A native band in B.C. claims that radar has identified the graves of murdered children, the CBC repeats the story without checking it, the government lowers the flags in apology, and then the band shuts down communications, refuses to allow further investigation into the alleged graves, despite having taken millions in tax dollars to do that very thing.
00:11:00.360You know, there's a bigger discussion going on.
00:11:02.760If you've looked at this last year and a half or so,
00:11:06.920why has there been so many of these strikes?
00:11:08.620Well, and we've got Canada Post workers even talking about it again.
00:11:12.600We've got to remember one of the things Trudeau did
00:11:14.240was brought in legislation with Jagmeet Singh,
00:11:19.080you know, that disgraced former politician,
00:11:20.880to illegalize replacement workers in federally regulated fields of work.
00:11:26.520Well, what a beautiful thing that was, right?
00:11:28.040Because that covers interprovincial truckers.
00:11:30.580so you know you got the teamsters can ready to really strong arm that covers flight attendants
00:11:35.860on the airlines it covers postal workers and it covers federal workers of course as well so when
00:11:41.300the federal workers went on strike you couldn't put anybody in postal workers why would such an
00:11:45.620obsolete uh service think that they can get away with threatening strikes and well not just
00:11:52.500threatening they did strike last year and they're threatening yet again because you can't replace
00:11:55.940them. You see, airline flight attendants, that's a little more difficult. Fair enough. You know,
00:12:00.900that takes some safety training and it's still got some specialized things, but that's something
00:12:04.340within a couple of weeks, you could probably fill a whole lot of those roles actually,
00:12:07.620maybe get some people across the picket lines. Postal workers, come on. Anybody who delivered
00:12:12.820newspapers in the 80s can be a postal worker. If you can read, write, find an address and have two
00:12:16.900legs, you can be a postal worker. But if it's illegal to actually have somebody fill that role
00:12:22.100on a strike, they still have Canada Post over a barrel. And that's why they feel empowered to
00:12:28.180pull these things. So get used to more of these strikes. I understand the right to collective
00:12:34.420bargaining, the right to strike. These things are important. They really are. I respect those.
00:12:39.020But when you give all of the power to one side and take away all the power from the other side,0.56
00:12:44.860this isn't good, guys. It's gone the wrong way. This is what drives companies out of business.
00:12:49.280this was what puts the cost of living through the roof. So we really, so many things that
00:12:55.760Prime Minister Carney should be re-evaluating from his predecessor, one of which would be the
00:13:01.800banning of replacement workers, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. All right, let's talk
00:13:07.120about something else I've been looking forward to. I haven't had him on in a while. Colin Craig
00:13:10.600of secondstreet.org, and they do great stuff on healthcare file, and he's been out to Japan. I
00:13:18.280envy. It must've been a hell of a trip, but he's also come back with a great deal of information
00:13:21.900on the healthcare system out there. So let's bring Colin in and chat about that. Hey, how's
00:13:26.600it going, Colin? Good. How are you doing, Corey? Good, good. I'm just really appreciate, like I
00:13:32.900said, the work you guys do in showing, breaking through the myth as if, you know, there's only
00:13:39.480two healthcare systems in the world, the Canadian one and the American one, and examining other
00:13:44.300functional system so that Canadians maybe can start to understand we can reform our system
00:13:49.180without becoming the big bad Americans. Yeah, of course. And that's been a frustration for so long
00:13:54.980is that people who benefit from not having health reform because they have a real stranglehold over
00:14:01.600control and, you know, who gets to do what in healthcare, well, they have successfully for
00:14:06.600years presented this false choice between keeping our system or the American option.
00:14:11.060And like you said, we've been trying to show the world or not show the world, show Canadians rather that there's all kinds of universal health care systems around the world that are performing much better than us.
00:14:23.240So a couple of years ago, we went to Sweden to look at their system. Again, universal. Everyone's covered in Sweden. We showed some of the things they do differently.
00:14:32.100Last year, we went to France and this year we went to Japan. So it's pretty amazing to go over there.
00:14:37.220Yeah. And that's the key word really, you know, with what the Canadians are concerned about,
00:14:40.920which is fair enough is universal. And they just want to be assured that you're always going to
00:14:47.340be covered one way or another. The system might be different, but you're never going to be turned
00:14:50.480away from a hospital because you don't have enough money in the bank or a good enough credit rating.
00:14:54.440You have coverage. Everybody has coverage and Japan has universal coverage.
00:15:00.240Yeah, they do. They most certainly do. And the most amazing thing about their system is that
00:15:03.900there's basically no waiting list. It was culture shock, Corey, to go over there and learn more
00:15:11.120about their system. I actually lived there 20 years ago, but as a younger guy, I didn't really
00:15:16.240need the healthcare system too much, so I didn't have a lot of exposure to it. But to go back now
00:15:20.320in my 40s and with the specific purpose of learning about their system, it was culture
00:15:25.600shock to just hear again and again that if you need healthcare, you're getting in within maybe
00:15:31.500if it's emergency, you get in right away. Excuse me. If it's not, you're getting in within a week,
00:15:38.320two weeks, a month max kind of thing. Like you're getting in right away compared to in Canada where
00:15:42.560people often wait over a year for something like knee operation, hip operation, whatever.
00:15:49.120Yeah. And I mean, that's, it's one of the, not one of it's definitely the biggest critique of
00:15:54.160the Canadian system is just waiting for access, trying to get in. I mean, it's fine if you're
00:15:58.380covered, but the lost productivity, the pain and suffering of somebody waiting, or of course the
00:16:03.400worst possible outcome, somebody actually passes away or perishes waiting for care. So that's not
00:16:09.320happening in Japan. No, no. They looked at us surprised. One doctor at a medical university
00:16:17.380hospital in Tokyo, we were talking away. We had an interpreter and everything. I mean, he knew
00:16:22.420English not incredibly well I don't think but we were talking with him and then someone would
00:16:28.480translate it for him and then once I started to talk about how patients had to wait a year often
00:16:34.560in Canada for things like a knee or hip operation he switched into English he couldn't believe it
00:16:39.320he said a year how long a year like he was shocked and and this is a problem is that in Canada I think
00:16:45.780many people have come to think of this as somehow normal it is not normal the suffering that we're
00:16:50.460seeing in this country is not normal. And, you know, like I said, if we copy things like what
00:16:55.620Japan does and other universal countries, well, then we can get our wait times down so that they're
00:17:00.740more in line with other developed countries. So, you know, that's what we did is we went over there
00:17:06.620to really kind of learn more about the system, show Canadians that, you know, the constant
00:17:13.300suffering that people are enduring in this country doesn't have to be this way.
00:17:17.600So that gets us down to the how, you know, how is it then that Japan's able to do this0.74
00:17:22.740with any universal system when, when we appear incapable?
00:17:26.060Yeah. So in their particular model, there's a few differences. The most important one that
00:17:31.380we can learn from them is that in our country, the government tightly controls who can deliver
00:17:38.100healthcare. And I don't mean like making sure that, you know, a doctor has a license or a nurse has,
00:17:44.420you know a nursing degree or anything like that that's a given but you can't simply open up a
00:17:50.260clinic in canada and start providing health care to the public you can't just do that and start
00:17:57.380billing the government system if you're doing say knee operations or if you want to open up
00:18:02.500a hospital you can't do that the government does not allow it so the government tightly
00:18:07.140restricts the supply of health care for the public system and there's also very tight
00:18:11.940restrictions around you know delivering care outside of the public system so if you know here
00:18:17.140in alberta as an example if if you want to pay for you know some kind of significant operation
00:18:24.020in calgary as a calgarian there are a lot of roadblocks that make it very difficult to do
00:18:29.940that so this is why calgarians often fly to another province and many other provinces do
00:18:35.140the same thing so you'll see vancouverites flying to calgary calgarians flying to vancouver
00:18:39.940you have these ridiculous restrictions japan is the opposite they do the exact opposite of canada
00:18:45.220what they do is the government there determines how much they're going to pay for different
00:18:50.100procedures and then they basically tell anyone who's in the healthcare market or wants to enter
00:18:55.620the healthcare market if you want to provide these procedures here's how much you're going
00:19:00.180to get from the government and then it doesn't matter if you've got say a different level of
00:19:05.620government wants to open up a clinic or maybe it's a non-profit wants to open up a hospital or a
00:19:10.740private facility a company wants to open up you know something like a clinic or hospital or whatever
00:19:16.580they know how much they're going to get from the government when they help out a patient
00:19:21.220and so it's a very very different approach they welcome people to enter their market they actually
00:19:26.020have so much health care that they're trying to grow their medical tourism sector they're trying
00:19:30.740to get patients to come over from China, South Korea and Canada too. And it's a great system.
00:19:36.580So if people are looking for, you know, to go abroad, to get timely healthcare, I mean,
00:19:40.500I definitely recommend taking a look at Japan, but yeah, very different, very different approach.
00:19:46.420They wanted to grow their system. They've wrote it. So they have shorter wait lists. We've done
00:19:49.780the opposite and the results speak for themselves. And that should calm some of the fears then. I
00:19:53.940mean, if they're at actually a point of a surplus of healthcare ability, one of the things that
00:19:57.940critics for private provision of care say is that well the private clinics will open up and they'll
00:20:02.740prioritize all the people who want to pay above and beyond and the people in the public system
00:20:06.180will end up being left behind anyways and you know back to uh we all must be equal and blah
00:20:10.340blah blah but i mean if we're all getting timely treatment it doesn't matter anymore well exactly
00:20:16.260and you know the interesting thing when you talk about uh private and the sky falling because
00:20:20.980that's what we hear all the time i mean there's all these other countries that have choice people
00:20:24.740can use the public system in Sweden or you can pay private the same in France etc all around the
00:20:28.820world people have this this uh choice and the sky hasn't fallen in fact they perform better than us
00:20:34.900so we can navigate that that uh issue and make sure that you know the public system still has
00:20:40.820staffing and so forth that's not a challenge but it's really I think the biggest thing we need to
00:20:46.340do is change this mentality from like I say the government strictly we're controlling who can
00:20:51.620provide healthcare to taking the opposite approach. You want to provide healthcare,
00:20:55.940come on into the Canadian market. If you're an existing doctor or nurse or entrepreneur,
00:21:01.700by all means, open up a clinic. Let's grow our healthcare sector so we've got more supply
00:21:06.740and so weighting let's decrease. Well, and it's funny because one of the
00:21:11.380things people constantly talk about or worry about is we lose our medical professionals.
00:21:15.540We're having difficulty retaining them and keeping them here. Yet at the same time,
00:21:18.980they're afraid of changing the system that's been pushing these professionals out i mean
00:21:25.060you guys help chip through some of that i guess that the cognitive dissonance people have when
00:21:29.860it comes to that like the system's failing in front of your own eyes yet you're still terrified
00:21:34.260to even tweak it much less to give it substantial changes so you guys did a documentary though
00:21:39.060right you you did a production so people can watch and see at length what what's the differences are
00:21:43.620yeah well we've got a few things people can watch it's all for free it's on our website
00:21:47.620uh if you want to watch the japan video it's just go to secondstreet.org all spelled out and
00:21:52.980you can see it's right on the main page it's super easy to find uh and also people could go to
00:21:56.820healthreformnow.ca again healthreformnow.ca and that's a 40-minute uh documentary that it's much
00:22:04.020more comprehensive and looks at more issues and more solutions but yeah you're right i mean with
00:22:08.500when it comes to labor issues um those can be navigated and you know personally i don't have
00:22:14.980have $100,000 laying around if I needed heart surgery or whatever. I want the public system
00:22:19.300to be strong, but it's not strong right now. So we have to be looking at reform and we can make
00:22:24.620sure that we have the staff and the public system. The reality right now is that a lot of healthcare
00:22:29.880professionals are just leaving Canada. They're looking at these different options, largely just
00:22:35.660working for the government, some government hospital here or there, and they're saying,
00:22:38.700I don't want to work there. I mean, I heard terrible things. It's not a good environment.
00:22:41.800it's chaotic it's not managed well so they're leaving you know other times these workers start
00:22:48.340out there and then you hear MEI the Montreal Economic Institute they've done great research
00:22:52.760looking at nurses retiring before they're like 35 not and I should correct that not retiring but
00:22:57.680leaving the profession before they're 35 because it's just too stressful the government's the
00:23:02.240government's operating a chaotic environment whereas you go into countries like Japan you
00:23:07.440know we went into these hospitals it's not chaos there's not patients laying in hallways there's
00:23:11.740not um you know just this you know i don't know confusion like surrounding the hospital and i'm
00:23:18.840not criticizing individual doctors and nurses in canada the problem is the government's running
00:23:23.040the thing and they've set it up poorly and the results are are not very good for too many
00:23:28.440canadians so yeah we can navigate these issues i mean two other things people i think um may want
00:23:33.840to keep in mind about the japanese system they do have user fees um they're pretty affordable like
00:23:39.040No one's, you know, from what we could tell, no one's going bankrupt by the Japanese system.
00:23:44.840If you need something like a heart operation, they have protections in place that if you're a middle income Japanese person, the most you would pay in a month would be around $800.
00:23:55.560So if you think about, I mean, $800, a lot of us don't have that money to throw around casually.
00:24:00.060But if you think about it for something like a heart operation, you know, that's when the cost is probably upwards of $80,000, $90,000, $100,000.
00:24:12.920So they do have safeguards in place to keep the costs low.
00:24:15.740If you need something less significant, a professor from Kyoto that we talked to estimated it would be about 3,000 yen to visit your family doctor, you know, if you've got a bad cough or something like that.
00:24:27.040So that works out to around $28 Canadian.
00:24:29.420So, you know, it's not it's not tiny. It's not huge either. I think most people, if they've got a serious health problem, they can afford that. And then there's other safeguards in place if you're poor for costs for children and so forth. But that's one.
00:24:45.300And the other thing that I think is important to talk about too, Corey,
00:24:47.800is just that the Japanese people are healthier to begin with.
00:24:51.100And when you live a healthy life, you end up with fewer health problems.
00:24:55.720And that's where we as a nation, I think, are weaker
00:24:59.040and we have more room for improvements for Canadians to, you know,
00:25:03.320live healthier lives in the first place.
00:25:04.920Then we put less stress on the health care system.
00:25:07.760So, you know, we talk a little bit about that in the documentary as well.
00:25:11.520Yeah. So with these reforms, though, ideas like this, would these involve actually having to
00:25:17.120reform the Canada Health Act or provinces able to implement some of these without that? Like,
00:25:22.480that's one of the problems Canada's had is the provinces are tasked with delivering the health
00:25:26.160care, but the federal government tells them how they must do it. Do we need federal policy reform?
00:25:32.320Yeah. I mean, the question or the answer is that it kind of depends,
00:25:35.760depends how you want to do it so in japan actually like um you know we talk about the option of
00:25:42.000paying privately use the public system or you reach into your pocket and pay privately
00:25:47.360i mean that's how it works in countries like sweden or whatever in japan it's basically the
00:25:52.400government's gonna pay x amount of money it doesn't matter where you go that money is flowing
00:25:58.400and then you would pay that uh additional top-ups it's not really a uh you know don't necessarily
00:26:04.320think about it choosing between public and private it's all part of the public system
00:26:08.320but you could receive care at a private clinic within the public system so the money flows from
00:26:14.160the government to the private clinic when you go in for your knee operation and then you pay a
00:26:18.080portion which is the user fee so it's um that uh could certainly be done without having to change
00:26:26.480legislation um just changing this approach i mean we're seeing it happen here in alberta i mean
00:26:32.080I mean, we'll see in the near future sort of how the government rolls this out as the
00:26:37.740details become clear, but it looks like they're moving in that direction so that they're switching
00:26:43.400the system so that the focus, stay with me here, so that the focus now becomes all about
00:26:49.080the patient, which is where it should have been in the first place.
00:26:51.780Too often in Canada, the focus is about ideology.
00:26:55.000Who gets to deliver the healthcare?1.00