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The Current Transcript for November 16, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I had to stay behind closed doors for three and a half months, it was the most horrible experience and I'm deathly afraid that I may have to go through that again.

MATT GALLOWAY: Long-term care homes bore the brunt of COVID's first wave in Canada. As a second wave picks up intensity, is history repeating itself? And how is this happening given what happened just months ago? In 30 minutes, a look at what we didn't do and what we still can do to protect our elders. Also this morning, war, as historian Margaret MacMillan reminded us last week, may not be a day to day reality for many people in the West, but it is still a part of life for many around the world. In an hour, why conflict in Ethiopia has put that country on the brink of civil war and driven tens of thousands across the border into Sudan. Plus.

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[Clip of viral video of ballerina with Alzeheimer's listening to music from Swan Lake]

MG: Did you see that video that was circulating online, former ballerina flattened by Alzheimer's, suddenly brought back to her past glory when she hears a bit of the ballet Swan Lake? It was stirring and inspirational, but there is, as they say, more to the story. Stay tuned. We'll start though in the ICU, where the story there is getting increasingly tense. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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As COVID-19 surges in Canada, 'half-hearted' measures leave ICU staff with sense of 'dread': doctor

Guests: Darren Markland, Darlene Jackson, Ann Collins

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Fires are burning in so many different areas, and right now is the time to get those under control.

MG: A warning from Canada's chief public health officer, Dr Theresa Tam. Those fires are cases of COVID rising across the country. In Manitoba, on Saturday, a new single day record with 15 deaths. Alberta and Saskatchewan both reported record high numbers of cases as well on Saturday. So did Ontario, with almost 1600 new cases. That number dropped to just over 1200 yesterday and severe cases across the country are increasing. Over the past week there were, on average, every day more than 4500 people being treated in hospitals.

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VOICE: Some areas of Canada have seen that they now have to scale back on routine medical procedures because their hospital beds are getting full. There's much concern about ICU capacity. We have specialized medical resources, personnel, and they're getting exhausted as well.

MG: Dr. Darren Markland knows exactly what Dr Tam is talking about. He's an intensive care physician and a nephrologist at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. Doctor, good morning.

DARREN MARKLAND: Good morning.

MG: You're about to head into a shift at the ICU this morning. What do you think you'll be walking into?

DARREN MARKLAND: Well, after the weekend, I think we're going to have some very important meetings about what we're going to do to resource and staff our unit today and for this week.

MG: That's a big sigh, as you start to answer that question.

DARREN MARKLAND: Well, I think like most Canadians, we're all a little tired of this, but we also see what's coming. And there are shells in the air already. I mean, the first one hit because of Thanksgiving, and we're waiting for the next one to hit because of Halloween. And so when you see exponential growth without a plan, that brings a lot of anxiety in the front line, health care workers.

MG: So when you say that you're going to need to have meetings around resource allocation, tell me, what does that mean? What sort of decisions are you going to have to make in the next few hours?

DARREN MARKLAND: So we have had a surge plan set up from the beginning of the pandemic. But it's one of these plans that it looks good on paper but is dependent on staffing and resources and hard decisions. And so up until this point, we've been running a full ICU but able to turn the patients over so that everyone gets the care they need. But within this week and next week, we are going to have to expand the ICU and start drawing resources away from the rest of the hospital. We have already cut down elective surgeries to bring in more resources and prevent admissions. But we're going to have to do more. We'll have to reduce more surgeries, take off and take on more staff from other units. And that process will have to continue as it does. And you start to get stretched a little thin. And as that process exceeds our capacity, then you have to make more difficult decisions about things like who actually will benefit the most from care, and that's called triage. And that's somewhere we don't want to get to if we don't have to.

MG: Do you feel that that's inevitable?

DARREN MARKLAND: I think there are things that we can do, but we have to do them quick. We have to do them rapidly and we have to initiate the process now. We still have two weeks of surge, even if we initiate things right now. And so, yeah, there can be some very tough decisions in the next week to two weeks in the intensive care unit.

MG: What sort of pressure is there on front line staff like yourself? I mean, you said that we're all tired and we are certainly, but you're right there and you're working long hours, right, you know, at the tip of the spear, as they say. So what kind of pressure is there on people like yourself?

DARREN MARKLAND: It's interesting. There's different types of pressure. I remember during the first wave, we just kept waiting for things to hit us. And when it didn't, there was almost this guilt that, you know, Canadians were so, so supportive and we never hit that first wave because everyone did the right thing. Now, with that in our back pocket, everyone's a little more realistic. We're seeing it. We're we've been doing this for eight and a half months. The hospital moves much slower than it used to because of isolation. Everything is an additional challenge, putting on the appropriate PPE, taking it off, ensuring that you don't make a mistake because one mistake will lead to an outbreak which can paralyse your hospital. That is an incredible weight. And then add it to our nursing and medical staff and physicians who are also trying to keep the rest of their life in order with their kids going to school and dealing with intermittent quarantines and sick family members. At this point, we're really seeing morale in the hospitals start to take a dip.

MG: And for yourself? I mean, are you frightened about what you know is going to await you when you arrive at work today or tomorrow or later this week?

DARREN MARKLAND: You know, fear doesn't factor into it anymore. I think we've just done it long enough. We've had enough experience with it. We know what's going on. It's more a dread about seeing what's coming and not seeing a definitive, clear plan to deal with it. As of yet. It's kind of like the Cassandra complex. We know this was coming forever. We predicted it. Our epidemiologists knew it was going to be an issue and now it's here and following the predicted curves and yet the measures are half hearted and not effective.

MG: You mentioned nurses. I want to bring Darlene Jackson into this conversation. She's president of the Manitoba Nurses Union. That province currently has the highest per capita rates of COVID infections in the country. Darlene, good morning to you.

DARLENE JACKSON: Good morning.

MG: Tell us what's happening in the small city of Steinbach. What are you hearing about the situation at the hospital there?

DARLENE JACKSON: Well, this Steinbach is a small town that's just a small city just about 50 kilometres out of Winnipeg. And it has almost become an epicentre of COVID-19 in Manitoba.

DARLENE JACKSON: We're hearing that nurses are working crazy overtime hours just to keep up. They are going out and triaging patients in their vehicles in the circular driveway of the hospital, just because the emergency department is so jam packed with patients, there's no beds. There's nowhere to move patients out of emergency. And in order to bring another patient in there, they're going to have to rearrange the whole departments. So they're going out and triaging in vehicles. If the patient stable enough, they stay in their vehicle. If they're unstable, then they have to come back into the emergency department, rearrange, make a bed, put a stretcher in the hallway to get that patient in. And they are working with the same staff they've always worked with and it just is it's actually a nightmare in this province right now.

MG: Sara Neufeld is an E.R. nurse at that hospital and CBC spoke with her. Have a listen to what she described.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It has been mentally and emotionally and physically absolutely exhausting. It has pushed us past what we thought we were able to handle. And we're starting to question how is this sustainable? We're short staffed every day. I think everyone is feeling the weight and the pressure.

MG: Darlene Jackson, tell me more about what you're hearing from nurses about what it's like to work in that environment where, as you say, there's not enough space in the hospital, you have to go and treat people in a parking lot.

DARLENE JACKSON: Well, I will tell you that nurses are exhausted, they're frustrated. We knew that wave 2, was going to be much bigger than wave one. We absolutely knew that. But our government basically sat on their hands for the for the entire summer when we could have been, you know, encouraging retired nurses to come back to work, stafping up, doing everything we can to get ready for wave 2 and basically nothing was done. So we've moved in to wave 2, our numbers are growing. We had almost 500 new cases yesterday. We're up at 12 percent infection rate and nurses are exhausted, you know. And this province went out and bought equipment. I mean, we bought 100 ventilators, we've got the space to put them in, but we don't have anyone to manage that equipment and that's the biggest issue.

MG: How concerned are nurses about contracting the virus themselves? Again, they're right in this environment and in a hospital that is, you know, full to bursting, they're presumably vulnerable as well.

DARLENE JACKSON: Well, we've had about 100 nurses infected since the start of the second wave, and you're right, they're very vulnerable. I talked to a nurse in Steinbach who tells me that when she goes to work in the E.R., she gets one N-95 mask and that mask is going to last her for her 12 hour shift. So what happens is that every time you doff and don that mask that you've been exposed to COVID patients with, the risk of exposure gets higher. So if you're taking breaks, you're donning and doffing at least five times during your shift. So what's happening is nurses are now not taking that mask off to hydrate or have breaks because, number one, they're so busy they don't have time for a break, but there's also a huge fear they're going to expose themselves just with taking that single mask off.

MG: How is that possible? I thought I mean, that sounds like something from the beginning of the first wave. And then I thought we as a nation had figured out how to get appropriate and adequate supplies of PPE.

DARLENE JACKSON: We're still seeing many, many, many facilities and many units that are monitoring and rationing N-95. We have an agreement with our shared health in this province that nurses can do a point of care risk assessment, which means they basically do a risk assessment on every patient prior to contact with them. And then they are supposed to decide based on that, what PPE they use. But what we're finding is when a nurse does do a PCRA and request an N-95 in some facilities, they have to fill a questionnaire on why they need that N-95 or answer multiple questions and justify that which no one has time for. We are crazy busy in this province. No one has time to be justified that they, why they need an N-95 for a patient. So we're dealing with those issues on a daily basis in this province.

MG: Dr. Ann Collins has been listening in. She's the president of the Canadian Medical Association. I want to bring her into this conversation. Doctor, good morning to you.

ANN COLLINS: Good morning.

MG: It's interesting and hearing from our previous two guests, they've both said we knew this was coming. We knew that the second wave was going to be worse than the first wave. Why haven't we, if we knew this was coming, why haven't we been prepared?

ANN COLLINS: Well, certainly your previous two speakers have given gut wrenching stories about what's going on at the coalface. And I think what this speaks to is that there has been a lack of collaboration and coordination. Our public health officials from PHAC on down have been working hard. They have been looking at evidence on a on a daily basis about where to go and how to manage this pandemic. But I think where the breakdown has occurred is that that information has not necessarily been brought together in a collaborative way with with levels of government. And by that I mean federal, provincial, municipal reached out to the health authorities in the hospitals where Dr. Markland and Mr. Jackson and many other health care workers are working. And so there's not been a coordinated plan to address what we're seeing now and moreover, to act now to change the working situations for these, your previous speakers.

MG: Dr. Collins, if you take a look at the situation beyond the ER, ICUs, as we heard from Dr. Markland, are at a crisis point right now. What impact would the surge of cases have on the larger health care system for things like non-essential surgeries, for diagnostic procedures?

ANN COLLINS: Yeah, that's a great question and it's a great concern. And and we actually saw that poster during the the first wave or earlier this year at the Canadian Medical Association. We just released a study that showed a marked increase in wait times for surgeries, for example, hip and knee replacements. But what we didn't look at but what we know intuitively is that the delay in patients presenting to their health care providers, resulting in a delay in diagnosis and treatment for some pretty serious medical conditions, patients were then and we'll be now reluctant to present for the fear of contracting covid and in hospitals, as Dr. Markland pointed out, you just have to move all your resources to caring for the most ill. So elective surgeries will be cut back, diagnostic procedures, MRI seats that are important in in defining a health problem will be cutback. Resources have to be channelled to caring for the most sick. So this is going to have a far reaching effect. We know the backlog from the first wave is high. I suspect that it will be much greater given this second wave or surge, just as we're calling it.

MG: We've seen in the last couple of days growing concern from doctors across this country and experts calling for long, strict lockdowns to get COVID cases down to zero. Is that the right approach, Dr. Collins?

ANN COLLINS: So what CMA, what we're saying is that we need to listen to the experts in this and Public Health, PIAC has been the bedrock or the foundation in the management of this pandemic or in providing the best or the most up to date recommendations. We know this virus changes, we know the science and the advice around it changes. So it's to listen to whatever their best recommendations are and to recognize that there's not a one size fits all. What Edmonton needs and what northern Alberta needs may be quite different, the Atlantic bubble is a whole different situation. So it's whatever that community or that area needs to reduce its community presence of COVID and prevent it from getting into the hospital.

MG: Dr. Markland, what about for you? You're, as Dr. Collins said, at the coalface. Do we need not these little circuit breaker lockdowns, but something more significant to stamp this thing into the ground?

DARREN MARKLAND: I think everybody is negotiating with both the public and the government right now because our chief medical officer of health's job is to try to balance the greater public need with the medical issues that are going on. And that's been an issue for a while, that we had a concern of people who put together a letter who who argued for the circuit breaker just so that we could at least get our contact tracing back, you know, contact tracing. We're flying blind, but that would not stop community progression and we would be at another point where resources would be overwhelmed, even with a two week block. If you look at what they've done in Melbourne, they did a much more strict six week lockdown and were able to get the community spread almost to nothing.

MG: So what do you want to see from the Alberta government? We asked to speak with the Alberta Health Minister, who wasn't available for an interview, but said, you know, the government is reluctant to have a lockdown because that would be, in the government's words, throw people out of work indiscriminately. So what do you want to see from your government?

DARREN MARKLAND: At the very least, I need two weeks. At best, six. I need an honest, I need an honest fact-based dialogue with the health minister so that we can actually know where we're going. I don't need half measures.

MG: Darlene Jackson, for you, the minister of health in Manitoba, also not available to speak with us this morning. But what do you want to see from your government?

DARLENE JACKSON: Well, we are right now in a circuit breaker, two weeks and may be extended to another four weeks and I'm sincerely hope it's extended to another four weeks. I know that our ICUS are drowning and our contact tracing is so far behind me and we're never going to get on top of transmission if we can't catch up on the contact tracing. And those public health nurses are working hours and hours of overtime and we can't catch up. So I think we need to shut down.

MG: Dr. Collins, what about from the federal government? We should also mention we asked to speak with the federal health minister, Patty Hajdu. We didn't hear back, but what can be done on a national level.

DARLENE JACKSON: So CMA is calling for is that all governments come together to come up with the best path forward to protect the health of all Canadians. And at this point in time, most specifically, we need to protect the health and the ability of our front line health care workers to care for these patients and for other patients. No matter what's implemented, as Dr. Markland said, we've got at least another two weeks of this ahead of us, but those people working in those emergency rooms, in those ICUs, they need to know that someone's got their back, that they have hope.

MG: Dr. Markland, the last minute will go to you, what is your message to Canadians right now?

DARREN MARKLAND: I think we've done this before. I think we did the right thing before. I know we can do the right thing now. I know we need more support for people out there, for elderly and people who are marginalized. But if we don't start doing the right thing and being civil and coming together on this, we will see deaths and loss of family members like we have never seen before, at least in the last several decades. It needs to be done now.

MG: And you're optimistic that we will do the right thing? You say we can, but will we do the right thing?

DARREN MARKLAND: That depends on, that depends on every single person out there. And to depoliticize this issue of COVID, I think is the first step.

MG: Good luck this morning. You're about to step into a very busy situation, and I appreciate you taking some time before your shift to talk to us. Thank you.

DARREN MARKLAND: It's my pleasure. Take care.

MG: Dr. Collins, thank you very much.

ANN COLLINS: Thank you.

MG: And Darlene Jackson, our best to your members and thank you.

DARLENE JACKSON: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Ann Collins is president of the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. Darren Markland, an intensive care physician and a nephrologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, just about to begin his shift in the ICU. And Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union. The CBC News is next and then it was long-term care homes across this country that were so vulnerable during that first wave of COVID-19 they remain vulnerable. Residents and their loved ones are scared about what these mounting cases and the second wave could mean. We'll return to the long-term care homes to talk about what we can do to protect those caught in harm's way. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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Long-term care homes remain at the centre of the COVID-19 crisis in Canada

Guests: Lisa Muswagon, Samir Sinha, Isobel Mackenzie

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

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MG: Still to come, unravelling the tale behind the mysterious ballerina in a viral video. But first, the ongoing struggle to keep long-term care homes safe.

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SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Well, what about in Ontario? What about in Quebec? This was all going on well before now. How do they not know it's going to get this bad? How many more people have to be gone before they're going to do something more?

VOICE 2: They need our help. These health care workers are just dropping. They're exhausted. They're crying. They need help now.

VOICE 3: They weigh the cost of hiring or getting more people in there against our families. Where wasm why wouldn't they call for help?

MG: Those are relatives of people in the Maples Personal Care Home in Winnipeg, speaking at a vigil last week. That home is now the site of Manitoba's most deadly outbreak. At least 39 residents have died at the home. A safety investigation found improper use of PPE and concerns over staffing levels. In another Winnipeg home, Parkview Place, there are at least 150 infections and more than 20 deaths. The situation has deteriorated so much in both places that the province is investigating and Ottawa is stepping up support for long-term care in Manitoba. The Red Cross has been called in to help get things under control as well. Lisa Muswagon's father, Charles, lives in Parkview Place. Lisa, good morning.

LISA MUSWAGON: Good morning.

MG: How's your dad doing?

LISA MUSWAGON: He's well, considering the health conditions that they have and being under isolation that long, he seems pretty depressed. He's anxious. He's looking forward to coming home whenever that will be. They told us it's been a few days, but that was just a couple of weeks ago. So we're hoping this week they said this week. So we're just waiting.

MG: When did you last see him?

LISA MUSWAGON: The last time I see my dad, I'm a mother and my baby is about three and a half months, and after I had her, I wanted her to meet her grandfather. So I took her to Parkview Place to meet him a few days after I had had her. And that would have been the last time I've seen him before they started tightening up the restrictions and not allowing because I'm a breastfeeding mother, so I wasn't allowed to, you know, go in and out.

MG: Do you know I mean, I'm not sure what kind of care he needs, but do you know if he's getting the care that he needs right now?

LISA MUSWAGON: Okay, so my dad, like I said, he has multiple health issues, vascular dementia, colitis, Crohn's disease, diabetes, heart disease, you know, and so are several of those, of the other people that live there, right. And so when my, when all this started happening, my dad started telling me, hey, you know, they're not coming around here, they don't want to help me. And I'm like, who? Who dad? Who? We kept asking, like, who's doing this? And he said, the workers are not coming. And I'm like, why not? He's like I don't know. I don't know. And at the time he was taking it personal, like as if they didn't want to help him because he wasn't sure what was going on. And it was we are starting to see things unfold. And then so we said, just hang in there, Dad. You know, it's the health care system. They wouldn't do that because we heavily relied on it. Right. And so he's like, no, no. He says it's awful in here. There's cockroaches. There's I've been trying to go to the washroom myself, and we're like, Dad, don't do that. You'll hurt yourself. He's like, but nobody's coming. I don't want to sit around in my diaper, in my own shit, you know, for whatever however long he's been left. It's been a couple hours. There were nights where he's taken falls and been left on the floor for a few hours.

MG: Oh my goodness. And so is that why you're trying, I mean, you say he's going to be coming home. Is that why you want to get him out of Parkview Place?

LISA MUSWAGON: Well, he has, like I said, he has multiple health issues. He's a high level of care need. But us as a family, we don't, we lost faith in the system. We don't want to leave them there. We don't want to sign him to his death wish by leaving him in there.

MG: But how are you going to be able to, I mean, with those issues, what's going to happen in terms of his care?

LISA MUSWAGON: Well, that's what's going on right now, is that like they'll let him go, but they want to make sure there's support in, home support in the community. But that's the challenge that we're finding now, is that bringing him out now, is there going to be support in the home community? So now my mom, like when she's seen him in a video call, he was thin and his his hair was longer. And, you know, that's her husband. Right? So right away, she's like, I have to take him out. I have to take him out. And and we talked about it for days. And there were days where, like mom you can't do it. You know, her own doctor even told her she couldn't do it, but because of the situation and the circumstances, she wants to pull him out. And I said, you know what, mom, all I can do is just support you, you know, and then stand up for you and do whatever you need me to do. And I'll recoordinate my family to help you.

MG: You said you'd lost confidence in the situation. I mean, we heard from those relatives at the very beginning of our conversation talking about, you know, how frustrated they were and that in some ways we knew this was coming. Why wasn't anything done? Is that kind of what's going through your mind right now?

LISA MUSWAGON: Well, a lot of this stuff was going on probably before, and it took the pandemic to highlight a lot of these issues. You see like like for us on the outside who don't have loved ones and, well, not us, but for people on the outside who don't have loved ones in care homes like like they don't actually see what it's like on the inside and what you have to go through. Right. So a lot of people suggest, oh, just go pull them out and take them home. But they don't understand, like, the challenges that you have to go through, how much that you rely on the system. And because my mom couldn't look after him, she she relied on the system by putting him in the care. And the home that they offered her was Rivera was Park new place. And that was her only choice at that time that she had because she couldn't look after him. And so so we put him in the system. She put him in the system, and then he went to Parkview. And so he was complaining already about the level of service and the care he was receiving there. And so we already had complaints. But it seems like when you complain, you become a problem family. But we're not even like that. We were just trying to bring issue to the concerns that were going on there. And then when the pandemic hit, it just got even worse and worse. And so I took it upon myself to look at back. I look at. Ontario, I even went as far to look at personal care homes in Italy and how they manage their care homes and because they're obviously in the epidemic further than us. And a lot of it was saying that the government acted, didn't quick enough, you know, and that's how we feel. We feel, we feel like we see our health care aids trying hard. We see the nurses. We spoke to them, you know, and they're like, I'm a nurse here. I'm working two floors. You know, that's two floors of how many patients on those two floors, one nurse and then one health care aid running around to how many different, you know, people that live there. Right? And so they have numerous health conditions. Right? So it's stressful. Even my own mother had a hard time looking after one person. I can't imagine all these health care aids having trouble running around, looking after different. And then when Maple, me and my mom were like, it's going to get worse, it's going to get worse. And then sure enough, Maples Care Home went through theirs and we just felt like the exact thing, like the nightmare was repeating again.

MG: I wish you the best. I mean, I hope I mean, you have a lot going. You have a new baby and your mom is trying to deal with this as well. And then hopefully your father will be taken to a better place and get the care that he deserves. I really appreciate you telling us what your family is going through, Lisa. Thank you.

LISA MUSWAGON: Thank you.

MG: Lisa Muswagon's father lives at Parkview Place, a long-term care home in Winnipeg. As I mentioned earlier, the minister of health for Manitoba, Cameron Friesen, was not available to speak with us this morning. It's not just Winnipeg where outbreaks are ripping through long-term care facilities. Hundreds of homes across this country are fighting the rampant spread of COVID-19. This weekend, we learnt there are 136 residents with COVID-19, 66 staff infected at Rockliffe Care Community Home in Toronto. Seven residents there have died. The outbreaks are happening despite the experience in the spring when long-term care facilities in Quebec and Ontario, as Lisa was saying, were the epicentres of this pandemic. Dr. Samir Sinha is Director of Geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto. He's been listening in. Doctor, good morning to you.

SAMIR SINHA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: If you take a look across this country how our long-term care facilities are performing now compared to the first wave of the pandemic?

SAMIR SINHA: Sadly, we're just seeing kind of almost a repeat of the first the first wave. We have over 350 homes that are currently an outbreak across the country. And the defining feature this time is that the levels of community spread are so much higher than we saw during the first wave that now that our homes, unlike the first wave, actually have access to PPE, actually have access to better infection prevention and control standards, understand the virus better. The challenge is that when there's such a high level of community spread, it can easily seep in. And when you still have the problem fundamentally in so many parts of the country, a poorly staffed homes where we didn't actually make that much progress in places like Ontario and even Manitoba, and getting these homes stepped up and ready when you have too few staff fighting a virus that can easily seep in, it's just it's a recipe for disaster.

MG: You heard Lisa. I mean, she sounds despondent in some ways, but the situation that her father finds himself in. She says that she doesn't have confidence in the system. And you've said the same thing. You say that you don't have confidence across the system right now. Why is that?

SAMIR SINHA: Well, especially for Lisa and her family. I mean, so many families like hers are experiencing the same thing in Winnipeg. You know, Winnipeg and Manitoba itself actually had a pretty good run through the first wave. There wasn't too much community spread, not much in the way of outbreaks. And and even in Manitoba actually shut down its incident command table for the pandemic in June. And now we actually have 25 out of 38 personal care homes in Winnipeg alone that are currently an outbreak we've had. And and recently, you know, the minister said, you know, these deaths are tragic, but they're unavoidable. And these were all avoidable. And more recently, it's being admitted that they never really made plans to get the homes staffed up and and they didn't anticipate that things could get this bad. But, you know, unlike provinces like B.C. and other places that were very proactive right through the first wave and now into the second wave, we're seeing much better results than in places that really, A, didn't take this seriously enough. And B, didn't really take the time during the summer, what I like to call our summer of opportunity, to make sure that we were ready to not repeat the same mistakes that we too easily made the first time around.

MG: So in that summer of opportunity, what were some of the big specific lessons that long-term care providers should have taken?

SAMIR SINHA: Well, in Quebec, for example, and in B.C., there were huge efforts to try and deal with the understaffing issues because, you know, right before the pandemic, 80 percent of homes, for example, in Ontario were having trouble recruiting and retaining staff. And then we lost a lot of staff, a lot of people, a lot of staff lost confidence in the system. They didn't believe their health and safety was being protected and supported. They're poorly paid workers, to begin with, often racialized and new Canadian women who were in these positions. And so, you know, Quebec, which lost over 10000 workers, they deliberately went out. They hired 10000 new people. They actually paid for their training over three months and they made sure they were in place by September at the start of the second wave. And you know what, Quebec, which had more outbreaks during the first wave than any other province, they actually had fewer outbreaks in Ontario. Ontario, for example, didn't really make any concerted efforts. B.C. did, and again in Manitoba, in Alberta, where you're seeing huge levels of outbreaks relative to their proportions, you hear that really preparations weren't really being adequately made. And so staffing is the number one big issue that I think is really let so many homes, unfortunately, struggle, and especially the homes that have really had significant outbreaks once again and are really repeating the same mistakes of the first wave.

MG: You were the architect of Ontario's senior strategy. What do you understand about why it is that those steps weren't taken in a province like Ontario? If we knew what happened in that first wave and you knew we heard from from from people who are working in long term care about how exhausted they were. They were burnt out. They were doing multiple jobs in multiple homes all at the same time. Why weren't those steps taken? Is it, people would say that it's just about money? Is that what it was about or is there something else going on?

SAMIR SINHA: I think it's more deeply rooted in systemic ageism. I mean, I helped develop the Ontario senior strategy. I talked about these issues way back when. The fact that, you know, people like Lisa and her family, they want to be able to have their loved ones stay at home. But if you don't have enough community support, we then end up institutionalising, you know, our older or older people. But here's the challenge, Matt, across Canada, when you actually look at what we spend on the provision of long term care, that's home and community and nursing home services as a country, as a whole, we spend 30 percent less as a nation than a comparable OECD or I like to call rich country in the world. And so because we fundamentally underspend on the provision of this care predominantly for our ageing population, for a population that's that's often marked with dementia and other issues which don't make them voters, if you will, all of a sudden it means that when you don't spend a lot, you cut corners. Hence you have low staffing levels, you have poor quality facilities. And literally Canada now stands out in the world as having the highest proportion of its debts compared to any other major industrialised country. That's that's happening in these long term care homes. So really, you know, we can I was happy and proud to make a strategy. I can't say that it was fully implemented to the extent that it needed to be. And that's disappointing because now you look back and people say, wow, you were telling us these things years ago. And many of my predecessors have been talking about these things for decades. But the key is, frankly, as a society, if we don't value the care of older adults, if we don't value our older people, why we value the people who work with them and why we value the places where we need to care and provide that support so they can live healthy and independent lives.

MG: I want to bring another voice into our conversation. Dr. Isobel Mackenzie is the senior's advocate for the province of British Columbia. She's been listening in. Isobel, good morning to you.

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: After outbreaks and long-term care homes, as Samir has been saying, B.C. has been relatively successful in keeping covid out of long-term care homes. What's been done there?

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: Well, remains to be seen, we're certainly under strain in the second wave as as most people are, but I think compared to most other provinces, many of our our outcomes are better. A number of things, not one particular thing. But I think part of it was that B.C. experienced the first care home outbreak in Canada and actually the first death from COVID in Canada in that care home. And so very early on in the pandemic before it sort of had exploded on the scene, we had this care home outbreak where frankly, it was very chaotic in that care home. And so our public health officials saw very early on, very quickly what could happen. And they got in there right away with some very key decisive policies and initiatives that I think have have put us on a good course as we work our way through this pandemic. So what the kinds of things that they did, what were number one, public health appears on the scene immediately when the outbreak is declared. The second thing they did was immediately recognise staffing issues and the public health officers seised control of that by saying all of our what you call personal support workers in eastern Canada and Keres in western Canada are going to come under the direction of the public health officer. Everybody is going to be paid the same rate, which is what we call that the top rate. And everybody is going to be restricted to working at one site. So you're not going to have a career working at a care home with an outbreak, going to another care home where there isn't an outbreak, but carrying the virus with them. And we also lowered our threshold for declaring an outbreak to a single staff person. So one issue is the virus gets into the care home. The other issue is whether the virus spreads once it's in the care home. And as Samier points out, when you've got a large amount of community spread, as we have everywhere, even here in B.C. on the Lower Mainland, we have significant community spread. Now, those staff people or staff person is much more likely to be able to bring the virus into the care home. But we're detecting that at a single case and isolating that staff person and not allowing that virus to spread so far in over 50 percent of our outbreaks. And so, you know, some of these key measures we put in place at the beginning are certainly bearing fruit as we work our way through this pandemic, even through this second wave, which is stressing even the the system here in B.C..

MG: And yet, if you look elsewhere in the country, we mentioned a few place in Winnipeg, more than 150 cases. In an Edmonton facility, the South Terrace Continuing Care facility, 83 out of 90 residents tested positive for COVID-19 since late October. Talked about the situation in Toronto. What would have to happen to to see that level of infection, do you think, Isobel?

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: Well, I think part of the challenge is getting a hold on the community spread. They are linked.

MG: That if it's outside the home, it's going to get inside the home?

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: The more community spread you have, the more likely you are going to be that one of the care staff coming into the home is going to be carrying the virus with them and may not be aware that they're carrying it with them. But the kinds of things that you can do and again, you know, all of the protocols in the world are ineffective if we don't follow them. So there's a difference between we don't know how to protect people from this virus versus we know how to protect them from it. But we're not doing everything we're supposed to do every time. And there's a little bit of that seeping in now. And we certainly see that a bit here in British Columbia. The COVID fatigue that everybody is talking about is also settling in in the health care system. But the ability and long term care to implement our protocols and follow our protocols is linked to our staffing levels. And those staffing levels, which are stressed in the best of times, are stressed even more so now, because we are saying to staff everywhere, if you have a tickle in your throat or a headache, stay home. And so if we've staffed even at full levels, we're going to see our absenteeism, which should be higher right now because people should be staying home at a lower threshold than they would previously is going to cause even further shortages. And that in in and of itself makes it more difficult to follow the very protocols that are going to keep the virus out of the care home.

MG: Doctor Sinha, the Ontario government says it will increase the hours of care that residents receive by 2024. They'll get four hours or personal care a day. We're in the midst of a pandemic now and you hear the alarm from people like Lisa, from the family members we heard at the beginning of this segment. What can be done now?

SAMIR SINHA: What can be done now is what Quebec and and what B.C. have done is that they've actually gone on a hiring spree because right now we're talking about staffing homes properly at four hours a day per resident, giving them direct care. But right now, we're providing 2.7 hours a day and that's on a good day, if a home is fully staffed and most homes aren't fully staffed. So really, what we could have done immediately was just start hiring more people in the same way that Quebec did where they said we're not only going to bring you, you know, provide you a job with good pay, but we're also going to pay for your training because that's often a barrier. But the challenge is that this specific announcement was made in Ontario a few days before the big budget and then the budget gets revealed and there's no money in the budget to even start attempting to achieve this goal that the government says will be in place by 2024, 2025. Now, while the premier has come out in response and saying he's committed and the finance minister said, well, that don't worry, their money will be there when we need to start this, the key is we needed to start this over the summer like Quebec did, because otherwise we're seeing poorly staffed homes going into this pandemic, tired staff and huge levels of community spread. And that's why Ontario, in my view, now leads the country again, not a not a great distinction in the number of covid outbreaks and and significantly a number thatare large and devastating.

MG: Isobel we just have about a minute left. What message would you give to the family members of those who share that alarm that we heard earlier?

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: Well, I think certainly we all feel for Lisa and the situation that she is in with her loved one and certainly some families are able to bring their loved one home from the care home during the COVID pandemic. And certainly those are decisions that families have to make. But part of the challenge will be for families to try and remain connected as best they can with their loved ones in the care home while we wake our make our way through this pandemic and provide supports that they can. We know that families are essential care partners for their loved ones in long-term care. And we really need to support and recognise that in a much more meaningful way than we do. And that goes to the heart, at least comments about how when her family tried to raise issues about her dad's care prior to covid, they were marginalised as a nuisance. We've got to learn to welcome the families and see them as not just essential care partners for their loved ones, but essential partners in raising the standards of this system overall and making it better for future generations of older adults.

MG: Thank you both for speaking with us and for the work that you're doing. I appreciate it. Thank you.

SAMIR SINHA: Thank you.

ISOBEL MACKENZIE: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Geriatrics at the Sinai Health System and the University Health Network. Isobel Mackenzie, seniors advocate of British Columbia. Coming up after your regional update, we'd love to hear from you, by the way. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca with the situation on long-term care. We're back in 90 seconds. We will talk about the mystery behind a viral video and perhaps a long lost ballet star. This is The Current. Stay with us.

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Who was this mysterious ballerina from the viral Swan Lake video?

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Have you seen this video that is floating around online? It's a video of an older woman in a wheelchair using her arms to dance the Swan Lake Ballet. You see her moving her arms to the music, and then you see scenes of the Russian ballerina, Ulyana Lopatkina, in full costume performing on stage. It really is quite something if you haven't seen it. The video was originally posted by a Spanish organization promoting music therapy for people with memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. In two weeks, it's racked up well over a million views on YouTube. It's been shared with millions more by celebrities like Antonio Banderas and Jennifer Garner. Who is this older woman in the video and is she, as so many people believe, a long lost ballet master? Well, like all things, there is more to this than meets the eye.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE: This is Alastair Macaulay. I'm a critic and historian of the performing arts and I do a lot of social media and I often find I do a lot of research in social media and find out a lot of odds and ends about the performing arts that I so love. This sometimes has a drawback that all kinds of people who are interested in the performing arts contact me about all kinds of odds and ends, some of which are a pain in the neck. And on Monday, I kept on being notified about this video that had emerged of no dead dance called Marta Sinta Gonzalez Saldaña.

[Music]

VOICE: Point of the video was not about her career, but simply about the effect of music to bring back memory movement in somebody afflicted with dementia, possibly Alzheimer's. And it's a very moving video. Nobody quite knows how old this woman is. And she seems to have lost the use of her legs long since. But the therapist, if that's the right word for him, is holding her hand. And he plays some of the most famous music in Swan Lake. [Sings]

[Music]

VOICE: Which has a visceral effect on almost anybody, and as she starts to hear it. To as she seems to have been known, responds not just casually, but she knows swan type movement, because I was getting this video from all kinds of people. I finally the other night, I better respond. So I just analysed it a bit. And I thought people were starting to project that this was an important lost ballerina who had gone into dementia. But there's absolutely no certainty that this was an important professional dancer. What I didn't notice at first is that actually the video then changed changes. Music was very charming and helpful. Therapist holds my hand and he then plays music from a different part of Swan Lake. [Singing]

[Music]

VOICE: And she responds, but she carries on doing swan movement to it, and it's a very touching thing. If you know the ballet, then you wouldn't be doing swan movement at that part of Swan Lake. It's a happy dance when nobody has brought swans into the story anyway. So I published what I knew. I began to hear from people on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, some of whom knew a little bit. And they were, of course, researched what they could. So they sent in documentation. We are not quite clear where Marta Cinta was born, but she seems to have had ended her life in Spain. And the people who have looked after her and loved her, they were in that they just knew that she had talked of being a ballerina, even a prima ballerina. Now, the question is, where had she been a ballerina? And if you're a ballet snob, the word prima ballerina has very important significance. It looks as if she was a prima ballerina of a very small or unknown company. Sometimes it was called the Ballet de las Americas. And it may have been a minor company in Cuba, but there is a ballet De las Americas in Bogota, Colombia, and it's also the name of Folklorico company in Mexico. So who knows? And nobody has yet come forward of any identification of her past. But she also had documents that showed that she had become a choreographer. And in her teens, she made 16, 18, maybe 20 pieces over different names. She had a list of them and she had press clippings that talked about them being performed in Cuba, one or more being done in America and one or more the prospect of being done in Europe. It is very touching and I am very moved to think of this therapist working with at the end of her life, it may well be that the lockdown is making us all look at our little screens more and spin stories out of it. It's also very touching that all of us are experiencing so much more isolation than perhaps we ever have in our lives. And there is this woman who in one sense is in total isolation. She has a post about which she can no longer really speak. She can't tell anybody at home just what roles her choreography was, how long she was in Cuba, how long she was in America. And we just had these few documents about her. It's ironic. People are now more curious about her probably than they were ever during her life.

[Music]

MG: Alastair Macaulay is the former dance critic for The New York Times. Over the weekend, the Spanish outlet, El Espanol, unearthed new details about Marta's life. It appears that she was born in Spain in the mid 1920s, but her ID also seems to have been falsified. Some former students have come forward and it does appear that she worked and taught in Cuba, New York and Spain over the years. Marta Cinta Gonzalez died in March, but left quite a puzzle behind and left a lot of people talking as well about the power of music. If you go to our Twitter feed, you don't have to be on Twitter. If you just go to Twitter and type in TheCurrentCBC, you can see some of the photos of Marta unearthed by Alistair and others, as well as more of this ongoing mystery on.

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Hundreds of thousands are without food or medical aid in Ethiopia, thousands of others leave the country as military conflict escalates

Guests: Giulia Paravicini, Michelle Gavin

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

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VOICE: No federation and constitutional order can tolerate such illegality. That's why the federal government is compelled to undertake a law enforcement operation to defend and protect the constitutional order and uphold the rule of law. A democratic and pluralistic Ethiopia cannot exist without the rule of law.

MG: As recently as two weeks ago, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, was being lauded as a man of peace, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped bring stability to a country that has known war, famine and hardship for decades now. The law enforcement operation that he speaks of targeting the rebellious government in the Tigrayan region has killed hundreds, left thousands homeless and sparked a crisis that the United Nations fears could spiral out of control and destabilise the entire Horn of Africa. The conflict has already spilt over to neighbouring Eritrea. Its capital was targeted by rockets over the weekend after the Tigrayan Regional Government accused Eritrea of violence. For the latest on this, I'm joined by Giulia Paravacini in Addis Ababa. She's a Reuters Ethiopia and African Union reporter. Giulia, hello.

GIULIA PARAVICINI: Hi.

MG: At its root, help us understand what this conflict is about.

GIULIA PARAVICINI: Basically, it's about the former ruling coalition, which for 20 years has been headed by Tigrayans and the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who is trying to change politics within the country and that Tigrayans are unhappy about the way he's trying to change politics. They haven't joined a ruling coalition, a new ruling coalition that the prime minister founded a year ago. And they have been fighting at each other through, let's say, administrative measures for over a year. Until a month ago, Tigray decided to go ahead and hold regional elections, despite the central government saying that such elections would be deemed illegal. And then last Tuesday night, the federal government claimed that the TP left, so the former ruling coalition now governing Tigray had attacked a military base of the federal forces and it had left the government with no other choice than strike back. Since then, basically, there has been war between this region and the central government. Hundreds of casualties on both sides, over 20,000 displaced that have crossed into Sudan, no humanitarian access to the region. Basic commodities like bread and food are running out in Tigray. NGOs and the UN are fearing a humanitarian disaster.

MG: We know that there have been phone and Internet blackouts in the Tigray region and the journalists have been arrested. What does that meant in terms of us knowing what's actually happening in that region?

GIULIA PARAVICINI: It's actually very difficult to find out what is actually happening. I went up there integrally a week ago with a team and even though we had all the papers required, we were basically thrown out of the gry and told that if we continued to report about it, we would be arrested. And then we were basically escorted back to the capital. We managed to be in touch on a fairly regular basis with the EPLF leader, but there's very little information coming out of the region and there's also a very tight grip on what information circulates across the country. The central government is very, very carefully controlling the narrative.

MG: There have been reports of atrocities by both sides in this conflict. What do we know about those accusations?

GIULIA PARAVICINI: Amnesty International published a report a couple of days ago detailing a massacre that occurred in the Tigray region committed, according to witnesses, by members of the Tigrayana forces. We personally interviewed refugees that crossed into Sudan who spoke also of atrocities committed by the federal government and by Amhara Special Forces. Amhara is a region bordering Tigray who has been at loggerheads with Tigrayans for decades, and their regional forces and their militias have now joined national army to fight the Tigrayans. In terms of what happened, we heard accounts of civilians bearing very severe machetes wounds with limbs cuts off and just very, very horrific injuries, and then we heard about bombing from the federal government on civilians, from witnesses who escaped the bombing and the former president of the region told us also that air strikes had killed civilians in the regional capital and a nearby town. We haven't been able to verify anything on the ground.

MG: There's also, as you mentioned, the no access for humanitarian workers. People have not been able to deliver food and medical supplies into Tigray. And what we're hearing is that that has led to many, many people fleeing over the border into Sudan. Tell us more about what we know about their condition.

GIULIA PARAVICINI: Basically, since hostilities broke out nearly two weeks ago, no humanitarian supplies have reached the region, meaning no food aid, no medical and no emergency supplies. And we know that the U.N. is negotiating access, but as of now, it hasn't been granted access. That has led to a huge number of refugees fleeing into Sudan, which borders the Tigray region. Our team in Sudan has interviewed many of them who basically told us that they had to walk for three days with no food and no water, trying to leave their country where they had been bombed or they had been shot or family members had been killed. So they were clearly in distress and had lost everything and had to leave everything behind. Some even had to leave like family members behind. The other I think important point to make is that Tigray was a region that already had 600,000 people dependent on food aid and 110,000 IDPs, internally displaced people. So the situation before the conflict was already a difficult one. Now, with supplies shortening and the ongoing conflict, a humanitarian disaster is in sight.

MG: Just finally, the government said on Friday that the fighting would end, in its words, a short time. Is there any indication that this is about to wrap itself up?

GIULIA PARAVICINI: My humble opinion is that it's not going to be a matter of days, honestly. Let's not forget that Tigrayans have been fighters for a very long time. They have, despite being just a region and very well equipped arsenal of weapons and artillery and amongst the top commanders of the National Defence Forces are Tigrayans and are now fighting on Tigray's side. They have everything to lose. So I don't see, I actually asked the region's president or former president, as the federal government claims, whether he had any intention to surrender, and he said never. So I don't see that being resolved in a matter of days, honestly.

MG: Giulia, thank you for this.

GIULIA PARAVICINI: You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

MG: Giulia Paravicini is the Ethiopia and Africa Union reporter for Reuters in Addis Ababa. The conflict in the Tigray region is cause for great concern for aid groups in Ethiopia. This is Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I think it is very important to place what has happened in the last week in the Tigray region in the brovader context of what has been for the last year or so, an increasingly very bad human rights situation in Ethiopia. I mean, we've been documenting cycles of unrest and serious human rights abuses, but also intercommunal violence on many occasions over the last 18 months in many different parts of the country. This fits into broader patterns of very serious tensions in the country, many of which the federal government have not done enough to tackle and we have unfortunately been documenting time and again, especially in the last year, how we have seen a return to very heavy handed responses by the authorities when unrest and when tensions increase.

MG: Michelle Gavin is a Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a former U.S. ambassador to Botswana and Senior Director for Africa on President Obama's National Security Council. Ambassador, good morning to you.

MICHELLE GAVIN: Good morning.

MG: Just briefly, what's your understanding as to why this conflict has erupted now?

MICHELLE GAVIN: Well, you know, there are sort of disputed reports about what the exact precipitating event was, but the conflict was clearly coming, in part because the Tigrayans for many years did have the lion's share of power in Ethiopia's system of coalition government. And that changed with the incentive of Prime Minister Abiy. And there's a lot of contestation in Ethiopia broadly, not just in Tigray, about the nature of their federal model, how much power the individual states have, how much of of identity and political power is aligned with ethnicity. And and so this is kind of the most prominent example, but there have been numerous other challenges to federal authority and a federal government trying to find its footing.

MG: It was just last year that this prime minister won the Nobel Peace Prize and now this war is erupting. Do you think that the Peace Prize was a mistake?

MICHELLE GAVIN: Well, you know, it's pretty hard to endorse the idea of Prime Minister Abiy as peacemaker at this particular moment. I think it certainly may have been premature. It was given to the prime minister ostensibly because of, you know, of a formal warming and an end to hostilities with Eritrea. That was a horrific war that killed many people. It was in many ways senseless and it was a positive development and unquestionably. But it was also given to the prime minister because he had undertaken a number of important political reforms in Ethiopia, opening up political space, creating more opportunities for people to express themselves freely. There was a moment where it looked like he had a different governing vision for the country and one that was significantly less authoritarian than what Ethiopians had experienced before, nut we've seen a rolling back of a lot of those freedoms over the past year. And, you know, now what we see is Eritrea being drawn into this conflict between the central government in Tigray.

MG: How concerned are you that this could escalate into a full civil war in Ethiopia?

MICHELLE GAVIN: I am deeply concerned. It it's just incredibly alarming to see how quickly this has escalated, how quickly it's become internationalised. So there's there's both the concern about Ethiopia itself disintegrating, that horrific humanitarian disaster, that that would be the destabilising impact of refugee flows. If you think refugee flows from Syria were destabilising, you're talking about a population so about six times greater. But then already the effects on what is a very fragile and strategically very important region are incredibly worrisome. These flows into Sudan, where there's already a very fragile transition underway, the prospects for the Sudanese people to to move closer to democratic and representative governments are very much in the balance and the political pressure that will be placed on the central government, the destabilising nature of these flows very, very worrisome. You already see Ethiopia pulling some of its troops out of Somalia where they have been part of both part of the Amazon forces there, the African Union forces there to try and bring some stability to a very troubled place. And Ethiopia has other forces there as well. It is already having these dramatic repercussions throughout a region that is fragile.

MG: One of the repercussions is, and we've been talking a little bit about the lack of aid that can get into this region in particular, but issues around food instability and people have connected the dots between climate change and larger issues around food instability. How is that affecting the population in Ethiopia right now?

MICHELLE GAVIN: Well, it's absolutely a part of the puzzle of sort of Ethiopia trying to find a way forward. So there's a tremendous sort of sense of flux and change in the country. Right? There's this new political order trying to find its footing, a lot of new ideas about the nature of federal government. And then you have a lot of economic pressure. And if you go to Addis, it's it's easy to get one image of Ethiopia. But Ethiopians, many Ethiopians still live in very severe poverty and many depend on agriculture. And as climate change affects the region, they're experiencing more frequent and natural disasters, floods and droughts. And some parts of the country that were, for example, reliable for coffee growing aren't going to be anymore. Those coffee crops are going to have to move. So that's a lot of dramatic change for any one place to be coping with at a time and it's impossible to imagine that those environmental pressures, which become economic pressures, don't also become political pressures.

MG: I want to spend just the last couple of minutes talking about what other countries could do to help. There is a sizeable Ethiopian community here in Canada. What role could Canada play in helping to, if not lower the tensions, then certainly address some of the issues that we've been talking about?

MICHELLE GAVIN: Right. Well, certainly one of the most important things is for Ethiopians of all backgrounds to stand up against demonizing others because of their ethnicity. Right. So, however, when they feel about the TPLS and the Tigrayan leadership's decision making decisions to go ahead with elections in defiance of the federal government, the idea that Tigrayans are the enemy right is incredibly dangerous and worrisome. And there are some genuinely alarming messages on social media right now and elsewhere that are sort of demonizing a people that could leadto even more atrocities than what you already discussed with a previous guest. So I think it's really important for people to make plain that whatever wherever one comes down on political disputes, the problem is not a people, right. The problem is not an ethnicity. And then, you know, to encourage international leaders to keep working, to call for a cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access and some mediation to move what is essentially a political conflict into the area of political dialogue and not military action.

MG: We're just about out of time. But, you know, President-elect Joe Biden. How optimistic are you that a new U.S. administration will help the situation there?

MICHELLE GAVIN: I am very optimistic that the Biden administration will be intensely engaged. I think there is a clear awareness of the stakes, both the downside risks that we discuss, but also the upside of, as you know, a strong, peaceful and democratic Ethiopia, which is highly desirable thing. So, you know, how much can external actors influence the situation? I think they can certainly be helpful or harmful, but it would also be misleading to suggest that there's any any external actor who can, you know, magically turn the situation in the right direction. It's going to require political will from Ethiopians.

MG: Ambassador, good to speak with you. Thank you for your time.

MICHELLE GAVIN: Thank you.

MG: Ambassador Michelle Gavin, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. diplomat. She was in New York City. That's it for The Current for today. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. We thought we would leave you this morning with some sounds from Ethiopia. It has an extraordinary musical history and legacy in Ethiopia. This is from the musician Ayalew Mesfin. In the 1970s was jailed for making music critical of Ethiopia's communist government, says the only way he could be freed was to promise never make music again. Almost 50 years later, his music is being shared around the world and here's a taste of it. This is Ayalew Mesfin and a tune called "Zebeder," which means mesmerizing. Apt title. I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Song: "Zebeder" by Ayalew Mesfin]

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Nov. 16, 2020 episode transcript

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