Alberta's move to stop COVID-19 testing leaves parents worried as new school year looms

Guests: Colin Furness, Krista Li

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There have been three words, three words that have guided the response in Alberta and Canada. Those words have been: Test, trace and isolate. Test, trace and isolate.

LAURA LYNCH: That is Alberta Union Leader Bill McGowan at a protest against the rollback of covid restrictions in that province. Testing has been one of the only weapons we have in the fight against the virus. So now that there are vaccines and millions of arms, how important is testing? And later this morning.

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you go into your house and you start thinking, well, it's going to be destroyed. What am I going to pick up from here? You cannot take away the memories. You cannot put them in the car. So I just picked a few clothes.

LAURA LYNCH: A man forced to flee the island of Evia in Greece. His home burned to the ground. That terrible experiences won. Some in Canada can no doubt relate to climate change is contributing to bigger, stronger, more common wildfires around the world. What it feels like to be caught in their path. In 30 minutes, we'll also bring you the final episode of the hit CBC podcast, Brainwashed, a look into the morally dubious past of the CIA. I'm Laura Lynch, in for Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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LL: People have stood in a long line at covid testing centres and during the uncomfortably long cutup up the nose, testing has been the cornerstone of public health fight against covid-19. But now some provinces are pulling back. Earlier this month in Alberta, Dr Dena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, announced some big changes.

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Testing will continue to play a part of our covid-19 response in Alberta, but it will be changing. Starting on August 16th. We will no longer recommend that all those with mild symptoms seek testing, but rather should stay home until they are feeling better.

LL: The province will now only be testing those with a doctor's referral, although or those whose symptoms are severe enough to require hospitalisation. Colin Furness an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto. Good morning.

COLIN FURNESS: Good morning.

LL: I'm wondering what your reaction was to Alberta's announcement that as of next week it will end what we've come to know as routine covid testing.

COLIN FURNESS: It's it's alarming to me. I think it's embarking on a very bold experiment, and I think that's the right word for it. It's an experiment on the population to say if we do nothing, if we pull back, if we let people's symptoms just progress, what's going to happen. And that is not an experiment I would want to be a part of.

LL: But she did say specifically or those who have a physician's referral or are severe enough to go to hospital will be tested. Isn't that enough?

COLIN FURNESS: I think by the time someone is sick enough to need to go to the hospital, whether you test or not, you may need to go and put them on a ventilator. So you're doing that from a diagnostic perspective. In other words, you're saying someone's very sick, we need to treat them. OK, that's fair. But what about all the spreading that is going on? I mean, that person would have caught it from someone with mild symptoms who didn't know they were sick. So this is the problem, the testing that Alberta has been doing. And let's be clear, they were leaving the country in surveillance testing that's meant to stop the spread. So that's meant to stop things before you get to the point of needing hospitalisation.

LL: But she argues that 18 months into the pandemic, the province can't keep testing. And this is a quote from her, every person with the sniffles. Is there any merit to that argument?

COLIN FURNESS: Well, I think we've we've been doing it. They've been doing it. Every person with the sniffles for 18 months. That's true. We don't have to do this forever. But we have to remember two things. One is we have an emerging variant that is aggressive, that requires a response. And number two, we haven't been able to inoculate our kids yet. So I'm not suggesting that until the end of time. We do covid testing on everyone all the time. But I think we need to get our way through this period and we need to get our kids inoculated. Once we've got those two milestones, then I think we ought to start having conversations about how to move past being worried about.

LL: So I just want to put this other thing to you that Dr. Hinshaw said. She says Alberta will conduct wastewater monitoring to stay on top of covid trends in the province. Is that a reasonable alternative in your mind?

COLIN FURNESS: Wastewater testing has emerged as a remarkable predictive tool. In other words, if covid is spreading in the community, wastewater testing will tell you that. It'll actually tell you that with a certain amount of certainty, which I think is great. However, it doesn't substitute or doesn't stand in for testing individuals because testing wastewater can only say, oh, yes, there's now a lot of covid in the community. OK, so once you've got that point, once you actually have enough covid, the community that you're getting wastewater signals now what? Are we going to lock people down? Or are we going to do nothing at all and let it spread? So it's just not clear to me what that accomplishes. If you're not trying to control covid and you're simply sitting back saying, well, let's see if there's covid in the wastewater, you then are faced with the decision. Are you going to continue to do nothing or are you going to wait for it to get so bad that you actually need to take extraordinary measures? And it seems to me that continuing on a programme of testing, continuing to do surveillance would actually be a better strategy.

LL: And testing isn't only an issue in Alberta. Listeners in Ontario may remember the very long lines for covid tests around this time last year. Has any province or territory managed to get testing right?

COLIN FURNESS: Ontario really did a bad job by saying, be afraid, come get a test and and not providing any guidance. And so, yes, a lot of people were afraid and they did come down to get tests, but that wasn't done in any kind of a targeted way. In other words, surveillance testing at its best, what we sometimes call sentinel surveillance testing is, is to go and look for cases. In other words, we should have gone to restaurants and tested servers. We should have gone to grocery store and tested clerks. Not throwing the doors open and saying, if you had the wherewithal and you trust the health care system to get tested, it's the marginalised people who don't but who have dangerous jobs. That's what we should have been doing it. So Ontario failed badly. Newfoundland did a reasonable job, I think, of whenever there was a case they would pounce on it and they would test very aggressively around that case in a school or in the community. And they were able to control covid and have continued to control covid very, very well. That's one kind of test and retesting around the case. Nova Scotia has been a little bit in terms of surveillance testing based on risk, but again, they haven't had a problem to deal with. And so if you look at the provinces that have suffered the most, no, none of them have actually use testing as a way to control the pandemic. And that's a real missed opportunity.

LL: Well, Nova Scotia has also been amongst the most aggressive in doing rapid antigen tests on a wide scale. What do you think of that?

COLIN FURNESS: Well, they are leading in that. That's a very good point. And the uptake of rapid tests have gone from very high, as you say, to practically zero, let's say, in British Columbia. Rapid tests are incredibly useful. They're incredibly useful because they answer a very important question. Are you contagious right now? Are you spreading it right now? That's what they tell you, a PCR test, which is the usual gold standard, which is a different question. It says, is there even a fragment of covid within your body right now? And that's a very different question, because you may not be clinical. You may not be spreading it. You may be past it. You may have been vaccinated and covid had a little toehold. And then and then your body got rid of it. You would test positive in those cases. And that actually can be misleading and to be problematic. So actually, I'm a big fan of rapid tests. Some people criticise them for false positives. High quality rapid tests do not create false positives. And anyone who's criticising them this way simply just doesn't know what they're good for.

LL: Now, the federal government has bought millions of rapid test kits and some of them have been distributed to businesses through local chambers of commerce in the provinces. Want to listen to Christine Dennison. She's a managing partner with Swift Components Corporation. It's an auto parts manufacturer in Ontario. And it's been doing a pretty robust rapid testing programme of its staff for a few months now.

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I do think that it should be encouraged and I think that there's ways to make it easy and accessible for people, you know, I'm hearing the news more workplaces are talking about when more people return to work. So I think that that's something that employers are going to have to look at. As you know, not only how do you mitigate the risk, but how do you minimise the stress on your team coming back and offer them some assurance that, you know, you're taking the steps to make it a safe workplace.

LL: And now do you think federal and provincial governments should actually be investing more in this approach? I think your answer may be yes,

COLIN FURNESS: it is, absolutely. But there's a caveat there, too. This can be used as a way to offload public health to the private sector and say, you know what, the government doesn't care for companies. If you're worried about it, then you foot the bill. That's actually not ideal. But when it's when it's a collaborative partnership, then, yes, it could be very, very effective indeed. The creative destruction lab at the University of Toronto pulled together a consortium of large employers to figure out on a large industrial scale, how do we do the testing? What's the technology, what's the protocol, what's the procedure? How do we do this in gigantic with gigantic employers, things like Air Canada, for example? And that's progressed very well. They've they've made some very good progress in figuring this out. How do you implement this on a giant scale, make it sustainable, make it affordable and make it effective. So, yes, I'm a big favour. I mean, I'm a big fan of enlisting the private sector constructively, collaboratively, but not abandoning the really important role that public health has in leading this.

LL: Now, the University of Waterloo has announced students and staff who are not doubly vaccinated will have to participate in a rapid antigen screening programme twice a week. Is that an acceptable workaround if universities don't mandate vaccines for everyone?

COLIN FURNESS: It's a second place. In other words, the best thing would be to say if you're not vaccinated, you need to engage in your education on a computer screen. You need to attend remotely, virtually. But yes, it would be it would be my next best choice.

LL: And what about using these rapid antigen tests in schools at all age levels, then?

COLIN FURNESS: I would absolutely. The thing is, what you want to do with kids is not use the deep nasal swab because that's extremely unpleasant. In fact, the less we can use that, the better. It's been clearly developed that you can use saliva, you can get people to spit in the cup that is much less invasive, much less intrusive. I have two kids. One of them has had a nose swab. He didn't like it. And I didn't really want to look him in the eye and say, well, to go to school, you're going to have to have that all the time. But to say to him, hey, buddy, you get to spit in the cup, I think you'd be OK with that. So I think we just need to choose the technology to fit the audience.

LL: Now, I just want to pivot back to Alberta in a week. People who think they might have covid or perhaps their child may have symptoms aren't going to have easy access to a provincial test. And I guess some are going to turn to paying for a PCR test that's apparently about 150 dollars out of pocket. I'm wondering what concerns you have about that.

COLIN FURNESS: If my family were living in Alberta right now and one of us developed the sniffles, we would be afraid. We would be frightened. And I think we would try and isolate as well as possible and watch symptoms. So, in fact, because would be trying to do the responsible thing, we would end up more isolated. We would end up with with less productivity. We would accomplish the opposite of what Alberta is planning.

LL: And what if they end up going to their doctor to get a test recommended? Do you foresee the possibility of a flood of people heading off to the doctor?

COLIN FURNESS: That's entirely possible and heading off to the doctor, heading off to the emergency room. And, you know, that's going to be difficult for the health care workers, no question for primary care doctors and for acute care, that is for hospitals, both groups of which have been under immense strain for a year and a half. So to yes, to offload that to them, it doesn't seem like a smart move.

LL: And then there's the whole question of cost.

COLIN FURNESS: That is also a significant concern. The rapid test, by the way, can be extremely cheap, but they need to be approved and to be put in place. They need to be made available. So if it's trying to manage this from a from the financial accountability perspective is a goal, then the province should absolutely be stepping up to provide cheap rapid tests as opposed to one or two or sometimes three hundred dollars for a PCR test, regardless of who pays for it. But especially, yes, if you're going to force the public to pay for it, you are going to create an inequity situation. And let's be clear, covid is not an equal opportunity virus because it is far more likely to strike in areas that are depressed socioeconomically. That's and very often racialized as well. If you're putting up any kind of financial barrier to safety, you're actually making a grave inequity problem worse.

LL: Colin Furness, thank you so much for your time.

COLIN FURNESS: My pleasure. Thank you.

LL: Colin Furness is an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto. We did request an interview with Dr Dena Hinshaw herself, but we received no response. Krista Li has been listening in. She's the parent of two school aged children in Calgary. Good morning, Krista.

KRISTA LI: Good morning.

LL: Your kids are heading back to school in a month. I'm wondering how you feel about their return to school combined with the province scaling back covid testing.

KRISTA LI: You know, I think I honestly feel utterly desperate and utterly hopeless, it is just a period of turmoil and yet it's almost cruel to sort of put parents in this situation.

LL: Are your kids or have you decided what the situation is going to be, are they going to attend in person or they're going to attend online, or is that part of your dilemma right now?

KRISTA LI: Well, it's very hard to make that decision because, of course, our provincial government has not been forthcoming with the information that parents need to make those kinds of decisions. Right now, we have not heard from the Education Ministry as to what the back to school plan is going to look like. And we keep hearing about a, quote unquote, robust plan, but we haven't seen it yet. And it's August the 11th, the first day, first full day for my kids in September the 7th. If we want to meet the deadline to join online schooling, this government needs to light a fire under that plan. And we need to get that plan into the hands and minds of parents immediately. But we're seeing quite a bit of a heel dragging here. So it's very hard to make those decisions when we haven't heard from the education minister and neither have we heard from our school boards of school boards or any sort of holding pattern as our parents.

LL: Alberta's chief medical officer of health says people can still book covid tests through the family doctor, get a test in an emergency department. What do you think of that?

KRISTA LI: I'm beginning to wonder if Dr. Hinshaw is living in the same province as I am, because what we're seeing here in Alberta is an absolute collapse of the family physician network. We know that many, many Albertans do not have access to a family physician. We know that members of the vulnerable population, [unintelligible], do not have access to a family physician. We know that many rural Albertans do not have access to a family physician. So how is it that they are expected to seek a family physician and then come up with a test? Not only that, what we're starting to see here in Alberta, you're starting to see family physicians who have taken to social media to say, you know what, due to the size of our office and due to the population that we serve, it is far too risky to have possibly symptomatic or positive covid cases in our office. And we will not be offering covid testing in our offices. So I don't know what part of the province Dr. Hinshaw is living in, but I know from what I'm seeing that's not tenable. It is not tenable to foist this upon family physicians and expect people who don't have a family physician to suddenly find. We know there's a shortage in Alberta that's very well documented.

LL: What about that second option of going to the emergency department?

KRISTA LI: So how how likely is it or how fair is it to expect people who may not have the ability to take half a day off work to go wait around the E.R.? You know, and in doing that, are we also then exposing people who are immunocompromised or who have very serious health issues, who are also waiting in the air to covid? I'm not sure I'm seeing the logic there.

LL: OK, but Dr. Hinshaw also said the province will conduct testing if there's an outbreak in a school. Does that give you any sense of relief?

KRISTA LI: It doesn't, because it all hinges on the big if. And Dr. Hinshaw, the provincial government has yet to tell us what that 'if' entails, how many students will classify for an outbreak? And we saw the classification system change multiple times over the past school year. So what's what's entailed in the if once we know what the F entails? I think it's easier for us to make a comment on that. But so far, we do not have the information as parents to even begin to process that.

LL: But what about her argument that you just can't afford to test everyone? So it should be reserved for cases where it might affect patient care?

KRISTA LI: I find that to be absolutely insulting. And I think it's, as Albertans, we've sat here from the beginning of Jason Kennedy's election to now, and we've watched this government squander away money left and right. We see this government each year spending thirty two million dollars on a so-called war room that has yet to produce a tangible results. And what the war room does is basically control environmentalist's on Twitter. And we're spending thirty two million dollars a year to achieve this. We see a government that has basically handed over four billion dollars in return for a handful of jobs. This isn't about money. It is about ideology, and it's about placating a base. We see a premier who is polling in the 30th percentile. We see a premier who is desperate to hold on to some form of a base. And it is that base that has been very vocal about doing away with masks, doing away with testing. Covid isn't real. And I think we see a government that's really willing to pander to that element of Alberta's society as opposed to keeping children safe. It isn't about money. I don't think any parent in Alberta buys that argument at all.

LL: OK, but I'm wondering if you've thought about going the private route, if you have to, by buying a rapid antigen test or paying a company for a private covid test. If you feel a need to test it, you can't get one.

KRISTA LI: It is egregious to expect Albertans to have to pay out of pocket for a private covid test.

LL: but would you do it if you felt the need?

KRISTA LI: Well, I would have to. I suppose I would have to if I felt the need, that we were sick and we could not obtain testing elsewhere, I guess we would have no choice but to pay out of pocket. It kind of grieves me, however, to think about having to go that route, because what we are doing, as your previous guest said, is we are driving equity. That isn't fair. It absolutely isn't fair that if you can pay, you can take care of your health. And if you can't, good luck to you. You know that that isn't very equitable. It isn't very fair. What does that mean for, again, members of vulnerable populations who may not have the ability to pay one hundred and fifty bucks down to Shoppers Drug Mart for a private test? I would also say here that in Alberta there's quite a lot of murky water surrounding private testing. We have a Jack Mintz who sits on the board of Jason Kenis Goodbody, who is also sitting on the board of a very large private testing firm. So there seems to be a lot of fingers into the private testing pie. Yes, I would have taken private testing if I had to, but it isn't fair.

LL: We've got about 30 seconds left. I want to ask you, the Alberta Medical Association section of paediatrics wrote a letter to Premier Kenny saying the removal of monitoring measures will allow covid to spread like wildfire. Do you think your concerns and those of organisations like the mayor being heard?

KRISTA LI: No, I absolutely don't. And this government has shown themselves time and time again to stay the course on decisions that are absolutely ludicrous. And I think what they're doing is they are forgetting that parents are also voters. And when you tell us that our children are not worth testing for, they're not worth conducting contact tracing for, they're not worth forcing others who are sick to isolate for you. Don't forget that.

LL: Krista Li, thank you very much for your time.

KRISTA LI: Thank you.

LL: Krista Li is the parent of two school age children in Calgary. Well, the CBC News is coming up next. And then.

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It's a terrible what we can feel, we are afraid, we feel lost, we'll feel abandoned. We feel alone. All of these days that have passed.

LL: Lost, alone, abandoned, that's how it feels to be forced from your home by out-of-control wildfires. The woman you just heard left the island of fire in Greece. Hundreds of people have had that same experience this summer here in Canada. That's coming up. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

Be prepared for wild fires now and in the future, warns former meteorologist

Guests: Panos Agiannitis, Claire Monte

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current. Still to come, the series conclusion of Brainwashed, the podcast hosted by Michelle Shephard that puts the CIA under a microscope. But first, fires continue to devastate parts of Greece and Canada.

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LL: When you think of Greek islands, you probably picture as your seas pristine beaches, whitewashed stucco and green hills. But for the past week, the island paradise of Evia has been a smoked out battleground.

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like you see the movie you get afraid and you tell yourself, oK, this is movie, but now. This is not the movie. This is a real life. This is horror that we live in the last week.

LL: for the last one week. That was one of hundreds of residents forced to flee by boat over the weekend as the wildfires on Evia worsened. It's the kind of climate catastrophe Monday's UN report warned will be seeing a lot more of unless we act fast. Joining me now is Panos Agiannitis. He runs a tour company on the island called Adventure Area. Hello.

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Hello.

LL: Can you tell me where you have been for the past few days and what you have been seeing?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: I live in the centre of the island, far away from the wildfires. And all of these days we are trying to set up a volunteer station here in Calcutta, which is the capital of the area, and trying to reach people in the fire like citizens and trying to collect and send products they need, like water, like, you know, everything you need to survive after this catastrophic event.

LL: And can you tell me the kinds of things that you have actually seen yourself as you're doing this?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: It's a total disaster. It's like you are watching a movie or something like that. It had been hit by a or maybe the situation would be better. Everything in the North Korea is destroyed from sea to sea, from the agency to their goals. Of course, everything was burned up.

LL: Everything. Are the fires still burning?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Yes, we are. There is a small, small fire and there are now firefighters in the area trying to extinguish it.

LL: I think a lot of people listening right now saw the video I did of people fleeing Evia by boat. Do you know anyone who actually had to do that?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Yes, I had a very close friend of mine who was in [unintelligible] when the fire was about to reach the village of [unintelligible], and they had to evacuate on a boat by sea.

LL: And what did they tell you about that moment?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: They told me that everybody was in a panic. He was saying pverage people like 70s, 80s, crying, trying to get desperate help from the boats. And this people had no idea what they will find when they will go back in their village. And the fire was like 50 metres or maybe 100 metres from the boat.

LL: Do you know if they've managed to go back?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Some of them just are going back. Yes, some of them.

LL: And what are they finding?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Most of the houses in [unintelligible] are OK. Most of them.

LL: Well, that's some good

PANOS AGIANNITIS: stuff, but the area is it's totally destroyed. I mean, most of the people living in most of the area, they were farmers. They were living depending their lives from the forest. And now there is no forest there. I'm talking of a big area with virgin forest and now it's gone. In just nine days, it's gone.

LL: Of all of the things that you have seen destroyed by these fires, I'm wondering what makes you the most sad?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Actually, everything. There is nothing I can find to make may be no sad with the situation. The only thing which is not sad is that actually thousands of people here in Greece, all over Greece and from Syria, they want to give us help. They're going to help us with everything. They're going to come as volunteers. They're going to send products. They're going to leavetheir jobs and they come here to help. This is a very good thing because, you know, the most important thing is to have one, to have each other in a situation like that and in that environmental crisis, [unintelligible].

LL: Well, you're one of those people who ran to help because you, as you say, were largely not touched by fire. Why did you want to help?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: I was there from the first day. I wanted to help because we are all human beings. I mean, when someone needs help and he's desperate, you go there and help doesn't no matter what. I also run a tourist business here in the area, but I don't mind about that.

LL: What do you think these fires will mean for your business?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: At the north side, no way that anybody would come again, not the tourists, maybe the citizen, the villagers. Maybe they think to evacuate the area forever and go somewhere else to live because their whole life was depending on that forest their whole life. Farmers, bees, the honey from the bees. They were collecting everything from the nature, everything.

LL: And for you, your own business, it must be taking a big hit from this and the pandemic.

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Of course, of course, because now the tourists, you know where to go there to see what? A burned forest. OK, the sea is still clear. The most of the villages and the houses are OK. You can stay. But it's a big disappointment to go towards that environment to be destroyed in just one week.

LL: The Greek prime minister has apologised for failures in trying to fight the fires, but but says that Greece has been facing sort of unprecedented disaster. I'm wondering what failures you've seen in Evia.

PANOS AGIANNITIS: I don't know how to say that. I mean, the fire never started like two hours after the big fire in Athens. Most of the people here were left as they said they left alone. We had no aeroplanes to fight the fire. And the fire was that big and actually the people here saying that they forgot. They left us alone. To do what, they were trying to evacuate the villages, which is a good thing because in such a crisis, you don't need the human loss. I mean, it was a big evacuation. They were evacuating everything, all the villages. But the forest is destroyed and we'll have to wait to wait, like, I don't know, 40, 50 years.

LL: Did did you were you born and raised on Evia?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Yes, I'm born here. I'm thirty six years old. I used to travel all the summer, all of my summers in north, central and south of the. And yes, most of my life, I live here,

LL: has this caused you to think at all about leaving the island?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: No way, no, I won't do that. I will stay here, the other half of the island is still green and now the people my age who are trying to organise and, you know, protect the environment here, protect us more as we can, with our whole lives if if it's needed. We stay definitely here.

LL: I was going to ask you about that, because the climate scientists are warning that disasters like this one, these kinds of fires could become more frequent. How how much does that worry you?

PANOS AGIANNITIS: It worries me. I know that it's definitely true and not only fires climate things, you know, water from the rain waterfloods, we had a blast last summer here in every island again, and eight people lost their lives in floods. In Florida, yeah, I don't know what to say. I mean, the future is is coming fast and. Against nature, there is nothing you can do. We have to we have to change the way we think. We have to protect the environment. We have to take care of the environment. We depend our lives on this planet because we have to keep it safe and unharmed.

LL: Panos, I very much appreciate you talking to me. I wish you and all the people of Evia well as you come through all of this. Thank you.

PANOS AGIANNITIS: Thank you. Be safe and stay safe.

LL: Panos Agiannitis is a tourism operator on the Greek island of every year. And that's where we reached him. Now, some of that will sound pretty familiar to people in B.C. The B.C. wildfire Service reports nearly 300 wildfires burning in the province right now. Rising temperatures are yet again in the forecast, meaning firefighting in the days ahead could get more difficult. Of particular concern is the White Rock Lake Fire between the cities of Vernon and Kamloops in the province's southern interior. Jackie Cooke lost her home in Montie Lake to the fire on the weekend. She escaped with her dogs just in time.

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The way the fire was coming. It was like a freight train. A six pack of freight trains was a horror movie with the weirdest awfullest sound. And my sense [unintelligible] my big gate. It was opening and closing like it was in a heartbeat of somebody. It was just horrifying sound. And even one gentleman yesterday, because logger guys were like in tears and said they've never heard nothing so freaky. More people lost their houses besides me. So we all had a little cry in the parking lot, which was very interesting. Of course, you know what you can say, but sorry.

LL: That is Jackie Cooke of Montlake. She lost her home. Claire Martin is a manager with Environment and Climate Change Canada. She's a former senior meteorologist here at the CBC. But Clare is also a resident of Vernon and she spent last weekend under evacuation alert due to the White Rock Lake Fire. Claire, good morning.

CLAIRE MARTIN: Hi, Laura. How are you?

LL: I'm fine, thanks. I'm wondering if you can tell me what the wildfire situation is like right now where you are in Vernon?

CLAIRE MARTIN: Well, you know, the last two pieces of two people you've spoken to. That resonated with me. It's quiet here now, I'll put it this way, it's quieter. The white light rock fire has been bombed repeatedly by the skimmers and bombers over the weekend. And we had a bit of rain on Sunday. But what Jackie was saying from like on Thursday and Friday, it was it was terrifying. I mean, I've covered tornadoes and hurricanes. I've been in dangerous weather. I've never seen a living, breathing fire. It is literally like a beast. You could hear it. It was growling. It was snapping and crackling. It was absolutely terrifying. And I'm across the lake from where the fire really was, was devastating an area. And we all of us, the residents of the area where I live, felt like the lake might protect us. But the embers from the light, from the fire were travelling so far. And when I talk about embers, I don't mean little pine needles, this sort of thing. I'm talking about, you know, sticks and twigs that were still on fire came over across the lake to our area and were raining down. So it was absolutely surreal. It's so it's so strange when you sort of know the conditions from a meteorological standpoint that have compounded the problem to actually see it in front of you and to know that you might lose your house and your home. It's mind blowing.

LL: It sounds like your scientific knowledge of this actually made you even more scared.

CLAIRE MARTIN: You know what it actually did? It was quite funny. The community I live in, we're all very close. We're very tight. And of course, I became a bit of a point person for here's what to look out for. And we have a very in meteorological standards. We have a very crude rule about when fires become particularly explosive, very dangerous, and we call it the 30 - 30 - 30 rule. So temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, winds of 30 kilometres an hour or higher, and humidity is 30 percent or less. And when those three ingredients come together, the fire can become incredibly erratic and unbelievably dangerous. And and just to set the scene a little bit, we were seeing temperatures in the 40s at the end of June, high 30s through the start of July. The humidity has been around 23 percen, 25 percent. And we tend to get breezy conditions off the lake. So, you know, my my understanding, my scientific understanding of this fire raised my angst level anyway.

LL: And I started I saw that on Twitter that you tweeted that you had your evacuation bag ready to go. I'm sure you've never been through that before. What was it like to decide what it what you needed to take to save your own life?

CLAIRE MARTIN: It's the words from it's surreal. You know, everybody that's listening right now, wherever you're in, if you're in an office or in your living room or possibly working at home from a bedroom or a second room, look around that room. Do this right now. Just look around and picture one thing that you cannot live without that is so precious to you you're going to take. Now go to another room and do the same. Pretty much within four or five minutes, that's everything that you can take that's precious. I call the rule the PP rules. Again, this is another rule I have. So pets are really precious. Paperwork. Your marriage certificate, your driving licence, your health records, anything that's precious, all these things you're going to have to grab and label and basically put by the car because you're not going to have time when that fire engine goes by with the sirens going to get out and to think coherently. So I had everybody in the community get their grab and go get bags ready, take a photo of it to prove to me that they've done it and then know that that can't move until we're out of this situation.

LL: Is it still packed and ready to go?

CLAIRE MARTIN: It is still packed and ready to go. I will put a photo of it on Twitter. It is still sitting there. We've also been given signs, a big cross, so a big green cross, a sign that we can put in our windows so that the fire fighters don't waste time checking to see if somebody is in the house. So it's just surreal to have this sitting in the garage. It's it's unbelievable.

LL: Claire, you moved to Vernon a few years ago, I assume, partly because it's a lovely part of the world to be in. Did you ever expect something like this to happen to you there?

CLAIRE MARTIN: No. And you know what? That's exactly it, Laura. I left Vancouver. I loved Vancouver, but I wanted to retire somewhere beautiful. I mean, the Okanogan Valley is where where people come to go on holidays. Just it's magnificent. It's it's absolutely lovely. And, you know, there's, you know, valleys of fruit and wine. And that's the weather, generally speaking, is really, really great. And to have this happen and actually this is not the first time since I've been here where we've had fires in the area. But this is the first time where a fire has been literally on my back door and threatening my home and. Will I stay? Yeah, I will stay.

LL: That was my next question.

CLAIRE MARTIN: Yeah. You know, and it's funny, I've gone through that in my head. I've had family and friends ask me, would I stay? I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave. Here it is. It's absolutely beautiful. But it is going to become increasingly more anxious, put it that way in the summer.

LL: Yeah, because, I mean, I want to trade on your scientific knowledge again. How big a problem are fires like this going to be for B.C. moving forward?

CLAIRE MARTIN: You know well that the IPCC report that came out a couple of days ago stated quite clearly, in fact, it literally states it cites Canada as warming is nearly twice the global rate. And then furthermore, it cites that parts of western and northern Canada are warming at three times the global average. And we it was always hard to convince people that warming when you live in Canada, a country that's known for snow and ice and hockey, that warming is not necessarily a good thing, that that link between climate change and more frequent and more powerful weather events is now very, very clear. And weather events include heatwaves, fires, flooding, sea ice loss. So and where we're living in the area where, as I said in June, I really wanted to do radio interviews because the temperatures were so astounding. I was on a chat list with meteorologists, you know, hardened scientific brains about just how hot it was and and how we were forecasting temperatures that we were shaking our heads. I heard Johanna Wagstaff just, you know, it was hard to put into words how incredible this heat was. And that was June before the fire started. And now we're into the fires and it's still going to be a long, hot season. And the IPCC report tells us that incredibly well.

LL: Then there's enough being done to mitigate the risks?

CLAIRE MARTIN: Oh, that's tough. Yeah, that's the question, right? We the scientists, we're the people that tell you about the data. We're the ones that say this is happening. Here are the links. The events are going to become more compound events. So we'll get heat waves and droughts simultaneously. Are we doing enough to mitigate? You know what, that's the politicians to answer that one. My job is to make sure people stay safe.

LL: Well, OK then. Let's look ahead to the immediate forecast. We're looking at rising temperatures in your region again. I know that the mayor's been saying that Vernon is worried about winds and heat. What do you see coming up in the next 24, 48 hours there?

CLAIRE MARTIN: Yes, we do. We've got a ridge of high pressure building in. Here's the difference right now between the set up in June. You know, the heat started to build in June over western North America just after sort of the soldiers solstice. So long days like the sun was setting. So that heat was building and building and building. The ridge was on many levels through the atmosphere. So it was like a massive lead. This ridge that's building is slightly more transient, so it won't last as long and daylight hours are slightly less. So we won't have the sun of as long, but it is going to build again. And the problem is, is that compounding issue that I was mentioning, you know, when you go for a walk around here, the ground is so dry, it's like walking in talcum powder. The dust is fine and lifts very easily. So this ridge is going to build in and cause more problems. The other problem is it comes with wind. When a ridge builds and it sort of pushes, it elbows its way in through the atmosphere. And when it does that, it generates wind. Right now, there's one of two scenarios. The fire that is still left will turn in on itself and try to burn the ground that has already been scorched. So there's less fuel, which is a good thing that, as I mentioned earlier, once we start getting really hot temperatures and an erratic wind, then the fire becomes explosive and it will become another long week into the long months, into another long summer for us.

LL: Claire, I can do nothing more than wish you the very best over the next little while. And please take care of yourself.

CLAIRE MARTIN: I will. I will. Laura, thanks. Thanks for talking to me. And thanks to everybody that's been there showing concern for us here. Bye bye.

LL: Bye bye. Clare Martin is a resident of Vernon and a manager with Environment and Climate Change Canada. She's also a former CBC senior meteorologist. Earlier this week, the Greek prime minister apologised for his government's handling of those wildfires and acknowledged the hardships facing people like us. And you need us. We're dealing with a natural disaster of unprecedented dimensions, he said. Of course, this isn't the first time the country has faced up to an unprecedented challenge, and there's always hope. The song, meant by Marina Saiti, became a smash hit in Greece in 2017, thanks to a young generation searching for something positive in the midst of the country's debt crisis. After a long pandemic and in the face of the fires, we thought maybe it would bring a bit of hope in this moment, too. So here is Marina Saiti with Mantissa.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

LL: That is Greek artist Marina Satti with Mantissa. Coming up after your regional update, the conclusion of brainwashed the CBC podcast that takes a closer look at the CIA's mind control experiments. And about 90 seconds, we'll meet some of the people who endured those experiments and hear about their fight for justice. I'm Laura Lynch. And you're listening to The Current billion for.

The conclusion of CBC podcast Brainwashed

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current, the CBC podcast, Brainwashed, is an investigation into the CIA's covert experiments in mind control from the Cold War and MK Ultra to the so-called war on terror and its connexion to Canada. In the conclusion today, we hear how Canadian victims of the experiments and their families are seeking compensation and an apology from the Canadian government. Here is host Michelle Shephard.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: MK Ultra is now being interpreted in Dance, a performance that recently toured the U.K., it splices together documentary footage, pounding lights and a steady techno beat like this one from D.J. Reshat.

[Music]

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: M.K. Ultra has seeped into our pop culture, Amazon even sells a T-shirt for 20 bucks that says M.K. Ultra made me do it. If you go down a rabbit hole online, you'll see. MK Ultra is the darling of conspiracy theorists Britney Spears talking to what seems like an imaginary friend during an interview.

SOUNDCLIP

Yeah, it's kind of weird. Weird. Hello. Oh. Oh, my goodness.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's mind control. And a couple of years ago, when Cardi B appears to go into a robotic trance on the red carpet and [unintelligible] to brainwashing, obviously. For some, these theories could be just entertainment click bait, but it can also be deadly serious. At the very least, the secrecy that surrounds MK Ultra or the CIA's post 9/11 programmes breeds distrust of government agencies and medical professionals, which, of course, can be healthy at times, but also incredibly dangerous, especially during a pandemic. And all of this also makes it easier to forget about the real lives that were destroyed through these programmes and the victims and their families who continue to struggle to this day because the fight for recognition, it's far from over.

[Music]

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I'm Michelle Shepard and this is brainwashed. Episode six. Never too late to say sorry.

NEWSCASTER: There was a time not so long ago when the words mental hospital evoke terrible images of padded cells, stupid and brutal attendant, cr uel mishandling of patients.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Let's go back to where we started this podcast at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s and 60s, where the CIA was funding Dr Ewen Cameron's experiments on a psychiatric patients without their knowledge or consent.

NEWSCASTER: Dr Ewen Cameron, one of the leading psychiatrists on the North American continent, has been the institute's director since its inception.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The CIA's MK Ultra programme was publicly revealed in the late 1970s, unbelievable stories about LSD testing in prisons and brothels, the mysterious death of a scientist working for the CIA and, of course, the stories about the island. By 1988, nine Canadian patients successfully sued the CIA. They didn't get the mea culpa they sought from the intelligence agency, but they did win a settlement. However, they were just nine of more than a hundred patients subjected to Dr. Cameron's extreme experiments.

LINDA MCDONALDS: With so frustrating, because when I first found out that I was part of an experiment, I called Joseph Roe and Jim Turner, they're their lawyers who represented Denine against the CIA.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: And this is Linda McDonald, a former patient of the Allen.

LINDA MCDONALDS: They told me to send for my file, but they also warned me that I couldn't become the tenth one to sue the CIA because I was done in 63 and the CIA funding was pulled in 62. And I said, but the same doctor, the same experiments. If the CIA didn't fund my experiment, then who did? And Jim Turner said that is a very good question, Linda. Maybe you better go and find out.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, Linda McDonald did start looking into it, so did a Canadian journalist, Saleem Jiwa was writing for the Vancouver Province newspaper when the case against the CIA was underway. He wondered who else was funding Dr. Cameron.

SALEEM JIWA: We were given a list of, what, 11 projects from the federal health department. The documents show that Cameron did all these things to his patients and that the Canadian government knew the limits to which he was pushing his patients.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: When news came out that Canada was involved, former patients at the island couldn't believe what they were reading.

SALEEM JIWA: Well, they're shocked. They say that if the government funded programmes which damaged individuals ultimately, then the government should be held responsible for their funding just as the CIA is being held responsible.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Linda McDonald was 26 when she went to the island for an assessment, and her tragic tale sounds so much like many others of Dr. Cameron's former patients.

LINDA MCDONALDS: I'd never been sick a day in my life, but I think I was just tired. I had twins in June of 1961 and for the next two years, I just never seemed to get it full health back. I was depressed, possibly postpartum depression.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Linda received intensive rounds of electroshocks, spent 86 days in a drug induced sleep, and was subjected to extended sessions of psych driving.

LINDA MCDONALDS: And when I came out, I was a vegetable. As far as I knew, I'd never been in this world before.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She could barely function and had to relearn everything from reading and writing to using the toilet. Linda couldn't care for her five children and eventually lost custody after her marriage ended. When she couldn't join the CIA suit in Washington, and it was exposed that the Canadian government was also funding the experiments. She hired a lawyer and other former patients started speaking up to and a select few politicians backed them. Before Linda's lawsuit went to court. The Canadian government took some action. Finally, 15 years after the truth was first publicly revealed about Cameron's experiments, the government announced a compensation plan only those patients fully departed and whose minds were reduced to a childlike state where eligible. 77 patients would receive 100000 dollars each.

NEWSCASTER: Ottawa had been resisting paying compensation. And today's decision, it said, is not an admission of liability, rather an expression of compassion for the victims. And just how many of those victims may still be alive today? No one knows.

AL ANTHONY: So we had started to work on it and we sent in our file this, and then they came up with you have to be alive to to get paid.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: And that was it. Remember Al Anthony from our first episode? His father was compensated, but just barely.

AL ANTHONY: My father was on his deathbed. And when they finally said, OK, we are ready to start giving out money, I called them, they said, you better get here fast. I went from my office to the airport. OK, I stayed at a friend's house overnight and I was there like at nine o'clock in the morning when their office opened up and the next day my father died.

PRODUCER: So you were you had to go from Montreal to Ottawa?

AL ANTHONY: No, Toronto.

PRODUCER: Oh, Toronto.

AL ANTHONY: Toronto. You know, I go there, they give me a check, I go right back to the airport, I get back to Montreal and stuff it in the bank. Before my father's account is closed.

PRODUCER: What time of day did he pass away?

AL ANTHONY: Later in the evening.

PRODUCER: Were you able to tell him that this had happened?

AL ANTHONY: No, he wouldn't have understood it anyways. You know.

PRODUCER: Give me a little bit of a tally of what she went she went through.

LLOYD SCHREYER: Well, they, um, you know, they gave her all the drugs. It's about four or five barbiturates and amphetamines at a time. It was a high concentration. And the 30 days and then in the sleep room, she had so many shocks I couldn't get over it.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: This is Lloyd Schreyer. He's come to our studio in Toronto, his arms full of documents, including his mother's medical records.Lloyd's mother, Esther, did receive ex gratia payments from the Canadian government. Here she is interviewed by BBC's Frontline Scotland in 2004.

ESTHER: The first thing I remember was waking up and seeing my husband and asking him, who are you? And he said to me, I'm your husband. Husband? Am I married? Yes, I'm your husband. And I remember thinking, who am I? I had a new baby and I didn't know what to do with the baby and I did have help, I had a nurse, the baby nurse, but she had to have a day off and she left a book. And I'll just give you a little example. When you hear the baby cry, go to the room, pick up baby, and step by step how to feed the baby. And that was very frightening.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Esther was pregnant when she received Dr. Cameron's treatments and Lloyd was that baby.

LLOYD SCHREYER: From March 5th to March 18th, she had 90 to electroshocks, and if you look in six days, I believe she had 12 a day, so it was 72 and I think that's just crazy like this. Insane.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The third paragraph down, it says, on March 12th.

LLOYD SCHREYER: Yeah, considered completely de-pattern in that she was incontinent, mute, had swallowing difficulties, accumulation of mucus. Yeah, I don't think it was fair to do that to a developing foetus knowing that she was pregnant for me to go through that.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's kind of amazing you can survive that or definitely that the pregnancy lasted.

LLOYD SCHREYER: Yeah, you kind of wonder I'm amazed that I came through the way I did with all of this, I don't know what I would have been I don't know if I would have been smarter, stronger or taller. I was the time of brain development. Like, I'm just surprised that I came out like that. I didn't think anyone can come out functioning through all that.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Esther died of cancer in 2017 at the age of 84 with her son at her side. Lloyd has repeatedly tried to get compensation for himself. His mother's medical records show Dr. Cameron was well aware that she was pregnant, but it was deemed that Lloyd was not a patient and therefore doesn't qualify his still lobbying politicians to find someone who is willing to champion his cause.

NEWSCASTER: Tonight, we report on a secret CIA research project carried out in Montreal in which mental patients felt they were used as the CIA's guinea pigs to Canadians who feel the past 20 years of their lives were damaged by the CIA, tell their stories publicly for the first time.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The CBC's investigative programme, the Fifth Estate, has been relentlessly chipping away at the true story since nineteen eighty nine.

NEWSCASTER: Canadians who were the unwitting victims of CIA brainwashing experiments are suing the United States government. But so far the Canadian government has done nothing to help.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: One evening in 2014, a woman named Allison Steele was watching an old episode of The Fifth, Allison's mother, Jeanne, had been a patient at the island in Montreal. She was admitted for what is now known as postpartum depression. Alison was just four years old.

JEANNE: I grew up knowing that my mother was ill. I just thought that was the way my mother was. And I felt embarrassed and I felt ashamed. And I was angry with my mother my whole life because she didn't seem the same as other moms. And my father had tried to get compensation and he was denied.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The compensation request to the Canadian government was denied because Alison's father couldn't get his wife's complete medical file. The hospital said the files were missing. By the time Alison was watching the CBC programme. It was two decades later and both her parents had died.

JEANNE: We're talking about Ewen Cameron at the Alan Morial. So I thought, let's go for it. And that's when I found out Mr. Stein.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: And that's Alan Stein. He's a Montreal lawyer who has been involved with these cases for decades.

JEANNE: He told me what I needed to do, what I needed to get the medical files.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: This time all the files were found, 300 pages of her mother's bedside notes, legal sized, double sided, a heart wrenching account of what she went through.

JEANNE: This is where I got to know my mother. What happened to her. The horror that she went through, pacing the hall this morning saying, I'm just a prisoner. I feel like Jesus on the cross can feel the nails in my hands and feet. It's just like being buried alive. Somebody please do something.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Alison took the Canadian government to court and they quietly settled with her, giving her compensation if she signed a non-disclosure agreement. And this is Lisa Ellenwood, she's a producer on Brainwashed and doing this podcast with her idea. Lisa works with the CBC's Fifth Estate, and a few years ago, she began her deep dive into MK Ultra.

LISA ELLENWOOD: We reached out to Allison Steele also and then started to dig around to see if we could find some new voices, people who'd never spoken publicly about their experiences before. So after the story aired, there was this huge flood of emails and calls from people who wanted to talk to us about their stories. They said, We think that our family member was a victim of the experiments. We want to access our medical records and we want compensation.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: What happened when all these people emailed you? What were you able to do?

LISA ELLENWOOD: So I asked Allison if it would be OK if I sent her the emails and the phone numbers and she agreed. And so what happened was she gathered all these people together and they decided to create a private Facebook group. And so they then decided to all get together and meet in person in Montreal. And they did that in May of 2018.

VOICE 1: Today, we have come together to form a coalition of victims and families of victims to support one another, in form one another and expose this evil happening to all Canadians and the world so that it may never happen again.

LISA ELLENWOOD: So it was this really, I think, cathartic moment for them all. People gave speeches, told the stories about their relatives, showed photos. There was lots of tears because they just felt that not enough people really knew about what had happened this moment in Canadian history and the real impact on generations of families.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: They decided they would go to court to try to force the Canadian government to apologise, and Alan Stein agreed to represent them.

ALAN STEIN: Hi, how are you?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I'm Michelle. You know lisa?

AL ANTHONY: I sure do. Hi. How are you?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: We're in Allan Stein's Montreal Law Office to hear the latest on the case. In the middle of the table is a banker's box brimming with files. Just to remind you how long this has been going on. Well, Alan Stein's late father was also an attorney and he represented one of the MK ultra patients, Lou Weinstein. Now, Alan, decades later, still fighting the CIA. He knows these cases so well, he seems to anticipate my questions. Before I finished asking

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: your direct action, what is it you're trying to get the court to?

ALAN STEIN: Compensate the families, the families of those former patients of Dr. Cameron who were treated as guinea pigs and who were experimented upon.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: But this is outside the compensation that was given to those under the--

ALAN STEIN: The one hundred thousand dollars that was given to the actual victims. The actual former spouses are parents of the families are siblings. OK, because here's what my conclusions say. Condemned the defendants, which is the Royal Victoria Hospital, the McGill University Health Centre and the attorney general of Canada.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: How can you show that the government of Canada knew about this, that they bear this responsibility? Is the threshold that you have to prove that they knew what was going on?

ALAN STEIN: Certainly if they if they didn't know, they should have known and they should have taken certain steps to find out what the funding was covering.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So the negligence of giving this funding but not having the oversight is enough to get compensation.

ALAN STEIN: Yes.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: OK. And therefore, you have to convince the judge of. What do you give your chances of being successful?

ALAN STEIN: I'd say 50 percent, because we have an uphill battle and the government is contesting the proceedings vigorously

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: What's the defence in general?

ALAN STEIN: Their defence will be it's too late now.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So is that the Canadian equivalent of statute of limitations? Yes, it's been too long. OK, when you're talking to the families, is it the compensation that they're looking for, mainly the financial compensation, or are they looking for something else through this legal action?

ALAN STEIN: For both compensation and an apology by the government, which they never had. At no time did they apologised to the families or to the former patients of Dr. Cameron who were treated as guinea pigs.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: A portrait of Dr. Cameron still hangs in the halls at the island, along with other past directors, but his name has been removed and McGill University doesn't mention the hospital's shameful past and Dr. Cameron's abuses in its official history. We ask the university why there was no mention of this past on their website. A spokesperson would not answer the question directly and responded only that they are truly empathetic to those who are impacted. Dr. Cameron was once the president of the Canadian American and World Psychiatric Associations, the Canadian Association has said nothing about his experiments. The American Psychiatric Association did apologise eventually, and this was thanks to the intense lobbying of Dr. Harvey Weinstein. The World Psychiatric Association did not specifically condemn Cameron, but they have recently addressed the issue of torture. On October 16th, 2020, the WPA ratified a new code of ethics with its strongest wording yet psychiatrists. It states do not participate in the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes or in torture. The code forbids psychiatrists from taking part in interrogations that help the military or civilian agencies. When we talk about the government being behind MK Ultra and the torture programmes that followed, it sounds like a singular entity, but there is never just one person to blame. There were thousands of people involved, spies, politicians, top medical professionals, administrators from the Cold War. Until today, there have been reports and committees and commissions and lawsuits that get settled out of court. And there have been courageous whistleblowers or conscientious objectors. But the message has remained remarkably consistent. These experiments, these efforts at mind control in interrogations, they may have been unfortunate, but no one needs to be held accountable, not for the torture of prisoners that followed the 9/11 attacks, not for the involvement of CIA agents in the torture throughout Latin America in the 1980s. Not for MK Ultra.

[Protestors chanting]

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: There are actually now two lawsuits launched against the Canadian government by the families of those experimented upon at the island, they split after disagreeing on legal tactics, fees and who to target.

JULIE: We will continue to fight until we are heard. We will keep fighting because we know that no judge could look at our case and say, sorry, too late because the damage is still so fresh today.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's Anthony Sister Julie at a recent protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. She's the lead plaintiff in the second lawsuit, this one's a class action suit and also goes after the CIA.

JEFF GORDON: For those of you that don't know me, my name is Jeff Gordon, CNN, I am a lawyer, and I know that this court case is important to everyone here and I'm really honoured that you allow me to speak for you in the legal part of your battle for justice.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: And they were the ones who arranged the protest on Parliament Hill.

JEFF GORDON: I would like everyone to know that we continue to work on your case, but I also wish to The Current we have a long road ahead of us. The US government has made things very difficult for us. This fight will not be simple, but we are determined and rest assured that we will press on. Everyone needs to hear your voices and everyone needs to know your stories. And the message that I want to bring to our government is that it is never too late to say sorry. Maybe we can achieve this, through rallies like this, maybe we can achieve it through legal action. Maybe we can achieve it through other means and maybe not at all. But one thing is, sure, we are all here fighting for it and we are not going to stop until someone up on Parliament Hill says the words, I'm sorry.

[Cheers]

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: We contacted the Canadian government to see if their message had changed, would they take responsibility for Canada's role in funding experiments on psychiatric patients? They responded by saying they have, quote, "taken action to provide assistance to those affected". Those affected, would disagree with.

PROTESTORS: [Chanting] Please don't close your eyes. We want you to apologise.

LL: We have been listening to the original CBC podcast, Brainwashed, with Michelle Shephard. That is our programme for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Guest host Saroja Coelho will be speaking with Lorne Cardinal, who you might recognise from his two decades playing the affable Sergeant Davis on corner gas. Just as the show's animated spin off reaches its conclusion, Cardinal will take the time to look back on how corner gas changed his life and Canadian television. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for August 11, 2021

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Prologue

Alberta's move to stop COVID-19 testing leaves parents worried as new school year looms

Be prepared for wild fires now and in the future, warns former meteorologist

The conclusion of CBC podcast Brainwashed

Wednesday August 11, 2021 Full Transcript

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