Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. #199 - Danielle Smith 2.0

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Did you hear the Premieres latest public address "pandemic of the unvaccinated" Well Danielle hops on to discuss this & what is to come, she also had a couple of unique ideas on how to be proactive moving forward. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Glenn Healing. Hi, this is Braden Holby. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hi, this is Brian Burke. This is Jordan Tutu. This is Keith Morrison. This is Kelly Rudy. Hi, this is Scott Hartnell.

Hey, everybody. My name is Steele-Fer. This is Tim McAuliffe of Sportsnet, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. This is a first for the podcast. I obviously had a bonus episode this morning for Friday, and then with everything going on, premier jason kennie's uh um address his announcement um weirdly enough i got the opportunity to sit

with daniel smith and uh thought this is something that should get released immediately because after the announcement i was pretty stressed well i figured the to all you stressed out folks out there or other people wanting to hear what um daniel had to say about it our conversation instead of waiting to release it. I thought I'd upload it immediately, so for the first time in podcast, my podcast history, two episodes in a day. I never thought I'd say that. And I'll get on to the T-Barr-1, Tale of the Tale. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, she graduated with degrees in economics in English. She was the leader of the Wild Rose Party from 09 to 2014, which even saw her become the official opposition in 2012. Former director of provincial affairs for

Alberta with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. She has extensive experience in the media, radio host with chorus entertainment for over six years, writer for the Calgary Herald, and served as a host on Global Sunday. I'm talking about Daniel Smith. So buckle up. Here we go.

I'm Daniel Smith, and this is the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I am joined by Daniel Smith. It's great to have you back. It's been an interesting, I think it was March the last time. we talked March 8th to be exact. So things have changed immensely. And as we both know, things just

changed again. Um, those darn pesky unvaccinated. So I mean, first off, how are you doing? I'm good. Everything old is new again. In fact, you're right. A lot has changed. But here we are, finding ourselves right back where we were in the early part of the year. I don't know whether laugh or cry. I, uh, I'm stressed. I'll, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll leave that out there. for the listener. They probably know why, but if you don't, haven't paid attention, first it was Premier Moe last week talking about consequences and making life difficult. And now Alberta today coming up with the crisis of the unvaccinated, I think was the term or the phrase that I heard the most that while you can kind of get a feeling of where we're at. What did you think?

I think it's important for people to look at the data themselves because even the way that they've been reporting the data shows that even if you look at sort of a most, you're the most generous assessment, 20% of the people who are being hospitalized are double vaccinated. So I think this is the real problem that we have and the real danger that we have. have. If we frame this issue, the way it was framed today, that, oh, you're 100% good to go. All you have to do is get double faxed. That's not what we're seeing in other jurisdictions. What we're seeing in Israel, as a, for instance, and look, anything I say, I want people to go and fact check themselves because I do lots of rating and lots of checking. But all you have to do is look at the hospitalization

crisis that they have in Israel. And Israel, remember, they had a deal with Pfizer that they would do mass vaccination earlier than anyone else. And so they had protocols in place to get to a higher level of vaccination than any of the jurisdiction faster than any other jurisdiction. So there are a couple of months ahead of us. And what they're seeing is this Delta variant is just zipping through their country too. and the majority, so in the order of 80% of people who have the Delta variant are double-vaxed.

It's the reason why they just announced that they were doing a third booster shot, a third vaccination, is because we're beginning to see that after about six months, the effectiveness of these vaccines wear off. Now, it's not the end of the world, and people shouldn't panic about that. But I think we need to be really honest about the fact that this is, a problem of both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. And it's, I don't want anyone to have some false sense of security that if they, they do have a double dose, they can then ignore it if they get symptoms because obviously they must be fine. I think that that's a, I think it's a really problematic messaging, because that's not what we're seeing in Israel, which is the nation that we

should be following most closely. The reason I think that's important is because we're just, if we are two months delayed and having the same result, then take us to the end of October. That's when our normal respiratory virus season is. If the vaccines are wearing off right when we enter into our respiratory virus season, we're going to need to develop different strategies to make sure that the vaccinated, the ones who did everything right and got there early and thought they were protected, you're to make sure that they don't get sick and get hospitalized. So I don't approve of this kind of messaging because it's just, it's not reflective of what we're even seeing in Alberta, and it's certainly not reflective of what we're seeing in jurisdictions that are ahead

of us. So it's really problematic. And I don't want people to have a false sense of security. Everyone has to do what they can, depending on their own health condition, their age, to make sure that they're being fully protected. And if you have to take extra precautions, you've got to take extra precautions. But we've, we're taking a strange turn that is a bit unexpected. And so I've got some ideas about what we really should do, but I don't think that trying to pit one part of society you can see others the right answer. You know, that might be the first, and maybe you could correct me on this, the first press conference that I've heard, I'm trying to rack my brain right now, where I've heard anger out of the questions coming at the

end. Like there is a lot of anger. From reporters, from the people in the audience, there's just a lot of anger. We're doing everything you asked and now you're punishing us. That's, and I'm glad you said, because in my head, I'm going like, we right now are pitting two parts of the population against each other over something that in theory should be their choice, I think. Well, and it's no one's fault. This is the other thing that I don't understand why politicians are trying to take it upon themselves to stop people from getting a virus. This is the real problem with having made a vaccination target the condition for freedom is because, I mean, I looked at the early results from Pfizer and Moderna. And it did strike me that when the way they structured those, those studies is that they had an equal number of people receive a sailing jab as received the vaccine.

They asked them to go out and go about their business. And then they tracked how many of them inadvertently got second, which ones didn't. And so they never really tested. It's not like they jabbed you and then they exposed you to the virus to see whether it was a sterilizing virus or vaccine. so that you would never, never get it. What they found is that a lot fewer people who got the vaccine ended up with COVID than those who got the saline, but people still got COVID. And so we've known from the beginning that this is a, it's not like a polio vaccine or a smallpox vaccine.

When you get jabbed with those, you don't get the underlying disease. This is more like the influenza shot. And when you get influenza, it prepares your body to better, fight off the virus, but it doesn't, you can't get to zero. So the very idea of having a vaccine target implies that you think you can get to zero, that you think you can eradicate. And that I think is not consistent with what we've seen about respiratory viruses. We're certainly not consistent with a virus like this that mutates so frequently. And we're just, you know, human beings are frail. We get into our fall rest.

respiratory virus season and the most frail among us are the ones who are most at risk. And so I just feel like we've got politicians giving us some false sense of security. So let's say, let's play this out. Let's say now that everybody can go get a $100 gift card, you get to 100% vaccination, right? So then what happens two months from now when we have the same friend happening in Israel, where it starts wearing off, who are they going to blame then? And what are the results? the result's going to be then? What are the solutions going to be then? I'm just playing that game of saying what happens in the event that we do reach the target politicians want us to. We're still going to have variance. We're still going to have people get sick. We're still going to have

the vulnerable get hospitalized. We're still going to have people die. And so if that's going to be what happens anyway, why don't we start doing different strategies now? Now that we're at 7% with a single dose and 70% fully vaccinated? Maybe there just needs to be a different strategy. And that's, that's, I guess, my concern is, is it really any different what we're doing here than the approach they're taking in Australia and New Zealand? Australia and New Zealand decided that they wanted to be net zero or they wanted to be at zero. And so a single case is enough to shut the entire economy down. Well, we're kind of now getting into that same mindset that doesn't matter how high the level of vaccination is that we're going to return to a system of restrictions.

I just don't know how we get out of this, knowing what I'm seeing other jurisdictions. I know zero is not possible. And so if we know zero is not possible, but we keep using the same strategies, where does it end? I don't know the answer to them. Well, I'm glad you bring up different strategies. I'm sure you have your thoughts. Have you seen the C-19 early.com, the COVID early treatment real-time analysis of 878 studies going on and I forget how many countries it is, but it's different early treatments they're trying to see how well they work. Have you seen that, Daniel? I have. I've had a doctor share it with me. And so, and I've had doctors who've shared with me all the way along what the potential therapeutic treatments might be. And you know,

why I should, I want to say this because it shouldn't be controversial to say this, but but I have to assert it. What is controversial is that we haven't had the fulsome discussion about therapeutics. Anyone who talks about therapeutics is now getting targeted in, I mean, I guess Joe Rogan is the biggest example of somebody I'm getting targeted for talking about a potential therapeutic. But this shouldn't be controversial. I can't remember if I talked to you about this back in March, but there was a pandemic planning exercise that took place in October of 2019. And it was just a month then before we'd be before

COVID hit the world. But the interesting thing about it is they had a panel of pharmaceutical experts. And you know what they said? The very most important thing to when they were modeling out what you do when a new pandemic hits is you try to find existing drugs that have approval that can be repurposed to reduce the symptoms and reduce the chance of illness. and death while you're looking for a vaccine. That used to be the established protocol of what you would be looking for. That was in the pandemic planning exercise. And we did the exact opposite. Everybody raced to find a vaccine and we didn't hear any discussion about potential therapeutics. So there have been a group of doctors around the world and recall we're not the only

jurisdiction on the planet. There are jurisdictions on the planet that have approved a number of different therapeutics because the nature of this disease means that you have to have different interventions at different times. Sometimes you need a steroid. Sometimes you need an antiviral. Sometimes you need an anti-inflammatory. Sometimes you need something that will stop your blood from clotting. It depends on how the disease manifests in each individual. It's why I've always said you have to have doctors managing this process for you. We've also got to equip doctors with information so that they can have some confidence that they're treating patients properly. And I think that's where the real failure has been is that we haven't given doctors that support. We haven't had those task forces and

independent studies being done. And we've in fact had the worst of all possible outcomes, doctors who are looking at the studies that you mention and treating their patients in the best way they know how they're getting ratted on by their colleagues. And then the College of Physicians and surgeons is threatening them with pulling their license. This is an upside down world. And to me, if we can't have an honest discussion about how you do therapeutic treatment in addition to vaccination, it's not instead of, it's in addition to, we're going to be in for world of trouble in two months' time when a new variant arrives and we see that the effect of the vaccines are wearing off and people then feel really betrayed because all the messaging right

now is get two doses and you're done, you'll never have to worry about this again. And I'm afraid that's, don't mean to be the bearer of bad news. But that's, that's not what they're, what they're finding in Israel. Well, we already know, I think my listeners already understand that they've already announced third dose. Kenny's already said it. I think Moe's already said it, right? Starting with the most vulnerable and frontline workers and, um, like, that's coming down the pipe. I think everybody understands. And I think, honestly, if you were to pull the part, population, they're turning it into the new flu shot. That's what they believe we're about to do with this Pfizer shot, whatever shots they're taking, is that what's going to turn into the flu season

where you have a new shot every single year and that's enough to keep you protected. I find another thing really strange that nobody wants to talk about, and it's a very taboo to bring up, Danielle, is natural immunity. And I don't mean, like, I just mean, like previously, if you, you got any, you know, of these different viruses, your body fights it off and you build up a natural immunity, right? And I've had a professor on who talked about it. And I was like, so what would, like, everyone's saying, no, the vaccine's better. And he just laughs. He's like, how does that make any sense? And so I just, I find it really strange when I listen to our government from the beginning of like, let's hit 70%. Let's hit whatever the number is. If you've

COVID still get it because you don't know what your natural. Well, let's develop some things. Like I just, I'm having a really hard time. Understanding why we aren't encouraging if we're so worried about this, which I mean, we are obviously,

why we're not putting some things in that people are comfortable with. You know, like some people just are terrified of getting something in their arm that they don't understand because I don't know, Daniel, is it 100% safe? Can anyone say it's 100%? Oh boy, you put a lot on the table there.

First, let me respond to what you said about this being the new flu shot. And I think you're totally right. And that's great. If we actually get to that point where we understand that it is a immunity booster, and every year those who are most vulnerable will need an immunity booster to deal with new variants. I think that would be a very healthy position for us to be moving towards, because then you're not in a position where you're pitting one group of people against another group of people. And you're not trying to pretend that it's a cure-all and that you won't need to have continued shots.

I think you're very right because it's very much like in its mutations. It's very much like what we've been dealing with influenza. So I would hope that we get to that point where we have a healthy, robust discussion about who is most at risk. Because remember, when you have the influenza shot, in Alberta, it's only about a third of people who normally get that on an annual basis. And I think it is, I don't know if it's a requirement, but it's a very high uptake in our long-term care facilities, which is probably where it should be. So if we could develop some kind of healthy approach and healthy way of talking about COVID

in sync with how we talk about influenza, then that would be an improvement on where we are right now. Because we've always had people who have sadly died of influenza. influenza also really sadly kills young people too this is this is one of the the things about COVID is that it doesn't appear to impact young young people the way influenza does so there's a lot of positive that we could talk about in how we develop an approach to this the other thing I'd say about flu is that we do have flu shots yes but we also have tamaflu so we recognize that it may not be 100% effective 100% of the time therefore you still need to have a therapeutic on hand in the event someone shows up in hospital and they need an

antiviral. So we already have taken an approach with influenza that you need both vaccines and therapeutics. And if we can get to that healthy attitude about COVID too, that would also be an improvement on where we are. I think when it comes to natural immunity, I think the problem that we've had about this is that there's a percentage of people who get COVID or get exposed to SARS cove to who have no underlying conditions whatsoever, and yet they still have an extreme outcome, either hospitalization or on ventilator or sadly die. And I don't think we understand fully why that is. And so we have this weird way of assessing risk. And you see it in the newspapers that if you find that one weird outlier case, it's almost presented as, oh my goodness,

this happened to this person. It could happen to anyone. And we know that's not true, because we know that the vast majority of people do get exposed to this. Their immune system does beat it out and they don't end up with a bad outcome. But we have become very bad at being able to assess risk and very bad at looking at the extreme examples as if they're the norm. We don't know how to analyze statistics anymore. We've lost all understanding of how our body's immune system actually works. And so if we're at that point where you've got zero knowledge, you know, you've had 18, where you keep getting bombarded with mixed messages, it becomes really hard to move people to where we began is how do we treat this like influenza? I thought that the government was going

to move in that direction and they've chosen not to. But I'm a huge fan of natural immunity. I'm kind of like a clean, live in person. The most I take when it comes to medication is Advil when I have the occasional headache. But I don't, I prefer to take vitamin B and I take vitamin B and I pop vitamin C. Don't you think if he'd come on and said, listen, over the next two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, what we'd like to do is we'd like to find out out of the one of five adults who have not gotten a shot, if they're willing to go in and get a natural immunity test, which you can do in Amiton, Red Deer, Calgary, all the major centers, and we'll find out how many people have been exposed to it. And then, I mean, geez, like, you can see it in

different countries when you fly there. If you've been exposed to, COVID and test it positive for, you have like 90 days where you can fly, just like as if you had a negative test because they understand there's a certain immunity there in that window. You're going to have to tell me, I haven't heard of places where you can get this natural immunity test. I have seen, and I have taken an antibody test. The problem with the antibody test is that the antibodies leave your body after a period of time. So if you, if you had exposure a year and a half ago. You're right. I'm calling national immunity antibody test. You're right. I'm talking antibody.

The one we need is a T-cell test. And I know that those do exist because I have a doctor in my orbit who's been trying to get one. They exist in the United Kingdom because there's multiple different parts of your immune system that get activated to fight off any type of threat. The antibodies is just one measure. But understanding how robust your T-cell response is is important to. And I don't know. I've been trying to find. If you find someone who does that test, I'd like to know.

Did you ever think you'd be talking about something like this so much? Or has this become your life over your career, Danielle, where you're like, you know, everybody's getting tired to talk about this. I think we can all agree on that. But did you ever think you'd be talking about T cells and antibodies and different tests? And I saw in your last newsletter, the infrared in the, was it schools or health cares where it just like cleans the air and you're like, man, we have gone into a different world altogether. other. We sure have. It's a UVC light. So I should tell you the, the approach that I, it's part of the

reason I left radio is there was no way, because I left radio on February 19th, there's no way I wanted to keep on talking about this day after day after day after day for months on end. And so I moved into advocacy, which is great because there's so many issues out there that need some advocacy on them. And so I've been watching with sort of peripherally what's happening in all the mainstream coverage about COVID. And I do write about it in my weekend newsletter because I just feel like there's so much additional information that needs to be brought to bear as people are assessing this. But it shouldn't have, it shouldn't be this way.

I mean, if you want my recommendation for what the strategy should be, because that's what I wrote about last week, is the first thing, and we've talked about it, if you're going to move to talking about this as being treated like influenza, you have to have a robust outpatient treatment protocol. Because I don't know if you've talked to a doctor about, this is why I started writing about this and talking about this over a year ago is if you have these centralized testing centers

and you go in and you get tested and then they come back to you with a COVID positive result, what do you think happens then? I can tell you what I've heard happens. Doctors don't know. It's not like they loop the doctor in to say, oh, you've got a COVID positive patient. You better be in touch with them.

You have to call your doctor yourself. And if you call your doctor yourself, most of them have said, you know what? Our college hasn't given any guidance for what I'm supposed to give you other than, you know, if you get out of breath, go to the hospital. And so can you imagine how that must feel being a patient who you've now been told how dangerous this is. It's obviously dangerous because look at how the government's reacting and shutting everything down. And then you call your doctor and say, what can I do?

And they say nothing? That's unconscionable to me. So that's why. Especially when in searching into it, you don't have to look too far to find, you know, I talk about Mexico an awful a lot because they, in the middle of the worst of it,

and I always screw this up on exactly what they were, but I call them kios. I'm pretty sure that's how I've explained to me, is these kiosk set up with this protocol built in if you're getting COVID. Because you're right, what do we do here? You get tests for positive for COVID.

Where are they send you? Home. What are you supposed to do? Isolate. Okay. Anything else? No. Precisely.

I'm generalizing. I'm laughing about it because I'm trying to talk to more doctors. I'm certainly trying to get more doctors on that are working right in the middle of it because maybe they can tell us different. And I would love to hear their thoughts and everything else on it. But right now, what I see from the government, and I've listened to you on your show when you were back on the radio talk about when governments start to pit two populations against each other, that doesn't bode well. It doesn't end well. And on top of it, you can't tell who the other is.

Right? Like, how do we know? It's totally true. So let me, because you mentioned it, I should mention what this UVC light is because it's not the only company, but I did go see one of these companies. It's called Air Sniper. And the, if you look at the UV spectrum, We all know that there's certain types of UV rays that are harmful to you that can cause cancer. But there's also this other light on the spectrum called UVC. And you can be in the same room as it. And it doesn't impact you from a human point of view. But what it does is that it can kill microbes and bacteria, mold and fungus and viruses, including COVID.

They actually had a test. They sent it to a bio facility in Ireland to do a test of how well this light worked at killing COVID. And the good news is COVID is a pretty. flimsy virus. It doesn't actually take much exposure to UVC to kill it. And so their approach is to put these installed on HVAC systems in nursing homes ideally, but schools, so that as the air gets circulated, it gets cleaned, and then you can remove 99.9% of the pollutants from the environment. So my question is, we shouldn't, why haven't we done this? Why aren't we doing more of it? Why didn't we do it earlier? Because this is the kind of approach that we would need to take

in every school and every nursing home, regardless, COVID's the problem this year, it was influenza two years ago. It'll be something else two years from now. Why aren't we talking about cleaning the air so that kids don't have to be masked up? Why aren't we talking about rapid tests, truly rapid tests at our nursing home facilities? If you're going to have our most vulnerable, have people coming and going, shouldn't you be able to do a simple $7 test? You do a little saliva test, you check and see that you're clear so that you can go into the facility. Why wouldn't we do that in all the places where we have our most vulnerable and then also have a therapeutic protocol in the event someone gets diagnosed positive it seems like those to me are the more practical things

that we should be talking about i've i've had this analogy thrown at me i can't remember maybe i listened to it on somebody's show about a war of defense that uh when you look at world war one to world war two they always talk about war war war one being a war of defense right like nobody had the ability to get across the other one's line so everybody just stacked the defense so they couldn't get they crossed their lines back and forth. They went, right? World War II, the Germans smashed through that and it was a war of offense. Everything was about speed and, you know, like, I'm making it very simple. But in the beginning of COVID, everything was about stay home, don't do anything, mask up, hand sanitize, war of like defense, not things like we're going to have to live with this

for the rest of our lives, which is what I find interesting about this UVC light. I go like, man, I'm sure everybody who just listened to that went. Now, I'm sure it comes with its flaws, and I'm sure it won't work 100% of the time, but damn, that sounds like a smart idea. And why aren't we unrolling some more things? Instead of just pumping the world with fear and fear and fear, why don't we start looking at things like and analyzing going, this is smart, let's try this out, just to see how it works. Oh, geez, look at the stats on that.

That's smart. Why don't we, we'll go back to all the countries trying all the different drugs. Why aren't we going, you know what, we've had, we're going to try this. these out at these facilities and see how they work. I just, I have a hard time understanding, Danielle, sitting here as just some Joe Schmo, no doctor on my resume, just staring at it and going like, we're missing a bunch of things. Like, we're going in a year two of this, well, almost past year two. No wonder it is. There's a phrase in the public policy world where they say, don't make the perfect, the enemy of the good. And I think that that's what bureaucrats do all the time, is that,

any option they look at, it's got to be 100% or it's a failure. And so I think what happened is that politicians convince themselves that vaccines would be the 100% solution. And all you needed to do was get 100% of the people, 100% vaccinated, and you could knock this thing out, and you'd never see it again. And I think there has to be some more pragmatism that sets in. And the pragmatic person would say, is there anything that we can do? to reduce the risk, reduce the harm, reduce the hospitalization, reduce the deaths. And anything that results in a measurable reduction is a step in the right direction. And it's a positive.

But I don't know that the politicians and those advising them are geared towards thinking that way. And until they get that mental switch, that there's always going to be a percentage of people who will get a respiratory virus and a percentage of them are going to have a terrible outcome, If they can't rationalize the fact that that is just the way, unfortunately, biology works, the way viruses work, then we're going to continue in the cycle for some time. And I'm not sure what's going to break it, really, because what's this new variant that the World Health Organization is talking about, the Mu variant, MU? So apparently this is a variant that escapes all the vaccines that was just announced in the last

week. So this is what I'm saying is that if we want to restore confidence in the health care system and in our political leaders, they can't keep doing press conferences where they tell us something that can be proven false or shown to be false in a couple of months' time because then it just erodes trust and then you don't believe the next measure that they come through with. And that's unfortunately the dangerous cycle that we've gotten into. So we get told one thing and then told something else a couple of months later. And I thought we'd broken out of it, but it doesn't appear that we have. Well, it is wild to think. What was that? You would know better than me. Was it two weeks ago where they said we were going back to normal? And within a week, they reversed that to six weeks.

We're going to wait on it. And you're like, I think, I know there was a huge outcry about that. Man, at the time, you're like, oh, man, that, okay. Right. Like, and how quickly it can turn. And here we are. And it's just, it's just wild to me. You know, let me tell you one more. I mean, it was only, I think, three weeks ago that we were, we were hearing from politicians, call it three or four weeks ago, that we wouldn't have mandatory vaccination or vaccine passports. And then we heard the chambers of commerce on a Monday saying, we want vaccine passports, came out of the blue. And then by Friday, it was when Justin Trudeau started talking about what the next steps were going to be. He was preparing for the election launch. He had his transportation minister give a press conference where they said not only would they be requiring vaccination of their civil servants,

but all federally regulated workers and that anyone who was traveling cross border. That came out of the blue. And so as soon as you start saying, this is, this is. going to be mandatory. Now you begin saying, well, how do you validate that? Well, the only way to validate it is with a passport. And sure enough, you've got Manitoba that rolled it out. You've got Quebec, BC, Ontario. And so it's fascinating to me how a year ago, everyone who is saying, this is the direction this could head if we continue on in this path. We're called conspiracy theorists. So what are they now? Now that everything that was predicted a year ago is coming to pass,

maybe they were just prescient. And so that's the other part of the problem. That's why I say there's a real danger that we are now seriously eroding public trust in our health professionals and our politicians because they tell us one thing. And then with the passage of time, it's the opposite. I would say because my phone hasn't stopped. bouncing. I was saying this to you before since that press conference. The problem people have now with, and I'll stick to Kenny, is they don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth. And they're just, you know, half the province, I don't know whether they wash it anymore or not. The part that does, they don't believe it all, right? And then there's a part that are just

frustrated because he won't lock everything right down or open everything right up, right? Like, that's where we're at right now. I'm glad you bring up just a. Justin Trudeau, though, because I did want to question, you know, we, I never thought, I got to be honest, Daniel, on this podcast, I never thought I'd be like, let's do some election coverage, but I'm curious. You know, yeah, I find myself as a young man or I don't even know what I am anymore. The kids call me old, the old call me young. I'm somewhere in the middle. Are you a Jen Exeter? I think you're younger than me. Are you a millennial? I'm 35. Oh, gosh, you're a lot younger than me. I don't look at and I don't act.

But hey. It's the teeth, right? I mean, when you start losing your teeth and your hair starts growing, it's tough to tell. I tell you what, by the time we talk the next time, I assume this will be fixed. And I'll be, I'll be smiling like you. And you'll be like, geez, you look respectable. You look your age. That's right.

Now, when we're talking the federal election, can you believe the amount of scrutiny that, or not scrutiny, the amount of heckling Trudeau has got wherever he has went. Like it has been, I don't want to, I don't want to think that I didn't think someone of it was going to happen for sure when he came out west. I knew he wasn't getting an easy ride. But like places in Ontario going after him, it seems like everybody's going after him. Is that surprised you at all? Well, it's, I hope it's not deliberate.

That's the only thing that leaves me really uneasy about it. because as I mentioned, he wasn't campaigning on vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination until two days before he announced the election. And it's possible to hold events where you can be completely protected from any type of disruption. Look at Aaron O'Toole. Most of Aaron O'Toole's major announcements happen in a studio and get pushed out online. So it is possible for the prime minister to do the same thing. And so the question I have is, is he trying to provoke that kind of reaction in the hope that it will make his opponents look like they're tolerating extreme language and extreme protests?

Because he keeps trying to push it back saying that Aaron O'Toole's not doing enough to condemn this. And so I don't think it has anything to do with Aaron O'Toole. But I'm trying to look at it from a rational perspective. I don't know if that is deliberate. I don't know if we have a prime minister who's deliberately trying to pit Canadians against each other, deliberately putting in provocative policies that make people angry. So he can deliberately have protests just so that he can make one side look like they're lunatics so that they have, he gets some sympathy and they vote for him.

I want to believe the best in politicians. but that to me, if that's what's going on, that's not the kind of person who should lead the country. We need some unity right now. We need some honesty. And someone who would go out of their way on something as personal and important to people is their health to try to create this kind of division,

it's the worst kind of politics. Well, you can't make this up because I watched one of his press conferences where he was trying to tell O'Toole, you need to condemn these people. people and who he was talking about wasn't the protesters. It was the unvaccinated. And I went, you know, it wasn't that long ago that a guy by the name of Don Cherry said, you people, and was let go about a day later. And now he's saying these people, and that is a segment of the

population, and I don't feel like there's any recourse on them. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a ton of people attacking them for them that or for that there probably is but i'm like that is wild for a population to jump all over somebody for you people now i'm not going to sit here and say that don cherry was right or wrong or anything just that that was don cherry and we knew it for about 30 years and for the prime minister as he's campaigning a federal election to say these people condemn them you need to condemn them and to be a significant part of the population that who knows if they're the ones chase them around or not.

At the end of the day, like this is wild. This is wild times. I used to stare at Trump in the United States and think, we will never get there. Like, that is the United States.

But look at what we're becoming. It is an interesting world. It's a tragic one too, a tragic development. Because I guess I should probably tell you the approach I've taken on this. I believe in choice in all things. Absolutely.

I mean, I'm an approach. choice or when it comes to abortion rights. I'm a pro choicer when it comes to anybody while making a decision about what they jab in their body. So I don't, I'm not a single issue person when it comes to choice. I believe in choice in all things. And so that's why I can frame this very easily from a choice perspective. And when I've looked at the data myself, it's pretty clear to me, if you're over the age of 70, you should get vaccinated. It's, it's pretty obvious that it has reduced the level of extreme hospitalization and extreme outcomes for those over age 70. So that one's not controversial at

all. Once you get between the ages of call it 35 and 70, probably depends on your own personal health status. If you don't have a strong immune system, if you're obese, if you've got diabetes, if you've got heart problems, if you've got a number of preexisting conditions, you'd have to make your own choice on that. Under the age of 35, it becomes pretty hard to mandate vaccine. when you look at the actual level of risk associated with getting COVID. That's why it really should be a choice, in my opinion. So that's how I've looked at it. But it seems to me that the public is left with the impression

that everyone is equally at risk of dying if they get this virus. And I think that that's a failure of communication. That's a failure of our public health establishment, but they haven't been able to put it into proper context. because that's stressful in itself. Imagine being the type of person who's been locked in your home for 18 months, thinking if you ventured outdoors,

that COVID would catch you and you would die. Even if you were a young, healthy person, I don't think that that is creating a very healthy environment for someone personally, but it's led to exactly what you've described is that now those who are in the camp of having made the choice to be vaccinated, they feel like they're under threat

of by those who have made a different choice. And it never should have been that way. I mean, that's the thing that I don't quite understand that I wish someone could explain it to me is if you believe you're bulletproof with two shots, why do you care if the person sitting next to you

on the bus is unvaccinated? You're fine. So why does it matter? And if you then take it to the next level of, well, I can get infected too, even if I have the double dose, now you're at a point We're vaccinated and unvaccinated people have parity.

So why again would you say I'm better than that person sitting beside me on the bus? So there's a lot of irrationality taking place here. But that's why it is so important for politicians not to use fear and this kind of extreme emotion in campaigning to divide society because it has some really negative consequences. This is going to be hard to come back from. Yeah, I 100% agree. And I got to be honest, I think that's where we're going to leave it. I really appreciate you hopping on on short notice and everything else.

This has been a lot to take in, not just this conversation, but today's been a lot to take in. It has. For just the, once again, it's another leader of our country creating a divisive topic, a divisive topic between two segments of the population that should be just like, we should be, we should be doing things together and like, like, Not putting each other against each other so hardcore. And it's just becoming so evident every single day that that's what's going to happen. Like it's just getting worse. I have a revolutionary t-shirt. I don't know if I've showed you it.

It's Anders Tegnell, who was the chief medical officer in Sweden. And one of the things that he said, because they took a very hands-off approach, one based more on recommendations rather than mandates. They had a few mandates, but by and large, they wanted to take focus protection of the most vulnerable. One of the things he said was, what's the end game? If you do lockdowns, how do you get out of it? And he couldn't see a pathway for politicians to be able to chart a path back to normal,

having normalized this kind of approach. And you have to tear the Band-Aid off. The only ones who've done, so I've been people like Non-Dicantis in Florida, Christy Noem in South Dakota, but it's very rare. I thought that Premier Kenny would have done the same thing. But now we're sort of plunged back to, where we were a few months ago. So I still want to know how do we get out of it? What does success look like? And that's, that's something that nobody can can really chart the path for yet.

And that's the, that's the really tragic thing is we don't know when this will end. Yes. Well, I appreciate you giving me some of your time. Yet again, it's always a pleasure. I miss having you on the radio. You were a fantastic to listen to. Although in saying that, you're a busy lady. Maybe I should actually give you a couple seconds. If people are looking for you, Danielle, how do they find you? Best way to find me is Danielle smith.ca. So I do have my newsletter that I put up there. Those are just my private thoughts.

If you don't like what I have to say, please don't even bother to subscribe because I really am not interested in the abuse that you get on social media. To me, I should be free to say what I believe and people should be free to tune me out. That's how I think it should work. But my real job is trying to advocate

on behalf of the business community because it's got a lot of issues on the energy front, on how we're going to transform our energy sector so that we can be net zero and so that we can reduce our environmental footprint. There's lots of work that needs to be done on well reclamation. I'm spending a lot of time on that. And so talking as well about health reform, we need to fix our health system.

We can't keep on spending as much as we are and getting such abysmal results. We've got a shortage in trades. We've got already a number of our industries are having a hard time attracting qualified labor. So there's a huge number of issues that we need to deal. with, which is why it's so frustrating that everything keeps on getting derailed by this one. So I'm trying to find the balance. Continue to talk about this in my newsletter and then talk about all those other really important things to see if we can move the dial forward even though we find ourselves in this in this strange world. Well, thanks again, Daniel. Yeah, you bet my pleasure.

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