The Globe and Mail - 08.04.2020

A8 | NEWS OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | WEDNESDAY,APRIL8,

Americans and Canadians alike are used
to seeing gauzy, pastel-coloured pitches
for medicines, therapies and treatments
on cable television. They’re less accus-
tomed to hearing them delivered live
from the White House briefing room.
At times, U.S. President Donald
Trump’s nightly news conferences have
come to resemble infomercials as the
country’s pitchman-in-chief promotes
hydroxychloroquine – an anti-malarial
drug more commonly prescribed for dis-
eases such as lupus and rheumatoid ar-
thritis that the President seems con-
vinced carries promise for COVID-19 pa-
tients.
Mr. Trump said earlier this week that
the U.S. has stockpiled 29 million hy-
droxychloroquine tablets – a strategy
based on evidence that doctors, health-
care professionals,governorsand infec-
tious-disease experts across the country
have described as inconclusive at best
and downright dangerous at worst.
“What do I know? I’m not a doctor.
But I have common sense,” the Presi-
dent said. “What do you have to lose?”
Quite a bit, if your quality of life de-
pends on a drug that’s becoming scarcer
by the day.
“It’s disheartening,” said Florence
Tew, a Toronto resident who has been
taking the medication for the past 12

years as part of a cocktail of drugs to help

manage the symptoms of lupus, which

can include debilitating joint pain, rash

and kidney problems.

As the hype over hydroxychloroquine

has ramped up in recent weeks, Ms. Tew

described hearing stories online from

other lupus patients being warned by

their pharmacies that they wouldn’t be

able to refill prescriptions – and in one

case, being told by a doctor’s office that

they would be denied the drug entirely.

“That’s when I started to really panic,”

she said. “You’ve gotten to a point where

you’re taking this medication and you

just – you feel good, you’re able to work,

you’re able to function and then some-

thing throws a wrench into it.”

Ms. Tew said she currently gets a

monthly supply of her medication from

PocketPills, a B.C.-based pharmacy ser-

vice that fills, delivers and manages pre-

scriptions online – and that’s beginning

to notice warning signs about the drug’s

availability.

Demand for the drug spiked in North

America in the early days of the out-

break, not long after the President began

singing its praises, said A.J. Bassi, the

company’s director of pharmacy servic-

es. Oversight bodies like the Ontario

Medical Association and the Registered

Nurses of Ontario had to issue notices to

discourage doctors from stockpiling it.

Since then, although manufacturers

insist that the supply of the drug in Can-

ada is currently at typical, pre-pandemic

levels, vendors are using historical pur-

chase trends to restrict pharmacies to a

30-day limit on how much they can pur-

chase, he said.

THECANADIANPRESS

Trump’spitchforuntested

viruscurehassideeffects

Increaseddemandfor

hydroxychloroquine

jeopardizessupplyfor

lupus,arthritispatients

JAMESMCCARTENWASHINGTON

N

ever has a government bent so

many times so quickly on such

a big program. And thank good-

ness.

Two weeks ago, when a skeleton staff

of MPs in the House of Commons met to

pass the Liberalgovernment’s first CO-

VID-19 emergency-response bill, both

the Conservatives and the NDP howled

that it lacked a big wage subsidy to help

companies, at least small businesses,

keep workers on.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flip-

flopped. Finance Minister Bill Morneau

announced a 75-per-cent wage subsidy

for all companies that had taken a 30-

per-cent hit to their bottom line. And

then companies, and business associ-

ations such as the Canadian Federation

of Independent Business, complained

that the finicky rules would make the

program unusable for too many.

On Tuesday, thegovernment circulat-

ed a new draft bill that sanded off a lot of

those sharp corners. The results, in the

eyes of Dan Kelly, the president of the

CFIB, are big changes.

“It certainly doesn’t address all of the

problems,” he said in an interview. “But

it does expand access to tens of thou-

sands of businesses.”

So it’s imperfect, but way better.

Again. Kudos are dueto the government

for flipping or flopping. Maybe we can

work up a new slogan for crisis policy:

better government through recognizing

mistakes.

Opposition parties can claim they

pushed the idea first. They deserve cred-

it.

When MPs met to pass the first CO-

VID-19 emergency bill on March 24, Con-

servative Leader Andrew Scheer’s first

comment in the House of Commons was

to tell Mr. Morneau that his proposed 10-

per-cent wage subsidy was not enough

to help small businesses. Twenty min-

utes later, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh

was arguing it should be a 75-per-cent

wage subsidy.

Maybe Mr.

Trudeau and Mr.

Morneau didn’t

change their

minds simply

because the op-

position asked.

It might have

something to do

with the eco-

nomic freeze

caused by coro-

navirus clo-

sures, the com-

plaints of com-

panies and the

intense lobby-

ing by business organizations. But it was

certainly easier for the Liberals to veer to

do something that opponents on both

the left and right had pushed them to do.

And then opposition MPs such as

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative fi-

nance critic, quickly started complaining

about the time it will take for the money

to flow, and the persnickety rules. Good.

Mr. Kelly and his organization were giv-

ing the Finance Department an earful,

too.

For one thing, small businesses were

complaining the rules were too rigid.

They were expected to declare whether

their revenues in March were 30-per-

cent less than last March, but businesses

had a variety of complaints. The rules

didn’t work for companies that were new

or growing. Some only started to see

business slide at the end of March. Paper

revenues didn’t match the cash crunch.

The draft bill made three big changes,

in Mr. Kelly’s view. First, it allowed com-

panies to compare their revenues now to

January and February of this year, so new

or growing companies wouldn’t lose out.

Second, it allowed companies to qualify

even if they saw revenues decline by only

15 per cent in the first period, from March

15 to April 11. And third, it allowed people

to use cash accounting – making it more

accessible to companies that had sent

out a lot of invoices in March but hadn’t

been paid by customers in a cash crunch.

Mr. Kelly said he still expects to hear

from anxious business owners who will

be left out – but that will be true under

any program, and there have been sub-

stantial improvements.

Willingness to bend to critics isn’t usu-

ally a government virtue. Opposition

politicians have struck a reasonably co-

operative tone, too. Mr. Scheer and Mr.

Poilievre have both offered credit to the

government for taking the right general

direction – getting cash out – while fault-

ing it for specifics. NDP House Leader Pe-

ter Julian said in an interview that he

gives thegovernment a lot of credit for

listening to his party’s suggestions.

The goodwill has limits and shows

signs of fraying. Negotiations between

Liberals and Conservatives over the bill

were moving slowly Tuesday – and there

isn’t a lot of time to spare. Opposition

parties won’t get thanks for moving

slowly. But if there is one thing the gov-

ernment should be learning about draft-

ing crisis policy, it's that an eraser is just

as useful as a pencil.

Governmentbends

tocriticsonwage

subsidies–and

they’rerightto

CAMPBELL

CLARK

OPINION

Kudosaredueto

thegovernment

forflippingor

flopping.Maybe

wecanworkup

anewslogan

forcrisispolicy:

better

government

through

recognizing

mistakes.

They cry, she said, because they are
afraid of catching the coronavirus, and
afraid of what it might do to the vulner-
able people they care for. They also cry
because they are exhausted from carry-
ing a workload that was heavy even be-
fore the pandemic began, resulting in
high turnover and chronic staff shortag-
es.
Personal support workers, or health-
care aides, as they are known in some
parts of Canada, make up about 85 per
cent of the staff in long-term care
homes, according to Ms. Ferrier, who is
also the president of the Ontario Person-
al Support Workers Association.
At least 22 of Ms. Piironen’s col-
leagues at Anson Place, in the town of
Hagersville, Ont., had tested positive for
the coronavirus as of Monday, according
to the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit.
Ms. Piironnen, who has been off sick
since March 22, is not among them. She
tested negative.
As the virus spread through the
home, Ms. Piironen said she and her fel-
low PSWs were kept in the dark by man-
agement and their “registered” superi-
ors, the registered nurses and registered
practical nurses who are licensed and
governed by professional colleges.
PSWs, by contrast, are unregulated.
“Nurses have [the Ontario Nurses’ Asso-
ciation], and RPNs have their licence,
and people to back them up,” Ms. Piiro-
nen said.
Lisa Roth, executive director of An-
son Place, did not address specific ques-
tions about Ms. Piironen’s concerns, but
she said in a statement that the home is
“working with Public Health and the
Ministry of Health to ensure all neces-
sary steps are being taken to manage the
outbreak.”
It’s difficult to say how many of Cana-
da’s approximately 275,000 PSWs have

contracted COVID-19, but the union

SEIU Healthcare is aware of at least 403

members in isolation in Ontario, 99 of

whom had tested positive as of Monday.

The union represents about 25,

workers in long-term care, most of them

PSWs.

Sharleen Stewart, president of SEIU

Healthcare, said the precarious nature

of personal-support work has contribut-

ed to the spread of the coronavirus in

Ontario, where thegovernment has di-

rected homes to work with employees to

limit the number of places they work,

but has not banned working at multiple

sites.

In B.C., the Provincial Health Officer

has taken control of staff-

ing at long-term care

homes in the Vancouver

Area, giving workers full-

time hours and forbidding

work at more than one lo-

cation.

“In hindsight, when this

is all evaluated, this was

spread by exactly that –

people working in multi-

ple places,” Ms. Stewart

said. “Seniors don’t get out

of their homes very often.

The virus was brought in.”

She and other union leaders have al-

so been ringing alarm bells about a lack

of personal protective equipment for

long-term care workers, including PSWs.

Personal support worker Darcia Hall

said it’s “very common” for workers in

her field to hold two or three jobs to

make ends meet.

Until the pandemic forced her to

choose, Ms. Hall, a 50-year-old single

mother of four, worked full-time at a

nursing home and a retirement home in

Pickering, Ont., putting in a total of 80

hours a week.

She earned about $17 an hour at the

retirement home and a little over $21 an

hour at the nursing home, where she de-

cided to keep working after the corpo-

rate operators asked staff to pick one lo-

cation.

Some regular workers have left as a

result, leaving the facility short-staffed

even without a coronavirus outbreak.

“We’re constantly working short,” Ms.

Hall said.

Jeff Begley, president of FSSS-CSN, a

Quebec trade union representing 43,

personal support workers, said Quebec

employees in long-term care centres

have been dealing for years with a heavy

workload.

“This coronavirus probably arrived at

the worst possible moment,” Mr. Begley

said.

Some of the long-term

care centres that are now

the sites of significant local

outbreaks were already in

the news because of their

inadequate staffing.

At the Sainte-Dorothée

long-term care centre in

Laval, relatives com-

plained two years ago that

they had found loved ones

with mouldy food on their

hands, or who had been

left on the ground after

they fell.

Katie Scott, a PSW in Guelph, pointed

out that if there were more full-time po-

sitions with benefits there wouldn’t be

such a shortage of qualified staff at

homes.

“It is definitely a wake-up call,” said

Ms. Scott, adding that that there is no

real oversight of who can do the work of

a PSW and what credentials they need to

have.

“The government really needs to step

in.”

WithreportsfromTuThanhHa

andJamesKeller

EightresidentsofAnsonPlaceCareCentre,along-termcarehomeinHagersville,Ont.,havediedofthenovelcoronavirus.
Severaldozenmore,alongwithatleast22employees,arenowinfectedwiththevirus.GLENNLOWSOM/THEGLOBEANDMAIL

Workers:PSWssayworkloadscontributedtovirus’sspread

FROMA

Inhindsight,when

thisisallevaluated,

thiswasspreadby

exactlythat–

peopleworkingin

multipleplaces.

SHARLEENSTEWART

PRESIDENT,

SEIUHEALTHCARE

TR4M-A;ESWATCHDOG

O9ERSEEINGEDERAL

RES-ONSETO-ANDEMIC

WASHINGTONU.S.PresidentDonald

Trumpremovedtheinspector-general

whowastooverseethegovernment’s

US$2.3-trillioncoronavirusresponse,

thespokeswomanfortheinspector-

general’sofficesaidonTuesday,fuell-

ingconcernsinCongressabouthowhis

administrationwouldmanagethe

package.

ItwastheRepublicanPresident’s

mostrecentmanoeuvretoseizecontrol

overhisadministration’shandlingofthe

coronavirusepidemicandattackin-

spectors-general,thefederalwatchdogs

responsibleforsafeguardingagencies

againstwaste,fraudandabuse.

GlennFine,actinginspector-general

fortheDepartmentofDefence,was

namedlastweektochairacommittee

actingasasortofuber-watchdogover

theresponse,includinghealthpolicy

andthemassiveeconomicreliefpack-

age,thelargestinU.S.history.

Mr.Trumphassincedesignatedthe

EnvironmentalProtectionAgency’s

inspector-generaltobethenewacting

Pentagoninspector-general,aspo-

keswomansaid.

Mr.Fine,whonamed11otherIGsto

thecommitteelastweek,isnolonger

onthewatchdogcommittee.REUTERS