Parses captions for PM Trudeau's daily speeches and presents them in a more human readable format
News app as well as CBC News. Ca. We are standing by to head to Rideau cottage for Prime Minister Justin trudeau’s daily briefing on the coronavirus pandemic. Today, he’s expected to pick up on a positive report from Canada’s top doctor. Dr. Teresa tam says that, after weeks of shutdowns and physical distancing, the COVID-19 curve in this country is flattening. She said that in a statement yesterday. That news comes as more provinces start phasing in their plans to re-open their respective economies. We’re also hearing today that the Prime Minister will announce funding to expand on-line access to health services. That, of course, is key for the millions of Canadians who are following orders to stay at home. I want to bring in My colleague, david Cochrane, who joins us here in ottawa. We’re expecting a reiteratation of what the feds promised to do around the Canada child benefit, probably questions around a story about testing that’s coming from the journal de montreal. Te spartan bioscience. It’s a quick test approved a couple of weeks ago by health Canada. Looks like it is runing into some problems.
Reporter:
Yeah. Most people heard about this when they announced – the federal government announced a new industrial policy in Canada to get domestic companies ramping up and reorienting to focus on fighting COVID-19. This is the Ottawa technology company that developed this rapid test kits that has been bough widely, or is going to be bought widely by governments like Ontario and Quebec. Send out for clinical testing. There’s some problems. We have a statement from health Canada, if we can show it to you. It says – this is important because a lot of people got the sense that these testing kits es would be widely distributed and widely used to help accelerate not tonight rate at which the country can test but the rate at which we can get those test results. It was apparently a conditional approval a, and expedited approval to allow it to be used with a condition that all of its results be examined by the national microbiology lab in Winnipeg to verify that the test results were accurate and apparently the verification of the results has led to this statement from health Canada. What I’m told by government officials that there is some issues with the swabs, either in the way they collect the sample or analyzed once inside the kit. The kit itself is seen to be sound but they need to be seen before it can be widely used. That is a statement from health Canada and from spartan, the company. Here’s what they said. Ok. We’ll pick it up later. It says – before that paragraph there, the company said it was advise on May 3 by health Canada that the efficacy of the proprietary swab would not determine the and lit cal performance of spartan’s test reagents and analyzer device. Currently they shipped 5500 tests nationally for validations to federal and provincial health agencies and will be working as quickly as possible to address concerns and bring the test to markets. a senior health official told me this is an setback but not an insoluble one. They believe the issues identified can be fixed and can be adapted and it will be able to be put into wide use at a certain point once it clears this regulatory hurdle. Vassy?
Vassy:
and if you are just joining us there, you’ll see there Rideau cottage. We’re awaiting the Prime Minister in 15 minutes time for his brief,. it’s a swab and it gives you the results very quickly. At the time, I think it was a few weeks ago that it got that conditional approval and Dr. Tam said they were trying to secure the order. and Alberta’s contract, I believe at the time was 400, 000 cuts at the c. E.o. At the time said he would supply the domestic market and there were demands, you know, for the private sector and other countries as well for it. But at that time, he thought they could ramp up to like 100, 000 tests a week. So it will be interesting to see what effect this has on that kind of a timeline.
Reporter:
Yeah. and this speaks to the challenge. There’s been a lot of political pressure on health Canada to approve more tests quickly and get them on the market. We’ve seen other countries move to urological testing and antibody testing and finding out that science is a hard thing to rush. and, you know, the approvals you can speed them up and buy and get them into the market. Until the testing is refined to the point that you’re not getting false positives and false negatives and either false hope or false indicators of where things are in dealing with the disease, it becomes a risk. Spartan looked very promising early. It has proved not to be where they need it to be. and it is going back in – basically was taken out for a test drive, Vassy, but needs some modifications before you can buy the thing and take it home with you. That is where it is right now. The biology lab found some issues with it. It does slow up the scaling up of testing capacity in the country. The hope is that it is a temporary delay.
Vassy:
Ok. I know you will be with us through the Prime Minister’s remark. On the issue of testing capacity, it is extremely important and significant towards the process of re-opening economies. Some provinces are starting to relax restrictions and allow certain businesses to re-open, to a certain degree Nova Scotia is one of them. For more on, this I’m joined by premier stephen mcneil from Nova Scotia. Good to see you again.
Good to see you. Good afternoon.
Vassy:
Premier, I wanted to start off on the question of re-opening the economy. Last week when we spoke, you say that the province wasn’t there yet. You weren’t prepared at this point to start relaxing, you know, restrictions in a big way. You did, however, open municipal and provincial parks this weekend and has a lot to do with an a issue the Prime Minister is going to talk about and I know that you are concerned about given the past few weeks. Tell us why you made that decision.
Well, our province was hit with a tremendous amount of [inaudible] during a period of time. We had 37 Nova Scotians who passed away from COVID-19 and the unthinkable tragedy that took place in colchester county and of course this week we lost six members of the Canadian armed forces in a helicopter crash, all of whom were part of our Nova Scotia family. and self-isolation was taking its toll and we felt that it was in the best interest of all of us to find some way to get outdoors and find some level of getting out. We are not through the pandemic yet but it was a balance for us and really trying to work toward ensuring that we tried to protect the mental health of Nova Scotians.
Vassy:
I know that physical distancing measures remain in place. Are people taking advantage of it and staying safe?
I haven’t heard of any issues this weekend. Nova Scotians recognize this is their opportunity to don’t move out of this pandemic and restrictions. We made it very clear, Dr. St rang and I, if there were complication and we saw that the virus started to pick up again, that we would put restrictions back on our province.
Vassy:
What about relaxing other restrictions? when we spoke last week, you said you weren’t there yet. What is your assessment of where things stand right now?
So, part of it we did on Friday. I asked the Minister of health and deputy Minister to work with our partners in health to look at day surgery or short stay surgery that could take part in our health care system and what that would look like. and Dr. St rang now will work with associations, like the restaurant association, and cosmetology association, other professional organizations who are in the service industry, how can we begin to open up our particular sectors by following the new norm, the public health norm that will be in place?
Vassy:
Do you feel like the information that you’re getting do you feel like Nova Scotia is on the other end of the peak?
Well, we have about 63% of our cases that we have of the 971 have actually gone through this now, or people who are [inaudible] in. We’re seeing a trend. But obviously we have a nursing home, the largest nursing home east of Montreal that we have issues in, that we’re working very hard. We sent in health care teams and infection control people and staff trying to don’t make sure that we pull that virus, isolate that virus in that home and then eradicate it.
Vassy:
We know that testing capacity so key to every province being able to loosen restrictions re-open aspects of their economies. Did Nova Scotia have any of those spartan biosigns tests on order?
Not that I know of. We were part of a national procurement piece, but they’re not part of our testing. We rafrnd up testing capacity. We went on early away from strictly travel to aggressively try to isolate the virus. We saw pocket where is we saw community spread and were able to put in teams to go in and help with that infection control type of setting. This nursing home as well as one that we’ve done the same thing by providing supports. We ramp ed up our testing capacity. It was critical for us. We’ve done about 1500 a day and so this has been our strategy to deal with it. Making sure where the virus is and it is through the testing to make that happen. We’ll continue, by the way, as we start opening up our economy, we’ll continue with that testing process.
Vassy:
As far as nursing home goes, there’s a big discussion about the pay. The people in those homes receive or other essential health care workers. I know in your discussions with the Prime Minister, that issue is a live one. The federal government has said that they’re going offer top-ups but you were hoping for flexibility because many of them already make the amount of money for qualifying of the top-up the feds were pledging. Where do talks stand? were you able to get any of that flexibility secured?
We’re still working with the federal government when it comes to making shh you are that COVID-19 essential service top-up impacts health care workers. When we talk about the essential component, where there are many parts of our economy working diligently, health care workers are the ones going into these homes or quite frankly into our hospitals and dealing with those who are suffering from COVID-19. We wanted to make sure that if there is going to be an essential service top-up that it impacted our health care teams.
Vassy:
Do you have a pledge – I should say to our viewers that we’re showing right now any minute from the Prime Minister – do you have any commitment from the foam supply that flexibility, and come up with a top-up that will work for your province?
We’ve been working with the national government and it is My hope that we’ll have a positive result.
One more question when it comes to federal-provincial issues and on a separate issue, but I do imagine the Prime Minister will get questions about the ban his government introduced on Friday for assault weapons. The premier of Alberta, jason kenney feels that an it undully takes guns away from law-abiding gun owners. Your province has obviously just been through a horrific incident involving a gunman. What is your position on the ban introduced? do you support it?
First of all, I don’t know the wait a minutes that were used by the gunman in our province two weeks ago. Historically it makes no sense that he would need an assault weapon. Those are for conflicts of war but makes absolutely no sense. That doesn’t mean that I live in a rural part of Nova Scotia. Global a rural community and law abiding citizens can actually own guns in this country and in this province, but assault weapons make no sense and the argue to me is that you’re taking rights away from law-abiding gun owners just doesn’t hold water when it comes to assault weapon.
Vassy:
So you’re supportive of what the federal government did on Friday?
I’ve been a long supporter of dealing with assault weapons in this country, quite frankly. We’ve seen too much carnage around the world impacting innocent citizens. No reason that anyone who’s not in position of protecting citizens, whether Canadian armed forces or citizen in this country require an assault weapon in My view.
Vassy:
I’ll leave it there. Thank you so much for making time for us on this Sunday.
Thank you so much.
Vassy:
I’m going to swing back to David Cochrane, My colleague here in Ottawa, as we await any minute now the Prime Minister coming out of Rideau cottage to address reporters. That is obviously separate from COVID-19, but definitely one that is garnering a lot of discussion and refraction various provinces. It is the only really noncovid-19-related announcement that the federal government has made in the past six weeks.
Reporter:
Yeah. There’s been a few things to deal with, but really the 11:00 eastern or 11:15 eastern update every day has been about the response to COVID-19. and it was interesting, Vassy, that a lot of partisanship had largely been set aside. Not necessarily between the liberals and the conservatives over the last several weeks but certainly between the federal government and provincial government. But this move on the firearm regulations and the restrictions did bring some of that back out. We saw some of that seeping back into the national conversation with Doug ford and Jason Kenny being critical of the gun regulations. Brian pallister in Manitoba slamming the Canadian emergency response benefit that is paying people to stay home and not work and limiting them re-opening the economy can. He’s just re-opened –
Vassy:
He has. There he is. I’ll cut you off and we’ll take listen live to the Prime Minister.