fell as
00:32:00.440
You know, again, that too is, it's hard to calculate because in many cases, we just, we
00:32:07.100
And in some provinces, the numbers that we got, we know that they were low-balled.
00:32:11.960
So early on, we asked the Alberta Health for data on hips and knees.
00:32:20.700
But we would note that in many cases, you know, it's just simply not tracked.
00:32:31.040
So it could be within one province where you have some procedures where when you're entering
00:32:35.720
in the cancellation cause, there is an option for noting that the patient passed away.
00:32:39.640
And for some other procedure, there may not, might not be.
00:32:42.380
So there, I think governments would really do well to standardize and start tracking this
00:32:48.380
And one of the things that we point out, which is really crazy, if you think about it, some
00:32:53.540
provincial governments will require private businesses to report and disclose workplace
00:33:02.040
So there's one example from BC where you can go on the government's website and see, read
00:33:06.260
about how a private business had an accident, a worker fell and had some bruising.
00:33:11.300
So that's their threshold for businesses is you have to report on bruising.
00:33:16.280
And yet you have patients dying in the health care system.
00:33:20.720
It's not something that governments report on proactively each year.
00:33:23.900
So what we've kind of pointed to is, hey, governments, you know, if you would meet the
00:33:27.120
same standard that you expect private businesses to meet, it would be very helpful, I think,
00:33:32.320
for patients and researchers and people who want to address these problems.
00:33:36.760
And it's actually a really interesting point you raise, because when I started reading the
00:33:40.660
report, it seemed like the big conclusions were going to be about how to make the health
00:33:45.280
care system better, which is still a big part of it.
00:33:47.560
But it was amazing how a data collection became one of the key takeaways as well.
00:33:52.300
And you see that near the end of the report where, you know, to really tackle a problem,
00:33:58.160
And if you don't have that, it makes it very difficult to get a lot of stakeholders,
00:34:01.940
notably politicians, to agree that there is a problem here.
00:34:06.060
I mean, it's mind boggling that, you know, some health bodies would just not consider
00:34:11.700
it important to track, you know, why it was that these cancellations occurred, like, you
00:34:17.260
know, especially from a customer service perspective.
00:34:23.280
Isn't the provider, the government concerned if they're not doing a good job, if they're
00:34:27.720
getting around to providing surgery after we've died?
00:34:31.440
And in one case, we highlight in the report, there was a patient from Quebec, 72 years
00:34:37.500
old, he needed heart surgery within two to three months, he ended up lasting five months
00:34:42.680
on a government waiting list before he passed away.
00:34:45.220
And then according to media reports, a few months after he passed away, the government
00:34:51.440
So, I mean, the stories like that, it's just, it's crazy.
00:34:55.260
And I think we really need to do a better job in this country when it comes to tracking
00:34:58.760
this information and figuring out where the problems are.
00:35:04.580
And I would say that one important point here, and you note this in the report, is that we
00:35:09.480
live in a country in which healthcare is rationed by government.
00:35:13.420
And a lot of the times people talk about it being delivered by government, but that also
00:35:18.240
And we know that at the best of times, we've had issues with empty ORs just because hospitals
00:35:24.820
And typically, a lot of those are on procedures that are, again, more about quality of life,
00:35:29.420
like knee surgeries, than they are about emergency life-saving procedures.
00:35:33.740
But even so, and this year, it would be very interesting to see what happens, because this
00:35:38.060
year we know that anything deemed elective was cancelled by most hospitals across the country.
00:35:44.040
And you've got to wonder, I mean, how many people were on wait lists that would have had
00:35:47.360
potentially fatal consequences, or at the very least, as you note earlier, quality of life
00:35:53.480
Yeah, and you've touched on a very important point.
00:35:55.960
And because of COVID, thousands of procedures were postponed across the country.
00:36:00.400
So you have, your natural demand is building all the time because we have an aging population.
00:36:05.280
And it's a reality that as you're older, you tend to require more services.
00:36:12.640
And at the same time, we have all these postponed procedures that are being put on top.
00:36:16.700
So there's a huge backlog right now in the healthcare system.
00:36:22.160
So sadly, we're probably going to see these numbers go up, where more people are going
00:36:28.200
to be waiting in pain during their final years.
00:36:32.320
They're not going to be getting the care that they need before they pass on.
00:36:38.760
We're talking about everyday people, their lives, you know, people that struggle with walking
00:36:43.940
across the room because they're living with hip pain that's so severe.
00:36:47.240
They're ending up with other health problems because maybe they're on T3s to address their
00:36:55.780
And then a year later, they end up with liver problems because the government's made them
00:37:02.960
So there's all these problems that really are happening to everyday people.
00:37:07.780
And I think we, more than anything right now, I think it should be a priority for governments
00:37:12.760
to figure out, to focus on health reform rather than, you know, these ideas of great reset
00:37:19.340
and everything else that's being talked about right now.
00:37:23.120
And I know it goes away from this particular report.
00:37:25.560
So I hope you'll indulge me for a moment, Colin.
00:37:27.420
But I know when you and I last spoke, it was about a previous Second Street report that
00:37:33.720
So people that were in Canada, specifically in border communities, but elsewhere as well,
00:37:37.560
that were going into the United States for medical treatment and medical care.
00:37:41.940
And I'd be interested to see if it's possible to quantify this or track this, how many people
00:37:47.320
that would have done that this year couldn't because of the border closure and the effect
00:37:52.520
Because naturally, there are people in this country that are deselecting from Canadian
00:37:57.420
wait lists by going outside of the country, which is still technically possible with air
00:38:02.400
But for a lot of people that would have just picked up and gone from, you know, Abbotsford
00:38:06.280
to Bellingham or would have gone from Sarnia to Port Huron, I mean, that option hasn't
00:38:12.020
So you've got really this two-pronged issue of losing some domestic options for care and
00:38:17.100
losing that ability to go abroad for travel or for healthcare, rather.
00:38:22.860
And there was a media report from New York State, actually, where they looked at that
00:38:27.120
and they talked about how some Canadians were having trouble getting across the border.
00:38:31.360
In one case, there was a cancer patient who was trying to go from Ontario to New York and
00:38:41.540
And that patient had two family members with them and they had to stop.
00:38:45.620
I believe what happened was they got to the border and they were told they could only have
00:38:49.700
So then they had to, like, drive to a Walmart or something, drop the family member.
00:38:54.660
Throw grandma out in Buffalo or, I guess, on the other side in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
00:39:04.420
If you think about it from their perspective, right, like, if you're not getting the care
00:39:08.680
that you need or that you feel that you need in Canada, you're having to go across the
00:39:12.500
border that's going to cause all kinds of anxieties as it is, throw COVID on top, and
00:39:17.840
then you're having to, like, leave a family member at the last minute unplanned.
00:39:22.420
It's one of those problems where I think you really have to go back to the root and say,
00:39:25.380
well, why is it that this person's having to leave their own country for healthcare?
00:39:28.580
Why don't they have the freedom to try to improve their care with their own money in
0.98
00:39:34.760
I mean, no other country on the planet does this where we have this system that says,
00:39:40.500
yeah, we're going to force you to, in many cases, wait a long time for the procedure that
00:39:45.340
you need and know you can't do anything about it.
00:39:48.920
You either have to leave the country or you have to take what we're going to give you.
0.63
00:39:52.160
It's pretty incredible what goes on in this country compared to what's happening in other
00:40:01.440
And I mean, I don't want to bog people down too much in the legal arguments because we
00:40:04.880
know there is the Canby case, which will be going towards the Supreme Court at some point
00:40:10.200
But for a lot of people, it's just, they don't care about the politics of it.
00:40:15.060
They're told that it's going to be there for them.
00:40:16.920
And when it's not, that's a failing of the system.
00:40:19.220
If you're going to monopolize it, you have to deliver.
00:40:22.160
Yeah, and the interesting thing is that so often, at the end of the day, no matter where
00:40:25.620
you are on the spectrum or where you are on this issue, once it hits your family, you
00:40:30.240
do whatever you can to try to help your loved ones, as so many of us would, right?
00:40:34.460
Like you do what you can if your son or your daughter is sick or a mom or a dad or whatever,
00:40:40.980
And when you talk to guys like you mentioned the Canby case, Brian Day, who's the plaintiff
00:40:45.640
in that case, he'll tell you that he's had people across the political spectrum in his
00:40:50.540
clinic, he's had people that are, I think, even fighting him in court that will come
00:40:55.140
in because they don't want to wait to get their knee done or whatever.
00:40:58.000
Like it's just incredible, our approach to healthcare in this country and how different
00:41:04.320
And we see that many other countries are providing better services for a lower cost, they have
00:41:11.920
a public system, they have private options, they're doing better.
00:41:15.200
And yet in Canada, we just kind of have this tunnel vision so often where we don't want
00:41:20.720
The opponents of change will always try to create this discussion of either we've got
00:41:28.520
They don't want people to realize that, say, Australia is doing better, New Zealand's doing
00:41:32.800
better, all these countries around the world that still have what I think Canadians value,
00:41:36.680
which is having that public system, but also having private options on the side.
00:41:42.180
The report is dyed on a waiting list, came out just this past week with secondstreet.org.
00:41:48.280
President and report author Colin Craig joins me on the line.
00:41:59.540
We'll be back in just a couple of days with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:42:08.820
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:42:10.960
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.nons.