The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Fighting back from the pandemic meltdown in the travel business.

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

A year ago the news of the pandemic shut down the travel business. Thousands of Canadian jobs were affected, as were dozens of Canadian companies.   Customers were stranded in countries around the world.  Today the inside story of how one company moved to repatriate their travelers, and begin the slow process of trying to save their businesses.

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. You are just a few moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. You may want to listen to this one, an inside look at what again with the latest episode of The Bridge. You know, in your circle of friends, could be in your office, could be in your bowling league, it could be in your neighborhood, there's usually one person who kind of stands out as the organizer when you're trying as a group to do things. Well, we had that kind of person in our office back in the old days when I used to work at the CBC on a day-to-day basis at the National. And I think back to the early 1980s because we formed a unit called the CBC Specials Unit that we could be suddenly on the air with any breaking story. Now, those units don't exist anymore, at least in the way they did then, because cable news has kind of taken over that business,

and there's a full-time, like CBC News Network or CTV, has its own news channel, and of course CNN and MSNBC and the rest of them. But back in the early 1980s, those channels didn't exist. So we handled breaking news. It really started for me and for us, I think, in 1981, because there were three big events that year that were unexpected and nobody was kind of prepared for them, and as a result, we formed this unit.

And those were assassination attempts. You know, there was the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt. There was the assassination attempt on the Pope, and there was the assassination, this one was successful, on Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt. As a result of those, we formed this unit, and there was, I don't know, there were half a dozen or more people in it who were prepared at a moment's notice to go on the air with anything. And we did a lot of different kinds of stories, obviously not just assassination attempts, but in those days between elections and conventions, leadership conventions,

constitutional conferences, court decisions, all those kind of things. Anyway, we had one person in our group who was clearly the organizer. And I'm not talking about editorial. I'm talking about just sort of organizing our group to do things. And his name was Tom Cavanaugh, a great young fella at that time, a producer from, he'd come from Newfoundland, born on Bell Island. And one of the things he wanted to start with our group was we'd all pitch in every week, you know, a buck or something like that and buy a lottery ticket. And we'd try for the old group lottery ticket, usually a 649. And, you know, so we did that for years until eventually the unit broke up,

but the idea of the lottery didn't. And it's kept going. All these years started somewhere around 82, 83, and here in 2021 still exists. That whole group, all of us are gone in one form or another. And there's, you know, a group that started with, I don't know, 10, 12 people in the lottery is now down to just a couple. And, well, you know where this story's going. It was either we win the lottery or we lose the organizer. Well, sadly, yesterday we lost the organizer. Tom is gone. And I think for all intents and purposes, so is the lottery for us. We never won.

You know, the odd time we'd win like 10 bucks or something like that, flip the money over into the pool and just keep it going. But I've thought of Tom a lot since I got the news yesterday, and it's obviously sad news. But it reminds me of that strength in small units as i said you know in families or offices or or the bowling league or your neighborhood or whatever there's always that one kind of person there's always that kind of tom who makes things happen in your group

so we never won tom but we sure had a lot of good dreams about what we'd do if we did win. So, so long to Tom Cavanaugh. Just ahead, when the virus hit, it took down a lot of businesses. We have the inside story of one that fought back. So let me start with a little transparency on this issue. About a year ago, I agreed with a couple of fellows that I met, who I was quite impressed with, to investigate their, well, not investigate, to have a look at their travel business because they wanted me to get involved in some fashion with their travel business and going on a few of their

tours. And they travel, they do, I think, about 150 different tours a year, everything from, this was at that time, everything from big cruise ships to bus tours in different parts of the world, all around the world. And so we had agreed that we were going to South Africa. And that was in the middle of March last year on one of their tours, a 10- or 12-day tour, and it looked fantastic.

And I'd been to South Africa before, but as I've been to so many places in the world, most of them you never get a chance to actually tour. You're too busy working. So I was really looking forward to this opportunity. But then, as we all know, in mid-February, things started to pop up in terms of this virus, the coronavirus, COVID-19,

and the impact it could have on our lives. And initially, it looked like it was just something that was going to be a problem in Asia, and especially for cruise lines. And we remember all those stories about cruise ships held up in different ports and nobody being allowed to get off the ship. Anyway, so they were caught in a couple of those and had to deal with getting their passengers home. But other things seemed to be okay,

and that included the South Africa trip. But then things kind of imploded. And that's what this story is about. The two fellows that so impressed me in terms of their tour company are two young guys. They met at university, Dan Chetreet and Leroy Haddad. They both went to McGill. Dan eventually went into the financial sector in Toronto. Leroy went on to Harvard. They both got more and more expertise.

And eventually they came back and they decided, we're going to look for a company that we can buy. And they were always interested in the travel business. And they found this great company, Journeys by Van Dyke, based out of Cambridge, Ontario, in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. It had a family history. It opened around 1980, and the owners were, the Van Dykes, were ready to retire. And so Dan and Leroy bought them and kept their business going.

It was a relatively small company. They had around 30 employees, but busy. As I said, about 150 tours a year. And then this hits. So this is the great test, right? Great test of any young business. How are you going to handle this? How long is it going to last?

What could happen? What do I do with employees? Will there ever be a way back? So this is the inside story and it's told through the words of Dan Chetrit. So I hope you have listened to this because I think it's a pretty powerful sense of what a lot of people went through. This is hardly the only business that suffered in the last year. But there are lessons in here on how to fight back. So let's have a listen. Once again, this is Dan Chetreit. So Dan, let's start, I guess, kind of from the beginning in the sense of when countries started to close down borders and government started saying, you know, you better get home. What was the situation for your company?

Where did you have clients? Where did you have tours? If you'll recall, you and I were scheduled to leave for South Africa probably two weeks later. And up until the week prior, we were still going back and forth on should we go? Should we not go? Is it safe? Is it not safe? And at the time, in good faith, we said, look, let's give ourselves a bit more time and make a decision. But if memory serves me right, we were supposed to leave on March 5th, which was a week before all hell broke loose, if you want to describe it

that way. And we made the decision not to go. And I think that was a very wise decision. But we had, at that time, about six groups abroad. And so the groups ranged in size from 12 participants to as many as 30 guests. And they were spread out all over. We had people on a cruise ship going around South America. We had people in Vietnam.

We had two groups in South Africa. We had a group in Morocco and we had a group actually leaving for Argentina. And some people had to head down there a little bit earlier to, you know, enjoy some time in Buenos Aires before the trip started. So we already had people on the ground, but it was early enough in the season that it wasn't, you know, as, as bad as it could have been, um, in something like April or May when most of our guests are abroad. Wow. So you got a lot of balls in the air at that point and things are starting to collapse around you and you got to get these people home.

How do you do that? So two things happened. First, we started reaching out. We have someone from our company on tour with all of the guests. Wherever they may be, there's always someone there. So we're in constant dialogue with them, even on the cruise ships. And we start telling them, look, there's this issue. It started in Asia. It might be making its way.

Start getting ready. Prepare mentally for the fact that we might have to act and act quickly once we make a decision. And again, much like the human emotion of people being disappointed about having to cancel their trip because they had this anticipation. If you're abroad and everything seems normal and you get a call saying, hey, actually, you know, we need to get you home. People don't want to hear that. Um, and, and, and there's a healthy dose of skepticism is what I would describe it as is like, why are you cutting my trip short? Everything's fine here. And to a

large extent it was in Vietnam or South Africa or wherever they were, it was fine. Um, but basically we had to make a decision that was, we don't know what it's going to look like in a week and a half or two weeks when the, when the trip ends. So we're going to get people home right away. And so two things happened, um, that, that triggered this, this, uh, wave. One is the federal travel advisory from foreign affairs, Canada, and the U S state department was also making announcements. And that you'll recall was the week of march 9th so i think it was march 9th the first

uh announcement was made for cruise ships and then by the friday which is the 13th very very fitting by the way that it was friday the 13th but uh by friday um foreign affairs canada had announced you know avoid all non-essential travel and the next morning there was a tweet that went out saying, you know, we advise Canadians to get home while commercial flights are still available, which is a very soft way of saying, you know, get on it, let's go. And so the night of March 12th is where most of the action happened for us, but we made the decision, okay, we're getting ready to cancel all the trips,

that, you know, getting in front of people and telling them you can't be leaving tomorrow. Um, and, and to speak to people and say, you can't leave. We had, um, some guests say, yeah, no kidding. And others say, absolutely not. I'm going to be at the airport. And so our Friday was, was quite uh dicey in the sense that i personally got in the car with a colleague from work drove out to the airport we bought plane tickets to solely for the purpose of getting across security and uh and had to convince people out of getting on a plane um and that was a again that's the same human emotion which is disbelief and shock there's many stages of grief and it applies to a trip. But at the same time, that weekend, we had multiple trips abroad that we had to get home.

And the ideal thing when you have 15 or 30 people is to get everybody on the same flight. And while everybody's scrambling to get home, if it's just one or two people, you can find a routing that makes sense from wherever you are. But getting all 25 people on the same routing together on the same aircraft is actually quite difficult at the very last minute. And so our team did shifts. We did all nighters on Friday night to Saturday morning and again from Saturday night to Sunday morning, partly because we needed, um, we needed, there was a lot of work to do, but partly because we needed to get the time zones to work so that we could speak to guests. Um, and if you, if you've ever been on a coach tour, there's a microphone at the front of the bus. And, um, one of our, uh, representatives was on the ground, had to actually put us on speakerphone with the microphone

up against the, the, you know, his or her iPhone and, uh, and say, okay, look, we've got, we've got people from head office calling and this is not a drill, you know, you need to get home. Um, and so it took for that group, it took a good 36 hours just to convince everybody, um, that they should leave. Um, and then, uh, we, we managed through that weekend, making sure we got everybody home and everybody was awake until nobody could sleep well until we knew everybody was on Canadian soil. And the following week to week and a half was really a tale of tracking one ship in particular, on which we had 12 passengers. And those people were stuck on a ship, MS Zandam. And what happened was they were coming around the southernmost tip of Argentina.

Argentina closed its border. So then they continued up the coast of Chile. Chilean government, by the time they were getting close to Santiago, had closed its border. And so they continued navigating north towards Peru. By that time, Peru had closed its border. And so we're watching this develop in real time and you're helpless. I mean, even the cruise company is helpless. Everybody's helpless. So fortunately there's a humanitarian side to this, which is that they were allowed to dock to bring on food supplies and fresh

water and medical supplies and whatever else they might need, but they weren't allowed to disembark and get on planes. So we had this cascading effect of we had booked flights for everybody in one airport and they couldn't get on shore. Cancel the flights. Okay, next port of call is Santiago. Get flights for everybody out of santiago scramble hurry up and wait they get to santiago can't get on okay let's try lima let's get everybody booked on flights we booked and canceled many many many flights in one way and in the end it became a bit of an international um diplomacy effort because we were in in close

contact with foreign affairs canada and the consular services. We had some, you find through your network, people who know people. And they weren't the only Canadians on board, but there were also Americans on board the ship. And so every government was lobbying very, very diligently to allow the ship to cross the Panama Canal to make its way to Florida. And they were off the coast of the Panama canal for probably three days. And there were three very long days. And eventually, you know, the backroom dealing and whatever had to happen happened. They went in the cover of darkness across the Panama canal. We tracked it online because it's a track, all this stuff on a website.

We watched it happen in real time at two or 3. And, and we felt a big sigh of relief knowing they would get to Fort Lauderdale and be able to disembark. And the company, I couldn't speak highly enough. I mean, they chartered flights for everybody to get home and really looked after the guests. They even sent another ship to rendezvous and split the group onto two different ships. They did everything they could in the circumstances, but that was a very, very stressful time. I can't even imagine for the families and the guests how stressful that was. But for us, it was very stressful, too.

And then once that group was back, we were OK. I was going to say, you know, it's hard to imagine how you prepare for something like this. Obviously, your company has to be prepared for a lot of different things. And so do governments and so do cruise ship owners and tour owners. And, you know, we keep emphasizing there's more than cruise ships involved in all the different trips you've just detailed to us. But overall, given the fact that this thing kind of came out of nowhere, it sounds like the system actually worked.

You know, it could have been faster, perhaps, given some of those delays, but really, overall, in the big picture, the system worked. I think it did. I think it did. We are really proud of the effort we made. I think we worked with a sense of urgency that allowed us, because the fear we had was if we don't move right the second, somebody else is going to grab those plane seats. Because remember, right, we're competing on a global scale. There are groups from Germany, there are groups from Brazil, there are groups from China, there are groups from all over the world competing for those airplane seats. And so this little engine that could in Canada is, is, you know, working really, really diligently to get priority access for its guests. So that's the thing we're proud of in terms of our response. And that's the, it's a sense of urgency, um, that I, but overall

people eventually made it home. Um, if you look at the industry and yes, it was difficult, but travel is nobody remembers the things that went really well in their travel experiences. Everybody has a great story of things that didn't go as planned and the varying degrees to that, but that's, that's the adventure of travel. That's like how many times I've lost my golf bags or at least they were delayed. I always got them eventually, but I don't know where they ended up. They weren't at the turnstile when I got off the plane. Anyway, let me move this ahead,

because obviously your priority was getting people home and keeping people safe. Once that was all in the bag, then you're trying to save your company, because it became clear very quickly that this was going to last. This wasn't a one-week, one-month thing. This was, well, as we already know, it's been at least a year, and it's probably going to be a bit longer. So what were the immediate decisions you had to make? And, you know, I don't need to know them all in detail,

but in terms of the basics, what did you have to do to save your company? So the power of this conversation is it's a year later and hindsight is 2020. Right. But a lot of what I'm about to describe to you is from the vantage point of what did we know then and what could we reasonably believe and what were the scenarios we were running. And when you, when you do that, you don't have the benefit of knowing this is going to last a year, it's going to last a year and a half. So I would frame it in the following way. We have two very important priorities, which come ahead of our own selfish ambitions.

The first is a priority and I would call it a duty towards our guests. They entrust us with their safety, their life savings, and we take that responsibility very seriously. And so that was one very important priority. How do we do right by all the people who trust us? And the second is, you know, we have 28 families that depend on the

income they earn from working day to day in our company. These are mortgages, these are rent payments, these are child support payments, these are young children at daycare, or toys or whatever else you can think of, right. And it's a very human thing. There are no numbers in our company, everybody has a name. Everybody knows people's birthdays. We celebrate them together. It's like an extended family. And so there's a responsibility towards those people too. And when you see large companies handle a crisis,

there's often immediate layoffs or at least furloughs and they're temporary in nature, but it's the, you need to act and you need to act quickly. We, so I'll describe the two tails. and they're temporary in nature, but it's the, you need to act and you need to act quickly. We, um, so I'll describe the two tails cause I think they're very intertwined. Um, on the one hand, we did not know how long this would last. We did not know, uh, which trips would be affected. So early on after that weekend, let's, let's describe it after that weekend and getting everybody home. Um, then we had,

we were flooded with calls from people who were nervous about their trip leaving next week, the week after a month later, you know, next fall and, and to varying degrees, you have to prioritize and say, okay, there are people who are leaving in the next two weeks. We need to deal with those first and then we'll get to the, and you can't do that if you're short staffed. So our first decision was we're keeping everybody full payroll, full staff, no ifs, ands, or buts.

We need to manage through this crisis because we have a duty and an obligation towards our guests. And I suspect we're, it's a big responsibility. I suspect we were among the few who did that. The impact of that was you didn't have to wait three hours on hold to get through to a human on our side. And it didn't take four days for us to get back to you. You had someone on the phone within 10 minutes whenever you needed to call. And I'm not saying at all times it was 10 minutes, but it was pretty quick and we were responsive and we communicated throughout the crisis. And it was because we kept the people.

But we also kept the people because we said we have an obligation towards them as well as owners of a company and as business people. It's a dual obligation. And so having that team in place actually helped us navigate through the following two to three months of expected departures much more quickly than had we scaled back. And so the nuance here is some people don't want to go anymore and some people are absolutely dead set on going. And so I think I've shared this with you in the past, but we have a retired guest population, some of whom are very early in their retirement and they have many years to go of travel. Some of whom are wondering, hey, this might be my last chance to go to Machu Picchu and come hell or high water, I'm going.

Like I'll be at the airport on April 30th. You can come with me or not, but I'm, I'm going. And so there's this, there's this, uh, tale of two very different perspectives when we speak to guests and we're constantly, um, you know, juggling between those priorities and, and, uh, views. So, so that's kind of how we, we navigated, um, the first, I would say 30 to 45 days, we kept everybody. Uh, so mid March is when things really got off the rails. We kept everybody on staff until the end of April. So it was a long six weeks, but it gave people plenty of time to let the reality sink in. And then, of course, we had to make some cuts. So we were a growing company.

We were staffed for growth, meaning we hired ahead of growth. And so we always had excess capacity, if you want to think about it, both for travel counselors, but training and development and marketing and all kinds of things. And so we had to make some very difficult decisions and to let some people go, which was a very difficult thing. And at the time, there wasn't much clarity in terms of what kind of government supports or programs would be available. So all of this was done basically assuming no help from the government. And I will say that for a business like ours and a sector like ours, the government programs have been tremendous, tremendous support. They have assured our survival and Canadian taxpayer bases assured our survival.

We'll forever be grateful. And I will never, ever cringe at the tax bill I have in 10 years, 20 years, or my kids can complain about how much they'll pay in tax. And I'll say one day, you're going to be happy you live in a Canadian society that looks after everybody else. And so we're very grateful for that. And that's a big part of the reason why we're still going to be around on the other side of this. All right. Let's talk about the other side of this for a few moments, because I've only got a few more moments. But I want to talk about what a business like yours and the tourism business in general, this kind of sector of it that depends on tours and going to different places in the

world because obviously it's still locked down, still shut down. It's going to open, still shut down. It's going to open up at some point. They just announced, the Canadian government announced it's not going to allow cruise ships into Canada for another year. I don't think that surprises anybody. But other elements may come back. So how do you plan for a comeback? It's not just saying, okay, well, you know,

let's look at this date to go to this place. It's where you go. It's how you go. It's how long you go for. It's how big a tour group you want to use. How do you make those decisions? Are those decisions the kind of things that you're having to make right now? They are.

So safety comes first ahead of anything else. And so our rule is we won't let a trip leave unless we would be comfortable joining or sending our parents abroad. And I think the best way we've – nobody really knows is the answer. And we don't pretend to know. But based on what we know today, here are my expectations. My expectations are that the vaccine rollout will be quite effective. We're seeing early signs of that in countries that have significant. Like I think an article last night that Israelrael has vaccinated 78 of its 60 plus population and they've seen a dramatic decline in hospitalizations and whatnot so there are countries as the vaccine deploys who will benefit from that and those will be the safest to travel to and canada will be among those countries eventually

that has effectively dealt with this this. So there's two sides. It's are the Canadians that you're traveling with vaccinated? And are the people that you're going to spend time with for a week or two or three, is that country safe? And I suspect that'll be the priority. Okay. Before you go any further, are you suggesting that to go on a tour, your tours at least,

you'll have to have proof of vaccination? We haven't landed on a final decision on that yet because it's deeply personal choice. And you'll hear it in the wording that Prime Minister Trudeau says, you know, everyone who wishes to be vaccinated will be. There are some airlines that are saying you can't get on board without a vaccine. That's kind of what they're signaling. I am pro-vaccination, so I certainly hope that our industry adopts a similar stance, but you can't impose that. You can certainly turn down someone if you feel it's unsafe for the group. So we'll have to see how that situation evolves, but I don't think it would

be a bad idea for the travel industry to take that stance is my current view. And I think it's likely to go Western countries first. It's sad, but they're the most likely to get the vaccines first. So Canadians traveling to Western countries, probably the way this recovers first, small groups, I think are going to be very important. So we are planning for a maximum of 16 participants on any group. That means not every group is going to be 16. Some will be 10, some will be 12 and whatnot. And we are taking extra precautions in terms of the hotel partners that we work with, the guides that we work with, having personal protective equipment on board the coaches,

having an oversized coach for that size group. We handle all the gratuities. So that seems like a silly thing, but there's no money changing hands between each of our guests and service providers. We handle all that for them. So there's no, there's no, you know, contact issues. So there's a lot of little things that we need to think through, including restaurants and whatever else to make sure it's very safe.

How much time have you got, do you think? Like realistically, when do you think the tour business is going to be back up and running? Okay, so I'll answer this from our perspective, which is mostly 60-plus Canadians traveling abroad for two- to three-week cultural tours. When you say 60-plus, you're talking age. Age, Exactly. In the tour business, you have, um, student group tours.

You have, you know, 20, 20 to 30 something group tours. They will start traveling well ahead. I think our demographic is much more cautious and, and, uh, and, and rightfully so. So I know of other tour companies that are running tours right now. We are not, but I know it's happening. And we are watching and in dialogue with them to understand how is it working out? What are the challenges you're facing?

And we're incorporating those data points into our planning. But I think for our guest demographic, at the earliest, it'll be fall 2021. More likely, it'll be spring of 2022. So I think by this time next year, we will be getting ready to send off a more significant number of groups. And 2022 is my best guess right now. I want to underscore that we don't need that to happen to survive as a company. We have a conservative balance sheet, and we're okay to wait it out another year if we need to. But my best guess right now is 2022. And if we don't feel a hundred percent comfortable, we won't run groups. What is this just as a kind of a final question? How has your mindset been impacted by what's happened in this last year in terms of the kind of business

that you run, which has obviously been hit hard by this and is going to continue to be hit hard for a while yet. I mean, you say you've got a conservative balance sheet and you can make it through, but still you weren't banking on two years without revenue coming in. So how is your mindset about the travel business being impacted by what's happened? It's an air pocket in the grand scheme of things. So if you take a very long-term perspective, 20, 30, 40 year view, there have been other air pockets like this one. I can think of 9-11 where people said it's the end of travel.

People will never get back on an airplane. And it took a while, but two, three, four years later, it was back to normal. Everybody was flying again. Things changed though, right? We started having to put our liquids in bags and to this day, that's still the case. So there will be permanent changes as a result of this. But it is in the grand scheme of things in air pockets. There are a very significant number of people I speak to are telling me,

I can't wait to be able to travel again, myself included, my wife included, everyone I speak to included. So it's very easy to get down on travel in the short term, but we have to maintain a longer term perspective and know that there's going to be a bounce back. And that bounce back might be very strong because people have been cooped up for two years in their homes. They're going to want to get back out there and hit the road and enjoy life.

And so I, my outlook hasn't changed. I think the new reality will be quite different once we,, once we go back much like nine 11 affected air travel, but it's probably for the better, right? Like there have been epidemics in the past and we'll be more equipped. We'll have masks. We'll have other things that we do and incorporate into our daily lives that help keep everybody safe. That's the goal. Well, you know, I wish you luck, Dan.

You've got a great little operation because I've seen it at least from a distance. But this has tested you and it's tested everybody in this business. Not everybody in this business is going to survive as a result of it. Some of these companies are just simply not going to be there when all this ends. And, you know, hopefully you guys are, you know, rewarded by the way you seem to have acted at the time it happened and the fact that you've had your thinking caps on in the time since on how to make things better and to deal with these things when the situation does come back.

But listen, thanks so much for sharing your stories with us. I just have this image of you at the airport getting through security by having bought a ticket somewhere. With no luggage. With no luggage. I'm amazed you got through to security on that one. But anyway, listen, once again, thanks very much, Dan. Thank you, Peter. Well, you know, I've spent almost all my life in the public sector

because I worked for Crown Corporation in terms of the CBC for the last couple of years because of this podcast I've actually been working for myself and so I've had to make decisions about running a little business a very little business. So when I hear stories like that, the one that Dan Chetrit just told us, I'm really impressed by what relatively small business owners have to go through. Now, Dan's not a small business owner, but he's not a huge business owner. But he was confronted with a chaotic situation

and a crisis in his firm. And he and Leroy, his partner, have had to make some tough decisions. And they're not out of it yet. And there's going to be a while before anybody's out of it. But listening to his story and the calmness in which he tells it, I've really been impressed. All right, that's the bridge for this Tuesday.

Tomorrow, of course, is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, what we call the podcast within a podcast. Bruce Anderson will join us from Ottawa. I'm sure what we're going to talk about is something to do with the impeachment trial, which begins in effect today, but the real actions is tomorrow. So we'll have a chance to talk about it as it begins the process of the next week or two of the actual trial on whether or not to convict Donald Trump. Later this week, Friday, of course, is the weekend special. It depends on hearing from you, and already I've heard from

quite a few of you, but I want to hear from a lot more. As always, we love hearing from new listeners, especially those who are joining us for the first time over the last couple of weeks on Sirius XM Channel 167 Canada Talks. So, don't be shy. Drop me a line at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. That's it for today. I'm Peter

Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.