The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Comparing The Wildfires in Jasper and Los Angeles

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Journalist & author Matthew Scace on his new book, "Jasper on Fire: Five Days of Hell in a Rocky Mountain Paradise".

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Jasper, Alberta, Los Angeles, California, wildfires. The story from the inside, coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to Tuesday, Tuesday of yet another week. And we're going to break from, well, we're going to break somewhat from the discussions we've been having over the last 10 days or so about politics in Canada. And instead, we're going to focus on the fires in California, the wildfires, but using the wildfires in Jasper, Alberta last summer as a way of getting into the California story as well. We're going to talk to the author of a new book that comes out next week that's all about the Jasper fires. We're going to hear his take on what's going on in California as well

and how these two are similar and how they're different. So we'll get to that in just a minute. But first of all, we do have to talk a little bit about the political situation because it links to our question of the week for Thursday's Your Turn. And we've already had a flood of emails from you on this topic. And the topic, of course, is do you think Donald Trump is serious

and why do you think he's serious about this whole 51st state thing? So, as I said, lots of letters coming in. Got to have them in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Name, location are prerequisites. You've got to have those

in your letter, the location you're running from. And the other thing you've got to do is keep it tight. There are already some that are going way long. that's not going to happen they're not going to get on um so look at a paragraph it's amazing what you can write when you focus down the issue is he serious and why do you think he's serious so send those along. Happy to have them.

Interesting last, I don't know, 24 hours or so, and it's going to be very interesting next few days because the heavyweights are getting into the campaign finally. One of those, of course, is the former Bank of Canada governor, Mark Carney, who's taking an interesting approach to the way he's announcing his candidacy. He was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. Now, I thought he handled himself great.

Well, great may be an overstatement, but I thought he was really good. He didn't look uncomfortable. He looked very comfortable. He was funny when he wanted to be, but he was also put forward his kind of position and why he thinks that his candidacy is a good candidacy for the top job of the Liberal Party of Canada and eventually, let's not forget, but not just picking a leader, they're in fact picking a prime minister.

May only be for a short time, but that's what they're doing. So why do I think it was a little odd? Well, it's a little odd because the guy is about to announce he's running for the liberal leader of Canada. And where does he go to give us the sense that he's definitely going to do that? He goes to the States. Now, the U.S. is a big part of, is going to be a big part of the campaign. I think he wants it to be a big part of the campaign. Rather attack Donald Trump

than spend your time going after the conservatives here to try and separate yourself from the last few years of the liberal government. Anyway, it's interesting because like last week, Trudeau was down in the States

doing one-on-one interviews as well. He hasn't done one in Canada yet since he announced he was resigning. But he was down in the States doing them. Last night, Mark Carney was down there. So it's kind of interesting because on the one hand, he was good last night. Can't take that away from him.

He was, as I said, he was funny when he needed to be funny. And he was on point politically and on the issues when he wanted to be. So that's all good. Interesting take. We'll see whether Crystal Freeland, when she announces in a couple of days, if she goes rushing down to the U.S. to do interviews as well. Maybe she will. Maybe that's part of the campaign right now.

I don't know. Stephen Harper, second prime minister in a couple of days, to go on the record and say, hey, I don't agree with Donald Trump. Harper said he was perhaps one of the most American-friendly prime ministers ever in Canada. But he's not buying this stuff that Trump is selling. And he, you know, he sounded tough and somewhat angry about the kind of things that Trump is saying, whether it's the 51st state or what have you,

the tariffs, the whole bit. So that follows Jean Chrétien's 91st birthday message on the weekend, where he too, on a much more emotional level, separated himself from the Trump message. So it's interesting. This story continues to play out. Will it suddenly end if Trump doesn't follow through on his promise of tariffs.

We'll find out as early as next week after the inauguration, if not on the same day as the inauguration. So that's all unfolding as we watch. Will somebody else jump into the race? There are clearly a few other candidates in the race, but it does appear to be heading towards a Carney versus Freeland liberal leadership campaign with perhaps Karina Gould, the House leader for the Liberals, in the race as well.

If the two frontrunners stumble, stumble badly, you know, that may be an opportunity for her. But no matter what happens, it will certainly be an opportunity for her to make a name for herself for the future, perhaps. So we'll see how that unfolds. And we'll obviously talk about it a lot more later this week. On both your turn, so we'll get your views, and on Good Talk on Friday with Chantel and Bruce. So that's all coming up.

All right. Let's get to this story. Let me tell you a little bit about our guest coming up here in a moment. His name is Matthew Skace. He's a reporter in Alberta. He's working now for the Calgary Herald. He's also worked for Canadian Press. He's written columns.

You may well have read them, stories, for a variety of different newspapers in Canada at different times, including the Globe and Mail. Young guy. I'm not sure exactly how old he is, but he's a young fellow, but he's been very focused on his career. He went to Queen's University.

He worked for the Queen's student newspaper. He worked for the Kingston Whig Standard at one point. I'm not sure if he actually worked there, but he wrote for the Kingston Whig Standard. But his home's in Calgary, or his home's in Alberta. And he's, you know, he was fascinated, as we all were, in the Jasper story last summer, the wildfires there. And he's written about them in a book called Jasper on Fire, Five Days of Hell in a Rocky Mountain Paradise. And if you've ever been to Jasper, you know it is, certainly was a paradise.

And it will be again one day. That book comes out next week, a week from today, actually. Sutherland House Books. And it really offers a timely perspective that bridges firsthand reporting on one of Canada's most catastrophic wildfires. This is the PR line. With critical insights on wildfire management in the age of escalating climate crises. And what a time for this book to come out,

as we have our eyes locked on these incredible visuals coming out of California. So, let's get to this interview, because Matt Skate is a really interesting guy to listen to telling this story. And the best way to tell this is uninterrupted, right? So let's take our break before we start the interview so we won't have to take it during the interview, right? So we'll be right back right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge for this Tuesday.

And our guest is Matthew Skace, who's a reporter with the Calgary Herald, and he's just written his new book, which comes out next week. Five, fire. It's called Jasper on Fire, Five Days of Hell in a Rocky Mountain Paradise. So let's get to the interview right now. Looking forward to this discussion. I hope you are too. Here we go. So Matt, you spent, you know, most of the past year working on this book and, you know, the focus is Jasper, of course, but obviously you couldn't ignore what you've

just seen in the last days, last couple of weeks really in Los Angeles. When you've watched the wildfires in Los Angeles, what strikes you? What enters your mind given the way you spent the last year? Yeah. So I spent a lot of time with folks in Jasper after the fire. And the devastation that comes out of these events, it's a real trauma for people. You lose things that you will never get back. So photos of family members, photo albums, even just the places that you spent your childhood. I spent a good amount of time with jasper's mayor um and he lived in the

same home pretty much for almost 70 years um and the just the the scale of loss when you lose something that close to you and not tied to your history is challenging so when when i looked at the california fires i i mean i heartbroke for everyone involved because you're losing something that's so close to your heart. The other thing that I noticed with the California fires, or wanted to learn more about, was how similar was this to Jasper? Were these two fires similar in certain ways? And upon learning more about the California situation, they are very similar. So one thing we know is climate change is making our conditions drier, making them hotter. In Jasper, one thing you'll know in the book is that forest management has been a longstanding issue,

where we essentially decided that fire was not something we wanted in our forests for many reasons. Tourism, we don't like to see smoke. It makes people uncomfortable. But in doing so, we allowed these forests to grow to a point where they sort of become these massive tinderboxes. And so Jasper was essentially a tinderbox waiting to blow. And it just was a matter of whether it would hit the town, which is a pretty small point on the map. And California has been experiencing recurring fires for several years. They seem to happen quite often.

But the scale that it has happened has not been quite this great. So this will be by far the biggest fire that I think the U.S. or North America has ever seen. So, so far what we know, and we'll probably learn a lot more because these fires are still happening, these two fires do seem to be quite similar. You've mentioned a couple of things I want to pick up on. You know, the mayor of Jasper, his story, and you spent time with him. One of the images that I will never lose sight of in my mind is the image of the mayor of Jasper on the day they let him back into town. And he's standing there looking at what's left of his home, which is basically nothing. It's a very moving picture, the expression on his face in the moment the camera caught him.

And it helps you identify with the points you were making. The human loss in situations like this, we get it consumed by, you know, stories about the fires, stories about the,, stories about the water bombers and the firefighters, and they're all heroic people. But at the end of the day, it's people like the mayor of Jasper who lost his home and lost all those memories that you talk about. The other thing I'm wondering about is, you know, like wildfires aren't new. The rate at which they're happening now and the spread is quite something. But it's always been an issue for like literally hundreds of years.

Did the indigenous people deal with this situation differently? Is there anything to learn from that? So just backtracking a little bit with the science of wildfires. this situation differently? Is there anything to learn from that? So just backtracking a little bit with the science of wildfires, like you said, we've had wildfires forever. The forest in Jasper is built to burn. That's one thing that when I started this book, that's kind of one of the things I wanted to figure out is like, are these forests supposed to burn? And the answer is yes. And the way they're supposed to burn is in little pockets effectively. so you have a fire that will flare up in a certain area and it'll kill basically whatever is the oldest trees in that area and then

the younger ones which have more moisture they're younger they won't burn as well so you have these little pockets of fire and then you have this regeneration of the forest happening all the time. And so from what we know from research way back is that indigenous communities were aware of this and they let it happen and would, would bring that, bring the process along and continue the regrowth process around the early 1900s. When Jasper became a rail town, it was basically a few shacks. Indigenous people were taken away from that land and pushed out of Jasper National Park. One research paper from, I believe it was 1977, noted that right around that time

is when wildfires seemed to stop happening in Jasper National Park. So it is really interesting to see that our wildfire practices, as we know them, to erase fire from the landscape because of tourism and whatnot, basically made us more prone to these fires. So that is one of these factors that is coming up more and more, is how do we get our forests in shape for fires and make them uh i guess less likely to hit our urban areas and get too far to control like they did in jasper where it becomes basically a bowling ball coming straight towards the town you can't stop so how do you do that you know i mean remember

trump was made fun of quite considerably a few years ago when he said, oh, you've got to get out there and rake the forest land, and that'll prevent forest fires. Now, some people said, well, you know, he's got a point there. He's probably not the way he's saying it, but there's an idea there. What is the way? How do you prevent this? It's a idea there. What is the way? How do you prevent this? It's a great question.

There will probably be some more extreme measures, I think, taken around mountain towns in the future. There had been a debate before the Jasper fire whether there should be a larger fire break in front of the town that basically is a fire break is just removing the vegetation, i.e. the trees from areas close to town, which is a challenging idea for a tourism hotspot because you go there for the trees. And there are different opinions on whether that would have solved you know saved jasper from the fire but i presumably if you were to take away all the trees three kilometers out from jasper which would be a monumental task one that's not something you can just do with an eraser then you may have prevented this from happening um but those are massive massive projects to take on

um you also have to think about the other effects in wildlife and everything. So that's one way that you can save at least urban areas from these kind of wildfires. Because that's sort of the challenge we're dealing with California and Jasper is these fires are happening. They're supposed to happen. But when it gets really bad is when they or when it becomes an issue is when it hits urban structures and takes homes and ends up in the situation we're in with california jasper now um the other thing that uh i hope gets more attention um but i think it's it's a very it's a kind of a boring task is fire smarting homes um because every firefighter i talked to in this book um would not stop talking about fire smarting homes. Because every firefighter I talked to in this book would not stop talking

about fire smart. And I had known about it before I started reporting on the book, but I, because it's sort of, basically fire smarting is taking the brush away from your, you know, two meters away from your home, making sure you don't have materials on your roof that could catch fire, making sure you don't have flammable things on your porch. Like it's, it's kind of boring stuff, but it can make all the difference. You don't have materials on your roof that could catch fire, making sure you don't have flammable things on your porch.

Like it's kind of boring stuff, but it can make all the difference. And we will see photos in California after this is all over of neighborhoods that are leveled and then one home or two homes that are still standing. And there are wildfire experts. There's one person I talked to who is the vegetation specialist for Parks Canada all the way up into the mid 2010s, I believe. And this was his focus. He wanted to introduce fire back into the landscape in Jasper National Park by doing prescribed burns, introducing those new pockets again. And then with the local fire chief trying to get people to fire smart their home. So if a fire, when a fire, which is what their wording was, is this fire is going to happen. We just need to prepare for it.

Like we need to have the homes ready. So getting people to cut down a tree that they love in front of their home that would catch fire and take their home down was it was not an easy task as they told me it's it's a really challenging thing to get people to proactively get ready for this thing because you don't also believe that this may ever happen to you it's very like thinking of fire is going to come to your home is like what are the odds you just don't know um but it's one of those things that every time i spoke to a wildfire fighter was we need to get really, get much better at fire smarting. And that might take action from the insurance industry or from a new building codes from local governments.

But that seems to be one of those things where we're not going to prevent wildfires from happening out in the woods because it's really challenging thing to do. But if we have them come hit our urban interface, what, how do we prepare for that? Or how do we prevent the type of loss we're experiencing in California? You know, I'm glad you brought this up because I've got friends in Malibu. And they're right on the ocean, right? You've seen those pictures. And homes are like side by each.

They're really close together. You can barely slip a piece of paper in between the homes. And my friend's neighbors lost their home. Like adjacent to them, they lost their home. Their home barely had singe marks on it. And they'd gone into trouble of fire smarting. And as you say, it's not just about cutting down vulnerable trees in front of you, it's about how you build the place.

So that one assumes, coupled with this whole issue surrounding insurance, is going to make people think twice, I hope, if they're living in zones that are vulnerable to this. So that issue will come aboard. In Jasper, was there talk of this fire smarting issue as well, not just by the firefighters, but by the residents of Jasper? Yes, to a degree. But from what I understand,

there were pockets that were, there were certain groups of people who were interested in this and there were local initiatives that people got engaged with here and there. But it's one of those things where it's sort of out of the good of your own heart. If you have nothing to do on a Saturday

and there's a local group doing something, then you'll go do it maybe. Um, and so mobilizing that initiative is pretty challenging. Um, there was a, there's a little community just outside of Jasper. Um, it's on a lake and it's right tucked in the woods and they got this big fire smarting certification because everybody got on board, but it's a really small group of people. And I'm sure there was a lot more. We're going to do this all together a lot um and so the the trouble really like you said about your friend malibu is you you can have a pocket of houses

that are fire smarted but if you know say even 50 are% aren't. Once you end up in a situation, again, like in Jasper, California, where you have 100 kilometer an hour winds, the homes that do catch fire are knocking over the homes next to them. And so you can fire smart all you want, but if the home next to you is going wild and the wind's blowing in its direction, then you're, you're in big trouble. So you need full support from the whole community at these things. The big problem in Los Angeles was the winds and the Santa Ana winds

and upwards of 100 miles an hour. Was wind a contributing factor in Jasper? Absolutely. In Jasper, they were 100 plus kilometers an hour. One of the firefighters I spoke with was at Jasper Park Lodge. He was the firefighter. He was the fire chief in Jasper up until the late 2010s. And then he was basically in charge of making sure jasper park lodge was ready for a fire and he saw muskoka chairs flying through the air and at that point he's like i gotta get the hell

out of here um and when the fire is going that crazy there's not really a lot you can do the winds pick up at that speed you have like trees being incinerated in minutes um which is having not witnessed it really hard to imagine like i wrote it into my book but even so like it's just hard to imagine what that looks like um and then the other thing um that i think is is probably lesser known with fires is that the fire doesn't actually hit the town as in like a you know slapping the town in the face it's embers that are flying overhead and landing into the town so you have embers from probably several kilometers away jumping into jasper it's not the fire sort of creeping up and hitting the doors doorstep it's all these embers landing over the town um so when you have winds like that too i mean you are just you were getting rained on um in the fire chiefs that i spoke with in jasper too when they were in the fire that night when

everybody's watching parks canvas communications they had basically rains of embers falling on them and falling on roofs that if the roofs are made of cedar which they are in jasper because or many of them were because uh building codes back in the 70s wanted them to look idyllic and mountainous whatever um those things light on fire and then boom you have a house fire and you're off to the races it's it just turns into a rodeo so when they rebuild jasper is it going to be rebuilt to look like a tourist town is it going to be rebuilt to deal with what's part of life now? It will be both. They released new architectural guidelines because, I mean, it's a fascinating sort of piece of Jasper's history is reading the architectural guidelines from the 70s and 80s and 90s when they wanted it to look a very very specific way

put you know small windows so they're little windows that look out into the mountains they're sort of like little paintings like they wanted small windows um and then one of the features they wanted especially early on were cedar shake roofs um because they look they're lovely they're these nice little slats that are made of wood um but further into the 80s and 90s when wildfires started to pick up a little bit and especially in the 2000s um they realized that that was a really bad idea um and they they took it off but um with the new guidelines they are very very clear that you cannot have flammable materials on your homes. So they do have very specific architectural guidelines of how they want Jasper homes to look. But at the same time, they're being very careful about flammable materials.

So there's a whole new section on that now. At its core, is this a story about, and you've got to pick one here, Matt. You can't just sort of say it's a little bit of all of them. But at its core, is this a story about, and you've got to pick one here, Matt. You can't just sort of say it's a little bit of all of them. But at its core, is this a story about people? Is it a story about fire? Or is it a story about climate change? You're making me pick one? Yeah.

I would say this is a story about people um because these problems are uh you are they're experienced by the people who live there um and that's that's sort of what the book was setting out to do because i was i was given a very quite a tight timeline to finish the thing and the story that i felt like was necessary to tell especially at the time because it was so soon after the fire was that these people are in the middle of this I should get that like this the point of the book is to tell the stories of what it's like to go through something suggesting that the whole country I think I mean I'm speaking from Alberta everyone was watching that night I think a lot of people are gonna remember where they were in that moment and I think a lot of people want to know where other people were and what was happening to them.

One thing about the Jasper fire that has been very different about the California fires, in my view, has been that Jasper, once it cleared out and nobody was there except for the firefighters, we didn't really know what was happening. We were getting the auto alert from Parks Canada saying, this is what's happening. We've been working overnight. We've been working through the day. Winds are expected to pick up. But there were no visuals. There were no iPhone videos, whatever, going around social media for the most part.

And then the night that the fire happened, we have these communications coming up from Parks Canada that say that we have removed all the wildfire fighters. Anybody without a breathing apparatus is leaving there were people in town but i think there was a belief that nobody was there at all but we didn't know what it looked like we didn't know what the scene was so uh i mean the thing with this book for me was that i kind of wanted to bring us back in there and see what it was like for the firefighters, for these people who have lived in Jasper the whole lives and we're trying to

hose down the homes that they had seen for decades or grown up in. Um, cause those are, again, those are the people, um, who, who were trying to save the town. They were all, most of them were all volunteer fighter firefighters. Um, and a lot of them had grown up in the area. And then you have all these people who are dislocated out in Belmont or Prince George or in Calgary. So I will answer that question saying it's about people,

but it's the people who are managing the fire and trying to manage the effects of climate change. Because it's I don't know. It was a really interesting and fascinating story to tell. Do you think our knowledge of or acceptance of the fact that climate change is changing our lives and the way we live, you know, has been made stronger or more likely as a result of things like Jasper and now watching what's happening in Los Angeles?

I hope so. The thing about Los Angeles that has been a little bit disturbing has been the level of misinformation going around. Um, and it's been, uh, I mean, finding, researching for, uh, this interview and just learning exactly what is happening. Like I said earlier on, I want to know what the similarities were between Jasper and Los Angeles. But there is so much stuff flying around on the internet.

And what I was saying about Jasper being a black box and not understanding what was happening on a deep level that night of the fire is almost like we have the exact opposite here in Los Angeles. We are seeing every moment we're getting citizens with their phones, taking photos of their homes burning. And there's just so much information out there. But on, on the whole, I hope that we're learning the right lessons with California. It's still happening. We're still in the middle of this thing. And what I hope is that we get up with a sober conversation about how we prepare for these things.

With the BC floods three years ago, afterwards, I felt like there was a pretty significant conversation about adaptation and figuring out how we prepare for events like these because we know they're going to happen again. And so I do hope in California and in Jasper and Canada, we understand the risks and how this will happen again. It doesn't, we don't know where, but it will. So I hope, I really, really hope because we're definitely in a new era now. I think we've had two defining wildfires in the past seven months for the country. I don't want to disregard Fort McMurray in 2016. But these two ones have seemed to caught people's attention. Here's my last question, and it reverts back to the issue of people.

Watching the coverage of Los Angeles, and I agree there's a lot of disinformation out there, but one of the things that has been striking and has made kind of heroic figures out of these people are watching the water bombers, the Canadian water bombers, and those pilots and some of the extraordinary things they do in picking up water and banking almost immediately as soon as they lift off the waves.

What can you tell us about those people, whether it's water bombers or helicopters or bigger aircraft that are dropping fire retardant? I don't know whether you had a chance to talk to any of them or hear their stories. What should we know about people like that? That is a great question because that's one of those things that I was really interested in when I started writing and reporting for this. I was like, what's going through someone's mind when they are either putting out a fire in a country that's not their own, or they're putting out a fire that they have a very deep emotional

connection to. So when I met with a couple of Jasper's deputy fire chiefs, I was trying to get a sense for what was going through their mind that night and that whole week when they were preparing for the fire to come to their hometown. And everyone's different. The firefighters all have their own perspectives on this. There were ones who, you know, didn't want to speak with me. It was just a really emotional time for them. And that is more than okay. And then you have other firefighters who are very matter of fact,

because they believe that they have a job to do in this situation. And they park their feelings for that particular moment or those several, several hours that they're up overnight trying to fight a fire, and they just get a job done. And I was, I found it remarkable as someone who's probably a little more emotional than them, how they're able to do that. Because they're also dealing with, in the instance of Jasper,

homes of people that they know. They probably know where everybody lives. And so you're not even just dealing with taking care of your own home or watching your own home burn, but deciding what to do with your neighbor's home, whether you bulldoze it to try to prevent the next fire from going to the next home. And those decisions, I mean, I just,

I can't imagine what that would be like, but they have a very clinical view of how they approach that situation. And it's incredibly impressive what these people are able to do under incredible amounts of pressure. They also have a, I guess, a sense of humor in a way where they're just very matter of fact about well this is this is where i am and um oh it's starting you know they one of the guys when i was speaking to him about uh the the night of the jasper fire they had this massive uh crane type thing that's spraying water on downtown to make sure all the businesses were saved and these uh he's saying uh when it started to rain he thought it was just the water coming down from their their sprinkler and he's like we were drained we're down to our trousers and water and uh you know there's a weird

humor about it um where they're sort of trying to keep things light in a moment of really i think like devastation um and then they just keep on trucking like they sort of wanted the next thing and i uh i don't know i don't think we can thank them enough um and they're the type of people who would never take credit for it um i think is the main thing that you they would never try to stand up and say i i saved jasper um they don't really want that credit um they're just there to, as they see, do a job. And what we tend to forget at times is whether they're fighting the fires from the ground or from the air. This is like dangerous work. It's really dangerous. And sadly, you know, we know the result of that in some cases, but you're right. We can't thank these people enough. Listen, Matt, I know

you spent a lot of time, obviously, and I know what it's like to sit there and write a book, and it's not easy. It's hard work. But let me tell you, the hardest work is now ahead of you in selling the book and going on book tours and doing interviews and that, that that's hard work. But, um, I think, uh, just from listening to your stories in this interview, uh, this is going to be a book where well worth reading. So, uh, do appreciate your time. Thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for having me, Peter. Appreciate it. So there you go. The name of the book, once again, is Fire, Jasper on Fire, Five Days of Hail in a Rocky Mountain Paradise. And the author, our guest today, Matthew Skace, journalist

and author now, works for the Calgary Herald and Canadian Press, and his writings have been seen in various places around the country. So good for Matthew, and thanks for his time today and being on the program. I did want to pick up on one thing that I left out in here earlier on the program when we were talking about the Liberal leadership race. I talked about the frontrunners being Freeland and Carney, and that's probably the case.

But close to that pack also is the former Premier of British Columbia, if in fact she decides to go into the race. She had a rough ride a couple of days ago on some issues surrounding her at least part-time membership in the Conservative Party of Canada during the last leadership race there, where she was trying to help Jean Charest in his run against Pierre Poglio. Anyway, that's Christy Clark, right? She will be, if she chooses to go into the race, she will be seen as a serious candidate and has a team that is ready to work for her. So that, you know, I should have mentioned that,

and I'm not sure why I didn't. There was a slip on my part. Anyway, this is going to be a lot easier when people actually finally declare. Some declarations have been made by candidates who are considered more of long shots than the so-called front runners. But within the next seven days, I think we'll have a slate, and you'll be able to make your decisions on the way you're thinking about how this is going to turn out for the Liberal Party of Canada

when you see those names listed for you. But it's pretty clear Mark Carney's going in. He all but announced his candidacy last night on American television. And Chrystia Freeland is apparently trying to thread the needle here on going in just before Trump is inaugurated on January 20th in Washington. Anyway, we'll have lots more on this coming up on two of the programs. Your turn.

So we want to hear what you have to say on this issue of the 51st state. Do you think Trump's serious? And if so, why? So we'll hear your views, and there have been lots of them already. Have your emails in by 6 p.m. tomorrow. And that'll be a one-show deal. So obviously I can tell you already that there are going to be those who don't make the cut for this week because we've already had a lot of answers. So what we're looking for is those who follow the rules such as they are, include your name, the location you're writing from, have your views in by 6 p.m. tomorrow.

That's Wednesday, 6 p.m. Eastern Time. And keep it tight, right? There's not room for the really long essays. And some of you have been writing those again. They won't make it, okay? So keep it tight. And that's it. That's it for today's program.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is Encore Wednesdays. And I'm not sure which program we will pick for that one, but we will pick one. And that will be up on tomorrow's feed. So we'll see you tomorrow in an Encore version. And then, of course, back on Thursday with your turn. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening talk to you again tomorrow