Parses captions for PM Trudeau's daily speeches and presents them in a more human readable format
Obviously, an awareness that more needs to be done. Previously they made a promise of $305 million for indigenous communities support fund. Those are for first nations, Inuit and metis. This is specifically for more than half of the indigenous people in this country that live in cities, off reserve. So we will wait to hear more details from the prime minister as we watch his front door for him to emerge. I’ll bring in My colleagues, Massey kapelos and catherinecullen. We are expecting for the Prime Minister to get a fair number of questions today about some of the things provinces are increasingly talking about, what we would expect to come up in the premier’s call today that they now have weekly and this is around testing and contacttracing, because we’ve seen pretty stark numbers in terms of testing in Ontario over the past number of days, nowhere near hitting what their target was in any way, Vassy.
Vassy:
This is the province to start that discussion and appoint of tension between provinces and the federalgovernment. You’ll know for sure that last week in that call, the federal government essentially said, we’re here to give you money forthat, to increase testing not only capacity but the actual number of tests you’re doing, as well as contact tracing. It does depend where you live. This is being done very well in certain provinces like albertaand British Columbia, for example, less so in Ontario. I point to the last four days as evidence of that. The goal where capacity isconcerned, as the premier has set out, is 20, 000 tests a day. For the last three days, they have come nowhere near that. They were at 7, 000 tests the day before and while they occasionally come close to thatgoal, they’re not doing it with any consistency. That is the central question as we see provinces reopen. Are we doing enough to feel safe in that process? should businesses have faith that they can reopen right now, that it is safe to do so and how can we be sure of that? I spoke to a doctor who works atmichael Darrin hospital, for contact tracing, he doesn’t wait for two days to get the testsback, but he has to wait to notify public health, at least two or three days until that official test result comes back and then they start the contacttracing, finding out who this person has been in contact with. He says, why can’t I let public health know at that moment and they start that process rightaway. There’s a big lag and said it could cost less or could be right now costing less. I think there are specific questions for provisional governments and also for the federal government that the prime Minister laid out he wants increase capacity and wants to give provinces money for contact tracing and testing, but there is something that isn’thappening. Do provinces need to be more explicit with the federal government about what the needs are and have a better plan? I know the premier expressed frustration and said the number swill go up, but I’m not hearing specifics about how, exactly, they plan to meet the goals they have set out. At the end of the day, thisisn’t just a number’s game but you and I feeling safe and all of the people watching rightnow, when they go into a store and leave their home. and I think that is something allot of people are thinking about as we do see economies reopen.
Rosemary:
The agreement is, I think, across the country that if we want to reopen, there area few things in place, moretesting, more contact tracing and the ability for people to go into isolation for 14 days if they do test positive. and you see places like, as you say different picture across the country like Saskatchewan andi’ll bring you in, Catherine, too, they are allowing people working outside of the home to get tested as of Monday because that seems to be important. If there’s someone going out everyday do their job, they will start to get a sense now, well, AM I carrying it or not? because we know you can beasymptomatic. and Quebec, too, is not meeting its targets and yet, it is moving ahead with reopening. So there seems to be some sort of disconnect here.
The Prime Minister said the federal government is welling to invest in a national framework for testing and contact tracing and talking about the need to ramp things up. Ontario’s premier is not satisfied with the testing levels and from the health official in Quebec, that he’snot satisfied with how things are going in that province. Yes, provinces that have been particularly hard hit and wedon’t want to minimize Quebec inparticular, the situation on the island of Montreal, around the island of Montreal and one of the worse in the world rightnow. The concern about the level of testing is significant. There seems to be two parts, some with the physical supplies. We’ve talked about making sure, can the federal government, forinstance, play a role in supplying the appropriate number of swabs, the reagents needed to complete these tests. It’s a question of who you test. Dr. Theresa tam says we’veentered a different phase of things now. Where before we would not have tested people mildlysymptomatic, this is something to think about, where peopleare, where they’re particularly at risk, be it in long-term carecentres, correctionalinstitutions and people at riskfor catching COVID-19, how thecriteria needs to be expanded. So we will all be watching tosee what happens when the Prime Minister behind closed doors hashis virtual conversation withthe premiers tonight. There’s broad agreement, but howdo you get those numbers up? Canada averaging about 28, 000tests a day, and theresa tamsaid yesterday that the publichealth labs is 60, 000. But who gets tested?
Rosemary:
I’ll leave itthere, if you don’t mind, to talk to someone who is trying to work towards some of this contact tracing. Thank you very much and we’llget back to you. FranÇois legault says his province is considering partnering up with Milan, an artificial intelligence institute based in Montreal and it has been working on an app designed to help with contacttracing. The company’s CEO joins me frommontreal and nice to see you.
Thank you.
So as we as Canadians better understand how we are going to live with this for an extended period of time and understand it will involve contact tracing an din some cases apps, whichalberta has been working, tell us a little bit about what your app is meant to do and what you would hope it would help with.
The difference from the othertechnologies, so once the app is installed on your device, whatit’s trying to do is to compute what we call a personal riskfactor. Essentially, the app is trying to figure out what are the odds that today you’re infected with the virus even though you feel perfectly fine. We noted this virus spreads allot in bacteria where people are not symptomatic yet. To do this, it puts in personal information about our age, our gender and health condition, but it considers what’s going on around us, right? essentially co vi is keeping track in a protected way of the symptoms and test results of the people that we’ve been in close contact with. Why? to help us make decisions on daily basis only things like using public transport, going back to work, going to store sand visiting with relatives. It is meant as a personal dashboard to help us make these decisions as we go about our daily lives.
So it makes me a little nervous just hearing you describe it and you said this keels all data anonymous andprotected. So give me a sense of how you’rekeeping the information and how long you’re keeping it for because that’s the part I think people are wary about with any sort of app.
Yeah, so it’s important to say privacy was at the very help of how we thought about covifrom day one. In the simplest form, co vi doe snot collect any information that directly identifies someone. It never knows your name, your home address, and all of the data is encrypted and secured and deleted as soon as possible, so specifically on phones, that’s every 30 days. The entire project will be managed by a non-for-profitorganization whose sole purposeis to help Canadians fight thepandemic.
How much onus is on the person with the app? how much should I input about my own health and how important is that to the accuracy of what the app is telling us?
Well, research is showing us clearly that symptoms are really important predict er of COVID-19and every half day that we savehere, we can save lives. On the user’s side, we’re askingpeople to report symptoms whenthey have it. They don’t have to do iteveryday. It could be every couple ofweeks. The contact tracing side is donemore automatically. So essentially, personal riskfactors of different users areexchanged in a confidential andencrypted way so that if yourrisk factor goes up and My riskfactor might go up, also, and imight have to take additionalprecautions to keep the peoplearound me safe.
is there trust you’re placing on the individual to input that information on a regular basis and be truthful about it?
Contact tracing technology in general will be incredibly democratic and a personal choice and be about empowering people and giving them to tools to dowhat’s right for them andothers. For symptoms, it’sself-reported. For positive test results, we’retalking with health authoritiesto see how that could be done inan automatic way and to get apositive test result, publichealth authorities would sendlike a secret key or secretsignal to the covi app so weknow it’s a validated testresult.
What would I see, if I was going to open up your a and start My day, would it tell me hot spots in the city? would it tell me places I might want to avoid or people I might want to avoid or what would it look like in terms ofinformation?
So, really, the nucleus is personal recommendation. So it has a daily message with some personalized information and it has a survey to get sense of what people think, butreally, the heart of it is your perm recommendation. So it might say things like this week it would be safe for someone else who did the groceries for you or hey, it’s abeautiful, sunny day, you should go out and get fresh air. One day it could say, I think you should call public health authorities or get tested. So that’s the heart of how it’sdesigned. It will never give information about who is at risk and who iscontagious. It doesn’t capture that information or share it withusers. But for public healthauthorities, we’ll do what yousuggested, which is we’ll be able to create heat M.P. Essentially, as risk levels goup, days ahead of actual cases, co vi will be able to see where things are heating up, in which neighborhoods or which cities to allow public health authorities to make local and precise interventions before it fires upentirely.
I know the premier of quebecsays he’s looking at the app and have you signed a contract withanyone? has the federal government comeknocking? can you give me any sense of what the uptick is?
There’s a lot of interest and think we’re super lucky herein Canada to have one of the greatest research scientists in the world that is leading this effort who was invited to be Royal society of London, along of people like Einstein. There’s interest among people in government and they require certain time and a lot of hard work and that’s what we’ve been doing for last few weeks and going forward.
I was talking with my colleagues before you came on about how testing is not where it needs to be and certainly contact tracing is not where it needs to be in many provinces. How critical a piece do you think this is to us being safe and keeping safe in the weeksahead?
Yeah, there’s to doubt that the best combination is one that uses digital contact tracing and additional testing. The technologies that aredeveloped, for example, by apple and google merely require a lot of testing because what it will do is it will alert someone that they now need to get tested orself-isolate and until we’vegone through the testing processand seen the negative testresults, you have to stay home. Sadly, a lot of people won’terror on the side of prudenceand send it into quarantine andit won’t be necessary. You hit a scenario where you hita threshold, we recommend youself-isolate but a few dayslater, the information isupdated and we can put the risklevel back down and it’s fine toreengage with your family and goback to work. So much more sophisticated toolsthan what we called the binaryor direct approach, yes or no, isolate or don’t.
I notice you didn’t quite answer My question about anyone signed on to the app and is that just because conversations are ongoing and there are negotiations ongoing, so people have a sense?
The direct answer is no one has signed but there are a lot of interest for the manygovernments.
I appreciate direct answers. Thank you so much. Many of us will have to come to terms with some kind of app in the future is thank you for your time today.
Thank you.
That is the CEO in artificialintelligence. As we stand by for the Prime Minister, we’ve had ourtwo-minute warning he willemerge to give us the latest onhis government’s response to thepandemic. As we mentioned off the top, we do expect the primary fundingannouncement today to bedirected to indigenous peopleliving off reserve or in urbancentres where there have been$15 million previously dedicatedand there will be more moneygiven, about half of Canada’sindigenous peoples live offreserve or in communitiesespecially where. So that will be an importantannouncement for those groups. I’ll bring back My colleagues –oh, there’s the Prime Minister, so I won’t. [ laughter ]
I always have the worsttiming. Here is the Prime Minister ofcanada.