Parses captions for PM Trudeau's daily speeches and presents them in a more human readable format
From his regular location, outside of his home at Rideau cottage. The Prime Minister will undoubtedly be reacting and talking more about those truly staggering job numbers out today, 2 million more jobs lost across this country in April. This is in addition to the 1 million jobs that disappeared inmarch. and I should mention the numbers in the United States, equally stunning, 20 million jobs gone because of the pandemic shutdowns. Unemployment numbers are smashing records that no one wants to smash on both sides of the border, so we’ll take you through all of that and get the Prime Minister’s reaction too. and I should say, although we are up to 3 million unemployed Canadians right now, the number of people no longer employed or working much less than before is actually a much higher number, closer to over 5 million of you have been affected in some way in your jobs, either by losing your jobs entirely or working far less than you did before. I’ll bring in My colleagues now, the host of “power & politics”, Vassy kapelos, and the cbc’s Catherine Cullen here in our parliamentary bureau to talk more about this. So I know we shouldn’t be surprised to see these numbers grow and grow and grow, but they do continue to be sort of staggering when you think about the fact that these are Canadians who no longer have work and many more Canadians who no longer have enough hours, and that would explain why 7.6 million of them are now using the emergency relief benefit created by the government to deal with this. Vassy, anything stand out for you in the labour market report?
Vassy:
Yeah, certainly, Rosie, a couple of things, and the first is what you point out. Though there is that initial drop in full-time and part-time employment, so more than 2 million Canadians, or just under2 million Canadians, rather, have lost full-time jobs since February, another million have lost their part-time jobs. When you combine with that the number of Canadians who have lost at least half their hours, that’s another 2.5 million Canadians. That’s how many people so far, and most economists are saying that’s even under-reported at this point, have been incrediblyaffected by what’s happened because of this pandemic. a couple of things underlying all of that that jumped out for me, first of all, the demographics behind it, and particular the number of young people who are currently unemployed. So many students we have been hearing from prior to this, prior to the announcement from the government about how they intend to help those students, for a good reason. The unemployment rate among students age 15 to 24 for the unemployment rate increased to 31.7%. so basically one of every three young people, young person in this country is unemployed. That is a huge and staggering number. The other number that really jumped out at me, and I should say on the students, we’re still – the application processis supposed to open up for the help that the government has promised. I’ve been getting messages from a lot of students asking when will that page be up. I know we’re going to hear from Minister qualtrough today. Hopefully we’ll get some detailson that for people who have beenasking. The other thing that really jumps out at me is this is sort of seems counterintuitive, but the average hourly earnings fromapril 2019 to April 2020 increased nearly 11%, and what that underscores is that the people who are most affected by this, the people who are most –losing their jobs or losing hours are actually the lowest paid in this country. and that is something sort of anecdotally we have thought and we have heard about, but especially when you think of theservice sector or other sectors that are particularly hit, people who are earning the leastamong us are the ones who are disproportionately most affected, and we see that because those who still retain their jobs, the income has – overall, when you look at the numbers, the income has gone up because those who have retained their jobs are higher earners.
Rosemary:
It does sort of make you worry I think for the future in terms of the widening inequality gaps between the people who make the most money in this country versus those who make the least, because it certainly is having a different impact on those two parts of thepopulation. That is where we’re expecting the Prime Minister shortly, and I should tell you that these are unprecedented numbers. The last time we saw an employment – an unemployment rate of 13% was back towards the end of the recession in the late’80s, but even then, the number of people not working at that point is – we have surpassed that in a really dramatic way. Catherine, I know you’ve also been looking into the details ofthose numbers to tell us more about who the Canadians are thathave been most affected.
Let’s start with another way of looking at the big picture of all this, rosemary, it is a lot of numbers today but of course every single one of those numbers tells an important story about people’s lives. One third of the potential workforce is what statistics Canada calls under-utilized. They are either not working or working fewer hours than they were before, one third of the potential workforce, really a staggering number. One of the angles I’ve been looking at in all of this has todo with how women are affected by this pandemic. When we saw the numbers, the last labour force survey, there was a real quite striking difference between men and womenin terms of how they were being affected because a lot of the jobs being lost in March, they were service jobs, jobs in the service sector, the restaurant industry, retail sector. This month we’re seeing a lot more job losses coming through in construction, in manufacturing. So we’re starting to see those numbers evening out a bit, but still, you hear economists say when you compare this to previous recessions, previous instances of economic downturns, women are being affected in greater numbers than we’re used to see, and that’s raising questions about how we go about trying to improve the situation. Traditionally, when you want to stimulate the economy, shovels in the ground. We’ve all heard it. It’s construction jobs. Now that is likely more often than not to get more men back towork, and I know some of the economists I’ve been speaking toare wondering about how child care fits into all of this, because of course if you start bringing men back into the worker forest first, there are questions, first of all, about whether those service jobs continue to exist and also if the women are, in most cases theones at home taking care of the children, does that prevent themfrom making the decision to go back to work. Child care certainly is going to be an important part of this picture, but also the decisions at various levels of government make about what this re-start looks like and how to try to help people during all of this.
Rosemary:
Yeah, okay, glad you highlighted that group of people too. Obviously affected in a different way. I’m going to get both of you to just stick around if I can for just a moment. I’ll pull out this one statistic too from statistics Canada that was of interest to My producer Phil and I, and that is that 3.3million Canadians worked from home in the month of April. So even if you haven’t lost your job or had reduced hours, your life has changed dramatically ifyou’re now just working out of your home office or your kitchencounter. I want to talk about another important part of this story as we move into, like, a difference phase of dealing with the pandemic, and that is some of the tracking of information, development of this virus, contact tracing, all the data that will be so important, was important up to now, will be important as we move into a different phase where we’re all trying to get out a little bit more. Dr. Kamran khan is an infectious disease physician at st. Michael’s hospital, an associate professor of medicine at the u of t, and he’s the founder and CEO of blue dot, which uses big data to provide early warnings on potential epidemics to governments and agencies around the world, and Dr. Khan joins me from Toronto. Good to see you, doctor.
Good morning.
Rosemary:
So I think if people don’t know, your company was one of the first to spot this virus and even get a sense of where it’s moving. I want to move into what you’re doing now, though, if I can, to try and better understand what you’re looking for. You have a relationship with the government of Canada and some other countries and agencies. So what are you watching right now when you gather and look at that data?
Hmm. Yeah, you know, as you mentioned, we really have been building this digital early warning system to look at the entire life cycle of an outbreak from early detection to risk of spread across international borders. Today we’re fighting this outbreak here in our backyards and looking at measures like physical distancing to try and see if we can slow the spread of this virus. Within Canada we are working with and analyzing anonymous data from millions of mobile devices. I do want to emphasize the point that it’s anonymous and aggregated data, to really understand why physical distancing measures are working – where physical distancing measures are working, perhaps where they are not, and also how fatigue is setting in and how it’s changing week over week. As we move from emergency response and make those initial steps towards economic recovery, these are the kinds of data that will help us make that transition as safely as possible.
Rosemary:
You talked about anonymous data. I get your point, that it’s not maybe attached to a name or a phone number, but it still gives you a picture of where people are and what they are doing. So what are – what should people know about how you’re keeping that data safe, because Canada’s privacy commissioners, as you well know, this week, have expressed some serious concerns around apps and those kinds of things that are going to be used for contact tracing. So maybe give us a sense of whatyou’re doing with the data and when you get rid of it or dispose of it.
Yeah. No, I think privacy is an incredibly important issue, and I’m glad that you raised it. What I’ll share with you is whatwe’re not doing. You’ve been hearing quite a bit about contact tracing apps where your location can be connected to other people that you were in proximity with and essentially the purpose of this is to give the public health community better insights about who you may have exposed if you were, you know, to become infected so that they can contact those individuals and get in front of the disease. What we’re doing is something very different. We’re analyzing data, just basically location data. There’s no information associated with the name of an individual or anything to that effect, and we’re analyzing that in aggregate. So getting an understanding of how populations are moving so that we can really better understand how this virus is moving. The measures that we have to tackle this today because, you know, the virus is quite active, are some of these physical distancing interventions, and so we need to understand where those are working and where they are not working so that we can inform our public health authorities and use the finite resources in the most efficient way as possible.
Rosemary:
Can you give me a sense of what you’re seeing, then, without giving away all the secrets that you’re giving to public health? but as we get into this phase of some restrictions being lifted in some parts of the country, can you give me a sense of whereyou’re seeing things that might be problematic?
Well, it’s quite heterogeneous across the country. I think in general there’s been a huge trend toward, you know, population staying at home, following many of the recommendations around physical distancing. But there are pockets in some areas, in rural areas, perhaps, where some of those movements are starting to increase, and we are seeing little bits of fatigue occurring. There are also important differences that we’re seeing across weekdays and weekends, so there are some insights here that are really important and can help guide our public healthresponse. and this is particularly important now as we start to perhaps ease or take those initial baby steps to ease some of these restrictions and to do this in a way that is safe and minimizes risk.
Rosemary:
You also have a relationship, a business arrangement, with air Canada, which obviously is not flying very much right now. But I’d be interested to know, other than being on alert for finding infectious diseases and flagging them to the company, what kind of data are you gathering from air Canada and how are they helping you to understand the spread?
Well, I think I would describe it perhaps a little bit differently in the sense that we’ve been working with air Canada well before COVID-19.
Rosemary:
Yes, yes.
This is putting systems in place to be able to monitor and understand infectious disease risk around the world. You can understand why an airline would want to understandthis, to be protecting its employees and its customers, understanding, anticipating disruption in travel. So this is really about even thinking past COVID-19 and thinking about the fact that outbreaks are occurring around the world on an ongoing and regular basis, and how do we help empower not just government but industry as well so they can mitigate risk to their employees, mitigate risks of financial and economic impacts. Ultimately we need to be really empowering the whole society if we’re going to get in front of these types of infectious disease outbreaks, which we’re seeing now with greater frequency than we have ever in the past.
Rosemary:
You are now at a point where we are, you know, a few months into this, and we have seen different responses across the globe, depending on where we are. We certainly know, and you were on 60 minutes last week talking about this, that even though there was information as early as the beginning of January for people, countries to start moving, not all countries did what they should have been doing at the right time, and of course in this instance it was the United States. Can you assess how Canada has done given the information they had early on? I know that’s a very big question, but how we have done in terms of our response to try and contain things?
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s obviously a broad question. a lot of the Intel was available. Obviously Canadian government also has a system called the global public health intelligence network to be scanning and doing this type of horizon scanning. We had been working with the public health agency well beforecovid-19 came into play, so a lot of the analytic I described, talking about the world’s air travel patterns and data. At different stages we were thinking about how it might disperse, and so these are the kinds of insights and analytic that are needed to empower smartdecisions. Now at blue dot our work is really focused on generating these insights, but we need these types of partnerships in order to translate insights intoactions, and ultimately really these are the things you want to be doing in peace time. You don’t want to be trying to figure this out in the middle of an emergency, so you know, that relationship predates COVID-19 and continues over this next phase of the pandemic.
Rosemary:
Has it surprised you in spite of all the analytic and data you’ve gathered, has it surprised you how quickly this has spread and changed the world in such a dramatic way?
Well, you know what I would say is that every single expert out there in this field will have told you pre-COVID-19 this is not a matter of if, it’s justa matter of when.
Rosemary:
Right.
I think for many of us it is unfortunately the fact that our brains are kind of hard wired, we are reactive rather than proactive in many of these instances. I think the scale and scope has been pretty staggering, and I think it’s probably caught us all off by surprise, just how interconnected and interdependent our world is now this little virus has crippled the planet. So it is perhaps not surprising that we are in the middle of a pandemic, but I think the extent and scope of this has really surprised all of us.
Rosemary:
I only have about minute before the prime minister comes out his front door there, Dr. Khan, but you talked about the importance of privacy and you gathering what you call anonymous data, things that don’t identify who the information is coming from. Do you think, though, Canadians should be willing to sacrifice Little bit of privacy in order to better participate in keeping people healthy and helping public health policy?
Let me just say that, you know, certainly the intent here and our work is really ultimately about safeguarding communities and lives. This is a very important discussion for us to have as a society. Where are the lines? where do we want to balance privacy and impact on public health? there are trade-offs, and I think this is really important for us to be having this discussion as an organization that is focused on responding tocovid-19 right now, we are really just focusing on ways that we can counter the transmission of this virus, but this is a really important discussion for us to be having. I’m glad that it’s occurring.
Rosemary:
Okay, Dr. Khan, good of you to make the time when you’re so busy. Important information that you are gathering for all of us too. Appreciate it very much.
Thank you.
Rosemary:
That’s Dr. Kamran khan, founder and CEO of bluedotwhich tracks epidemics and provides warnings to government sand global agencies.
I realize that was maybe a little bit backwards and not exactly what the Prime Minister is going to talk about there, but it is things that everyone is thinking about as different provinces in this country move, for instance, into contact tracing apps to get a better sense of where you’re going, whoyou’re associating with and how community spread might happen. What blue dot is doing, of course, a little bit different. a little higher view of things, if you will, in terms of gathering information. But important conversation nonetheless as we try and figure out what the steps forward will be in this country, what the newnormal, as the Prime Minister always talks about, will look like, and here he is now. Of course the Prime Minister’s focus today will be the 2 million jobs lost in the month of April, 1 million in March, now up to 3 million Canadians who no longer have jobs.