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The Current Transcript for January 13, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

At the moment, I need money because I need to buy groceries for my children. I am ready to go into work to take care of my family.

MATT GALLOWAY: When COVID first appeared, some people initially called it the great equaliser, suggesting it would hit everyone the same. Two years into this pandemic, nothing could be further from the truth. In 30 minutes, why society is now facing two different pandemics one for those with access to tests and better masks, and who could afford to stay home from work and another for those who can't. Also this morning, how did you sleep last night?

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Oh, I listen to podcasts with meditation goals. I have lavender oil burning. I'll do the milk and banana thing. I've tried everything. No luck this past month.

MG: New research is just confirming how little sleep we're getting these days in an hour, the connexion between insomnia, memory and COVID. We start, though, with a whistleblower who told the world what was really happening inside Facebook. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Canada could lead a coalition to force change at Facebook, says whistleblower Frances Haugen

Guest: Frances Haugen

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Facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.

MG: That's Frances Haugan testifying before U.S. lawmakers late last year. Frances Haugan is a former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower who disclosed thousands of damning documents to the media. Her disclosure and subsequent testimonies to U.S. and U.K. lawmakers is the latest in a long list of accusations against the tech giant in recent years. Frances Haugan. Good morning.

FRANCES HAUGEN: Thank you for inviting me.

MG: Thank you for being here. Why did you want to work at Facebook? What was it? You had had experience at other tech firms Google and Hinge and Pinterest. Why did you want to work at Facebook?

FRANCES HAUGEN: My speciality is an algorithmic product management. So I worked on search quality at Google. I was the lead product manager and ranking at Pinterest for the home feed and for related pins. I worked on search quality at Yelp. There are very few product managers in the industry that are focussed on algorithms. The reason why that intersection. So it's not just that I worked on algorithms, but I was also a product manager, is important. One of the core responsibilities of product managers is to think holistically about experience, to think about how the technical choices we make impact people. When a recruiter reached out to me in early 2019. I immediately told that recruiter when she reached out to me, I was like, The only thing I would work on Facebook is misinformation. And that's because I've lived with vivid personal experiences over the cost of having a toxic information environment is. I had a very, very close friends. And over the course of six months in 2016, I watched what being immersed in toxic information environment can do. I don't blame Facebook for them. It was more 4chan Reddit, but I watched the smart kind, college educated, well, read person descend into conspiracy theories, and I feel like that misinformation on the internet took him from me. And so I ended up working on civic misinformation at Facebook, and I came into it wanting to prevent anyone from feeling that pain that I had felt.

MG: What were your initial impressions of the company when you started to work there in terms of the way that the company was run?

FRANCES HAUGEN: Facebook is a very unique environment. They have this almost ideological belief in flatness, right? So they have the largest open floor plan office in the world. It's a quarter of a mile long. It sits 5000 people in one room. It takes like 15 minutes, sometimes to walk from your desk to the other end of this giant open floor plan. And so even at the cost of utility, they're committed to the idea that there's no one above or below. Instead, they believe in metrics, the idea that you can have goal posts. And once you establish those goalposts and your numbers even move, you can let people do whatever they want as long as they move those goalposts. It's good. The only problem is if those goalposts themselves become the problem, because then there's not leadership within the company to fix those things. And so when I got there, I was really shocked at how lots and lots of people had identified core drivers of what was causing the misinformation problem with Facebook. There was an unwillingness to use the levers available, levers that didn't involve censorship. This is about product choices. There was an unwillingness to do that because it hit other metrics for other teams. So I'll give you example. They have a feature where you share not just one group at a time. You can reassure that post to 10 different groups and because there wasn't leadership, there was really looking at how all the pieces came together. It took months and months for them to realise, allowing someone to mass broadcast out of 10 10 groups with one click substantially increased misinformation, but walking that back cost growth in those groups teams. So those are the kinds of choices that I saw over and over again inside the company.

MG: What was the nature of the research that was being done in that context that led you to say enough is enough?

FRANCES HAUGEN: I would say within two weeks of joining, I was shocked at how much worse it was than I thought it was, right? So I came in and I'm willing to be humble and admit my ignorance here. Like I had come into the company only thinking about it as an American company, or maybe a North American company, an English language company. And I had never thought about the impact of Facebook on people who don't speak English, who aren't in the United States or Canada. They take better care of Canada [unintelligible] near us. I never thought about that, and I never realised that in other parts of the world, people were actively dying. So from from almost immediately when I joined, I learnt a lot where I was like, Wow, this is a lot worse problem, they thought. But it took it took a year and a half or so for me to really get to the point where I was like, I'm going to have to do something. So when they dissolve civic integrity, which is in early December 2020, when they got rid of my team- The focus of my team was to make Facebook a positive force in our societies, positive force in politics. Facebook got past the 2020 election, and this is so cool, we didn't have riots, we didn't have one in the streets. We don't need civic integrity anymore. We've solved that problem and it showed a level of lack of commitment and like a blindness that I was like, This is just not acceptable. You can't have a force. Is this dangerous that thinks itself is safe? And that's when I knew I was going to have to figure out how to do this. But it took me even longer than that to figure out how to actually, you know, Facebook surveilled all of its employees, their spyware on our laptops. So I had to think very carefully about how could I do this in a way where I knew I could finish. I couldn't get the information out that was needed because I knew that if I was half way Facebook to sure that no one else could ever do it.

MG: How did you do that? What can you say? But how you did that?

FRANCES HAUGEN: So I can't go into a very much detail because my lawyers will jump on me, but I can say if you look at the photos that have been released through various media outlets, it's pretty obvious their photos of laptop screens. And so there is a concept known as air gapping right, that a computer can only watch what you do on the computer. It can't watch what you do off the computer. And so instead of saving files or printing files, making PDFs, the files. I took pictures of them. And that allowed me to look just like a normal employee, as I made sure this disclosure was possible.

MG: What was the influence that your mother played in the decision that you made?

FRANCES HAUGEN: I am so grateful for my mother. So my mother is a very interesting person in that she is a professor for years. So she guided young people for twenty five years as a scientist, and then in her fifties, she became an Episcopal priest. She became an Anglican priest. I moved home with my parents during COVID because I have very bad dietary restrictions like I can't have gluten. Like, I literally ended up in the hospital for seven weeks because of it. Back in 2014. So it's not just hippies that don't go in. And my parents were willing to follow my diet and keep me safe. And so I moved home with them, and I am so grateful I did that because she provided a sounding board for me because at that point I hadn't decided to do anything yet. All I knew was I kept learning worse and worse things. And if you're having a crisis of conscience, being able to talk to a priest as much as you need to, it's like the ultimate [unintelligible].

MG: In the documents and the testimony that you gave to lawmakers in the United States and as I mentioned in Europe and in the EU, you have said that Facebook places profits over user safety, that Instagram makes body image issues worse for users, teen girls in particular, that Facebook changed its algorithm to reward rage. There are many other accusations that you make. You've hinted at this, but just how much did people in Facebook know about that? How much did they know about what their products were doing?

FRANCES HAUGEN: So I want to I want to slightly tweak one things you said, because I think it helps illustrate how did we get here? So it's not that Facebook came in and said, Don't be great, we should incentivise rage. You know, we should reward extreme content. That's what we should do. Facebook came in and had a real problem. There was less and less content being produced on the site. This is a thing that happens on all social media sites. They tried a bunch of experiments on individuals, on producers like people who create content. So they did things like give people more reach so they would receive more likes and comments and researchers, and they found that the only thing that was sustainable or you could get people to produce more content over a longer period of time was getting them more feedback. So more comments, more likes from researchers. And so they switched from going like trying to decide, like, is this is this version of Facebook good or is this version good? They switched from using how long you were on the site as the measure of success. And they switched instead to how much engagement does this generate? And they gave it a very lovely name. They called it quote, meaningful social interactions that Facebook cares about you connecting with people, and so they want you to have meaningful social interactions. Ignoring the fact that if you had hate speech or bullying in the comments, that was a meaningful interaction. Unfortunately, the system had a side effect, which was content that is more extreme is more likely to elicit a reaction from you. And Mark Zuckerberg himself wrote a white paper in 2018 talking about that. He said the the the thing about extreme content is that people are trying to engage with it. But don't worry, AI will save us. And Facebook, I think, earnestly believes that in twenty eighteen, they were like, we can build A.I. systems, they can pull out the worst of the content. But that ignored the fact that when you have that strategy, you have to do it over and over and over again for every language. So if you live in a society that has lots of different languages being spoken, you are at risk because only English is done and even a moderately rigorous way. And every other language in the world is a vastly second class citizen. So I don't think Facebook set out to do that. It just happened to be there were side effects and they didn't pay enough. They didn't spend enough on on safety systems or on people watching for these problems.

MG: That was the real issue. I guess how much recognition is there again within the company? From people who work there, that that that there's a problem. You've said that that people are willing to look the other way and are promoted within Facebook more. If they look the other way, then if they raise those alarm bells.

FRANCES HAUGEN: there is a there is a contingent of people inside the company who work on integrity who have been diligently pushing on these issues for years. When I captured these documents, I also included the common threads because I wanted to show a contemporaneous discussion where people were actually saying at the time each of these documents were written. I wanted to show that lots of people inside the company agreed that these documents were real. But the thing said, these documents were real. And the problem is the people whose job is to find these problems and the people whose job is to authorise fixing these problems are different people. And so when you have incentives that are misaligned with the people who have the ability to fix, the problems are incentivised by growth and the people whose job to find these things don't have the authority to fix them. You end up in an impasse that leads us to where we are today.

MG: Do you think Mark Zuckerberg cares about fixing the platform?

FRANCES HAUGEN: There's a real pattern of behaviour that happens with all people. Where if you are rewarded for a behaviour, you will continue to do that behaviour more. For a very, very long time. Mark was incredibly well rewarded. We're talking tens of billions of dollars rewarded for prioritising growth, for always pushing for it, for copying any threat and making sure that you take it in-house for making sure the walls from escaping Facebook were as high as possible. And I think Mark is in a really hard place because he has to learn to be a slightly different leader now. And I don't think it's a question of does market care or not care about fixing these problems? I think it's a question of can he learn to be a different kind of leader because his pivot to video games and the metaverse shows him repeating those past behaviours. He's saying, Oh, you're talking about human trafficking, about kids hurting themselves. You're talking about people getting persecuted online. But let's focus on video games instead. Let's grow into the new, you know, Web3 world. I think we probably need a different leader to come in because he hasn't demonstrated a willingness to change, though I do have faith that if you wanted to take that path, he could do it.

MG: But when I asked you that question, you paused for seconds.

FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah, I think it's like I said, I think it's a question on rewards, that if you've gone behaviour reinforced since you were 19 years old, that growth is the only thing that you'll get rewarded for. I think it's very hard for you to focus your attention on getting execution right.

MG: What has what has to happen right now to start fixing some of the issues that you raise?

FRANCES HAUGEN: Great question. We have to change our relationship with Facebook from transparency perspectives. So you you raised in the intro the idea that people for years have been raising a lot of these criticisms. I always make sure to acknowledge the incredibly hard work of activists around the world to raise these issues. They've been even sounding the alarm for 10 plus years. The difference of what happened with my disclosure was we now have evidence that Facebook knew these were problems and chose not to do the solutions they had found. But what needs to happen immediately is greater transparency with the platform, like we need to have a structured process where people can raise concerns because right now, academics watchdogs raise concerns with Facebook will say Here we've accumulated all this evidence for you that there is a problem. Your kids are hurting themselves. And Facebook has literally said over and over again to them, and I know this because those activists, right, reach out to me. Facebook says that's anecdotal. That's not real. And that's a problem. We have to have a mechanism where people can raise issues, and Facebook is forced to articulate what they're going to do to solve them and give us enough data on an ongoing basis that we could see. Are they actually getting better? So there's this question of like, how do we right now? The only thing Facebook has to report externally is profit. Imagine a world where they had to report a whole host of metrics like what problems we divide, like, let's let's look at teen mental health right now. Facebook doesn't have to report how much eating disorder content is on the platform, or they don't report how much self-harm content is being viewed on the platform. I talked to a regulator in the U.K. and they said we asked Facebook how many young people in the UK have been overexposed to self-harm content. And Facebook said, We don't know. We don't track self-harm content. So there's this thing of like, imagine a world where we could come in and say, Hey, we believe kids are going overexposed to images of of of of of cutting or self-mutilation. You need to disclose how many kids get exposed to more than 10 pieces of this content every day. Imagine a world where that number is reported. Would Facebook get better about self-harm content? Almost certainly. So we have to change that dynamic.

MG: Lawmakers around the world are trying to figure out what to do with this company and about this company. And so in the US, this is underway. The EU has taken, I think, a much more aggressive stance on this. What should Canada be doing to try to rein in this company?

FRANCES HAUGEN: There is an amazing opportunity for Canada to work on coordinating countries that aren't the EU and the UK and to form a coalition for change around Facebook. I really want to draw attention to what the impact the U.K. had early mid last year, where they passed a bill about the rights of children online. And the U.K. is only about sixty five million people. But because it is difficult for Facebook to customise its services to individual countries, that more restrictive environment, like more rights for children, became the floor. And I believe there is an opportunity for Canada to lead a coalition of 200 million people. And if you can get together 100 million 200 million people your countries, you will be able to force change from Facebook. And I have faith that Canada could be a leader in driving that change.

MG: You have faith that change could be forced.

FRANCES HAUGEN: I do, because the reality is Facebook has to live in democracy's house, right? If you if those countries pass laws with real teeth on them around transparency and saying like, Hey, you have to actually disclose to us. I'll give you an example. Facebook has been misleading countries around the world on how many safety systems exist in each language. You know, they like to say you support 50 languages around the world, but most of those languages have only a tiny fraction of the safety systems that English has. Imagine if part of the Transparency Coalition was, they said, you must disclose which safety systems exist, which languages they exist because we're a multilingual country and the efficacy of those systems in each language. So. And so it's one of those things. We're just having to publish that data every month, every week. These are automated systems. You could easily have streams of data. That would force Facebook, Facebook, we now have egg on its face, so they continue to be doing really, really poorly in, say, French, which they're doing a very bad job with today.

MG: In spite of what came out of your revelations and the testimony that you've given, there are billions of people around the world who love this product, who love Facebook, who love Instagram, for example. It's a powerful tool. What the company has been able to pull off for all of the problems that exist, is there the potential that this technology could be used for good?

FRANCES HAUGEN: Unquestionably. And I want to I want to put one little tweak on something you just said. I don't think it's so much that people love Facebook or they love Instagram. That they love connecting with people. People love connexion. They love their friends. And so we deserve. We shouldn't have to choose between connecting with our friends and systems that hurt us.

MG: Would you ever go back to Facebook if you could make it better?

FRANCES HAUGEN: 100 percent. If Facebook would take me back, I would work there in a second because I believe this is the biggest problem in the world and we have to have to have to solve it. And if I can make any difference on that problem, I want to make a difference.

MG: Frances Hogan, it's great to speak with you. Thank you very much.

FRANCES HAUGEN: Have a great day. Thank you for inviting me.

MG: Frances Haugan is a former product manager at Facebook. We asked Mehta, Facebook's parent company, for a statement on what Frances Hogan has disclosed and what she said since leaving that company, particularly around putting profit ahead of safety. A spokesperson sent us the following. At the heart of these claims is a premise which is false. Yes, we're a business and we make a profit. But the idea that we do so at the expense of people's safety or well-being misunderstands where our commercial interests lie. We have over 40000 people to do one job, keep people safe on our services. You're CBC news is next. And then.

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My rent is getting $200. At the moment, I am unable to take care of my family. I have been laid off rent and my groceries, everything I pay from my credit card.

MG: The Omicron wave is hitting some people harder than others, and this time there's not nearly as much government support to cushion the blow in six minutes. The impact of the latest wave of COVID 19 on this country's most vulnerable and why some people say we're living through two separate pandemics. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Advocates say low-income and racialized communities need more support in Omicron surge

Guests: Dr. Andrew Boozary, Sue Gwynn, Raymond Ngarboui

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

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Still to come, if falling asleep every night has become a bit of a waking nightmare over the last couple of years, you are not alone. In just under 30 minutes, we'll talk about the lasting impact of losing sleep. But first, a tale of two pandemics.

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MG: It is no secret that this pandemic is hitting low income Canadians much harder than other demographics. These are the people who don't have a job that lets them work from home when their kids are doing online school, the ones struggling to pay rent and bills, the ones behind the 20 percent jump in food bank visits last year and the latest wave of COVID is once again widening the gap between those who can afford to cope and those who can't. Dr. Andrew Boozary is seeing this play out firsthand. He's a physician and executive director of social medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. Dr. Boozary, good morning.

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: Morning, Matt.

MG: There was this idea when the pandemic started that this would be, as I was saying earlier, a kind of great equaliser that we would all be touched by this in the same way. Now people are saying that we're living through, in some ways, two pandemics. What does that look like to you two years into this?

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: Yeah, I mean, I think when we look back. Over the last two years, and many of us from the beginning of this pandemic were warning that, you know, COVID is not. Going to be a great equaliser there, really, it's going to expose many of the, you know, structural disparities and divides in our society and actually exacerbate a lot of the inequalities that we've seen throughout the country. And we talk about a tale of two pandemics in which many of us have been calling and saying that, you know, warning against from the beginning, you know, it's exactly as you mentioned. And what we're really seeing is a tale of two pandemics of poverty and profit. You know, power and privilege who can afford to stay home, who has a home or is housed in a pandemic, what the conditions are for people who are providing essential work. So many can stay at home. You know, this is the divide that we've seen and the realities have always been different throughout the pandemic. And I think what we now two years in really fear is that the divide can be worse than it's ever been when there is really, you know, these notions or slogans early on that we were going to be, you know, all in this together. And that's some of the part that's that's really concerning right now.

MG: When you take a look at some of the public health guidance that we are given that we should work from home, if possible, that we should access tests if we find that we have symptoms that you know, obviously people should get vaccines, but you need to book those vaccines. How does that play out when it comes to people who don't have the luxury or the capacity to be able to, for example, pay for a PCR test when some people can go and walk up the street to a private clinic and book a PCR test for $150.

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: Yeah, I mean, there's a a seismic difference in the realities, and I think the other thing that, you know, has been really clear for many of us working out in communities on the front line is that, you know, there's there's just been a real disconnect between the public health advice and for the reality of millions of people living in Canada right now. What do you mean? This has always been the case. So I think, you know, when we look at, for example, you mentioned testing, we've had, you know, chief medical officers of health have to come out and say testing is a privilege. And so again, it's not a privilege afforded at all. It's one where, again, when you've mentioned, you know, all of these barriers that people are going to have in terms of if people do not have adequate paid sick leave, how are they going to be able to go get the vaccine and to ensure that there is time to recover, to be able to be back at work where people are experiencing symptoms? The guidance from getting testing to return to work. But if you cannot access a rapid antigen test, if you cannot access a PCR test, these are again layer upon layer and barrier upon barrier that is creating an ossified these two different realities. And I think that the piece that has been really concerning as well that has been really problematic is that the public discourse really early, at least a lot of the messaging we're talking about, the public health advice initially and for a long part, was putting the onus on individuals. Or you've got to go out and get tested, you've got to go out and sure, you're getting the vaccine, you've got to keep safe. But what I hope that we've learnt throughout the pandemic is that these are structural forces. These are not individual failures. These are not deficits and people, people who've had to provide the essential work. We're not getting access to testing, we're not getting access to high quality masks where the vaccines are at the highest risk. It's not a failure of their own. These are the structural forces, and I think this is something that there are too many heartbreaking tales of this throughout the pandemic. And if we can't come to those realisations now, we're only going to continue to fail these people.

MG: We want to hear some of those tales across the country. But just very briefly, can you a couple of years into this? Why are we still in this place? Why is this still at the heart of of in many ways, how some communities are dealing with this pandemic?

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: One thing we have to name it. You know, we have to be able to name the fact that this has been about systemic discrimination and the discrimination against people living in poverty, people with disabilities, our elders and seniors. This again, COVID does not expose anything new. It is exposed the harsh realities of people that have always been marginalised, that have always been neglected and have not been the priority in policy, in access and in spending and funding and investment. So, you know, it's been like this pre-pandemic. I think many of us, you know, really clung to some hope that this was going to change, that people were going to realise that, you know, our fates are more connected than people wanted to believe or were led to believe pre-pandemic. And you know, these are again, policy forces that have been in place pre-pandemic continue to be in place and we've seen some movement. I mean, I think that again, we've seen mobilisation and some policies that pre-pandemic politicians and policymakers were telling us is impossible. You know, we can't ensure that people have basic income well within a matter of weeks. There was a CREB Brooke, right? You know, we can't ensure that people are getting access to different supports and these things were happening again, a time in scale that was supposedly unimaginable before. So I think there's been some promise and hope. But we have to also reconcile the fact that this is longstanding discrimination, longstanding neglect and marginalisation. And this is why you know, the fight continues to ensure that people who are at the highest risk who continue to have the worst health outcomes are really the priority in our society as we're talking about this in the pandemic.

MG: So let's hear how this is playing out across the country. This is a restaurant worker named Sivakumar. We've agreed only to use his first name because he's concerned about future employment. We recorded this yesterday with an interpreter named David Harris from the Worker's Action Centre.

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Speaker 3: The Omicron virus really affected me and my family. I was working in the restaurant till the pandemic time and at the start of the pandemic I was laid off and in 2021 I was asked to come to work in September and again because of the new restrictions due to a macro virus, I had been laid off, effective from December 26. This affects my family very badly. I live in a rented apartment in the basement. My rent is 1300 dollars and I have a wife and two children. My three children are school going. And at the moment, I am unable to take care of my family because of the financial constraints. I had to go to work because take out of my wife and three children. As a cook all the time, I wear my mask and I do my job. But still I am in fear. With great difficulty. I have been managing my family, all my payments, rent and my groceries, everything I pay from my credit card. I also sought help from my friends and already I got $3000 from my friends as a loan. My medical outlook in this episode. At the moment, I lost my hope as my employer told me, you will be recalled to work only after this pandemic is over. Now they are doing only takeout and I have no hope at all that I can rejoin the work. At the momen. With the lockdown benefit, I'll be able to get only $270. That's not at all sufficient to maintain my family to pay my rent and bills. So the government should help us giving us income support to take care of my family.

MG: That's Sivakumar, a restaurant worker. Let's keep heading across the country. Raymond Ngarboui is an organiser with the Community Education Development Association and Rainbow Community Garden in Winnipeg. He organises food delivery and other support for about 350 families in that city. Raymond, good morning to you.

RAYMOND NGARBOUI: Good morning, Mike, and good morning, Dr. Boozary.

MG: How has this latest wave affected the families that you work with?

RAYMOND NGARBOUI: Oh, this wave, the the wave that happened before hit Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg, but the Omicron wave came to do it harder even due to the self-isolation from imposed by the provincial health restrictions and with consequences on low income families and especially indigenous and newcomer families. Those categories of community members were really hit by this situation because lower income families are more within this community, for example. And the consequences, as Dr. Boozary mentioned, go from housing, people can't afford food, and it's also caused by discrimination and marginalisation. He mentions the fact that this- we noticed that what is happening now has consequences for the Omicron are the consequences that are already being existent and the COVID situation came to reinforce it.

MG: And so you are involved in helping to meet some of those gaps in delivering food and other support. But what what more would help when it comes to the families that you're working with? What do they need and what should government be providing in this moment, do you think?

RAYMOND NGARBOUI: I think the family's hard hit economically in terms of how is being socially, culturally and all this. So there is a lot to do academically. For example, there is not enough laptops, tablets or computers in many new immigrant families, for example, to enable decent online school attendance by their children and many children. For example, you would be a parent, phones or other small electronic devices, which are not appropriate as when they use laptops for textbooks, for online course or for online school schooling. And many newcomers, for example, parents don't have English or French as first language, so difficult for them to communicate with that the school administration. They have children to school and to help their children with their home school homework. So it's difficult for them to manage this. That's why I think more resources from provincial and federal governments to organisations which deals with helping communities and also school administration, for example, would be a good thing. And also in terms of affordability, in terms of groceries, families who are isolated, many of them don't have credit cards, for example, to order something from their home. And also, these are populations who live mostly collectively and when they are isolated, it really impact their lifestyle. And newcomer families, for example, or indigenous do happen more, the same lifestyle, as they do live together. They do have larger family members values. And when one of their family members is infected, it goes from one individual to another and from one household to another household to within the same community, which makes it even harder. And that's why, for example, in Winnipeg, we decided to launch a programme called Food for All to address some of those challenges.

MG: Raymond, it's really important to hear the work that you're doing. I appreciate that work, and I appreciate you telling us about it. Thank you very much.

RAYMOND NGARBOUI: You are very welcome, Matt, and thank you for having me.

MG: Raymond Ngarboui is an organiser with the Community Education Development Association and the Rainbow Community Garden in Winnipeg. Dr. Andrew Boozary is a physician and executive director of social medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. Dr. Boozary, just briefly, I think one of the things that we hear from Raymond is that there's a bit of an ad hoc approach there. The government support perhaps isn't there. And so you see organisations like his stepping in. What does that? What does that mean if a support is coming in and coming in that way?

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: Yeah. I mean, what it means is that the system continues to bank on the heroism of the individuals in poverty, of people like Raymond to try to step up and try to navigate with communities, the supports that are there. But it's very clear that it's not as coordinated as it needs to be. And I think again, we are trying to unpack these last two years. You know, the real high points of the pandemic is when every level of government was working in concert to put, you know, people over corporate interests, party interests. And I think that's, you know, as Raymond is calling for, that's really what we need to see now because I think, you know, in films or the stories, the gentleman working in the kitchen, what Raymond has been speaking to, you know, this really embodies the social determinants of health. And I think pre-pandemic, you know, this may have been academic or esoteric term, but I think it's very real for people now to understand that this is really about, you know, where people work, the air they breathe, where they sleep. The so social supports that they have are the fundamental drivers of health outcomes. And so if we're not ensuring that there are real coordinated collaborative policies in place to make this happen, we continue to see, as Raymond mentioned, is we're exacerbating the divide and actually people are more lonely if the system is more fragmented and people continue to experience worse health outcomes in isolation.

MG: I want to slide one more voice into this conversation if I can. Sue Gwynn is acting chair for Poverty Talks. It's an advocacy group in Calgary. Sue, good morning to you.

SUE GWYNN: Good morning.

MG: One of the things we've been talking about is people trying to figure out how to, you know, determine whether they're sick. And as Andrew was saying, medical officers of health have been saying the testing is a luxury, but also what happens in that context. If you can't, for example, work from home when it comes to testing people and their children in terms of the communities that you work with? What sort of decisions are these families forced to make?

SUE GWYNN: Well, tearfully, they're forced to decide whether or not to test their children because testing a child and having that child test positive has dire economic impact on the family where, you know, we haven't considered the fact that, okay, that positive test has ramifications, meaning that, okay, so the child is sick. They test positive for COVID. They're out of school for X number of days. The parent has to stay home. They can't go to a day-care. They can't go to even a private day-care. They have to be isolated. That means the family can't, there's no income, and that is the difference between making the rent or not making the rent.

MG: And these are stories that you hear from the clients that you work with.

SUE GWYNN: Absolutely, yes. And I mean, it's it's a reality, and then of course, there's the whole every time the kids go on a break, it's not the break that they say it's going to be. It's an extra, and even an extra five days. That's five days that a parent is scrambling. And these are four children that aren't sick. They're scrambling to find, Well, what am I going to do with these kids? I don't have a day-care provider, I don't have this, I don't have that. And the reality is that they're just left holding the bag and they have to figure it out themselves, and that sometimes is impossible.

MG: What can governments do now to help those families now?

SUE GWYNN: They need to look at this pandemic and actually address the issues the inside of the pandemic instead of kind of putting these big Band-Aids on them, the individual issues are not actually individual issues, they're issues faced by the whole of the population. So low income parents with children are not a small, it's not five people. That's a lot of people. They need to say, Okay, so these people, when this happens, we're going to provide not just support, but we're going to provide adequate support. And, you know, frontline workers can't afford to take time off. Most of them work well in this province anyway, are reduced their hours before pandemic or part time hours, meaning that they didn't get the benefits that a full time job would include, right?

MG: And so you need to look at it holistically, you need to connect those dots.

SUE GWYNN: Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, and that that's not even speaking to families that are brand new to poverty. COVID has forced them into poverty. They don't know the system. They have no idea how to access a food bank, how to get- I actually spoke to a family at Christmas time. Their first time ever applying for for any kind of support around Christmas time, they're asking for a Christmas hamper. And there was a lot of noise in the background, and I asked the mum, You know, is everything okay? And she said, Yeah, my 12 year old daughter wants to talk to you. And once she put her 12 year old daughter on the phone, the 12 year old was freaking out because her mother hadn't eaten a meal in three days because although she was getting food from the local little, we have these outdoor food pantries. And although the mom was accessing those to get food, she wasn't getting enough for herself because she felt that it was selfish. She was taking too much, so she would feed her children, but not eat herself. And in that she is trying to work, she is trying to raise children, she's trying to home school children, all of these things, and she's not eating. Because she doesn't realise that that there's tons of resources, but she's never, ever accessed before in her life. This is new to her.

MG: Sue, I'm really glad to hear about the work that you're doing and these are important stories for us to reflect on. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sue. Glen, acting chair of poverty talks in Calgary. Dr. Batsari, last couple of minutes to you. What has to happen? What's your message now to those who are making policy about what needs to be done right now?

DR. ANDREW BOOZARY: You know, I would agree with Sue, and I think the challenging piece is this really has been heartbreak, heartbreak on repeat for people throughout the country, and I think that the real element here is that we do have to address the root causes. We do have to address the pathologies of poverty. We cannot have these short term, you know, unsustainable programmes. We need to invest in sustainable programmes and policies that we know have massive health benefits that will protect us in a pandemic, but also have health and social and economic benefits. And I think just, you know, we have to look at the data. I mean, I think the data needs to continue to drive the response. And when you look at the data of where Canada stood pre-pandemic, it's pretty damning and where we were on social policy, you know, when child well-being was 30th out of 38 countries, we are near the bottom on health care and hospital bed capacity. We are near the bottom, the same comparators when it comes to social programmes spending. And I think we need to upend the thinking that, you know, we have to revert to a normal that has been failing people and looking at the fact that there are investments that are being made, you know, whether that's in transit or different corporate supports that need to be moved towards people who are suffering people, as Sue has mentioned, that are going without food. We have food bank usage that is surging in this country. While some grocery store chains are having profit, record breaking years and essential workers are not even getting pandemic pay. And so if we're not able to address these issues and make these commitments, I mean, we've been having these conversations and it's so powerful to hear directly from the people who have this because there is no one was voiceless. I think the voices are coming forward, but the policies in the coming places, we finally need to deliver on housing as a human right and the income support.

MG: We'll have to leave it there. But this is a lot to think about and hopefully a lot to act on. Dr. Thank you so much. Dr. Andrew Boozary, a physician, executive director of social medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. Your thoughts on this are welcome. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. We're back in 90 seconds.

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Can't sleep? Here are some tips to tackle pandemic-induced insomnia

Guests: Dr. Elliott Lee, Veronica Antipolo, Luc Beaudoin

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. When was the last time you felt like you had a really good sleep? You know, the kind where you're out like a light as soon as you hit the pillow, you wake up feeling rested and refreshed and ready to tackle that day in front of you. It's been a while. You are not alone. Sleep experts say that insomnia rates have skyrocketed during this pandemic, and it's time to start looking more closely at how to deal with some of the pandemic related sleep disturbances rather than just waiting for them to go away. This next conversation is for all of you who stared at the ceiling for hours last night. Dr. Elliott Lee is medical director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Dr. Lee. Good morning.

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Good morning.

MG: How many more patients with sleep issues are you seeing now compared to a couple of years ago before we were in this mess?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, we've seen a steady rise in the number of consultations at our clinic has been receiving for insomnia and sleep complaints, where, like many other health care workers, are overwhelmed with the number of consultation requests we're getting, we've seen a almost a 50 percent rise in the number of consults that we've received.

MG: And so what are those sleepy patients telling you about what's causing their sleep issues?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, it's a variety of issues that cause problems. I think the pandemic has really unmasked several issues and made things a lot worse. We know from our recent publication, from Dr. Robi Ard and I also worked on this as well that up to 50 percent of people now are complaining of insomnia difficulties in Canada, well above what the usual rate was before which was closer to a third of the people.

MG: How are you sleeping?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Oh, my sleep is going up and down a little bit. I've had some more difficult days than others, so the pandemic has brought its own challenges for our family as well.

MG: Do we know that? Well, do we know what what it is about the pandemic that is continuing to disrupt our sleep? We're now a couple of years into this.

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, I think it's a variety of factors, but I think the biggest thing for most people really is the uncertainty and the lack of control that the pandemic has introduced. And that just affects people differently. Whether it's job stability that has been compromised or of work situation that's changed or the school situation that have changed and how to address child care in the context of the pandemic and balancing all of these things together. I mean, fundamentally, our lives have just become out of balance because of everything that the pandemic has thrown at us.

MG: I mean, I think a lot of us experience that we just spent the last half hour talking about how the pandemic is an unequal pandemic, and there are a lot of people who are carrying perhaps a lot more weight when we're trying to sleep. I mean, as the medical director, what's going on in our brain that's preventing us from sleeping when all of this is swirling through our minds?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, it can be a variety of factors. But fundamentally, one thing that is very common amongst people with insomnia is a physiologic arousal. So whether that's related to anxiety associated with stress or changes in their routine. It can be something as simple as personally wondering about your own health. I have a I have a little sniffle, I have a little cough, my throat is a little dry. Do I have something? You know, I think this has really come up with the American brand to all the other things that have changed with the pandemic, lack of consultation or contact with our loved ones, how school is going for kids, what what to do when so many things have changed and this overall lack of control and loss of balance in their lives is contributing to an overall arousal that is manifesting as sleep problems and maybe unmasking other sleep issues.

MG: So stay with us, Dr., I want to hear how this is playing out in the sleep patterns or lack thereof of Canadians. Veronica Antipolo is somebody that we spoke with a little over a year ago about how the pandemic had disrupted her sleep. We thought we'd check back in with her. Veronica, good morning.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Good morning.

It's great to talk to you again. How are you sleeping these days?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Not well at all. Worse that probably last year.

MG: Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. Tell me what that's like.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: It's. Well, I actually joked with a friend the other day. I said, You know, I might as well just take a night shift somewhere because I'm just up all night. It's terrible because in the day I can't, I can't. Not because right now we're in virtual school, so I have to stay up for my daughter. And the anxiety builds on itself as the doctor was mentioning. I am anxious throughout the whole night. I'm up, I'll go to sleep, I'll wake up an hour later and I'll stay up until 5:00. And then at 5:00, I take a little nap until 7:30 a.m. And that's it.

MG: What are you? What are you doing in the middle of the night?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: I've tried so many things this time around, I am actually I moved to another city, so it's better for work life balance. I have meditation apps. I am more physically active. So now in the middle of the night, I either read, I try to listen to the meditation app or my last resort is I start cleaning.

MG: You start cleaning.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Yes, I guess I might as well go with it.

MG: I mean, the house is clean, but that does it knock you out at all? Does it prompt sleep or just? It's something to do.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: I had something to do it. I think it gets me a little bit physically tired, which in theory you'd think would help. But I'm just physically tired. I still can't get to sleep.

MG: As you mentioned, I mean, you have a lot going on. It's not as though you can nap all day long. You're a single mom and virtual school is happening in many parts of this country. And that's happening where you are.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Yes. Yeah, it's it's a lot. And again, the schedule as well, just the disruption in schedule every few months as it's been happening, the pivots have, you know, they just turn everything upside down and you have to start again and it's pivoting like on a dime. You know, you get sometimes 48 hours notice with school and it makes for an uncertain future. I don't know whether I should be looking for a full time job because right now I'm self-employed or if I should just stay in self-employment. It's all of this uncertainty comes to visit right in the middle of the night and sits with me and holds my hand doesn't let me go.

MG: Did things improve at all in the time between when we spoke before and now?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: A little bit. And by a little bit, I mean, I was getting maybe six hours of sleep, and when I moved to out of Toronto into London, there was a period for two weeks where I slept like a baby from nine p.m. until 7:30. And just like that, it stopped, and it coincided with around the news of when the variant started popping up. And then my sleep said, See you later.

MG: See you later. Yeah, we have the sleep doctor on the line. Is there anything that you would want to ask the sleep doctor?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Yeah. I think I'm trying everything that I'm supposed to help me sleep. What do you recommend in terms of? Is there anything I should not be doing during that time I'm awake that will not help me get back to sleep?

MG: Dr. Elliot Lee, is there anything that you can offer, Veronica?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, the initial thing that I heard that I would comment on is the cleaning at night, so that can be a bit of a mixed bag. It depends on how anxious you are about the cleanliness of your home. So cleaning at night can in some ways be a rewarding task. So when you clean the house, you might feel a little bit good about yourself and what you've done. At least, you know you may rationalise that you have not wasted time. But fundamentally, if that keeps continuing, you may inadvertently be training yourself to stay up in the middle of the night or wake up. It's like giving yourself a reward for waking up in the middle of the night, and then you conditioned yourself to actually keep waking up so you can keep cleaning and get things done. And that may, in the long run, actually be counterproductive. So I would recommend if you do wake up in the middle of the night and you can't get back to sleep after about 20 minutes to do something that's actually boring and doesn't make you feel particularly good or doesn't increase your productivity so as to not reward yourself for staying up in the middle of the night.

MG: Dr. Lee, Veronica mentioned like the meditation apps and things like that, do those work at all in helping to distract us to to lead us to better sleep?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: They can be helpful. It really depends on what the cause of insomnia is and you have to have. You have to do them often enough for them to be helpful. It's kind of like training yourself. I liken it to like practising the piano. You know, you have anxiety. Often it's unconscious at a level. And so when you do those apps, you have to get them to a point where the breathing techniques and the other things associated with those go to an unconscious level, just like a concert pianist. When he plays music at a piano hall, he's not playing by reading the sheet music rack. He's just playing through the notes. But if you ask him, like, what if the fifth note on the 10th page, you know, they're not going to be able to tell you, but they could play it, you know? So that's what I mean by these learning techniques being unconscious. So if they're done properly and repetitively to the point where people are starting to do things unconsciously, then that's where they can really be helpful. Assuming, of course, to that they're not going on backlit screens all the time at night too.

MG: Veronica. I wish you deep sleep, and I hope when we talk again, if we talk again, we have to wake you up to get you on the radio that you sleep through your alarm. Thank you very much and take care of yourself.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Thank you.

MG: Veronica Antipolo is a small business owner in London, Ontario. Dr. Elliott Lee One of the things that is worth mentioning is that your clinic is in the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Just briefly, how closely associated are sleep issues with mental health? And we've been hinting at this through conversations around anxiety and more. But tell us more about that.

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Oh, sleep issues are intimately connected with mental health issues. We we really conceptualised sleep and mental health issues, including psychiatric disorders, as having a bi directional relationship. Most people know that if you have a psychiatric illness, you can have associated sleep problems but don't necessarily understand that a sleep problem can contribute to exacerbate or even cause a mental health issue. Just as an example, 80 percent of people with a major depressive disorder will have some kind of sleep disturbance. Usually it's insomnia so very intimately connected, and we believe that if we can address insomnia symptoms in those patients, especially first, we may be able to prevent the onset of a depressive illness or at least treat the outcome and reduce the risk of subsequent relapse.

MG: Dr. Elliott Lee is the medical director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Dr. Lee stick around a little bit longer. We have one other guest to bring in to this discussion. Luc Beaudoin is a researcher at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and adjunct professor of both education and cognitive science. And he's been looking into some of the underlying connexions between sleep and cognitive function. Luc Beaudoin, good morning to you.

LUC BEAUDOIN: Good morning.

MG: From a psychological standpoint, what is going on when I'm in bed tossing and turning and I cannot fall asleep?

LUC BEAUDOIN: Well, there's you're in this in this case, your brain, your brain has a system that decides whether it is time to fall asleep or not. It's actually asking that question all the time. And so it's confusing a lot of different factors. And one of the factors is are some of my motivators active. So your goals, your concerns, your wishes, your wants, etc. Are they active? And are they are they drawing my attention? And one of the ways in which we keep these things active is just by by processing them. So by engaging in problem-solving. So we find that people with insomnia have, you know, they tend to be engaging in problem-solving mode or reflecting about their motives at night. Whereas natural sleep onset involves, you know, a gradual fading out of of that kind of thinking. So that's kind of one thing. Another another major factor is is my colleague here was mentioning arousal. We conceptualise this or some of us conceptualise it in terms of of stress in terms of in terms of an alarm system going off in your in your brain, saying that you know there's something urgent, don't know what it is. So this is balancing between, you know, very specific concerns being processed and and a general something is going wrong and an alarm going off. So if those two things are happening, then the brain takes that as a signal. As you know, I might as well stay awake. You know, it's not it's not a very smart system. It doesn't know if you're being chased by a tiger or whatever, because this system, the sleep system, we share this with older animals with with the with evolutionarily simpler and ancient forms of, you know, brain forms.

MG: Is this the mental power turbines that you have been investigating that? Is that what's going on with that?

LUC BEAUDOIN: Yeah. We conceptualise that in terms of in terms of mental procurements, me being our research team, still investigating at the universe at Laval University in Quebec and others. Yeah, that's mental procurements has these two sides the motivational side. So you're processing motivators and and the alarm side.

MG: This sounds like an obvious question, but I think it's worth asking in what ways does that disruption in our sleep interfere with our cognitive abilities throughout the day? I mean, I think we all know that if we don't get a good night's sleep, we're a bit of a zombie at some point in time during the middle of the day and that you can just zone right out, but tell us more about what's going on there.

LUC BEAUDOIN: All right. So your executive function, so your working memory, which is your very short term memory, your ability to recall information to control even what you're thinking. So we have this thing called metacognition. They take a hit during an during the day. So it's it's really a bit of a catch-22 because in order to deal with the insomnia situation, you need your cognitive functions. But as you as your executive functions take a hit, it's harder to step back at your own thinking and exercise an influence over your own thinking. And so but you know, when you describe these things, it's easy to to sound like this is not something you can deal with. So I don't want to make it sound like and you know, it's not it's something you can't deal with. But yeah, we do take. We do take a hit. It's amazing that when sleep goes, whether it's from insomnia or just because people are pushing themselves to work longer hours or whatever, that so much goes out of whack. But one of them, yeah, that is the core executive function which distinguish us from other animals.

MG: And have you seen a real spike in this? I mean, over the course of the pandemic, has this been exacerbated as people go through all of the things that we've all gone through over the last couple of years?

LUC BEAUDOIN: Yes, the pandemic, the the papers I've seen have shown a market increase and use of medication for sleep, the general general stress related concerns and insomnia. It's it's really, you know, it's funny. It's not funny. But before this, you hit the show was talking about a pandemic of sleep deprivation, and I think that was probably a misuse of the term pandemic. But but, you know, a few months after they put that out, we were hit with a real pandemic, the previous pandemic continued. So it's kind of overlaid on that. But certainly all kinds of mental health concerns, as you would expect, went through the roof.

MG: Dr. Elliott Lee, what are the we talked about the mental health consequences physically and when it comes to our health and well-being and what we're able to to accomplish over the course of a day? What is the impact of this sleep deficit that so many of us are going through right now?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: Well, I would highlight that newer data have evaluated a system that is very active in the brain called the lymphatic system, which is a group of blood vessels that basically function to clear waste products from the brain. And this lymphatic system is only active during sleep. So I kind of liken it to like a dishwasher for our brain every night when we sleep under normal circumstances. This dishwasher or lymphatic system clears waste product from the brain, and we know then when we don't sleep, then these waste products can accumulate. Some of these waste products include stuff called beta amyloid tao and alpha synuclein. If these products accumulate too much, we know that these are the pathologic hallmarks of various neurocognitive sort of like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's and [unintelligible] dementia. So this is a very active area of research looking at whether sleep problems could predict the onset of these issues. So that's I mean, that's a big philosophical and medical question. But for the here and now, this system, when it's not active because people are not sleeping, probably is not working properly. And that may contribute to sort of the cobwebs that people feel when they don't sleep well. We know that for sleep to function, to give us the restorative function that it does. We don't know how it goes, but we know that you need three things to happen to your sleep. You need a good quantity of sleep. For most people, that's usually seven to nine hours a night. You need a good quality of sleep. That's where insomnia and other stressors will, you know, kind of play a role in compromising that. And you often need to sleep at the right time relative to your own circadian cycle. So you don't sleep at the right time, which has also been an issue in the pandemic. Then sleep quality and quantity are also compromised.

MG: So let's spend the last five minutes talking about how to get a good night's sleep. Luc Beaudoin, if I'm experiencing mental perturbing as you have described it, and it is affecting my ability to sleep because my brain is racing and there's a lot going on and I can't seem to park it at night. What are some of the strategies that you would recommend for dealing with that?

LUC BEAUDOIN: Well, my first recommendation is is something akin to mindfulness, which has become more popular, is basically having acceptance about one's concerns because ultimately this is driven by concerns that not everything's in our control and in our own feelings as well our mental experience, which is sometimes unpleasant, you know, to have acceptance that you know, it's it's sometimes we're in for an unpleasant ride. So, so it's a good thing that mindfulness is becoming more popular because that because we've got that in our toolkit, then then specifically, it's requires a distancing and a disengaging, you know, that's the time when you're in bed from your concerns. So one strategy, for instance, is for people to journal their concerns say at around dinnertime far enough before bedtime to basically put that on paper, do that. Do once doesn't even need to be problem-solving. Just write down one's concern and maybe jot down a few thoughts about what to do about them. And then by the time you get into bed, you need a mindset that this is not a place for problem solving. Now, naturally, as anybody who's tried to meditate, you find yourself going to your concerns because the brain's designed to figure out, OK, what should I be thinking about? And and then and then you need something else, another mental activity to do. So one one for one activity that's been studied is is called it's a mental articulation. Is you just you think about words which you might, which you might spell anything to distract you. That's not that's not problem solving. So that's one.

MG: So it's a tried to spell words in your brain and that that would distract me from the problems of the day.

LUC BEAUDOIN: Yeah. Yeah. To move from one focussing on the phonemes, et cetera, the idea is to keep parts of your brain that might otherwise get into problem solving mode busy. We ourselves have developed the technical The [unintelligible] shuffle, which involves imagining one different thing after another. I should point out that concrete thinking is is probably a better thing to do than abstract thinking. So thinking about particular things like piano, you know, like here's a piano going for a walk, etc. that brings up visual imagery that ties up part of your brain and it takes it draws you away from problem solving. If you think of problem solving, it's very abstract. You know you're thinking about, Oh, what am I going to do about, about my job, my job? So you can go into all kinds of, you know, tailspin about reasoning about that, whereas focussing on a concrete thing in general is less it's actually less stressful. Even apart from this, the insomnia literature.

MG: Dr. Lee, what do you recommend again? You know, the obvious common advice is put your phone down. Don't be scrolling through Twitter looking at all the terrible things that are happening in the world when you're trying to fall asleep. What should we be doing if we are struggling with sleep?

DR. ELLIOTT LEE: So I think sleep at night starts first with activity during the day, so make sure that you're doing good things during the day. So exercise and nutrition, get involved in activities and be a little bit selfish about those activities have to be an activity that's pleasurable and gives you some enjoyment in life. So this is another issue with the pandemic. It's compromised a lot of our coping strategies, like exercise and things like this. I think I read that you like cooking. I do the Galloway. So something like this would be really good because it's an enjoyable activity. And when you do it well, you see the output. So that's also an important part of any such activity. But these activities ate during the day can help with sleep at night. Then just really practical things like going to bed at regular times and waking up at regular times, avoiding maladaptive strategies like alcohol and cannabis, for example, we've seen a significant rise in use of these chemicals to help with sleep. Avoid clock watching for sleep is really funny. The more you think about sleep, the worse it is. And so what happens is people are looking at the clock Oh, it's midnight, I'm not asleep. It's one o'clock. I'm still not asleep. It's four o'clock. I only have two hours to sleep before I actually get up. These things ultimately can sabotage sleep and then avoiding naps in the day as well, because if you nap in the day, that can compromise asleep at night, I just want to add a final comment, OK? Kind of hints at what Dr O'Dwyer highlighted when when we're faced with stress and uncertainty in the pandemic, something that can be really helpful is to try to have a plan for certain contingencies that you know can occur. I mean, this is what made you feel. Do actually, you know, when they have to go into, you know, some of their mission. So if we know, for example, that there's a distinct possibility that a child will need to stay home because of, you know, the school being closed or schools are being closed, try to have a plan for what's going to happen if if the school closes and my child has to stay home, what am I going to do? And I, you know, am I going to have health care or my nanny come or, you know, from parent or whatever? Or how am I going to do? How am I going to deal with the job? But if you have a plan of action, then that can help relieve some of the uncertainty for some of the anxiety that can occur if you know about some sort of predictable or potential outcome that is going to occur with the pandemic. And then this can get people a feeling of being at least a little prepared when such uncertainties occur and then gets a sense of comfort and relief to help facilitate sleep.

MG: We'll see whether put people put these techniques to use this evening. It's good to speak with you both about this. This is important. Thank you. My pleasure. Luc Beaudoin, adjunct professor of education and cognitive science at Simon Fraser University, and Dr. Elliott Lee is the medical director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. How's your sleep? Two years into this pandemic and we figure out ways to get a better night's sleep, let us know. Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca or tweet us not before you go to bed @TheCurrentCBC. That's The Current for this Thursday cues up next on CBC Radio one. You might have tried any number of ways to fall asleep and you listen to podcasts. Maybe you do some meditation. Maybe you have a glass of warm milk before you go to bed. Have you tried the dulcet tones of Willie Mason might just be the thing. We'll leave you with a bit of Willie Mason and I Can't Sleep. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Sweet dreams. See you tomorrow!

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