Is thinking about pain making your pain worse?

0:00Good afternoon and thank you for being with us on this Thursday, September 3rd. Every time it seems we turn around, something else rather bizarre is happening when it comes to BC politics, although not only in BC, a very strange news conference was held in Ontario as well. And then other parties in BC, lawsuits are being filed. We're now at nine MLAs that have walked away from the BC Conservative Party. Could there be more on the run? Who knows? We're going to talk more about this. But just before we get to my first guest, some of the voices of those who have left the BC Conservative Party. We cannot win underneath Carrie Lynn Finley. We just can't. Like you watch Mark my words, she is going to get slaughtered in this bioelectron, I believe, based on the responses that I am getting from the events that I've been to since I since I left. I knew that I could not do that. I could not look at British Columbian in the face

1:06and ask them to either give their hard earned money or they're vote to her. Some of the questionable people that the leader brought in around her certainly made me uncomfortable. And some of their values certainly didn't align with my own. I think we have intention to create something really new and exciting. And Peter and I are the start of it. I said last week that there was others in caucus that may or may not choose to follow the same path. It's a very personal choice. And you know, I'm hearing and listening from caucus members and some may still come some may not. There may even be others that leave our caucus. I don't know. But if they're leaving, that means they do not have a vision for prosperity and hope that we're presenting for all British Columbians. It means somewhere along the way they've decided that they know better than us where we should be going. All right, just some of the voices. So as

2:10you know, nine MLAs have stepped away. The voices you heard there were Bruce Bandman, Donnacle Wilson, Scott McKinnis, Ian Payton, Peter Millibar, and that last voice, BC Conservative leader, Carrie Lynn Finley. Well, joining me now to talk about what is happening in this political party is Trevor Bolin, a former BC Conservative leader, currently a city council in Fort St John Trevor. Thank you for coming back on the show. Hey, Jill. Thanks for having me back. Well, you are looking at this again through the lens of being a former BC Conservative leader. What do you make of what's happening? It's kind of like you started with the intro where, you know, I was kind of I was updating our community daily. And as we continue to see more MLAs leave and more executive members leave, that daily has turned to weekly. And I'm almost scared to check the news daily with with what's actually happening to the party right now. What does it say with the these MLAs leaving? They many have been very clear. We heard some of

3:10the reasons right there why they are going up some others saying even though maybe they didn't support Carrie Lynn Finley for a leader, they were still willing to give it a shot to and see what was going to happen to the party. Is this is this a case of of people leaving because of their principles? Or do you think this is sour grapes? I think it could be a little bit of both. I think sometimes what starts is sour grapes just becomes compounded with with issues inside the party. I mean, I don't blame the MLAs when when culture changes a person needs to look and see if they still align with with where the party's moving or you know, if it was a corporation where the business is moving to it's really no different in that aspect. But at the end of the day, Carrie Lynn needs to get on this. She needs to fix it. She needs to be highly focused on a bi-election because all eyes in British Columbia are going to be on this bi-election and in the meantime, I think losing any more MLAs or any more frustration in the party is just going to lead to not a not a positive outcome of this bi-election. I guess I would say.

4:15How important is it to do you think that Carrie Lynn Finley wins that bi-election? Oh, this. I think all bets are on the bi-election right now. I don't even think between, you know, not even as far as just the members go or the existing or remaining caucus or MLAs. But you know that this is the election that that EBS, you know, Premier EBS, after this to win it, it is going to be everything and anything he's got to put into this. We see a center to BC candidate. If we look back to the 2020 election, Jill, you know, the the conservative is at a contender, the BC United Edict contender. And, you know, ultimately the the NDP won that in that election. And, you know, when we see the BC conservative stand alone, you know, we see we see that go to a conservative win. So there's so much riding on this bi-election for for Carrie Lynn, for the conservatives, for the NDP, for the for the center BC. This is this is the bi-election that will probably have all bi-elections this year. I think people tend to agree with that. But Trevor, how can the

5:15public have faith in this party? And even if say you were going to vote BC conservative, now you're looking at this, nine MLAs have left. We don't know if any others are going to exit as well. We know the chief of staff has stepped down. He put out a pretty scathing letter about those calling the MLAs who have stepped away the enemies of democracy. How can a voter do you think have confidence that voting for the BC conservative party? There's even going to be a viable party in the future. That's a great question Jill. I mean, at the end of the day, as we know, leaders come and go, MLAs come and go. The members that make the party and the party itself is what what last the test of time that the conservative party of British Columbia under many different names is the oldest party in the province. They are still the ones that are there remaining or still representing their writings. They're still bringing those issues forward to the caucus and to the leader itself. So, you know what I mean? Honestly, I think that it's going to come down to whether you support the

6:19party, whether you believe in the platform of the conservative party. Carrie Lynn is vying for a seat. She needs a seat. I think this is the one opportunity that those longtime members have that they can say, okay, let's put our support behind Carrie Lynn and let's see what she can actually do without you know, without the fallout that's already happened. It's time to rebuild. I'm hoping Carrie Lynn is listening to the members. I'm hoping she's listening to that remaining MLAs and all the writings that are represented by the conservatives in British Columbia. And I'm really hoping to see some positive change going forward. Some of those who left said they were willing to give this a shot thinking, okay, new leader, there are going to be some growing pains, yes, it's a big shift, but in say three months or so, there would be a chance to be back on track. And for the party to go is I guess a sports term to gel and to get back and to figure out how everybody works together. Some of them said things fell apart much faster than they anticipated. A caucus meeting was cancelled.

7:20Carrie Lynn finally hired some people that there were some concerns from some of the MLAs. What about that behavior? The hiring and the canceling of a caucus meeting that many of these MLAs were looking forward to had booked flights, had booked hotels for. I think that's fair. I think that is unfortunate that she did do that. You know, when she had cancelled the last caucus meeting and the reason was because of the bi-election. I think that would be the reason to have a caucus meeting aside from the party and the condition that it's in. So again, they said they'd give her some time. It's three months enough. I mean, Carrie Lynn's been out of politics for a bit. She was a single riding MP prior to this. It is going to take her a little bit of time. And I think it's unfortunate that we're in the position we're in, but we have to focus on what matters. And if you're conservative or if you're even centered or riding this province, what matters is ensuring that the NDP has, if not a viable opposition, but they literally have a viable component in the next

8:21general election, which in my opinion, we'll see next year. And when you look at that landscape, though, we have Ian Payton and Peter Milibar saying they're looking at starting up a new party. We have Mike Bernier with Center BC. Doesn't that kind of hand a big gift to the NDP? If now we have all these different parties, it's going to take a while for any of them to get traction. Isn't that a gift for the new Democrats? Well, it's a huge gift. And I can tell you, there's probably not a new Democrat in British Columbia right now that's not got a grin on their face and rubbing their hands together. And that's how politics work. And I mean, we've seen this happen before. We've seen, you know, when the conservatives ran in the snap election in 2022 or 2020 when I was a leader, you know, there was seats lost from the BC United. We've seen the same thing happen in the election part of that. And we're going to see it again going forward. So, you know, when there's, when there's too many parties, you know, especially on the center of right, because that is such a large tent when

9:22you've got, you know, kind of that far spectrum on the right all the way to the center that are all, you know, all have that fiscal conservativeness, but maybe don't lie with those platforms or align to the far right social side, it splits the vote in the NDP wins. And that is what we will see in next year's election if we don't fix this. The premier was asked the other day a couple of days ago. He was asked for a yes or no answer, but as you well know, that rarely happens even when you when you offer a sitting premier or politician, yes or no, he was asked, yes or no, are you, could you call a snap fall election? He didn't give the yes or no. In fact, he didn't really answer it to the point the headline out of that became, David E.B. will not rule out calling a snap election in the fall. What do you think? Is this something, I mean, if he looks at the fractures, he looks at where the BC Conservatives are now, is that something you think British Columbians should expect that that could happen? Well, you know, we, I mean, the same thing kind of happened with with John, but you know, when he was the premier, John Horgan is the premier in 2020,

10:24and he was asked earlier in the year if, if, you know, a snap election was on the on the table and, you know, it's the same thing that the same answer comes out as is I'm not going to rule anything out. I think I think it would be a mistake to do it. This fall British Columbians are going to go to the polls for the municipal elections. That is, that is, you know, to me, the highest and most valuable former democracy in our province because it's literally the politicians and the the bylaw and policy changes that you can talk to in the grocery store and run into them on the streets of your of your community. If premier E.B. was, was that interested in the snap election, I feel that he should hold off until the spring and I hope he wouldn't in light of how importantly municipal election is this coming up October 17th. All right. Trevor, just before I let you go, you are a former BC conservative leader. If she came asking, what advice would you give for Carolyn Finley? You know what? Honestly, I, my advice to Carolyn would be to start listening to understand the needs and the concerns of her, of her caucus, of her writings, of the residents of British Columbia. I would focus on what is affecting British Columbians in their day to day lives.

11:28I would stay out of the federal side of the conservative, almost platforms, if you will. You know, we got to bring this back home. We got to bring it to BC. She's got to get her caucus on her side. She's got to get her MLA's on her side. And she has to prove to British Columbians that she is ready, able and willing to lead this party into the future and not in just this by election. So, you know, I really hope that that Carolyn can turn this around. There's, there's so many people have dedicated so much time of their lives to this party over the last how many years and, and volunteers and, you know, we're not ready to say goodbye. We're just ready to say, let us help you get to where you need to be. All right, Trevor Bowlin, we will leave it there for today. Thank you, as always, for coming on the show. Thanks so much. You'll have a great day. Lisa, because of your outstanding score on yesterday's big test, you're being immediately moved up to the third grade. I guess that's it is from the Simpsons and that is because

12:30school is just around the corner, hard to believe. Here we are. It is already September 3rd, but that means the report card on British Columbia's elementary schools, 2026, has been released. This is a yearly ranking. It is put out by the Fraser Institute and it is something a lot of parents look at. It always generates a lot of debate, but it is something that gets a lot of attention as far as schools, how schools have improved or perhaps not and which schools are outperforming others. It's based on specific testing and joining me to talk more about how they come up with these rankings is Paige McPherson, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. Paige, thank you for being with us. It's my pleasure, thank you for having me. School is starting up in just a few days and this is the report card on elementary schools in BC. Before we get into some of the specifics of the schools and where the schools are on the list, can you remind us again how does the Fraser

13:31Institute take the information or what information does it use to rank these schools? For sure. This is using eight academic indicators. We compile the data from the province using primarily foundation skills assessment, so the province-wide assessment scores. We look at grade 4, literacy and numeracy, grade 7, literacy and numeracy, and then we look at the differences of the gap between male and female students on grade 7, literacy and numeracy, the percentage of tests written in the school and then how many of those tests are perceived to be based on the past five years, judged to be performance above or below the expectations. We put all of that together, compile it and we put it into a ranking. We also do a measure of the percentage of English language learners, French immersion students, and students with special needs so that parents can compare their school to a school of a similar profile. When you talk about the FSA tests,

14:35do enough students complete the FSAs to give a clear picture of how the schools are doing? I think so. I mean, this ranking includes 1,032 public and independent elementary schools in the province, so it does give quite a lot of schools to look at. It's not every single elementary school in the province, but it's a fair bit of them. The exclusion of a school from the report card should in no way be construed as a judgment of the school's effectiveness. There could not have been enough kids at each level writing the FSA at your child's school because it might be a small school or those could be small grades, so that's something that parents should take into consideration. Basically, just if we didn't have a large enough set of data for that school, they would be excluded from the report card, but we do have enough data certainly to work with to give us a good picture here. So what are some of the standouts then? Like you said, more than 1,000 public and independent elementary schools are on this list based on these indicators. What are some of the

15:35key findings or standouts that you're looking at? So for me, when I was looking at the results of this year's report card, which of course we published because we want to give parents an easily accessible tool, giving them access to the information in an easily displayed way. They really don't have access to this anywhere else. And for me, there's sort of two takeaways. One is that improvement is possible, regardless of the type of school. We do have several schools looking at the five-year trend indicator on our report cards that have improved, even though they face, you know, what might be seen as a challenge, for example, having a high proportion of special needs students. I'll give you an example. So Peterson Road Elementary, which is a public elementary school in Langley, is one of the fastest improving schools in the province, despite 16.8% of the school students having special needs. I like to see that improvement is possible, regardless of the type of school that it is. The other thing is that I know that a lot of eyes gravitate towards, okay, what are the top schools? We did see 28 schools in the province tied for first place,

16:40and amongst those schools, a bunch of different types of schools. So we saw public schools, Catholic schools, Sikh schools, Christian schools, French school, Montessori school. So a lot of different types of schools represented at the top. Because I know that there is often some controversy, or people will look at these rankings and look at the private schools or schools that do cost a lot of money for students to attend, and that those schools tend to do better. What do you say to that idea that this kind of pits independent or private schools against public? I don't think that's an accurate representation of what's going on. I don't think that there is this kind of false dichotomy that one is necessarily better than the other. It's really just important as a parent to be empowered with this kind of information so that you can choose the school that best fits your child. So this ranking, the report card, is one of many tools in a parents toolbox. So when parents call us or email us, which they do all the time, asking about

17:42more information about the rankings, we'll say, look at the report card, look at our compare school rankings website, see the schools in your area where your child might be a good fit, but also call the administrators or the principals of the school. Talk to other parents at the school. See what kind of programming the schools offer. As I said, there's lots of different types of schools at the top. There's lots of different types of schools throughout the ranking. And if your child school did not perform so well in the ranking, or maybe the school that your child, you might intend for them to go to, you can look at schools of a similar profile and say, okay, does this have a high proportion of kids who are just learning English, does this have a high proportion of special needs? Okay, well, this other school is comparable in that kind of a profile. Why is my child school not improving the way that this other school is? Because yes, where the school, you know, fits on the ranking might be an important thing for some parents, but seeing improvement might be just as important or more to other parents. Is it important as well for parents to remember

18:46these rankings are based on the FSAs? Like you said, it's looking at math, it's looking at reading, it's looking specifically at those test results. It's not looking at, say, extracurricular activities, or programs or sports. It's not looking at what other things might be at the school that it is a very specific snapshot. Absolutely, this is an academic ranking. So this is based on the province-wide assessment. The reason that we use that data is because this is really just the best tool that we have, you know, province-wide assessments are the closest thing in British Columbia to those standardized tests. It's giving us kind of the fairest snapshot of all kids who are at the same level, taking the same test at the same time, that kind of level playing field academic assessment. We can then use that data to generate the ranking. But as you say, it's an academic snapshot and schools are so much more than that. And that's why I've said and why we do tell parents and we have it written right in our report card that this is one tool in your toolbox. Absolutely,

19:50we hear all the time that parents strongly value these report cards. We hear it from administrators in schools and teachers as well. But this is a very valuable tool for many, many people in the province and it's very longstanding. But at the same time, it's an academic picture. So look at your child's school, talk to families, get a feel of the school culture, the community, the extracurriculars, as you say, that might be offered. British Columbia is, it's fairly unique, you know, in the country. It does offer a high proportion of kids that attend alternative schools outside of their local government public schools. And parents do have a pretty large degree of choice for their child's education. And I think that's what makes this a more valuable tool. But there's a whole bunch of different types of schools out there that parents can choose from in this ranking can give you some really good information that you can't find anywhere else on the academics of how a school is performing. But it's one of many tools in the toolbox. And because it is an academic ranking of

20:51the schools, I know that's been discussed in the past. Is this a ranking of the teachers or the quality of individual teachers? Well, you know, the performance of students on the foundation skills assessments on those province-wide tests is a measure not only of students aptitude and their academic performance, but of course it's a measure of teacher effectiveness and of school effectiveness. So if your child's school is not performing so well on the province-wide assessments, if they're not being that improvement over the five-year trend indicator that you'd like them to be seeing when you look at our school report cards, that's a great way to start a conversation with your kids' school and ask why that might be the case. And maybe there are legitimate reasons for that. But at the very least it's a good conversation starter because yes, it's a measure of the school, it's a measure of teachers, it's a measure of students, there's a lot that goes into

21:51that kind of academic performance. I know like you said, it is something that a lot of parents look at and there's the tool on the website that they can go through and find their schools. Paige will leave it there for today, but thank you for coming on the show. Really appreciate it, thank you. Well, thanks for being with us on this Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, a lot of British Columbians deal with chronic pain and different types of chronic pain, but what if there was a different way of looking at it and understanding it? Well, that is what the research of my next guest looks specifically at. Cynthia Thompson is an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of the Fraser Valley, and she joins me now to talk more about this. Thank you for being with us today. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, thank you for doing this. I know you spoke with the Ta'i about this as well and went into your very personal history

22:54of dealing with chronic pain and how that got you into doing more of this research and looking at it. Can you give us a bit of a background on how that kind of unfolded? Sure, so I was not a pain researcher. I was researching in other fields, but I had, you know, during my time as a researcher, experienced chronic pain for over a decade. And it was the pandemic. It was actually COVID when I no longer had resources to some of my physical interventions that I started to explore the science on pain, specifically looking at the neuroscience. And as I dove further into the resources, I learned about the biopsychosocial model, which is a model that shows the complexities of pain and how it is influenced by multiple factors. And as I started to do this, I started to explore how various factors impacted my pain. And I went through a journey of learning about pain and then

24:01re-experimenting and retraining myself to no longer see certain activities as fearful or threatening and finding safety and movement. And I did eventually experience days without pain. And funny enough, I didn't even really notice it when it happened because it just shows that my thinking had changed. I was no longer constantly checking in on my pain. And then one day I kind of realized, wow, I haven't had pain in a few days. Which, yeah, what an amazing thing like you said to not even notice that. When you talk about chronic pain, though, can you explain a bit more of what that was like? Because I think we all know that the body uses pain as a signal. Something's broken, something's not working. And we hope or expect that it heals and the pain goes away. But is it chronic pain when, for some reason, it doesn't go away? Exactly. So by definition, chronic pain is

25:01pain persists for more than three months. Often, if it's three to six months, as there is sort of variable healing time. But the alarm bells are still going off despite their no longer being threat, a potential threat, or worry about the structural integrity of the tissues. And so, yes, when chronic pain sets in, it's essentially become a learned process. So there is a learning and the brain starts to predict pain. But perhaps there's no, even though there's warning signals coming up, there's no longer that danger. So that it's like the alarm system is over sensitive and it's not doing its job or rather it's doing its job too well. Because yes, your correct pain is meant to be a protective mechanism. And is it oversimplifying it then? Because I know you

26:08write about this and you talk a lot about the neuroscience. It's all in your head. It's your brain. But is that oversimplifying it to say, once you've realized that, once you acknowledge that, that you can actually use your brain to get over the pain and to make the pain go away? Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. Because I definitely would never frame learning about pain as a cure for chronic pain. Chronic pain is so complex and it varies by individual. And that may not be realistic for everyone. I recognize, you know, my experience is very different than an experience of someone who may have another type of condition. So that is oversimplified. We definitely, sometimes it is perceived as you can think it away. And that is also not a reality. I think that understanding that the nervous system does actually become oversensitized. So there are changes that occur within the brain and they can see this in, you know, imaging. There are changes that

27:10occur within this final chord such that the whole system actually becomes more sensitive to potential threat signals from the tissues. And then our system also doesn't do as good a job at dampening, sort of calming signals that could downregulate things in the spinal cord, for example. So it's a combination of learning the science, but then also starting to retrain the brain to start to explore movements through a lens of safety. And so it becomes more than just your thoughts. You actually have to start to explore movements along with that. So there's a field that explores graded motor retraining where in a safe space with a physiotherapist, for example, you start to explore movement. It can also employ virtual reality and so on.

28:15Is that one of the problems too or maybe not problem, but I know with talking to people and knowing people with chronic pain, one of the frustrations can be you could go for an x-ray, you can go for testing and come back with, well, we don't see anything wrong with you and you don't know what's actually causing it. Yes, and that is when that's why when the definition changed, so the International Association for the Study of Pain, they revamped their definition a few years back. And within that definition, because pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience, but it can be associated with sort of resembling tissue damage, actual damage, or the potential for damage. And so it created a classification of pain where the actual pain is the primary symptom and there's no structural damage or pathology in the tissues, but the system has become sensitized. And so it

29:17actually gave a whole diagnostic category for these individuals that the search for the physical cause is met with, we don't know what's wrong, but the pain is real. The pain is always real, because the only way you can know if someone's in pain is if you ask them. And that's a big problem, you know, reported in the literature that often people do feel dismissed, especially when they can't find a cause for their pain, people will attribute it to it's in your head, which is not, you know, that's invalidating and you feel dismissed. So it is related to what's going on in the brain, but it's still not, it's not made up, it's very, very real. And so for somebody that might be listening to this, that experiences chronic pain or knows somebody that does what would you say kind of two points, if we could change how we think about pain and what should someone do

30:18if they're experiencing this and want to figure out how to make that pain go away? So I think because our system is, it's very much focused on the biomedical model, such that most of us, even from childhood, learn that pain is equivalent to tissue damage or what's going on in the structural tissues and that's incorrect. And so just learning about how pain works through the biopsychosocial model, you can learn that, you know, yes, your biology plays a role, but in terms of your psychology, your thoughts, your mood, fear, and beliefs about pain and coping, and trauma, those play a role because they impact your threat system. So if you have had previous experiences where you have been under threat, then your system might be that much more sensitive to additional threats that you perceive in the environment. And then there's also the sociological

31:20factors. So these are often neglected, but if you're experiencing stress through financial barriers, social expectations, job satisfaction, and so on, that can also play into the pain experience. So it really comes down to understanding how pain works, step one, and then looking into your own pain and starting to notice how it changes depending on context. So I, for example, notice that you know, I can have sort of a flare-up of pain, for example, when I'm really stressed out, or when I feel under pressure. And that would potentially be a different trigger for another person. So they may have a trigger when they hear, when allowed noise, could actually trigger their pain, or when they're having to have a social gathering with people that, you know, they have some social tension with, or whenever they go to work, because perhaps the job satisfaction is low.

32:22So it really takes kind of looking inside and figuring out what are the factors that impact your pain by just starting to observe and notice, because it's quite rare that pain is constant throughout the day. Most people do experience a change in a fluctuation in their pain over the course of the day and from day to day. So it's really figuring out those context-specific influences and then starting to explore how to tackle them. All right, well Cynthia Thompson, I'm so happy that you were able to join us and talk more about this. We will leave it there for today, but thank you for making the time. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to the Jill Benet Show podcast, can't wait for the latest episode to drop, tune in to the Jill Benet Show live from noon till three on 730 CKNW. Have a question or comment, send me an email, Jill at cknw.com. Thanks again for listening.