Front Burner - Peter Mansbridge on COVID-19, 9/11 and the 2008 market crash

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

It’s been an overwhelming few days of developments around the COVID-19 pandemic. As cases tick upwards, and more drastic measures are taken to curb the outbreak - CBC’s former chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge helps us set it in historical context with other global crises.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. It's been an overwhelming few days of developments. COVID-19 cases ticked upwards here. As of Sunday, the territories are the only areas in Canada that have not confirmed a case.

As pleas for social distancing continue, there were more closures. The libraries, museums, ski resorts, Nike and Apple stores, measures to limit who can visit nursing homes and jails. This global pandemic is shutting down society in ways that is frankly unprecedented in modern history. The Canadian government is urging all Canadians traveling abroad to come home now, essentially while it's still possible as more and more countries take drastic measures. Today, my guest is Peter Mansbridge, CBC's former chief correspondent and anchor of The National. We wanted to talk to Peter because, well, he sat at the anchor desk during some other recent events that shocked the world in so many ways. 9-11 and the 2008 financial crisis.

And I want to talk to him today about what that was like and how we emerged from those crises. This is Frontburner. Hi, Peter. Thank you so much for making the time to speak with me today. Hey, Jamie. It's a pleasure. So I know that we're reaching you at your home in Stratford today and that you've been practicing some very strict social distancing. Yeah, that's for sure. My son, who goes to University of Toronto, also works at a part-time job for Uninterrupted, a sports media company in Toronto. And last Tuesday night, he was out with Serge Ibaka filming a product for Uninterrupted. And this was 24 hours after Ibaka had been guarding the fellow at the Utah Jazz,

who by Wednesday had tested positive for the coronavirus. So that was a chain reaction of things that put Ibaka, obviously, into self-isolation and the rest of the Raptors, too, for that matter. For the next 14 days, I can't go out. In the meantime, I have to stay in shape. So I made my little gym here at my place. You know, that's all I need, man. I'll see you when I'm out uh but it also put those that they'd been around so that included will who then been around with me so both will and i were in

self-isolation monitoring our own situation to make sure we didn't get any symptoms and waiting for the uh tests that were done on the raptor players including abaca which turned out negative by late Friday night. So at that point, the doctor said, you know, you should still monitor your situation very closely for the next about dozen days. We're left in the 14-day period. But for the most part, you're looking good, and you can sort of carry on your life. So we've been carrying on in a very watchful way.

That's good. I'm glad to hear that everybody's doing well and staying healthy. I wonder if I could ask you, did it feel to you like this past week was a real turning point in the COVID-19 story from a Canadian perspective? Oh, I think so. And it wasn't just about what had happened to us. There were a lot of, you know, listen to your intro to today's program. It just lists one thing after another that underlines, you know, how our world has changed dramatically. I think if there was one thing that happened during the week that really made it strike home to everybody, it wasn't the declarations of political leaders. It wasn't the declarations of health authorities. It was one statement from Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA.

And when he decided to shut down the national basketball season, he was followed within 24 hours by all the other major sports in North America. And then we made that decision since I knew we had, I'd had the benefit of several hours of meetings that day with representatives of every team on the issue of a hiatus. You know, it seemed in that moment, we made the decision that at the expiration of that last night's games, we should be taking a hiatus. And I think that drove home to a lot of North Americans, oh my God, you know, this is the real deal. This is serious.

Today, I want to spend some time with you putting COVID-19 into perspective with other global crises. Let's start with 9-11. Can you remind us what the world was like then and what it was like to witness what happened that day? Well, you know, up to that morning of 9-11, we were all living, you know, in a way, a pretty good life. The Cold War was over. Soviet Union was no longer a threat. It was gone. Just Russia, communism was gone.

The big enemy was gone. And while there were acts of terror happening around the world and various other things, overall, we felt pretty good. happening around the world and various other things, overall, we felt pretty good. And then suddenly, bang, just like that, within a matter of seconds, the world changed. This just in, you were looking at, obviously,

a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers. What we saw and what we've been seeing all day from the heart of New York and the power center of Washington is a scene of deliberate carnage on a scale and visited with a suddenness that has produced an epidemic sense of shock all over North America. When those planes hit the towers, everything was suddenly different. And you know, we had to adapt our lives because of it.

We were suddenly at war. Canadian young men and women were off to Afghanistan to fight in a war we'd never thought we'd ever be involved in, in that part of the world. And a lot of the news wasn't good. So here we were, you know, in a situation that changed everything we did. And we thought about ourselves and about the world. I can remember in those couple of days, I mean, I was in the studio, I think, for something like a total of 40 hours or a couple of breaks. But for the most part, it was nonstop for 40, 44 hours. I remember watching you. Oh, come on, Jane.

You must have been like eight at the time. I was just in high school. But I do remember very clearly turning on my television and watching you in my economics class. We just stayed in my economics class all day and watched CBC. Good evening again. I'm Peter Vansbridge. Those of you who have just joined us, let us recap for you what has happened today on what has proven to be an unforgettable day. Well, it was, you know, it was a dramatic few days. I can remember more than a few times using that phrase, as did other network anchors. you know, our world has changed in this moment.

And it did dramatically, but there's a difference between how the world changed then and how the world has changed now. Right. How do you think the anxiety that people are having now compares to what they were feeling back then? Well, it's very different. I mean, you were worried back then about your family and your friends, and there was a kind of reaching out around the world of people talking to each other and helping each other out through what was clearly a time of some crisis. But the difference today is back then, you didn't expect that al-Qaeda was going to burst through your front door and threaten your family.

This time is different. They, in fact, are threatened inside your house. This germ can get everywhere. It's traveled across, you know, it's a pandemic because it's traveled everywhere. The way this will be dealt with is how we all, as a community of communities in a way, reacts to dealing with it. I was thinking last night about 9-11 and the Iraq war and how it also changed the way that people looked at their politicians, that people felt lied to about the evidence for going to war. And we know that that affected the trust that people have in government and the media. And I wonder if you worry about whether or not this crisis could cause something similar. You've got three elements here that the public relies on

at a time of crisis. One is government. One is authorities in the sense of public servants, in this case, public health officials and the media. And those three elements have to be trusted. Well, governments, you're right. You know, the trust factor for governments and politicians in general, even before this, was extremely low. Certainly hasn't gotten any better in the States.

The way the American government and the president especially have handled this as being deplorable. And repeatedly ignored the advice of experts by shaking hands with several of the speakers at his news conference. The president has been criticized for appearing not to take the crisis seriously and for responding slowly. The people we need to trust are the public health authorities, most of whom have spent a lifetime dealing or preparing for an issue like this. There's an awful lot at stake here. You know, flattening the curve is kind of the phrase of the last couple of days. And it's true and it's real.

What happens if they don't? What happens if the hospitals are overwhelmed? What happens if there aren't enough doctors and nurses and ventilators and respirators and all that? What happens if the hospitals are overwhelmed? What happens if there aren't enough doctors and nurses and ventilators and respirators and all that? What happens? What happens is going to be a problem, you know, in the streets, wherever. You know, they have to prevent that. That's what they're desperate to prevent. And I think we're seeing that play out in Italy right now where doctors are having to make decisions over who lives and who dies,

who gets a respirator and who doesn't get a respirator because they didn't clamp down hard enough in the beginning. And now they're having this, these massive influx of cases, which are overwhelming the system. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the 2008 financial crisis as well. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the 2008 financial crisis as well. So this virus is causing incredible impacts on the global economy. Last week, the S&P TSX composite dropped to record lows. It's since recovered a little bit. And given that, I can't help but think about the 2008 market collapse. This was a crisis that exposed a kind of rot in the financial system in the U.S.

that was operating with no oversight at the time. And can you take us back to that time? How did we see that system fall apart? Very quickly, like it happened in a matter of days, if not hours, that we suddenly saw huge banks going down. And the whole banking system around the world was on the verge of collapse. You talk, you know, a moment of confidence with the leaders of the banks, Canadian banks at that time, and they'll tell you they were scared stiff. They didn't know what was going to happen next and how it could impact them, even knowing how solid the Canadian system was. In the months of speculation about a slowdown in Canada, there were few hints that it would be led by a sudden collapse in the markets or that one of the big banks, Scotiabank,

would predict a recession. That exposed exactly what you said. It exposed a corrupt system within the banking system, especially in parts of the banking system outside of Canada. This is different because what's happening here is the sudden telling people to stay at home, shutting down production lines, doing all these kind of things, the overall economy is starting to shut down. And therefore, you know, prices take a major hit. There's no kind of rational way of looking at this other than there is fear and a degree of panic on the part of investors. So they're looking for calm. They're looking for confidence. They're looking for leadership. I also wonder if you think that, you know, we could come out of this and see some real and meaningful change here. So like the 2008 financial crisis exposed all this rot in the American financial system, to many people's dismay, it didn't necessarily change

the structure of it. But this crisis also seems to be exposing rot in a different way in the American system, for example, with their healthcare system, people who didn't want to get tested because they can't afford the testing and didn't know if it would be covered and didn't want to get treatment. And do you think it's possible that, you know, when we do come out of this, we could see some real and meaningful changes? Well, I hope so. But you kind of touched on it. We didn't see the kind of, well, we did see some changes after 2008. I mean, in the way the banking system operated, but we didn't see anybody, nobody was ended up accountable for it. The issue here is about, listen, you know, you could predict that eventually there was going to be a pandemic and many people did. But, you know, when you know it's coming, then you act, you know, you act with some degree of force.

It has taken many countries, including our own and especially the United States, months to react in a forceful measure. And they went through a period of denial, at least some of their leaders did. It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle. It will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows. Kind of making fun of it and calling it a hoax and all that. Right now, there's a couple of needs. One is we've got to recognize that there are some people who have given everything

and are giving everything to help this spread. And I just know how stressful it is for our health care system, for my colleagues, and for families that are dealing with this. And I'm probably a little tired myself, but... You look at our, you know, doctors and nurses and health care workers at hospitals and other places around our country. The second thing is the media, us. You know, what's our job through this? It's to tell the truth. You know, truth matters now more than ever. And after we've been through a period of a few years where truth became this sort of, well, you know, really, do we need truth on the part of some people, not the media?

And they kind of twisted a lot of people's vision of how important truth is. Well, we're finding out how important it is now and how much you have to react to the truth. And so the media's job right now is to A, tell the truth and B, to give as much information as possible to the public who's desperate for it. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. We've talked about 9-11, the 2008 financial crisis,

but I wonder if there's anything from further back in history that we can learn from at this time. I know you're a big history buff. at this time, and I think I've been as much of a critic as anybody else, to sort of target both the public sector through politicians and the private sector through business that they're reacting to slowly. Well, part of the private sector that is critical to making this next few weeks and months work is that part that will be dynamic in its innovation and production. And you know what? There's nowhere else in the world like North America to deliver that kind of innovation. And, you know, you go back to the Second World War and you see what happened in North America And you see what happened in North America, where Canadian auto plants and U.S. auto plants throughout that war, just as one example, switched from building cars to building tanks and planes and ships. And they did it at an incredible rate. And that was the spearhead to winning that war.

That was the spearhead to winning that war. Yeah. And, you know, we can draw upon the same kind of innovation and smart people and dedicated people to help in this crisis. And I think that's finally starting to happen. Not because some politicians promise them some kind of, you know, payback. It's because they recognize they're part of the solution here too, and they're getting involved. Right. And we're certainly seeing that already in Washington State, Amazon and the Bill Gates Foundation have teamed up to try to get test kits to people faster. Peter Mansbridge, thank you so much for this conversation. I'm so appreciative.

Thank you, Jamie. It's been a treat. Okay, so our team here at FrontBurner is following this story really closely. And a reminder that we are going to continue to release our daily morning episodes as well as an end-of-day coronavirus episode whenever it's warranted. Stay tuned for one later today. Please let us know what you want to hear. What questions do you have? What are you finding confusing? Who do you want to hear from? You can email us at frontburner at cbc.ca, tweet us at frontburner cbc or tweet me jamie j-a-y-m-e underscoreisson, P-O-I-S-S-O-N. Also, the CBC is working to make its coverage as widely available as possible.

Our 24-hour news channel is now available to anyone who subscribes to Bell TV, Shaw, Kojiko, all TELUS Optic TV packages, Rogers, Eastlink. It also streams online on cbc.ca slash news or through our GEM app. That's all for today. Thanks so much for listening and talk to you later. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.