The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Supply Chain Issues

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:08.700 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps, the likes. Brock, bringing

00:00:13.060 you new content for 2022, our very first episode. We've got a great topic for you, something

00:00:17.860 everybody is talking about. But first, with this content, we ask that you'd like, subscribe,

00:00:22.840 comment, share this program, help us push back against the ever-moving Liberal agenda.

00:00:27.000 And as always, if you cannot listen or watch the entire program right now, you can download

00:00:32.400 it, listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it,

00:00:37.260 it is out there. And again, new content every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Our first

00:00:43.020 guest of the new year, a very important guest, I might say, and someone who was newly elected

00:00:47.580 in the class of 2021 in the riding of Cumberland, Colchester in the amazing province of Nova

00:00:53.360 Scotia, we have Dr. Stephen Ellis. He is that Member of Parliament. He's also the Special

00:00:58.800 Advisor on COVID-19 and the Deputy Shadow Minister for Health. We appreciate you giving up your

00:01:04.780 time and joining us here today.

00:01:06.520 It's absolutely my pleasure, Jamie. And this is such an important show for all Canadians.

00:01:12.440 And the topics we'll discuss today, I hope they find them equally as important because I know

00:01:17.300 they are to me.

00:01:17.900 And let's just talk a bit about your background as well. You've been in the healthcare field,

00:01:22.580 you've also been the Canadian Armed Forces, maybe we can start with that, because I'd give

00:01:25.900 some contents to the next conversation about COVID-19 vaccines, etc.

00:01:31.320 Sure. You know, I've been a family doctor for 26 years. Four of those I spent in the Royal

00:01:37.580 Canadian Air Force on both coasts, so Shearwater and Comox. And the last 22 years, I've been here

00:01:43.420 in Toronto, Nova Scotia. In the first 16 months of the pandemic, I was the lead here for our

00:01:51.320 inpatient COVID unit in northern Nova Scotia. So I've seen this illness up close and personal.

00:01:56.820 Well, the beginning of the pandemic, it was kind of nobody knew what was going on, really,

00:02:00.620 we're trying to do the best. I think all governments of all stripes are around the world,

00:02:03.940 we're trying to figure this out in the best steps forward. Since then, we've learned a lot.

00:02:07.620 And we've been evolving our rules and regulations and practices, whether healthcare or government,

00:02:13.980 etc, or we're supposed to anyway. So this past week, actually, last week, we had the federal

00:02:20.260 minister of health, say that he probably want to get this quote, right, personally, would support

00:02:25.580 mandatory vaccination in Canada. What was your reaction to that when you heard that?

00:02:30.840 Well, I think the big thing, Jamie, for me is that as a physician, you know, if people were hesitant

00:02:37.580 for any type of treatment, whether it be vaccines or medication, etc, you know, our job would be to

00:02:45.460 really build a bridge across that gap to help people understand better, you know, why we would

00:02:51.120 recommend certain treatments, how it would benefit them, what the potential downsides are. And, you know,

00:02:57.660 in my experience, as a legislator, which I know has been very short, not compared, you know, to someone

00:03:03.400 experienced like yourself, but I think hitting people over the head with bigger and bigger mandates

00:03:07.840 is, is certainly un Canadian, in my opinion. And certainly, you know, when you look at the 0.98

00:03:13.260 scientific literature around, you know, people are hesitant for certain treatments, that those those

00:03:19.300 things are not necessarily going to persuade them to change their mind. So from those two perspectives,

00:03:24.340 I think that that's going down the wrong path. I also don't, I don't understand how they would

00:03:30.920 implement this if they so decided to go down this path, would they kick down someone's door and hold

00:03:36.380 you down and give you the needle? I just don't understand the comments, because it could take

00:03:41.760 us down a very dark and dangerous path. You know, certainly, it's a direct contradiction to those

00:03:47.620 things that I mentioned, which, you know, in the, you know, in an analogy is building a bridge,

00:03:52.500 I agree with you totally that that nobody's ever come out aside from perhaps some provincial

00:03:58.680 leadership to say that they may, you know, present fines and things like that. But people have

00:04:04.320 suffered significantly, people have suffered during the pandemic, in terms of their their,

00:04:09.060 obviously, their ability to socialize, their mental health has suffered, their physical health

00:04:12.740 has suffered, people have lost their jobs, people are now, in most provinces, unable to go to a

00:04:18.720 theater or a restaurant. They've had their their personal freedoms suffering from that. So as you

00:04:25.100 mentioned, you know, what are the next steps? What possibly could we negatively do to people to enforce

00:04:30.560 a vaccine mandate? It seems a little draconian to me.

00:04:34.940 And now we've also heard news, the government did relinquish for one day only, and that was

00:04:40.980 thankfully for our conservative team pushing on this. But now, truckers now are required to have

00:04:46.360 vaccinations in order to do their job. And in many cases, these truckers work alone, they drive

00:04:51.360 alone, they eat alone, they sleep alone. We have a supply shortage, a very severe supply shortage as it

00:04:58.100 is. This is another government made decision that is going to cause yet more problems that they are

00:05:06.380 then going to have to try to figure out how to solve. And I don't know how they do it, especially

00:05:09.580 during this labor shortage. I think it's a it's a sad reflection of the inflexibility when liberal

00:05:17.260 parties have this ideology of, of how they think they should approach something that they will have

00:05:22.220 absolutely no exceptions to it. As you mentioned, I mean, I've spoken to lots of truckers and in my

00:05:29.000 riding, especially people who drive as they might say in their language, pin to pin, their interactions

00:05:35.740 with others, as you mentioned, is pretty much zero. And I think that the, you know, the other side of

00:05:42.780 that is, is I've seen some studies that would suggest the likelihood of them having COVID, of course,

00:05:47.520 because of the lack of contact with others is very minimal. The government, again, the liberal

00:05:52.600 government doesn't want to acknowledge that they just want to have, you know, their ideologies push

00:05:57.300 forward on Canadians, and create this kind of cookie cutter approach, which, as you mentioned, is going to

00:06:03.660 negatively affect our supply change, and further exacerbate this, this cost of living this, this

00:06:10.600 just inflation that we have now already, that's going to continue to increase and folks, then it's

00:06:15.960 not going to just be inflation, it's going to be, there's just not things on the shelf either.

00:06:21.900 I think we're seeing that in many parts of the country already supply shortages, people, they want to

00:06:27.180 build something for their house, their their months along, you know, the appliance shortage, you name it,

00:06:32.400 it is, it is very real. And these individuals, the truckers, transport goods and services from

00:06:38.460 community to community across the border, and they keep the economy going and to take 0.65

00:06:42.320 thousands, potentially thousands of truckers, when they're already aren't enough out of the

00:06:47.100 workforce, seems very short sighted to me.

00:06:51.140 I agree with you totally, you know, and I think that it's going to become very, very clear to Canadians

00:06:57.020 very, very quickly, that it's, it's not only going to be things that are perhaps optional, it's going to

00:07:03.560 be things in your grocery store, right, things that you you you see every day there, thankfully,

00:07:09.360 we're, you know, we're usually well stocked. But I think when you go there, and you show up, and you

00:07:14.060 say, Hey, where is this? Why do I have no choice? Why don't I have, especially, you know, I would

00:07:21.340 suggest that in Canada in the winter, it's going to be fresh produce, that's going to be one of the

00:07:25.880 things that are going to negatively affect us the most, which, of course, as a physician is going

00:07:29.820 to negatively affect my, my health, you know, I want to eat healthily, as you do, I know, and,

00:07:35.380 and all Canadians strive to, but as the costs go up, and the choices go down, then we're going to be

00:07:42.400 in a very much more even significant problem than we are now, which is bad enough as it is.

00:07:48.300 And, and of course, last week, the numbers for inflation, almost 5% inflation, this,

00:07:54.640 this is real, and it in most of its government made, because, of course, the Bank of Canada

00:08:01.560 started to print money to cover the debts, the spending of the actual government and the

00:08:06.960 finance department, Justin Trudeau deciding he wants to throw all this money out in the

00:08:11.720 atmosphere. But I would say, I think there was a crisis in healthcare before COVID. This is

00:08:19.060 exasperated it. But yet, they're all this extra spending, a lot of it inflated a whole bunch of

00:08:25.200 things, including the housing market. But a lot of the spending besides the CERB, the wage subsidy,

00:08:29.840 etc, is all things couched in the language of COVID, but have absolutely nothing to do with COVID.

00:08:37.980 Now, it's, it's, it's very, very sad. You know, as you mentioned, one of the things we had an

00:08:42.080 emergency health committee meeting, at which the Minister of Health appeared yesterday,

00:08:46.360 you know, when you look at the studies, Jamie, 91.6% of hospital beds in Canada were,

00:08:53.280 were full most of the time before this pandemic. And again, what has the government done about that?

00:08:59.900 They have done absolutely nothing. They promised to hire 7,500 healthcare workers,

00:09:05.860 including, in their terminology, nurses, family doctors and nurse practitioners.

00:09:10.820 When I asked Minister Duclos about that specifically, he could not provide an answer as to how many they

00:09:16.620 hired. Was it one? Was it 21? Is it zero? He has really no idea, even though, as you know,

00:09:24.060 in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister promised the exact same thing, we are going to have these 7,500

00:09:29.520 people. They've had four months to do it. They've, again, they really have have not delivered on their

00:09:34.680 promises.

00:09:35.100 Well, it's like they're promised to build, or sorry, plant two billion trees, and they've only

00:09:40.520 planted a couple thousand. It's absolutely the level of failure in this government. And yet,

00:09:47.140 I would say that the media, for the most part, protects them and their supporters talk away their

00:09:52.600 failures. It absolutely is quite amazing. But going on to this topic here about what the next steps are,

00:10:02.300 how are we continuing going to get the message out about what the government's decisions are doing,

00:10:09.360 what some of these mandates are doing to our economy, to our currency? You know, how are we

00:10:15.840 going to continue to push back? And what plans do you have as Associate Health Critic?

00:10:23.100 You know, I think, Jamie, the Canadian needs to know that this is a failure of leadership.

00:10:29.660 Yeah, all of these things that they begin to talk about are too little too late. When we as

00:10:36.560 Conservatives, I wasn't there, I know you were, Jamie, recommended vaccines early on in the pandemic,

00:10:41.820 they dismissed the idea out of hand. When the Conservatives recommended early in the pandemic,

00:10:47.020 the introduction of rapid tests, their use, their procurement, their domestic production,

00:10:52.580 again, dismissed out of hand. When we talk about domestic production of personal protective

00:10:58.480 equipment, dismissed out of hand. When we, again, talked early on about antiviral medications,

00:11:05.980 dismissed out of hand. And a long time to, when they did actually agree to it, a long time to

00:11:12.640 actually approve that medication. And now we're in this situation, of course, where some people in

00:11:18.500 certain parts of the country, you need a PCR test in order to be prescribed this medication.

00:11:24.200 Well, if it has to be prescribed within five days of your symptoms to be most effective,

00:11:28.960 and you don't get your result back for four days, and then you have to access a healthcare provider to

00:11:34.480 get a prescription in a system that's already loaded, overworked, and not recognized, then

00:11:41.360 again, we're going to continue to have problems. So from those perspectives, Canadians out there need to

00:11:47.280 know what the real story is. And that's why I love this program, that we're able to get this word out

00:11:52.360 to Canadians and be able to tell what the truth is. Oh, absolutely. And let's touch on some of the

00:11:58.460 issues you just mentioned. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, as a physician, there's always a wide

00:12:07.800 variety of methods to treat a certain illness or what have you, and you pick the best one.

00:12:13.760 We talked about early on, as you mentioned, a bunch of pieces to this puzzle on how to deal with

00:12:20.040 the pandemic, one of which was the rapid tests. And this was even before there was a vaccine,

00:12:25.400 we didn't know how long it was going to take. But we talked about rapid tests, and we were just

00:12:30.220 missed out of hand that we were, you know, just making things up that this would not be a path

00:12:35.720 forward. And now, the government just all of a sudden decides, yeah, you know what, rapid tests are a

00:12:41.000 good idea. The problem is, a lot of companies that have stockpiles in Canada started to move those

00:12:46.760 stockpiles out of the country, because there wasn't a market here. And all of a sudden, the government

00:12:50.740 saying, yeah, you know what, we probably should have used them. Does anybody have any left? No? Well,

00:12:56.760 now we're in a shortage. Now we're competing with every other country, just like everything else.

00:13:00.520 You know, it is those ongoing failures. And certainly, rapid tests has been, you know, our, our, perhaps,

00:13:09.820 you know, as a diagnostic test, the most important thing that we have talked about as conservatives,

00:13:15.360 that that's not to dismiss vaccines, because vaccines are a very, very important, the most important tool

00:13:20.680 to treat COVID and prevent it. That being said, knowing who has an illness can really help you

00:13:26.800 self isolate, it can help you, obviously avoid gatherings that you shouldn't be at, etc, etc. So

00:13:33.000 from that perspective, it's very important. I think the other thing that's disappointing to me,

00:13:37.380 and as I looked at some of the research around this, you know, in the 1940s, Canada mobilized

00:13:45.040 our population to support the war effort. In the 1940s, we were able to build a 10,000 ton ship,

00:13:51.940 which is the same size as a Canadian frigate in 107 days. And can anyone then tell me why we do not

00:14:00.220 have domestic production of those things that we need to fight COVID-19, we do not have any domestic

00:14:06.080 production of vaccines, we have very minimal domestic production of rapid tests. And we have,

00:14:12.880 as far as I know, no domestic production of antiviral medications. So, again, it's these ongoing

00:14:20.020 failures of leadership that people need to know about and, and, and to understand that this

00:14:26.400 government really does not have your back. Well, I think a lot of that, well, first of all,

00:14:32.660 I will say the news came out, I think, a week or so ago that the planned, I think, over $100 million

00:14:38.440 for this research center to do our own vaccines in Montreal, that's delayed. No idea when that's going

00:14:44.080 to start back up, no idea when that's going to be completed. But also, I think governments,

00:14:50.500 you know, liberal governments, especially, you know, in the province of Ontario, we've seen it

00:14:54.280 firsthand, 15 years of liberal rule. They have made the atmosphere to, to, to start, create,

00:15:03.520 establish a business, you know, very cost productive, to the point where businesses aren't

00:15:11.080 even looking at Canada as a jurisdiction to do operations. And that, and this is just steamroll

00:15:16.740 to the, to your point, why we can't get anything built in this country, why we can't have domestic

00:15:21.400 manufacturing, because the rules, regulations, red tape, government policy, taxes are just out

00:15:26.560 of control, where they just go to jurisdictions, where they can get things built and done quickly

00:15:30.580 in a responsible manner, in some cases, not all. Absolutely. And I think that's so important

00:15:36.080 as a Canadian, you know, Canada historically has been a leader on the world stage and innovation

00:15:41.400 and intelligent people in, in business startups. And, you know, I would suggest that even again,

00:15:47.160 I'll go back to my second world war story is that Canada played a leading role in, in both wars,

00:15:53.340 really, let's be honest. And now, you know, when we stymie development here, then we, then we run

00:16:00.060 into problems, you know, Canada was important in, in talking about a multitude of things during the

00:16:07.900 Second World War, like how to prevent ship's hulls from, from rusting, those things we looked at,

00:16:14.940 very other important innovations around penicillin and its stability and its use. So, I mean, from

00:16:21.160 everything from the Navy to medical innovations, Canada was important during the Second World War.

00:16:28.740 During, you know, this event, where 30,000 Canadians died, 42,000 Canadians died in World War II,

00:16:36.820 we are absent on the world stage. And sadly, we're also absent domestically.

00:16:43.740 I don't want to keep you too much longer. I've already kept you over time. We've gone a bit long.

00:16:47.800 I did post on social media last week, about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that it must never slumber,

00:16:52.960 especially during a crisis, that if that happens, there will always be a crisis, right? So we should

00:17:00.580 be using that as the framework of our way out. Well, and certainly we see those rights being

00:17:05.760 trampled upon. If Canadians who are traveling are not allowed back in our country, that's one of the

00:17:12.300 tenets of the Canadian Charter is that you can enter and leave your country of Canada whenever you decide.

00:17:18.800 And I think that the Canadians, again, as you suggest, need to be aware of how are your rights

00:17:24.140 and freedoms being manipulated during this pandemic. And that's important to us conservatives. I know

00:17:30.440 it's important to you. It's important to me. And that's something that we want to stand up for

00:17:33.780 Canadians for. All right. I always give the guests the last word. I don't know if you want to,

00:17:37.480 you know, you said that perfectly, but I should have started my last comment on that. But if you want

00:17:44.140 to do the last word, the floor is yours and we'll wrap up. Well, thanks. Thanks for this, Jamie.

00:17:49.020 You know what? It's been an honor and a privilege to be part of this conservative government. I think

00:17:53.680 that we are working very hard to hold this government to account. And I think that Canadians

00:17:58.840 need to know that and that we do have an agenda to ensure that their rights and freedoms are being

00:18:03.940 protected out there and to give them the best shot at coming out the other side of this pandemic

00:18:08.260 in an appropriate and well manner. That is Dr. Stephen Ellis, the member of parliament for

00:18:13.700 Cumberland, Colchester in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia, one of the best dressed MPs on the

00:18:20.000 conservative benches right there. He's also the deputy shadow minister for health and the special

00:18:24.000 advisor on COVID-19. We appreciate his time. We did go a little long. I wanted to get in more depth

00:18:28.820 on some of my questions, but unfortunately, this is only supposed to be a 12 minute segment. We've

00:18:33.060 come way over 12 minutes. We'll have him on again. We'll start to address some of the other

00:18:36.940 issues about the vaccines and that sort of thing and COVID-19, the path forward. We do thank you,

00:18:42.920 Dr. Ellis, and appreciate your time. We appreciate your time for tuning in. New content every single

00:18:47.780 Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time. We ask that you like, comment, subscribe, share this program

00:18:52.420 together. We can push back against the ever-moving liberal agenda. And of course, instead of Facebook

00:18:57.360 or Instagram, it is on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, so you can listen to it

00:19:03.240 at your leisure. We do appreciate your time. And again, as always, low taxes, less government,

00:19:09.320 more freedom. That is the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - January 24, 2022

Supply Chain Issues

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript