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The Current Transcript for April 12, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

BILL BROWDER: So when you see an oligarch, a Russian oligarch who's on the Forbes list worth $20 billion, the reality is that that oligarch is only worth 10 and the other 10 belongs to Vladimir Putin.

MATT GALLOWAY: Long before war in Ukraine prompted international sanctions on the billionaire friends of Vladimir Putin. Bill Browder was in the crosshairs of the Russian leader. Once the biggest foreign investor in Russia, Browder has spent years tracking corruption in that country and seeing his Russian counterparts and collaborators imprisoned or killed for their work. In 30 minutes, Bill Browder is here to talk about the danger that comes in criticising the Kremlin and how Canada took a leading role in holding Putin to account. Also this morning, will increased access to an antiviral pill help blunt the sixth wave of COVID in Canada. And later. These are good times to be fishing for lobster on the east coast of this country.

GAIL ATKINSON: The thing about this fishing industry out of the gate, it's all or nothing. If you don't do well in the first few weeks, you probably blown your whole season.

MATT GALLOWAY: In an hour, how record prices have lobster fishers taking extra risks on rough seas to cash in? We'll hear from Captain Gail Atkinson from her boat off the coast of Nova Scotia. We begin, though, with those rushing back to Ukraine in the midst of war. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Ukrainians returning home to help despite threat of war

Guests: Artem Danylchenko, Volodymyr Yaroslavski, Olena Sadoma and Maksym Dzhyhun

MG: The Russian military has retreated from some key areas of Ukraine, but in the east of the country, there is still the full force of a brutal campaign underway, which is expected to escalate. The port city of Mariupol is still under siege, the city's mayor says. Over 10,000 people have already been killed there, and that number is expected to rise. Thousands are still trapped. There's still no food, water or electricity in the city. But as the East braces for more violence, some parts of Ukraine are trying in some ways to find their way back to normal. People who fled are travelling back to Kyiv. Some shops and restaurants are back in business, and there are more people in the streets. This morning, we're going to connect with some of those people. Artem Danylchenko had just moved to Berlin in February for a job. He returned to Kyiv last week. Artem, hello.

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: Hi, Matt. Thank you for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thank you for being here. Why did you want to go back home to Ukraine?

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: You know, leaving Ukraine before the war was a decision made, from a career perspective. But when the war started, I just felt, you know, really worried by the situation in the country. I understood that I may be needed here, even though I don't have the military experience, but I may help in some other ways. So for me, it was, you know, too important to be to be home, to be where my family is, my parents, grandparents. So that was basically the core of why I decided to move back.

MATT GALLOWAY: What was it like watching the war from abroad, knowing that, as you said, you had family and friends there this is your home, but you were somewhere else?

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: It was, of course, really hard. I remember the day when the war started. Basically, the morning I was woken by my mother who called me saying that the war had started. You just can't believe that something like that a full fledged war can start in the 21st century in the middle of the Europe. My first urge was to, you know, pack up my things and just go straight away to Ukraine. At the time, it was almost impossible to get to Ukraine due to break up with railway lines and flights, which do not operate till now. My wife was in Berlin at the time as well, so she stayed there. To be honest, watching it closely almost 24/7 for the first couple of days, it was, of course, heartbreaking to see something like that happening. Nobody knew what to expect in the couple of next days because we all expected Russia to be, you know, a military superpower which can overwhelm almost any, any other country. But it didn't happen. Luckily for Ukraine and for all Ukrainians, that was a little bit reassuring, to be honest, this first shock had passed, I believe in the first week. Afterwards, I understood that this pretty much we have a fighting chance, and that's why it's so important to support the army.

MATT GALLOWAY: You came back knowing that you would be part of that fight, that men your age can't leave the country again, that you will be conscripted into the army. Were you prepared for that? Are you prepared for that? Is that something that you're all right with?

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: I understand that I can't come back to Berlin, at least for the time being. When the martial law is in power. But for me, it was like a decision I made. I understand that at some point I may be really conscripted. I have not yet volunteered for that, even though I had said such thoughts. But as I don't have the military experience, I think that at the moment I can be of use other ways like continuing working, you know, making money, donating part of it for the army, supporting in other ways the economy, you know, buying things as well. I started a little podcast with the news on Ukraine in English called Highlights from Ukraine. So I think, you know, spreading the truth a little bit about the situation in Ukraine as it goes from a person who is living there. We don't know when the war will end and how it will end. So I fully understand that at some point, of course, me being, you know, 30 plus years. Of course, I'm fit for service, so that may be the case in the coming months.

MATT GALLOWAY: What is it like being home in Kyiv now?

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: You know, at first it was a little bit frustrating, of course, because not so many people on the streets. Right now, I should say, it may sound a little bit weird, but it's great. Like you said, I'm at home, so that's my home. That's where I feel safe, even though it may not be safe from Russian missiles or anything like that. But still, it's the place where I was born and raised. So it's really nice. And I should say that during the week I'm here the city is flowing back to life quite a bit. People are coming back. More businesses are opening shops as well. It's coming a little bit back to normal to, you know, not the right to the time when I left it, but still... Much closer to it.

MATT GALLOWAY: How do you... Just finally, how do you kind of reconcile and live with the fact that, as you say, it's coming back to normal, but there is still the threat of attack that the war is unfolding around the city right now?

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: Yeah, you're right, of course. So I feel safe. It's not, you know, a reasonable feeling. The fights are ongoing and we are all, you know, waiting for the news from the front line. And of course, the fight there was a really tough one for Ukrainian Army. Two things I can say that gives me and my friends, my family comfort is the strength of the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian armed forces. And second of all, we are all, you know, really appreciating and waiting for the support from our allies because we understand that in a fight like this, even though we still hope that we can win on our own just because, you know, we are fighting for the right cause, we're defending ourselves, we are defending our country. But still, we understand that the price we will pay for this kind of war will be just enormous for us. And if we get the support we need, first of all weapons for our army, then it will mean that Ukraine won't be destroyed, the people won't be killed. That gives us some little hope the support that we get right now.

MATT GALLOWAY: I'm really glad to talk to you. Stay safe and thank you very much for speaking with us.

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: Thank you, Matt, and I'd like to thank the government and the Canadian people for the support they give in Ukraine right now. Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Artem, take care of yourself. Bye bye.

ARTEM DANYLCHENKO: Bye.

MG: Also in Kiev is Volodymyr Yaroslavski. He's a chef and owner of a restaurant called Lucky. He left the city for Lviv, but decided to return to Kyiv and reopen his business. Volodymyr, hello to you.

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Hello.

MG: When the war broke out, you had left Kyiv and you went to a safer part in Ukraine. Why did you come back to the capital city?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Because I feel like I should be there and I must open the restaurant. Our people still work for army and for civil organization and for doctor. We prepared, from 27 of February, we prepared around 300 meals every day. So I understood that business should go in. People needs money for salary, needs money for electricity, for water, so business should start it. And who will do it, if not me. And now I feel like I am on my place. I do the right things.

MATT GALLOWAY: You're doing the right thing? How would you describe Kyiv right now? What is the mood like in the city right now?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: You know, every day is going to be more people on the street. Also, spring is coming. Already, some flowers blossom on the tree. And sometimes it feels like we're back to normal life. But you know, a lot of people want business, and a lot of people want to go back to Kyiv. Back to home. So it's all depend about your sensation for all of this.

MATT GALLOWAY: How difficult is it to run a restaurant in these times? I mean, where are you getting, for example, supplies for the restaurant?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: First of all, we try to used all things what was frozen. There was some difficulties with the fresh veggie, also fruits. But now it's more and more people working and some suppliers start to work. Also, so now is a better situation. But you know, before we sometimes still smiling with other restaurateurs that before we dream about small menu like in michelin restaurants like 12-16 position, you know, we started that first day with a full position and the people was happy people every day saying thank you, that you're open because people want hot meal.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's on the menu?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Now, we have one bouillon, few salads, pasta, fish and meat main dish and two desserts.

MATT GALLOWAY: I know that you have lost some colleagues and friends in this war as well. How difficult has that been for you?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: You know, to be honest, I feel like I am leaving in two parallel realities. One is when we do our common job at work, it's looks like the same time, like before and when you start to remember that this is a war, that people is dying. When you reading the news, you understand that there's really something like nightmares.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned what some of your customers are saying to you. How important is it, do you think for them to feel a little bit of real life in the midst of this nightmare?

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Oh, thank you for this question. Yes. People was really happy. They hugging us like our staff. It is like a family, like a big family now. We know each other very well and people are smiling thanking... sending money for help in our military and people, you know, like you feel even better than before. This relationship... Your relationship between people is something special. It's difficult even to describe.

MATT GALLOWAY: But it sounds like it's brought people together in a way.

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Yes, because all Ukrainians now trying to do whatever you can to be better in this situation because we need to be... We need to win.

MATT GALLOWAY: Volodymyr, I'm glad to talk to you. I'll say the same thing. Stay safe and thank you very much for speaking with us.

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Thank you very much. And also thank you for all the Canadian people for support to Ukraine.

MATT GALLOWAY: Take care of yourself. Bye bye.

VOLODYMYR YAROSLAVSKI: Bye.

MG: About 350 kilometres west of Kiev towards the Polish border is the city of Khmelnytskyi. That is where Olena Sadoma is this morning. Olena, hi.

OLENA SADOMA: Hi.

MG: How is life for you today?

OLENA SADOMA: Well, it's pretty calm, and I'm glad that I have a chance to experience this calm way. That I am not in the centre of what people are experiencing in eastern Ukraine. And I'm glad that I can be here, stay safe and provide help to everybody who needs it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me what life is like in the city right now.

OLENA SADOMA: Well, it is pretty much very safe and it looks very normal, which kind of makes you think that nothing is happening. But then you see so many volunteer centres, you see so many new faces in the city that you suddenly realize, Oh, our city is hosting like a couple of thousand of people who didn't live here. Then you see so many help centres that help those refugees.

MATT GALLOWAY: Are there businesses that are operating right now? I mean you said it sort of feels like normal life and we are hearing about restaurants and we're hearing about other things, the subway running in Kyiv. In your city are the businesses running?

OLENA SADOMA: Oh yeah, the businesses are getting back to normal. And I think it's a good thing because the first week everybody just stopped doing what they did and just started helping each other. Myself, I stopped my coaching business and together with my friends, we set up a fund base literally in a bomb shelter to support kids and moms in Ukraine. We just stopped working, and most of the people around us did the same because everybody wanted to help. Everybody wanted to do something that was going to support people who are fighting, people who are suffering, people who are running away. My family itself we hosted around 40 people during this time. But then we realized that the best we can do is open up our businesses, run our operations, donate the profits to the army, to funds, to whatever cause there is that feels good for you. But you need to run the business to provide the normal life for people because while people come here to live, you know, I went to one of my favourite restaurants and I said, thank you to the guys who are running the business because, you know, it was given a little bit of normal life in the first weeks when we didn't experience it, and it was something that was very comforting. And I think you need to do that.

MATT GALLOWAY: Why was it important for you to stay in Ukraine as the war unfolded?

OLENA SADOMA: I think I made my decision to stay in Ukraine when I was 15 years old. I was doing the foreign exchange program in Alaska for the whole year. And, you know, I came back and I realised that while Ukraine is my home and I want to travel around the world, I want to see what is done and I want to implement this in my home. And Ukraine is my home. I was living five years in Europe, and last year I came back to Ukraine and right before the war started. A lot of my friends called me is like, we can host you in Europe, you can come and just stay here, stay safe. But then I realised that it was sort of for me. I'm not saying that whoever left is the same. For me, it was running away from myself, running away from what I came back to build this country, to be the active participant of building this country, to making it better. So it wasn't even a choice for me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Then you feel good, though, about being at home? Again, we're hearing from people, so many people who've come back, you feel good about being there in Ukraine.

OLENA SADOMA: It didn't even cross my mind. That maybe I should stay here. I'm not saying that those people who left, they made a bad choice. No, no, no. Everybody has a right to his own path and I realize that I'm the best here, so I need to stick here.

MATT GALLOWAY: Olena, it's good to speak with you. Take care of yourself. Be well and thank you very much.

OLENA SADOMA: Thank you so much.

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, for some people, it's still not quite time to move back. Max Dzhyhun is a communications consultant from Kyiv. He's now in Chernivtsi in southwestern Ukraine, near the border with Romania. Max, hello.

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: Hello. Happy to hear you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Happy to have you with us! Why did you decide to go to Chernivtsi?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: The first day of the war were the hardest ones, and it was a period when we couldn't sleep. We couldn't eat, and it was even hard to speak some time. And the only thing we were doing was reading, like Facebook News Feed and observing the world around us. And it was very dangerous in Kyiv during that time, and we didn't know what's going to happen in the city. So we decided to move somewhere else to have more opportunities for help for people. And one of the reason why we decided to move here is that we have more opportunities to help Ukrainians from this place.

MATT GALLOWAY: What is the help that you're doing? Everybody seems to have a role to play in this war. So what's the help that you're offering?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: We're trying to volunteer. We are buying and delivering humanitarian help to Kyiv, [inaudible], Mariupol and other cities in Ukraine. So during the last month, we managed to deliver more than six tons of humanitarian help. Pharmacy, second one is food. It is also hygienic things. Also, it's warm clothes and other stuff, and we are trying to send it to people who are in need right now. And yeah, there are lots of requests from different cities. That's mostly what we are doing. But also I'm trying to balance with work. You know, it's quite hard to live without money right now because as you know, like, I think that almost all businesses in Ukraine were closed during this war and we are working in the sphere of PR and lobbying and it is not operating right now. So we have to look for some other opportunities to work.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so what has your work become?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: I think that we have approximately 10 percent of the work we had before war. It's like a small PR project here in Ukraine.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's a real sense of solidarity that we're hearing about in the country, people pulling together and doing what they can. And there are, the stats say, more people now returning to Ukraine than are leaving the country. What's the mood like in the city that you're in, in the midst of this war?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: The situation is very different depending on the region of Ukraine, for example, here in Chernivtsi, and it looks like it is safe. But every day we have air alarms. You know, this is terrible sounds on the streets, and it means that there is no safe place in Ukraine right now because a bomb can land in your yard at any moment.

MATT GALLOWAY: Will you go back to Kyiv, do you think?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: Yeah, of course. I'm going there at the end of this week. Currently, I'm waiting for two emergency ambulance cars from Germany. We paid for them and I'm waiting when these cars will be delivered to Chernivtsi. And after that, I'm going to Kyiv and I want to deliver these cars to [inaudible] city. It's not far from Bucha where these terrible things happen, and they really need this help. I'm going there. And probably I will stay in Kyiv.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, again, you're trying to live your life. But at the same time, as you said, danger is everywhere. Are you worried about that?

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: I think for now, it is quite the same dangerous situation internally in Kyiv, and they are bombing old cities. And I think that I can be more useful right now in Kyiv because there are a lot of things are happening there right now. And of course, now I can work as volunteer in Kyiv because we have enough food, we have enough other stuff in shops so I can buy it there, so I don't see any reasons to stay here for now. And of course, I want to say thank you to all Canadian people, to the Canadian government. I know that they made lots of good decisions for our country. We are very grateful as Ukrainians for Canadian nation and Canadian state.

MATT GALLOWAY: Max, I'm grateful to talk to you. Take care of yourself and stay safe and thank you very much. Bye bye.

MAKSYM DZHYHUN: Bye.

MG: Max Dzhyhun is a communications consultant helping with humanitarian aid in Chernivtsi. He is planning to return to Kyiv in the days ahead. The CBC News is next, and then...

BILL BROWDER: Why would a cellist have $2 billion in Russia? The answer is because he's Vladimir Putin's best friend from childhood. He is the godfather of Putin's daughter, is the person who introduced Putin to his first wife, and he is somebody who holds money for Vladimir Putin.

MATT GALLOWAY: Once you know how and where Russian President Vladimir Putin keeps his fortune, you might become a target. So says Bill Browder. He's my guest coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

Bill Browder on facing ‘Putin’s wrath’ for exposing corruption in Russia

Guest: Bill Browder

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, sky high lobster prices have fishers out at sea, longer, in worse weather and on less sleep. In just under 30 minutes, we go to Nova Scotia for more on the race to cash in. But first, a man who has dug for some of Vladimir Putin's dirty secrets.

[Music: Theme]

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: History will judge President Putin as harshly as the world condemns him today. Today, he cements his place in the ranks of the reviled European dictators who caused such carnage in the 20th century. The response by Canada and our allies will be swift, and it will bite.

MG: That was Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on the day that Russian forces invaded Ukraine. At that same press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada was going to go after Russian oligarchs. Countries around the world have hit Russia with debilitating sanctions. Bill Browder knows what it's like to go after the oligarchs and the Kremlin. His work has made him the target of Vladimir Putin's rage. Bill Browder is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the author of Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath. I spoke with Bill Browder yesterday. Here's our conversation.

BILL BROWDER: Good to be here.

MG: What did you think of those words from Canada's deputy prime minister?

BILL BROWDER: Those are clear, unequivocal words which describe exactly how Vladimir Putin is, and I'm glad that she said them, I didn't hear them when she said them at that moment. But I'm glad to hear them now and I know Chrystia very well because we go back to the days when she was a journalist running the FTs bureau in Moscow, and I was a newly minted fund manager, and she was the only journalist brave enough to expose the crimes of the oligarchs. Back then, several decades ago.

MG: She talks in that set of remarks about biting sanctions. And we know that it's not just Canada, but many countries around the world have launched sanctions against Russia and have re-upped them and added new sanctions. How much of a difference do you think they will make to President Putin in this war?

BILL BROWDER: Well, sanctions are kind of like medicine, and if you have a disease, it all depends on when you start taking the medicine. If you take it early enough, you can knock out the disease before it comes full on. We should have done sanctions before Russia invaded, but there was not enough consensus in the international community to do that. Now that we're in the middle of the war, Putin is not going to back down. He has to show strength. He's in a certain sense, he's launched this war as a war of distraction so his own people don't pay attention to all of his misdeeds. And so the purpose of the sanctions now are to deprive him of resources to basically dry up the capital, the money, the dollars that he needs to pay for his war. And so the sanctions aren't going to see an immediate effect. We have to keep on doing the sanctions. We need to expand them so that he's fully economically encircled. And at that point, the sanctions will work because he won't have enough money to buy equipment to kill Ukrainians.

MG: Is there at all the risk that the sanctions could backfire just in terms of strengthening his hand. And a poll from Russia, take them for what they are, but polls suggest that support for Vladimir Putin from Russians has actually grown as the sanctions have gotten more pointed.

BILL BROWDER: Purpose of the sanctions is not in my mind to force the Russian people to rise up against him. I don't think that that's a realistic possibility. He controls the narrative, he controls the news flow and he runs a repressive regime. The sole purpose of the sanctions at this point are to basically deprive him of resources to fight this war.

MG: How much money do you think elites in Russia, including Vladimir Putin, have funnelled out of that country over the years?

BILL BROWDER: Well, I believe Vladimir Putin's personal net worth that he keeps outside the country is north of 200 billion dollars, and I believe that the elite, the corrupt officials around him over the last 20 years have stolen a trillion dollars. And that's money that should have been spent on health care, on education, on roads, on public services that has now been spent on yachts and villas and planes. By the way, we're seeing all those yachts and villas and planes now and... And that is the reason why we're in this mess because in a so-called democracy, you can't steal all the money from the people and have them want you to stay in power. And so Vladimir Putin needed a major, major distraction, something a foreign enemy, somebody to rally against, and that's what this war is about. I don't actually believe this war is about NATO or Ukraine wanting to join the EU. I think this war is about autocracy, the deprivation of money for the people of Russia and a need for a distraction.

MG: $200 billion would make him one of the richest people in the world. Where is his money, do you think?

BILL BROWDER: None of the money he holds or he has is held in his own name. If there was a piece of paper with a bank statement saying Vladimir Putin on it, that piece of paper could be used to blackmail him. And he knows all about that because he's used those types of pieces of paper against his enemies. So all the money that he has is held with people he trusts and people who have the financial and international wherewithal to hold it legitimately in the West. And those are the oligarchs. So when you see an oligarch, a Russian oligarch who's on the Forbes list worth $20 billion. The reality is that an oligarch is only worth 10 and the other 10 belongs to Vladimir Putin.

MG: One of the stories you tell in this book is of someone called the cellist who is the cellist, and what has the cellist done?

BILL BROWDER: The cellist is one of the famous nominees or trustees for Vladimir Putin. It's a person named Sergei Roldugin. He was exposed in the Panama Papers. This was a famous leak. They came out a few years ago and it showed that this guy, who is a cellist from St. Petersburg, had $2 billion in his own name. And then the obvious question everybody asked was, Well, why would a cellist have $2 billion in Russia? That's like two hundred and fifty times greater than the next richest cellist in the world. And the answer is because he's Vladimir Putin's best friend from childhood. He's the godfather of Putin's daughter. He's the person who introduced Putin to his first wife, and he's somebody who holds money for Vladimir Putin. And so when we see the cellist accumulating all this money, that comes in large part from the oligarchs and Russian state banks, it's not actually the cellist getting the money from the oligarchs. Is the cellist acting as Putin's trustee.

MG: What do you think should be done with the yachts and the other resources, whether they're luxury homes, what have you that are being seized from the oligarchs? What should happen with those seized assets?

BILL BROWDER: I was just in Congress a few days ago testifying about Ukraine and about Russia and about the oligarchs, and there was a very good suggestion from a woman, an anti-corruption activist named Daria Kaleniuk from Ukraine, who pointed out that just one of these yachts that was seized was at this point the equivalent of the amount... The value of the yacht, I think this is the one off Italy. It was seized was equivalent to the amount of money that has been allocated for military assistance from the US to Ukraine. And so the reality is that if we took all these yachts and all these villas and all these bank accounts, we could use that money to rebuild Ukraine after this whole war is over. And that's the obvious purpose of this.

MG: You arrived in Russia initially in the 1990s and you became the country's largest foreign investor. Just remind us briefly how you came into conflict with the Russian state and with Putin in particular.

BILL BROWDER: So I showed up in Russia in 1996. I set up an investment fund called the Hermitage Fund. It grew to become the largest foreign investment fund in the country. And I discovered that in all the companies I was investing in, like Gazprom and SpareBank and others, all the money was being stolen out the back door in massive quantities. And so I became a shareholder rights activist to fight the corruption. And the way I did that was to research how they did the stealing and then share it with the international media, including, as I mentioned, Chrystia Freeland. When she was a journalist back then. And that worked for a while. But then, as you can imagine, if I'm exposing the richest people in Russia, they got pretty angry. And the richest person in Russia was Vladimir Putin. And so in 2005, I was expelled from the country and I was declared a threat to national security. My offices were raided. They seized all of our documents and the documents were used in a complex $230 million tax rebate fraud, where they stole $230 million of taxes that I paid to the Russian government. I had a young lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky working for me. He was the one who uncovered the fraud. He exposed it. He testified against the officials involved, and he was subsequently arrested, tortured for 358 days and then murdered in Russian police custody at the age of 37. And since then, I've become a full time activist, going after the people who killed him to make sure they face justice. And that's led to a piece of legislation called the Magnitsky Act, named after my lawyer, which freezes the assets and bans the visas of people who commit, who killed him and commit similar abuses in Russia and around the world. This was something that Putin absolutely couldn't tolerate, and it was passed in the United States in 2012. And shortly after it was passed, he made it his single largest foreign policy priority to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act. He went after... he banned the adoption of Russian orphans by American families and went after me, you know, in the most profound way, chasing me around the world with death threats, with kidnapping threats, with arrest warrants, lawsuits, with movies being made about me, etc. That hasn't stopped me and it hasn't stopped the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act was passed unanimously in Canada, in both Houses of Parliament in 2017 and the UK in 2018 and the European Union in 2020. In Australia in 2021 and various other countries in between. We now have 34 countries with Magnitsky acts around the world and this is the tool to go after the oligarchs. And so one man's death, Sergei Magnitsky's death, has led to the main policy that we're now using to try to stop Putin in his tracks.

MG: What are the movies that are made about you to try to denigrate you and reduce your standing?

BILL BROWDER: Well, they mean they make all sorts of movies. I think they made five and total where they accused me of being an international fraudster. They accused me of being a CIA agent. They accused me of... And Sergei Magnitsky of stealing the $230 million. They didn't do it. We did it. And most profoundly, they accuse me of being a murderer. They say that I killed all sorts of people and they've even said I killed Sergei Magnitsky. I mean, it's truly... And we see this now playing out in real time in Ukraine. I got a taste of it, you know, six or seven years ago when they were doing the same thing with me.

MG: You said, and I want to come back to this in a moment. You mentioned Canada and the Magnitsky Act, and you've said that it was a major milestone for Canada to pass that act. Why? Why that language?

BILL BROWDER: Well, so the Magnitsky Act was first passed the United States in 2012, and I understood that it's great to have the U.S. doing it, and the U.S. is extremely powerful. But bad guys, oligarchs. They don't keep, you know, they keep money all over the world. They don't just keep money in the U.S., they keep money in Europe, they keep money in Canada. They keep money everywhere. And I needed other countries to follow. And when I had learned in my travels and in my meetings with governments and politicians is that some countries really don't want to follow the U.S. There's anti-American sentiment. There's people feeling like America is too big and throwing its weight around too much. But what I learned was that there's no such thing as anti-Canadian sentiment anywhere in the world. And so if I could get Canada to do it as the second country, it would not just be helpful because some of these people keep their money in Canada, but it would be hugely symbolic because if the United States did it and Canada did it then everyone would do it. And so I really concentrated a huge amount of time and effort on Canada, and I probably travelled to Ottawa 20 times and I've met with many, many members of parliament and many government officials. And when Canada passed it unanimously in both houses of Parliament, it had exactly the effect that I predicted, which is it was the domino that kicked off all the other dominoes. And after the United States and Canada, then 32 other countries followed

MG: in doing this. As you said, you've put yourself in the crosshairs of the Russian government. Russia's special prosecutor said that you should not sleep peacefully at night. What sort of threats do you live under?

BILL BROWDER: Well, that was his threat. Dmitri Medvedev, who is at the time the prime minister, was at a closed door briefing with journalists, including Chrystia Freeland, when she was a journalist. And she asked the question, Could you talk about Sergei Magnitsky's death? And he said, it's a shame Sergei Magnitsky is dead and Bill Browder is still alive and running around. That was from the... That was from the prime minister of Russia. I mean, literally, you know, once a week, once a month, often once a day, sometimes I'll get emails, direct messages, texts, all sorts of things threatening me. I mean, just as I was testifying in Congress last week, I got a death threat, anonymous death threat by email. I mean, it's constant.

MG: And this is serious, in part because as you write about it, the book, but as we just know, generally, many people who speak out against the Russian government accidentally fall out of a window, fall off a roof, drink tea that is laced with poison. I mean, do you have to spend a lot of your time kind of looking over your shoulder?

BILL BROWDER: It's now an instinct, but I have to spend all my time looking over my shoulder, but I don't do it in fear. I don't spend my time living in fear. I'm now just a very careful person, by instinct, by habit. But I have to be and I've got to do whatever I can to not give them the opportunity to wipe me out. And I've been doing it for a long time now. It's been going on for 12 years, so it's... I've gotten good at it, but I've got to be lucky every day. They only have to be lucky once.

MG: They have a poison factory. What is the KGB poison factory that you write about?

BILL BROWDER: So for many decades, the KGB and now its incarnation, the FSB have loved to use poison to kill their enemies. Poison is hard to detect. It's plausibly deniable and oftentimes it can be very effective. And so they have something called the KGB poison factory, where it's a part of the state security services, where they come up with new and ingenious poisons to go after their enemies. And this is... I'm not just making this up...

MG: It's not something from a James Bond thriller.

BILL BROWDER: It's a well-established truth many of you will remember. The Alexei Navalny, the opposition activist, they put Novichok, which is a banned chemical nerve agent in his underwear, trying to kill him, and he was on an aeroplane. He would have died if the aeroplane had gone all the way from Siberia to Moscow, but it made an emergency landing. They gave him some antidote, and he survived. Alexander Litvinenko in London wasn't so lucky. He was given radioactive polonium 210 and died a miserable, horrible, terrible death. Another friend of mine, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is an opposition activist and someone who has been with me in the Canadian parliament lobbying for the Magnitsky Act. He was also poisoned. We believe, with Novichok. He came within inches of his life in Moscow.

MG: Poison is one thing. There are also, as you write about in the book, some bizarre efforts by the Russian government to smear you. Tell me about the honey trap that the Russian operatives tried to spring on you.

BILL BROWDER: Well, this was really ham fisted, but I was going to the... An organization called the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and they had their annual meeting in Monaco in 2012, summer of 2012. And I was invited there to give a presentation on the Magnitsky Act because I was trying to get it passed and trying to get countries around the world to support Magnitsky acts in their countries, including a resolution for the OSCE. So I show up in Monaco and I show a movie. It's about one of the mobsters who is effectively part of the Russian government who was involved in the Magnitsky case. And I show this movie during the afternoon and I'm invited to a reception that is put on by the Prime Minister of Monaco at the Meridian Hotel. And I'm standing in line and I am sitting there getting my food, and I feel something, something brushing against my back and I move forward. And again, the same thing happens. I turn around and there is this six foot blonde woman standing behind me looks like a supermodel. She smiles warmly and starts to have a superficial conversation with me... And a little bit later on, I'm approached by some of the parliamentarians. Everybody starts asking me questions. They ask for my business card I handed out to everybody, including this woman, and then I'm back in my hotel room later on and I get this email from this woman, and I've literally spoken to her for five minutes, saying it was so nice to meet you. We have so much in common and blah blah blah. We agreed to meet for a drink. I ignore the email. About half an hour later, she sends an even more explicit email and I'm thinking to myself, this is just the stupidest thing I've ever seen. This is like Honey Trap 101. This is what they do. Of course, you know, some six foot blonde woman is not going to throw herself at me. You know, sort of a middle aged, balding businessman. And unless they have an ulterior motive. And it was funny on one hand, but it was also terrifying on another hand because, you know, that meant that the Russian government knew exactly where I was and they were tracking me and plotting against me. And that was pretty scary part of the whole thing.

MG: When you talk about scary, in 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Why did that frighten you?

BILL BROWDER: Well, it frightened me because leading up to his election, he was saying all these hugely complimentary things about Vladimir Putin. And it's the first time that I've seen a US politician of any calibre of any party speaking fondly of Vladimir Putin. And he always... He struck me as a sort of dishonest guy. And most worryingly, he sort of prides himself as a dealmaker. And, you know, Putin has been trying to get me for a long time. He's been chasing me around the world with Interpol arrest warrants. I was just terrified that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump would make a deal. And so when he was, you know, running for president, I was praying he wouldn't be elected because I didn't want to be, you know, one of his deals.

MG: There was this extraordinary meeting in 2018 between President Putin and President Trump in Helsinki. Take a listen to the translation of what the Russian president said at that press conference.

TRANSLATOR: For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over one and a half billion dollars in Russia. They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia or in the United States. And yet the money escaped the country.

MG: What did you make of the fact that President Putin named you in that meeting with Donald Trump?

BILL BROWDER: Well, the thing that really upset me about that was Donald Trump... So Putin asked for me to be handed over, and Donald Trump said that's a great idea. And so it's pretty... Well for Putin just to be name checking me shows how much I've gotten under his skin. But for Donald Trump to then agree to hand me over really terrified me and I was in the United States at the time. I'm normally living in London. I'm a British citizen, but I was in the United States at the time and I pictured a bunch of blacked out Big-Government Chevy Suburbans all arriving where I was staying and being escorted out and put on to a rendition flight back to Moscow. It was terrifying.

MG: Why do you keep doing what you do given the obvious threats that you face?

BILL BROWDER: Well, my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in the most horrible, unbelievable, heartbreaking way because he worked for me and the burden of his murder and his loss of life and his family's loss has weighed so heavily on me that the only thing I can do to live with myself is to go after the people that killed him. And that gives me a little bit of comfort to do that. And it gives me more if I can succeed, and that's what keeps me going, and that's what motivates me on a daily basis to fight Putin and fight his cronies.

MG: You've said that continuing to do business in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine is equivalent to continuing to do business in Nazi Germany. Do you think this war will change how the rest of the world sees Russia for the long period?

BILL BROWDER: There's no question it already has. I mean, it's... You know, everywhere you go now there's Ukrainian flags, every responsible business person has pulled out. We watch it on TV in real time. A Holocaust taking place. There's no way that anyone's going to go back to doing business in Russia unless Vladimir Putin is out of power. And there's a democratic government there that's rebuilding, you know, in our model of, you know, peace, democracy and freedoms. There's no way that we're going to go back to doing business with Vladimir Putin the way we did before.

MG: In the meantime, six weeks into this war, do you see any sign that it is nearing an end?

BILL BROWDER: I see no sign of that whatsoever. The only sign I see is that Ukrainians are really giving the Russians a good run for their money and defeating them in a lot of places that the Russians... Well none of us could have ever imagined... Imagine the Russians being defeated. But make no mistake, Vladimir Putin has got a lot of money still left, and he's got a huge, huge agenda to win this war. And whatever successes have been had early on, he will fight back hard. He will do terrible things and we're in, you know. Stay tuned and rest assured that our hearts will be broken many times before this thing is already over.

MG: This is a fascinating book. It's a real pleasure to talk to you, and I hope we talk again in the meantime. Thank you very much.

BILL BROWDER: Thank you.

MG: Bill Browder's new book is Freezing Order: a True Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath. A quick update: as you heard in our interview, Bill Browder's Russian ally Vladimir Kara-Murza had been poisoned in the past for his opposition to Vladimir Putin. Minutes after our interview with Bill Browder yesterday, news came out that Vladimir Kara-Murza had been arrested in Russia.

MG: Coming up after your regional update, lobster prices are hitting record highs, and so are the risks that fishers are taking to cash in. In 90 seconds, the fine line between a huge haul and a life lost at sea. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in a minute.

Record lobster prices prompting fishers to brave rough seas; and the role of Paxlovid in tackling COVID-19’s sixth wave

Guests: Gail Atkinson and Dr. Tara Kiran

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The U.N. estimates that over 10 million people have fled their homes in Ukraine since the war started, nearly half of them leaving that country. It is a huge number, but those people are part of a global refugee crisis that is so much bigger it's almost difficult to comprehend. More than 82 million people around the world are displaced, forced from their homes by conflict, persecution and violence. Just this summer, we saw Afghans desperately fleeing the Taliban. Syrians have been running from a bloody civil war for over a decade. The Rohingya fled Myanmar for a precarious home in Bangladesh. People have also been displaced from Yemen, Venezuela, Sudan, Somalia. The list goes on. Tomorrow on The Current, we will be looking at the global refugee crisis, and these are some of the people you'll meet. They live in two of the world's biggest refugee camps.

TASNIM: My name is Tasnim, and I am 22 years old. I'm from Syria and I am living in Zaatari since 2013. We ended up in Zaatari camp after moving between several towns in Syria. It was not the first choice for my father to leave the country because we knew that it will be even harder outside in the unknown. My plan is to find a better future and to leave the camp as soon as possible. This camp gave me safety, but it can't be a lifelong place to live in. Of course, I hope and plan to go back to my homeland one day. All I'm waiting for is for the situation to get better.

BAHATI: My name is Bahati. I have been living in Kakuma for the past eight years. I am from the DRC Congo. I came from Congo because of war. The current biggest challenge we're facing is the Somali region. The region has been cut into two. We are suffering. Now, how will that feed my children and my family?

HASSAN: My name is Hassan. And I'm Somali, who was living in Kakuma Refugee Camp Kenya, and I stayed here for a long time. There's no job. There's a lack of education. There's a lack of access of getting what you want. Most people here they don't have a way to go back. Like me, somebody like me, I have no place to go back. I have no home. There is no... Because they grew up here. I stayed here since I was two years old, so there's no way to go back.

MOHAMMED: I'm Mohammed from Somalia. I'm here around 11 years. Being refugees is not something you can choose. This is a situation you feel yourself in it. So I would like to understand more about humanity. We are all human beings. You cannot see them unless you wear the same shoes. I ask international community to focus on refugees because there are those people they are running from war and conflict area to build their new lives.

CHRISTINE: My name is Christine and Kakuma, this is my 24th year. Like if you a mom and you don't know what will happen tomorrow. So in most cases you cannot say, I understand what we feel. The only person now who can understand it is Ukraine and Russia. I am sorry for their passing though to have been through that. And maybe soon I'm going to experience the same thing because we don't have a permanent home as a refugees.

MG: We'll have more on the global refugee crisis on a special program tomorrow. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

MG: It doesn't sell for the same price, but for some fishers in Nova Scotia, lobster is as good as gold. Lobster in Atlantic Canada is reeling in record high prices, recently hitting nearly $20 a pound. And now, with the spring lobster fishery opening up, hundreds of additional boats will be out on the water trying to cash in. Gail Atkinson is the captain of the Nellie Row, and this morning she's aboard her boat just off the coast of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Captain Gail. Good morning.

GAIL ATKINSON: Good morning. How are you?

MG: Well, I'm well. Where are you right now and what are you doing?

GAIL ATKINSON: Actually, I just sent a trail back. I just went in the water as we were speaking there. We're just off of Lunenburg, the town of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia, about, oh, about eight miles from our port.

MG: So as the captain, you're not up top steering the ship, you're not actually involved in throwing the traps into the water.

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, I'm sort of driving the bus as we say, so to speak. So yeah, we were just sort of shooting a trail back just now, and it's just two of us today. So I've sort of been more active than usual.

MG: That's called two handed fishing.

GAIL ATKINSON: Yeah, yeah. Just in the spring, we sometimes just sort of go with two, and I think the weather's nicer and we're catching fewer lobsters. So we sort of... It helps with expenses.

MG: What has this season been like for you and for your crew?

GAIL ATKINSON: It's been an unusual season. It's been. It's been amazing. I was talking with one of my friends. We're about the same age, so we've been in the fishery for... He's been in it since he was 15 and so we've been in it for decades and he called it a fairy tale fishery for us. We saw prices that we've never seen before, and so that was just fantastic and the catches were good and the quality was good. So we had all the components where everything was going in our favour.

MG: You don't hear the word amazing applied to a fishing season very often.

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, no, we always try to downplay it and pretend we're not catching anything, I guess. But I would. I do know, that's the general sentiment for sure. It's been. It's been excellent.

MG: What are the prices? I mean, what are you selling your lobster for?

GAIL ATKINSON: Oh, I think we're in the $15 range right now. For us, it peaked two weeks ago at, I think, around $18 for us, and it varies a little bit between buyers. Some, you know, chuck in another 50 cents here and there, but it's around $14 something or $15. And with more seasons opening in the province and in the Maritimes and, as the spring rolls on, we'll probably see the price continue to decline a bit. That's all a matter, I guess, of what the catches are like. And I'm, you know, we're all still optimistic that we're probably going to see record high spring prices as well. So that'll be fantastic.

MG: How does that compare $15-$18 a pound to what you'd normally be getting?

GAIL ATKINSON: This time of the year I think, you know, definitely it's not double what we would normally be getting, but it's definitely, you know, a third more or so, which is great. I think that once the catches start to pick up again as the water warms up again, well, really, you know, sort of indicate how our spring is going to go is how far it drops. I mean, if we see a lobster that stays above 10 pounds, for example, to the end of our season, which is the end of May, that would be phenomenal. I think last year they were at eight bucks and that which we considered good then. So. So, yeah, no, we'll take it.

MG: This is hard work and you're out there hustling on the water. I mean, it sounds obvious, but what does the difference... That kind of difference in price mean for you?

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, it certainly makes it... It makes you a lot more eager to get out of bed in the morning. For me, I means, I don't know. I can, you know I can expand my business a bit maybe. I can probably take on more crew when I'm... during the busier periods. So it just sort of, it goes right through the whole community. You know, people... If you get, you know, you have a good season and you think, Oh, well, you know, I wouldn't mind getting a new lobster boat or something, then all of a sudden you're going to see, you know, the boat building industry take off, which it is. So it just sort of trickles right down through.

MG: You never really know what kind of season it's going to be when it starts out. You took... Tell me about this gamble that you took at the beginning of the season.

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, at the beginning of the season I do... I do something that I always do with my dad and I fish with him for 20 something years. I have the means to sort of hang on to my lobsters if I don't want to sell them at the opening price, which usually is the lowest price. It opens low and, you know, they sort of get a sense of catches and quality. So we sort of we stashed away a few thousand pounds. We sort of sat on them like mother hands, just waiting to see what was going to happen with the price. A lot of people didn't bother to save because the opening price was so good, but I thought, What the heck? I'll gamble on it and I could always sell them at any time. So we actually didn't end up selling them till about the first week of March, and we made about six dollars per pound on what we'd saved. So it definitely paid off this time.

MG: Where does one stash away a few hundred pounds of lobster?

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, we have these little floating... We call them lobster cars, a little wooden sort of compartments, mostly submerged. You can stand on them when they're floating in the harbour. They're sort of divide it up. And then we put our lobsters in what I call lobster condos. They're kind of... They're cages and they're divided... each lobster gets its own little slot so they can't fight with each other and they can't... So they won't get damaged or anything while they're being saved. Generally, water temperatures drop, so they sort of become dormant. So you're able to save them for a couple of months at a time when you pull them out, they look, they look fantastic. So it's a great way to sort of play the market a little bit and not be completely at the mercy of buyers having to sort of turn your catch over as you go sort of thing.

MG: Are you seeing a lot more people out on the water now because the prices are so high and people are trying to figure out a way, as I said earlier, to cash in?

GAIL ATKINSON: I wouldn't say a lot more on the water because I mean, it's all regulated and there's only so many licences anyway. But, you know, we're probably... We're driving it a bit harder this winter with those prices. And makes you, as I said, a bit more keen to get out there and capitalize on it. So I think, you know, maybe we try to haul more often, you know, in that sort of way.

MG: It's risky work. I mean, when you say driving it a bit harder, what are the kind of risks that people are taking to get that little sliver of an edge that could amount to a lot of money?

GAIL ATKINSON: I think, you know, basically the obvious thing is we, you know, we're make a decision to perhaps go out when it's blowing a little... blowing pretty hard and maybe we wouldn't have gone out on those days in the previous season. But with that little extra, you know, incentive, you know, every day you can get in extra, particularly at the beginning of the season, because that's... We actually probably catch, oh, two thirds of our catch by January. Really. So it's all you know, out of the gate, you've just got to go for it or else... because you're never going to make it up again. So with prices like that, we were... Everybody was, well I won't say everyone... But a lot of people were perhaps, you know, pushing it a little bit more. I wouldn't say they're doing anything dangerous, but you're, you know, we're all trying to work within a... keep things as safe as possible. But we do, you know, we take some sort of educated sort of risks, I guess.

MG: You're the captain. I mean, you're the one who has to figure out, I guess, how far to push it and how to weigh those risks. That's a lot of responsibility because it's not just on you, that's on your crew as well.

GAIL ATKINSON: Mm, yeah, it is. I, you know, and on the nasty days and when the boat's, you know, just all over the place and they're working out on deck and perhaps it's icey out there and stuff, I just... Yeah, my heart's in my throat a lot. I'm pretty... I want to know where they are all the time. And it's definitely a worry, but I guess, you know, you have to sort of function knowing that and that's kind of just a given in the industry. So you have to find a way to live with it and be productive within those confines.

MG: You talked about growing your business, and I mean, people will know of you because you're the captain of an all female crew. You've also been at this for 30 years, as you said. What do you want to see your business grow into? Where would you want to see your work kind of take you?

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, for me, you know with fishing, you're kind of limited by what licences you have. So I mean, I would, you know, if I... Last year I bought a herring licence, for example, to do a fall herring fishery. So if you have some good seasons you can sort of buy some more licences, that sort of thing. It's possible that you can actually have two lobster licences and you stack them. So instead of the 250 traps that we fish, we would be able to fish 375. So you could see how that could be very helpful.

MG: What do you still love about this work?

GAIL ATKINSON: Well, right now I'm just sort of standing here looking... I can see the shoreline, and it's an absolutely gorgeous day. So today it's a pretty easy day to just love it. I think you just got to love being on the water. It would be like the worst sentence ever to be out here in the winter. But the challenge of it, I guess there's just so much about it. I mean, you're always on the hunt, and it's... Even though it might seem like a repetitive sort of thing you do. It's for me... For us, it's not because, you know, you're always trying to figure out where the lobsters are moving and how to get there and how to get your gear there. And it's always it's really involving in all kinds of levels.

MG: I think there are a lot of people who are listening who are thinking they would... They're envious of you being out there. And again, it's hard work but today, being out there on a lovely day, bobbing around in the water is kind of where they want to be, I think.

GAIL ATKINSON: Oh, it's gorgeous. We have like, you know, 2.8 knots of wind right now. Almost a flickr as we say, the sun just came up a little, you know, an hour or two ago, and it's lovely and it smells wonderful out here. I love the smell of the ocean.

MG: Lovely. You've put us right there. Gail, it's great to talk to you. Good luck and stay safe. And thanks a lot.

GAIL ATKINSON: Thanks so much for your interest. Have a good day.

MG: And you bye bye.

MG: Gail Atkinson, captain of the Nellie Row. We reached her off the south shore of Nova Scotia near Lunenburg. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway.

KIERAN MOORE: Antiviral treatment, including the oral antiviral Paxlovid. Can help to reduce hospitalizations, protect hospital capacity and protect patients at high risk of severe health outcomes. We have 30 to 40,000 treatment doses or treatment regimes of Paxlovid made available to Ontarians, and I want to make sure that they're used, that they're used for the most at risk for the severe outcomes of COVID 19 across Ontario. And I think we've worked robustly over the last week to ensure that that plan is in play now.

MG: That's Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore, talking about the province's plan to expand access to a drug called Paxlovid. The drug is for patients who are particularly vulnerable to getting very sick or dying from COVID-19. But nearly three months after being approved for COVID treatment in Canada, the Canadian stockpile of the drug has barely been touched. In Ontario, only one percent of the available treatments have been used. Six and a half percent in Manitoba, five percent in British Columbia. P.E.I. is the outlier, with something like 56 percent of available treatments having been used. Dr. Tara Kiran is a family physician at St. Michael's Hospital and the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto. Dr. Kiran, good morning.

TARA KIRAN: Good morning.

MG: How does this drug work in terms of treating people with COVID?

TARA KIRAN: So this is a new drug, and it's actually made up of two different medications. The first medication is the new part, and that first medication basically slows... That binds to the virus, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and slows the virus from replicating. And then the second medication is actually a medication that's been around for a long time. It's an antiviral used in HIV treatment, and it actually just boosts the first medication. So that means that it allows that first medication to be in your body for a longer period of time. So the two work synergistically together, and the randomised trials have shown that in unvaccinated patients, this was pre Omicron actually unvaccinated patients. There was a significant reduction in hospitalization and death for people who received the drug within five days of getting their first symptoms.

MG: There was a lot of promise when this drug was unveiled, and we talked about it on this program as we make our way through this sixth wave of COVID. What difference do you think it might make if it were to be deployed?

TARA KIRAN: So I think for some people, it could make a real difference. So we know that it works really well in preventing hospitalization and death for people who are unvaccinated, and we can also think that... extrapolate the studies to other groups of people that are at high risk of hospitalization and death if they get COVID. So, for example, people who are immunocompromised, people who are older, so over 70 and then even people who are younger than 70. If you've had less than three doses of your vaccine or if you have one or more chronic conditions, this is a drug that could really help you. It's meant for people who have illness that's not so severe that it takes them to hospital. So illness, for example, that doesn't require supplemental oxygen.

MG: The drug was approved in January. And why then, do you think P.E.I aside so little of this drug has actually made it to patients who could use the drug?

TARA KIRAN: Yeah, great question. And, you know, it's complicated because this is like with everything in COVID. We're learning as we go and we're trying to implement evidence in real time. Usually when a drug comes to market, we have time. We have time to get the systems in place to distribute it. We have time to tell patients about it and we have time to educate providers and get the guidance ready for providers who are going to prescribe it. And this time, you know, all of that is being done in a hurry. And then, of course, now we're in many parts of the country in a sixth wave. And so it's even more important that we get this drug out there. So really, what we need to do is strengthen some of these factors. We need to improve patient education, improve provider education about what this drug does and how patients can get access to it. And then we need to improve that distribution system so that patients have more doors open to actually getting the drug.

MG: What about issues of testing? I mean, as you mentioned, it's important for the patients to use this drug early on in their course through COVID. But not everybody has access, easy access to PCR testing, depending on where you happen to be in the country. Rural communities in particular are especially disadvantaged. How big of an issue is that in getting the drug to the people who need it the most?

TARA KIRAN: Well, what's good is that many provinces have now changed the requirements so that people can get the access to the drug not just with a PCR test, but also with a positive rapid antigen test. So it's true that in many communities, accessing PCR tests to confirm you have COVID is tricky. But rapid antigen tests are more widely available, and you can actually order those to come into your home and have them in your home ready in case you do have symptoms and want to confirm. Now, of course, one of the things that's a little bit tricky is that you can have symptoms of COVID and actually have COVID, but have a negative rapid antigen test. So if you think you might qualify for this drug, you have symptoms and you have a negative rapid antigen test. You still should try and get a PCR test because the PCR test we know is far more sensitive than actually picking up COVID.

MG: Ontario announced yesterday that it's going to get this drug into pharmacies across the province that's happening in other parts of the country as well. What sort of difference do you think that will make?

TARA KIRAN: I think it's a great idea. I think Ontario's now opened it up so that any family doctor can prescribe Paxlovid and community pharmacies can register to distribute it. And we know that's actually how patients usually get drugs. They get them prescribed by their doctor and then filled at their local pharmacy. So it's good that we're actually opening up that distribution avenue. One that patients are familiar with. And what I like about this, you know, the doctor and pharmacy working hand in hand, is it also means that there's two people there who are able to help patients figure out, is this the right drug for them? What risks might there be and counselled them appropriately, both about the effectiveness and also the safety implications?

MG: Quebec took the lead and went even further in empowering pharmacists. Pharmacists are now allowed to prescribe this drug. Is that the right approach to get the drug into the hands of people who need it the most in an expedited way?

TARA KIRAN: I'd love to know more about how it's going there, but I would say that I like the system where we have both a prescriber and a dispenser, someone... two healthcare professionals who are able to review with the patient whether this is the right drug for them and also what the safety implications are. This is a drug that actually has many potential drug interactions. And so it's really important that the prescriber and the pharmacy... pharmacist that's dispensing the medication take time to review the medication lists and make sure that there aren't any serious drug interactions, and in some cases, there may be medications that need to be stopped. So this is a pretty long, complicated process, and I think it's always better when there are these long, complicated process for us to have some checks and balances. So the doctor who's prescribing it and then the pharmacist who's counselling the patient and dispensing medication for them.

MG: One of the things that we've seen over the course of a couple of years of this pandemic are the inequities in the health care system in terms of who gets what, who is exposed to what, who is available for certain forms of interventions, whether it's vaccines or whether it's treatment like this. How big of an issue is this when we're talking about this drug. Do people in communities that have been already marginalized over the course of this pandemic even know that it exists?

TARA KIRAN: Yeah, it's a really good question. And so I'd say two things. First, I think that this is a drug that actually has the potential to close geographic inequities. So some of the other drugs that are available to treat patients who are not admitted to hospital with COVID but actually the drug prevents hospitalizations. Some of those drugs are actually administered through intravenous. And so you can imagine if you’re in a rural area, those can be really hard to access. This drug is a pill, so it can be distributed to rural areas. It can be couriered or mailed. Of course, it can be at the local community pharmacy, so it has the opportunity to close geographic inequities and access to treatment. And then there's the other types of inequity. So inequities that we see even in urban settings, as you mentioned, high priority areas, areas that are racialized or low income where we've seen high COVID rates and there I think we do... You're right, I don't think that the majority of people probably know that there's this drug and that they might qualify for it. So we really need to get the word out, and I think we should be leveraging some of the strategies that we know work for vaccinations. So the community ambassador program is a great example that was used in Toronto and some other cities where we have people who are local and have local relationships and local knowledge, and they're able to get the word out to people that this is a medication that could help them if they got sick.

MG: Just the last question, which is that as this six wave continues to spread, we are not seeing provinces reimposing any of the public health restrictions that were in place before. Ontario's premier has said that he's confident that his province's health care system can handle the sixth wave, in part because of drugs like Paxlovid can help keep people out of hospitals. Is that such a smart approach, do you think?

TARA KIRAN: Well, I'd say prevention is always better than cure, and I would love to see us take more upstream action. So, yes, this drug can help. But wouldn't you rather not have COVID? Then get COVID and then get a drug to treat it? I mean, this is not going to work for everybody. Not everyone is going to necessarily get access to it. And there may be.... The outcomes in the trial relate to hospitalization and death, but we know that there are other outcomes that matter to people too and symptoms that persist. So we want to avoid people getting COVID in the first place. We want prevention. And I think reinstating mask mandates, for example, specifically even in schools, would go a long way to helping to reduce transmission. The other thing that's really important, of course, is ensuring that everyone gets all the vaccine doses that they're eligible for. So that means for most people, that's three doses. For some people, it might even be four doses. And we know that vaccination helps to prevent COVID, and we need to really increase that campaign and ensure those people in those high priority areas, as you mentioned, that are actually down those vaccines.

MG: Dr. Kiran, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

TARA KIRAN: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Tara Kiran, family physician at St. Michael's Hospital and the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto. That's The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it’s Q. Big Pop star alert. Tom Power speaking with Camila Cabello about a new album and a whole lot more of that conversation coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. Before we turn it over to Q. Mimi Reinhardt died late last week at the age of 107. Even if you don't know who she was, you probably know what she did. She was Austrian and Jewish, and she was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland, because she knew shorthand, she ended up working as a typist for a man named Oskar Schindler. Mimi Reinhardt typed up Schindler's List, the names of Jews who were recruited to work in his factories instead of being sent to death camps, and her work alongside Oskar Schindler helped save more than a thousand lives. Mimi Reinhardt died at home in Israel. As I mentioned, 107 years old. We'll leave you with a bit of music from Schindler's List. This is performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Schindler's List Main Theme, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra]

Tuesday April 12, 2022 Full Text Transcript

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