The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Shameful

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

One word describes what we heard today about the level of "care" in some Long Term Care Facilities. So what now? Plus, the latest on air travel, and some hopeful news about my latest project!

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily you know if there's one thing that's got us pretty upset over many weeks now, a couple of months really, is the sense that so many people were dying in long-term care homes. You've seen the numbers. You've seen the huge percentage of the deaths to COVID-19 have been as a result of people in long-term care homes. And so there was always this pressure that we had to get to the bottom of it. Why was this happening? Why were they so vulnerable?

We understand that older people are vulnerable. You know, with pre-existing conditions, then suddenly they get hit with this virus. But was there more to the story? Well, today we found out, yes, in fact, there is more to the story. And it's the Canadian military who are helping us understand that. As you know, both in Quebec and Ontario, they have been inside a number of long-term care homes trying to help out what has been a disastrous and deadly situation.

And yesterday, last night, they reported to the federal government and the Ontario government, because it was the Ontario study first that they've done. They're doing one in Quebec as well. And it is devastating. I'm not going to go through the results here for you, but it's as horrible as you could possibly think it could be. In fact, it's worse than that.

And you've had both the Prime Minister and the Premier of Ontario today In fact, it's worse than that. And you've had both the Prime Minister and the Premier of Ontario today saying that they could barely sleep last night after having read the report. Fine. So now what happens? Well, the government of Ontario had already announced last week that it was going to set up an independent commission to look at the situation in long-term care, LTC as they call it. Today, Premier Ford was saying that an independent commission is not enough. A public inquiry, he's starting to think now, is what it should be. And that, in fact, is what many critics have been calling for for some time, A public inquiry, he's starting to think now, is what it should be. And that, in fact, is what many critics have been calling for for some time, a public inquiry. Now it appears they may get it. What about the feds? What are they going to do? Well, they're sitting

watching what the provinces do because there were problems in long-term care homes in more than just two provinces. So the feds are kind of looking at what the provinces are doing. But behind all that is this kind of question of whether or not there should be something much bigger, whether there should be a commission of inquiry along the lines of, remember the Murray Sinclair inquiry into the situation with Canada's indigenous peoples. Or whether there should be a royal commission into LTCs. Now you know, as I know,

that the problem with some of these inquiries in the past has been they get a lot of coverage at the time the inquiry takes place, and people are horrified with what they learn. And they come out with a report, and they make recommendations. And then what happens? Does that committee report sit up on a shelf somewhere,

and you never hear about it again? Well, too many times in our history that in fact has been the case. So what will happen here? We're talking about the well-being of some of our most precious assets. Our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. of some of our most precious assets, our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. When they were put in LTCs,

the expectation was they would be treated in such a manner that they deserved. Well, if this is any indication, that's not what's happened. Now, this is not to put a blanket condemnation on every LTC in the country or in the province. Some must have done well because some have had no issues. But it appears that far too many did have issues. And part of the reason why was the slovenly way that they were run. The way people were treated. Not even like humans.

We have to get hold of this. We have to deal with this. This is more than just a COVID-19 story. You know, so many of the letters that you have written to me over the last, what are we at now, week 11? So many of the letters have dealt with this issue, and you've talked about your parents.

You've talked about your sisters or your brothers who may be in LTC, your grandparents, how worried you were. And we saw those devastating pictures of people unable to go inside the LTC because they were barred because of quarantining. And they were standing on the lawn outside

in the snow when this whole thing started. Now in the spring weather, with their hand up against the glass, trying to touch through the glass their relatives. Now how heartbreaking is that? Could it be any worse? Yeah, it could be worse when you read what was written today. What reports were tabled by the Ontario government

as to what was happening inside some of those homes. Now there was a little bit of the blame game already starting. Premier Ford kind of saying, hey, I arrived, this was on, this is the way things were when I arrived as Premier, which never sounds right. Even if it is right, just doesn't sound right. But at least he went the next mile, which was, I accept full blame. This is on me. The buck stops here with me. At least he did that. But now what happens? That is the question. What happens now? You can't bring those people back to life.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in Ontario. Thousands in Quebec. What was the last figure I heard? 82% of those who've died in Ontario and Quebec were in long-term care facilities of some kind or another. We can't bring them back. We will forever stand and be accounted for the way they were treated. So what happens now is critical.

Does it become just another inquiry that has a report that deals with certain recommendations that nobody ever follows through on? If that's what happens, then these people died for nothing. They should never have died but they did and as a result of them dying we can make things better. We have to make things better for those that follow them into a system where we're promising long-term care. All right. Let me leave it at that, as awful as that is.

And try and turn the subject, because you know that I don't like dwelling in this podcast on the absolute negative. I try to bring some kind of positive into the discussion each day. That's not to ignore the negative. We all know it. We're very aware of the negative part of the story. But we try to give you some other things to think about too. So let me change topics.

Let me switch the topic here. I was talking today to a really good friend of mine who is in the travel business. Yesterday we talked about Dubai and all the problems that Dubai is facing with likely 70% of the businesses in that great city in the UAE, 70% likely to go out of business. All hooked to the travel and hospitality business. So I wanted to see what was happening here because I've been hearing a little bit of an undercurrent in the last week that certain things are starting to come back a little bit. Not overstate this, but a little bit.

And one of them is the airline business. And you know from my talk last week or was it the week before that I love following the airline business. Anyway, I want to know how things were doing. Because the numbers that I've seen have been in the United States. And in the United States, you've got to understand how bad it got. Business in the commercial airline business has never been this slow since the 1950s. That was even before commercial jet travel.

So they've actually come off the last couple of years where things were kind of booming for most airlines. Especially when they started charging you per bag and per peanut and everything else. But they've taken a hammering in the last three months. And the indications were it's slowly, very slowly, starting to come back. Keep in mind, it was almost down to zero in terms of travel. And it's, you know, compared with 0%, compared with where it had been three months ago. And today you hear about maybe upwards of 15% of where it had been.

Now, that's still pretty brutal. That's a lot better than zero. So I was trying to get a sense on how things were in Canada and whether we were starting to see any kind of pickup. You know, the whole system is different, how things operate, who controls what, how many different airlines there are. Well, it's still slow. Tiny hint of a pickup, but slow, very slow.

My friend is in the travel business in the sense that it's kind of a boutique operation. It's not huge, like one of the big huge, like American Express travel or something like that. But he's got a great clientele. We depend on him a lot. And a normal month back in the normal monthdays for him would be roughly, roughly, 150 to 180 bookings a day. Now, it could be anything. It could be a rental car. It could be a hotel. It could be a flight.

It could be any number of things that are associated with the travel business. Where are they now? Average of one a day. One booking a day. Now I said, well, how does that indicate things are starting to pick up? I said, we had a few zeros in there. Things are starting to come along a little bit, slowly, very slowly. And I said, how do you keep an operation going on that? And he said, well, you know, we're lucky in Canada in the sense that governments have been supportive of companies that are

getting hammered right now, but have a chance of coming back. And he's positive on that front. It's going to take a while. I mean, he's seen these awful dips before. Remember 9-11? Nobody got on a plane there for a while. But, you know, people aren't exactly rushing out to book cruises, hotels. You know, I checked in Ottawa today. You know, probably the two best-known major hotels in Ottawa are the Chateau Laurier, historic, more than 100 years old,

built by a guy who was lost on the, well, not built, but he was the owner, the manager, who was lost in the Titanic. He was coming over to oversee the official opening, the Chateau Laurier. If you've been to Ottawa, you know the Chateau Laurier. It looks actually like one of the parliament buildings. Named after, obviously, former Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It's actually a bit of a scandal involved in the land,

but that's a whole other story. Sir Wilford Laurier. It's actually a bit of a scandal involved in the land, but that's a whole other story at the time. And the shadow is closed, locked up, tight, nothing happening there. And across the street, a little bit to the east, is the Westin, the other kind of landmark hotel of downtown Ottawa. It's open, but running on a very reduced scale and with not a lot of customers because people just aren't traveling.

But what about flights? What's happening on the flight front? Well, one part of the news today is that Porter Airlines, you know, they're kind of two major airlines in Canada, Air Canada and WestJet. Both Air Canada and WestJet have been flying through all this, but at a much reduced schedule. A lot of their planes parked. WestJet, I think, is pretty much carrying on its service to every city that it had served before in Canada. It also flies internationally. Air Canada has pulled back on a number of its routes.

They're not serving those cities. Every city they had served beforehand. Now, there were a lot more cities they were serving. But nevertheless, they've pulled back somewhat. Porter Airlines is based in Toronto at the Island Airport. And it's a pretty busy little airline. It flies all over central and eastern Canada. They don't go any further west than, I think, Thunder Bay.

They go into the States, New York, Washington. Don't they go down to Florida? I'm not sure. Anyway, they have a fair chunk of routes. They shut down mid-March. Shut down. And they're still not up and flying, and just today they announced they're delaying yet another month. July 29th is their first possible day of flying.

So for WestJet and Air Canada, they've had to adapt, obviously. They don't have full flights. There's rarely a flight that has more than half the people in it. There are certain rules you have to follow. The federal government says you've got to wear a mask on the plane. The airlines want you to wear a mask to check in. They want you to wear a mask to check in. They want you to wear a mask at the gate.

They want you at the gate with at least 30 minutes before the flight leaves. I think Air Canada and WestJet may be different on some of these things, but they get to determine that. But they want you 30 minutes before departure at the gate because they want to do a health check. They want to check your temperature. They want to get you to fill out a questionnaire. Now, if you were one of those who loved airline food, you're going to be

disappointed because, well, on Air Canada anyway, you don't get any meals anymore. All you get is water. Water. That's it. Only water. Unless you're in business class, then you get a packaged meal, like it's in a little box

that nobody's touched on the airplane. They just hand you the box. So that's kind of what happens there. On the flights where it's two and two in the seating, you know, two seats on one side, two seats on the other, unless you're traveling with somebody, what they seem to be trying to do is only fill the window seats so you're not in immediate proximity to

somebody else. Now keep this in mind about airlines. For the most part, airlines or airliners, planes, jet planes, jet passenger planes, have a really sophisticated system of air. You know, it's going through purifiers. It's constantly being cleaned. In fact, there are some who argue that you have a better air in an airplane than you do in your own living room because of the system they have. However, the system they have

can't deal with the passenger in front of you who may be sneezing or coughing or something that could mean a problem for you. But the airlines are all trying. They are trying to have a situation that people will have confidence in, to get people back in the air. My friend, the travel agent, said, you know, I'll tell you one thing. People are calling me.

They call me every day. Because they're going crazy. They want to go somewhere. They want to do something. Whether it's this summer or whenever. They want to travel like they used to travel. And so they're looking for places to go. Well, once you get outside the border, it becomes a real problem, right? Some countries you can't get to.

Other countries you can get to, but you're immediately in a quarantine when you get there, and then on the way back, you're in quarantine here when you come back. As long as that goes on, it's going to be difficult. Having said all that, there seems to be a very gentle uptick in passenger And if the overall numbers, in terms of the COVID spread, keeps inching downwards and the curve flattening and the recoveries taking place, one can expect that tick on airline travel to go up a little more. But as you can see, when I'm telling you it's a 10% to 15% of what it had been a couple of months ago, that may sound good compared with the 0% or 1% that was happening a few weeks ago.

It's still got an awfully long way to go. And there are tens of thousands of people who are employed in the airline business and the travel business overall in Canada, millions in North America. So there's a lot at stake in trying to make that system safe and to win back our trust that it is safe. All right, last point today. And I get to make it on my own time. And it's about something that I kind of hinted at to you a couple of times over the last few months.

I can officially announce it today. I've got a new book coming out. And I've written it with a great friend and colleague, Mark Bulgich. We worked together at the CBC for decades. We traveled around the world together. He was one of the top producers at the CBC, news producers and executive producer, and he worked on the National, he worked on specials, he did it all. Well, Mark and I were convinced by the book publishing firm Simon & Schuster that we should put together a book that focused on what we called extraordinary Canadians, people who you may not have necessarily heard of,

but who are extraordinary nonetheless, and should and do inspire all of us. And so that's what we've done. I won't tell you how many there are in the book, how many people there are, but there are certainly enough that you're not going to get tired of reading their stories. They come from all parts of the country,

all kinds of different backgrounds, and they have great stories to tell. So the book is actually coming out on November 10th, but Simon & Schuster wanted to get it out in the sort of the public knowledge zone. So you could be thinking about it. You can pre-order one if you wish. But I think you'll enjoy it.

It's going to be a good book. It's called Extraordinary Canadians. What a concept, right? And you can find out a lot more about it by going to extraordinarybook.ca. It'll tell you everything you need to know by going to that website that we just created and just put online today.

Gives you all the information you need. Now, we're still months away, obviously, but we wanted to get that out there now. And so out there now it is. Extraordinary Canadians. Publication date, November 10th. And you can find out more at extraordinarybook.ca. And you can always write me at themansbridgepodcast

at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's our podcast, The Bridge Daily, for this day. But you know what? It's true. We'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.