The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Covid Isn’t Over So Is It Ok That We Are Acting Like It Is?

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Back on The Bridge after ten days off and we get right to it with a major interview with Dr Isaac Bogoch. The Bridge is known for blunt talk and no one is better at it than Dr Bogoch. Covid is everywhere yet many of us seem disinterested. What now?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away guess, about a 10-day sabbatical, if you wish. Just taking it easy over the Easter holidays. Enjoyed the break. But I want to start with a big thank you. A thank you to all the listeners who tuned in to many of the encore editions over the last 10 days, some of the highlights of the bridge over the past year or so, some great programs. And I was actually inspired to hear from many of you

over these last few days by email. Those of you who wrote in and said, you know what, I really enjoyed listening to certain episodes over again or hearing certain episodes for the first time. As somebody who just started listening to The Bridge over the last few months and hearing some of those earlier special edition episodes. So thank you for writing in. And thanking you for letting me know that. And thanking you, I guess, and the good people at SiriusXM for letting me have a short little break. I also want to thank the many of you, and I mean many,

who've written in over the last couple of days who had the opportunity to see Arctic Blue, the documentary I shot in Canada's Arctic last fall. You may recall that the bridge did a number of episodes from on board the Canadian naval warship Harry DeWolf when we were traveling in the high Arctic, visiting Grease Fjord and Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay and other communities. It was a fascinating trip and especially so in terms of the documentary we were doing which was looking at some of the obvious issues surrounding climate change and i've been going to the arctic for decades now and have watched the climate change story unfold but this one was also mixed in with the questions about arctic. A lot of nations, including Canada, trying to carve up certain areas of the Arctic

as a result of the changing nature of climate. With ice melting, more areas exposed, different countries want a chunk of that territory. We feel we have ownership rights in certain areas, but so do six other circumpolar nations so it's an interesting debate that's going on especially as one of those countries is Russia and after the last six weeks of the Ukraine story people are looking at Russia very differently now in terms of what they do when they want something. So as a result, lots of different things are happening,

and we tried to cover some of them in Arctic Blue. Now, this was a documentary I did with my good friends at Primitive Entertainment, which is an independent Toronto production company, and sold to the CBC. And the CBC had it on their schedule as the lead-off for a week of special documentaries. It was on Monday night of this week.

And it wasn't heavily promoted, but it was promoted to a degree, and I thank my good friend Andrew Crystal, Crystal Nation, Sirius XM, for plugging the program on Monday of this week, the day that it ran. And I'm sure that helped as well. So anyway, an important documentary, one that you can still see if you miss it on Monday. You can see it on CBC Gem. And, you know, obviously I think it's well worth watching and if i can read in to anything

in terms of the letters that i've received you kind of thought it was important and interesting too so arctic blue is the name of the documentary if you have a chance to see it and thank you to those who who wrote in now what are we going to do this week now that we're back with same day editions of the bridge well we're going to do a little bit of catch-up on the two big stories that we've been following for in situation in terms of ukraine for the last six weeks and to covid for the last couple of years. As frequent listeners to the bridge know, Mondays has always been COVID Monday on the bridge. And we've had the great help from some of the country's leading epidemiologists in different parts of the country who joined us

on Mondays to talk about where we were on the COVID story. And as you know, over the last two years, we've seen every angle, every concern, every horror show, and every, hey, this looks like it's getting better story to tell. So where are we today? Well, I'm confused because COVID's not going away. It's not gone. It's seemingly everywhere. And yet at the same time, there's a seeming lack of interest on the part of some governments in dealing anymore with it.

And clearly on some people and it was some media organizations. You know, I'm in Scotland right now. And loving it. I'll be back in Canada in the next week. But I'm in Scotland, part of the United Kingdom. A country that has, loves news and information. Loves its newspapers. I mean, they're struggling in some cases just like newspapers are everywhere but still there are a lot of newspapers in the uk

and i pick up you know i go online and look at the papers every day so i pick up or i go online and look at the telegraphraph today, the Daily Telegraph, out of London. On their website, 28 stories featured on the front of their website that are in today's paper. 28. How many do you think had something to do with COVID? Well, if you guessed zero, you were right. Not one. Obviously, stuff about Partygate and Boris Johnson's problems.

Obviously, stuff about Ukraine and the continuing unfolding story there. Right down to number 16, this is important, what to wear at weddings. Wouldn't want to get that wrong. Now, not one of the 28 stories had anything to do with COVID. Now, six months ago, a year ago, a year and a half ago, probably half of the 28 stories featured on their front page of their website would have been about COVID. Not today. And that's not singling them out.

I think you can do that in any number of news organizations, you know, in many parts of the world right now. And governments are kind of sort of moving away from worrying about it. But at the same time, COVID is still there. The question is, how should we be dealing with it personally? What should we be thinking about? So that's going to be the topic for today. And as you know, if you've been listening to The Bridge over the past year, Mondays, COVID Monday, we've had, as I said, some of the top epidemiologists in the country.

And today is no exception. Dr. Isaac Bogoch will join us again from the University Health Network in Toronto. He'll be with us right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

whatever that may be. We're happy to have you with us. Okay, as promised, Dr. Isaac're happy to have you with us. Okay, as promised, Dr. Isaac Bogoch is going to join us now for a sense of kind of where we are after a break, where we are in the COVID story, and what we should be kind of thinking about as we survey the landscape on how this is being dealt with. So let's get right at it. Here he is, Dr. Isaac Boguch. I noticed last week that you tweeted out a sense that we may be past the high point of this current wave. Is that an accurate reflection of what you're suggesting?

Yeah, it is, especially with those caveats of May, right? I think we have to be a little bit cautious in these predictions. If you look at the wastewater signals across Ontario, and in fact, in other parts of the country, some of them are leveling off and even coming down a little bit. And those are good indicators. They're not perfect, but they're good indicators. It's still early. But if that really pans out, and if we continue to see a drop in those wastewater signals, that'd be a very positive sign and some significant arrows pointing in the right direction that this wave is going to be receding at some point soon. And, you know, it takes time for that to translate into a reduction in the rate of hospitalizations and a

reduction in the rate of deaths. But that inevitably will happen. It's just usually going to be a one to two-ish week lag time. So, you know, cautious optimism, but I think many of us in the healthcare sector are still walking on eggshells because there's still a lot of COVID out there. There's still people being admitted to hospital. And, you know, I think we just have to proceed cautiously, but there might be some of those early signals that things are going to be improving soon. And again, at the end of the day, all waves come to an end. And this wave is going to be no different. Sadly, there's going to be more waves on the horizon.

We have to be prepared for that. But this wave will come to an end and we'll likely start to see those signals, hopefully sooner rather than later, maybe this week, maybe next week. And there's no guarantee that with more waves likely to come, that they will be any lesser in severity than than the past ones they could be they could be bad they could be not so bad yeah that's exactly it and a lot of it depends on a how transmissible a future variant might be b the significance of illness and the what we call the virulence how much of a punch does it pack, see the degree of

immune evasion from the particular variant. So, does it wriggle around the protective immunity you've got from previous infection or vaccination? Now, some of those are interrelated, but those are the things that can make a future variant more significant. And, you know, for example, if we look at Omicron and specifically at the wave we had in December, And, you know, for example, if we look at Omicron and specifically at the wave we had in December, January, and February, right, this was driven by the BA1 sub lineage of Omicron. Okay. There were good lab studies demonstrating that it didn't pack as significant of a punch compared to Delta, but it still could pack a punch. It was just really, really transmissible. And, you know, on a case-by-case basis, people didn't get as sick compared to prior variants like Delta.

But when you look at the fact that, you know, a third of the province of Ontario got infected over a short period of time, even less frequent hospitalizations on a case-by-case basis become rather frequent when so many people are infected over such a short period of time. And we had the highest number of people in hospital with COVID-related illnesses compared to any other point during the pandemic. It was tough. It was really, really tough. So sometimes you hear things are mild. It doesn't necessarily mean it's mild. It means it might be milder than a prior variant. But transmissibility is a huge factor. When a lot of people get sick over a short period of time, your health care system is going to run into

troubles. If we go back a year and I asked a friend, do you know anyone who's got COVID? And this would be a year ago when people were getting their first vaccines and the common answer was usually yeah I actually there is somebody I know who has COVID or had COVID or you know in a lot of cases it was no you know I don't know anybody yet who's who's had COVID so here we a year later, a couple of vaccines, a couple of boosters, if you have gone the full route at this point. And if you ask that same question of people today, everybody knows somebody who had COVID, at least one person,

usually a lot more than one person, often within their own family. Sometimes it's themselves um what does that tell us well a couple of things one is it tells us the social circles that we're hanging out with the other thing it tells us is um how transmissible these these variants like the omicron truly are uh remember early in the pandemic, COVID disproportionately impacted poor, low-income, racialized neighborhoods, essential workers. And I think that's why some people didn't know anyone with COVID because they might not have fit into, they might not have lived or interacted as much with people in those neighborhoods that were being disproportionately impacted. COVID's everywhere now.

And people that were perhaps able to successfully or have the means to work from home, have the means to successfully school their children at home. We're able to avoid getting this infection for a long, long time, but with more transmissible variants. And, you know, I think with people now more out and about and interacting with those around them, we're starting to see all demographics, all neighborhoods, all areas of Canada impacted by this. The other important thing you mentioned too, I'm not sure if you want to go down this path or not, but you know, when you think about April of 2021, like for many healthcare providers, that was the worst. Like a year ago was horrendous. It was such a bad time. That was the third wave in many Canadian settings. And we had vaccines and vaccines were rolling out

and vaccines had, you know, we were still triaging vaccines and they were really going to the highest of high risk. So we vaccinated our long-term care sector and vaccines were moving into community dwelling senior populations and slowly working into essential workers. But that wave was driven by the alpha variant. And this was a time where we were admitting 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds to hospital and people were sick. The ICUs were full. I mean, we never had that many people admitted to Ontario and Canadian ICUs than at any other time during the pandemic. We were having conversations about having to make horrible decisions of will we have a ventilator for this person or will we have to choose between who gets essential ICU care and who doesn't. And if you look at numbers and stats, it doesn't look as ugly as other waves. But from a hospital standpoint, that wave was just, it was just the worst. This time last year was absolutely awful. I'm not taking anything away from any of the other ways. People get sick with COVID, they come to the hospital, they succumb to the illness. It's awful, regardless of if it's a

big wave or a small wave. i think for health care providers that was probably one of the most challenging waves it certainly was for me um the other thing that's happens now which does make it a puzzle uh certainly makes it a puzzle for me is that while as you say covet is everywhere and we all know people who've uh got it or who've had it uh many in number we we all seem to have um yet at the same time governments are easing restrictions in in in a huge manner i'm in scotland right now today uh this week they've you no longer need a mask anywhere, anywhere. Indoors, outdoors, doesn't matter. The U.S., unless it gets appealed at some point,

and it doesn't appear that the government is moving in any hurry to do that, a Florida judge has said you don't need a mask on a plane anymore. So nobody's wearing masks on planes planes or with huge cheers apparently on on board airliners as the captain announced this mid-flight in some cases yesterday um these two things don't seem to fit together right you got the no you've got the pandemic still roaring uh let's assume that it it's less severe severe in its hardship for patients, mainly because of vaccines and boosters, et cetera, but it's still roaring. And you've got governments almost seemingly disinterested in dealing with it anymore.

It's a problem. It's a huge problem. You know, like, what do you do so i mean it's it's a major disconnect and you know but listen obviously if you ask 100 experts you're going to get 100 different answers but my take is listen we should not be closing down society we shouldn't be shuttering businesses we shouldn't be keeping kids out of school. And occasionally you see this weaponization of the phrase learning to live with the virus. And of course, that means many different things to many different people. But obviously, we've got to learn to live with this virus because there's no other choice. This virus isn't going away. And we do need to learn to live with it. But that really means learn to live with it,

not die from it or have vulnerable people overwhelmingly and disproportionately impacted by it. It truly means learning to live with it. Key word, live. There's simple things that we can be doing to help create safer indoor spaces and protect those around us, especially vulnerable individuals

and vulnerable communities. Masking, simple, simple. It's so easy. It's such a light touch intervention. And it doesn't mean masking all the time, but certainly during a wave, a mask can take the edge off the wave. It's not going to stop a wave. It's not going to prevent a wave, but it certainly can protect individuals and populations and certainly take the edge off a wave, but it certainly can protect individuals and populations and certainly take the edge off a wave. Greater access to vaccines, right? There are under-vaccinated communities and under-vaccinated individuals, and vaccines aren't going to go away. I don't know what's going to happen in the future. We need high-quality data to guide vaccine policy, but you can be sure that

there's going to be more vaccines on the horizon. And we really have to get vaccines out to people that need it. And, and, you know, that's easy to say, but it's actually a lot harder to do because you have to fight polarization, disinformation, and do the heavy lifting to get those into arms, especially arms in communities and individuals that are going to be most impacted by it. Therapeutics as well. I mean, you have to really promote research into therapeutics and get drugs into, lower barriers to access to drugs that treat COVID and do that in an easy, fast manner

that really lowers as many barriers as possible. So, for example, getting them into pharmacies, especially in communities that have been throttled by this pandemic. Maybe even have pharmacists be able to to COVID in the absence of, you know, shuttering businesses and shutting schools down, you know, improving the ventilation in indoor settings or at least giving people guidance to do this. A lot of this also involves public trust and public buy-in, especially at a time when it's at an all-time low. It's going to be very hard to build that back. And, you know, I think that's also a larger conversation as well on how do you build back public trust and even how do you fight misinformation and disinformation that's amplified online that have truly polarized opinions with, you know, many things we see globally. But of course, they were focusing on is the pandemic, like simply putting on a mask should

not be a political statement. Like, this is crazy that, you know, we're having those conversations. And, you know, early in the pandemic, we'd sort of look down at the United States and say, oh, that's not going to happen here. But of course it is you know uh so there's a lot that we can do to quote unquote live with this virus um and i think i don't know i don't have a ton of confidence that a lot of it will be done but some of it might be you know i i i wonder at times whether how much of this is uh polarization and misinformation

and disinformation. There's no doubt there's a lot of that out there. But there's also seemingly a new sense of hesitancy on the part of people who were there lined up for one and two vaccines and their booster. And they're just, you know, what they're saying to me is, you know, fourth booster and probably another one in the fall. I mean, really? It's not that they've got anything against the needle in their arm. They're just, I don't know, tired of it all, or they're just not sure what differences it's making to them.

A couple of points. One is translating science into policy. And, you know, the fourth booster is a great example. The science is not 100% clear on who would most benefit from this. it's clear, what is clear, it's probably best for frail, elderly, immunocompromised, like people who are at the greatest risk for hospitalization. But let's just be honest that there's a lot that we need to learn about this and that the data that's available is not the highest quality data, yet it's been translated into policy and the policy is different. In the United States, it's over 50. In Ontario, it's over 60. In other places, it's over 70. In Europe, it might be over 80.

Of course, people are confused. The messaging is inconsistent and stinks. So that's one point. The second point sort of is related to the first point is if you're in the business of promoting positive behavioral change, you should probably have people that are experts in behavioral change help out. And, you know, this has been an issue from the very beginning of the pandemic. Where are the social scientists, the marketers, the behavioral change experts to really help with the pandemic response? Where is the dedicated age, language, and culturally appropriate messaging that should be blasted out to 38 million Canadians? Because we don't all watch the press conferences at 1pm on Monday afternoon that says, hey, you know what, you're now eligible for, you know, whatever dose of your vaccine.

Like, there is tremendous room for improvement. And that's not just with the vaccine. I think this is with the communication of the pandemic in general. And it would go a long way if this was decentralized. Like, listen, I'm not in charge, obviously, but if I was, I would just come up with, you know, four major points. Here's your four talking points, you know, for whatever, you know, there's a surge in COVID, you should be wearing a mask in an indoor setting. Here's the type of mask we think would be best. You know, here's three simple points. And then you just completely decentralize it, right? You can send it to, you know, Cantonese-speaking radio and Punjabi-speaking TV and indigenous community leaders. And like, just, you know, blast these three points in any way you want on media, on social

media, on everybody. Like, those are the three takeaway messages. And decentralize that and put it in the hands of people who are community leaders and behavioral change experts. I bring in marketers and advertisers because these are people that really do a great job at that. So, you know, rather than looking at some of the communications that we've seen, it reads like, you know, those pamphlets you see at the doctor's office, it looks like someone just took those pamphlets and then put it on tv and that's that like we can do a lot better on the on the comms front how frustrating has that been for you i mean we're almost two and a half years into this

and some of the things you're talking about are kind of basic right yep you would have thought this would have been dealt with a long time ago. Yeah, I think it would also go a long way in the polarization that we see. Right. Like if you just talk to me, it's a lot of this is common sense. Like, oh, you know what? Here's here's a vaccine. Here's some data that demonstrates that, you know, if you get the vaccine. You're going to do OK versus if you don't get the vaccine like there's just a lot of different ways you can communicate with people oh yeah we should be wearing a mask we should be wearing a mask let's all put on a mask like i think if you just factor

in the common sense and communicate with people meet people where they are speak with them you know you don't don't talk down to people speak with them at their level, at a language, in a way that they understand, and have the right people delivering the message to the right communities, I think it would go a long way. It is very frustrating to see, because there's a lot of, I think Canada did a lot of things right, and we're very lucky to live in this country. And if you look at our response compared to other places around the world we are doing it better than most and we are very privileged to live here and i'm thankful for that but in the same breath is we should always

be striving to improve and i think that's one area that we can improve upon um just a couple more points uh one of them you kind of brought up 10 minutes ago or so when you were talking about the desperate situation that we had a year ago now, the ICUs full, hospitals, you know, crowded and, you know, far too many patients and patients in hallways, et cetera, et cetera. And we all swore, you know what, this will never happen again. We're going to do the fixes to the system that would never let this happen again. Have those fixes been made?

No, but you can see that there's some efforts being pointed in that direction. Those aren't short-term fixes. Those are medium and long-term fixes. We're talking about healthcare system overhaul and restructuring. One piece of that much larger puzzle is we need more beds per capita and actual physical beds and physical space. And another piece of that puzzle is that we need more people to staff those beds. Those are two pieces of a much bigger puzzle. We've heard, you know, rhetoric about the bigger piece and how we can restructure healthcare at a federal level and at a provincial level. And, you know, those conversations have been going on since I started following the news decades ago. And, you know, sometimes we see some real pushes on that. But I think we are going to actually see

some meaningful input on more beds and more staffer beds to get us staff our staff beds per capita higher which is which is certainly positive now that's not the only thing that needs to be done but that's a major thing that needs to be done but again you're not going to snap your fingers and have that done overnight uh but it does look like we are headed in that direction at least many provinces have indicated that but you know what the situation is like in in these things when when the pressure's on is the time to get things done and money committed right when the pressure's off there's other things that attract the eye's attention of politicians and they and you know and they they worry about other things and here yeah this time last year everyone was screaming from the rooftops, support essential workers, vaccinate essential workers, vaccinate vulnerable communities.

Where is that momentum now? That doesn't stop at vaccination. I can't remember another time where you had the general public so concerned about what an essential workers were and and and who where these vulnerable communities were um maybe i naively thought that we'd continue with that momentum but it goes a lot it's a lot bigger than just vaccinating like there's a lot of health care and health promotion and preventative health that we can bring in to those communities to really create a more equitable Canada. And I feel like we're losing a lot of that momentum. But I think it's not

every day that that's front page of the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, all these. I think obviously memories are short, unfortunately. But if you go back this time last year, it was all over the place. It was sad because these individuals and communities were getting pummeled by COVID, but there was a glimmer of hope that, hey, these are conversations that we don't typically have at a national level, and we're having them. Maybe, just maybe, we can make some true structural changes and provide significant support. I hope you're right. I don't think we, yeah, we haven't lost the momentum, but we're losing that momentum. And that's the problem.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, governments and politicians and, you know, I'm not dumping on them, but, you know, they respond to what clearly seem to be the needs of people, especially around election times. And, you know, I saw the Nanos poll this week on what public concerns were, what the issues that confront them. And the pandemic is kind of diving off the charts. It's going down. Other things, inflation, you name it, are going up, housing, et cetera, all important things but when something goes down on those charts it's unlikely it's going to get the kind of attention that it might have had when it was higher in the charts but let's leave it at that i think we uh we see the argument and we see the need and and we'll see what happens and who promises what and who fulfills those promises? My last point is back to the actual situation.

I've had a number of letters, and I'm sure you hear from people as well, about concerns with this spread that it's everywhere. And because it's everywhere, you know, a significant number of young kids have been getting COVID. Is there any sense yet what the long-term implications are for young kids? And I'm talking, you know, single-digit age kids, of what impact that's going to have on their life. I would say it's uncertain, and we need to learn a lot more about it. In general, in general,

these, you know, young kids that get COVID don't get as sick as older individuals, recover quickly, and usually all is well. But of course, some do get sick. Some end up in hospital. Some end up with long COVID and chronic symptoms. Like, of course it can happen. But it does appear to be much less common versus older adults. Great. That should be a good new story. That doesn't mean kids should get COVID. We should be doing everything to protect kids from COVID, especially those who are too young to be vaccinated. But, you know, I do worry about what are the implications of infection long-term? What does long COVID look like in those who develop it?

What are the implications of multiple repeated infections in that cohort, which is, you know, happening and is sadly going to continue to happen? What are the, I mean, I'd expand that. What are the implications of recurrent infections in older cohorts, including older adults? I mean, we don't know. Here's the, I don't mean to sound fatalistic here, but it's going to happen. Like, we're all going to get exposed. We can, you know, it doesn't mean we have to throw our hands up in the air and ignore COVID, but we're going to get exposed. We all are. And it's just a matter of

time. And we're going to get exposed a lot in the years ahead, like more and more frequently. I didn't say that right. We're going to get ongoing exposures to COVID with time. We are. We can take steps to reduce the risk of getting COVID or developing significant symptoms by vaccination. We can lower the chances of exposure by mask wearing and creating safer indoor spaces with better ventilation and rapid tests. We have the tools, but that reduces your risk. It doesn't eliminate the risk. And when you add in the variable of time, I think it's fair to say that people have multiple exposures over the years ahead. And we don't really know what the long-term implications of that are. Appreciate the conversation, as always.

Feel better informed, sometimes more confused but overall certainly better informed than i was before we started this latest conversation is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up uh this current wave in canada stinks but i think you know like always it's going to end. And barring any unforeseen new variants that ruin our plans, hopefully, fingers tightly crossed, that we're in for a really good late spring and summer. Man, I hope you're right about that. We're all hoping for that. Dr. Bogoch, thank you so much, as always. Good to talk to you.

My pleasure. Nice to talk to you. My pleasure. Nice to chat as well. Dr. Isaac Bogoch, University Health Network in Toronto. One of the four or five epidemiologists in different parts of the country, from east to west, who have been helping us out over these last couple of years, trying to deal with this story. And with all of them i always appreciate the blunt talk i mean they're under pressures obviously they have certain

attitudes towards what's going on in terms of relationships with government with patients with hospitals with health authorities um and what i've always appreciated, as you just saw Dr. Bogoch during the last 25 minutes or so, you know, he says what he thinks. He tells you what he knows. He tells you what he doesn't know. He's blunt. And so are the others. And the bridge, as I've said before, is known for blunt talk. And we appreciate the blunt talk from the epidemiologists.

They're in a difficult situation. It's a challenge every day dealing with the people that they have to deal with, dealing with their patients, dealing with their critics, dealing with their government officials, all of them. So we appreciate that they spend time, find time for us as well. All right, time to give you a sense of what's coming up over the next couple of days. The other major story, as I mentioned earlier, that we have been covering, especially over the last couple of months, is the story in Ukraine.

I mean, we first started talking about the Ukraine story last fall when Janice Stein, good friend, somebody I've always go to for information and kind of a sense of where we are on the foreign policy front. But Janice was first with us in the fall about Ukraine. And then again, I think it was in January before it really started and we talked again about, is this going to happen? You know, is it a bluff? Anyway, Janice has guided us on this story really well,

as she always does. And so has Brian Stewart. Great war correspondent, foreign correspondent, been around the world, covered conflicts up close, very up close. And is watching very astutely the situation in Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine, and the way other forces, NATO forces, are trying to have an impact as well. So the great thing that Brian's done for us over the last six weeks is he's brought to the fore his sense of what's going on that isn't being talked about or hasn't been talked about enough. So instead of doing the day's headlines, he sort of goes beyond the headlines and behind the headlines. And he'll come in again tomorrow and we'll do the same thing. Once again,

we'll go beyond the headlines. We'll talk about what perhaps hasn't been talked about enough. There's a lot of focus right now on the move the Russians are making on eastern uh the move the russians are making uh on eastern ukraine or in the donbass region the cities that are still under siege but there are other things going on as well and that's what brian will bring to us in our conversation tomorrow and i've really i was giving thank yous out earlier for the nice things you've said about some of the things that we've done. There have been a lot of letters over the last six weeks or so about Brian's reporting on the bridge, and he'll be

with us again tomorrow. So that's tomorrow. Friday will be good talk. Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson are going to bring us up to date on all things Canada politics. There are always things to talk about there. So that's it for now.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Back at it with same-day editions. So glad you've been listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. That's it for this day. We'll be back in 24 hours.