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The Current Transcript for September 9, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Herron being the first pair home that showed how flawed things have been with senior care, even though more people died in various homes across Ontario and B.C., Herron will always be. No, and that's pretty awful.

MATT GALLOWAY: A coroner's inquest has begun in Quebec examining a devastating covid-19 outbreak at a long term care facility in that province in many parts of this country. Residents of long term care homes bore the brunt of this pandemic. So in this election, as a fourth wave takes hold, what are federal leaders promising to do differently? We'll discuss in 30 minutes. Plus, how those leaders tackle that and other pressing issues at last night's French language debate and what's at stake tonight in the English debate. And later, a love story.

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VOICE 1: We were in a place that was heaven. We were taken out of these troubled skies and we landed on an island with so many wonderful people. They were just taking care of all of our earthly needs.

MG: The tale of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland, on September 11th, 2001, has been told around the world, most notably, of course, in the smashed musical come from away in an hour. Anthony Germein with how that moment is remembered 20 years later and Ghandour and far beyond. But we begin with the not so simple question of who should get an exemption from the covid vaccine. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Why do some people disagree with vaccine mandates, and who can qualify for an exemption?

Guests: Cheryl Pauls, Maxwell Smith, Dr. Mariam Hanna,

MG: Your local restaurant, your office building, your university might all have something in common these days, a vaccination requirement, no shot, no shoes, no service. That's probably on a sign somewhere. But it's not the whole story. Some people aren't able to get vaccinated for medical reasons. Others say it goes against their religion. People like Sheena Friesen, who is at a protest in Steinbock, Manitoba.

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It's my body and my choice. And that's something that we hold dear here in Canada. And I will say I'm a Christian, I'm a God fearing woman. And these are our temples. These are our temples. We have to treat them well. And that decision, how you treat your body well is up to you.

MG: Some religious leaders have been encouraging people to get the shot, but not everyone is ready to listen. Cheryl Pauls as president of the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. Cheryl Palls, good morning.

CHERYL PAULS: Good morning.

MG: How often do you hear concerns like the one Shina Fresen just made that getting the shot goes against someone's religion?

CHERYL PAULS: Well, it's something you're hearing every day, but you're hearing it all over, I don't know that I'm hearing it at Canadian Mennonite University any more than on the news or any communities you walk around in.

MG: Is there any religious doctrine for Mennonites that would back up exemption on religious grounds for the vaccine?

CHERYL PAULS: No, there is nothing. There's nothing in sacred text. There's nothing in the traditional confession's and teachings. There's, you know, and church leaders are being very explicitly or very explicitly saying that this isn't a place where a separation of church and state makes sense.

MG: So what's this actually about then, when people say that it is based on their faith that there's something that they believe, within religious religious doctrine, that would allow them to not get the shot?

CHERYL PAULS: So I'd say for the most part, it's a cluster of reasons and a religious rationale would be one of those in the cluster. And so it's a combination of things. It's not about something that's traditional in the church, but it could be that there's a secondary rationale where in the church there was something that was was working with a certain way the government was giving orders. And this sounds like a certain way that some other order was given that did go against something in the church. And so it's it's it's a bit of maybe these are two strong terms, but a bit of a trigger or trauma kind of response with secondary rationales for the most part.

MG: How is that playing out at the Canadian Mennonite University? The school is requiring vaccines for students, staff and faculty. What sort of pushback have you got from that?

CHERYL PAULS: Well, first of all, very small in terms of pushback. So the vast majority are vaccinated, in fact, were vaccinated before we put this in place well beyond any kind of herd immunity levels. And so just to say it's a very small proportion. And so I think I can speak for the overall community probably more than than what's going on at CMU. And and the reasons, again, probably would be medical or trying to understand what's going on, medical system, trying to understand science and then putting a little bit of a religious stream within that cluster.

MG: Is the school granting religious exemptions for students? I mean, have you granted any yet?

CHERYL PAULS: Well, in terms of exemptions, we we recognise that in terms of actual religious exemptions that would be based in the traditions of the church. No, there was nothing we could go on. Then you look at the category and actually Orthodox and Catholic traditions do this much more than Mennonite has formal language for it. But Orthodox and Catholic traditions talk about not to or any vaccine needing to be taken by the individual's free will. And so that gets you into reasons of freedom of conscience or maybe better if you think in terms of human rights code language, something that wouldn't cause undue or unreasonable harm to an individual. And so there you get into into a question of whether there are exemptions for, say, compassionate reasons or something that would be undue harm or or something that just seems unreasonable in someone's life. And so in that context, we've been looking at places where people might have trauma in their past with medical system. They might have trauma in the end and and working with them, whether it's an exemption or an extended timeline to get a different access. And this is particularly if if people are new to the Canadian system and so on. There could also be people where there is is some extreme strain within family systems and within close community systems that they're trying to negotiate. And that would get into that area. And so there's there's a there's some religious community aspect to it, but not necessarily a religious reason.

MG: And is that I mean, that approach of listening to people's reasoning as to why they say they don't want to get the vaccine, is that something that you think we need to be doing more of?

CHERYL PAULS: Yeah, I think listening to it, because at this point, there's such a cluster of reasons, and so it's very it's very difficult to just have quick talking points of these are the reasons that that are safe. It's often a secondary or third level reason. And it could be that there's a lot of good rationale in those previous experiences, even as you might be struggling with, with what the immediate response to this is. And and so if I can give you an example of what those kinds of things might be, you know, there might be intergenerational trauma of sorts and and things that have felt like government overreach and other times, and particularly in terms of closing down houses of worship, in terms of closing down access to to visiting people and seniors care and so on, in terms of closing down businesses. And so if in the first lockdown, a person's experience was not understanding the threat of the virus, not understanding the seriousness of it, feeling as if this was an overreach, then it's easy to make a connexion between, say, that house of worship being closed and that freedom of religion is being challenged. And then if you make that kind of connexion, then other things sort of take on from there. You know, we often hear about this novel coronavirus for like there's been this novel response to it where there's variants that keep it, period, hearing in terms of older logic that are taking on new forms, which I'll just say quickly on that religious freedom form, often we think of this as something that's fixed and insular and protected grounds instead of being something that freedom religion is like academic freedom. You're coming out of a discipline. You're coming out of something that you really work that hard and you're exercising that muscle to face a new question. And I think we've exercised with coronavirus medical and science unbelievably well and governments are working with that and in many ways very well with the level of success we've had and so on, certainly in Canada. But exercising what religious freedom means and what that means across communities, that's something that's perhaps underdeveloped at this time. And then that kind of backfires.

MG: We're going to speak more about how this is playing out in other communities, but I really appreciate hearing your perspective from Winnipeg. Cheryl Pauls, thank you very much.

CHERYL PAULS: You're most welcome.

MG: Cheryl Pauls, president of the Canadian Mennonite University. She was in Winnipeg. The so-called vaccine passports are coming to Ontario in just a couple of weeks time, and many doctors in that province are seeing more and more requests for medical exemptions to that requirement. One of those doctors, Dr. Mariam Hannna, she's also Ontario Medical Association's chair for allergy and clinical immunology and she's been listening. And Doctor, good morning to you. Good morning, ma'am. Just briefly, what are the two valid medical exemptions in the province of Ontario for the covid-19 vaccine?

MARIAM HANNAH: Sure. So generally speaking, there are very few legitimate medical reasons and they fall under two big category, the first of which is an allergist or immunologist confirmed severe allergy or anaphylactic reaction to a prior dose of the vaccine or to any of its components. And then the second big category is the diagnosis of myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the sac around the heart muscle. After receiving a dose of MRNA vaccine.

MG: You've seen an increase of patients asking about exemptions. What are the reasons and the concerns that you're hearing in your office now?

MARIAM HANNAH: So typically we will receive any referrals for vaccine reactions throughout our offices. But now that the vaccine password is coming into effect, a lot more patients are asking about, you know, I had this type of reaction after my first dose. Does this merit an exemption or am I safe to get the second dose? So we certainly have had a large influx now that the two dose passport is coming into effect, because people are wondering, this happened after my first dose, can I still safely get my second dose of vaccine? And much of it is deciphering between what is a serious allergic reaction versus an expected side effect potentially to one of the doses of the vaccine.

MG: How often do you give an exemption?

MARIAM HANNAH: Very rarely, in fact. So there are many requests for referral, but most of the time patients can safely get their second dose. And we hardly ever give a true medical exemption because of a reaction that has occurred.

MG: What happens when you hear people and we heard it at the beginning of this conversation say it's my body, it's my choice. We're in the midst of a pandemic. This is a highly contagious communicable disease. When you hear that, it's my body, my choice. What goes through your mind?

MARIAM HANNAH: You know, many of the times that we see patients in our office, it is all about sharing in their decision making process. We want to arm patients with as much information as possible as to what the safety is about this vaccine. And as the pandemic has gone on and unfolded, we know quite a bit about the virus and we know quite a bit about the vaccine safety and efficacy that exists. Much of it has to do with myth that patients have heard either on the media or from one another, and it has propagated quite rapidly. So a lot of what we do during our consultations is really debunking misinformation or disinformation that has come into their hands. And we find that most of the time it's a very fruitful conversation to have, and it's not taking away somebody's right to their body, but it's allowing them to understand risks a bit more as to what the vaccine looks like versus what the true infection could look like.

MG: I was gonna say just finally, I mean, is your sense in those conversations that that people are willing to take that information on and that they might come in asking for an exemption to the vaccine, but after a conversation, their concerns have been assuaged and that they're willing to get the shot.

MARIAM HANNAH: It takes time. Many people are willing to listen and you have to be in the right mindset frequently when patients get referred to our office, their mind, I think, is that they're getting an automatic exemption and that the allergist will provide them with that. And they're often surprised that we're talking about options to safely get them vaccinated with their second dose or the fact that we're saying, no, this wasn't even a concerning reaction and we can go straight to second dose right away.

MG: It starts with the family. It starts with the family doctor in many ways,

MARIAM HANNAH: absolutely it does. And we are actually putting a lot of strain on our family doctors at this time because they're needed to decipher between, you know, who do I prefer versus who do I go ahead and give their second dose safely. So our medical system has already been under a lot of strain. But as this deadline kind of looms closer with these vaccine passports and for various workplaces, we are putting that final push to say, you know, who merits a referral, who can be safely vaccinated and on others referring allergist or is receiving allergist. Sorry, we need to decipher quickly between who do we test further, who gets a medical exemption versus who can go on to get safely vaccinated.

MG: Dr. Hannah, great to speak with you. Thank you very much.

MARIAM HANNAH: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Mariam Hannah, the Ontario Medical Association chair for Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The challenge around vaccine mandates in many ways is finding the most ethical way of making sure that people stay safe and stay healthy. Maxwell Smith is a bioethicist and assistant professor at Western University. Good morning to you. Good morning. What are you trying to balance when you consider the ethics when it comes to vaccine passports and exemptions from vaccines?

MAXWELL SMITH: Well, I think on the one hand, we certainly don't want to run roughshod over people strongly and sincerely held beliefs. But on the other exemptions, the vaccine mandates and passports tend to simply defeat their purpose. The more exemptions we have, the less effective they are. And so we want to make sure that we are respecting people's strong and sincere, sincerely held beliefs, but that we're really using those exemptions sparingly as we have

MG: people come at this from from all sorts of different perspectives. One can be that, you know, there's something within religious text that they believe would allow them to not get the shot. We heard from Cheryl Paul saying that when it comes to the Mennonite background, that there's nothing there, that there's nothing within the texts that would allow people an exemption. So if people feel that they might want to not want to get the shot, but the religious leaders say they can. How do you how do you square that?

MAXWELL SMITH: Well, you know, it just comes down to this question of what constitutes a sincere religious or religious belief or conscientious objection. And and we really don't have a good test of that. And so a lot of the time, this actually comes down to the reasons that are supplied to sort of support that belief or objection that's being provided along with that request. And if someone says, I don't believe in vaccination because it's against my religion, I think we need a little bit more than that. Because as we as we heard from Cheryl, there are really no religions and faith leaders who will say that vaccination goes against religion and in fact, many encourage it. And, you know, those that might try to point to religion may tend to bungle the arguments and the facts about why this might actually go against their beliefs. So I think we do need to actually explore the reasoning that that's applied for this exemption.

MG: You use the phrase conscientious objection. How does that fit into a pandemic?

MAXWELL SMITH: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing there is that people can have an objection that need not necessarily be grounded in religion and religious beliefs, but you may have strongly held beliefs that that are based on conscience and there even in murkier territory than we are with with these religious objections, because at least with the religious objections, we can point to dogma or doctrine and the views of religious leaders with conscience that comes down to a strong, strongly and sincerely held personal beliefs. And it's very hard to adjudicate whether that, in fact holds any water. And so, again, this comes down to an interrogation of the reasons that people provide and then really a conversation about whether those sorts of objections ought to be seen as legitimate in the context of a threat like this.

MG: And what about people's individual rights? People will point to the charter, perhaps human rights codes and say that that somehow protects them from a vaccine mandate or a vaccine passport. Where does how does that come into play here

MAXWELL SMITH: that we cannot and in fact, do not grant absolute priority to religious freedom in Canada such that it will always trump other important values, like protecting the public health from a pandemic virus? If your religious beliefs lead to behaviours or actions that harm others, then it's ethically concerning and there ought to be mechanisms and policies to restrict those behaviours or actions. And this is true in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well in Section 2A of the Charter. This protects freedom of conscience and religion as a fundamental freedom in Canada. But Section one of the charter creates a balance between the rights of the individual and the interest of society by permitting limits to be placed on guaranteed rights and freedoms. So the charter recognises that rights are not absolute and can be limited if necessary to achieve an important objective and if the limit is appropriately tailored for proportionate share.

MG: Polls are suggesting that part of this is about conversation and that you need to have conversations with people who have objections. I mean, this is playing out. I don't want to get too deep into this, but is playing it at your own school where one of your fellow professors is questioning the ethics of vaccine mandates. Is it incumbent upon those who are bringing those mandates forward to to sit down with people who have concerns and walk them through those concerns? Or is the time for I mean, you know, we're into a fourth wave. Now is the time for those discussions over and done with?

MAXWELL SMITH: No, I still I still think there's time and opportunity to do that. I think it's the right thing. And I think that by doing that, that's how we actually foster the trust that's necessary to get people to do the things that are important to protect other people's health. If we don't take those concerns seriously or sort of just push them to one side, you might further entrench that mistrust or the misinformation or whatever it might be. And so I think it's pretty attractive for many of us to say, well, people who won't get vaccinated now, let's let's not worry about them because they believe in conspiracy theories like microchips. But of course, that's not the entire population that we're talking about here. And I'm sure I mentioned at the top of the show, some populations have a history of marginalisation and oppression and have good reason to be distrustful of governments and medical establishment. And if we don't want to entrench that mistrust even further, having these conversations is the right move to get them on board and at least see how we can work collectively to end this pandemic.

MG: and get to that common goal. That's right. And you believe that that's possible?

MAXWELL SMITH: I think, you know, it's going to be a tough battle, and we know from survey data that there's just simply some portion of our population who is staunchly opposed to vaccination and believe in certain things that that will never change their minds. But there is a significant amount of people who would simply need more information or they need to have those conversations either with their family physician, with their faith leader or another community leader that could really just tip the scale and cause them to get the shot.

MG: Maxwell, good to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you. Maxwell Smith is a bioethicist and assistant professor at Western University and he was in London, Ontario. It's time for the CBC News. And then we're not doing a good enough job to support our seniors and our loved ones.

MARIAM HANNAH: Seniors in long term care have borne the brunt of this pandemic and national shame.

MG: All provinces are going to be going through how they need to address long term care. Ottawa needs to be a partner still with health care cracks. And Canada's long term care system were laid bare during last year and a half of this pandemic. What are the politicians who want to lead this country? What are they promising to do about it? We'll find out coming up in about six minutes time. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Fixing long-term care after the pandemic; how did federal party leaders fare in French-language debate

Guests: Dr. Bob Bell, Dr. Quac Dinh Nguyen, Laura Tamblyn

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

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MG: Still to come, less than two weeks to go before Election Day, and if you haven't made up your mind yet. Well, that's what debates are for. The official French language debate was held last night. The debate in English is tonight. We'll break down what was said, en Frencais, coming up. But first, we assess what the major parties are saying about fixing long term care in this country.

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MG: Let's go back to the early days of this pandemic, covid-19 was still new, scientists didn't know all that much about the virus, the public even less. What we did know, though, was that it was stalking our seniors. The elderly were dying in care homes with overworked staff sometimes left alone, sick in filthy conditions.

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31 people passed away within a month. We paid for my mother to go into a place that we trusted, trusted and put our our souls in our heart that they would take care of our loved ones. And that's not what happened here. This is not right that my mother should have to suffer the way she did.

MG: It was Barbara Schneider who told us in April of 20/20 how her mother, Mary, was left to suffer. Barbara still doesn't know the cause of her mother's death at Reseidence Herron in Montreal. An enquiry into what happened in that home and others is underway right now in Quebec. And now the issue of how to fix long term care in this country is an election issue. It was raised last night in the French language leaders debate. Laura Tamblyn Watts is CEO of Canada to National Seniors Advocacy Organisation. She's in Sanday Cove, Nova Scotia. Dr. Quoc Dinh Nguyen is an epidemiologist, a geriatrician and a researcher at University of Montreal Hospital Centre. He also led the province's task force regarding seniors during covid-19 during the first wave. And Dr. Bob Bell is a former deputy minister of health and long term care in Ontario and a former hospital CEO. Good morning to you all.

BOB BELL: Good morning.

QUOC DINH NGUYEN: Morning, Matt.

LAURA TAMBLYN: Morning.

MG: Dr. Nguyen. Before we get into the election campaign, a public enquiry into the covid-19 death toll in Quebec nursing homes is under way right now. We've spoken about what was happening in those homes over the course of the first and the second and perhaps the third wave as well. If you take a look at what we're learning so far, what kind of picture is emerging about what went wrong at places like Herron?

QUOC DINH NGUYEN: A lot of things, right, but if we tried it. Give a few major points. I think the first is that the attention that we have on older adults and long term care being one and the end of the spectrum of older adults is not very high up in the priority. And when we were trying to prepare for this pandemic that we learnt pretty late about, we focussed especially on the hospitals. And it took us a lot of time to realise how serious the situation was in nursing home with regards to older adults and short shortages of staff and sort of resources like testing. It took us a lot of time to shift at least, and to make it especially from hospital priority to long term care priority. And the other reason really important in that the data was just not there. We didn't have good granular data about people in long term care and those vulnerable to shift our perspective and shift our planning. And what we see at all is just actually one of the many long term care facilities that had difficulties with facing a pandemic and facing an infection, where usually these are not places where people get medical care, high level medical care.

MG: So, Laura Tamblyn, what's we're now in the fourth wave. And given what Dr. Newman is talking about in terms of a slow understanding, perhaps, of how devastating this could be in long term care homes, and then if you take a look at the toll that the pandemic took on the residents of those homes, not only in Quebec but right across this country, is your sense that party leaders are giving this issue the attention that you would expect in the midst of a federal election?

LAURA TAMBLYN: No, and We have wrestled with the devastation, in fact, the senicide of older people in long-term care and party promises to fix it. But if you actually are analysing both the party promises and their platform and the level of discourse, long-term care and seniors care more broadly is a footnote, not a central point to the election.

MG: Why do you think that is? You the phrase the word sennoside. That's a really powerful word to use.

LAURA TAMBLYN: If you look at how Canada made its decisions and province by province, we saw decisions being made constantly to prioritise other people and to lock up residents in long term care and not provide the type of supports that they need. When we knew it was coming, we knew that it was going to be arriving in Canada and we did not take the precautions. And then 18 months later, we still really haven't fixed the scenario. It is a sennoside. We performed the worst in comparative countries because of it. But when we're thinking about the why of it, we know that older people are the largest voting bloc in the country. But 80 percent of all seniors vote in every election. But what we also know is that it's a fleeting promise and we have decades of promises to fix seniors care. But as soon as an election is held, those are muted to younger people. Fundamentally, this is an issue of ageism.

MG: Dr. Bell, from your perspective, what are you seeing? The virus killed 3799 long term care residents in Ontario. In Quebec, over 4900 people died in long term care because of covid-19. Are you hearing enough in this campaign about how to fix long term care, how to actually fix it?

BOB BELL: Matt, I think the first thing to say is that what occurred to residents and families in Canadian nursing homes, clearly a tragedy and Canadians owe it to these people. To undertake a careful analysis, what really needs to be a new senior care strategy for the country, not just a good political response, some of which could make things worse. You know, if we look at the experience in Ontario and Quebec, I agree with Dr. Nguyen and the many of the teachers he described were also operated in Ontario. But certainly the most important thing that comes out of any analysis is the impact that overcrowding has on spreading the virus between people who are literally sharing the same air in rooms that, you know, that looked after three to four residents. And when we look at the necessity to improve, I'm going to talk about Ontario's case. Now, this case, I know. We need 32000 beds redeveloped, 32000 beds and homes that are 50 years or more old, as well as creating spaces for 38000 people on the wait list, that 70,000 new beds that cost roughly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a bed. That's 25 billion dollars in Ontario alone, just to fix the problems that exist today. And when we look at the party platforms that maybe offer up to nine billion dollars for the entire country for infrastructure redevelopment, that doesn't come close to looking at the problems that exist today, let alone the fact that this population is increasing at four percent per year across Canada today.

MG: Laura Tamblyn, what's I mean, just briefly, what are the biggest differences you see in the party platform, Liberal Conservative NDP, when it comes to long term care and how to tackle what we've just laid out as the issues?

LAURA TAMBLYN: So the liberals have taken a very quiet approach, and I absolutely agree with Dr. Bell, there are modest amounts of money which would tinker with the system but not actually make a substantive change. The NDP have taken a holistic view, but it's also quite ideological and probably not very practical. They're looking to move towards all not for profit and change the Canada Health Act. Again, that is not going to make situations happen quickly enough to address the systems that we have in the country. And then the conservatives have a very sort of specific approach. They're talking a lot about leaving this to the provinces and being sort of a modest funder. The only one that's actually addressing it in great depth is actually the Green Party. And I don't think that that's going to be the thing that sways this election. So we're seeing the political parties each spout words about seniors care, but not a single one of them is demonstrating the kind of transformative change that we need, for that matter, that we needed 15 years ago, let alone that we're going to need now.

MG: There was a lot of talk over the course of the first couple of waves of covid-19, certainly. And it continues now, Dr. Nguyen, around the idea of national standards for long term care. This is something the Liberals, with an election now happening, have promised the conservatives and the bloc Abakua oppose the idea of a national standard. What would that mean if there was a national standard that said this is the ground level of care that needs to be offered at homes? What would that mean for patient care?

QUOC DINH NGUYEN: So it's actually right. It's a question that has many levels to it. But I would say so first is, of course, the standard of care in nursing home is not up to par to what I think most people would expect. If you compare and I usually do comparisons between hospitals and long term care just to show how discrepant things are and the amount of personnel staff we have, the amount of resources for the level of care that people need in nursing homes is not concordant with the level of resources we give them. And I think we need to realise is that people have become sicker in nursing and nursing homes because we've not actually increased the number of vets. But people are getting sicker because the population is bigger. So does that actually end up in nursing homes are sicker? I think so. Having a bare minimum level of standard I think is important that it needs to come from the federal level, the provincial level. I think there needs to be an increase. I don't without going into the political way of doing it. I do think the level of care and standards need to be raised and the quality assessment needs to be much more rigorous. We tend to focus on[unintelligible] when we check how hospitals are doing and health care systems are doing, we look at the hospital rather than also include home care and nursing homes. I would just add also just to what has been said already that the issue we're talking about is long lasting. It's been decades that we've been talking about population ageing and what we hear party proposing here is not foundational, is not structural enough. It's always let's fix like five percent, 10 percent. But the issue here is much larger. I think we have to understand it as a challenge of the level of climate change, in terms of complexity, in terms of scope, in terms of things we need to do. It's not a like one or two policy. Things will make it work. So I think changes I would I would like to hear about is maybe funding based on age. Let's transfer help. Health care transfer being based on age rather than five percent or 10 percent would allow us to plan better in advance. And another other ideas to include some part of long term care, home care in the Canadian Health Act. Those are things that would make a tremendous difference, that would actually give everyone the power to create programmes that would actually fix long term care and home care.

MG: Dr. Bob Bell, does that take the jurisdictional wrangling out of it? If you include long term care in the Canada Health Act? If you watch the French language debate last night, leaders are tripping over themselves to say that they would respect jurisdictional boundaries. But they also said that what happened in long term care is, you know, a reckoning, something that needs to be dealt with. So if you take if you put it into the Canada Health Act, would that then ease the concerns of some provincial leaders that the federal government is stepping on their toes

BOB BELL: on that rather than giving it to federal provincial relationships, which always make this way more complicated than it needs to be. I want to applaud the union for his mention of home care. If you look at a recent survey commissioned by the National Institute on Ageing, 96 percent of Canadians over 65 would do everything they can to avoid moving into a nursing home, and certainly with the experience during the pandemic, you can understand why home care is the forgotten stepson's stepdaughter Canadian health care. It's a last step in health care planning. We need to keep seniors independent at home by providing home care resources, which is not only what seniors want in this country. It's also extremely cost effective when you compare it to long term care expenditures. No question some seniors need to go to long term care with advanced dementia or other forms of frailty. But we spend no time focussing. And the the the federal platforms have not focussed on the requirement to expand, modernise and innovate with home care. And there's huge opportunity to reduce the need for long term care by looking at a senior strategy that focuses first on how we provide home care, as other Nordic countries have done in avoiding the need to make this massive investment, 24 billion dollars in Ontario alone today just to fix the problems that exist right now in long term care.

MG: Well, I want to get back to the home care, but if you might indulge me when it comes to the jurisdictional regard, because this is important in some ways it is complicated because you would know this as a deputy minister in Ontario, what is the role that the federal government could play or should play in long term care when health care is a provincial responsibility and those provincial and territorial leaders will shout loudly, reminding the federal government of that?

BOB BELL: Well, that the reason why I chuckle is this is a recurrent theme in Canadian health care, whether it relates to pharmacare or whether it relates to long term care, primary care, etc.. The governing party to the Liberal Party likes to say we will put dollars out there as they've done, for example, in day-care and other social programmes. But you need to follow the standards to get those incremental dollars. Well, in the case of long term care. The incremental dollars being offered by the liberals, the party that does this most frequently are tiny. I mean, nine billion dollars over 10 years as opposed to the twenty four billion dollars right now. So I have sympathy for the provincial governments which say we're happy to follow your standards. And I think the recruitment of experts like Dr. Samir Sinnott, for example, to look at standards for long term care that the government has undertaken is an excellent idea. But if you're going to do that, you have to talk about, first of all, sufficient money to make putting standards in place rational. The second thing you have to look at is the system of health transfers that exist in this country, which only require the federal government to a fund about 25 cents on every Canadian health care dollar spent by the provinces. So as you can hear, the provincial health care person, I have some sympathy for the concept that if you're going to try and dictate standards, you have to come up with the kind of funding that meets that requirement.

MG: Laura Tamplyn, what do you think that those who have been watching this horror unfold in long term care, do they care about jurisdictional boundaries?

LAURA TAMBLYN: You know, I am a lawyer, so jurisdictional boundaries are something that really interests me. But in when the geeks created this country, we didn't create it with finger pointing in mind. This is a problem that the whole of Canada is experiencing and it needs a whole of Canada solution we're advocating for. It can be just a dedicated seniors care transfer separate from the health transfer, which can be negotiated with the provinces to meet their needs and can be used for things like long term care and home care, which I absolutely agree is one of the most important pieces that we can do. We understand that there is challenges jurisdictionally, but provinces can't do it alone and the federal government needs to lean in with a real response and real dollars. Otherwise Canadians will continue to suffer.

MG: Dr. Nguyen, you led, as I mentioned, to the task force in Quebec around seniors during the first wave of covid-19. What was learnt and what has actually changed in the wake of that task force? We're now into a fourth wave.

BOB BELL: So the two I think the most important things that that we've learnt, at least in Quebec, is destroyed a lot of stuff. So, again, a longstanding issue, but the government was courageous enough to say that we were missing many elderly people who had been injured and then trained them and actually have them present in long term care, thus reducing the amount of mobility and mobility, bringing infection in different centres. Right. So that's one major point. The idea of people we can't fix nursing homes just with money. We have to have the money to train and to increase the number of staff that we have on premise.

MG: And to pay people more so that they want to work in that field.

QUOC DINH NGUYEN: And that's absolutely and there's all this whole idea, especially in Quebec, of using people from agencies that move about the mobility of personnel. And does that work directly for the government versus work for an agency that the government employes. The second point I have to go back to this is data. You can manage a cluster of infection, a small one, if there's one or two nursing homes without any good kind of data. But in the pandemic, when your eyes and yours are everywhere, you absolutely cannot. And the only way I think in addition to all this, we've said already to significantly improve our health care system is to have better data specific to older adults because an older adult does not, is not, cannot be defined only by the typical measures like heart, heart, heart failure or comorbidities or chronic conditions. It's much more about social support, it's more about functional impairment. And all of that needs to be accounted for. And we need to understand and be able to quantify the trajectory of anyone going from 65 up to that, be they at home in a nursing home at the hospital, and only then with better data in an acute setting in a pandemic, but also in for the next 25 years, only with good data will be able to make the best decision. So I think staff shortage and fixing that and then have data to kind of plan correctly would be the two major points.

MG: Bob Bell, you mentioned home care. The data would show that people want to live at home as long as possible. Why aren't we talking more about that?

BOB BELL: Well, I think part of it is simply the tragedy that's occurred during the pandemic. I agree that what's happened to seniors and their families during a pandemic makes this top of mind for Canadians, no question. But to me that this is the fundamental challenge of publicly funded Canadian health care. If we can't figure out a better way for seniors to thrive in this country at a more cost effective level than we have today, you know, a long term care for only 80000 Ontarians currently costs six billion dollars in this province, which is close to 10 percent of the entire health care budget. And if we see this population going up to four percent per year, we need to consider what seniors want, which is not to go into institutions. We need to recognise the staff working in institutions need to be paid better. Their working conditions the better. But we need to look at what's happening in the Netherlands, what's happening in Nordic countries, where the focus is on independent seniors living and ageing at home rather than ageing institutions. And if we can't get this right, it's going to be very difficult for us to afford all the other health care services that Canadians need and want because this massively expanding population of Canadians going forward.

MG: Laura Tamblyn, what's during the course of this pandemic? We have repeatedly referred to what was happening in long term care homes as a reckoning when it comes to how this society treats and take care. It takes care of its seniors. And there were all sorts of promises that were made. We're going to hire new staff. We're going to have better ventilation. We're going to install more air conditioning. How much of that has actually happened? And do you think that we are treating this as the reckoning that we said it was?

LAURA TAMBLYN: I think that there is right now a dissonance between what the Canadian population is wanting, which is transformative care, which is to implement the very well known solutions that Dr. Bell and Dr. Nuland are talking about and what politicians think are the issues and this platform analysis that we've done it carnage really shows that difference. I think fundamentally the reckoning is going to happen at the ballot box. People are angry. They're incensed, they're worried. They're concerned about themselves and their loved ones. And if we actually don't come up with a plan of care, again, the answers are extremely well known. If the impetus is not to move forward, I think we're going to see governments fall.

MG: Dr. Nguyen, is it is it that stark that people are ahead of the governments and that they will hold the governments to account if they don't respond to what we have all seen over the course of the last 18 months?

BOB BELL: I think part of it is true, I think that the greater challenge here is, yes, the pandemic was a reckoning, I think, but things that caused the pandemic to be a reckoning were already there and will still be there if we don't do structural changes. And the challenge here, I think from a politics and actually media and societal perspective is that this is although it is a huge change, change population ageing. I mean, it's not something that occurs from an extremely rapidly and acute way. It's progressive. It's extremely strong, but progressive, again, like climate change. We're not going to see one day, like we're not going to realise in a single day. We wake up tomorrow morning and oh, my God, the earth is two degrees warmer. It's taking course over the course of a few decades. It's the same with population ageing. And because we have a short attention span, we tend to forget how things were before and we tend to not act when the change is progressive. And I think that is one major cognitive psychological bias that makes it really hard for people to enact profound changes that need to be done.

MG: I'm grateful to have the chance to speak with all three of you, and I think we'll come back to this certainly, if not during the election campaign and then after the issue is not going anywhere. Thank you very much.

BOB BELL: Thanks, Matt.

BOB BELL: Take care.

MG: Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of National Seniors Advocacy Organisation. Dr. Quac Dinh Nguyen is a geriatrician, epidemiologist, researcher as well at the University of Montreal's Hospital Centre, Dr. Bob Bell, former deputy minister of health and long term care in Ontario. He's also a former hospital CEO. Your thoughts. Welcome on this. When you think about long term care in this country and an ageing population, what could we do to better serve that population and fix long term care? Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your regional update is next, and then we'll take a look at what was said last night in the French language debate. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Stay with us.

Remembering the kindness of Gander, N.L., 20 years after 9/11

Guests: Emilie Nicolas, Michel C Auger, Anthony Germain

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current

[sc]

[Party leaders debating in French]

MG: Some voters heard last night as the five main party leaders went head to head to head to head to head in the second French language debate of this election. That was from one of the more heated sections on climate change. And Francophone voters, of course, especially in Quebec, are poised to play a key role in determining who forms government after the 20th of September and whether that government is a minority or a majority. Joining me now are two of the top political minds in La Belle province. Michel C Auger is a political columnist with La Presse and a commentator on Rajia Canada. Emilie Nicolas is a columnist with the Devoir and the Montreal Gazette. Good morning to you both.

MICHEL C AUGER: Good morning.

EMILIE NICOLAS: Hi.

MG: Emilie, what did you make of the debate last night?

EMILIE NICOLAS: It was an interesting exercise, there were not a lot of surprises in terms of I think in terms of how how it unfolded, the ones you saw there was actually an import because she had not been there during the CPI debate. It was her first debate. So we all got to know her a little better. And she she actually, I think, did a fair job. I'd say the one woman is probably going to stick with the imagination for the long term, is Justin Trudeau getting angry at Yves Francois Blanchet or, you know, him implying that he's not Quebeqois, so Justin Trudeau, you know, asserting that that these cultural notions of having monopoly over the Quebeqois, I think is something bad. Well I don't know if it was going to change people's vote, but it's definitely going to be a matter of conversation today.

MG: Ask and you shall receive. Let's have a listen to that moment.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: He imposes things on the indigenous people. So why is he doing the same thing to come back?

VOICE 2: Because I am a Quebecer.

VOICE 1: That still doesn't give you the right to impose. So you keep forgetting I'm a Quebecer. I'm a proud Quebecer. I've always been a girl. I will always be a comeback and I will always have a say in what happens in Quebec. You do not have a monopoly over Quebec.

MG: Michel C Auger, what did you make of that? That was an interesting moment towards the end of the debate.

MICHEL C AUGER: Yeah, that's back to the future, though, we've heard that from Mr. Trudeau's father, we know that that was a big part of the 1988 referendum debate when Mr. Trudeau, the father, was accused by [unintelligible] then of being more Elliot than Trudeau. And then we got into exactly the same kind of exchange. So this is good for the noise level, but it's not very productive in terms of policy.

MG: What did it say to you, and I ask you both this, about what's at stake in this debate? I mean, Yves Francois Blanchet, in some ways, his appeal to Quebecers is the rationale for voting for his party. And Justin Trudeau and the other leaders on stage had to work to try to figure out how to appeal to a community that the Bloc Quebecois sees as our community. So what was at stake, do you think, Michelle C Auger, in this debate for the leaders?

MICHEL C AUGER: Well, the fact that the Bloc Quebecois is sort of an anomaly in federal politics is well established now. It's a party that will never take power. And and but it's still on on the map for a very good reason. It's first of all, there is sovereigntist vote. It's not very strong right now. It was 17 percent of the vote in the last provincial election. But they get that vote. And there are a number of Quebecers who don't feel very good with either Mr. Trudeau's personality or the Liberal Party or and reject the Tories. So that's the nice place to go to, to cast your vote is the Bloc, because why doesn't it doesn't cost a lot. A lot and you feel you have a representative or not.

MG: Well, Emilie Nicolas, in saying I'm a Quebecer and I'll always be a Quebecer, did Justin Trudeau, in some ways, make an effort and break through in trying to appeal to voters in the province that he needs to, if not, stay in power than try to form a majority.

MICHEL C AUGER: Yeah, I think he did a lot, made a lot of appeals to voters. I'm not sure that's the part of the debate where he did that the most. I think it was more striking when he was battling with Erin O'Toole, who started himself with the, you know, the cost to discuss the platform. You knew right before the debate that he was going to have a rough night. Why? Because he basically doubled down on his idea of cancelling the agreement between Trudeau and [unintelligible] on child care, which means that a lot of women who are anxious to get additional spots in the system, that are perhaps not going back to working because they cannot find a spot in the child care programme, those women would be left behind. And so this is something that Trudeau said in the debate. The second thing was the how much of the gun control debate that is not over yet. And so that was also something that the debate touched upon it as well. And so there was a lot of there that basically the NRA was playing defence in terms of trying to justify that he understands what the needs are in the province. And so he was doing a lot better than the polls said actually at the beginning of the campaign, causing quite a surprise. I don't know if after the two debates that he's had that he's been stumbling over the question of childcare, question of gun control is taking more precedence as well. I'm not sure if if, you know, the kind of rise that he was saying is going to materialise into even more of a rise in the next couple of days. But we'll wait and see.

MG: You mentioned that exchange between Justin Trudeau and Erin O'Toole, particularly around the issue of gun control, but there's more to it as well. Let's take a listen to that.

SOUNDCLIP

[Trudeau and O'Toole debating in French]

MG: Michel, sum up just briefly. What's going on in that exchange and what you read into it.

MICHEL C AUGER: Well, basically, Justin Trudeau had to to paint Mr. O'Toole as as the villain on a number of issues that are important in Quebec, that is child care, that is climate change, that is gun control. And and the answer Mr. O'Toole always has is pro-choice. Well, OK, that's fine. Check pro-choice. But there are other issues that are very important. Also, it's not the only one. And it's Mr. O'Toole seems to think that in the last campaign, Andrew Scheer got defeated strictly on the question of abortion and believes that everybody will forget that this is a conservative party because he says he's pro-choice. Well, no. I wrote this morning that the debate was finished before it started and the media said the same thing a few seconds ago. From the moment we got the cost and platform of the Tories saying we're we're reneging on an agreement that was signed between two between the premier and the prime minister in six provinces. And I'm not going to have a national childcare policy for a lot of people in Quebec that sort of closes the window for for or for the Tories. The Tories have in the polls actually about 20 percent of the vote in Quebec right now, but that is very concentrated in the ridings they already have in the Quebec City area, which is their stronghold in the province. But they have only one seat in the rest of the province and it's probably going to stay that way.

MG: Emilie, you think that it's that devastating for the conservatives in releasing that platform, which would, to Michelle's point, cancel that national child care programme, which was based in many ways on the Quebec idea?

MICHEL C AUGER: Yes. The other thing that's actually a bit of an issue, but this way and the cost of from the conservatives, as is the health care transfer, when you look at the into the details, it's basically said that the chunk of the money that they agreed to transfer would come if the conservative would be re-elected for a second or third term. And so it's not even if you elect the conservatives now that the money would actually be transferred to the provinces. So if going to actually read that and make the point for comment about that, this is also something that could, you know, his old rhetoric about respecting, you know, Quebec and we have a contract with sandbaggers and all of that. I think it could fall through if he decided that he's not satisfied with what conservatives have promises, because earlier, before the cost of platform to [unintelligible], you know, small print immerge level was actually quite satisfied with what the conservatives had to say about how transfers was just an issue that he feels really strongly about.

MG: Last minute or so. Michel, what about the NDP Jadmeet Singh trying to bring that party back from a strong defeat in the last election, mentioned Jack Layton a couple of times in the debate. Does the NDP have a shot at regaining some seats in Quebec?

MICHEL C AUGER: Oh, they might double their membership to have it. They could get second seat in Quebec with the liberals who does well in Canada. But that's about it. Mr. Singh Didn't didn't campaign in Quebec for real, he's there and he's limited in his ability to debate during a French debate by his language skills. You can see he can answer a question, but it's very basic. But when it comes time to debate and to be quick on your feet and all that, he's not quite there. And that's really a problem for him.

MG: We will watch and see how this all plays out, minus Maori bullshit at the English language debate this evening. In the meantime, thank you both. Great to have you on the programme.

MICHEL C AUGER: Thank you so much,

MG: Michel C Auger, political columnist, La Presse, and Radio, Canada. Emilie Nicolas, political columnist at Le Devar and the Montreal Gazette. Tonight, yes, the leaders are back to debate in English. You can watch on CBC Television and CBC Gem, listen on CBC Radio. It all starts at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. And tomorrow on The Current, our panel of political veterans Lisa Raitt, Catherine McKenna and Libby Davies will be here with insight and analysis. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio one. My name is Matt Galloway. Next, to Gander, Newfoundland, to remember 9/11.

SOUNDCLIP

It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. There wasn't hardly anything parked on the apron. It was just a normal, nice fall. September day. As a matter of fact, I remember it was a nice day because I drove a motorcycle to work with the idea that I might be able to sneak off early and go for a bit of a ride. But that didn't happen.

MG: That day was September 11th, 2001. Bruce Terris was the supervisor in the air traffic control tower at Gander International Airport, Newfoundland and Labrador. Right after the terrorist attacks rocked carnage in the United States, all air traffic was grounded. Flights had to land as soon as they could. And that airport and that community welcomed thousands of international travellers. Leading up to the 20th anniversary of that day, CBC television journalist and anchor Anthony Germain spoke with people who were part of that history. And he joins us now with their story is Anthony. Good morning. Morning, Matt. I could imagine that 9/11 is still I mean, 20 years is 20 years, but 9/11 would be a very vivid memory for Bruce.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yeah, it sure is. And I guess as we approach this 20th year, since everything happened for those of us and I think that includes you and me. Yes. People born a certain time. I think we all know exactly where we were when it happened. Previous generations had Pearl Harbour or maybe the Kennedy assassination. But for many of us, 9/11 was it. And in Ghandour, it would become memorable for the sheer number of flights and the volume of people, more than 6000 people who would land here 20 years ago. And for Bruce Terris, there's one historic element that stays with him. And that was for the first time in the history of the United States. They shut down their airspace, their entire airspace, grounded all their flights, as you mentioned, and a candidate soon followed.

MG: What does he remember most about that day?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: He seems to remember almost every single minute of it from the time that his morning coffee was being interrupted to watching on TV. When the second plane hit the tower to the sequence of phone calls, he got bombarded with phone calls and knowing almost immediately that it was going to become very hectic at the airport, but that he was remarkably calm talking about how the day went. I guess that's a feature of air traffic controllers. But he did say that they had prepared for some kind of scenario before Y2K. Remember that, Matt? That that fear that all the computers are going to crash at the end of the millennium, as indeed, he pointed out that they had to prepare for Y2K. So they'd actually practised landing a huge number of aircraft blind, as they say. So there was one good thing in prep for all this. And yet, despite the preparation and all the tense situation, the chaos 20 years ago, this is what still sticks the most in Bruce's mind.

SOUNDCLIP

BRUCE TERRIS: The strongest memory I have of it is walking outside that night that it was the night of 9/11 and there was all these aircraft parked here and it was just so completely quiet. It was just there was no aircraft overhead. There was no engines running, and it was just completely quiet.

MG: It's really eerie when you think of it.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: And I remember that, too. It was so quiet. No planes in the sky. Maybe you remember that. No plumes. But that didn't mean that everything was calm. In Gander, everybody mobilised. And you had, as I said, you know, more than 6000 people from 95 countries. And all of a sudden they're merging with a town that has fewer than 10000 people. So the logistics were enormous. The food, the water, the moving of people, feeding people of different religions and dietary restrictions and all those different cultures, where to put people up at night. Here's Bruce Terris again.

SOUNDCLIP

BRUCE TERRIS: I don't think what went on here would have happened anywhere else in the world. Every community group that was asked to help, helped. Every surrounding community that was asked to help, helped. And it makes you proud to hear of the way that that was done from an air traffic control point of view, let in 38 aircraft ins over the space of an hour and a half or whatever it was, is really not technically that difficult, especially when there's no departures. It was just the fact that once we get all these aircraft on the ground now, what do we do with all the people. And some of the things that happened that day were like- at the time school bus drivers, for example, were all on strike. So everybody was concerned because how do you move 6000 people if you don't have buses? And at one point I remember getting a phone call in the tower from the airport authority's office saying, like, what are we going to do for buses? And I said, I don't know what you mean. There's buses lined up on the road coming down to the airport as far back as you can see, the bus drivers and immediately realised that they were going to be needed up here. And because of that, they left the picket line, got their school buses and come up here and lined up waiting to start transporting passengers.

MG: I think for many Canadians, I mean, that's really the story that so many of us remember, that this this community in this town stepped up in this way. That was remarkable. That was unbelievable in some aspects to house and feed and take care of the thousands of people who came from all over the world.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: You know, exactly. It was this response at a time of crisis. And, you know, other places did take aircraft. But in a small town where the population more than doubled in the space of three or four hours, it was unique. And now, even 20 years later, that legacy is celebrated and in some places, perhaps that many listeners wouldn't expect, for instance, in a couple of classrooms in Texas.

MG: Oh.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yeah, I spoke to two teachers there. They teach grade six and seven, and many of their students are immigrants to the United States. And when they teach about the horror of what happened on 9/11, they also talk to their students about the good that happened in Gander. So they have a project where the students write letters to the people of Gander to thank them for their kindness. So here they are. This is Madison Hughes and Megan Krewe's.

SOUNDCLIP

MADISON: From this project, I think what was most important for our students to learn was, you know, everybody is different. And when there are hard times in your life, you can't let those differences define you. You need to come together and help those people, show a lot of compassion, show a lot of kindness.

MEGAN: I think these students, they really put themselves in the shoes of the plane people. A lot of my kids remember that first day on American soil when they, too, were dropped in a place where they couldn't speak the language. They know that feeling. And so they really pour their hearts out with these letters because it's almost like the kids were there and they know how it feels to be welcomed.

MG: That's really something. That's Madison Hughes and Megan Krewe's to teachers in Texas.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: And Matt, they also say that that lesson of kindness, you know, starts in September, the start of the school year, that it permeates the classroom culture for the entire year, and that when conflicts arise, as they're bound to do, especially in those grades, the kids will say, what would the people in Gander do?

MG: Where did the idea for this come from? I mean, these are kids that weren't even alive when 9/11 happened. They've embraced the Gander story. But for the teachers, where where did the idea to make this part of their course come from?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: It turns out that Madison loves musicals and she was enthralled when she saw come from away.

MG: I was surprised we talked this long about Gander and we have not spoken. You know, who'd come from away?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the show really has immortalised the role of Gander still running, although it was interrupted considerably by the pandemic. And just a few months before covid broke out mad, I went to New York with members of my Newfoundland family. And here I am, this crusty ageing journalist. I have pretty low expectations. I was afraid to be hokey and predictable, but there is definitely a reason why it's still on Broadway. It's actually quite charming, makes you laugh, it makes you cry. And I think that combination of feelings and emotions is what inspired both Madison and Megan to make it a core part of how they teach 911 to their students. And for those who aren't familiar with Come from Away, there's a love story in the play in the musical about a man and a woman based on a real story who met when their plane was forced to land in Gander. And I had a chance to talk to the couple, the real life inspiration for these characters on stage. So he was an oil industry worker heading to Houston from the UK and she was heading home to Texas after visiting her son in England. And they spent about 24 hours on the plane on the tarmac without meeting. But then when they were finally released and put up in the same shelter in a nearby town called Gambo, not too far from Gander, there they were. And in the five days they were there, they fell in love. And Diane and Nick Marzin are still 20 years later, happily married in Texas.

MG: The kind of romantic story that could touch the heart of an ageing, what did you say, crusty journalist? Especially given that they found themselves with each other during what's a really difficult time.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Yeah, and I think here's where the interesting complexity to their story is that they actually told me that they felt really quite guilty about this, about finding happiness when so many people had lost their loved ones and they were grieving that they didn't talk about their story for years.

MG: I could imagine. I mean, that's really understandable when you think about it. But the story is out there now. So what did they tell you about how they hit it off?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: All right, Matt. So it all started, as love often does with a walk together, and I'll just let them pick up the story.

SOUNDCLIP

NICK: And so I was looking around somewhere to put my blanket. And I looked around as this lady sitting on a bed on her own, or a cot. And I looked around and I thought. Well, she looks pretty interesting. So I just went over, said, is it alright if I laid down here? She went, Sure.

DIANE: Well, there were 60 or 70 of these army stretchers that we were going to be sleeping on. And what else can I say? I mean...

NICK: Over the course of those few days, it grew slowly, but we've been taking care of, having fed us and giving us somewhere to sleep, those wonderful Newfoundlanders started entertaining us and there was a screech in ceremony the one evening, and that's where had to be Diane had offered to marry me.

DIANE: Well, the marriage ceremony thought we were married because we've been sitting together and chatting and suc.

NICK: So, when he found out we weren't married, he said, well, I'm a justice of the [unintelligble] and would you like to be married? And Diane light-heartedly went, Well, why no, I not it. And I figured, well, you know, it might work.

DIANE: Well, we were in a place that was heaven. We were taken out of these troubled skies and we landed on an island in a town with so many wonderful people and they were doing everything they could. They brought food from their pantries, from their refrigerators to feed us those first couple of days. They sent lunches out to the plane while we were still on it, diapers for the babies, formula. They were just taking care of all of our earthly needs.

NICK: And he knew for those first two days there wasn't a kitchen in the island that was preparing food.

DIANE: Right. We were just like locusts that fell out of the sky and landed in their lap and they had to do something.

NICK: They embraced us.

DIANE: The love flowed from those people who were like angels taking care of us. And we were so close to them in a world that was so troubled, we had something wonderful to hold on to those people.

NICK: It was a long lasting friendship.

DIANE: Yes. Oh, yes.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: That's Diane and Nick Marzin. They were strangers until they landed in Gander on 9/11.

MG: Do hear them picking up on each other's sentences. They're finishing each other's thoughts.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: I know they are so in sync. It's incredible. And the other thing is they've really stayed connected to the Newfoundlanders they met. They visit regularly. And you can really hear how grateful they still are for the care to welcome they received twenty years ago.

MG: Have they seen come from away?

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Get this, Matt. They have seen it 118 times.

MG: Excuse me.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Try to set a record. This is one of the touching things they said that they see. They say they feel the rush of falling in love all over again every time. And you think about, you know, in our business, crusty journalists or not, we do dwell on stories when they hit certain time milestones. So as we are all being exposed to some of the horrific images of what happened twenty years ago in New York and in Washington, as well as the current images from the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, which which started as a result of the decisions that were made because of 9/11. There was in all of this darkness 20 years ago, there was also a source of brightness, a source of caring and Gander and all the Canadian cities and towns that took an aircraft and passengers. That is an extremely important part of the 9/11 story.

MG: Anthony is wonderful. Thank you very much.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Always good to talk to you, Matt.

Saturday, Anthony Germain hosts a CBC News special Connecting Through Gander. It's happening in the airport's iconic international lounge. If you've never been, it is a beautiful, beautiful room. And that's all about the impacts 20 years on of hosting 6000 9/11 passengers. And the special airs at six o'clock Eastern, seven thirty in Newfoundland and Labrador. And tomorrow on The Current, we continue with our coverage of the impact of 9/11 and what followed with the next story in our special series, Afghanistan in the Shadow of the Taliban. That is The Current for this Thursday. Coming up next on CBC Radio one, it's Q Tom Power speaking with some country music royalty. Sam Williams, his grandfather, of course, Hank Williams, his father, Hank Williams Jr.. Sam didn't want to initially be in the family business, avoided becoming a musician for as long as he could. But it's in the blood. And eventually he had to follow along in the family business. He'll talk about his debut album and his family's rich musical legacy. That's coming up next on CBC Radio one. We can't end today's programme without playing a little bit from come from a way which Anthony Jermaine was just mentioning and the couple that saw 100 plus times. There are a lot of songs you could play from the musical, including Welcome to the Rock. We decided to go with this from the original Broadway cast. I Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. And this is Stop the World.

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Thursday September 9, 2021 Full Transcript

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