The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Weekend Special #64

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

The mailbag edition with lots of topics, takes and some tough talk!  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Friday, the weekend special. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. BitBuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. BitBuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees, and new coins. BitBuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code PODCAST20 to get $20 free when you make your first deposit. Friday in the middle of June, the days are getting longer,

about to be the longest days of the year. And what incredible weather we've been having, especially in southern Ontario. Anyway, I can vouch for that. It's been quite gorgeous. Cool in the mornings, hot during the day. Lots of sunshine. Just what we expect from summer, right?

As we approach summer, the summer of 2021. And is this going to be the summer of our lives? Hey, who knows? It's sure going to feel a lot better than it has for the last year and a half. And let's hope it stays that way. Were you up early yesterday? Did you see that spectacular, you know, unveiling in the sky? Those shots of downtown Toronto have made it around the world.

The amazing show of the eclipse. But, you know, people got a glimpse of that on their own if they were up early, early enough to see it. And that's one of the things about the summer sky. You won't get a show like that every night. But you get great shows, especially if you're away from downtown cores. Now, it could be in the backyard in suburbia. It could be out in a farmer's field.

It could be at a lake. It could be at a cottage. It could be at a cottage. It could be at any number of these places. But the opportunity at night sometimes to just lie down and look up at the sky and see the wonders of what our night sky gives us, seemingly more so in the summer months, because I guess it's not like you can lie down in the snow every night

and have a look at things in the winter. But it's pretty good out there, so if you get an opportunity, enjoy it. Okay, it's Friday. It's the weekend special. Your letters, your thoughts, your comments, your ideas, and we have some interesting ones this week. But I wanted to start, actually, I wanted to give a shout out to all those who've been working so hard on dealing with the pandemic in the last year and a half.

Not just all the frontline workers who've been amazing wherever they are in hospitals, grocery stores, you know the list. But also to those who have been working especially hard in these last few months in getting vaccines to people. You know, there's been much moaning and whining and crying and editorializing about how well Canada has or hasn't done, how well Ottawa has or hasn't done, how well the provincial governments have or haven't done on vaccines.

But, you know, listen, you look at the raw numbers and I'm not sure what there is to complain about. Six months ago, we didn't even have a vaccine. Anyone. There was some promise that there could be one, but here we are six months later, not only are there vaccines, and four different ones accepted in Canada,

but they are getting to people at an incredible rate. Esther Turner in Kitchener sent me the site she follows, covid19tracker.ca. And, you know, I was looking at it last night and again this morning. These numbers are pretty startling. When you consider we started from zero, right? Zero. There have been almost 28 million vaccine doses administered in Canada.

Remember, we're a population of of what, 35, 36 million? There were almost half a million vaccines administered just yesterday. Now, of those administered, how many were actually delivered, you know, from Ottawa to the provinces? 30.6 million, roughly. In other words, more than 90% of the doses delivered have been administered.

These numbers are all as of last night at 6 o'clock. All right. Six o'clock Eastern. More than 63% of Canadians, 63% of Canadians have received at least one dose. That's one of the highest numbers in the world. I think only Israel is slightly ahead of us, and maybe they're behind us now. More than 63%. Now, fully vaccinated, in other words, two doses, 10%. We should cross the 10% mark today. And that's moving quickly. It's going to have to move very quickly to get up in the same range as other countries.

It's the fully vaccinated number you want. But remember, our policy was to get as many people first vaccinated as possible. You can argue about that as a policy. It certainly worked and continues to work, as that 63% number shows. The policy was to get as many people with their first vaccines and then move quickly into the second vaccine.

So that's where we are right now, and millions of vaccines are coming into the country every week. We're way ahead of the schedule that had been promised by Ottawa at the beginning of the year when it was first known that we were buying vaccines, that we had vaccines that were working. We've been buying vaccines for more than a year, on the chance that they might work. So these numbers, and I know some people are going to quibble, and they want to crap all over governments, all governments.

I'm not. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to say, at a time when we're really looking hard at our country on issues that we cannot be proud of. And you know what I'm talking about. On this one, I think we have reason to say, good for them. I don't care who they were, liberal, conservative, NDP, you name it, doesn't matter. They seem to have worked this thing pretty well. We're through the third wave.

You look at the numbers, the infection numbers, they have dropped dramatically. Yesterday, there were fewer than 1,500 new cases across the country. A couple of weeks ago, only a couple of weeks ago, there were three times that many in Ontario alone. Alberta was facing a terrible time. They're still difficult, but their numbers are way down in new cases in every province. Now there's concern and worry about the one of the new variants of concern, the Delta variant.

And that's why the push is on, get your second vaccine. People are lining up for hours to go into the big clinics. You know, they're held in hockey rinks and things like that. But pharmacies, some are going around the clock. And there are tens of thousands of new vaccine recipients every day. And I say, good for all those who've been involved in that. Good for you, and thank you. All right.

Letters. And we're starting the mailbag today with the letter that came the furthest, the email that came the furthest, although I guess by Internet it's all the same, right? But the origin was Munich, Germany, Charlie Lapin. Charlie was listening obviously yesterday when I was talking about geography and the oceans of the world and that question of if you walk from the tip of the bottom of south america to the tip of the um top of north america the land base

forget about the archipelago and the islands but as far north as you could go the most northern point where would that be and if you walked the whole way right not over ice just walked on land and i pointed out the spot that i believed was along the bellet straight between somerset island and the boothia peninsula charlie writes given the way you framed your question on thursday wouldn't you be blocked by the Panama Canal when walking north from the southernmost tip of the Americas? I knew somebody would say that. You're right, Charlie, of course, you're right.

But the Panama Canal is a man-made structure, right? So it doesn't really count. At least that's the way. That's my argument, and I'm sticking to it. But Charlie, loved the fact that you thought that one through. And I can remember standing there at the time, saying to my colleague, the cameraman who was with me, I said, if you walk, blah, blah, blah,

you know, ignoring the Panama Canal, because I was man-made, and I'm sure there are points at which over the Panama Canal there must be some kind of structure like there are in most canals. Nevertheless, Charlie was right, and so was I. There were quite a few comments based on my interview the other day with Goldie Heider from the Business Council of Canada, which is a group that argues for, puts forward the points that the business community in Canada wants to put forward in Ottawa to government.

Lobbies, if you will, which is a profession. It's legal. You have to book yourself as a lobbyist. Anyway, the Business Council, like many other groups, wants the border open now with Canada and the U.S. After a year and a half of it being closed and agreeing at the time for it being closed, right? Anyway, Kim Reid from Cobourg, Ontario, writes, Borders need to open as soon as possible to people who are fully vaccinated.

Our economy depends upon it. Straightforward argument, right? Doug Scheel writes, he has a different tone in his voice. Having listened, it was tough listening to your lobbyist buddy today. That's a cheap shot, Doug, you know? Lobbyist buddy, as if that's some kind of criminal. Whether it's because he's a lobbyist or whether it's because he's a buddy. I've known

Goldie Heider for years, as I said on the podcast. Not just in his current work, but in his time as a consultant and a political advisor. And I have no problem calling him and many other people from all kinds of walks of life, labor leaders, politicians, you name it, as friends. Anyway, Doug goes on, hearing him whine about wanting his life back and misstating so many things like apparently being promised that if we got vaccinated we should suddenly have unrestricted freedom i don't remember him saying that i remember him saying that they were

on side with all kinds of restrictions throughout all this and protocols. But now, as the government's various ones have promised, that if we do these things, there'll be payback for us in the long run. That's obvious. We all kind of know that. But to characterize it as whining about being promised, that's not true. Everything he said was devoid of any understanding or recognition of the complex realities that we continue to face.

Examples, please? None. We're certainly heading in the right direction but it's not over yet and like every other pandemic that has come before this one will likely fade out gradually not shut off like a light switch that's exactly what he said if you actually listen to the interview the last question was realistically how long do you think it'll be before the border opens and he said i'm paraphrasing he said it's going to take time and there will be stages in other words not like shutting off a light switch i'm all for a good debate, this is Doug, again,

over the issues and a thorough consideration of the relevant factors, but hearing a lopsided, misleading diatribe was too much. Well, sorry you felt that way, Doug. I didn't, and neither did some other viewers or listeners. I remember him saying how unfair his life was because of the border shutting. He totally understood the border shutting. He's just part of the argument now for a constructive way of reopening it, which is going to have to happen at some point.

Anyway, maybe it was just your tone that set me off on that. Michael Brisson, he's not happy either. In response to, we have been under house arrest, we did what you said, now where is our reward? These are quotations he says from Goldie Heider. And all the rest, Mr. Heider threw at you, we might throw in one very pertinent life and death question. What part of the vaccines might not work to prevent Delta

and the other mutants does he not understand? Actually, I thought he referred to the Delta variant and other variants as potential issues as we move forward. But I agree with you. I think, you know, maybe he could have picked some different descriptions other than the house arrest and others that he threw in there. So I'm sort of halfway with you, Michael. Okay, let me see. Is there another one I want to read from that? Yeah, here's another one.

Ron Fisher from Barrie, Ontario. Ron has written to us before. He always has some thoughtful ideas. But he wants to push back on Goldie Heider for a moment, or particularly his terminology, as many of his core points had real value. In other words, he basically agrees with some of the core points, but he didn't like some of the terminology. Specifically, he constantly uses negative terms like punished and house arrest to dramatize the

difficulty that we've all been going through since this began this is not helpful and in fact feeds into the rhetoric of the anti-mask and anti-vax crowd that use these exact terms in their propaganda i was not punished and i was not arrested arrested. I and most Canadians did our duty as citizens and caring members of our community and did our part. Our sacrifices for the greater good should not be so denigrated. All right, Ron, listen, I like your argument and the way you put it. Here's a letter. I like this one. That's not like all your letters,

even the ones that crap on us. Adam Burgess from the Power Workers Union. He's the Chief Steward of Sector 1, Unit 7. I'm a 34-year-old elected representative of the Power Workers Union as a Chief Steward in the Nuclear Sector of Ontario, living in Bruce County. While the pandemic has hit a majority of Canadians over the past 16 months, the hard work of my predecessors in bargaining a strong collective agreement has proven fruitful in times like these. Now, when I read that, I thought, okay, here we're going to get, you know, the classic kind of union argument about the reason for unions. And in fact, a lot of this letter is exactly that, but it's the way it's written in terms of the points that are made.

And I'm glad to read it, Adam. So here we go. Employment security, health and wellness benefits, a strong defined benefit pension, excuse me, multiple joint health and safety committees, and an expedited arbitration process has helped reduce the amount of stress and anxiety our members have. My wife and I had a COVID baby in late November of 2020, in addition to our four-year-old, and while I will always look back on this pandemic as a time where I got to spend more than 16 months working from home with my growing family part of our wage packages is based on off entering into a nuclear facility on a daily basis moving forward into the world of remote working unions need to be flexible and forward thinking but everything comes at a cost it's my

job as a chief steward to balance the needs of the individual with protecting the future of the union and all its members, and it's a challenging role I am enjoying very much. No one knows what the future holds, but one thing is for sure. The value of unions may be questioned during times when everything is going well, but in hard times, you see the value of your union dues just ask the approximately 4 000 members of our facility who haven't missed a paycheck since the pandemic began adam burgess and i think that gives you whether you're labor anti-llabor, union, pro-union, anti-union. I think there's food for thought in that letter, and it's a timely one right now.

Frank Hendrickson from Bainesville, Ontario. I just listened to your Tuesday podcast where you said that something seemed wrong with the sun rising in the west. Remember, we were doing that thing about supersonic jets, and they were saying that if you fly from London to New York in the three hours, there are times of the day when you can land in New York and see the sun rising in the west. I read that from an article.

Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. Sun rising in the west? Anyway, Frank says, as I'm sure many have pointed out by now, you're the first one, Frank, flying at those supersonic speeds, you're exceeding the Earth's rotational speed of 1,656 kilometers an hour. So it's entirely possible to see the sun rise

in the west. Well, think about that one for a moment. I don't know. Frank seems to know what he's talking about. He certainly seems to understand this story better than I do, which is not hard on a lot of stories. But anyway, thank you, Frank. Stephen Cooper in Ottawa.

Like you, I got the AstraZeneca vaccine for my first dose. So this was a question about what do I do for my second and when I've got choices. So he listened to Dr. Bogoch on Monday. And he wrote back, thanks for today's segment with Dr. Bogoch. That's exactly the information I was looking for. I've decided that optimal protection is more important than suffering through temporary side effects.

So I'll see if I can get a Pfizer or perhaps Moderna as my second dose. But if I end up with a second dose of AZ, that's not the end of the world. Either way, I'll have decent protection. I appreciate the fact that whichever expert you have on, they can spend more time with you than they do on conventional media, given program time constraints. And that was always, you know, and they have real time constraints, conventional media.

I understand that. I was there for 50 years. And sometimes that was a benefit sometimes it was frustrating at a time like this you want as much information as you can get and that's why on the monday broadcast when we talk to our one of our epidemiologists who's been working with us over the last year and a half um i don't worry about the time. We just go on until we finish talking. And the Monday of this past week's podcast with Isaac Bogoch was a great one. And if you are faced with that dilemma right now,

you've had your first shot and it was AstraZeneca, what do you do for your second shot when you have a choice and in many cases you have that choice so circle back you didn't hear it and you're in that situation listen to it's really good really good monday's podcast um joe damiani from Vancouver. This is kind of on the same topic. Just listen to the weekend special last weekend. When you said that you'd be covering this topic on vaccines, you thought that in Ontario, you don't believe that it will be a choice. It's whatever the pharmacy has on the day of your appointment.

Well, pharmacies are kind of allocated certain drugs or certain vaccines, and that's the way it works out as opposed to changing every day. So, you know, you have your Moderna pharmacy or you have your AstraZeneca pharmacy or you have your Pfizer pharmacy. In some cases, you'll have a pharmacy that has both those vaccines or two of those three vaccines. So usually, I don't think you'll have one that has the two mRNA vaccines. But nevertheless, I digress here.

If we book with our pharmacy, we'll get AZ as the second dose. If we book at a government vaccination clinic, this is in BC, it will be a Pfizer or Moderna. I got AZ as my first shot because I was going with the standard advice, which was whenever you've been offered the first, take it. Well, what do you do if you really do have a choice? Well, that's exactly what we talked to Isaac Bogoch about. So if you didn't hear that, Joe, listen to it now from last Monday,

which was, what, the 7th of June, if you're looking it up on back podcasts. It's a really good conversation, and it gives you every possible and potential option and the upside and the downside of all the different choices that you might make. What have we got here? Dave Jersic in London, Ontario. While I'm definitely against COVID passports,

I do favor what the European Union is planning to do. They say they intend to issue travel certificates for fully vaccinated people within the EU to have free and unfettered, no testing or restrictions, travel privileges within the EU. I'm all for that and hope a similar policy is implemented here in North America. Well, you can be sure something's going to be implemented. We just don't know what

it is now. And, you know, we've had the discussion about privacy concerns around vaccine passports. So we'll see what happens. But it does appear that they're all working towards something that you will at least be able to prove that you've had, you know, in some common form of proof that you've had two vaccines. Here's a cute letter from Guy or Guy Skipworth. I enjoyed the story about your wife doing a handstand at the Louvre. I don't know whether you remember that, but it was an involved story. But anyway, that's right. Cynthia did a handstand in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre for a picture.

This reminded me of my, you're not allowed to do that, by the way, and she shouldn't have done it. And I firmly told her then, for whatever good it does me, firmly trying to say anything. This reminded me of my visit to the museum. While standing near the information booth, I heard a voice behind me and thought to myself, Wow, that guy sounds like Robert Stanfield speaking French. I turned around and it was the former Premier of Nova Scotia speaking French in his distinctive way. I introduced myself and a nice ten-minute chat ensued. Maybe not as exciting as a handstand, but memorable for me.

P.S. Many people may not be aware, and I was not aware of this, that Robert Stanfield, a former leader of the opposition, leader of the Federal Conservative Party, as well as, of course, a former Premier of Nova Scotia, many people may not be aware that Stanfield and Barack Obama share something in common. They were both editors of the Harvard Law Review. Stanfield was the first Canadian to hold that position.

I did not know that. And Guy included a picture of him with Robert Stanfield, which was clearly taken at that time in the Louvre when they met. And I love it because Stanfield's there, and in his pocket, he's got one of those guide maps that we all used to use before we just looked at our phone to see where we were standing and how far it was to walk to the next site we wanted to see in some great city of the world.

And it's one of those, I can't remember off the top of my head the name of those particular guidebooks, the green one, the kind of long green one that you get for each city or each country or each region in different parts of the world. Anyway, it's a great picture, and Robert Stanfield was a great man. You know, I arrived in Ottawa to cover Parliament Hill in the mid-1970s, just before Robert Stanfield gave up his position as leader of the Federal Conservatives.

Joe Clark won the position after Mr. Stanfield. And that was something that everybody respected Robert Stanfield. No matter which side of the House you were on, no matter who you were on Parliament Hill, it was Mr. Stanfield. That's what you called him. That's what his staff called him, Mr. Stanfield. Okay. My, we're already on to our last letter. You know, I try to keep last letters as,

I mean, all these letters are memorable. But usually there's something about the last one that sort of catches my attention in a way that catches my attention as the one that I'm really going to remember from the week. So this one comes from Laura Milosz in Amherstburg, Ontario. I opened the door and found her standing in the garage, weeping and completely naked. She had another heart-wrenching day at the Detroit Hospital ICU that she worked at, and stripping out of her nursing uniform in the garage and running to the shower had become her routine. Her first day as an ICU was March 1, 2020. COVID's been a rollercoaster for my family, and I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining.

We have lost no family members. We have postponed a wedding, started a new relationship, received a cancer diagnosis, and yet still I'm grateful to COVID. Weird, right? We are a family which includes four nurses and a husband-father that worries about all of us appropriately. We work obstetrics, ER, mental health, and the ICU nurse got out, worked oncology until she decided to accept a travel nurse job in New York at a vaccine clinic and will come home to quarantine June 12th.

That's this weekend. The point of this email, Peter, is gratitude. COVID has condensed a lifetime of learned wisdom into 16 months. It has brought entitlement, selfishness, fear, and patience up front and center. I've witnessed some of these negative behaviors I just listed In many of the professionals I've worked with But also the positive behaviors from other professionals That I may not have even noticed if it were not for COVID We will get through this

There will be a wedding Relationships will be a wedding. Relationships will be deeper. Days spent with loved ones will have more meaning. And she closes by saying, open the border. Thanks. From Laura in Amherstburg, Ontario. And we know in a number of places in the country,

there have been situations where nurses have, because of their working professions, because they worked on the other side of the border, have had to go through this over the last year. And it's been tough, I'm sure, as it has been for all healthcare professionals. But thank you, Laura. And thank you to all of those who wrote today. Including Doug.

Doug Shields of North Vancouver. I think we probably agree on more than it sounded like in that letter. Anyway, here we are at another weekend. Middle of June. Two weeks to go here for the bridge before we take our summer hiatus. Doesn't mean we're disappearing completely, but we will still be on on Wednesday. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth will continue from wherever I happen to be,

wherever Bruce happens to be. We'll keep that on. The idea is to take a hiatus until such time as it's clear what's happening on the election. My betting is still mid-August. The election's called for sometime in mid to late September. And obviously we'll be on there. And so we'll good talk. Chantelle Hebert will come back on.

And we'll be back with our weekly hour-long discussion about all things politics in Canada. And obviously at that time, it'll be all about the election. So we're looking forward to that. In the meantime, it's the weekend. It's the middle of June. It's time for a break. Get outdoors as much as you can again this weekend.

Be safe. If you're looking for your second dose, go find it. They're out there. There are millions of new vaccines coming in every week. And there's one with your name on it. So go for it. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you again on Monday. Thank you. you