The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Only three months ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose in the House of Commons and said that, when it came to vaccinations for COVID-19, Canada was in a superior position compared with its global peers. The government’s planning, he said, “resulted in us having the best portfolio of vaccines of any country in the world, with more doses per capita than any other country.”

But as of this week, Canada ranked behind more than 30 countries in vaccination rates. Its number of inoculated citizens stalled in February, hovering at about 5 per cent – while peer countries such as Britain and the United States, as well as poorer countries such as Chile and Morocco, have accelerated their rollout.

How did the government go from proclaiming its performance was “the best” to fending off accusations that it had failed its citizens?

GUEST: Dr. Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus with School of Health Policy Management and Faculty of Health at York University, and a former consultant to the Federal Government and World Health Organization

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The first Indigenous president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) says he wants to help change the culture of medicine so all Canadians feel safe accessing health care.

GUEST: Dr. Alika Lafontaine, President Elect with the Canadian Medical Association

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Ontario will extend the interval between doses of COVID-19 vaccines to up to four months after a national panel recommended doing so, paving the way for an acceleration of the province’s immunization effort.

Dr. Wouters says the NACI’s decision is outside their jurisdiction.

GUEST: Dr. Bradly G. Wouters, Senior Scientist with the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Executive Vice-President of Science and Research

Anyone who cares for older adults knows that medication overload has become an epidemic. Over the last decade, older people sought medical treatment more than 35 million times for adverse drug events, and there were more than 2 million hospital admissions. These adverse drug events are often a result of overprescribing– more than 40% of older adults take five or more prescription medications a day, and 20% take more than ten. 

The solution to medication overload is deprescribing — taking patients off, or reducing the dose of, medications that are unnecessary or harmful. Sounds simple, but deprescribing is rare because often clinicians don’t have the time, skills, or information they need to do a full Prescription Checkup (a visit in which the patient and clinician review all the medications the patient is taking and discuss which drugs can be safely deprescribed).

Can pharmacists be the key that unlocks the full power of deprescribing? They have specialized knowledge of drug interactions and risks, and know how to safely remove and taper drugs. Yet there are many barriers in the way — most significantly, Medicare and most other payers don’t recognize pharmacists as clinical care providers and don’t pay them for this work. In short, most pharmacists are only paid to dispense medications, not deprescribe them.

How can we remove the barriers and make pharmacists our deprescribing heroes?

GUEST: Camille Gagnon, Assistant Director of the Canadian Deprescribing Network

The pandemic’s ongoing impact on frontline and essential workers’ physical health is well-reported, but there’s a crucial element missing from this story: the concept and cost of emotional labour. Emotional labour refers to the need for frontline and essential workers to endure long hours in difficult circumstances that require them to carefully manage their emotions – frequently masking how they really feel with a smile. From staying calm in a room of unruly students, to asking an angry customer to wear a mask instore, this added ‘emotional labour’ is leading to stress, burnout, and lower job satisfaction.  

Unlike physical or intellectual labour, the demands of emotional labour are poorly understood and rarely discussed in the workplace.

Dr. Laura Rees, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, wants to bring this issue to the forefront so that employers can do more to protect the emotions of their employees.

·         The emotional labour trifecta now faced by frontline and essential workers

·         The true costs of emotional labour

·         The difference between “surface acting” and “deep acting” and the perils of each

·         What organizational leaders should do to mitigate emotional labour in the workplace

GUEST: Dr. Laura Rees, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

The Canadian federal government announced Wednesday it will extend multiple critical COVID-19 emergency benefits aimed at helping businesses during the pandemic.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy, as well as the Lockdown Support programs, will maintain their current rates until June 5, 2021.

GUEST: Dan Kelly, President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB)

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Premier Doug Ford overrode the advice of his government’s medical experts in opening up COVID-19 testing to all Ontarians in the spring, a decision that overwhelmed the province’s antiquated lab system and led to critical backlogs in the long-term care sector.

The revelation is contained in Health Minister Christine Elliott’s testimony to an independent commission examining the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Ontario’s long-term care homes.

The experts – Chief Medical Officer of Health David Williams; Vanessa Allen, Public Health Ontario’s chief of microbiology and laboratory science; and Jennie Johnstone, chair of the province’s panel on testing strategy – said allowing anyone to get tested for COVID-19 was not advisable because it would add to already lengthy turnaround times for processing results.

Despite the warning, Mr. Ford announced on May 24 that anyone without symptoms who feared they had been exposed to COVID-19 could get a test. Prior to then, only high-risk groups, including health care workers and residents in nursing homes, could get tested.

ALSO: Canada’s Premiers to Hold Virtual News Conference today

GUEST: Richard Brennan Former Queen’s Park Bureau Chief and Parliament Hill reporter for the Toronto Star

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US officials on Wednesday alerted lawmakers to a potential threat against the US Capitol on March 4, for which security has been enhanced as a precaution, less than two months after the Capitol complex was stormed and lawmakers' lives were threatened by rioters.

GUEST: Brian J. Karem. Executive Editor of Sentinel Newspapers, Political Analyst for CNN and White House reporter for Playboy