00:02:30.900Here's the things we learned from that.
00:02:32.580here's the decisions we would make in the future uh it's more so just out of those reports all you
00:02:38.260get is kind of we just need more more more budget i'm not interested in partisan politics or
00:02:44.100finger pointing but as a person who has a mother in a long-term care home as the millions of
00:02:49.620canadians who are aging into long-term care at the very least lamb i would think that the government
00:02:55.300has a a moral obligation to hold a national inquiry from all provinces and all backgrounds
00:03:01.780in all languages to prevent what happened in long-term care homes during covid for sure and
00:03:06.980even just preventative measures across the board definitely with the long-term care homes when
00:03:13.540you're factoring in that 43 of those deaths that you outlined at the beginning came from those
00:03:19.940long care uh homes but then also too uh you know we talk about pandemic preparedness but then why
00:03:26.820isn't there public messaging out there right now in terms of hey this is what you need to do in
00:03:33.540your personal life day to day to make sure that hey if something like this were to occur in two
00:03:39.720years three years four years down the line that you're not going to be vulnerable because it's
00:03:44.860not enough in my opinion to just wait for something to happen and then to try to throw
00:03:51.580mandates and that sort of thing at it um you know as somebody that takes their personal health quite
00:03:57.640seriously i don't have to deal with uh with coming down with whether it be more severe sickness or
00:04:04.260even just seasonal colds and that kind of stuff but unfortunately through covid liam we saw people
00:04:09.880who were running marathons and triathlons getting quite ill and dying so no matter how much of a
00:04:16.500health if there's a sickness out there it can affect everyone and my concern is i've heard from
00:04:21.140so many health experts over the last six months saying hey if there's another pandemic in not just
00:04:26.580canada around the world i don't believe the world as we know it is actually prepared for that which
00:04:32.100is surprising to me that what have we really learned from covet 19 especially as we try to
00:04:38.500distance it from our memory in the past of what we went through there's no guarantee something like
00:04:43.140that won't happen again 5 10 15 years from now yeah and i mean too actually even if you look at
00:04:48.820New Zealand's take away from it as well as they actually said what we did was
00:04:55.000effective you know it's funny looking at say the difference between New Zealand
00:04:59.440and America's takeaways from their two reports because New Zealand's was yeah
00:05:05.500everything we did was right actually the main fault that we can give ourselves is
00:05:10.780that we didn't do it quick enough and we didn't do it hard enough I tend to
00:05:16.660disagree with that position and look at somewhere much more like the the states and their sub
00:05:22.380house committee uh in their findings to be much more illuminating on that fact because they do
00:05:28.700reference things like hey shutting down the schools was not the right call the amount of
00:05:34.300damage that we did to kids both socially and uh with their education yep that that in when you
00:05:41.640compare that to the uh say the the health consequences the consequences of the mandates
00:05:49.000and the decisions that we made in that regard are much worse than the uh the health effects that were
00:05:55.800had as a consequence of covid for that that age group in that that specific group themselves
00:06:01.880um and so there was a lot more nuance and i think wisdom generated out of that report but then yeah
00:06:10.700you see somewhere else where they just go yeah no nothing to nothing to learn just more of the same
00:06:15.820which is a little disappointing to me liam because the one thing we heard over and over
00:06:20.380again is oh hey don't be too critical of your prime minister or your mp or your premier
00:06:26.300because there's no a blueprint for this there's no guidebook there's this there's no nothing like
00:06:31.900this has happened before so my thought is we have an in-depth commission reaching experts of all
00:06:39.820sides of the community across canada gather up information so there is some sort of blueprint
00:06:45.900so there is some sort of guidebook for a future premier prime minister mayor of their community
00:06:51.340if something like this happens they can revert to what went right and what went wrong last time
00:06:57.180and maybe put their citizens in under their purview under their best position to deliver
00:07:01.820lives and be be healthy and be safe well and i i i do think that that is one of the main the main
00:07:08.060takeaways is the the behaviors that uh essentially improve resilience before something like that were
00:07:15.500to come but then even there's other other conversations that we haven't had in terms of
00:07:21.500for instance the manufacturing of ppe and all of this kind of stuff exactly like if you want to be
00:07:28.140in a position where whether it be masks surgical gear all of this kind of stuff that when something
00:07:34.860like this was to occur that you have the ability to produce those materials on your own rather than
00:07:42.080have to rely on somewhere like china who yes who actually started using them as political leverage
00:07:47.980and so you want to make sure that you have that that capacity but there hasn't been much talk or
00:07:55.300look into that since the population in canada liam is over 40 million people it seems incomprehensible
00:08:01.400that there isn't at least one manufacturing facility in this country that could create PPE
00:08:06.780gear and protective gear and have it in a warehouse just in case. Because we don't know as a society
00:08:14.200or no politician could tell me with a straight face that something like this could not happen
00:08:19.360again in the near future. Nobody knows. So why not be prepared? That's the one thing they talked
00:08:25.280about during the pandemic is, oh, we got to get back to manufacturing our own vaccines and our
00:08:30.260own PPE gear and we you know they were pointing fingers and blaming others well they sent it
00:08:36.040offshore years ago but still I don't understand if that was the problem in 2020 2021 here in 2026
00:08:43.760that we're not making it well and to even even further you go you go into say national security
00:08:51.440or IP measures uh that we should have learned for instance with the CanSino vaccine deal
00:08:58.360At the beginning of the pandemic, we made a joint research agreement with the Chinese government, and I believe it was out of BC that they were running these in a lot of the institutes.
00:09:11.400but essentially what happened was we were putting forward public funds into a joint venture with
00:09:18.440China and then as soon as the IP and the research got to a certain degree China broke from the
00:09:25.780agreement went off with the research and then just said we're producing the rest of this on our own
00:09:31.000again so you can presume it's so that we can be in charge of this supply and rather not have to
00:09:38.360uh have any we we can have all the leverage in that that scenario again to be able to
00:09:43.000to use it on you and so things like that as well that you would think we would take away in terms
00:09:49.240of uh you know yeah who can be trusted as an ally in the future when it comes to this kind of stuff
00:09:54.600that's not going to rug pull uh uh something like vaccine research and liam my whole thing is why
00:10:01.240even need an ally the one thing mark carney has done that's the reason he's polling so high it
00:10:06.840has such a high approval rating and he's tried to take responsibility back in the hands of Canada
00:10:12.460as a country and the Canadian people when it comes to manufacturing resources and our own
00:10:17.980sort of economic destiny is now not in other people's hands he's trying to put it in our
00:10:22.700hands that's great I'm all for that so why not have some sort of a private public consortium
00:10:28.540in Canada making these kind of things you know producing certain things that we need so we never
00:10:34.540have to rely because if we're going into bed with another country there is no reason why they
00:10:40.420wouldn't say thanks for the information you're on your own now we're going to take it but that
00:10:44.540totally could happen again in the future yeah and i mean too you can even go further down that as
00:10:50.120well actually there was one federal committee uh it was a parliamentary house committee they
00:10:56.280released a report called the nexus between science and national security and which is a highly
00:11:03.000illuminating uh report but it was all about the winnipeg lab scandal as well in that where they
00:11:08.840were where essentially pathogens and uh research was being stolen that was going to the wuhan
00:11:15.240institute of virology which obviously became a pivot point and was the center of that american
00:11:21.480report in terms of the lab leak hypothesis and such but even that too we've got a major national
00:11:29.960scandal that essentially we had spies from a hostile uh military working on biological
00:11:38.520weapons research in our labs and then there's a report that confirms all of this and which is
00:11:46.360public record yep and nothing ever came of that there was no public officials that were fired for
00:11:53.480the fact the the negligence because for years CSIS was trying and the RCMP was sending warnings to
00:12:01.560our politicians saying hey you've got you know people in in this laboratory that need to be
00:12:08.920need to be ejected and nothing ever came of that and so yeah all of these reports it would be
00:12:14.840I guess you've got kind of two problems here where first we're not even really yet doing
00:12:18.920the report but then also once we do the reports we need to actually take action on them and liam
00:12:25.320okay let's fast forward to just a few months ago a chinese national now living in canada who had
00:12:31.400had a number of positions in canada was found out in the nato headquarters in belgium right
00:12:37.400passing secrets to a foreign national for another country and she's in custody and someone's saying
00:12:43.160how do you vet this person who did the vetting so this is this is a big picture problem in the
00:12:49.720country not just the lab in winnipeg but who are we hiring and and how are they being vetted and
00:12:55.560how are they being checked to make sure that they're potentially not a threat to our national
00:13:00.280security exactly and yeah when you when you consider all of this at once when you think
00:13:07.400about yeah when you know it was definitely in the early days of the pandemic everybody thought about
00:13:14.200oh well maybe this is a common uh a common front that all nations of the world can work towards
00:13:21.320but we quickly saw that that wasn't how nations actually responded and it very much did become
00:13:27.320uh a form of way to subvert one another and so on and yeah what what what have we done of uh of
00:13:34.840tangible tangible results in in the response of that as a Canadian I would like a commission and
00:13:43.720just not point fingers not use names or labels just have a talk okay if something like this
00:13:51.140happens again would it be in the country's benefit to lock down travel to say no one if
00:13:56.660if they think it's from this part of the world this country we're not going to have people travel
00:14:01.880in and out because the risk is too high until we get a handle on it now that was suggested in
00:14:07.640certain countries around the world and right away people were called names and said no you can't do
00:14:12.680that wait a second now there are other countries that locked down right away and had far less
00:14:19.240infections and far less covid deaths so i is did it make a difference let's let's talk to experts
00:14:26.200let's talk to people across the country who are in the know and say would it have made a difference
00:14:31.640in canada had we been more intense with locking down travel in and out of the country during those
00:14:37.080times that we were in doubt well i think i think the information is already out there on that
00:14:44.600question in specific there's a great book called uh diary of a psychosis which just goes back it's
00:14:51.960um week by week almost of the covet data as it was unfolding um and it was it's quite illuminating
00:15:00.440when you contrast even say for instance certain states within america they were this one has a
00:15:06.540mask mandate this one doesn't this one's locking down harder on travel this one's not and so on
00:15:12.520and yeah a lot of those uh results came back showing that there wasn't a major difference
00:15:19.660between uh say for instance where there was mask mandates and where there weren't um and i would i
00:15:25.920think as a as a citizen i would really like to know you know what were the what were the costs
00:15:31.360on the other end of this you know because we talk about lockdowns and stuff like that but if another
00:15:37.280one comes around are we willing to uh pay the economic costs that come across with that a lot
00:15:43.360of the cost of living issues that we're dealing with today absolutely are ripple effects from the
00:15:48.800economic decisions that we made back then i in my community and every community in canada long time
00:15:54.560businesses and restaurants and diners and bars they just went away and they never came back
00:16:01.360and they were part of the fabric of the community yeah and like i have a daughter who who finished
00:16:06.400high school basically doing school in her bedroom through the pandemic no prom no graduation nothing
00:16:13.120and i would like to talk to some real um broad mental health experts from the youth to adults
00:16:20.400to seniors and what it did to this population and i still think there's part of canada who are still
00:16:26.720mentally and emotionally still dealing with the after effects of what would happen liam well i
00:16:31.440mean even to my personal life not i wouldn't say it it's a it's a mental health uh aspect but even
00:16:40.080just the the habits of personal change so for instance before covid i was definitely a very
00:16:46.720social person i would go out all the time whether that be on weekends now you wouldn't think about
00:16:51.200it right part of this is also now being 32 versus 25 at the time yeah um but definitely that led
00:16:59.520towards me having a more uh a life that's more has a little bit more solitude in it now and i hey i
00:17:06.800enjoy that it's not like i feel like i've been relegated to that but uh those three or four
00:17:12.400years of social effects how many people have had the same thing but don't necessarily feel like
00:17:17.360it's a choice for instance like oh all of their social groups their sporting events went down and
00:17:22.720all of that how many people never got back to the life that they've you know i know a lot of people
00:17:27.520yeah and i guess the other thing too liam is a lot of the countries that we are in lockstep with
00:17:34.160and have good relationships with and we as canadians look fondly at new zealand and australia
00:17:39.520and some of these other countries they did an in-depth review what went right and what went wrong
00:17:45.040and i think as a camera like well they did it why they're kind of like us why don't we do it
00:17:50.800and that's what i guess is i'm a little confused that it's been kind of crickets on all levels that
00:17:55.760you know we're talking about bringing it up but i've not i don't know about you i've not heard
00:17:59.920any inclination that there's any desire to get together and have one of these reports put together
00:18:05.440no i mean on a on a more provincial scale there has been ontario quebec and alberta all did a
00:18:12.560report but again i didn't find that there was much that came out of that in terms of
00:18:17.680uh in terms of substance or actions on the on the after effects but even too you can go back to
00:18:25.040the very first 2003 there was a report done by nailer on the sars yes pandemic and outbreak
00:18:32.320Again, it was a lot of the same stuff that you hear back then in terms of, hey, you know, this isn't where it needs to be.
00:18:39.320A lot of the same echoes that we had 20 years later.
00:18:43.600So, yeah, I think this goes to that kind of larger discussion as to the expectations we even put on government in the first place.
00:18:53.700You know, I'm not a fan of the institution in terms of just how it's even set up.
00:18:59.960I think by its very nature, it's inefficient
00:19:02.620and it's ineffective on a large scale.
00:19:05.600And I think a lot of this falls into that
00:19:08.840where there's not really any benefit to be proactive
00:19:15.980or be in front of problems before they occur,
00:19:20.920because you can think about it in terms of,
00:19:23.580let's say the goal is just to get reelected.
00:19:27.280Well, there's not much that you can run on re-election of,
00:19:30.660look, I've solved all these issues that don't exist yet.
00:29:20.720See, to me, I think if he gets reelected with a significant majority, and he would probably be at that point, like, once that term's done, I'm just going to walk away and my work is done, that maybe as a parting shot, he does one.
00:29:32.080But, yeah, that's a very good question.
00:29:35.400And I guess I would expect more, silly me, expect more from the opposition to just, you know, politely and respectfully say, hey, do you think we should talk about this?
00:29:46.020But I haven't heard much from them either.
00:29:50.260And so I think the big takeaway here that I always go back to is just how can I, as an individual, take in this information and make better decisions of my own?
00:30:00.600I can't really decide that other people should, how they should intake information or the decisions they should make on the other side of that.
00:30:09.640but i can focus on being healthier now and you know making sure that if something like that were
00:30:15.700to occur again that uh that i've got or even two whether it be certain hobbies that in a scenario
00:30:22.400like that that can carry you through and keep you sane uh in in a time like that the one thing that
00:30:28.260came out of the pandemic liam that i discovered that i never really thought about and a friend
00:30:32.880of mine i play hockey with he's a contractor and he was telling me i'm so busy i go what are you
00:30:38.020talking about well there's that segment of the population they have money and it meant nothing
00:30:44.360to them they said build me a cottage in prince edward county build me something in uh you know
00:30:50.720in bc i want to build something in the maritimes really like oh yeah just tell me when it's done
00:30:55.060like the gap between the working class the middle class struggling to pay the bills
00:31:00.220and the wealthy it had no effect on them they still traveled on their private jet
00:31:05.160they still built their cottages and dream homes they lived their life with no and i think that
00:31:11.640opened the eyes of a lot of canadians the gap between the really wealthy and just the rest of
00:31:17.000us well and too it worsened that because even even during covid was one of the largest upward
00:31:22.220transfers of wealth in human history and a lot of that came as an effect of the fiscal policies
00:31:29.200the printing money because what ends up happening when we did all of that public spending like i
00:31:34.920I think, I can't remember the exact number,
00:31:37.060but it was over $300 billion that we spent in one year