November 02, 2009

It's Monday, November 2nd.

Provincial health officials across the country have received only a fraction of the doses of H1N1 vaccine they had been expecting from the federal government.
Currently, apparently it's taking a little longer than anticipated to put tiny

Conservative Party logos on all those needles.

This is The Current.

H1N1 - Stress

There are reports this morning that a few private clinics across the country jumped the queue getting the H1N1 vaccine for their paying patients even as provinces are trying to limit the first shots to those at risk. They went as far as to call out the police in parts of Prince Edward Island last week - all in an effort to enforce the rule that only those at risk could get the first H1N1 shots.

Across the country we are heading into another week of potentially long lineups, creating anxiety and frustration even as health officials have warned that a nationwide shortage of the vaccine will delay original delivery plans for most provinces. Those lineups have already begun in some parts of this city this morning and healthcare workers who are trying to deliver the vaccine are feeling their share of stress too. After all, they're on the receiving end of everyone else's fear and in some cases - outrage. And that comes on top of extra-busy waiting rooms, and the ever-present possibility of being infected themselves.

We heard from Alan Drummond, an Emergency Room Doctor in Perth, Ontario ...Tanya Penny, a nurse in Windsor, Nova Scotia ... Gerald Evans, a doctor in Kingston, Ontario and Bluma Levine - a public health nurse in Winnipeg.

Robert Maunder is a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He wanted to help health care workers cope with the stress of a flu pandemic. So he went back and looked at the SARS crisis from six years ago. He found that health care workers at that time felt more stress than usual and that the effects of that stress could have long-lasting implications. So he developed a program to help health care workers stay calm and carry on during the H1N1 pandemic. Robert Maunder was in Toronto.

The Salish Sea Documentary

Unless you live on the West Coast, you have probably never heard of the Salish Sea. But it's very possible that you'll soon be finding that name on every new map of Canada. Unofficially, the Salish Sea refers to the waters between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island ...stretching down to Seattle that included the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca as well as Puget Sound.

The British Columbia office of the Geographic Names Board of Canada has already endorsed the name - on the condition that it's also endorsed by both the State of Washington and the US federal government. On Friday afternoon, the first hurdle was cleared when the State of Washington approved the name.

Now it's up to the US government to make it official. That decision will be made later this year. If the new name does get full approval, those old names will remain. The Salish Sea would be a collective name ... in the same way that The Great Lakes refers to five separate bodies of water.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem like a big deal. It's a new name and it's not taking away any old ones. But as freelance documentary producer Paolo Pietropaolo discovered, there's a lot of power in a name. His documentary is called, The Sound and The Sea.

Nortel - Long-Term Disability

When Josee Marin became too sick to work, a lot of things in her life changed.
Josee Marin worked in a lab at Nortel, a job she loved. After multiple diagnoses, she ended up on long-term disability. It was less than her salary, but enough to get by. But now, with Nortel in bankruptcy proceedings, she and about 400 other Nortel workers stand to lose those payments entirely.

It's estimated that more than a million other Canadians have benefit plans that would be in jeapordy - in the event their employer went bankrupt. And this morning, as part of our on-going series Work In Progress, we looked at the fine print on some of those plans and asked if there's anything that can or should be done about it.

Sue Kennedy has been appointed by the court to represent the group of Nortel employees on long-term disability. She is also a Nortel employee on long-term disability and she was in Ottawa.

Nortel - Benefit Plans

Diane Urquhart is an independent financial analyst. She is volunteering to help the group of Nortel employees on Long-Term Disability. But she also has concerns for other Canadians whose benefit plans could be in jeopardy. Diane Urquhart was iin Toronto.

We will try this week to have someone responsible for these laws speak to us.

Last Word - Seasame Street

We ended the program today with a little vintage Sesame Street. The show will celebrate its 40th anniversary next week. And in the lead-up to it, you can vote for your favourite Sesame Street segment. You can vote online at sesamestreet.org. And you can sift through a whole bunch of skits from years gone by ... like this one ... in which CNN's Anderson Cooper takes a stab at a new news environment by filling in for Oscar The Grouch on GNN -- that's the Garbage News Network.