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The Current Transcript for May 5, 2017

Host: Nora Young

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Giving water to a thirsty, panting, suffering pig on her way to slaughter is the right thing to do.

NORA YOUNG: That was Anita Kranjc yesterday outside a Milton, Ontario courthouse. She was found not guilty of mischief for giving water to a pig in a transport truck in 2015. We'll look at the treatment of animals on the road to slaughter in half an hour. Also—

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This is the season when polio is at its worst and every precaution is being taken to stop the disease from spreading. In the Halifax area for example, officials have postponed the opening of school as a safeguard.

NY: Once, communities across Canada and around the world lived in fear of polio. Today some survivors of the disease still suffer the effects and struggle to get the proper diagnosis and treatment for a disease that was eradicated so long ago. In an hour we look at the legacy of polio. But we begin with flooding.

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[Sound: Alarm wailing]

This is in Alberta. Emergency alert.

NY: That was how the Alberta government got the word out in 2013 about dangerous flooding that would wreak havoc on Calgary and other cities. We sound the warning about the risks of living in flood prone areas and what you need to know. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Canadian homeowners in the dark about flood risks, study suggests

Guests: Connie Balerud, Jason Thistlethwaite, Craig Stewart

NY: During the next few days, eastern Canada from Nova Scotia to Ontario is expected to be drenched by a month's worth of rain. In the Montreal area already, residents were caught by surprise as they were hit with fast rising floods.

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VOICE 1: At four, four-thirty this morning, a neighbour was ringing my doorbell saying, “Hey, you better move your car. The streets are flooded.” I was completely shocked and surprised.

VOICE 2: When I looked out there, there was a river down our street.

VOICE 3: We tried to save everything. The house is still okay but the water is to the door.

VOICE 4: We are expecting more rain, up to 25 millimetres this evening with risk of isolated—

NY: Yesterday people in southern Ontario braced as the forecast called for another 50 to 100 millimetres of rain before the end of the weekend. That forecast comes with more warnings of flooding as the ground is already saturated. Weather-related disasters are hitting the country with more frequency and as Canadians know from past experience, the costs of extreme weather are rising. On average the federal government doles out about one billion dollars annually for disaster relief and 75 per cent of that goes towards flood damage. A new study released today raises concerns about how well-prepared we are to deal with floods. We'll get to the study in a moment. But first, let's hear from someone who knows what it's like to see water fill her home. In 2013, Connie Balerud's house was one of many flooded in High River, Alberta and dealing with the consequences was anything but straightforward. We reached Connie Balerud in High River, Alberta. Hello.

CONNIE BALERUD: Hi.

NY: So what are you thinking as you hear about the people whose homes are flooding in parts of eastern Canada right now?

CONNIE BALERUD: You know it does bring it right back to us here in High River and I certainly can feel for them and I know they've got a long road ahead of them. It’s not an easy thing.

NY: What happened to your home in 2013?

CONNIE BALERUD: We were told to evacuate. We left our home around 10:30 p.m. and we kind of left expecting that we would be back the very next day and there wouldn't be any issues. We don't live by the river. We're not in the flood zone at all. So we were kind of told we were leaving just because the sewer system was probably failing or the water system was going to be over used and they needed us to leave.

NY: What did your basement look like once the flooding happened?

CONNIE BALERUD: When we got back, it was like a blender had gone through our whole basement. The walls were falling in. There was stuff growing where there shouldn't be stuff growing on all the walls. We had water up to our support beams. We had about eight feet of water in our basement.

NY: So how long was it before you could move back into your home?

CONNIE BALERUD: Before we were allowed back in even just to see the damage, it was about 14 days. And before we actually moved back into our house, it was three months and that’s just moving into the upstairs part.

NY: How much did you know about what your insurance policy covered before all of this happened?

CONNIE BALERUD: Before all of this happened, I would honestly say we hadn't studied our policy. We really didn't know about overland flooding. We knew there was coverage for sewer backup. You really would have to sit down and probably study your policy and go through it with somebody who could read the jargon to actually help you understand it. Now I would say we’re a lot more aware having gone through it and we certainly have made provisions to our insurance policy. But prior to that, absolutely not.

NY: What was it like trying to sort out insurance and government funding after the flood?

CONNIE BALERUD: That was a bit of a nightmare. It really was very, very difficult. It was physically and mentally exhausting on us. We actually went down to the insurance company in Calgary right to the office to finally sort things out with them. Even with the insurance companies, the interpretation of what we were going to be covered for was quite, I won't say vague, but it was very buried and it would change. It would change weekly.

NY: What about the government funding? Did it match with what insurance was telling you was going to happen?

CONNIE BALERUD: No, not necessarily. Again, you really had to be your own advocate. Luckily for me, my husband was that advocate. He would go down to the government disaster relief programs, to their office on a weekly basis and it really went back and forth. One would cover for overland flooding and the other insurance would cover for sewer backup. So when you have a house that has eight feet of water and you got to imagine how do they decide what’s what. So we really, really had to fight for any of those benefits.

NY: So ultimately what was the financial hit for you?

CONNIE BALERUD: Luckily for us, you know it's a little bit hard to say because we didn't replace everything that we lost. So I think all in all, in the end, we probably came up pretty close to even, between the government funding and the insurance.

NY: But I understand you retired early to look after your house.

CONNIE BALERUD: I did. Yes. I was working right up until the flood and at the time of the flood I did give notice at my place of employment.

NY: What kind of a toll did this take on you emotionally?

CONNIE BALERUD: Oh man. And I would even say you know even today just talking about it again, it still does bring it up. It's very, very hard on you emotionally. You're not sleeping. You're not eating as well as you should. For sure when you see all of your children's memories and pictures and whatnot in a big heap on your lawn going into a dumpster, it's pretty tough.

NY: Looking back, are there things that you wish you could have done differently?

CONNIE BALERUD: When we do the practices now in town for awareness, I’m always making sure that I have the information for that. Our insurance for sure, we have looked into that and changed what needs to be changed hopefully to protect us better next time if there was a flood. That took some work as well, doing some homework on our part to get that figured out.

NY: Do you have any advice for people going through flooding now or even people who haven't ever gone through a flood but might someday?

CONNIE BALERUD: Anybody else who's going through this and fighting with insurance and with the government, it is a real battle. Try to take a breath and take time for yourself. If you need to step away, that's okay and don't give up. Just keep going back and keep going back because that really helped us.

NY: Connie, I know this has been tough to revisit, but I really appreciate your sharing your story.

CONNIE BALERUD: Thank you.

NY: Connie Balerud’s house was damaged in the Alberta flood of 2013. She was in High River, Alberta. Now as we mentioned earlier, a new study released today confirms that Connie Balerud isn't alone. Many Canadians either don't know their own flood risk or what to do if it happens. The study “Canadian Voices on Changing Flood Risk” surveyed 2,300 people living in high-risk flood zones across Canada. It found 94 per cent of those surveyed didn't know their homes were at risk and that most have taken no action to protect their homes from floods. Jason Thistlethwaite is one of the study co-authors. He's an assistant professor at Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development and we’ve reached him in Waterloo. Hello.

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Hi there.

NY: So how typical is Connie Balerud’s experience?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: This nightmare that she described happens far too often in Canada and it's only getting worse. These victims of flooding are not alone.

NY: How much are these things costing us?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Canadians pay out of pocket $600 million dollars annually for flooding. And as I mentioned, these costs are going to grow as a consequence of some recent government changes that expect Canadians to play a much larger role in flood management by protecting their homes and purchasing newly available flood insurance.

NY: So given that kind of liability, how is it that 94 per cent of those that were surveyed didn't know they are at risk?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: This is one of the most alarming findings of the study. Canadians simply lack the awareness of flood risk and this is really a consequence of governments keeping Canadians in the dark about some of these concerns and the severity of flood risk. So most of our flood maps that we use to determine where flood risk is severe are out of date and inconsistent and based on the province you're living in. And insurers, while providing flood insurance and expanding coverage recently, need to work harder to communicate to Canadians the benefits of insurance. We found through our survey that only 70 per cent of survey respondents have been actually told about flood insurance by their provider.

NY: How many of the people you surveyed knew they were in high risk flood zones?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: The study was targeted to these high risk factors as you mentioned and only six per cent knew that they were located in a high risk flood zone.

NY: Six per cent.

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Mhm.

NY: So why did you conduct this study?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: The motivation is that the costs of flooding are so significant. Canadians are paying out of pocket for them and the government policies are changing. So we wanted to give Canadians a voice on what they thought about these changes. And it's clear from the study that we've got a significant problem. In addition to the lack of awareness, we are not taking actions to take this flood risk, to manage flood risk. And this is really a consequence of our own self-assessment of risk that doesn't align with the actual risk. If we don't know we’re at risk, how can we make informed decisions on how to protect our homes and property? And increasingly we see that people believe that while the government has been there historically, they're not going to be there in the future. It is too significant of a cost to the government to keep maintaining and helping people recover from flooding. So this is really what motivated and some of the findings from the study.

NY: But what is the government's role in this? Isn't there a disaster relief that kicks in when a natural disaster hits?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: So this has been one of the changes. There's a gap in the way that disaster assistance is now employed. Disaster assistance covers costs that are not covered by your insurance policy. With newly available flood insurance, some disaster assistance programs across the country have now said that flooding damage is no longer covered. The problem is that people don't know that they need to buy insurance and they don't know that they are no longer going to qualify for disaster assistance in the event of a flood.

NY: So if more extreme weather events in the future mean more flooding, is the government adequately funding disaster relief?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: They do it on an ad hoc basis which as we know, they're not the best and sound way to inform a budget. So in certain events yes, they may be there but it's inconsistent and that's the problem. Canadians really need to start thinking about how they can protect their properties on their own and taking responsibility for themselves.

NY: So what do you think the federal government needs to do to improve how we deal with flooding?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: We need a national strategy that encourages homeowners to protect their homes by communicating the risk of flooding and the actions that are best for their homes. And this has wide support from the Canadians that we surveyed in the study. For instance, 90 per cent of Canadians think that flood maps should be made public. Ninety per cent of Canadians think that the sellers of property should be required to disclose risk and over 90 per cent of Canadians think that property owners should be notified if their home is located in flood risk. So we need more information. But we also need to make sure that insurance is made available in areas that need it the most and that's a challenge because insurance can often be unaffordable in these high risk areas. So we need governments, insurers and homeowners to come together and decide who should be responsible for this risk and how much are we willing to pay to manage that risk? And that conversation isn't happening. I think we've started a conversation by asking Canadians about their ideas for solutions and I think the government ought to listen.

NY: So what about insurance companies in all this? Many people don't know their policy only covers flooding resulting from sewer backups. What responsibility do insurance companies have?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Well, I think that insurance companies need to do a better job in communicating some of that fine print that Connie was explaining. They need to clearly delineate where people can purchase flood insurance, how much is available. And this is confusing. So in high risk areas what you're often going to find is that yes, insurance may be available but it's going to be really expensive and it's not going to cover all the damage that you're likely to see in a home. It's just simply uneconomic for the insurer to provide it. So insurance companies need to be communicating those facts but they also need to be offering people incentives or rewards that lower their premiums. So if you take actions and you can demonstrate that you've taken actions at your property level to help mitigate a flood before it happens, that you should get a reward for that. You should have some sort of economic benefit for that. That is the primary job of the role of insurance.

NY: So what should Canadians living in areas that are prone to flooding do to prepare their homes?

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Well, the first thing they can do is they can take a look at a website called floodsmart.ca and that's supported by a group that supported the project called Partners for Action who is charged with, responsible for going out and informing Canadians about flood risk. But ultimately what they need to do is they need to sit down at the kitchen table, have a look at their insurance policy, call their insurance broker and more broadly, they need to give their MP or MPP a call and tell them that flooding is a concern for them. They know their properties and families are at risk and it's time to have a national strategy on this issue.

NY: Jason, thank you very much.

JASON THISTLETHWAITE: Thank you very much.

NY: Jason Thistlethwaite is a co-author of the study “Canadian Voices on Changing Flood Risk”. He's also an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. He was in Waterloo. We did put in a request to Ralph Goodale, the minister of public safety. He was not available. Well, many have gone through a flood say navigating the insurance claim process after the water subsides can be complicated. Craig Stewart is the vice president of Federal Affairs at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. He's in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

CRAIG STEWART: Good morning, Nora.

NY: So you were just listening in. What do you make of what you just heard?

CRAIG STEWART: Well, I would agree with everything that that Jason has said and empathize with Connie. The 2013 Calgary flood really was a wakeup call for the country and for our industry, about the magnitude of such events and about how ill-prepared we are frankly to handle them. What has changed since then is that at that time, overland flood insurance was not widely available in Canada. It now is. There are about 15 companies offering flood insurance. But as you can tell from Jason's study, very few Canadians are aware that they live in high risk zones or what they should be doing to protect themselves.

NY: How affordable are existing insurance options for flood protection?

CRAIG STEWART: For the vast majority of Canadians, flood insurance is very affordable. You’re looking at about $100, $200 additional to your existing policy in order to bump up your coverage to make sure you're protected. It varies of course from company to company and it's important to shop around and to familiarize yourself with your policy. However, if you have not bought flood insurance or if you haven't reviewed it in the past year, to be clear: you do not have overland flood insurance because it's only been on the market for a year. But for high risk homes—and those are homes that are in a one to 20 year flood risk area—there's a five per cent chance of them flooding every year. Those home insurance policies can be very, very expensive. The average claim in Calgary for a basement was $250,000, just for a basement. So if you're going to flood once every 20 years, you can do the math. You can get a sense that you're living in an expensive area.

NY: We heard earlier from Connie Balerud that it was difficult to navigate the insurance claim process and even difficult to understand her policy. So what are you doing to make this simpler for homeowners?

CRAIG STEWART: I'll go back to Jason's comment. You know we're probably in a decade-long transition right now where we're learning to do flood. The whole industry is learning how to do flood and specifically how to coordinate with governments. Up to now, Canadians have expected that governments will step in and backstop them if an event occurs and governments are saying no, we're pulling out of that business. It’s becoming unaffordable. You're responsible for protecting yourselves. But while we're in this transition period, it's messy. I agree with Jason. The insurance industry and governments need to work together to coordinate so it's very clear when disaster assistance stops and when insurance starts. And we're in the midst of those discussions now. We're engaged with governments across the country. But it's going to take us a while to get it right.

NY: So what do you think the solutions would look like for people who are living in high risk zones?

CRAIG STEWART: So for high risk zones, there's a couple of things under way. First, the federal government needs to be congratulated because in the last federal budget, they just announced two billion dollars in infrastructure spending that will be designated largely for flood defences. Whether it's improving storm water infrastructure, whether it's putting wetlands or natural habitat upstream to buffer communities from flood or whether it's building dams and dikes, these sorts of things. That money will help and communities across the country that are high risk should be encouraged to apply for that funding and protect their citizens frankly. So that's a first step. Also the federal government has put money into improving building codes so that new homes are more resilient to flood, more climate resilient. And they've just announced about $180 million to help implement new building codes towards those ends. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the knowledgeable consumer. To get back to the study that was released today, it comes back to knowing your own flood risk, advocating that you have access to maps from your municipality that show flood risk for your home and then taking the measures—if you are in a high risk area—to do some of the simple things like seal the cracks in your basement, put in a backwater control valve in your basement. You know there are some simple measures that you can take and educating yourself as a consumer is probably the number one thing you can do.

NY: Are those flood maps widely publicly available for people if you want to find out?

CRAIG STEWART: No. And this is an issue. The city of Edmonton was recently challenged by a news—I think it was the Edmonton Journal—to release its flood maps and it resisted. And the provincial ombudsman frankly forced the city of Edmonton to release those flood maps. It's an issue because they're worried about the effect on home prices. Municipal councillors are rightfully worried about what it's going to do if people know that they're in high risk zones suddenly. But people have a right to know. And so we encourage municipalities across the country to make sure that this information becomes available. We even believe that real estate listings frankly should note flood risk. When you're going to your local MLS or Realtor.ca, this sort of information should be there for homeowners.

NY: Craig, thanks so much for your insight on this.

CRAIG STEWART: Thank you very much.

NY: Craig Stewart is the vice president of federal affairs at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. He was in our Ottawa studio. The CBC News is next, then courting compassion. An animal rights activist wins her day in court for giving a pig a drink of water. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Farm animal transport to slaughterhouses need better rules, says advocate

Guests: Maureen Harper, Egan Brockhoff

NY: Hello. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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NY: Still to come—

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VOICE 1: I remember lying on a very hard cold table and I remember waking up feeling as though my head had been decapitated.

VOICE 2: Where were you?

VOICE 1: In an iron lung.

NY: Dark memories of polio haunted its victims for decades and now some are coping with new symptoms as they develop post-polio syndrome. That story in half an hour. But first, taking stock of the treatment of animals from the farm to the slaughterhouse.

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[Sound: Pigs snorting]

VOICE 1: Can you give this guy some water?

VOICE 2: Nope. Get out of the way. Do not put water in there.

VOICE 1: Jesus said if you're thirsty, give them water.

VOICE 2: No. You know what? These are not humans, you dumb friggen broad. Hello?

VOICE 1: Have some compassion. Have some compassion.

VOICE 2: Let’s call the cops.

VOICE 1: Have some compassion.

NY: That's audio from a video posted on YouTube by Toronto Pig Save, an animal rights group. It depicts the group's co-founder Anita Krajnc giving water to pigs inside a transport truck in June 2015. After that exchange with the driver of the transport truck, Krajnc was charged with criminal mischief. If convicted, she could have been facing six months in prison and a $5,000 fine. Yesterday the charges against her were dismissed.

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I feel good in the sense that compassion is not a crime. But I think we need to make great strides with respect to how animals are viewed in the law. The judge said that the pigs and other animals are property under the law. I think that when you see animals like we do at vigils, the animals are so much more than that. They're not property. We believe that they should have personhood status because they have personalities, they’re autonomous, they’re self-aware, and they deserve to receive that kind of respect under the law.

NY: Anita Krajnc wants to see an end to eating animals so that no animal will have to be transported any distance to a slaughterhouse. She describes how she's seen the methods of transport affect the animals inside the trucks.

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Pigs are incredibly intelligent animals and so they're very self-aware. They know what's happening. So it's very painful to see them have so much fear and sadness in their eyes. Often they're dejected. In some of the trucks, the pigs are scratched up. They're often filthy. It smells really bad. There's three levels of the animals on the trucks and often the feces, they're sort of mired in their own feces. And in the summer, they're extremely hot. They're panting and they have foam around their mouths. Many of them suffer and also some of them even die of heart stroke. I mean we've done Freedom of Information requests and a number of them are dead on arrival every day in the summer heat. I just think like when you do something like vigils and bear witness and look inside the trucks and look inside the animal's eyes, you're looking from soul to soul and you see an individual before you. You certainly don't see property. Animals are not like a toaster. They're living beings and they're the most precious things on the planet.

NY: The current rules around animal transportation are being rewritten—rules that haven't been updated since 1977. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, has been working on a new set of rules for a decade and last December the agency put forward changes that are under consideration by the House of Commons’ Agriculture Committee. We asked the CFIA for an interview to describe the changes it wants to see implemented but it declined the request. The new regulations the CFIA proposes would reduce the amount of time animals are allowed to spend in transit. For example, pigs can spend up to 36 hours on a truck. If the new rules are adopted, the limit will be 28. But my next guest says that the new rules don't go far enough. Maureen Harper is a veterinarian and a retired veterinary inspector with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She retired in 2011 after 30 years working there. Maureen Harper is in our Toronto studio. Hello.

MAUREEN HARPER: Hello, Nora. Thanks for having me.

NY: Pleasure. Thanks for coming. Before I get your take on the CFIA’s proposed regulation changes, what do you think about the verdict yesterday for Anita Krajnc?

MAUREEN HARPER: I think the verdict yesterday was basically just a no brainer. In my opinion the court case was just a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. Anita was providing water to a pig that was obviously in distress and unfortunately industry had decided to charge her with mischief. But it was a no brainer. Obviously it was a compassionate act and I think that the decision was the correct decision.

NY: So based on that video—we heard the audio from the video a little earlier—based on that video which you saw, what do you think of the conditions the pigs were in when Anita Krajnc gave them water?

MAUREEN HARPER: I think the positive thing that's come out of Anita’s case is that this has raised awareness with respect to some of the plight of animals that are on route to abattoirs. And it was very clear that that animal was in distress and was overheating and was gulping the water. And so I think that the positive thing from this case says this has raised the profile of the issue of animal transport.

NY: So the CFIA is proposing a 28 hour limit when it comes to transporting pigs. What do you think of that?

MAUREEN HARPER: I believe that that is still too high. I believe that the science dictates that all the transport times that are proposed in the newly proposed amendments to the animal transport regulations are still too high. It's very clear that from scientific literature that the longer the trip, the more stress and the more loss there will be of animals. We've waited for 40 years for these regulations to be changed and I have to admit that I was quite disappointed in the times that were provided. I would like to see them lowered.

NY: What are some of the proposed changes for other animals?

MAUREEN HARPER: The other proposed changes are the horses are reduced from 36 to 28 hours and cattle are from 52 to 36 hours. But again from what I understand from access to information documents that have been obtained, the CFIA was proposing to lower them more than that but the industry has pushed back. And so we find ourselves where we are here today, with a reduced number from what the current legislation is but it still has not gone far enough.

NY: So generally speaking, what's your take on the CFIA’s proposed changes to the rules around animal transportation?

MAUREEN HARPER: There are a number of issues, not just the fact that the transport times have not been reduced sufficiently in my view, but also the fact that the CFIA is proposing to go towards, to move towards outcome-based legislation. So what that means is instead of having for example, prescribed loading densities for pigs on a trailer, the regulations would just stipulate that the animals are not to be overcrowded. So an analogy that I would make is if somebody gets into an accident in a vehicle and there's no speed limits and the person says I'm driving safely to the police officer, if the police officer doesn't have any speed limits, then he can't admonish the person for causing the accident. So by the same token if an inspector does not have prescribed loading densities but just finds a load of dead hogs, how can he ascertain for sure that the issue was overcrowding that caused the problem? So that's going to make it more difficult for the inspectors to enforce.

NY: What concerns do you have about the transportation of spent hens and what is a spent hen?

MAUREEN HARPER: A spent hen is a bird who has been used to produce eggs for the course of its life and towards the end of its life, it’s not producing eggs anymore and they're very fragile frail birds that are barely feathered very often. And they're transported to be used in things like chicken soup or chicken nuggets or what have you. And I have an issue with spend hens being transported great distances because they are very, very fragile frail birds. And very often in my experience when I worked with the CFIA, there were issues with high percentages of dead on arrival of the spent hens. So it's my understanding that the CFA was trying to reduce the time down to 12 hours but now it's back up to 24 hours due to the pushback from industry.

NY: Yeah. What evidence do you have that the CFIA has aligned itself with industry?

MAUREEN HARPER: I don't personally have the evidence but it's my understanding that access to information documents have been procured by certain animal rights groups that are elucidating the fact that the CFIA was considering to have the transport times lower than they are proposed now but there was industry pushback.

NY: When you were still an inspector with the CFIA, what did you see that concerned you?

MAUREEN HARPER: Well, as I mentioned, I did see a high rate of dead on arrival of spent hens. So that was a big issue. I also had issues with pigs that were very often in distress in the extreme heat and humidity in the summertime and this also speaks to the issues with respect to the regulations. There is no requirement for control of temperature or ventilation in closed vehicles and that's not been addressed in the new legislation. And that is a big issue with pigs because they are not able to sweat and so when they're under distress with respect to high temperatures and humidity, they mouth breathe and start panting and can go into cardiac failure which is Anita was describing earlier.

NY: You worked for the CFIA for 30 years. How did seeing all this affect you?

MAUREEN HARPER: It was a struggle for me at times. Circa 2003, I was the program officer responsible for the delivery of the animal transport program in Ontario and it was very difficult for me to see what was going on and to actually have to meet with management at the respective plants to try and you know get their heads around the fact that this was just improper treatment, inhumane treatment of animals and that they needed to make the proper corrections. It was difficult. There were issues with enforcement. There were issues with a culture of fear and the organization whereby inspectors were somewhat reticent to admonish industry because they don't want to rock the boat. So there are a number of issues and it was at times for me quite frustrating.

NY: You mentioned horses earlier. What have you learned about horse transportation?

MAUREEN HARPER: Well, the issue with the horse transportation—we have been dealing with shipments of draft horses that are being shipped specifically to Japan for slaughter. And the issue right now is that the current legislation is not being enforced by the CFIA and with respect to that, horses that are at greater than 14 hands are required to be segregated and that is not happening with these shipments. And the containers are to be built high enough so that the top of the horse's head does not come in contact with the top of the container and that's for balance reasons for the horses. And so as a result of that, horses are being shipped in wooden containers and there's an association—International Air Transport Association—that is actually even stipulating that these wooden containers that they're shipping these horses in—crammed in like cans of sardine in a can. The containers are not even sanctioned to be used for horses. So all to say the CFIA is not even enforcing its own current legislation. And with the newly proposed amendments, these requirements about segregation of horses over 14 hands and the horses’ heads not coming in contact with the top of the containers are being removed. So I have an issue with that.

NY: We're going speak with someone from the Pork Council next, but other industry groups have spoken out against the CFIA’s proposed changes. A spokeswoman for Maple Lodge which deals with spent hens told the Globe and Mail that reduced transport times can be a detriment to animal welfare. How do you respond to that?

MAUREEN HARPER: The scientific literature totally counters that argument. The scientific literature out there definitely stipulates that increased transport times will produce increased losses, either fatalities or casualties. So I take exception with that comment because it's only common sense and intuitive that the shorter the distance, the less stress, the less chance of having problems and losses with the animals.

NY: But won't stricter rules have a detrimental effect on industry and end up costing consumers more?

MAUREEN HARPER: That is an issue. That's a very real issue that I think the Canadian public deserves to know. But you know it's important to understand that we have a responsibility as custodians of these animals that are sacrificing their lives for us to provide us with food, to ensure that we are handling and treating them as humanely as possible. And so it’s a bit of a saw-off that the public has to understand there may be a cost attached and to be respectful of the CFIA, they're wrestling with that issue as well. But you know we have a responsibility to treat animals humanely and the CFIA is the regulating party to do that. So it's a bit of a disappointment that the regulations in my view have not gone further far enough and as I said, we've waited for 40 years for them to bring these new changes about. These are sentient beings and as Anita said, they are property under the law, yes, but that doesn't counter the fact that they're sentient beings. And we would not be treating our own pets this way and so farm animals should be treated no differently in my view.

NY: Maureen, thanks very much for joining us.

MAUREEN HARPER: Very welcome.

NY: Maureen Harper is a retired veterinary inspector with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She was in our Toronto studio. We requested an interview with the Minister of Agriculture Lawrence MacAulay but he was not available. For another perspective on this issue, I'm joined by Egan Brockhoff. He's a practicing swine veterinarian who also provides veterinary counselling to the Canadian Pork Council. He also teaches swine medicine at the University of Calgary faculty of medicine. He is in Red Deer, Alberta. Hello.

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Good morning.

NY: So what do you think about the Anita Krajnc story?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Well, it's an interesting story and I admit I haven't followed the story particularly closely. It’s a story interesting to me because I think in many ways we've missed the point of the story. This was really about food safety and food hygiene. I think when farmers and farm families load their animals up to go to sale, they have every expectation that those animals will arrive to sale in a safe and healthy manner and I think the processor has every expectation that those animals will arrive in a safe and healthy manner as possible. When people are giving liquids to animals during transport, that concerns me greatly with food safety and public health. I mean people want to know their food is safe and wholesome and certainly nutritious and having foreign liquids added to animals destined for food consumption is concerning to me. I think it's it should be as concerning to the public as expecting to go and to be able to buy fruit and vegetables in the grocery store that haven't been tampered with as well.

NY: So what do you think about the proposal to limit hog travel times to 28 hours?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Yeah. It's a frustrating proposal for me. You know in all honesty, there isn't a lot of data to suggest reducing travel time is going to be any benefit to the pig. In fact if we look at current peer reviewed published research, it clearly states there's no linear relationship between travel time and outcomes. If we look at the research that we have published right now in fact, it clearly shows that transports over 134 kilometres have lower dead on arrival than shorter transports. So I think we need to be very careful when we talk about the research because the research does not support lowering transport times.

NY: What conditions are pigs in when they arrive for processing?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: That’s a great question. You know we were really lucky. In the last year I was able to complete a transport project of our own at our veterinary practice and we evaluated 5,807 pigs—market pigs loaded in the morning—every morning about 6 a.m. and then transported to processer. We watched those pigs be loaded. We recorded them with GoPro cameras. We had temperature and humidity monitors in the trailers and we were comparing two different trailer designs. And then we watched those hogs being unloaded. We had again video cameras inside the trailer to watch them being unloaded. We had two veterinarians on site watching the pigs being unloaded and the vast majority of pigs come off those trailers doing very well.

NY: But don’t some of the animals arrive dead?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Yes. Certainly we do have some mortality during transport but I think it's important to remember that farm families, pork producers and transporters, it's all in their best interest to have as many animals arrive alive as possible and certainly that's everyone's goal. No one wants to see animals die in transit. For the family back on the farm, that is an economic loss to them. It's a frustration for them. Transporters are being paid to move animals to markets and certainly it's their goal to get them there alive as well. And so yes, there's some mortality during transport. It's extremely low. It's less than a third of a per cent if we take a look at the numbers. And pork producers, farm families and families certainly make every effort to find ways to improve that outcome.

NY: Do you have any concerns about the status quo when it comes to regulations?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: I mean there's no question the regulations are getting older and it's important to look at ways to update them. You know our research project focused a lot on trailer design. Trailer design can greatly impact how the welfare of the pig during transport focused a lot on how pigs are handled during loading and unloading. And so for us, I think we're missing some of the big ticket items for improving animal welfare and maintaining positive outcomes for the pigs. Transport time is certainly leading us down the wrong path. We need to focus on some of these key things—how the pigs are handled in the trailer. The trailer design itself—pigs are not great athletes and so loading ramps, can we replace loading ramps with elevators within the trailers? I think those are some of the key things we should be focusing on and not just getting caught up in transport time where there's really no data to support this.

NY: How much will this cost the industry if the CFIA’s proposed changes go through?

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Yeah, there isn't a lot of pigs moved over the 28-hour line in Canada. But there's certainly a significant proportion of farms that ship pigs, especially down into the US Midwest where transport times approach that 28 to 32 hours. And so there could be some significant and detrimental losses to some farms and farm families that make a living shipping pigs down into the US Midwest.

NY: Europe has much stricter rules than Canada and the industry is still profitable there. Why shouldn't Canada follow suit.

EGAN BROCKHOFF: I mean Canada is a big country. We're a big geographical space and so we need to move animals further distances. Europe has a different set of rules for a smaller compartmentalized industry. I think we should look at this from a science-based approach though. If we take a look at the research available, we have almost no research published on the impact of transport time for weaned pigs. I sit on the Farm Care Council's Scientific Review Committee for the movement of weaner pigs. We have no research to base these decisions on. If we look at the research for transport time for market pigs, it's clear to me and other researchers that we need to look at other things beside transport time. Pigs are very cool animals. They get onto the trailer and within 20 or 30 minutes, they lie down. They want to lie down. And so that's how we transport them and so they're very comfortable with movement. But if you load them, you don't allow them to lie down and then you immediately unload them in a very short transport time, the research clearly says we increase concerns around welfare if we do something like that.

NY: Egan, thank you very much for joining us.

EGAN BROCKHOFF: Thank you. You guys have a great day.

NY: Thank you. Egan Brockhoff is a swine veterinarian who also provides veterinary counselling to the Canadian Pork Council. He was in Red Deer, Alberta. Monday on The Current, we'll be talking to Victoire Dauxerre. She's a former runway model scouted off the streets of Paris. When she started her career, she was five feet ten inches tall and weighed 123 pounds. She was told she was too big to fit into the clothes. But it was the dehumanizing treatment by the industry that really got to her. Here is Victoire Dauxerre talking about the moment she decided to leave the industry.

SOUNDCLIP

I was doing a photo shoot and it was in Paris and I was wearing only lingerie. So I was really freezing because it was winter and the photographer took ages to adjust his camera. So I told him sorry, but I'm going to go to the car because I'm freezing. And it was a very famous photographer. So he called my agency to complain and my agency called me back saying who do you think you are? You only are a model. And this sentence, I was just like that's it. I'm free because this sentence really meant you are nothing, you’re worth nothing and we can do whatever we want with you. And I said no to that. This was actually a key point and it was a survival moment to save myself from this world and to save me from dying because I was going to die from anorexia, from not being treated as a human being anymore.

NY: Former runway model Victoire Dauxerre talks about her new memoir, Size Zero: My Life as a Disappearing Model. That's Monday on The Current. Coming up in the next half hour, the challenges of dealing with the after effects of polio when the disease has been eradicated for decades. I’m Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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'I didn't care very much whether I lived or died': ER doctor shares the moment that saved his life

Guests: James Maskalyk

NY: I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

NY: This season on The Current, we've been looking at disruptors—the people, ideas and things that have disrupted how we live and think. We've been featuring personal moments of disruption about life- changing events. Last month we spoke with James Maskalyk, an emergency physician who works in Toronto and Addis Ababa. After our interview, he shared this personal moment of disruption.

SOUNDCLIP

After graduating from my residency program in emergency medicine, I went out as soon as I could to do something I'd been waiting for since I was a medical student, which was work with Doctors Without Borders, Medecins Sans Frontieres. And they sent me to Sudan. At that time it was one country and I was to be a doctor in a field hospital at this crucible between the tensions of north and south. And I thought I was prepared for that type of work. I thought that I had not just the skills but I had experience that was relevant. So I had these high hopes of how I'd be able to address the needs of the patients and the people there. However, as it happened, I stepped off the plane into a world that was even more difficult than I had anticipated and right into the middle of a war. People were being shot and some were being raped and children were starving. I was there for six months. And at the same time as I was doing the medicine—and I lived about 100 metres from the hospital so I could hear the cries of people who were mourning the patients who had just died—I started to write about it. I was MSF’s first blogger. But I didn't have the internet I just sent pulses of data to headquarters, would they reviewed and then put up. So I didn't know what was happening when I was in the field, but when I returned home after that difficult experience, I had ingested some of the suffering that I was so close to. And I don't think I'm alone when I say that I didn't care very much whether I lived or died. In fact, I could walk into a plane's propeller and not feel that I would be missing out too much of what life had to offer. But what was waiting for me when I got back was sure, my friends and my family and that difficult experience of integrating into the life I'd left behind, but also a book deal. And the moment that I can recall was me sitting in a patio in downtown Toronto on Wellington Street with a table full of people and we were talking about the book I would write. And it was 1 p.m. and a church bell pealed and it pealed just for me and said this is a rare moment in your life. And I looked around the table of all of these people who were there to support me and this idea and then I never looked back. That book saved me. It saved me from walking into a propeller and you know I'll tell you what—what happened after is not just was I able to wrestle with that difficult experience in a way that helped it make sense, I was able to recover the motivation that led me to Sudan in the first place. And soon those propellers were below me as I returned to the field to work again in Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee camp, even more sincerely, now not just with experience but with confidence that I could do it and emerge not unscathed, but passionately engaged in the deeper mission.

NY: That was Toronto emergency James Maskalyk sharing his personal moment of disruption. James Maskalyk’s most recent book is Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine. He's also the author of Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village. I'm Nora Young and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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How polio still affects survivors decades later

Guests: Lois Hall, Terry Wiens, Dr. Ming Chan

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: There are a lot of parents whose children are healthy and happy now who live in fear. I know I do. The fear my friends, is polio—infantile paralysis.

VOICE 2: Polio is no respecter of people. The rich, the poor, the strong, the weak—no one is immune.

VOICE 1: But soon, perhaps within a year, there may be a vaccine—a vaccine available to all that may be the answer. Now here is your chance to help get this test done as quickly as possible. Give every dime and dollar that you can spare to the 1954 March of Dimes.

NY: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz there in a 1954 television ad for the March of Dimes. The polio epidemic in North America was at its peak. Two years later, American researcher Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine and the disease was virtually eradicated in North America by the early sixties. But the disease hit Canada hard in the early 1950s. In 1953 alone at the peak of the outbreak, there were 9,000 cases and 500 deaths. Today it's estimated there are 31,000 polio survivors in this country, most of them now in their late sixties and early seventies. And today some of those survivors are dealing with the legacy of the disease—post-polio syndrome—and with the medical community with very little experience and knowledge of polio and its long-term implications. Lois Hall and Terry Wiens were both diagnosed with polio in the 1950s when they were three year olds and both are dealing with post-polio symptoms. Lois Hall is on the phone from her home in Heidelberg, Ontario and Terry Wiens is at his home in British Columbia. Hello to you both.

LOIS HALL: Good morning, Nora.

TERRY WIENS: Good morning, Nora. Thanks for having us.

NY: Terry, when you were a little boy, you were the March of Dimes poster child one year. What do you remember about your childhood experience with polio?

TERRY WIENS: I remember the smell of wool, of hot wool. They used to wrap us in these wool blankets that were soaked first. And then they would wrap you in them and leave you for a while. That was part of the treatment. The one time I remember walking was down the hallway in our home in Winnipeg to my mother I don't feel good and collapsed. She took me to the hospital, King George because she was convinced by that point it was polio. I had been treated for flu for about a week prior to that. And I’ve got very vivid memories of my spinal tap that I recall really well. But most of my memories go more to Calgary after we moved to Calgary because there's a children's hospital.

NY: Right. How long were you in the hospital?

TERRY WIENS: All total, by the time I was 16. Eight years.

NY: Wow. What impact did this have on you and your family?

TERRY WIENS: It was a very different time then so you didn't see your family. The 80 per cent of the kids in the children's hospital were polio. So that was my family. Parents could only visit twice a week. That was Wednesday for an hour, Sunday for an hour and a half. Siblings, you sort of waved to them down on the parking lot. Because you didn't hear words like access and inclusion and things like that, so the hospital was pretty regimented and we had school. We had activities. It was like our own little community.

NY: Lois, what's your story of polio as a child?

LOIS HALL: I don't have a lot of recollection. I had just turned three and it was a major epidemic in Winnipeg. Whole neighbourhoods were quarantined. Everybody was at home. Everybody was sick with the flu. Everybody got better and I didn't. And that was fairly consistent with a number of homes on our street with kids the same age that I was. And I can remember being pushed around in a baby carriage when I wanted to run and walk and I was pulled around in a wagon. Eventually I just wore orthopedic shoes. But other than that, I wasn't conscious of really having any great disability except I could never run. I could run like you would on a hobby horse, but I couldn't get my left foot in front of my right foot to run. But other than that, I was a bit of a klutz, but that was it.

NY: What kind of treatment did you receive? Do you remember?

LOIS HALL: I didn't. The hospitals were full. The doctor would come to the house every day and tell my parents what they had to do to look after me.

NY: Wow. So what impact has having had polio had on your lives, both of you?

LOIS HALL: Well, from my standpoint, it didn't have a great impact on my life until I was in my forties. I went to university, got married, had children, worked as a physiotherapist. And in my early forties, I started occasionally tripping or falling and not really paying too much attention to it except thinking you know you're too busy, you have a full time job, you’ve got teenagers, kids going to university, that kind of thing. And then one day I actually fell hard enough to break my hip and then started looking at what was going on. And I developed pneumonia shortly after that. And that caused a bigger issue. And from there, life changed a lot for me.

NY: Terry, how about you? What impact has polio had on your life?

TERRY WIENS: Well, a little different. I was in braces. Lois and I were probably in the Winnipeg hospital because we were living in St. Vital at the time. But I was in braces from my chest down—two-leg braces, hip band and back brace. So I grew up thinking this is normal. I didn't know anything else. So like Lois, I went to school after getting out of the hospital. I went onto school, became a social worker, worked in a hospital in Calgary, got married, had a son. And again like Lois, it was about 40 years later that I slowly started experiencing increased weakness in my arms, a little bit of a swallowing issue, just above the [unintelligible], I would feel like things would get stuck in there on occasion. I'm now wheelchair dependent because I can no longer—I’m weak enough. My arms kept failing enough that I just became unsafe on my crutches. And again, I was like Lois. It was in three weeks of turning three years old that I contracted polio in Winnipeg. But it was about 40 years later that little aches and pains that I wrote off to generalized aging. I was working as a therapist in mental health in a Calgary hospital so I didn't want to over inflate it. I had gone through a few post-polio support groups and I think there's a lot more people like Lois out there because I’m convinced a lot of cases went undiagnosed and those ones seem to be the ones that were affected fastest by post-polio. I asked my doctor a few times about who would I go to see about post-polio. They don't know.

NY: Right. Lois, you talked about the onset of your symptoms. What kind of reaction did you have from doctors when you first started reporting those symptoms?

LOIS HALL: When I first started looking for help, the doctors in my own community had no answers and so I was referred to McMaster Medical Centre. And I went to seven different neurological specialists until they finally started doing muscle biopsies and discovered I had post-polio, had had paralytic polio because no one seemed to really think that was on the radar. And so then it becomes a matter of well, what do you do? How do we make you functional again? And at that point in time, there was a polio clinic in Toronto West Park Hospital which no longer has existed for a while. And things have continued to change. My swallowing is significantly involved. I have to use a ventilator for breathing when I sleep because I saturate my oxygen levels very quickly sleeping. I have a nice big below knee leg brace that's so big and clunky it doesn't fit into regular shoes. So that makes life a bit interesting. I use elbow crutches to get around, although that’s a lot of hard work. My goal is to stay walking as long as I can. But I do have a scooter if I have to go somewhere for a real long time. But like other typical post-polio people, I'm pretty much a Type A personality—go, go, go—and the rule is supposed to be go slow.

NY: Yeah. And how do you deal with doctors who have little or no knowledge of polio and post-polio?

LOIS HALL: Well, I did have one bad experience when I was outside my own community once and I had to get some medical assistance and they didn't believe it even existed. My family physician is the most fabulous person I could ever be connected with. She is entirely open, willing to refer me to anywhere, is extremely cautious with medicating me because it has significant issues on the weakened muscles that I already have. We do have the London-Hamilton connections that I can be referred in to.

NY: Terry, overall what has your experience with the medical community been like as you seek treatment?

TERRY WIENS: They don't really seem to know. You really need to be able to advocate for yourself. What really has got me going in the last four months was a short hospitalization, the realization that nobody in this hospital when I mentioned walking and momentum to turn over knew what polio was, knew what any of that was. Then I started getting a bit of homecare. They didn't seem to know anything. I'd mention well, it was polio so I have to do things this way and even explaining as a fused hip why you do certain things in a certain direction. The awareness just wasn't there and I've now been on a five month campaign educating Island Health on really what post-polio is or trying to get them to understand but also looking for what kind of doctor can I go to.

NY: And Lois, you’re coping day to day okay?

LOIS HALL: I have help coming in to help me. I have someone come in to clean the house every other week and then I have another person who comes in to support me with individual things that I want to do beyond cleaning. If I want to clean out a cupboard or something extra like that, I have someone to come in and help me. I'm very fortunate that we're in the financial position to have traded our house for a bungalow and we've had a lot of work done on it to be able to make it more accessible. We recently dismantled our entire bathroom and had a walk-in shower with a bench and hand shower put in so that I can still shower independently. But yeah. You constantly feel like you're giving something up because as you age, with weakened muscles on top of your polio, your function level is always dropping.

NY: Yeah. Lois and Terry, I want to thank you both very much for sharing your stories.

LOIS HALL: Thank you for being interested.

TERRY WIENS: No problem. Thank you.

NY: Lois Hall is a polio survivor who lives in Heidelberg, Ontario. Terry Wiens is a polio survivor living in an Nanaimo, British Columbia. Well, to help us understand more about post-polio syndrome and its challenges, we're joined by Dr. Ming Chan. He's a rehab medicine specialist at the neuromuscular disease clinic at Edmonton’s Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital. He's been studying the effects of polio and post-polio syndrome for 20 years and he's in Edmonton. Hello.

MING CHAN: Hello. Good morning.

NY: So what were you thinking as you listened to the stories from Lois and Terry?

MING CHAN: Yes. They are very instructive situations and the two patients when they contracted polio as babies, I mean they seem to spend pretty different ends of the spectrum in terms of severity. But it is interesting that many decades later they start to develop new symptoms and the problems that they're experiencing now are very similar and they are common among the other polio patients with post-polio syndrome.

NY: Yeah. How common is this that people who had polio will experience these post-polio syndromes?

MING CHAN: Right. So I think the rough number is reported as about 50 to 70 per cent. So that's we’ll say the majority of them.

NY: What is post-polio syndrome exactly though?

MING CHAN: Right. So it is a conglomerate of symptoms. So there are about five of them—sleep disturbance, muscle pain, cold intolerance, fatigue, new weakness in the limbs. So those are the things that kind of describe what people who would report when they develop the syndrome.

NY: Why does it happen?

MING CHAN: That's a good question. I think perhaps a simple way to explain that is when they contracted polio, it destroyed nerve cells in the spine and that's why they have muscle weakness and wasting. Now the nervous system does have an ability to regenerate. And quite often as the children grew, they became stronger simply because of the regeneration of the nerves. As they get older, they start losing nerve cells and when they have a loss of say 50 per cent of them as babies, they can’t really afford to lose a lot more. So while you and I can afford that, in their cases the new weakness become much more evident as they get older.

NY: So what are some of the challenges in diagnosing post-polio syndrome?

MING CHAN: The first challenge is the recognition of someone actually having polio. So in Lois’ case when the initial symptoms weren't overly severe, I think convincing someone who's not familiar with that they actually had polio in the beginning is a challenge. And the second one is that in the symptoms that I describe of cold intolerance and sleep disturbance, they are not exclusive to polio. So I mean that that really in a way is a diagnosis of exclusion where one has to kind of look at everything on the table and kind of rule out other possibilities. So the workup it takes quite a bit of work. So I think those are parts of the challenges.

NY: You wonder if sometimes patients might not mention that they had had polio because it was so long ago. They might not make any kind of connection.

MING CHAN: That is very true. You know I think if you take a child at the age of three, I think the recollection of something happening in any detail is difficult. And I have patients told me they had only realized that years later when they started asking their parents.

NY: Oh wow. How equipped are family doctors to deal with people who come in with symptoms of this?

MING CHAN: Yeah. I think it is difficult. As I mentioned that you know in medical school nowadays, that there's not something really taught and that has been for many years. So I think the general awareness helps, just like Terry said earlier that you know he's well informed, he takes in a package of information to doctors. So I think my take of that is for individual family doctors who drove into this in great detail is really hard. I think a far better way is if they have a heightened awareness of the possibility of this problem is to refer those patients onto specialized centres that are more used to dealing with this.

NY: What can happen to people who aren't properly diagnosed?

MING CHAN: Well, it is a progressive condition and both as Lois and Terry pointed out, that as years pass I mean the problems become worse and worse and that I think is the worrisome thing, is unless if things are adequately dealt with, I think the problems will just become more debilitating over time.

NY: What kind of treatment can patients get for post-polio syndrome?

MING CHAN: I think to make those symptoms disappear is not realistic. I think that's the first one to realize. But having said that, I think many of those symptoms can be well managed. So you know just to take an example with sleep disturbance, exercise activities, fatigue, I think those things if they're adequately addressed, can be minimized to a very substantial extent. So yes, I think those symptoms if they are managed properly, can be made much less problematic.

NY: What kind of results have you seen with treatment?

MING CHAN: Yeah. So let me just perhaps give you an example of a personal insight is that I started seeing these patients as you said 20 years ago. And one of the first things that I’d encouraged a patient to support the group is to form the exercise group and they have been meeting for the last 20 years twice a week with guidance from a therapist. And some of the patients that I saw 20 years ago having quite a lot of problem with muscle weakness and fatigue, I would say 20 years later they're doing better.

NY: So it can be managed but not cured?

MING CHAN: That's correct.

NY: Right. What would you like to see to happen so that patients get better care?

MING CHAN: Yes. I think having a few multi-disciplinary clinics around the country really isn't enough. I would like to see more of those becoming available and I think perhaps that would start with the patient support group as an advocate. And in some ways that's how we got started in Edmonton many years ago.

NY: Thank you so much for sharing your insights.

MING CHAN: Oh, you're most welcome.

NY: Dr. Ming Chan is a rehab medicine specialist at the neuromuscular disease clinic at Edmonton's Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital.

CATHERINE KALBFLEISCH: Hello. I’m Catherine Kalbfleisch, one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal who was filling in as writer this week, Ines Colabrese, John Chipman, Lara O'Brien, Shannon Higgins, Sujata Berry, Kristin Nelson, Karin Marley, Liz Hoath, Samira Mohyeddin, Pacinthe Mattar and Willow Smith. Our intern is Seher Asaf. Special thanks to our network producers Anne Penman in Vancouver, Michael O'Halloran in Calgary, Suzanna Dufresne in Winnipeg and Mary-Catherine McIntosh in Halifax. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Lisa Ayuso is our web producer and Ruby Buiza is our interactive producer. Our technical producer is Gary Francis and our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver and the executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

NY: And that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Tom Power talks to Margaret Atwood about the relevance of The Handmaid's Tale in the current political climate. Now in 1953 when he was just a baby, Peter Kavanagh was diagnosed with polio. Peter would go on to become a well-respected CBC journalist and author of the book, The Man Who Learned to Walk Three Times. In an interview on The Sunday Edition, Peter spoke about growing up with the after effects of polio. Peter passed away last September, but we can still access his insights thanks to the CBC archives. So here is Peter Kavanagh about how polio changed his life. I'm Nora Young. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

At the very basic level, what polio did was it paralyzed my left leg. It destroyed the muscles, nerves, tendons and what have you in the bottom half of my left leg and it made walking a remarkably awkward thing for the entirety of my life up until now. Polio meant I spent large periods of my life in a form of sort of social isolation—that is either away from my family in a hospital, away from my family in a room, for a year lying flat on my back in a body cast, not having much interaction with all kinds of people. And so polio, one of the things polio did was polio made me remarkably interior, a person who was very, very comfortable and very, very much at ease with solitude and contemplation and reflection. So strangely enough, I have to say in some senses, there are things that I drastically regret that polio meant to me. And at the same time, there are things about me that I truly do appreciate, perhaps even love, that are a consequence of having had polio.

[Music: Ending theme]

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May 5, 2017 full episode transcript

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