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The Current Transcript for October 30, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I cannot recall someone being more [unintelligible]to farmer and supporting the people who helped develop this country and build this country.

MATT GALLOWAY: The clock is ticking until next week's U.S. election. And as our Road to November road trip heads down the Mississippi and we get closer to a final destination of New Orleans, we head to the Delta to hear from voters there about floods, the power of community and crisis, and the danger of talking politics with your neighbours during a divisive time. Also this morning, Globe and Mail health reporter Andre Picard on living in a COVID limbo. But first:

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We are in the middle of a second wave. And we are still only relying on economic shutdown as a way of addressing the pandemic. And that's not good enough after nine months.

MG: Our national affairs panel on provincial elections, opposition parties turning up the heat and the lingering possibility of a pandemic federal vote. That's where we begin this morning. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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National affairs panel on the anniversary of Quebec’s 1995 referendum

Guests: Murray Mandryk, Rosemary Barton, Charelle Evelyn

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VOICE 1: B.C. has voted and a majority has been called. This has been an extraordinarily difficult election for many, many reasons, but it's one that I believe had to happen.

VOICE 2: I'm going to tell you, I'm feeling pretty good tonight. Last week, we had a couple of big honking rallies for a strong Saskatchewan. And tonight, we're celebrating a big honkin election win.

MG: A big honkin’ election win. Premiers John Horgan of British Columbia and Scott Moe of Saskatchewan after their resounding wins this week. They followed New Brunswick, which also saw an incumbent premier win a big majority. And so now all eyes turn to Ottawa. Is there a federal covered election in the air? To answer that and other questions, we will turn this morning to our national affairs panel. Today, I'm joined by Murray Mandryk of the Regina Leader Post, Charelle Evelynn of the Hill Times and Rosemary Barton, the CBC chief political correspondent. Good morning to you all.

GUESTS: Good morning.

MG: Murray, let's start with you in Saskatchewan. Scott Mo's victory, I think, was expected by just about everyone, but a big honkin’ victory, as he like to say. Let's talk a little bit about the NDP. They had an awful night in a province that, of course, has the deepest roots when it comes to that party. What do you make of where the NDP ended up?

MURRAY MANDRYK: Absolutely. It was an awful night for the NDP is pretty deep roots. They are roots, but the plant is long weathered than died. And that's an unfortunate thing for the NDP in Saskatchewan. But it's it's the reality of a province where you basically move to the right, because we've become so economically reliant on oil and farming and farming in this province has changed quite significantly. It's not the small family farm operation anymore. They're there multiple ten thousand acre operations in the millions of dollars every year in terms of their seeding costs and every everything else. It's big business, really. So that's one major factor. The other major factor is that the timing of the Sas party arrival in 2007 came at the time of a population explosion for a province that had stagnated in population for just decades. And now that's really associated with first Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan before Scott Moe, Moe has just successfully run his first election.

MG: Where does that leave the provinces in terms of the future? I mean, we're in the midst of a pandemic. There are concerns around the resource sector and oil and gas prices. So where does that leave the province in terms of that uncertain future?

MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, uncertainty as it is, and maybe that was one of the big factors in this big win. I think basically people - and I think we saw this trend across the country, of course, in terms of other provincial elections, of all stripes being elected during this re-elected during this pandemic - I think it actually helped. It certainly actually helps got most government in the sense that people did not want to think about change right now. This province traditionally hasn't been very tolerant towards things like big expense costs, debt. And oddly enough, that's been the success of the NDP in the past because they've really run like Liberal governments in the sense of being very fiscally prudent and not liberal governments here, liberal governments federally, but liberal governs in terms of their approach. This was more of a traditional NDP campaign from Ryan Mylie, the NDP leader in Saskatchewan, in the sense that he was spending a lot of money on the platform in trying to help various social issues and other things in terms of trying to reach out to that vote and and deal with issues. So I think that was one of the things that kind of hurt them. People were uncertain about the notion of big spending. Obviously, the Sas party governments presented a pretty big spending budget as well, but was smaller than the NDP. And so this uncertainty, I think, is probably something that people just didn't want to risk right now and kind of went with what they knew.

MG: Some uncertainty, Rosemary, in Ottawa, we keep hearing murmurs. Maybe they're louder in some areas and quieter and others that a fall election would be the best bet for liberals to gain a majority. Much like John Horgan and Blaine Higgs did. What are you hearing?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yes. I mean, I think those rumours are persistent. They will be persistent because we have a minority government and because, yeah, we've seen that incumbencies are performing well in elections. I think it is a little bit different on the federal scene. The issue of travel, for instance, remains a real one. No party would be able to campaign in Atlantic Canada. You couldn't go to Manitoba, which also has a 14 day quarantine. So you'd be limited sort of in your movement. That doesn't mean there's not a way to do this. We're seeing this down south with Joe Biden's very limited activities and certainly the prime minister every day is adding up additional virtual visits to businesses and virtual rallies. So it's possible. I just think it's a difference. There are different sort of stakes here. The second wave is really hurting a lot of people. And it would be dangerous, I think, to look opportunistic at this moment as as a federal government. All that being said, if you talk to any any liberal right now, not in on what may be in their home constituency, they are ready to go. They feel like they have governed well. They feel like they have handled things pretty well. I mean, there's always room for improvement. And while they're not chomping at the bit for an election, they certainly would take one if it came. Their opponents remember, too, particularly in the form of Erin O'Toole, are not yet still very well-known in the minds of Canadians. So that, too, is an advantage. But I think I think there is still a desire to govern right now and to manage the country by Justin Trudeau and his liberals. And that unless they're forced into some sort of situation where it seems to be the only option, as it did just two weeks ago. You know, I don't think they're going to manufacture their own defeat. But listen, this is these are weird times. 2020 is very strange. It's possible. It's always possible. And so, you know, we have to keep that in our minds.

MG: Charelle, how possible is it how realistic do you think a federal election this fall is?

CHARELLE EVELYN: Well, I guess the the deeper we get into fall and the closer we get into winter, it seems like, you know, the possibilities starts to shrink. I mean, if you remember that just a few weeks ago when Green Party leader Annamie Paul was asking for the recent Toronto by elections to be delayed because of the second wave? You know, Prime Minister Trudeau's response was like, no, we need to have it now, because if we wait until the winter things could be even worse. Whether that was, you know, a political strategy or a ploy or whether he was genuinely concerned about the fact that holding an election during the winter when, you know, cold and flu season is ramping up and potentially the virus because we have no idea what's going to happen. Could there be a third wave? Is a second wave going to be it? You don't know, I suppose. But, you know, like Rosemary said, it's a minority government. Anything is possible at any time. It's interesting when you look at the provincial situation and you see, you know, minority governments that have become majorities with incumbents, you know, taking that stronger hold over their local government. It's not quite the same situation with the federal government because like [unintelliglbe], you know, things. Things are not the same. It's more difficult to campaign. It's more difficult to hold an election. Elections Canada is in even, you know, fully ready. They say it. If they have to go, they'll go. But they said this is not the best of circumstances.

MG: Getting away from elections for the moment and part of this is about why an election may not happen. Have a listen to the prime minister from earlier this week.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We are in an unprecedented global pandemic that really sucks. It's tough going through this second wave.

MG: Canada now has top 10000 deaths due to COVID cases increasing in several provinces. The premiers are sounding exasperated. The prime minister says it sucks. Murray, why are the messages from politicians and perhaps public health officials not landing with some people?

MURRAY MANDRYK: That's an interesting question. In a place like Saskatchewan, I think it probably has to do with the fact that COVID is still spotty right now. We had a record highest day for cases and we have a record. Active cases, but it's still only 82 cases yesterday in this province of roughly 1.17 seven million and 700 active cases total. So even less is actually it's not like obviously the US where it's identifiable with the neighbour or anything else. You see, things happen. People are being rather cautious in most places in terms of wearing masks and other things. But you know, it's been a long time. I have two teenagers at home and trying to get them to stay and not go out or keep to their social group is a challenge.

MG: I know of your struggle.

MURRAY MANDRYK: No, no, man. You don't know my struggle son. You don't have that much air time. But it's things like that that make it really difficult for I think the family's here for it for everyone. And I guess that's no different than any place else that's been dealing with this pandemic for getting on to seven, eight months now.

MG: Rosemary, where does that leave? The federal government was interesting. Patty Hyde has faced increasing criticism from the opposition parties, concerns around rapid testing, concerns around the comments that she'd made earlier when reporters were asking her about China and what China had done, this photo that appeared of her in an airport lounge in which she didn't have a mask on, although there were questions as to whether there was food nearby. Where does this leave the federal health minister, for example, if the cases continue to rise? And there is that sense we heard from the prime minister of exasperated that this hasn't gone anywhere.

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yes, I mean, I think the exasperation is real. I think Mary's dead on. I think that the Kovik fatigue issue is is a is a major one. And, you know, I think everyone can relate to that. I think that the prime minister has become the face of the pandemic. And as long with Dr. Teresa Tam, I think we will see more of him as as needed as as things develop. I don't I no longer think that it's Patty Hajdu who is is is really the face of this, managing it. In the spring, it was the prime minister. I think it will continue to be him through the fall as things get worse. I think the frustration for many of the people in Ottawa now, the federal government is there's only so much they can do for all sorts of jurisdictional reasons. Certainly they can pump money everywhere and they've done that. But in terms of messaging, the messaging is has to be very localised because these are regional pandemics. Things are different in in Ottawa than they are in Regina. So that is also a concern. But the real thing I know that that that worries them. That bothers them that they're not sure how to wrap their heads around is that the fear of the virus has dissipated. And like it or not, that fear over the course of the spring, fear of the unknown, fear of what it would do, did keep people at home and it kept people behaving. And because that fear is not there anymore, it's much harder to connect with people. And that means your teenagers do because, you know, you can go outside and you'll be OK in certain circumstances or you're willing to risk it. And that makes messaging difficult. And the fact that it's not coherent across the country makes it even more difficult.

MG: We did an entire programme yesterday on the economy and the state of the economy. We called it remaking a living, because so many people are finding themselves either out of work or having to pivot if they still have a job, figuring out how they want to make ends meet, figuring out what the future looks like. We heard from the finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, earlier this week, Cherelle, essentially saying that the government would continue to try to spend its way out of this pandemic. How is that playing in Ottawa, Charelle?

CHARELLE EVELYN: Well, I guess it kind of depends on who you talk to. If you're talking to, those aren't more on the right of it, you know, it's not playing out very well. It's you know, the liberals have already spent a lot of money and talking billions and billions and billions of dollars to the point where, you know, any sort of dollar figure that gets talked, it doesn't even seem real anymore. It doesn't seem or even, you know, a number like 34 billion. It's kind of like, well, that's chump change. So the idea that, you know, we can continue to spend in and find some find some relief, it's- on the one hand, you have you have you have the idea that, OK, well, we're spending the money, but we're not spending it in the right places. You have people asking for rapid testing and and and things like that and vaccine development and business support. But we're also saying, well, there's not enough money being spent to do things like support long term care homes and schools, which are, of course, not federal jurisdiction, but the federal government has still been, you know, throwing dollars out to the provinces to kind of get them to move on some of those issues. So, you know, money isn't going to fix it, but money is definitely going to help for all of these businesses that are floundering as we look towards more markdowns and shutdowns. You mean look around the world, even places that have the things that people are asking for, like rapid testing, like in France, they're experiencing another, you know, mass lockdown. So, you know, money isn't necessarily going to be the panacea of that.

MG: I guess, finally, just on this point, Rosemary, is there any appetite in Ottawa to start turning the taps back the other way to slow down the flow of money? Or are we still, to your point, because politicians can't wrap their hands around how to slow this down? Because in many ways it's out of our hands that this will continue to be an issue that is addressed with government spending?

ROSEMARY BARTON: No. No one, certainly in government is talking about turning the taps off or down in any way, shape or form. And I think the message from the finance minister and deputy prime minister and from the prime minister this week, who also talked about how we wouldn't be hearing about fiscal anchor is so, you know, do we keep our debt to GDP ratio at this level or this level. He said that's not going to be in the economic update we're expecting in a few weeks. I think that is about setting the stage for what we're about to see. Remember, we haven't seen the country's books since before the election. I mean, that's pretty unprecedented. I realise we're in unprecedented times, but we don't really have a clear sense of what's going on there. So I think they're setting the stage for when we start to see some of these sort of mind boggling numbers that are difficult to comprehend and to sort of explain how the government is going to continue to spend. That might not be the right solution. Certainly the conservatives have concerns around that. But it is what they're doing right now and they're going to have to justify that to Canadians. And I think Canadians are going to have to keep an eye on things to make sure that the spending is pandemic related and that the government is not trying to put other things out there that are part of its overall agenda and take an opportunity there.

MG: Let's take a trip in the old CBC time machine. Turn back the clock. Where were you 25 years ago today, Murray, on the day of the Quebec referendum?

MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, probably calling my less than wait here. But generally speaking, I was watching a referendum that night and looking at it from a Western perspective and really having, you know, one scared at a you right now in terms of where a country was going. I can't remember quite specifically where I was watching. I remember the next day or a day after going to Yorkton, which is a small town about two hours away, and people just being actually rather in shock over what happened and had how close they had come to the country breaking up and and just how even is far away out here where at that time probably the same sentiments held related to a liberal government and and their handling of things, although it's probably far worse today, how absolutely hurt they were by the notion that they might not have the country that they have and how frustrating that were and maybe how mad they were at Quebec and maybe how frustrated they were at the time. A lot of people thinking about how unappreciated it was. But mostly I just remember it being a very sad and surprisingly scary time.

MG: Rosemary, what do you remember about 25 years ago?

ROSEMARY BARTON: I did have to do some calculations. I was 19. I do remember going to a rally at the Forks. I'm from Winnipeg, the Forks in Winnipeg to try and convince Quebec through cheers that they should stay. I also remember being very distraught. I am, you know, daughter of immigrants who chose to go into French immersion because of her love of the French language. And I was very concerned that if Kobach left to that, that would have repercussions for me personally and for sort of the way I dedicated my life to to trying to embrace that culture and that language. So I remember two being really, really worried about what that would mean and then relieved, but also uncertain about how we were going to sort of feel those wounds and get past that.

MG: Charelle, where were you twenty five years ago?

CHARELLE EVELYN: Well, it's going to make everybody hate me. I was nine years old and in grade four.

MG: Ah! The youth.

[Laughter]

CHARELLE EVELYN: I can't pretend that I was, you know, a really precocious child sitting down watching the news, you know, looking at my parents going, what's going to become of us? I was probably hearing about, you know, Halloween the next day. I don't recall it being a really, having a really big impact on my life or on my day. I don't recall talking about it in school. I was in elementary school in in Whitby. So in Ontario. But I don't think it was a major, you know, focal point of my day or month or even year.

MG: Fair enough. At age nine, perhaps not the most pressing concern. Halloween, I could imagine, would push that off the radar. Rosemary, you have a television programme that will debut on Sunday. Do you want to just briefly tell us what we might see on Sunday?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yes, it's two hours. Thank you for asking about it. It's two hours. It's politics. It's real Canadians. We're going to talk a lot about the U.S. election. Obviously, we're gonna talk about my home province, which is dealing with this spike in COVID cases. And we'll have a couple of surprising guests that I won't reveal quite yet. But anyway, we're very we're very excited and I'm very excited. And I think CBC is making the right decision to get into this political show game on Sundays where there's competition, but there's some real estate. And I think I've got a great team and I think we're going to deliver something interesting for Canadians.

MG: Surprise guests. Listen to that. That's the tease, as they say.

ROSEMARY BARTON: I probably over sold it, but anyway. There you go.

MG: It's great to speak with you all this morning. Thank you very much. And we'll be watching on Sunday, Rosie.

ROSEMARY BARTON: Thanks.

MURRAY MANDRYK: Thanks for having us.

MG: Murray Mandryk is a columnist with the Regina Leader Post. Charelle Evelyn is a managing editor of The Hill Times. Rosemary Barton, the CBC chief political correspondent and her new programme Rosemary Barton Live debuts Sunday, 10:00 a.m. Eastern on CBC News Network, 11:00 a.m. on local CBC television. Where were you 25 years ago when you watched the results of the referendum come in? You can let us know via email at thecurrent@cbc.ca Or tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Your news is next. And then we pull the Radio RV into the hospitality state. We're heading to Mississippi. Talking about what's going on in the Delta in the last few days of this election, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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Road to November: Devastating floods led this Mississippi farmer to a political awakening

Guests: Victoria Darden, Tracy Harden

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, a new way to reduce overdose deaths by looking after the whole person. But first, rolling down the river.

[Music Theme]

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VOICE 1: Together, we will make America great again.

VOICE 2: We're going to vote by mail, vote early.

VOICE 3: But you don't hear them talking about it. I say hundreds of thousands of lives.

VOICE 4: The only thing you could tear America apart is America itself. And we not let that happen.

MG: We are five days out from the U.S. election. And here at the current, we've been trying to bring you the perspectives of regular voters. No pundits, no politicians, just average Americans living along the Mississippi River in a series we're calling Road to November. We started in Minnesota and now we've followed the river into Mississippi herself. Water nourishes everything around it. But it also has the power to destroy everything in its path. And this is no clearer than along the Mississippi River, in the fertile farmland known as the Delta. Today, we're in Rolling Fork population less than 200,000, just down the road from where this guy was born.

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[Song by McKinley Morganfield]

MG: McKinley Morganfield born in these parts back in 1913. You probably know him better as Muddy Waters. Chances are he did not know just how fitting that name would be to his birthplace more than a century later. In 2019, more than 200,000 hectares of the delta were flooded for about seven months straight. This year has not been much better. For years, people have been battling to get pumps built to move the water. But it is a very slow process.

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We can't keep doing this year after year and I can't even live in my own home because they won't do what they're supposed to do, which is build bombs, install a male. The farmers up here going broke.

MG: The national U.S. poverty rate in 2019 was 10 percent in Mississippi. That number jumps to 19 and in many parts of the delta, it exceeds 30 percent. This was never an easy place to live. And the floods and now covered 19 have made life that much more difficult. Victoria Darden has worked her family's soy farm near Rolling Fork, basically her entire life, and joins us now. Victoria, good morning.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Good morning.

MG: If we went back three years ago, what would your farm have looked like then compared to what it looks like today?

VICTORIA DARDEN: We would have harvested probably about two months ago and had our farm work going on, everything would've been good. That was before the floods. 2020. We now have been able to grow crops. We are about a month behind on our normal schedule of quote unquote, harvesting. We still have crops in the field where we normally [unintelligible]. So we had a flood this spring and therefore it pushed us back planning.

MG: When that flood came in, how much water was there? What did it look like?

VICTORIA DARDEN: Everything was dead. It was waterlogged. There is water all around. I had to go by you in front of my farm and also have a creek beside it. So we are essentially just ploughing.

MG: What was it? How would you get around if there's water kind of all over the place?

VICTORIA DARDEN: So we had to park at my neighbour's house and get in a boat and travel down the creek because it was the deepest part where we could actually get a boat through and go out to a road here where the creek is. Take it into a four wheeler, our truck, whatever was running that week and then dropped to our house over the flooded road.

MG: I'd heard that because there's water and there's water everywhere. And it's a bit like an island with gators had arrived in that area.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Yes, we had several gators in the area that normally, you know, were pretty dry and we wouldn't have them. And, of course, you know, we'd normally be driving in a truck or something, leaving out normal life and we wouldn't have to worry about the gators in the creek or whatnot. But unfortunately, we weren't in Little John boat. We have an eight foot gator next to John. They're very powerful creatures. You know, they roll, you're going to roll in the johnboat. And it was a very intimidating situation.

MG: Sounds terrifying.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Yes, sir.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Give a sense - I mean, it's always awkward to ask people about money, but do you have a sense as to how much money you would lose from something like this working on a farm and living on a farm? You're on a kind of a knife edge at the best of times.

VICTORIA DARDEN: That's an accurate depiction there. I can't put dollars to it. I can just tell you, you know, a whole year without any kind of income. It's not good. It's not good for farm. It's not good for people. It was more than devastating.

MG: More than devastating. And so was this year any better? I mean, in addition to flooding, there's a pandemic that's been all around us. Was this year any better for you?

VICTORIA DARDEN: So this year the flooding was different. It didn't last seven months long. Fortunately, we were just [unintelligible] weren't the flooding and displacement. We were able to get a crop in and actually we're in the process of finishing harvest started. So, yes, that was much better. The current situation with the pandemic has been very troubling and it creates a sense of, you know, we're already out here on the island and we feel stranded and forgotten about. And then you tell us, oh, you don't really need to go to town either because there's a virus and everybody's going to die. You know, that whole little high thought they had is beginning and it was very scary.

MG: What does that do just in terms of the stress, the mental stress that you're under?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I've never been more stressed in my life. I didn't know what anxiety was until 2019. It has changed a lot about me and the way I had to handle it.

MG: What do you mean it's changed a lot about you?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I just have to approach things differently. I have to look at the big picture and I realise we can get through this. But yes, it [unintelligible], you know, especially when it rains for several months on end and honestly, every time it rains around here, we're all have a little bit of PTSD about it, because whether the situation is kind of like the equation is there to flood or not doesn't matter. We're still scared of it. I they really go through it for seven months long, it's very- it doesn't just disappear in your memory. It's very much there every day. You carry that with you.

MG: I'd mentioned in the introduction that people in your community have been fighting to get pumps built to move this water for a long, long time and nothing's happened. Tell me about the fight over these pumps. This has gone back to to what, like the 1940s?

VICTORIA DARDEN: Yes. So the first piece of legislation that stated we needed a pumping system was in 1941. We had not been strong until 2019 about fighting for this because no one knew what could happen. There is unprecedented, never being comprehended that, you know, we were going to flood half a million acres and that our whole livelihoods were they just operated in a blink of an eye, essentially. So I can definitely say that since my father's time things have changed and data has become available that supports this pumping station. And it shows all the things that need to be there. Back in 1941, it was just kind of a little bit of data and some common sense that if you build a structure, you need to be able to handle the rainfall as well. And that's why they put that in the law. And it just never got built.

MG: Why do you think it's never been built?

VICTORIA DARDEN: There is a lot of opposing environmentalist that believes the misinformation that is now proven to be misinformation because we have the data that supports it now that we've had a flood of 2019 and 2020 and the amount of wildlife that's been devastated among people loss as well.

MG: Has climate change affected this just in terms of what we've seen elsewhere in the world through the United States, but other parts of the world as well, where, you know, extreme weather has become even more extreme. Are you seeing that in recent years?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I would say climate change affects into the amount of rainfall that we've had over the years. You know, everything changes. I would say it plays a hand in it, but it is not our main cause of our flooding.

MG: What would you want to see from Washington to help you and your community?

VICTORIA DARDEN: Just the port. I mean, I hope that they will pass this when we get there. And they just support us and recognise that we need help. We're in a problem situation.

MG: Do you feel like if people call these the forgotten floods, do you feel like you've been abandoned by by leaders in Washington?

VICTORIA DARDEN: In 2019, in the very beginning, we tried very hard to get the media's attention. We tried very hard to get anybody's attention, honestly. It was a very frustrating fight and we did feel forgotten. Now, I do feel like our constituents are starting to advocate for us and realise the problem at hand. And I think they are trying their very best.

MG: One of the things that happens in crises like this we've seen during COVID as well, is that a community pulls together and you see people kind of rally around each other and try and help each other out. I want to bring somebody else into this conversation. But let me ask you about her first. Tracy Harden owns Chuck’s Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, about 15 minutes away from your farm. What is she meant to you and to your community as you've gone through this over the last few years?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I would say she's been the glue for us. You know, we constantly we go to her restaurant and eat. That's where we can go if we need to visit. She's there for us. She's going to listen to everything. And even if people don't want to talk, you know, she's like, I know you need help, go sit down and we're going to have a little chat, you know, cause she cares. She cares about the community. She's done everything to help us do fundraisers to raise money to just anything. She has been the glue for us.

MG: Tracy Harden. Good morning. You've been listening in.

TRACY HARDEN: Good morning.

MG: What does it mean to you when you hear Victoria say that you're the glue in your community?

TRACY HARDEN: Well, it brings me to tears. This was not home for me years ago. We've had the business for about 14 years and it has become home. And the people here have been so good to me and me showing them any love or care or anything, it's what's been shown to me. I think we just all hold each other together.

MG: What do you see as the role of Chuck’s Dairy Bar? I mean, tell me about the place in and about what you see as your role as you say you want to do your part.

TRACY HARDEN: When my husband first mentioned buying the restaurant and my words to him were don't you dare buy that place thinking I'm going to do it because I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it. And of course, we ended up with it anyway. And after a few months, you know, he decided, you know, this is it for me. So here I am. If it has my name on it, I want it to be best that it can be. We are here to not only serve food, we are here to serve them love, care, compassion. That's what we try to do.

MG: Victoria was talking about the last couple of years and what the last couple of years have been like for her and for her family on the farm. How have you seen the lives of your customers changed in the past couple of years? I mean, you have the floods and then you have covered the hard yards.

TRACY HARDEN: Well, with the flooding, I will say that Victoria, she had it so hard and my heart would break for her and her dad. With the [unintelligible] and home and [unintelligible] out to get what they need and not being able to plan. And you saw that or I saw that with a lot of my customers not being able to plant their land, that they planned it for years. I mean, this land has been in their family forever and. Now, here, you are not able to do what you do, not able to do what you do to make a living, to take care of your family. That is a tough thing to see. And when they continue to come and continue to talk about it is devastating. It's devastating.

MG: Does it hurt your business as well? I mean, that it can't be an easy time.

TRACY HARDEN: It does. And I honestly, I try I try to put that on the back burner. I know that I won't survive without my farmers. I know a lot of the local businesses here. Wouldn't survive without the farmers. I do try and put it on the back burner because we do have other customers besides our farmers, and that does bring in income for us. But they are hurting the most.

MG: We're talking to you just days away from this election, and it feels almost hard to believe that that it's about to happen because people have been talking about it for months, for years. How are you feeling, Victoria, as this election gets close?

VICTORIA DARDEN: So, like, I'm ready for it. [Unintelligible]. Honestly, you know, and the commercials, the ads. I think it's going to be a very crucial turning point, whichever way it goes. I think it's a real moment in history.

MG: Does this feel like a moment in history for you, Tracy? Does it feel. People have said that it feels different in some ways.

TRACY HARDEN: It is. It's very different. I can remember back when elections were not this difficult. I guess I would call it, you know. It's very different. It is people are content to running high. You know, everybody has their opinion of who's right and who's wrong. And it is. Sometimes some days, it's just kind of hard to deal with. I haven't watched a lot of the election stuff on the news. I haven't watched a lot of it. I've already made up my mind who I'm voting for. Some of the arguments back and forth on the news, that silliness. You know, I just don't want to hear it. We have a whole lot more going on in this world that we need to be taking care of. I just think we can all just kind of grow up a little and, you know, go vote. We have a lot of people arguing about it that won't even get out together. Go vote. Make your choice. And that way you're helping.

MG: Do you see those difficulties creeping into the personal relationships? People will often say, you know, you sit down at dinner, don't talk about religion or politics, but people will and they probably would at the dairy bar. Do you see that creeping into people's personal relationships?

TRACY HARDEN: Yes I do. We have, you know, we pretty much got the same people here morning after morning, which is wonderful. But you do have some that that get very combative, I guess you would say, when it comes to the election. Everyone has their opinion and lots of people don't mind sharing them. So we do hear a lot here. Some of it we'd rather not. But people really have their strong opinions. Being in a business, I try and keep my opinions to myself. My husband usually comes up in the morning and does out and sit with the fellows and talk. And I always tell him the voice is out. You know, you can go out there and you can listen all you want. But don't you get into an argument. You just listen and don't get into that.

MG: Doe he follow you or does he follow your advice?

TRACY HARDEN: I'd say seven times out of ten he will.

MG: Not too bad.

TRACY HARDEN: I think so. Not too bad. He's pretty good about it. All right. You know, you have to think of a business standpoint as well.

MG: Victoria, let me ask you about what's at stake here. I mean, personally, if you take a look at your farm, for example, in the last debate, the president claimed responsibility for something like 28 billion dollars in payments to farmers. He says he forced China to pay that in response to the trade war. The Democrats say that the money came from taxpayers, not from China. How well do you think Donald Trump has done in terms of supporting farmers like yourselves in the last four years?

VICTORIA DARDEN: He is such a great supporter advocate for us. I cannot recall. Obviously, I'm very young, but I cannot recall someone being more of an advocate for farmers in supporting the people who help develop this country and turn this country in that things to be where he kind of had his platform for people who are the blue collar workers that really get out there and do manual labour and try and keep things going.

MG: And is that what attracted you to him as a candidate four years ago?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I like the fact, obviously, that he was not a politician because I don't like politics. But I did not try and be very you know, I went out and I voted, I made my choice every year, but I didn't want the, I didn't go the extra mile to be super engaged. Now that I see how that affects daily life here, I tend to come and change things.

MG: And you'll vote for him again, if you don't mind me asking.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Yes, I will.

MG: Elections are in some ways kind of like a you know, it's like an exercise in hope in some ways that you cast your ballot and you hope for something. What would you hope comes out of this election?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I hope that our country can start getting back at peace with each other and just calm down all the hate and just mudslinging and the turmoil [unintelligible]. We're being very divided. I hope are very unified after this.

MG: We'll do it for you, Tracy, what do you hope for whether it's, you know, the day of the election, the day after the election?

TRACY HARDEN: Well, I hope for those same things. I pray for peace. I pray that the when the election is over that things can kind of get that rolling and get on back to business. I pray that there's not too much turmoil from who ever becomes our president. I've always been the type that, you know, whether the president is the one that I chose or not. He's still my president. He will be my president. And I just I pray for him that he does the right things for our country.

MG: If this was not a conversation in the time of a pandemic, we'd be sitting together and we would have driven the actual RV down into Rolling Fork. And I would have gone to Chuck's Dairy Bar if I had done that. Victoria, what's the thing that I mean, what's your go to order? What's the thing that when you roll in there after a hard day or it's an early morning and you want a cup of coffee, what's your order?

VICTORIA DARDEN: I'm very predictable. I'm just a chicken strip basket kind of girl.

MG: Chicken strips basket?

VICTORIA DARDEN: Because that is their go to item. I'm just I'm very basic.

MG: Tracy, what's the special if when I get there, not if, but when I get there, what do I have to eat?

TRACY HARDEN: Okay. Then when you come to Chuck's, if I see people coming in that I haven't seen before, I let them choose whatever it is they want to order. But I also take out some samples to them just to let them try the things that we have. We have a Chuck Burger with some Chile on it that we are known for and our Shaggs chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, pineapple.

MG: A pineapple shake is right up my alley. I will make those orders when I arrive. In the meantime, I really appreciate speaking with you both. Victoria, good luck. Running a farm is a tricky operation and I wish you the best of luck.

VICTORIA DARDEN: Thank you.

MG: Tracy. We will see you at some point in time and future at Chuck's Dairy Bar. Thanks again. Thank you very much.

MG: Tracy Harden once Chucks Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Victoria Darden runs her family farm 15 minutes down the road. You can see pictures of them both. You can see photos of the flooding on Victoria's farm. Photo of a gator as well. On our Web site, go to cbc.ca/roadtonovember and you can catch up on all of our past stops there. Speaking of stops, next week we pull the radio RV into New Orleans, 15 years since the world watched the levees break and flood the city during Hurricane Katrina. Now, Tropical Storm Zeta has just ripped through the Gulf. Monday, our final stop on the road to November takes us to the Big Easy. In the meantime, we'll roll out of Mississippi with one of its greatest artists, maybe one of the greatest singers of all time. It's Sam Cooke.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

MG: Listen to that voice, Sam Cooke, your regional update is next, and then we'll talk about a change could be coming to how we as a nation, in particular Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, treats the issue of addiction and care. I'm Matt Galloway. The Current is back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

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How a B.C. doctor's plan to treat 300 people with addictions, mental illness could tackle the overdose crisis

Guests: Dr. Bill MacEwan, Andre Picard

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. The tragedy that is the addiction and overdose crisis, particularly in British Columbia, has taken a backseat to COVID-19. At least once a month when the B.C. coroner publishes her report on the previous months overdose deaths. We are reminded that exponentially more people are dying by overdose than by this pandemic. This week, 127 suspected illicit drug toxicity deaths were confirmed for the month of September in British Columbia and the band played on, might be how Dr. Bill MacEwan would describe what happens next. Nothing changes enough to cause overdose deaths to diminish in a meaningful way, in spite of so many agencies and initiatives that taken together are incrementally helpful, but not enough. Last week, Dr. MacEwan, along with former British Columbia premier Mike Harcourt and a few others, presented a proposal to the mayor of Vancouver, Kennedy Stuart. They also share their proposal with the leaders of the three provincial parties. And the main idea here is to treat 300 of the most seriously mentally ill and chemically addicted citizens in the downtown East Side in a comprehensive programme. Dr. Bill MacEwan is in Vancouver. Doctor, good morning.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: For people who know of maybe the Downtown Eastside but can't picture it in their minds, you've given medical and psychiatric care to residents there for more than 20 years. Paint me a picture of what I would see if you and I went for a walk around a few blocks where most of the people congregate in that community.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Well, it seems you see matters. It's our old core of Vancouver, the original downtown, and it's a lovely area. I mean, you be very happy to walk to the streets, [unintelligible] lovely old buildings. We have great restaurants or some nice parks. And it's got a very it's got a character to it which many cities have. But in Vancouver, this is the best area because it includes gas down as well. The part that you'd also feel, though, is you'd feel heartbroken by the things you're seeing on the street and a highly visible level of poverty, of mental illness, of drug use and then the homelessness, which is literally on the streets and in the parks all the time now.

MG: MG: The last time I was there, there was the sense that I mean, in many ways, there are so many people on the sidewalks that it was difficult even to make it through there, that you had to navigate it onto the streets and you saw people come spilling out onto the streets. It seems to a lot of people that that has grown. Well, how would that compare to what the situation was like, I don't know, two decades ago?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Oh, it's vastly different. It has grown and the level of homelessness I think it's a very large driving factor to that. Vancouver and the province have done great things and have had very good initiatives to decrease homelessness. But it's still highly visible. And that's what you're seeing, is that hubbub and that interaction and the merchandising of things on the street that goes on. And as you say, it's hard to actually navigate. However, it's really deteriorated. So there's a lot of much more misconduct of people having fights or the open use of drugs is that can be very distressing to many people. And you're seeing a lot of times where it while you're standing there, multiple ambulances will roar by with sirens going presumably heading to an overdose. And the police are engaged with people who are having difficulties with criminal behaviour.

MG: Would you have ever expected that it would reach this state the way that you see it today?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: No, I wouldn't have. I've been working down there since the late 1990s. No one was really predicting the level of deaths that would occur from what you took. The previous overdose crisis was called because of 145 people dying in one year. We're doing that, outstripping that in one month now. So that's the part was a real game changer that none of us thought was coming.

MG: What then is the plan that you are proposing to help address what you're seeing on the streets of the Downtown Eastside right now?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: The part that's really distressing to see is that nobody is attending to the individuals who are cycling in and out of their addiction, are in and out of homelessness, are the grinding poverty. They often are having difficulties with not only mental illness, having difficulties with their addictions, and they're having difficulties in terms of maintaining a life on the streets. And those are people who don't get into the hospitals, who are often excluded from some of the housing facilities, and they tend to come in and out of emergencies, often at the behest of the police, because they've had serious mental illness behaviours on the street which are felt to be a danger to themselves. And they do not get admitted to hospital. They're simply punted back out and they make it back to the Downtown Eastside before the police who brought them in can after they've written their reports. It's those people who are the forgotten individuals, their addiction and a craving the grind they have of going and getting and using their drugs. Traumatic brain injury, which occurs in 25 percent of them. A serious mental illness such as psychosis and hearing voices. And then the difficulties in terms of of not having slept because they're living out in the streets. Those things all get in the way of them making reasonable sort of 'how do I help myself today' judgements. And they're just forgotten about. No one goes with them. And that's what we want to do.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: How are you proposing to do that?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: The Initial portion of it is is fairly straight ahead in terms of we're doing things that act teams, for instance, these sort of case treatment teams or community outreach teams have been doing in many of our cities. The part that is excludes these individuals are they are never picked up through the health system. And when they go through the justice system, there's no connection to the health system to understand, oh, this, Bobbie, is the same person who is having problems in the emergencies. But he's also the same fellow who's being picked up on the street by the police for minor crimes or other difficulties. So we have to address those individuals because we really believe that that the disruption that they feel and they experience has an effect on the whole community and not a positive way, but in a negative way. So we want to address those individuals.

MG: So if they're cycling through the system, how do you go about, as you say, addressing them? What specifically would happen so that they're not caught in that revolving door?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Yes, and that's it. This is the challenge. And I think it's a really good question. Often people will come in and I'll use example to emerge because I think that's a really good starting point. And they've come in with like what we call the 2500 dollar office visit. Police have picked them up, which is about 800 dollars per visit. The ambulance has had to transport, again, another 800. And there's about eight or nine hundred dollar cost of just being admitted to emerge. And then those individuals, calm down, are seen to be stable and are discharged. Nothing. So the first thing we have to be able to do here is be called to emerge by saying, or be there and say we're going to follow these individuals, please discharge them to us or let us introduce ourselves. And we walk with them after that. And so the part is the end. We would then say stay with them, even though there seem to be a mixed bag of, oh, this is addiction. Oh, this is mental health or they're just having poverty. We were going to stick with them because they've got all of those things plus others, and we'll move them through a system. So we have to get the other steps, or we have to get housing that's arranged and involved with our programme. And then we also have to be lock step with detox, drug treatment, second stage housing and moving on to addiction free housing. It's a very large programme after the initial step, but this has to be done.

MG: Has to be done because?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Because it costs too much in terms of personal risk and and suffering that these individuals are having, so if we did nothing else, we would help make their lives better. And then there's also the cost to the first responders we have who are excellent. They get worn down by this kind of difficulty, never seemingly having any kind of approach taken to it. Many people I talked to, ambulance attendants, VPD, people who are working in the emergency room. We're not doing anything here. What can we do? And it's very frustrating. And that really grinds people down in terms of being able to say, we know what we can do. We can help these people. It really feels good to do that.

MG: This programme would, if it moves forward, would help 300 people. How do you identify the 300 people that could be part of.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: We let other people identify them for this. We're going to say, OK, is the Vancouver police department has people there worried about if the emerges have people there worried about the people around us or. I work at many of the [unintelligible] in the Downtown Eastside and they can tell you in a heartbeat how many people in their building are having major difficulties and how disruptive that is. So we would take those referrals, as it were, in quotation marks from anyone, a family member. I have family members who phone up and say, can you help out here? And yes, we will help out here.

MG: What happens if the person is not, you know, interested in taking part in this voluntarily? Can you compel them to be part of this?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: We would be doing this not on a mandatory basis. You know, there are things that have happened elsewhere in the community in terms of sometimes these individuals have been charged under a minor criminal offence. I work at the downtown community court, which does a fabulous job of managing people in the criminal justice system and swinging them over to the mental health system. So we would take those probationary orders or bail orders and help work with those individuals. Some have been certified and emerge and we would help with that as well. In terms of helping those people, so be it's a given that many of these people will not be saying, thanks very much, Bill. I appreciate you doing this. They will need that time to understand what we're trying to do. And people talk about relationships and part of a relationship is just not going away.

MG: How much would a plan like this cost?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: We want to have a place to house individuals. And so we would engage private capital for to get buildings and housing for us to be engaged with them to do that. I can't. I'm a doctor. I can't give you those level costs. That portion of it will have considerable cost. But I think you can easily see how it will help when individuals don't have to go into hospitals much. So you're saving those twenty five hundred off awesomest visits. It's fifteen hundred dollars a day to stay in hospital. And there's a lot of programmes the at home shay swap programme. There's a federal government research programme. I happen to know before school showed that by engaging individuals in housing and with support, you saved this system probably 20 thousand dollars a year per individual.

MG: Why do you think maybe it's about cost? But why do you think this sort of wraparound care hasn't been applied in a meaningful way already?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: I think this goes to the crux of the matter. Why do we in mental health treat people and depression, anxiety? They're all very, very rare areas of treating. But we don't treat the people who most seriously are ill. They know we had institutions, which I think was a good thing, that they're disbanded and sent out to the community. We have mental health teams, but so commonly we're leaving the individuals who are needing it most. And that's a question I can't answer exactly. I didn't to say that people are not attracted to it. The psychiatrists, mental health clinicians are not attracted to this population because they're sometimes too ill, they're too aggressive. They'll cause problems in emerge and they're making it being very disruptive. Their addiction is getting in the way of their mental illness, whole myriad of difficulties. But if you can imagine, if you were talking to a cardiologist and said, well, you know, you're only treating chest pain, but we don't treat the most serious infections that may cause death. And they were just not doing that. That's exactly what we're doing in mental health. We're not treating the people who need it most. And that's why it's not been addressed. And you'll get pushback around these people and all we're dealing with it. You can see now exactly what we're experiencing in the downtown eastside, in B.C., Prince George, Kelowna, Victoria, Kamloops, are all having the same problem. Slightly different group of people, slightly different scale. But it's the same problem. And I know it's happening across the country because I've visited, visited Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan. All the same things, different drugs, slightly different systems. But again, this group of individuals who are not reaching out and grabbing the health they need are not getting it.

MG: There are different approaches to dealing with this opiate crisis across the country, and we've seen them play out in in different areas. You have this proposal on one side. You have in Alberta the government closing down safe consumption sites, supervised consumption sites. What do you think the consequence of that approach would be in that province?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: I can't actually tell you, because if I go back to my own province where so we have a supervised injection site, the first one in Canada, Incyte, which does great work. What I have said to you that when this started up a decade and a bit ago, that that would have been still a premier programme within our system, which was now suffering more than it ever had. And I'm not implying that caused any difficulties, but it certainly hasn't been a single step of all. We started inside and things got better. So I cannot pretend to know that if they don't have a supervised injecting sites in Alberta, that it would get worse. What I can tell you is that none of us are in control of the drug supply and never will be. The concept that we're only dealing with a toxic drug supply, that people don't know what they're taking works in some situations. But you look at there's a B.C. Centre for Disease Control study from 2018. 66 percent of people in Vancouver and says Vancouver and some other the major centres knew that they're taking fentanyl and indeed wanted fentanyl. So it's not they're thinking that they're going to take cocaine and they got fentanyl. That did indeed happen. But now that was in 2018, it's more than that. Now it's upwards of 80 percent in my patient population. They know they're taking it. Nobody predicted in 2014 when the switch started that fentanyl was going to come on big time like it did. And that's, I can't tell you what I'm going to predict what would be coming up in the future, because I'm not part of the drug trade. What we have is a safe, secure drug supply, which I'm totally in support of, but we have to realize that we need more than just how can we vaccinate, isolate or medicate our way out of this crisis. We cannot. We have to do more than that.

MG: Is part of that decriminalisation legalisation?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: I am in support of that totally the element of decriminalization is already de facto happening in Vancouver. There was in the last year, 2019, there was 10 possession arrests made in Vancouver, period. So the Vancouver police force, which I can't say enough good things about them, Adam Palmer and then Jim Chu before him, they are very, very progressive police forces that have been able to say this is not on for what we're trying to do here. These are medical illnesses. They shouldn't be treated as crimes. And that's, in fact, what they're doing.

MG: There are people who see that, though, as a crime. And there are people who will still say that drug use is a choice.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: And I think the best example of that is when you look at Portugal, so Portugal decriminalized drugs, always seemed to be the landmark or the benchmark, as it were, of their programme. Well, they decriminalized below a certain amount. If you're above that amount, they're thinking you're trafficking potentially. And so you are then arrested and treated within the criminal justice system. So there are always nuances. When you're apprehended or taken aside for the amount of street drugs you have, which is not a criminal level, you are sent to a community dissuasion committee, which then makes decisions around how you have to help your drug issues. No one talks about that one because it it doesn't sell as easily as decriminalization. So, sure, let's decriminalize. Let's take it, the personal possession and personal use amounts off the books, legally. We have effectively in Vancouver. But let's do it across the country. I have no difficulties with that. Do not pretend that will take the problem away.

MG: I guess the question is, I mean, across the country, we're seeing these overdose deaths at record numbers and they're staggering. And people talk about it's not a new conversation, but people talk about the stigma that still surrounds these deaths. They'd say that if this was happening because of something else, you know, heaven and Earth would have been moved by governments to make sure that it was addressed in a meaningful way. Do you see that stigma affecting the national response? What's happening in Vancouver is one thing, but what's happening across the country is something different.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: I think you're I think you're spot on with that to a degree. I mean, JJ McCullough, who's a Vancouver reporter who did a very nice piece in The Washington Post, said that, you know, the essence of the whole thing is it's playtime with opiate drugs are a nasty thing. People shouldn't use them. And so I think there is that whole tenor around this, which makes it difficult sometimes to address this situation as if it was a COVID crisis or another public health difficulty. But the reality of the stigma is the vast majority of it is internalized. I have very few of the people I see and I see a lot of them in the Downtown Eastside who will say, oh, I'm worried about what John's going to think about me because I'm a user. They feel that they're not doing the right thing, that this is unhealthy for them internally. They understand that. And they are now self treating the trauma they've had, the other difficulties they've had with mental illness, the stress of poverty, those kinds of things. So they're self treating. But that's why they're doing it, because they're trying to self treat. They understand, though, that this is not the right way to do this, but I can't give myself away from it.

MG: Just finally, go back to the Downtown Eastside where this plan, if it comes into place, would be a rolling out. You know, you've come to know a lot of the people on the Downtown Eastside. What is it that you want us to know about who they are that perhaps we don't know from the headlines that we don't know from a distance?

DR. BILL MACEWAN: I'd like you to feel the broken heart that we all have. I know of two people who were our patients of mine now, but I have known him for a long time [unintelligible] the street who passed away in the last week? The aspect of how you you'd never really, truly understand where your prejudicial until it happens. And I remember going into a place called the Stanley Hotel and knocking on the door, the person inviting me in. And it was mayhem in the room. They cleared off a chair. They brush it off and say, Please have a seat. And I remember walking out going, gee, that's amazing. Then I realized, why is that amazing? You're just being nice. You're being- I mean, prejudicially, I've been thinking, oh, boy, this will give you a tough one. It wasn't. There's so many people there who underneath all of us are decent, wonderful human beings who have other lives to tell and talk about. But they are now in the throes of their addiction. They're now suffering from serious mental illness. They're now trying to make things work within grinding poverty. And so that part in many people's eyes, there is a good heart and a lot of souls and good souls, many those individuals. It's just unfortunately covered over by a lot of other difficult things. And now, unfortunately, it's being fatal at a degree which it breaks your heart. There's no other way to put it.

MG: I appreciate you telling us about the work that you're doing and where that work could be most effective. Bill, thank you.

DR. BILL MACEWAN: Thanks very much. Pleasure talking to you.

MG: Dr. Bill MacEwan is the lead psychiatrist with Vancouver's Downtown Community Court Mental Health Team. Any thoughts on what he was speaking about? We'd love to hear from you. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. This is indeed The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. Saskatoon, the latest city cracking down on its nightclubs after multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 were linked to clubs. Forty nine out of 63 guests who attended recent wedding in Calgary contracted COVID-19. These sorts of super spreader events are happening all across this country in this week. From Quebec to British Columbia, provincial case counts are smashing records. Andre Picard is the Global Mail's health columnist. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: Prime Minister says when it comes to the situation, COVID-19. This sucks. Do you think on this matter the prime minister speaks for many Canadians?

ANDRE PICARD: Yes, I think that's a pretty good blunt assessment. That's I think a lot of people feel good summary.

MG: Why are we- it feels like we're in we're stuck in some ways that people have taken efforts. We were told to socially distance. We're told to wash our hands. We're told to wear our masks. And yet in many parts of this country, aside from the Atlantic bubble case, counts continue to go up. Why are we stuck?

ANDRE PICARD: We're just stuck in this limbo of we want to have a life, but we want to lock down a bit and we think we can't decide how harsh we want to be. And we're kind of looking maybe it won't get as bad as elsewhere. I think it really is kind of dangerous period, where it could go out of hand really quickly. We've seen this in European countries and a period where cases are not going down. They're climbing up a lot in the West. They're stuck at about a 1000 cases a day in Ontario and Quebec. And I think it's a concerning time because we just don't know how it's going to turn.

MG: There are still these of, as they say, super spreader events. I mentioned the 63 guests who attended a wedding in Calgary, 49 of them contracted COVID-19. There's a wedding north of Toronto, 46 cases linked to that. Why are these Superstruct super spreader events still happening, do you think?

ANDRE PICARD: I think there's two reasons. One, the social one is people are still gathering. So all of these things are about gathering's. They're breaking the golden rule of COVID, which is how we talk about the 3C rule. So avoid crowds in close contact in closed spaces. So weddings, funerals, Thanksgiving parties, barbecues, that stuff has to be avoided. And that's where all of these cases are happening. And that's why in Canada, they start going down because we continue to meet. And then there's the biology. So we're learning a lot about this bug, about this virus, and we're finding out that it spreads not evenly, it spreads very unevenly. So in clusters. So this really a cluster based pandemic. We're learning more and more in that to opens our eyes to how we have to do things differently.

MG: You wrote in your column about another C, and that's cluster busting. What is that?

ANDRE PICARD: Cluster busting is that figuring out where these events happened? You know, we know that most people who get coronavirus won't spread it to other people. That's the good news. The bad news is there are 10 to 20 percent of people are infected, are super emitters. So they infect a lot of other people. So wedding, you know, 50 people infected out of 60 who attended. That's quite striking. That's a real super emitter. So we have to find out who those people are. And we do it by contact tracing a little differently instead of looking to, oh, I wonder who the people were, this person was in contact with. You try and find were there people infected in their close circle, and if there were a couple, then you really zero in on that person. This is a super emitter, and we really have to track down their contact.

MG: A lot of attention being paid and you're talking about large events, a lot of attention being paid in the province of Ontario to the MPP Sam Oosterhuff, who released on social media photos of an event that he was out. There were 40 people or so who were there. None of them had masks on in this photo. The photo was subsequently deleted. He's apologised a couple of times. But what's the effect, do you think, of those mixed messages when you have government officials who say, don't do this? But then there are photos of them doing just that?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, judging from what I saw, the reaction on social media, it's like a slap in the face to people. They're being told by the government, you know, being lectured and hectored every day, wear your mask, stay inside, don't get together. And then a member of the government does this. And it really does feel insulting to you. To be fair, lots of people are doing what he did. But you're in a position of responsibility. You have to act like a grown up not to be flippant about these things.

MG: We had a conversation earlier this week on the programme with three residents of long term care, and they talked about what they had been through in the last several months and the balance between physical health and mental health, and really felt as though from their perspective that we had not been dealing as much with their mental health and instead focussing on the physical health. How do we as, calling it a second wave, but as case counts, continue to go up in many parts of this country and people are looking at long term care, how do we ensure that those residents aren't just physically healthy, but also mentally healthy?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we have to get that balance right. And we didn't get it right the first time around. So what do we do? We have to provide PPE to families. We have to have to limit contact, but don't eliminate contacts. It's finding that balance that have one or two designated caregivers teach them how to do. Families will bend over backwards to see their loved ones. They'll do whatever it takes. We know that. So let them do it. You know, it's again, it's a mixed message. Families are locked out, but in some provinces, workers can still work in three or four facilities. And it makes absolutely no sense. So get, you know, get some fairness in there. And, yes, recognise that the virus is dangerous, but so is isolation and loneliness and not having an advocate when you're in an institution.

MG: Some of those things just finally and briefly are behind the what seems like some sort of support behind this great Barrington declaration, which is promoting so-called herd immunity. This week, the chief medical officer in Alberta, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, had to write a post criticizing that declaration. What does that say to you about how people are feeling about this pandemic right now?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think it's again, it comes from frustration. I think that that declaration in particular is really thoughtless. When you get right down to it, it's just saying essentially let old people die because the economy matters more than people. And I don't think most people think like that. I think Canadians certainly don't think like that. And there was a counter publication that John Snow Declaration, which I think sticks out very eloquently. I think we have to be careful of this false dichotomy, that it's either our health or it's the economy. The fast track to getting the economy going is to get rid of this virus as much as we can.

MG: But in some ways, as you say, it does speak to that frustration and that fatigue.

ANDRE PICARD: Absolutely. The fatigue is real. It's going to get worse. Christmas is going to be hard this year. A harsh, harsh winter is coming for all of us that we have to bear down and, you know, help each other out as much as we can.

MG: That sucks, as the prime minister says. Andre, good to speak with you, as always. Thank you.

ANDRE PICARD: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Andre Picard, Global Mail's health columnist. He has been with us over the course of this pandemic and will continue to be here on a regular basis. That's it for The Current for today and for this week. It's been a long week in a weird, strange way. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q Elvis Costello speaking with Tom Power about a new album called Hey Clockface, recorded in the midst of this pandemic. You'll hear a little bit of Elvis Costello talking about the album, the importance of live music venues during COVID-19. But living in a musical household with his wife, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello. Coming up. Q on CBC Radio One. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take good care of herself. Have a good weekend. Happy Halloween. We'll talk to you on Monday.

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Full Transcript for October 30, 2020

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