The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Gotta Love THESE Snowbirds - Ready To Salute Our Heroes!

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

A new way to thank our front line heroes -- by taking to the skies. Plus, the promised feature interview on whether COVID-19 has given us reason to redefine our relationship with the United States.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. Well, you know me, I don't get overly depressed at bad news. I don't get overly excited at good news. Today, it was that latter of those two emotions that I had to ensure that I followed. Because there was some good news out of the United States today, and that came from Anthony Fauci. And you know who he is, Dr. Fauci, when he expressed some optimism around the initial trials on a drug called remdesivir, her remdesivir. And let's just make sure we understand what we're talking about here. If there's going to be some kind of solution in some fashion to the COVID-19 story,

it's going to come in one of two ways. It's either going to be a vaccine or it's going to be some kind of antiviral treatment. Now, the vaccine, there's been promising news on it in the last week. We've talked about it more than a few times. Oxford University are into human trials already. University of Saskatchewan is doing well with its closing in on the finish of its animal trials. And so are many other different research labs around the world. So there's interest on the vaccine front, but still even the most positive of vaccine proponents is saying

it's at least six months, if not a year, away from beginning production if the trials continue to be of a positive nature. So that's the vaccine. The vaccine is we'd all get it, therefore preventing us from getting COVID-19. That's the plan with the vaccine. The antiviral treatment is different. A, you've got to have COVID-19 for the antivirals to kick in to help lessen the consequences of having the virus.

Okay, so today's announcement on remdesivir is the potential for it to be an antiviral. So that would help, obviously, if you'd contacted COVID-19. The idea is it would shorten the length of time you were sick and lessen the impact of being sick. So that's where we are with it. But it is still in trials. It has not been approved yet by officials in the United States. But the very fact that Dr. Fauci, who's been very resistant, you saw what he said when Trump was floating

in the various ideas that he has, Dr. Trump. But on this one, Fauci was more positive. Now, it's not out of the blue remdesivir. It has been talked of and has been talked of for at least the last month, if not longer. But this was the first time we heard positive vibes from somebody who people trust. And Anthony Fauci is somebody people trust.

Brad Pitt trusts him. I love that. I don't know whether you saw it. Saturday Night Live last night had a, or Saturday night had a skit of Fauci played by Brad Pitt. Because Fauci had once said a couple of weeks ago that when the movie's made, I want Brad Pitt playing me. Well, he played him on Saturday Night Live, and it was very funny. And you can find it by, you know, go on YouTube.

Anyway, enough on that. Second thing before we get to our main guest for today, I just want to say a couple of words about an announcement today from the RCAF, the Canadian forces. Snowbirds. The snowbirds are going to fly over a number of Canadian cities, starting, I think, this weekend in Nova Scotia,

as a tribute to first responders and frontline workers. They're going to do this across the country. Follows by about 24 hours, the U.S. aerobatics team doing similar events in a number of American cities. And good for the snowbirds. I love the snowbirds. Always have. I get quite excited watching that when they

do their various shows across the country. I, you know, you've heard me talk about my days in the Navy and flying training back in the sixties, which I loved, certainly enjoyed it a lot more than they enjoyed me. But in 1967, based at Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, that's where we were based for advanced flying training. We shared the base at that time with the Golden Centenaires. Remember, 67 was Canada's centennial, and our aerobatic team was the Golden Centenaires, flying the same planes, literally the same planes

that the snowbirds fly today, Tudor jets. And so they practiced at portage getting ready for the big summer of 67 they practiced every day airspace was locked off i think it was between 12 and 1 or 12 and 2 and so when we'd we'd be flying in the morning we'd come down land and we'd we'd uh you know go for lunch a mess and the uh golden centenarians would be up above the base doing their doing their shtick doing their routine practicing rehearsing getting ready for the shows that they would do during that year and i gotta tell you as exciting as that was it got to be so routine that I can remember walking to base with my buddies and we'd be heading to lunch and you wouldn't even look up in the air

because you'd seen it so many times. But I've sure made up for that since because whenever I've seen them and I always see them on July 1st for the big Canada Day show because they're always part of that. They come swooping in over the Peace Tower. And here we are going to be watching them over these, you know, next few weeks, I imagine, in different, over different cities across the country. And they come in pretty low.

You know, I think the restriction for them is like 500 feet. You know, they've got to be at least 500 feet about the tallest building in whatever community they fly over. And if you're wondering when they're going to be coming over your town, that's yet to be announced in terms of a firm schedule, but it will be. You can be sure you'll be hearing about it in your town. With the hope and expectation

that they're going to be flying over the hospitals, where obviously the frontline health care workers are. But it's a tribute to all those essential workers that we all pay tribute to every day. So they'll be doing from the air what we're doing from our porches, right? I hope you're getting out there trying to make your mark on your community and thanking those who are at the front lines of dealing with COVID-19. Anyway, that's my comment about the snowbirds.

Now, if you checked in on last Friday night's podcast, which was the mailbag edition, we had a special letter there last week that I gave a fair amount of time to, and it came from Sarah Tacone from Oakville, Ontario. And basically what she was saying was, listen, this is a redefining moment for Canada. And the redefining she was talking about is the relationship

or the potential redefining, redefinition, was the relationship between Canada and the United States. Because we've all seen and heard a lot of things in these last two months. And Sarah wants to know or wanted to know, is it time that we really started to rethink that relationship based on what we witnessed from our southern neighbors who are our greatest friends and our best allies. An incredible relationship that we have with our neighbors to the south. But is it time to actually be rethinking it? So on first read of that letter, I thought, oh, you know, okay, sure. And then I read it again, and I thought, you know, this is a really good topic. And I want to reach out and talk to

somebody who I have a great deal of respect for to see what they have to say about this issue. So that is what I did. I reached out to Janice Stein, who's been a friend for 35 years and somebody who I've often gone to for advice on foreign affairs issues, on global questions. She was the founder and first head of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. And so I reached out to her again,

and we had a great conversation this morning. And I'll tell you, this is about 10 minutes long, 10 or 12 minutes long, and it's like you're getting a free course in global politics, especially on Canada-U.S. relations in this 10 or 12 minutes. You can be a student here because I bet you students will end up listening to this as well, because it's great insight here onto the relationship, not just historically, but today,

on this question of whether or not we should be redefining that relationship. So anyway, enough from me. Let's hear from Janice Stein so Janice I think you'd agree it's a good letter because it makes us it forces us to really think about the issue and I guess the key question is

is this a good time to be kind of rethinking our relationship with our southern neighbor that's a great question Peter kind of rethinking our relationship with our southern neighbor? That's a great question, Peter, and it certainly is tempting to do so when we look south of the border and see unprecedented dysfunction in the United States. It's in politics, it's in the economy, it's in the management of the epidemic. So this is really a great question for Canadians to ask. The other side of this story is geography and economic fundamentals have not really been changed by COVID. U.S. trade

as a proportion of its economy, 27%, just over a quarter. And that's because it has such a big internal market. Canada's trade as a proportion of our GDP, 65%. That's because we are a small population in a large land mass. Those are just unforgiving facts. Now let's make the story just a little worse with two more statistics. How much does

the U.S. export to us as a proportion of their exports? 16%. How much do we export to us, that's a proportion of their exports, 60%. How much do we export to them? 75% still of everything we export goes to the one market. So whatever we're seeing south of the border, our economic future is still dependent on a thriving U.S. economy and on our access to it. And in history, when we've kind of challenged that, and I think back to the kind of 70s and early 80s, the Pierre Trudeau government, Mitchell Sharp, the third option, looking for somewhere to tie into beyond the states,

to try and change those numbers. It never really worked. It didn't work. It never really worked. The 70s, we were not able to move the needle at all, Peter. You know, more recently, our political leadership and our business community certainly recognized that China was becoming the big global market of the future.

We had Team Canada under Prime Minister Craig, and it started that early in the 90s, and a concerted effort to grow our exports to China, huge demand, 4%. We did not get very far in penetrating that market. Partly, we're far away. Partly, it's just so much easier. We know the United States.

We speak the same language. The sellers know the buyers. The suppliers know who needs what they supply. And it's just been easy for Canadians all these years to do it. So we call ourselves a trading nation, but that's really not accurate. And a global trading nation, you're still overwhelmingly focused on the United States.

You know, I think part of this discussion is based on the fact, or kind of the age-old question, you know, who are we and are we different? You know, what's the difference between a Canadian and American? And some people are looking at this story and the handling of this pandemic and seeing fundamental differences in terms of us as peoples and whether that should be driving new thought in the relationship. I think you're absolutely right, Zach. The differences between the way our governments,

both federal and provincial, have handled this epidemic, they've worked together. They've left partisan differences largely aside. And Canadians have listened to their governments and trusted them. You look at the United States, dysfunction is almost unimaginable, frankly, in the White House. Rivalries with Congress and inability to coordinate really with governors who are really doing most of the work here. And we have a deep polarization that even this pandemic has not wiped out. So I think any Canadian looking is going to say we really are different.

The problem becomes what do we do about that in terms of our economy and job creation and our exports? There may be a little opening here, Peter, as we look forward. Because coming out of this epidemic, and this epidemic accelerated things that were happening already. So those long global supply chains, we saw this in the difficulty in getting masks, for example, because China is a leading manufacturer. There's a stepping back now in Canada, but in Europe, and the political leaders and even some of the business community are saying,

we can't on every single product just buy what is the lowest cost per unit. We can't have every antibiotic on the whole spectrum now with a component that's manufactured in China. We can't make ourselves vulnerable to one supplier on critical issues. I think we're going to see a conversation start in Canada as we come out of this. What's really critical? Do we need to redevelop our long-lost capacity to manufacture basic health products that we need? Do we need to be able to manufacture the things we would need in an urgent climate emergency?

In a challenge for Canada, if we want to do something about this, we're going to have to pay more for things that we think are essential to our future and make us different from our neighbor to the south. You know, it seems that whenever we have this discussion, it always appears through an economic lens. And I'm wondering, is this showing us anything beyond that lens about the two countries? So that's the question I think we're going to have to answer.

And I put it this way. How much more are we willing to pay for a mask that's manufactured in Canada and may be more expensive than the most efficient global supply chain could give us. And how much more are we willing to pay for that mask? So if we need it again in five years or seven years, it's there ready for us and we can turn our factories on and say, manufacture this for us. Because we're not going to be able to return any manufacturing to Canada if we don't have stable demand over time. They won't do it. So the second big piece of this, I think, Peter, government is going to have to play

a larger part in our economy. Do we have political support for that across the country? I don't know. That's a tough one. That's a tough one, right? Because it does underline how different we are as a country, even within our own borders, that there are regions that would say yes to that question,

and there were areas that would say no. That's right. That's right. You know, I know some parts of the West would be very uneasy about that. And if you said to them, well, that's part of the price we're all going to pay to make ourselves more independent of our neighbors of the South and China and the other part of the world and provide strategic reserves for the next crisis, whether it's a health crisis or it's a climate change crisis or

it's a nuclear reactor that goes bad, whatever it is. We're going to build that kind of capacity in the country so that we say we are different, we have resources that we can draw on in a crunch, but we're going to pay more. And government is going to be the biggest buyer of all that. And it's going to be a much larger driver of our economy. Last question. I can see that one in the next election, can't you? Yeah, that would, well, let me actually follow up on that with the last question, because

what some are saying is this discussion is all very interesting right now, but really the discussion changes completely if there's a change of government, not now, but really the discussion changes completely if there's a change of government, not here, but in the States. And with an election coming up in November, you know, if Trump doesn't get a second term and if some of that dysfunction that we're witnessing doesn't exist with a new government, that we suddenly go back to the way it's always been and there is no discussion? I wish that were the case. I don't think so. I think it'll get better because what we're seeing in Trump's White House will just go away. And that'll help to some degree.

But what you and I are talking about now has been building for 10 years since the global financial crisis. The China problem is not going away. In fact, that's the one thing that unites Democrats and Republicans is the China problem. That's a big one for our government coming out of any government of Canada, regardless of who gets elected, are we different from the United States in our attitude toward China? And if we want to build the kind of reserves of stuff that we might need in the next crisis,

that's going to complicate our relationship with China, no matter who the government is. So in a funny way, this crisis that we're living through right now just pushed a lot of trends that were happening, moved them into fast forward, and they're visible for everybody to see. It's been a fascinating discussion, Janice. As always, whenever I talk with you, I always end up thinking bigger thoughts than I had when I started. So I do appreciate it.

I hardly need to say what a pleasure it is to talk to you, Peter. You take care, Janice, and we'll talk again soon. You too. Bye-bye. Bye. So there you go. Janice Stein's thoughts on Sarah Tacone's letter from last week about whether or not this is time to re-examine

the relationship between Canada and the United States. A lot of food for thought, as we say, in those words from Janice. And I hope you've got a takeaway from it all as well. All right. Time to close off today's podcast. By the way, last night's, you know, could COVID kill cash? Got a lot of reaction and a lot of listeners.

People were more than interested in that topic. As they have been, you know, I was going to say for the last few weeks, the numbers for the podcast have gone up significantly. And that's nice to know. It's nice to know you're getting something from this and you're listening and you're reacting as you have been and as you continue to by writing to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Love to hear from you. They all go into the mailbag for this Friday's edition of Your Questions and Comments and Thoughts, another very popular part of the Bridge Daily Podcast. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.