On Tuesday, November 3rd, Americans will head to the polls in the country’s 59th election. After four years in power, Donald Trump’s presidency is on the ballot and on the ropes—things are not looking good for the incumbent.
But will the US election be free and fair? For years, Trump has been working to undermine the integrity of American electoral institutions. He has refused to say whether he’ll recognize the results of the vote. He has attacked the postal service and postal balloting. He has made unfounded and incorrect claims of voter fraud. When stacked alongside gerrymandering and long waits to vote, there are more than a few reasons for concern.
On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Adam Gopnik, staff writer with the New Yorker and author of, among many other books, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism.
On this episode of @Risk, Jodi Butts sits down with Cass Sunstein, bestselling author of Too Much Information, Understanding What You Don’t Want to Know, and Carl Bergstrom, co-author of Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World.
There are lots of salesmen trying to convince us of miracle cures for the things that could kill us, while couching their misleading statements in superfluous mathematical and scientific jargon. There is also a ton of accurate information out there which can confound and overwhelm us without trying. Sunstein and Bergstrom provide us with the tools to better process and understand the data that feeds our risk decision-making and the risks created by too much information and too much B.S.
To read the full transcript of this episode, click here.
Risk is all of our business but some decisions really bring it home. On this episode of @Risk, Jodi Butts speaks with four parents about their decision to return their children to in-person learning in public schools.
Hear how these parents carried out their risk decision-making responsibilities during a September unlike any other. We explore their policy ideas for what could have made the decision easier and better informed, and consider how to move towards a safer, more equitable and better functioning public education system.
Over 500,000 people die around the world each year from drug use, and the vast majority of those deaths are related to opioids. Thousands of the lives lost are Canadian lives. The old ways of thinking about, legislating around, and policing drug use have failed. New ways of thinking about drug policy, including an emphasis on safe supply, destigmatization, and treatment are ascendent. But more must be done.
Decriminalizing drugs reduces harm and saves lives. That’s what the evidence says. The policy is supported by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction, and many, many others. So, should Canada decriminalize drugs?
On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Scott Bernstein, Director of Policy with the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition.
In Canada, the opioid crisis has killed thousands of people and continues to claim more lives each and every day. In August, British Columbia marked its third straight month with over 170 deaths by overdose – and its fifth-straight month with over 100 lives lost. In Canada’s westernmost province, the crisis has been, by far, deadlier than covid-19.
While there is no panacea for the crisis, there are policies that can reduce harm and save lives. Those policies require political will and cooperation across federal, provincial, and municipal jurisdictions. To date, these political efforts have been slow and insufficient. More must be done, and done quickly. To better understand what that “more” is we must ask: How can we solve the opioid crisis?
On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Travis Lupick, a Vancouver-based, award-winning journalist and author of Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction (2018).
Jill Promoli with one of her children listening to the first episode of the @ risk podcast
Risk is all of our business and we make decisions about it every day but not all risk decisions are created equal. There are some decisions that really bring risk home and set off sirens, particularly when they involve kids. On the @risk podcast, I spoke with four parents about their decision to return their children to in-person learning in public schools during the pandemic.Hear how these parents carried out their risk decision-making responsibilities during a September unlike any other. We explore their policy ideas for what could have made the decision easier and better informed, and consider how to move towards a safer, more equitable and better functioning public education system.
You’ll hear from Jill Promoli, a wedding and lifestyle photographer, a parent of three children and flu shot advocate. She became a flu vaccine advocatefollowing the death of her young son, Jude, from Influenza B causing cardiac arrest. Jill wants to see paid sick days deployed to fight infectious diseases in our schools and workplaces. Lauren Dobson Hughes is a consultant specializing in gender, health and rights and a single parent to her daughter. She’s fed up with government leaders leaning on women to solve their public policy failures. Regina Bateson is a political scientist and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa and parent to three boys. She implores us to remember the short and long term equity implications arising from insufficient support of our public education system. Mike Moffat is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Economics and Public Policy group at Ivey Business School, Western University and the Senior Director of Policy and Innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute and parent to two children. He wants governments to communicate better with parents and to meet them where they are. The children of all four parents are back to in person learning at elementary school (sorta*). I’m a parent too who sent her elementary school and high school aged children back to in person learning (sorta*).
In speaking with these parents, it became clear to me that there really was no choice about back to school. For many, sending their kids back to school was an absolute necessity in order to meet work obligations, as was the case for Lauren. And for parents of younger children, there is literally no evidence supporting the effectiveness of virtual education. Some children also need the psycho-social benefits that can only come from in-person learning more than others; the reading, writing and arithmetic is on par or secondary for some, like Mike Moffat’s children.
Further, for something to be a choice, the decision-maker needs to have access to and understand the information relevant to both options. All of the parents felt that there were key pieces of information missing, like class sizes, as well as a lack of transparency around how the government planned to manage community transmission throughout the school year. For example, New York State published guidelines that indicated schools could reopen only if daily community transmission rates stayed at 5% or lowerbased on a 14-day average and schools would close if the regional infection rate rises above 9 percent, using a 7-day average, after August 1. That’s clear guidance.
Even if there were perfect information and a more viable virtual learning alternative, it was still an impossible decision. It was impossible because for many parents the option of virtual versus in-person learning in school came down to a choice between: the health of their elderly parents or the health of their children; a child’s mental health or physical health; and financial security or physical safety. It was also about whether the sacrifices in the spring and summer were for naught or for a better tomorrow. Those are some serious sunk costs, coupled with no good options.
Last, some of the parents felt that opting for virtual learning could undermine the future of the in person public education system. In an interview with Piya Chattopadhyay on CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine, Charles Pascal describes public education as the best investment a society can make and Regina Bateson in conversation with me points out that no country ever regrets investing in public education. Robust public education systems contribute to more just and healthier societies, not just for the few but for the many. For the parents I spoke with and for myself, sending our kids back to school was a vote for and investment in the greater long-term good of public education despite our immediate safety concerns.
When deciding whether to send their kids back to school was an impossible uninformed non-choice. The worst kind of risk scenario in many respects.
Risk is a team sport but there always needs to be a risk owner. That owner can work to avoid the risk, to mitigate it or to transfer it. When it comes to a safe school year, the risk owner has to be the level of government that not only holds the purse strings and sets the standards for education but does the same for public health in the school jurisdiction, as Lauren ably argues. We all have great sympathy for the battlefield conditions in which governments and policy makers are operating. Nevertheless looking back and living through it, it does look and feel like the government tried to transfer risks associated with school reopening to parents. Without the autonomy to control influential factors, the necessary information upon which to base a decision or any effective alternative to in-person learning for so many parents across Ontario, the risks associated with back to school were more transferred and downloaded than assumed by choice.
School systems around the world have reopened and the Commonwealth Fund provides a good overview of the learnings gained from across these experiences. But it was only after examining a school reopening experience much closer to home did I gain real clarity on how much better it could have been handled. On the Ahkameyimok Podcast with National Chief Perry Bellegarde, National Chief speaks with the Chief Executive Officer of the First Nations Health Managers Association, Marion Crowe, about COVID-19 and Back to School. In their discussion a few key themes emerged. Departmental and jurisdictional silos are barriers to the best decisions. The First Nations Health Managers Association offers a COVID-19 information resource hotline, InfoPoint, open to health managers across 634 First Nations across Canada and it contains information related to school openings, not just traditional health care guidance. One consolidated information resource; not six-hundred and thirty-four and not one for education and another for health. National Chief and Ms Crowe also highlighted how the mental health needs of parents have been taken into account in plans to return to the classroom. Innovations around handwashing measures and desk barriers at Chief Paskwa Education Centre in Saskatchewan are good examples. These creative measures ease the anxiety of parents because they communicate that children’s safety is being prioritized. I’ve shared just a few of the smart innovations and policies discussed on the podcast, all of which were developed and deployed in a much more resource constrained context.
Remember in the before times when we all could gather closely together to listen to live music? One of my favourite concert memories is from the Stardust Picnic at Fort York in Toronto in 1998. Blue Rodeo played on a perfect summer evening. On their playlist was Diamond Mine. Why do I bring this up in the context of fumbled public school re-openings? Sing it, Greg:
Nothing’s as obvious as what is lost
Nothing’s as painful as the cost
I like the suggestion of Mike Moffatt and Regina Bateson: policy makers must take a hard look at what’s not working now and bring in communications swat teams; and they need to start planning now for how we make up the gaps being created today during this period of pandemic disruption. Jimmy Sarakatsannis of McKinsey observes that there are reports out of China of significant numbers of students self-reporting symptoms of depression or other mental health challenges following school closures and in the United States they expect students will lose at least six months of learning or more. As Lauren Dobson-Hughes rightly points out, the PTA can’t address these problems. We cannot afford governments and policymakers waiting for the pandemic to be over to act. The hard, detailed work needs to start now and then be piloted, practiced and rehearsed. In other words, our best risk-thinking needs to be applied by the proper risk owner to solve today’s public education challenges and avoid long-term negative outcomes. Let’s not wait for the system to be lost, for future generations to bear the costs and for all of us to be faced with further impossible uninformed non-choices.
Please subscribe to the @risk podcast and share with me your back to school experience or even your favourite concert!
*Mike Moffatt’s daughter’s school closed for two weeks due to an outbreak at the time of recording and my entire family is at home in quarantine while we wait for the results of a COVID-19 test at the time of release of the podcast.
That is the message Canadians are sending as a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic takes shape across our country.
This and other new findings are published in a new survey released by Canada 2020, Dusk to Dawn: Tracking Canadian Attitudes Towards the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Seven months ago, as the first cases of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were reported and Canadians went into lockdown, the vast majority of the population were experiencing a health pandemic for the first time in their lives.
Now, after a hard and isolating spring, and a summer attempting a tense normalcy, case numbers are sharply on the rise in Canada’s four largest provinces, and current public health measures have been unable to stop the virus from finding a home in each province and territory.
That is why, as a second wave hits, and seven months of anxiety, frustration and confusion crest along with it, Canada 2020 and our research partners at Data Sciences wanted to gauge how Canadians are feeling: where they think we are in the pandemic, what their priorities are both now and into the future, and how they feel we can best find our way through the night.
The survey, as a snapshot in time, is revealing in its uncertainty: it tells us that Canadians are anxious, that they are unsure about the future, and that our leaders will bear a tremendous responsibility – more than they have already shouldered – in uniting a fractured public through the worst of this crisis.
To better understand how these attitudes may evolve and change both in response to the virus and the action of our governments, Canada 2020 will be updating this survey three more times throughout the remainder of the year.
Our goal is to track these attitudes over time – both validating how Canadians are feeling as we move through a second wave, but also mapping their priorities, opinions and feedback onto better policy responses.
Alex Paterson Executive Director Canada 2020
Summary of Findings
Current Canadian sentiment is marked by a significant level of anxiety about the future and about the pandemic. While half the country is cautiously optimistic about the future or believes that we are through the worst of the pandemic, the other half still fear the worst is yet to come. As a reflection of this tension, most Canadians are, at best, lukewarm on the idea of wide sweeping reforms or are unsure of exactly what kind of solutions they want from government right now.
Right now, Canada wants Canadians to come first and for our national interests and values to be put at the forefront of recovery efforts. Broad support for seemingly contradictory policy objectives, and broad uncertainty point to a need for leadership at this moment in Canadian history. Canadians are looking for the way forward, and are not sure themselves what the future will or should hold.
As we move further towards recovery though, there will be greater need for leaders to demonstrate capacity for innovation to maintain the country’s confidence, and to develop novel solutions to challenges that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. There is a general feeling that we must move forward and cannot go back; it will be up to leaders to identify the best of ourselves that we can and should take with us into the future.
Methodology
The online survey engaged a sample of 1,585 Canadians from September 9th to 13th, 2020. The sample was balanced by gender, age group and regions in Canada. Our results are weighted by age, gender and region to be highly representative of the Canadian population. The margin of error for the data presented below would be ±2%, 19 times of 20 for a probabilistic sample of the same size.
Key Results
Where are we in the night?
Opinions may differ on where we are in the pandemic crisis. Nearer to the start or the end? To measure these differences of opinions we gave respondents a landscape picture divided into different slices, each representing a certain period of time from dusk to dawn. Canadians were then asked the following question:
“Please look at the picture, which is meant to represent the COVID-19 pandemic. Dusk is the beginning of the pandemic, midnight is the worst part of the crisis and dawn is recovery from the crisis. In your opinion, where is Canada right now?”
Few Canadians feel that we are in recovery mode already – only 11% chose early or full dawn. Consistent with this, 11% also agreed or strongly agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic was being blown out of proportion. 1 in 9 Canadians think things are fine, the rest do not.
Otherwise, most Canadians (53%) feel that we are still in the darkest parts of the night. While a little over a third (36%) felt that we had turned a corner or entered the early dawn of this pandemic. As the cases begin to rise again, one wonders if the optimists will perhaps reconsider.
Part of the divide between those who feel we are facing the worst of the crisis now versus those who believe we are well on the road to recovery may be economic. Canadians who described themselves as financially stable were 20% more likely to have said that we are ‘past midnight’ than Canadians who say they are struggling financially.
Living within the pandemic
We also tested more specific sentiments about COVID-19 that add colour to our results presented above.
When we asked Canadians whether or not the pandemic was being blown out of proportion, 42% strongly disagreed and 20% disagreed. Only 11% strongly agreed or agreed.
Moreover, 37% agreed or strongly agreed that they are still afraid they would contract COVID-19 (and 26% somewhat agreed).
Very few seem to believe that social distancing measures are causing more damages to the economy compared to the damages that the virus would do (30% strongly disagreed that that is the case, and 24% disagreed; only 6% strongly agreed and 6% agreed).
45% strongly agree that wearing a mask in public indoors spaces is necessary to slow down COVID-19, and 25% agreed that that was the case.
In sum, our results show a population continuing to grapple a high degree of anxiety around the spread of COVID-19. Canadians are taking it – and the public health measures used to contain it – very seriously.
What is the best way through the woods?
We then asked respondents a series of questions meant to measure where they think leaders should put their focus now. From their responses, it was clear that there are two sentiments Canadians can widely agree on: It’s time to put Canada First and we need to take care of Canadians.
However, Canadians are split on what “taking care of Canadians” looks like practically speaking. Given that nearly half the country believes that we are through the worst of the crisis, it is not surprising that 24% would agree or strongly agree that it’s time to return to normal to protect the economy, and 31% would say that we need to focus on an economic recovery. However, others strongly disagree or disagree that now is the time to focus on the economy, and the vast majority find themselves in the middle on this issue.
The issues of uncertainty
We asked a series of questions to understand whether Canadians want wide-sweeping changes, austerity, or something in between. Our results mostly indicate that Canadians either are not sure what they want from the government right now.
On questions regarding big changes to Canadian society, most Canadians have mixed feelings:
Q: “The government should use this moment in time to introduce big changes to Canadian society by introducing new programs and services”
25% agree or strongly agree, 60% in the middle, 13% disagree or strongly disagree
Q: “Governments should not take on big reforms that were not in their campaign platforms.”
18% agree or strongly agree, 70% in the middle, 12% disagree or strongly disagree
It is not surprising that in uncertain times, people are unsure of what they want, or at least not totally aware of what they want.
What novel initiatives should leaders put forward?
We asked respondents about their support for a number of issues, as well as potential and existing government initiatives. Results were quite mixed.
On the one hand, Canadians understand that current spending levels seem unsustainable. An overwhelming majority are concerned about the deficit (42% Very concerned, 39% somewhat concerned). They also overwhelmingly agree that after this pandemic is over, we will need leaders to be uncompromising to get Canadian finances in order (50% agree or strongly agree, 24% somewhat agree).
On the other hand, when presented with new options for spending programs Canadians were supportive of every initiative they were asked about. They also agreed that we need to implement extensive social programs to make sure that Canadians across the country are safe and provided for (51% agree or strongly agree, 27% somewhat agree). Supporting local producers and manufacturers with a new “Shop Canadian” label, police reforms, a new deal on jobs, and caregiver support were the most popular.
When it came to working with other countries, or a Canada first policy results were similarly ambiguous: about three quarters of Canadians support both of these contradictory viewpoints.
Taken together with the above, these contradictory findings suggest Canadians aren’t sure what they want exactly. But they would be happiest to keep money close to home, support their community and to not have to pick up the cheque for the pandemic if at all possible. Long held attitudes towards international multilateralism may also be newly vulnerable to a more populist and nationalistic message.
Unity and togetherness are our best bet
Across our findings, Canadians are communicating a desire for unity and togetherness both throughout and in response to this crisis.
54% of respondents reported seeing more mutual support within their communities than before the pandemic.
Along the same lines, 56% of respondents believe that there is some good that is coming out of the pandemic that will make the world a better place.
This slice of compassion and sense of community underpins a few policy priorities – particularly in the realm of social policy – with an overwhelming 78% of respondents believing that our government will need to implement extensive social programs to make sure Canadians across the country are safe and supported.
Indeed, when asked what in their opinion is Canada’s greatest strength right now, respondents reported – unprompted – variants on the theme of togetherness: unity, working together, being strong together, community, compassion for each other, and solidarity.
Those attributes, bolstered and supported by strong leadership and coordination by our officials, points the way forward as we face a second wave of this crisis.
On the premiere episode of @Risk, host Jodi Butts speaks with Col. Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, New York Times bestselling author and YouTube sensation. Mr. Hadfield has spent his entire life being careful with risk, visualizing defeat and then figuring out how to prevent it.
Hear why risk is all of our business, why we should always be ready for things to go wrong, and other lessons relatable to our more earthy daily lives.
Democracy is in decline in the United States of America. While President Trump is hastening that decline, he is neither the initial nor the sole cause of it. Indeed, prior to Trump’s election, the Economist, in its Democracy Index, downgraded the USA from “Full Democracy” to “Flawed Democracy,” citing the concerns that would help give rise to the 45th president.
Stretching back to the 18th century, the United States has routinely faced democratic crises, but this time may be different. The country now faces the confluence and overlapping of several types of threat, leaving us to ask: Can democracy survive in the United States of America?
On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Dr. Robert C. Lieberman, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and co-author, along with Dr. Suzanne Mettler, of Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy.
