The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "This is a Time of War"

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

We are in the worst moment of the pandemic and everyone from governments to citizens has to realize that. Again this week very blunt assessment from our infectious disease specialists who we have been talking to from across the country.  Plus, the power of the people in affecting change in the decisions governments make -- this weekend was a breakthrough.   And finally, a test case of rapid testing happening right here in my hometown -- it could be coming to yours soon.

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, where today is all about power to the people. Like you, I have been so grateful and so thankful for frontline workers during the COVID crisis. Let's just talk about the frontline workers at SickKids, which is one of the world's best children's hospitals. SickKids doctors also work behind the scenes on incredible breakthroughs to help our kids

and generations to come. Listen to their inspiring stories in a new season of the popular podcast called SickKids Versus. Each episode explores a major SickKids discovery like, well, a virus fighting super molecule or a cure for hard-to-treat cancers. Just visit sickkidsfoundation.com slash podcast or search Sick Kids Versus and spell versus VS. So Sick Kids VS. You'll be amazed at what you learn. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here again. Welcome to another Monday. Welcome to another week in this more than a year-long battle. The battle of our lives, many people see it.

As we fight the coronavirus, COVID-19, and fight it, has taken on a whole new meaning over the last couple of days. From many parts of the country, and specifically we're talking about Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, the fight is on against COVID-19 in a way that we haven't seen before. Clearly, we are going through the worst period, the worst period of COVID-19 since this whole thing started. The numbers are staggering. And as a result, many people are worried and many people are saying, hey, wait a minute, you're not doing this the way you should. And that brings on this whole phrase of power to the people. I mean, we've all heard it all our lives, and we've seen examples of where people power has really changed things.

And I think we've seen another example of it over the last couple of days, specifically in this province, in Ontario, just one of the ones that's hard hit, but one of the ones where a government decided late last week, seemingly very quickly, on a number of measures to try and restrict movement on the part of people, and some policies attached to that and it has not gone well people are upset and they showed it very quickly and as a result literally within hours

the government started flip-flopping on some of the decisions that it made and they kept doing that throughout the weekend. The latest being the decision last night to reduce the age for those who can apply for the vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine, to 40. Now, that had been called upon by a lot of different groups. And now the government has agreed. So they're scrambling. They're scrambling since Friday when they had a whole different set of rules in play

and restrictions and protocols. Many of those the people have rebelled against. Some have been flipped. Others have not, at least not yet. But what these last couple of days have shown is that people in fact do have a say in all this and if they make their statements clear enough and smart enough and reasonable enough they can affect change so we're going to talk about that a number of other things this morning, but today's program is all about the pandemic

and the fight against the pandemic. As you know, on Mondays for the last, I don't know how many months, we have had one of the country's top infectious disease specialists, and we draw upon those from different parts of the country, from the west, from the West, from the East, from the Center, and we've been getting their thoughts on a kind of daily basis. Of late, in the last month or so, these people are getting more and more blunt about the way they see the situation, and none more so than today's guest, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, University of Toronto Infectious Disease Specialist,

part of, they call them tables, like there's the science table of advisors to governments, and the vaccine table, or rollout group. So Dr. Bogoch is on both of those, and has been kind of caught in the middle at times about how critical he feels he can be. Hey, he doesn't hold back today. So listen closely because he and a lot of other people in that profession are not happy with the way things are going. And they don't think, not only governments, but they don't think the people, quite frankly, understand how serious our situation is right now

and has become that way just in the last few weeks. He's been warning us, he and others have been warning us for the last month or six weeks, that the incoming effect of the variants was going to really cause massive problems and massive problems are what we're facing right now so let's get things started uh with dr isaac bogoch once again he's um he's in toronto and so you know there's a degree of toronto perspective on all this but it's not just Toronto. It's not just Ontario.

Listen closely. This affects all of us. Here we go. Well, Doctor, I don't know about you, but I don't recall a weekend like this at any time, let alone in the middle of a pandemic. But, you know, the province of Ontario

announces a bunch of rule changes in terms of its lockdown. And it takes immediate incoming from everywhere. You know, you've got doctors and nurses dumping on them. You've got parents and kids, teachers, students, golfers, tennis players, you name it. They were all upset. And they crossed the spectrum of the whole issue in terms of COVID and the pandemic. Were you surprised at the amount of criticism that the government took?

No, not at all. I think a lot of it was well-deserved. You were waiting for a big announcement with major policy that was going to really help us get out of this horrific third wave. And we didn't hear about anything that was really going to help us. And if anything, there was several distractions that were focused on areas that were just non-issue. So, for example, shutting down the out-of-doors. I mean, like, it's been over a year we want to be out of doors the out of doors is the safest place to be we should be encouraging people to be outside and we heard policy that basically said no we're going to make it more

challenging to go outside and do things like that that didn't make any sense at all then you heard about policing of public health. Anyone who knows anything about public health knows that policing public health like that doesn't work. It's counterintuitive. It doesn't it's not effective. And in fact, you really see disproportionate policing in the end. At the end of the day, you see disproportionate fines and policing, usually in the populations that are disproportionately impacted by the virus or by steps to curb the virus. And it just backfires. So that was pretty surprising. And then, of course, there's what you didn't hear as well. Not just what we heard, but what we didn't hear.

We didn't hear about additional supports for communities and people that were most impacted by this virus. We didn't hear about, you know, how are we going to help the essential workers or the communities that have been bearing the brunt of this infection for well over a year now. And in all fairness, you know, there was some pretty impressive public outcry. But and the province walked back a lot of what they said and credit where credits do. They did that. And that's, that's reasonable. They listened and walked back, you know, the playground. I still think there's room to walk back the other outdoor measures and perhaps

even change the messaging in that and finally encourage outdoor measures. They walked back the policing as well. I thought that was very helpful. But we still haven't heard about steps that are going to be taken to support those who are most impacted by the virus, namely the essential workers. Well, who are they listening to, to have come up with that list in the first place? I mean, there are a number of different groups and boards and tables or whatever they call them you're on one of them in terms of the vaccines um i i can't believe that the people like your group or any of the other groups were recommending these ideas so who are they listening to yeah it's tough to know but in all fairness like i help out with the science table as well i'm on the vaccine one i mean there's a lot of people who are on various committees and tables that feed information. I think it's fair to say, though, that there's multiple streams of communication

that will help dictate policy. And, you know, there's been a lot of focus on the vaccine and the science table who certainly feed information to the province to help them with policy decisions. But by no means are we exclusive, right? You can be sure that there's, you know, political lines of communication, business lines of communication, advocacy lines of communication. And, you know, at the end of the day, they probably put that all together. And, you know, they probably think that they're coming up with some sound policy. I mean, in all fairness, it's pretty clear that that policy that they had didn't align with science or medicine or public health.

And they changed some of it. They certainly did change some of it. But there's certainly room for improvement. But again, I mean, I'm not trying to give them too much credit because I really think that there's much that's to be there's a lot to be desired. Right. We still need to go significantly further than where we're at right now, but they did walk back some things and, and, and that was helpful. And that was helpful. I think that needs to be acknowledged too. All right. I, I'm sure it's a fine line for you in terms of dealing with this kind of issue. Your area of expertise is what to do with sick people.

And obviously I'm going to get to that, you know, right away. I guess the issue is at a time like this, third wave, terrible numbers, crisis underway, that surely to gosh, the only thing they should be looking at at this point i understand the other pressures at other times but at this point is the health issue it's not business it's not you know sports or whatever you know i mean people are are dying or running the risk of dying that one assumes should be the primary factor and i know it is for you and for your colleagues let me talk about vaccines because i know this is uh certainly one of your areas of of high expertise and high concern um vaccines

have taken a hit in the last uh a week or two weeks we we've talked about astrazeneca a number of times over the last couple of weeks with you um last week is johnson and Johnson. And you can see on the part of, you know, normally reasonable people, a backing away from this sense of going to vaccines. A lot of reports this weekend in different parts of the country of people not turning up for appointments. When I say a lot of, I mean, just anything sounds like a lot. But the fact that they are backing away do you do you have numbers on on what's happening on that front do you have a sense of how difficult it is to convince people right now yeah i mean i think it's fair to say that astrazeneca is the big one in canada right now uh and you know it's fair to say that there is hesitancy with AstraZeneca.

And I think we all realize why. Just calling it how it is, our communication with AstraZeneca has been appalling. It's been appalling. I mean, we shouldn't be surprised that we're having trouble doling it out to the 55 plus crowd when we have communicated this vaccine and have not communicated or contextualized risk at all with this so a lot of it we we can blame ourselves for i mean i don't think the company did themselves any favors with some of the gaps that they had as well but i think a lot of the blame lands on the collective us as the medical scientific and public health community

and that's a problem because this is a, as you point out, it has never been this dire in Canada. Like COVID-19 has never been this bad ever in Canada. It's not every day you're admitting adults to the pediatric intensive care unit. It's not every day you're operationalizing tents out front of, in front of your hospitals to put patients. It's not every day you're canceling surgeries across the province so you can have an all hands on deck approach it's not every day you're bringing in personnel from other provinces to help out because you can't staff your

your your wards i mean it's not every day you're flying people from one icu hundreds of kilometers to another icu like pretty safe to say this is a public health emergency. And here you have a vaccine that will save your life. Like it will, it will save your life and it will save the life of those around you. And yeah, there's a teeny, tiny, teeny, tiny risk of developing a very serious blood clot. And we just have not communicated the contextual risk at all with this. And it's a shame because this vaccine can do a lot of good. And we've seen it do a lot of good. Look at the UK.

I mean, they've given this out like Halloween candy. Plus, they locked down. And, you know, one of the countries, they're one of the countries, quite frankly, the worst pandemic response in the world. And there looks like they're going to waltz out of this shortly with very few cases and a tremendous amount of vaccination. And a significant component of that vaccination was with AstraZeneca. We should be doing the same. I think we can do a lot better by number one, communicating risks and communicating the benefit of AstraZeneca in an honest

and transparent manner. Number two, really lowering the age criteria for AstraZeneca. And I think we're going to see that happen from coast to coast imminently, regardless of what NACI says. I think the provinces are just going to do it. And if NACI goes along with it, great. And if NACI says something else, great.

But I think the provinces are going to lower the age criteria as they should. Number three, expand how we give it out. Pharmacies, primary care. You don't need to give this out in mass. You can give it out in mass vaccine clinics, but you can give this out in pharmacies and primary care with significant ease and i really hope at least in ontario we expand the role of primary care and going so now i saw you like to tweet by uh your colleague uh dr brian goldman uh i think earlier today who was saying it was basically begging pharmacies if they got anything left over give them to

give astrazeneca to anybody who comes in 18 and over and as i in terms of lowering the age are you in favor of doing that that low i am but listen i think like like anything else like health canada said they this is licensed in canada for 18 plus uh so the provinces could give it to anyone 18 plus. NACI's recommendations are not binding. They're just recommendations. The provinces tend to align with NACI, but Health Canada sets the rules

and the rule is 18 plus. I really think that if you give it to 18 plus or just like, even if it's not 18 plus, like lower the age range, like make it 30 or 40 plus. Like if you lower the age range below 55 you will have people coming out of the woodwork for this there still is a tremendous demand for vaccination i think the reason we're not getting the same degree of demand is because people who are in and around

55 years old plus or minus five years are either are many of them are unfortunately astrazeneca has been sadly labeled as a second class vaccine, which is completely false and people are waiting for their Moderna or their Pfizer instead. And I think that's a lot of, that is a lot of the problem. It's not 100% of the problem, but that's a lot of the problem. If you lower that age criteria to 30 or 40,

30 and 40 year olds will know for sure that it's going to take a little bit, it's going to take weeks for them to get a Pfizer or Moderna, but they can get an AstraZeneca like this tomorrow. I think we'll get a ton of, a ton of buy-in and a lot of people getting it. I like the 18 because I figured health Canada says 18 and up. And I think informed consent can be done well. And you can just have an honest conversation about here's the tiny, but not 0% risk of a blood clot. Here's the benefit treated, like essentially treat a public health crisis, like a public health crisis, right? conversation about. Here's the tiny but not 0% risk of a blood clot. Here's the benefit.

Essentially, treat a public health crisis like a public health crisis. We've never seen this much COVID-19 in the country, and this is a life-saving vaccine. Let's treat it as a crisis. This is not a time of peace. This is a time of war, and we should be acting accordingly. That means doing everything we can to help prevent people from getting this infection. I think that's the right move to do. So, A, do it 18 up, or B, just lower the age range by, you know, 20 years or so. Do you have any idea where we are generally in the country in terms of the amount of vaccine that's available on a daily basis and the amount that's actually going into arms. I mean, I saw a figure over the weekend for Saskatchewan, which is very high. You know, it was like in the 80s in terms of the percentage of available vaccine

that is being administered each day. I believe that it's lower than that, in some cases much lower than that in other parts of the country. Do you have a general sense of where we are on that? Yeah, if you look at it, there's data that's publicly available about vaccines that are delivered to the provinces and vaccines that are administered. Of course, it waxes and wanes around the time of vaccine delivery. In general, in general, most of the provinces are rather aligned. There's more similarities than differences. And, you know, they're,

they're, they're usually in sync as well. So the burn rate of the vaccines is pretty comparable in all of the provinces. It's not identical, but it's pretty comparable. And usually it's, you know, you you know there's 80 you know 75 to 80 ish percent of the vaccines that are are administered and you know and it's not like you're hoarding uh i think people think there's like a big freezer with vaccines in one big freezer and someone's just sitting on that freezer smoking a cigar laughing that they're not going to give out the vaccine like that's just not what happens right when the vaccines land in the province, they get administered and distributed throughout

the province. It takes a couple of days because these are obviously big places. And they go to various public health units. And then the public health units distribute them again to their clinics and their vaccine centers. And then the burn rate for the different vaccines is going to be different. Your Moderna burn rate, we get Moderna every two weeks. So the burn rate is through two weeks. The burn rate for the different vaccines is going to be different. Your Moderna burn rate, we get Moderna every two weeks, so the burn rate is through two weeks.

The burn rate for Pfizer is weekly. AstraZeneca sits there like a lump of coal, and we sort of slowly chip away at it because of the reasons we just discussed. So I think we're doing okay from that standpoint. Obviously, it would be wonderful to have greater efficiency in vaccine delivery, but like I would focus, I don't think that's as big an issue right now. I think the big issues, for example, in Ontario,

my biggest concern is like signing up for vaccine. Like we still have a very cumbersome signup tool that is a barrier to care. And I think we need to really navigate that. I think the other issue is really harnessing primary care throughout the province rather than just a few geographic areas. Like, I think there's low hanging fruit for what we can do to improve vaccine delivery in the province. I know this freezer talk is very exciting for some. And, you know, I think the province certainly can do a lot better from a transparency standpoint by just being open and honest and having a dashboard of like, here's our vaccine. Here's our burn rate.

Like this would just quell so much concern that people have. I tried to do it last week somewhat unsuccessfully, but it would be just helpful if the province was just transparent about, you know, what vaccines we have, how much is administered per day, how much of this one we have? How much of that one we have? Like easy information and we quell anxiety. And then we could probably focus on more important issues like, you know, getting vaccines to the high burden areas, navigating a convoluted signup system, mobilizing primary care throughout the province. Like there's other issues that I think warrant more attention. Two other quick areas.

I read Dr. Fauci over the weekend talking about a third dose. Now, most of the, well, all the vaccines that are available in Canada right now are a two-dose vaccine. And certainly for the most vulnerable populations, many of those two-dose vaccines have already occurred. But for a lot of other people, especially the AstraZeneca crowd, they're going to have to wait a while for the second dose. A third dose. Do you see dose three? Now, Fauci didn't say for sure, but he said it's likely. Yeah.

Oh, I'll say for sure. We'll for sure need a third dose. Of course we will. I don't know when, but we will. Like, there's going sure need a third dose of course we will i don't know when but we will like there's going to be a third dose it's probably going to be 2022 or onward but like immunity is going to wane with time and variants of concern are around and it just seems like a very reasonable thing to do i mean we know that companies are already working on booster doses that will account for some of the circulating variants of concern. And yeah, I, I, I mean,

I don't have a crystal ball, but I imagine we'll all be getting a shot sometime in 2022 to account for the circulating variants or to account for, you know, perhaps waning immunity over a year or so. We just don't know how long immunity, like a true effect of immunity is going to last with these vaccines. But regardless of how long your immunity lasts, there are variants that are evolving that, you know, they do chip away at the efficacy of the vaccines and a booster that accounts

for those variants would be very helpful as well. I think we're going to have them in 2022. You know, there's been some concern expressed, well, not concern, but some hope expressed that the second vaccine dosage, if you need it may not have to be of the kind that you had the first dose that they're testing that, you know, Pfizer and Moderna are testing to see whether they could go in after, after an AstraZeneca first dose. Now they're very different vaccines.

The three of them, you know, two, you know, Pfizer and Moderna are one kind AstraZeneca is a different kind. Are you hearing anything on that front? Yeah, absolutely. The UK is doing a clinical study, started a few months ago hopefully we'll have the results of that soon like it should be before the summer we'll have the results of that and uh it's neat you know you start they're basically looking at dose one with vaccine a dose two with vaccine b and there's theoretical reasons why you might mount a more robust immune

response because you're you know you're you're sort of targeting you know different immunity and a more diverse antibody response to two different vaccines theoretically that may provide additional protection maybe and even if it doesn't you know if there's vaccine shortages and you have you know less of vaccine a around but you have a lot of vaccine b around if it doesn't matter it provide you with the same degree of protection, great, get vaccine B instead of vaccine A. So there's a lot of pragmatic reasons that that will be that this study will be very helpful with. Yeah, and I know, I know people in Canada watching for the results of this pretty, yeah, well, it should be about, I imagine we'll have the results in a couple of months.

I don't know how important this will be in Canada, because like we have a ton of pfizer coming in like pfizer is plentiful moderna should be plentiful but you know they're always late and and the shipments aren't as big as we want them to be uh so i don't know if we'll actually have a huge need for this in the end, but it's the information is valuable and maybe we'll put that information to good use. All right. Last question. I, you know, I live in Stratford, Ontario, as you know, and Stratford is the district we're in has been picked as a kind of test case for a program by both the province and the feds on rapid testing. And it's starting tomorrow.

And I'm just wondering, you know, how important you think that is in this, the big picture of trying to fight this. And this is the rapid testing, you know, it's like 10 or 15 minutes and you've got a result and it's primarily designed for small and medium-sized

businesses that's the idea behind it how important is it i mean two points point one is it's very important point two is it's april of 2021 like where was this a year ago yeah get on with it what is up i mean we there's several and you don't have to look too far but i think you've seen many medical science public health people banging this rapid testing drum for well over a year there's so much good that can come of this like there's so much good that can come of this tell me tell me what is the good that can come of you so we know that a ton of infections are mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic imagine you know you go into a place of work like a factory high risk setting right and you just test people i don't know a couple times a week, two, three times a week, walk in the door, get a test, get an answer. If you're positive, great, go home or back it up with a regular PCR test.

This didn't really be the tiebreaker. If it's negative, come on in, get to work. But like, you can rapidly identify people who might be at risk of causing a big super spreader event. And you can prevent that from happening and and you just identify people early before things get out of hand you can you might stop outbreaks and if there is an outbreak though it might lead to much smaller outbreaks because it gives you meaningful information that you can use in real time you know what's really interesting with the rapid testing is i don't know this is going to come out wrong. I'm going to get hate mail for this.

But like the medical and scientific community was unfortunately kind of divided, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because I don't see any downside to this. But there were there are some people who are rather public that were like, yeah, they're not as good. They're not as accurate. And why would you do this? There's a lot of false positives. There's a lot of false negatives. Remember, this is a public health intervention. This isn't a microbiologic laboratory diagnosis type of intervention. This is a public health tool. So if you've got a hundred

people coming in to a factory and you do the rapid tests, you know, I'm just going to make up some numbers. Maybe there's three, maybe there's five people coming in with the infection. Okay. Well, let's say you do the rapid test and you pick up three of those five, you miss two of them, but you're still picking up three of those five. I would much rather pick up three of those five people than by doing those rapid tests, then pick up zero people, then not doing those rapid tests. And because you're doing them multiple times a week, you're going to catch the other people as well. So, like, it just makes a lot of sense.

And then some people's argument is, oh, you know, boo-hoo, there's a couple of false positive tests here and there. So? So? So what? You're sending someone for a confirmatory PCR test if you have a false positive. It's, you know, you can operationalize this easy. And you know, what's really interesting, sorry for blabbering on and on the business community figured this out really early on. And they said, we're not waiting for these, you know, egghead

medical public health losers to figure this out. We're just going to do it. And they did. And they quietly integrated rapid testing into many, many businesses. Actually, there's a very well-known Canadian startup guy, John Ruffalo is a name many people might know. And he was actually one of the leaders of this thing. Like, why aren't we doing this? And he sort of figured this out with a group of other people and got this going in a lot of businesses. Meantime, you know, the medical and scientific people were debating amongst themselves about who, what, where, when, why, and how. They just went ahead and did it.

And kudos to them because they did a great job. Sounds like we don't need a test case. We just need to shove it into every town and city in the country. Look, Dr. Bogoch, I know you've given us a lot of time, as you always do. And we really do appreciate it. And we know you've got lots of more important work to do than this. So take care and good luck. Thanks, Jack.

Have a good one. Dr. Isaac Bogoch. And, you know, saying it like it is. And that's what these people, these infectious disease specialists in different parts of the country, the men and women who are at the front line of trying to deal with this situation, have been giving us the last few weeks. They are not holding back. This is a time of war, heard Dr. Bogoch say.

Here we are more than a year into this. Right? We thought the times of war were last year. This is the worst case situation we've been in overall in the country, a time of war. All right, that last point on the rapid testing being tested here in this community, a quick interview with the mayor of Stratford when we come back. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further.

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in every community in the country. This is just a test case that's going on here in Stratford, but what does it actually do? What does it actually mean and what actually happens? Let's talk to Mayor Dan Matheson of Stratford, Ontario. Well, Mr. Mayor, Stratford is a city of a little over 30,000. It's got a good selection of both small and medium-sized businesses. How is this program going to work? Well, Peter, what we're going to do is through our business improvement area, our tourism organization and invest Stratford, get tests brought to Stratford as part of the Waterloo region pilot project. And we're going to train the individuals at

certain businesses on how to test should be administered. They're then going to have free access to those tests, teach their employees how to use it, and then decide, is it something they're going to do every other day, three times a week, every day? But it's a way to make sure that those businesses that have to be open and are going to be open have a way to make sure their employees are safe. And, of course, the customers coming in. And this is a no-cost-to-them operation? It's a no-cost. The Canadian government last year acquired 43 million of these tests from abbott laboratories they have been in storage and they are now being

put out into communities across canada and the first pilot project is of course in waterloo region and ian kludman who is a strategic advisor to public health canada is responsible for the business restart. Ian's from Waterloo. He's included Stratford in it. He knows how important getting our small and medium businesses back open are for our economy and for our tourism. So we're happy to be part of this,

what I would say groundbreaking opportunity to get testing into the hands of all residents. You know, that number of them just sitting in storage. I'm sure this is not up to you to answer, but it does sort of beg the question, why the heck weren't these things out there before now? You must have been asking for them, or cities and communities across the country must have.

Well, I think we all know the key to getting out of this is testing, and testing that is available. This is not a silver bullet this is a pre-screening opportunity it's one more tool beyond do you have a headache do you have snuffle or sniffles are you congested this is okay if you get a positive get a hold of the health unit and get into that larger testing queue that's important if not and you test negative well it's great we know that you're in a workplace and you're safe. You're still going to have to physical and social distance, wear a mask, good hand hygiene,

do all the things you're supposed to do. But it's that one more level of security and I guess comfort for everybody to know that we're safely restarting our economy as best as possible. You know, we've spent a lot of time talking about the prime minister and the premiers and the way they've led or not led during this pandemic. And little has been said about mayors.

Some there are, what, I don't know how many mayors there are in the country, but there must be tens of thousands. 2,000. 2,000. 2,000 mayors across the country. Now, what, you know, there are obviously, there have been pressures on all of you as well. Can you give us some sense of what that's been like? What are people in communities demanding of their municipal politicians?

Well, first and foremost, they want consistent, reliable information. And Friday was a good example of a challenge we had. The premier made a series of announcements late in the afternoon on a friday some of them were to take effect right away such as closing playgrounds and of course the new powers for police there was no pre-consultation whatsoever with the elected leaders of this province at the municipal level there was a phone call with the ontario association chiefs of Police just prior to the press conference. And at that point in time, if they would have taken the opportunity to consult more often, they would have known that the blowback they were going to get around playgrounds and, of course, the police powers.

And this has been a continual challenge. I know that the pandemic is a fluid situation, but there's nobody closer to the residents than the elected officials in each and every community. I can tell you our medical officer of health, Dr. Miriam Closs, is here in Perth. I chat with her regularly. She gives regular briefings. She's continually taking in new information as she charts the courts. And I think the provincial government would do well to start doing more of that as they're trying to get the economy restarted and this project is a good example of listening to municipalities giving us some tools that we can work with our business businesses with and to start safely start to restart our economy all right mayor dan matheson right here in stratford ontario thanks very much for this mr mayor. Mayor. Thanks, Peter. Well, there you go.

That's starting rapid testing in Stratford, Ontario, and a number of other areas in the surrounding Waterloo region, with the sole purpose of trying to encourage small and medium-sized businesses to check their employees. And this is, you know, obviously it's good for the employees, it's good for the business. It's good for the business. It's good for customers. So hopefully this test case works out well and it's approved and therefore goes beyond. If they got 43 million test cases, like what are they waiting for? Let's get going on the test case scenario because Dr. Bogoch and Mayor Matheson are quite correct.

There have been people calling for these test cases for more than six months, almost a year now. And they're here. They were sitting here. They just haven't been used. Hopefully now they will be. All right. That gets our week started.

And I know it was heavy on the COVID story, but hey, this is a time of war, and that's the focus we've had on this day. Lots more during the week, obviously. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Thursday, Good Talk, later on SiriusXM, Canada Talks channel. And on Friday, of course, we have the weekend special.

Listen, I hope you have a good week. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you again in 24 hours.