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With Bevereley McLcachlin and Vardirt Ravitsky

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Vardirt Ravitsky: The enduring effects of the pandemic and the continuing questioning in nearly every state and region about how it has been handled means most institutions – public and private, local and global – will have to take a hard look at their performance. Beverley McLachlin, retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and a 2020 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Mentor, believes that the system of justice, taken in its broadest sense, also has a real self-examination to undertake. 

Bevereley McLcachlin: I've realized that our justice system is not just a system of government provided courts, it is that's important, but it is also a whole system of civil society, NGOs, various groups who are dedicated to helping people who need the legal protections that the Constitution of Canada gives to them. NGOs and community justice services, They have proved most helpful in this situation because they deal with people on the ground. When people can't get to a law office or they can't get to a courthouse, they can go to those places. And fortunately, since the Access to Justice movement got going about 10 or 15 years ago, we've seen a plethora of these small organizations, often partially or wholly funded by nongovernmental sources, they're there to help women who suddenly find themselves on the street without a home and three children to look after. They're there to help people who are going through a housing crisis. And they can take up a lot of the slack through counseling, through making connections to telling the person where they can go for help and other means.

Vardirt Ravitsky: Did you expect this important contribution from civil society?

Bevereley McLcachlin: I've been working with a lot of these groups and I've been so impressed, even pre pandemic with the wonderful work they're doing.But my impression is that they've helped pick up a lot of the slack, that a lot of the job, rather, that the more formal governmental tribunals have not been able to handle. 

Vardirt Ravitsky: I'd like to explore with you more specifically and of course, related to your own perspective on society. What did you think? How did you feel when the court started to shut down with a pandemic? And what implications did this have?

Bevereley McLcachlin: Well, it's a very big picture, but of course, I felt I felt very concerned because having worked in the court system for most of my life and seeing the men, women and children whose lives are affected by the decisions that are made there.The dislocation is enormous because the justice system is a big, complicated system. And at the hub of it are our courts. And when the courts shut down, then police have nowhere to go to take their people. How do you arrange for bail and so on.If you are involved in any kind of dispute that goes before the courts there, there will be documents, there will be pieces of paper. That's the foundation. So how do you do that when there's the counter is not open in the courthouse and you have a deadline coming up. How do you deal with those things if nobody can get to a judge and nobody can get to the paper? So they started e-filing in most places. And that just means that lawyers and other designated agencies can have an electronic track and they can send their document that way and get it filed that way makes perfect sense. We were doing this in the Supreme Court of Canada for many years, working up a system. It takes some time to build up a system. Fortunately, in some parts of the country, we'd already started putting in place some virtual systems so that these could be upgraded and expanded. And so a lot of these things were up-wrapped quickly, stood us in good stead, and I think prevented a real calamity. But this is one of those things we shouldn't go back on now that we've built it up in our provincial courts and our local courthouses. Let's move on it.I'm not one who says that courtrooms should be closed forever, that justice should be virtual. I think that we do need our open courtrooms where the press can be present, where the public can come, where juries will deliberate together once they are capable of going and sitting next to one another. And where there is a judge. This is our bulwark to ensure that the rule of law in all of its ramifications is maintained. Lawyers present, everyone present debating in the public arena. And if a person charged with a serious offense or with a serious dispute, I believe is entitled to that quality of justice. But we have learned that along the way, a lot of the interlocutory applications about, you know, documents, disclosure, how many days you get to do this and that, a lot of those things can be dealt with online.

Vardirt Ravitsky: So you've been actually describing to us your ideal vision for the future of the justice system, this combination of in-person and virtual. Do we in Canada currently have the infrastructure that is required to kind of fulfill this vision in terms of the virtual, do we have the funding for that? Is there political will to build what is necessary? 

Bevereley McLcachlin: There's a whole lot of questions there. The first one is we don't have it. The second is there's considerable will from certain sectors to do it.And the third is that there will be a need for funding. And this becomes a question of priorities which will be very, very critical in the post pandemic phase. We all know that important steps need to be taken in the health and wellness sector and how we would deal with such pandemics in the future in a more, this isn't a criticism, but governments were very much caught on the back foot. It's been very difficult to come up with the appropriate response in every case because of lack of precedent, because of the fact we'd let our agencies that were supposed to be ready for this. We got complacent and let them slip. so we need to invest a lot in health, welfare, public health sector.We know that. And we know we have to do something with long term care, which was where most of the ultimate suffering and death took place.There'll be lots of needs in education where we know that sometimes schools may have to shut down and what do we do and how do we keep our kidshealthy and well and socialized and educated.But somewhere in that piece, we have to find the money to make our justice system work because our society is founded on the idea that every Canadian can get justice when they need it. We know people have differences. We know we have to have processes for those differences. And we know the justice system is at the heart of that. So we need to keep our court system strong and we need to keep it accessible and we need to keep it proportionate.It's no good going to a court where you may have to wait two or three years. That's not going to give you the answer. So there's a lot of thinking to be done as to how we can do better justice delivery and then how we can improve.And the problem in the past has been that it's been hard to get government funding for improving the justice system. I hear this every day as I work and access to justice from the smallest agencies who are out there doing bake sales and benefits to raise money for helping people who need justice right through the chief justices who sit and wait for the funding to come from the government to introduce some new computer program in their filing system that would help them be much more efficient. So but it's hard for politicians, I think sometimes around the table, faced with the need for health care improvements, faced with the need for education, are too big and say, “oh, justice will be looked after somewhere down there.” But I believe that is a terrible error because if you don't have a good justice system. Nothing else will ultimately work and the people will end up disrespecting society in a sense. They won't trust their institutions as much when people believe they can go to court and get a remedy for whatever it is in their life, health, education, whatever, they will have more faith in their system. That's the foundation of our system and we cannot let that slide.

Vardirt Ravitsky: You give us so many interesting examples of the impact on people when their access to justice is impeded or slowed down.Who do you think was most vulnerable to these issues of not having access?

Bevereley McLcachlin: I don't have stats, but this is all anecdotal, but I think what I kept hearing when I talk to people was that it was the the families and women. There may have been elements of abuse between husbands and wives and and between children and parents in some cases.And coupled with the psychological stress of maybe not having your work or losing your job, not being able to go to school, whatever it is it created very difficult situations in homes. And so how does a woman who is fearing for her life from her partner, who she feels is going over the edge to actually deal with that in the pandemic situation, is she going to pick up the phone and say, “Come quickly? I'm in fear of my life,” when her husband is hovering over her? And what is she going to say when a counselor calls her virtually and she's in an apartment where everyone can hear what she says of these are the real-life stories you're hearing about people who find their access to support services cut off and are living in this situation. I wanted to mention one thing that I think is vital. One of the special groups impacted the most, I believe, by this pandemic have been rural, often indigenous communities who do not always in Canada, unfortunately, have access to video platforms, to even computer technology and the most basic sense.They can't even access some of these court and counseling systems that might otherwise be available.If we do move to more of our court system being online, virtual, which I hope we do, we have got to improve our digital infrastructure throughout the country. We need to make sure that everyone has some way of accessing, if not through their home, in their community, these digital services in in rural parts of the country. I also believe we need to build more Indigenous justice support centers, which there are some good models for. But we need to get them built on the ground now, in the north. These centers will provide that sort of a connection, which would be excellent.

Vardirt Ravitsky: Recently for International Women's Day, you published a wonderful piece that congratulates women for their contributions during the pandemic and you mentioned specifically women within the legal system. Tell us a little bit about the work that you've seen women do during the pandemic within the legal system.

Bevereley McLcachlin: I spoke of the people who work in the organizations who help indigenous people, women and others get through their justice crisis. Those people have been working overtime. They've been working in the courthouse. And they've been working in church basements. There they are, they are there and their doors have been kept open, I think in many cases, and they've provided a real lifeline in the justice system.Women make up a big part of the infrastructure of the justice system right from the top, where a lot of judges are women. But going right down to the person who receives the documents, processes, the documents, make sure the judgments go out. Women have been key pillars in this in this fight to keep justice alive and and and going during the pandemic despite the strictures. And that goes right down to the cleaning staff and the the people who are there wiping the counters and making sure that everything is done, the volunteers coming forward in every sector. I don't I think it's happened also in the justice sector as well as people who have dedicated their lives professionally to this kind of work. So, yeah, women have been been huge in this pandemic and have shown that, as Mao Zedong said, the women hold up half the sky. But I think they held up more than their share throughout this pandemic in every sector of our society.

Vardirt Ravitsky: I wanted to ask you on a personal level aboutwhat surprised you the most in the early months of the pandemic.

Bevereley McLcachlin: I think the sense of shock and fear that I felt all around me when any turbulence suddenly comes upon society, people don't know what to make of it. But when it did happen in the first start of the second week in March of two thousand twenty people took it seriously. And everyone learned a new way of living and they learned it very quickly, washing hands all the time, eventually, although it was not soon enough, wearing masks and how to be sensible when you're facing a terrible situation and then all the economic privations. All those people who are suddenly seeing their paychecks in jeopardy are canceled or their jobs lost and so on, there was a sense of calm and a sense of how we can help each other out through this.It was this whole coming together around the community, around the notion that something bad had happened, that out of something bad, maybe something good can happen to you have to seize the opportunity. You have to look at the the tragedy, however serious it is, and and try to do your best with it and hopefully in the end, bring out something good and improve the society when we're all through this.

Vardirt Ravitsky: So now a year out, do you still feel this sense of hope and optimism? Do you still see Canadian society in this positive light?

Bevereley McLcachlin: I have a feeling just in recent weeks and months that we are we are going to come through this well and in and with our society enriched and strengthened.There will be huge challenges, just as there were challenges after the Second World War. And many of them, for example, in the in the job market, the economy was already changing exponentially. And this is going to give it another boost, the old ways of doing business,this kind of thing will all take a hit. And there will be different ways of operating after, but also create new jobs. The same thing happened after World War Two. And people said we'll never get back to normal.How are we going to heal? And of course, all that was very difficult to work through. But what came after was was a huge transformational process in our society where we moved from a sort of creaking, post-industrial age into a new way of communications, a new way of huge infrastructure projects across the country.There's going to be a lot of opportunities for rebuilding. Rethinking. First, we need to rethink before we rebuild and making our society bring our back a society, but not only back to where it was, but into a new era. So I look at this and I'm pretty positive.I feel on every front that there's room for positive growth. Also our health and safety, huge issue of education changes in the legal system now that we're using platforms, video platforms for some of the procedures that can be used, we're learning lessons and we can take them forward and rebuild better.

Vardirt Ravitsky: Thank you so much for this historical perspective. You know, we're so stuck in the here and now, surviving another day, another week.It's so helpful to remember how in the past we've emerged from big tragic periods.So thank you so much for that.

Bevereley McLcachlin: Thanks Vardit. This was lovely. Bye bye.

With Eric Meslin and Vardit Ravitsky

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Vardit Ravistky: For the last six months, hundreds of millions of people have lined up for vaccination against COVID-19, an operation accompanied by worries, scares, occasional shortages and a blizzard of scientific studies. For Eric Meslin, President of the Council of Canadian Academies and 2020 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Mentor, the main issue though is what does the speed of vaccine development and deployment mean for the future of dynamic interplay among scientific, political, and ethical considerations. 

Eric Meslin: I think we all were caught by the surprise with the speed of the development of the vaccine, the speed with which the vaccine was reviewed by federal regulators and the speed with which the vaccines were being manufactured. This was unprecedented. And I don't think that word can be used enough or shouted out loudly enough, unprecedented. Even the bioethics community, who is often quite conservative in offering cautions and careful analysis of the design and conduct of research involving human participants were, if not warning, then certainly expressing concern to try and tamp down exuberant expectation about the vaccine. And yet, as you say, already a year later, we're not talking about will there ever be a vaccine? Which of the five, six or seven our best, which ones have high efficacy, safety? So it's an absolutely fascinating, almost mind bogglingly fast discussion that we have now found ourselves in a year later. I think what that's raised, though, are a set of revisiting of old ethics questions about the ethical issues that come up when you design and conduct vaccine research in particular. Remember, we still don't have an HIV vaccine almost 40 years after that disease faced us. So I think what it's done is two things. One is it's caused us to rethink what fast and speedy mean in relation to ethical and careful. And it's also done some really interesting sort of mind games on the public and on politicians about what the proper role should be and what the set of issues are that should be considered. 

Vardit Ravistky: So tell me more about how you see the interplay of science and politics or policies and what this fast evolution of policy based on crazy fast science does to the public.

Eric Meslin: Your Freudian slip when you say policies or politics, I think was not so Freudian. I think you actually nailed where some of the that dilemma is. And I don't want to keep coming back to how awesome that science is. I'm certainly a fan and a great supporter of great science. And it's just so important that we remember that this might have been fast in one way, but the vaccine development came after very impressive, long standing, well-established, good science science that was done in the laboratory. Science that was done many years ago, important genomic science, important epidemiologic science. So let's not leave aside that this crazy fast science didn't just emerge whole cloth by the snap of a finger. For those who understand how science and policy works, that science doesn't tell you what to do. Science gives you the facts, and it's up to policymakers to decide how to interpret and use them. I can say that I have a certain sympathy, but I'm also a little frustrated, that even our best and most trustworthy politicians have a hard time explaining fast moving science. We're at the moment where a vaccine is regarded as seventy nine percent effective, and the rest of the message might be lost. Effective at doing what? Preventing people from being admitted to hospital or dying, which is very different from preventing the infection so that the nuance of the science is often lost in the communication strategy of even our most articulate politicians when our politicians are less articulate. It's even more difficult. And that's why it's not surprising that you have frustration at the level of the public. Here in Ontario, we have a different set of issues than they do in Alberta or Saskatchewan or or Nova Scotia around availability of vaccine. So I think one of the triangulation problems is there is science which provides incomplete data in real time that may change over the course of weeks or months. That automatically triggers different kinds of policy responses or recommendations from public health authorities, which automatically triggers responses by the public. And it can get very messy and very frustrating. And I think that's what we what we see one year on, despite the, as we've said before, the phenomenal science that got us to this point.

Vardit Ravistky: So I loved how you recognize that this phenomenal science that you and I both admire did not start with the pandemic and that the vaccines are standing on the shoulders of many years of development. So in a sense, we were prepared for the vaccine development. And I'm wondering what you think about our preparedness in other areas.From your perspective, as someone who has been through these discussions for many years, were we prepared? Could we have been better prepared?

Eric Meslin: So those are two again, two good questions. Where are we prepared? Could we have been better prepared? The answer to the latter question is always yes. It's sort of the the easy way out. You can always be more informed, better prepared. There's no perfect example, because every epidemic, every outbreak is different from another in certain respects. But were we truly prepared to address a global pandemic of this kind. At this point in history, a novel coronavirus. It's not the first-time coronaviruses have been around. There have been many epidemics that involve coronaviruses. This is not an unusual piece of biology, but I think our public health, our political structure and I say our I mean, much of the world's political structures were unevenly prepared to make difficult decisions. And this is the most, most awkward part of this. The science which we thought would be the hardest part of this turned out to be, forgive me, the easiest part, the proof is that we've got six, seven vaccines ready. What was the hard part? Making tough calls about signing contracts with companies. What where the tough calls? How do we make lists of who will get access to the first vaccines? Another tough call. What do we do when the science changes and we have different options? So while I think we were prepared at a kind of scientific level. I don't think we were adequately prepared to deal with the obvious ethical challenges of making decisions under conditions of incomplete or uncertain data. That is the lesson that we've been learning over and over and over again for decades. But we seem to still not learn how to do something with the lesson that we have learned. Should there be a permanent standing pandemic committee in Canada? Should there be a permanent emergency response system set up in Canada? There's lots of things that we can say now, but I worry very deep that we will get over this current surge. We will all hopefully be vaccinated. We will cross our fingers and hope that five or 10 years from now, when the next pandemic comes, we will have remembered, not just learned, but remembered the lessons of what happened this time around. And I'm not suspect, but I I'm not overly confident because history has shown us that we have a hard time remembering what we think we learned. 

Vardit Ravistky: What can we do in the next few years not to go back to the normal of, oh, we'll figure it out when it happens, but rather really lay the groundwork so that we can address ethical tensions and ethical dilemmas in an informed and nuanced and effective and fast way, if this ever happens again. 

Eric Meslin: This may sound a bit heretical and sort of biting the hand that feeds, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that unless we in the bioethics community can do a better job of empowering others to speak about ethical issues and challenges, then we will quickly become relegated to the sort of the chair at that table, a singular chair at the multi chair table where people go around the table to say, tell us what the ethics are. And the one person puts their ethics hand up and says, this is what the issues are. I think what we need to do a better job of doing is to, as I say, empower others to identify, prepare for and and prepare to respond to this to these issues.Everyone can be a bioethicist when you think that these are issues that affect value choices and decisions. But I worry that as we become so specialized and specialized as a field that we will simply be one other data point, one other voice in a sea of of many voices. So I think we have to learn how to do a couple of things. One is to train and train and train the next generation to be able to translate our ethical commitments, values, concerns and issues into useful technologies of communication, useful policy strategies so that know it's almost like when when Harry Truman famously said, you can get an awful lot done if you don't care who takes the credit. It shouldn't be like bioethicists should claim that they solve the ethical dilemmas for for pandemic influenza or for COVID-19 or for Ebola, but that it took an entire community of thoughtful scholars and members of the public who have their own values to bring. So we need to be thinking of ways of democratizing the expertise we have and enabling and empowering a society to recognize these issues for what they are, not always tragic dilemmas. So I think we need to do some reflection as a field about how we can contribute to the policy conversation on topics like this, especially when they affect everybody, and in particular those who are most vulnerable more than others. So the pandemic is highlighting not just public health and population health issues, but all of the interconnectedness topics that we see that that affect the health and welfare of the planet. I would. I hope that we would take this seriously and that the bioethics of the future not only accommodates this as a new topic in the anthology of bioethics topics to study, but that it might force us to revisit some of those foundational questions that start in the field and recommit ourselves to what it means for a country or a world to care and worry about the health and well-being of the planet. 

Vardit Ravistky: So I wanted to share something with you and get your take on it. I was just invited to be expert witness as an ethicist, something that never happened to me before by a government that is being sued by one of its citizens regarding the public health measures that it implemented, that citizen claims that his individual rights, his liberty is being limited in an unethical and maybe even unconstitutional way. And the government is saying this is what we need to do to protect the well-being of the public, to promote the common good. Now, this is, of course, one of the key ethical tensions throughout a pandemic. We're all limited. We're all sacrificing in order to to protect others. But what are the boundaries? What are the limits? What is the scope of the sacrifice that we can be expected to make? You know, we all talked about solidarity and compassion. Sometimes there are people who do not want to express solidarity, but they are forced to do so. I'd love to hear your thoughts about how we emerge out of this, not just in terms of vaccines, but as a community after four years of being so limited and now maybe wanting to reclaim our liberties and freedoms. What do you think?

Eric Meslin: Again, just to be a little provocative, I've been thinking about this issue with respect to covid-19 on one aspect of it that is being discussed. It may not be front page above the fold, but it's it's being discussed and it is what to do if you are a country that has extra vaccine available, should you keep it in case you need it, should you donate it to another needy country? What should you do with it? Because in some ways, the concept of philanthropy in public policy is a version of what John Rawls, the philosopher, was referring to when he sort of talks about justice, as we can judge a judge, a country or a judge a society by how well it treats the least well off. And I think in some ways, the discussion about how as a country we decide to stand up for our own citizens and the citizens of the rest of the world says a lot about a country and says a lot about the people in the country. So with that little preamble, I've come to the conclusion that on this little topic of vaccine surplus, if we were to call it that, it is and I don't like this phrase,It is not unethical for a country to say we are going to look after all the people in our sovereign nation and our nation state first. They are. And I'm not using the word citizen. I'm saying the people in our country, people who are here, here legally, maybe even people who may not have legal status. But we are looking after the people within our borders first. So it is not inappropriate or unethical for a country to look after its own first long philosophic history about one's moral intuition is strongest to care for people you know well and care for deeply as opposed to those that you don't. I do care for my immediate family, my wife and daughters, more than I care for the person four blocks away from me. I don't think that makes me a bad person. That probably makes me human. But what happens after you have assured yourself and your country that everyone, and then the next words are really important, have had a chance to be vaccinated, have been vaccinated if they wish. Is it at that point that we say we've asked everybody, they've all put their hand up and signed up? Not everyone is vaccinated. We haven't achieved herd immunity. Now we're going to make the leftover available to other countries who are going to use it. That is a really tricky place for an elected government to go. I personally think that a government’s that is well-off, and Canada is one of them, does have a moral obligation, once it has satisfied its primary obligations, to do something with the extra. But I do think that countries right now are grappling with what it means to be a sovereign national state with people within its borders that the country's elected officials have promised to look after as part of their social contract with society, and that, as a member of the family of nations, has another separate but important obligation to contribute to the welfare of the planet. And I think that when this comes up in your particular expert witness scenario, or even just as we all think about this on our own, this example serves for me as a good case study for how to do that, that balancing, because it can't simply be a knee jerk reaction. We'll give away all the extra. Well, it's a very nice thing. Should we save for a rainy day? Should we keep forever or should we give away? These are profound questions that are more than just about allocation of a scarce resource. They are about one. It needs to be a country that looks after the people within its borders and looks on behalf of the world where it can help those who are in need.

Vardit Ravistky: Thank you, Eric. Great points. A lot to think about and digest. Thank you so much, Eric. It was lovely chatting with you.

Eric Meslin: My pleasure. Thanks a lot.

With Bernard Duhaime and Vardit Ravitsky 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Vardit Ravitsky: Since the beginning of the pandemic, as we were following the medical and scientific debates and discoveries as closely as possible, we became aware of another phenomenon that was somewhat unexpected for many of us: the confrontation between the powers of governments and individual rights, in the context of a public health crisis. But early on, BernardDuhaime, professor of international law at the Université du Québec à Montréal, came to the conclusion that this debate would be one of the most relevant. 

Bernard Duhaime: During the crisis, I observed human rights issues and the pandemic. I set up a small research team with volunteers and a colleague at the university. We produced a research report for a non-governmental organization, in which we essentially studied the impacts exceptional measures, especially during a pandemic like this one, can have on our rights. Another big part of the work I did during this whole pandemic was as a member of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances at the United Nations, a special procedure of the Human Rights Council. We examined the impact of government policies on the issue of enforced disappearances, adopted in the context of COVID-19. We adopted a series of very important recommendations, which were made public during the pandemic. They deal, for example, with the fact that public forces used the pandemic as an excuse to justify the capture of certain people, and then refused to reveal their whereabouts. Therefore, they were making “enforced disappearances” as defined by the international law. But we also discussed the pandemic’s impact on the work of families and human rights organizations, in their search for missing persons who are likely held by the authorities in a clandestine manner.

Vardit Ravitsky: Can you give us some examples of human rights that normally, in non-pandemic times, the people and the public take for granted, but that were almost violated or clearly limited during the implementation of health measures? Can you give us some concrete examples? 

Bernard Duhaime: On the one hand, there’s obviously the fact that this is an exceptional situation, and thus governments are adopting exceptional measures that can sometimes suspend or limit certain guarantees or rights. And in the case of our study, we were mainly interested in issues related to freedom of movement, access to information and discrimination. We were obviously interested in the impacts the pandemic may have on more marginalized groups, or those more likely to be discriminated against. For instance, we’re thinking of migrants, who had more difficulties at the borders (some were completely closed in some cases), of groups of migrants who were prevented from entering.These are always populations that are more at risk. And yet, these are people who went to the front lines in many cases, accepting precarious and difficult jobs that exposed them to the pandemic. On the issue of access to information, as you know, several governments have chosen to censure the flow of information about the virus itself, but some have also used the context of the pandemic to limit it, either directly, by suspending access to certain public information, or indirectly, by using the pandemic as a pretext to excuse significant delays in requests for accessing public information which, of course, can have serious implications for human rights and democracy. 

Vardit Ravitsky: I would like to address an issue that is very interesting for the public at this time. You mentioned the right of movement, and we know that we are very limited in this regard today. In your opinion, is the curfew a real violation of our right of movement or can it be justified under the current circumstances? 

Bernard Duhaime: Measures to limit freedom of movement such as this can be justified in certain circumstances, but they must always obey criteria of necessity and proportionality and still be reasonable. It must always be done, obviously, without any discriminatory impact. And we have observed that in the case of past pandemics, often these types of measures were adopted with some discriminatory perspectives or they had discriminatory effects on certain groups, either on the people perceived as the cause of these pandemics, or on more vulnerable populations who have less protection of their rights. Think of migrants, for example, whose rights are often subject to repression or limitations. So, obviously, it’s always a question that must be studied case-by-case, depending on each measure adopted. But freedom of movement is a right that, under certain circumstances, can be subject to limitations.

Vardit Ravitsky: We talk about the pandemic as being this great revealer, this light that is thrown on injustices, on discrimination. What discriminatory effects do you see here in Canada that are particular to vulnerable or marginalized groups or populations here? 

Bernard Duhaime: Our study was not strictly about Canada. The objective is to have a broader look and comparative approaches, but certainly there have been impacts on the right to equal access to health care. We will recall the impact that this had in the CHSLDs for this category of older people, who were more vulnerable from a health perspective. There were also several indirect impacts on the right to health, especially when we think of this whole series of treatments that have been suspended couldn’t be provided as planned, especially in the case of quite serious diseases. So, we will obviously have to see how people who were not able to fully access these right to health’s benefits will be able to do so quickly, and thus limit the possible impacts on their health status. 

Vardit Ravitsky: Everyone is now talking about vaccine passports or vaccination certificates, which will be required for international travel or even for accessing social and cultural activities at home. Does this type of passport have important implications for human rights? 

Bernard Duhaime: This is a proposal that’s being discussed here and in other parts of the world, such as Europe. But obviously, this type of information or this type of document or measure could have impacts on people’s privacy and on their freedom of movement. This measure could have discriminatory effects, and effects on specific groups of the population. You’ll understand that I always come back to the issue of population groups that are exposed to situations of vulnerability. One of the things we’ve noticed in our work at the United Nations and in our study for Amnesty International with colleagues at the university is that measures like this often have a disproportionate impact on people from humbler socio-economic backgrounds, minorities or people in migratory situations. So, we will have to study the goal of such a passport. Is it to allow essential, strictly essential travel? Or is it to be adopted in completely different circumstances? At that point, depending on the need for such measures, we will no longer be in a position to assess whether their implied restrictions on human rights are proportional to those goals. 

Vardit Ravitsky: We’re coming towards the end of our conversation and we talked a lot about the negative impacts of these restrictions on human rights. In what you’ve seen over the past year, do you think there’s an opening for positive change in our society? 

Bernard Duhaime: This is an opportunity for us to do some introspection. What are our objectives as a society? For example, in Quebec, I think that the elderly have been marginalized for some time now. And the dangers to which they’re exposed, it’s not a new phenomenon, but it will bring radical changes in public policies for populations such as this one. I think that it can be a good thing to reflect rather severely on what has worked, what hasn’t and what has been in place for some time and should’ve been modified. Let’s think about the public, we’ve had to be self-critical of the different biases we had towards certain groups, whether it was before, during and soon after the pandemic. We have to realize that there were, for example, migrant populations without permanent residency who came to the front lines to work in the health care field, and thus exposing themselves to difficult conditions. This makes us think about how we should treat people who are willing to risk their lives and their health to live in our societies. So, I think that all these are positive elements that will help us to face what’s ahead of us. Because obviously, once the pandemic is over, our work will not be over. We’re gonna have to rebuild. We’re gonna have to make up for lost time, and that too is an extremely important issue that will require some very important thinking. What will we prioritize? Why? How will we fund these programs? And so on. You know, there are several public services that have been operating in slow motion and that will have to resume their operations at full speed, and this will also have consequences on the enjoyment of our rights. 

Vardit Ravitsky: You know, in the statement we wrote as the Committee on the impacts of COVID-19, we start from the assumption that everyone is eager to get back to a normal life, and we say no, we don’t want to go back to normal. We will go towards a society that approaches its problems much more responsibly than before. What elements of life do you want to see return to normal? And for which aspects would you like to see a change, whether on a social or personal level? 

Bernard Duhaime: We’re all anxious to be able to resume a more social life that’s a little closer to normal, to see our extended families, our good friends, and to be able to enjoy, collectively, different leisure activities. It’s definitely something we look forward to. Of course, there are some things that should not go back to what used to be called “normal”, such as policies that have had negative impacts on groups more likely to experience discrimination: seniors, migrants, aboriginal peoples, women, and youth who’ve suffered significant mental health or domestic violence issues in the past year. They must not go back to what used to be called “normal”. Normal meant somewhat closing our eyes in a hypocritical way, closing our eyes to injustices for the sake of our own comfort when, socially, we should all be taking responsibility and learning from this crisis! 

Vardit Ravitsky: I strongly agree with you. What a great way to end in a positive spirit, and appreciate what we always had before and what we hope to have back soon. Thank you so much, Bernard, for such a fascinating and informative conversation. 

Bernard Duhaime: Thank you, Vardit, and thank you for all the work you’ve done with us during this difficult time. See you soon. 

Vardit Ravitsky: See you soon. This concludes this episode of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Committee. We would like to extend a special thank you to McGill University and the Université de Montréal for allowing us to have this important discussion. Follow the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to get updates from our community and, of course, to subscribe to the podcast. Until next time! 

With Pascale Fournier and Vardit Ravitsky

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Vardit Ravitsky: Not everyone was able to react quickly at the onset of the pandemic, but Pascale Fournier, President and CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, saw the need to reflect on the impacts of the pandemic and the opportunities that lies within the after-pandemic. 

Pascale Fournier: Like all organizations, we were caught off guard by this pandemic. And in our new strategic plan, democratizing knowledge is really at the heart of our approach. So how can some of the brightest Scholars in the country and in the world become publicly engaged educators who give back to Canadians? Early on, we reviewed both active members of our community, as well as alumni, to identify the kind of public educators that we needed to help us reflect on this pandemic, understand it better, see what was previously invisible, and to guide us through this crisis.  

Vardit Ravitsky: I'm not originally from Canada. I came from elsewhere and I'm very aware of how the world sees Canada, as being a society based on justice, equity, respect of human rights and in which the population shows great solidarity. And when the pandemic started, I said to myself, well, here in Canada, it's going to be better than other places, because we already have these core values of solidarity and equity. And then we saw what happened to the elderly and to marginalized groups. I was really surprised and a little disappointed. I wanted to ask you this : was it a surprise for you?  

Pascale Fournier: It’s probably an occupational bias on my part, since I was a commissioner of the Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission for three years, prior to the position I hold now. But I'm very familiar with the theoretical state of the law, and I think this pandemic has revealed to us everything we don't see behind the scenes. So we have a legal system, a system of charters, whether it's the Quebec Charter or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, where rights seem to be taken for granted. The rights do exist. But what this pandemic reveals to us, in fact, is that for the implementation of these rights-if we think, for example, of the elderly and also of the entire hospital system - do we have the necessary workforce, which is well paid, and sufficiently staffed? Are the conditions of employment adequate? It really shows us a whole tragedy that exists behind the scenes. We may have rights that exist in the abstract, that are enumerated in a charter. But when we want to implement those rights, do we really have the necessary conditions? This pandemic has revealed a major gap in our social fabric, in our various institutions. So I'm talking a lot about the hospital environment, but I'm also talking about the legal environment, which I'm very familiar with. Also, for parts of the population that are already marginalized - that is to say that for these people, the right to equality and the right to live without discrimination exists in theory - you find yourself in a pandemic situation, where the vulnerability prior to the crisis is highlighted. One really becomes aware of the enormous gap between the law in theory and the law in practice.  

Vardit Ravitsky: Many of the issues you described may be the result of a lack of investment, or priorities that were not well established before the pandemic. In order to build this better society that we dream of, how can we prioritize when investing our resources? Everywhere, we feel the need to rebuild and reconstruct. How can we prioritize the huge investments we will have to make in the years to come?  

Pascale Fournier: I don't think we will be able to get out of this pandemic crisis if we don't join an unavoidable and irrevocable movement to democratize knowledge. I think we have to mention the climate of misinformation in which we live and people's distrust of science and scientists, which was really prevalent before the pandemic but has reached disturbing proportions in 2020. It needs to be acknowledged, and it's all still going on. So we know, in academia, you can easily be a recognized researcher who publishes extraordinary scientific papers in your field and who's kind of in his or her own bubble... I believe that the great contemporary challenge awaiting intellectuals and researchers is to give back to the public, to be able to make science accessible, to communicate it in a sufficiently simple way while preserving the complexity that is at the heart of the scientific process. So, it is important to inform the public and to fuel these informed discussions around major social issues. In the pandemic, there's all this scientific talk about "Get your vaccine, be informed, wash your hands, etc.," but there's also this talk about "How can we visualize this inequality and address it?" There are different ways to support this reconstruction to be more inclusive, more just, more equitable, and we're going to have to be creative. We're going to have to be original in our way of thinking, of suggesting solutions, of educating. If we think about racialized communities that distrust, for example, a system where racial profiling exists. How do we build trust if that marginalization exists and is also fueled by a climate of mistrust? How do we rebuild better? I think creativity and originality will be needed to do things differently, and then to create that inclusive space and value all members of society, in a spirit of collaboration, humanism and compassion. 

Vardit Ravitsky: All the issues you mentioned about people living in tighter conditions, having less access to resources, perhaps not even to the internet ... When it comes to what children have experienced, the impact of the pandemic on women's productivity and on their ability to work, those issues may not be as visible as the ones impacting the elderly, but they are going to have a long-lasting effect on children, women and families.  

Pascale Fournier: I think it needs to be said, and statistics also point to the fact that women bear a lot of the burden with childcare. And recent university studies show that women's productivity in research has been more affected than it has been for men. The pandemic has also allowed us to reflect on our work environment, how we might have overvalued the importance in-person work. I certainly value teamwork and seeing each other, I value sharing meals, ideas, etc. But this whole crisis also allows us to realize that we can build a more inclusive workplace, that teleworking - maybe not every day, but more regular teleworking - may be a way to meet the needs of some women and men. It allows for greater proximity to the children. Can we imagine a different work environment than the one that existed before the pandemic? Can we imagine, for example, employees being in the office half the time and at home the other half, and communication taking place virtually? After more than a year, I can hardly imagine that employees from organizations everywhere will suddenly go back to the office every day. It's going to have to be a gradual process, a progression with trial and error. So it's going to change forever, I think. Everyone's mental health is still affected. We have to find ways to deal with that now, not when it's too late and someone has already reached a crisis state. And for children, it's important to create human relationships and for them to learn through contact and sharing with other children. Being away for a long time, having to always wear masks, even inside a gym for physical education - and all of this is necessary, I'm all for these health measures, of course - but it still has an impact, I think, on their mental health, on their sadness, on the fact that it's a long crisis. When you've been alive for 7 years and you’ve lived through a pandemic for more than a year... It's very long, and we have to be attentive children’s needs. They don't have the same way as adults have of expressing their needs, their crises and the difficulties they face. So we have to be attentive to symptoms that are less direct, but that are just as important. And we have to accompany them through this difficult period.  

Vardit Ravitsky: I really like the emphasis you put on the positive, that is to say on what we've learned through the pandemic, whether it's the possibility of teleworking more, or the resilience in children.  

Pascale Fournier: I have a lot of hope that, through the post-pandemic period, we will be able to build back on a better foundation, one that's more inclusive and more just. It allows us to dream of a better society, and also create this spirit of solidarity in which members of society can work together and see how we can improve the hospital and justice systems, and the manner in which the State intervenes in situations of violence, for instance, in situations of systemic racism. How can we better accompany vulnerable populations to ensure that their rights and freedoms are not abstract rights, but rather that in their implementation, they are made accessible? I think it is important to mention that we all have a role to play. That's the interconnectedness of this pandemic. It made us realize that we all have that role to play, a responsibility to assume. So let me make this appeal: how can we build back a better world together? I am very optimistic about the future.  

Vardit Ravitsky: I can't wait for us to get to the post-pandemic stage so that we can rebuild a better society, inspired by our Declaration. And thank you very much, Pascale, for this very pleasant and enlightening exchange.  

Pascale Fournier: I thank you, Vardit. And thank you for your remarkable leadership, which has been praised by all during this pandemic. So, thank you for giving us the gift of this privileged guidance, whether it was in the sixteen opinion pieces that were published in the Toronto Star and La Presse, or in our Declaration on ethical considerations and social implications. 

Vardit Ravitsky: Thank you for the opportunity.