The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "It's Feels Like Living In A Different Century"

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Veteran Canadian war/foreign correspondent Susan Ormiston joins us from Ukraine in a riveting conversation. Plus, our regular Monday check-in on Covid this week with Dr Lisa Barrett from Halifax.  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's like living in a different century. We go to Ukraine for the latest. Well, it's a long way from Stratford, Ontario, where I am today, kicking off a new week in the peaceful surroundings of southwestern Ontario. It's a long way from here to Ukraine, and specifically on this day to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. We're going to talk to Susan Ormiston, one of the many Western correspondents

working in Ukraine, trying to tell the world the story of the Russian invasion. Susan, of course, works for the CBC and is a longtime colleague of mine. We'll go to Susan in a second. But I do want to tell everybody it's Monday and you know what Mondays means on the bridge. For the last couple of years, Mondays has meant the latest kind of situation on the pandemic, on COVID, and we'll be true to that as we always are on Mondays. Dr. Lisa Barrett will join us in about 15 minutes and Dr. Barrett will talk about where we are today it's hard to think of the pandemic it's hard to think of covet 19 when we're so focused on the crane story but things have been happening fairly quickly over the last few weeks and hopefully that pattern

will continue and dr barrett will talk about that in a couple of minutes. But we start in Ukraine. As I said, Susan Ormiston is a friend and colleague of mine. We've worked together for a long time, 30, 35 years. And Susan is in Ukraine, part of the CBC team, part of a group of international journalists, many international journalists who are inside Ukraine telling this absolutely gut-wrenching, depressing story of the Russian invasion and what appears to be a planned slaughter of civilians that's been taking place. And we've seen some horrific images

in these last few days. Susan and her team have been out covering this story. She's no stranger to Ukraine, having been there a number of times. And she's no stranger to war coverage. And as a result, she's learned many things

about how to deal with this story. And that's what I want to get at in my conversation with her. So let's get right to it. As I said, Susan, it's early evening now in Ukraine, and she was out for most of this day covering the story in Lviv. So let's catch up with Susan and get a sense of what she's witnessing, both on the ground. Well, I'll let her tell the story. Here we go.

Susan, tell me where you are and what you've seen today. Oh gosh well in Lviv which is the westernmost city in Ukraine relatively safe for now Peter and a lot of the humanitarian aid is now coming through here we're expecting a convoy of UN trucks but really this has become an unbelievable hub for refugees hundreds of thousands of refugees are flocking here from other parts in Ukraine, either transitioning through here to other countries like Poland, or staying here trying to, you know, gauge whether the war is going to come this far west or how bad it is. But it's just been a phenomenal exodus of people and the city is trying to cope with this influx of refugees the train station is absolutely bursting uh with people every day you go there are

more and more in fact on the weekend the statistics showed that it was the largest the day with the most refugees crossing over into poland since the war. So my assessment of that, Peter, is that as the bombing intensifies in East and Southern Ukraine, people who thought maybe they could wait it out or thought that their village would be safe are giving up and they are fleeing. You know, when we watch these incredible images and we listen to the Ukrainian people, there's this mixture of despair and resolve. That's what we see from here. What do you see on the ground?

A lot of heartache, particularly around separation, Peter, because women and children are leaving and they're leaving their men behind it's epic uh so many women have cried when i said how tough was the decision it was leaving half their family here and not knowing whether when they would come back and whether their loved ones will survive. I mean, they have a mandatory mobilization here. So men of fighting age 18 to 60 cannot leave the country. They haven't called up all Ukrainian men, but it's a possibility. So these separations at the train stations and at the borders are just heartbreaking. So we're seeing a lot of that.

We are, too, seeing the beginnings of a new resistance. You know, I reflected that you and I talked in 2014 after I spent so much time in Ukraine, the revolution there. They toppled the president and then Crimea was invaded by Russia. And the people on the square then, eight years ago in Maidan, many of them were young Ukrainians, you know, filled with this fervor that they could depose this Soviet-backed, Russian-backed president. And they did. And I talked to young people the other day who said we feel like this is a new maidan we feel like this is a new resistance growing the other thing that's given them a lot of oxygen is you know they'll say to us you in the west thought that we would fold within

days that under russian bombardment and the strength of the russian military ukraine would simply dissolve within days well Well, it hasn't. You know, we're into two weeks now and we're still standing. And I think that's given a lot of power to people who are resisting this war and determined to fight it, that they have a chance. They have the world's attention and they have a chance. They need a lot more support, which you've been hearing about, you know, the air support, military's support. But they do have a sense that something is building here. We talked to the mayor of Lviv. He described it as a new Ukraine. And when I said,

what does that mean? He said, it's a bright light. He said, at the end of this all, we will have a stronger country full of people who are very taken with this idea of Ukraine as a strong, independent, democratic, European facing country. The world is standing beside them or behind them or with them on this. I mean, even Japan today came out in support of Ukraine and said it was going to start sending things. Now, Japan and Germany, as you well know, have had a history of staying out of these things, but they're in on this. And so is everybody else to a degree. You mentioned the no fly zone issue does this come up with ordinary people that you know we know you support us but hey where are your troops all the time to a person uh you know they're grateful but they're also angry and each day that we see the atrocities like we did on the weekend uh in uh in european with those civilians being struck by a mortar crossing a street i mean it's it's getting worse

so there's a sense of we know the world is with us we know the west is watching but you're letting us fight on our own we need need more help. We need helmets. We need armored plates in our flak jackets. We need aid, of course. But what we really need are fighter jets. And we need you to close the airspace so that they can't attack us from the air. Yeah, people, ordinary people who are traveling out of this country tell us that all the time. It's a mantra.

You mentioned earlier that, you know, you've been in Ukraine before and you've seen some difficult things, not only in that country, but in other countries where you've covered, you know, to say the least, difficult situations. Is this unlike anything else you've covered that's a good question um it feels like it's from another century because of the massive humanitarian exodus you know i was standing at the levive train station the other day peter and i was looking at those old Soviet-looking trains, you know, their old-style train cars. And I saw these people with creases in their faces and worry and, you know, bags of belongings, and I thought I was transported to another era. It has that feel about it. Also that, you know, in many wars recently, we haven't seen as much conventional warfare. We're seeing a resurgence of this type of warfare with tanks and bombs and grenades and one force moving down a road facing another force. It's very real here.

And it has a different feeling from the war, for example, that we saw in Afghanistan over the last 20 years and some of the other Middle Eastern wars that we've experienced. It does have a very different feeling and and a very scary one talk about that because i i you know i get a lot of mail about asking how do correspondents cover something like this you know they must get scared when they're seeing what they're seeing and they're involved in the middle of all this um how do you it's not a distance you can't get distance but how do you deal with it i mean you've seen a lot of stuff susan in your career i mean how do you deal with this yeah you know i think um for the cdc anyway Anyway, we've had to make some tough decisions about risk, moving our teams away from a situation that could become extremely difficult and where they could get trapped.

The challenge with that is you it's very difficult to cover the worst of the war when you can't be close to it. But a lot of people 10 days ago believed that Russia would move in and would more quickly encircle some of the key areas like Kiev, for example. So we had to make determinations on that. So we're a little too distant from the worst of the fighting at the moment. And I'm hoping that we can find ways to get closer to the people who are suffering from it. But it's a, you know, it's just uncertain. You don't, it's very hard to determine where the war is going next and how severe is the

risk. I can tell you sitting in my hotel room in levied the other night at four in the morning our time when that nuclear plant uh caught fire i really started to think about okay what's our risk mitigation here we we hadn't anticipated that uh what do we do next so it's a daily assessment of managing the risk. And, you know, I mean, on the other side of it, it's as I've said, I've said to you many times, I feel totally, completely privileged to be able to cover stories like this where, you know, things things are turning on these massive historical events. And people are turning to us for understanding but also they're turning to us in ukraine they want to get the word out there's been almost no hostility toward the media which is different as we've experienced in other wars as well ukrainians

know that they need to keep this um this war elevated in the public consciousness and they understand that the media the western media is is part of their power and so they're very welcoming to have us tell parts of the story that indicate their their suffering and and their misery going through this you know one of the ways we obviously follow this story is not only from hearing from people like you, but witnessing the pictures. And the pictures have been really quite remarkable. One of the ways I follow it is I follow people's Instagram posts,

including yours. And I want to talk just briefly about two particular shots that I've seen on your Instagram feed in the last little while that say volumes. On the one hand, there's this picture of this elderly woman in the train that you took at the station. And you've taken through a window and you can just see her contemplating her life and her situation. That image is remarkable. And the other one in a contrasting way is, I guess you had a chance to have supper at some point and it was just a dish of pierogies. And I don't think I've ever read so much into a dish of pierogies before, which I love.

And, you know, anybody who ever has pierogies loves. But the contrast between those two images is quite something. Well, yes, pictures have stories, don't they? Backstories. Those were delicious pierogies. And it was my first meal in about six days, like not meal in that we hadn't eaten, but sitting down and having something hot in a place where you could pause for a moment and eat pierogies. And it was sort of promoted by my sister-in-law, who is a Ukrainian Canadian back in Saskatchewan. And she wrote me and said, I'll bet the pierogies are really good over there. Stay safe.

So, indeed, I posted that in part toies are really good over there. Stay safe. So, indeed, I posted that in part to tell her, yes, indeed, they are. And the picture in the train station, yes, that's what I talked about before, Peter, is that image, it could transport you back to other wars in Europe. You know, her face creased with worry and being of an age that she's lived through a lot of conflict in this part of the world. And she's leaving again, probably, and not knowing when she'll be back. And, you know, not that it matters at all, but that day at the train station and the day of pierogies was my birthday. So I'll never forget it. You know, I'll never forget being at that train station surrounded by this human odyssey, seeing these people, you know, torn by leaving and recognizing what was happening.

And the other thing I'll say about that train station, obviously it affected me deeply is I saw a couple of men, Peter, one man came, I was watching out of the corner of my eye. He came up the steps with a four-year-old in his arms and he was looking kind of around, he looked exhausted. And I eventually talked to him as he tried to get his documents to the conductor or the the border patrol and tried to get on the train and they rejected him why because he's a fighting age and he told me his wife was in hospital in harkiv and he had brought their son to levive a long way to get him out to safety but he couldn't they wouldn't let him get on with that kid

I saw another couple probably in their 30s try to get on the train man and woman and he couldn't get on and I didn't understand their Ukrainian but I could see in her eyes he turned to her looked at her asked her something which I presume was will you go and she nodded no very very quietly and just looked at him and I just thought wow everyone is going through hell. Last question I mean we've known each other for a long time and one of the things I've always admired about you to a fault is that you want to be there, wherever the there is. You want to be at the story.

You're driven to be there, whatever it is, whether it was Meech Lake or whether it's the war in Ukraine. You want to be there. What drives Susan Armiston? Hmm. want to be there what drives Susan Armiston well um I I don't know I just know that when I'm sitting comfortably in North America and this has happened a lot of times uh having uh you know, enjoying my life, live in Washington now. And I see something like this developing. It's my only passion is to get there and to try to tell stories and interpret them for

Canadians. And I don't know where that comes from. It's maybe, you know, I don't want to be left out. I just want to cover this. But it also comes from now years of experience doing this kind of reporting. I call it, you're on the sharp end of a spear. People are, this is life and death. There's no question. People do not know what's going to happen in the next hour. And as a storyteller, it's very compelling. And I think what makes this story here in Ukraine so significant for us as Canadians is, as I described on the prairies, you know, there's a huge connection with Canadians. I've had people contact me that I haven't heard from in 20 years.

You know, it feels in that way like the Haiti earthquake, where people were so engaged in it, they wanted to help. It's been a very interactive experience as a Canadian working here in Ukraine and telling the story back home. And it's been very rewarding for us to know that people are really tuned in to what we're trying to do here. And tuned in they are. I mean, and it's people like you are allowing them to understand as best you can what is happening there on the ground and what the stakes are, not only in the big picture, but on an individual basis, like that woman on the train or that fellow you met in the train

station and his family. So listen, it's obvious that we want you to stay safe in a difficult situation and to take care of yourself. But I want you to know how much we all depend on what you and your colleagues are doing. So thank you, Susan. Take care. Thanks,

Peter. Great to talk to you. Susan Armiston in a war zone, uh, in her hotel room on, uh, this day, it's a Monday evening now in,

in, uh, Lviv in Ukraine. And, um, you know, all I can say is to Susan and all her colleagues from all the networks

and the newspapers and the online organizations, they're doing a heck of a job under really, really trying circumstances. Okay. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll get to the COVID story. It's Monday. And where are we on all this?

So we have a short conversation with our good friend, Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax. That's coming up right after this. This is a mix. All right. Peter Mansbridge, you're listening to The Bridge coming out of Stratford, Ontario on this day.

And you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. One of the amazing things about today's technology is we can go from an interview with Lviv in Ukraine in a war zone. And the quality, the sound quality was fabulous. So now we'll reach out to Halifax, all the way to Halifax, and see whether you never know with, you know, we gathered this information on Zoom,

and sometimes you get a good line, sometimes you don't get a good line, sometimes you have a good microphone, sometimes you don't have a good microphone. Nevertheless, wanted to check in with this week Dr. Lisa Barrett to find out how she sees things unfolding at the moment on the COVID story. Now that we're in this... Oh, man.

Where's that coming from? So let's see whether I can get this right. I think this, okay, wait a minute. I'll get it. You know, if I can arrange to get Lviv, Ukraine, I should be able to arrange to get this. If I can just queue it up properly. Okay, here we go.

Here's my conversation with Dr. Lisa Barrett on COVID. Where are we? So what am I to think of this? I got a note from a friend who says they're having a progressive afternoon long birthday event for a friend. A real outdoors, indoors, small group event. Hooray. What should I make of that?

What does that tell us about where we are? Well, it sounds like your friend has some good ideas about getting back to life with COVID. It sounds like they're interested in seeing more of their friends and family, but also aware that a full-on indoors plan is probably not in the cards in the middle of a respiratory season still. So, wow, good on your friend well we we should be aware that the friend is you and uh we hope your your weekend event went well but if you're planning something like that what should you keep in mind now that we're in this you know we're not normal yet but we're heading in the right direction. Yeah, I think it really very much is a time where it's silly to think we shouldn't do anything that's not quite where we are. We have a lot

of knowledge. We have a lot of tools. We can start to do things. But if you're somebody who has vulnerable people around you, or you have more than one household involved in getting together, then chances are, you're going to want to keep an eye on the number of people and where you're getting together. Right now, it's not about do or don't do. It's about do, understanding the risk and how you might mitigate that. And easy, easy things like understanding if your friends and family have any medical issues or are vulnerable. People who are healthcare workers happen to be in a category where you want to keep them from getting COVID right now. Still, they still need to be at work so thinking about all those things before you plan

something and then making an in-between plan for example parts of your day maybe inside together but reducing the amount of time inside together or changing the ventilation perspective and then having some other bits that are outside and still fun and able to socialize that's kind of an in-between plan reducing risk not getting rid of it where would where would masks fit into that or would they at all and that depends so if you've got a household that are always together chances are the use of masks is not really all that helpful because you you're inside and you're together a lot if you're with people from another household again and and there's some people that are vulnerable in that

mix wearing some masks inside would be perfectly reasonable especially if it's going to be for a longer period of time. And so it's that in-between land of no masks ever or the mandated mask plan when anyone is together inside. That's kind of where we are right now. And that really does depend on people understanding what's risky, understanding what the risk is of the people around them, and then applying some measures that might make things better. For example, if you're inside and you're not going to mask and you have some folks there who may be at risk, perhaps you do it for a shorter period of time or with a little bit of distance or with some increased ventilation as opposed to just go for it. And really, that's going to be a shorter term plan. And by that, I mean, we're still in a respiratory virus season. I've just had some kind of respiratory virus. It wasn't COVID, but there are a lot of

viruses around in the community right now. And combine that with COVID. And it means that people have the potential to get sick in large numbers until about the end of May. And so what I'm thinking of is understanding more about where we're headed with COVID, but also getting past the respiratory virus season so that we're not filling our hospitals and other places and spaces with people who are ill for whatever reason. Okay, help me with this one. As you can imagine, I get a lot of,

you know, I get a lot of mail with a lot of questions. And I thought this one would be worth, you know, asking you as opposed to me trying to answer it myself. It comes from Gabriella Zilmer, who's in toronto and she i she writes a big long letter i'm not going to read it all but i will read a couple of sentences because it gets the know of it um i truly get the sense that we are on our own now and i'm trying to be educated to make sure i continue to make the right choices for me and my family. So my question for your experts, not you, what are we measuring now? And how will we know if we're heading into a new wave

or into trouble? I do feel like the only thing we are concerned about and perhaps have been concerned about is our hospital capacity. So there's the question. What are we measuring now? Yeah, so we're in a bit of a difficult situation. I think a lot of our governmental folks and our policy-related folks

are really trying to move us forward. And in the traditional way, hospitalizations and deaths have been what we said we always wanted to prevent to keep our health care systems viable. And that's still a good thing to measure. We are still measuring that across Canada for sure. But again, that's a late indicator of what's happening. And I would argue, especially I think that people who've had COVID would also be mindful of the fact that there's things that are more important than just death and hospitalization. Not being well or being sick for quite a long time are also important. And we're not measuring that part of things in Canada right now. We don't have a great way of measuring absenteeism from work, for example, or for measuring the amount of time people can't look after their family or friends,

or that they are feeling less than healthy. We don't have great measures of doing that in this country. And it probably matters for a bunch of different diseases. And we've just never thought of it that way. So right now we do measure hospitalizations we do measure deaths we are still somewhat measuring cases but to be honest it's it's a terrible measure at the moment in most provinces because we're not testing enough to know what the community burden of covid really is and so for gabriella's question of what should i know and what should i be looking for some provinces are starting to do wastewater surveillance. And that's an earlier indicator of when virus is going up in the community. I think that's probably a really good idea. Some provinces are still measuring

home test related COVID cases. For example, if you but you have to report that yourself, we do that in Nova Scotia, we've offered people the ability to do their own tests at home, and then to register them. And that's been a useful thing for us. Those those numbers do tend to go up a little faster than the hospitalizations a little earlier. So that's probably if you're not doing that in your province it's a good thing to do because to her point it gives people some tools to be able to understand how much virus is around in the community so wastewater and self-reported testing are two things that we can easily look for that also might be more sensitive to the amount of just virus and unwellness in the community, as opposed to solely waiting till people are hospitalized or dying. So what should she do? Keep an eye on those numbers. If she has access to tests, it's a useful thing still to do and to look for as a

metric or an indicator. And then until we're out of the respiratory virus season, is being a little more cautious and assuming that there's a fair bit of virus around because there is until we get past that May time point. All right. My last question for this week is feeling some sympathy for parents with kids under five, most of whom cannot get their kids vaccinated yet because the vaccines haven't been approved yet for that age group. Is there an issue there?

Why does it seem to be taking so long? It's a great question. Things always tend to take a little longer, particularly in the age range where people aren't really just smaller adults. So 11, 12, 13 year olds, in some ways, physiologically, they are closer to the adult version of humans, if you will. And it is a little easier to make sure you get all the side effects and that the vaccine that you're going to use is actually appropriate in dose and in timing for those people. As you get further and further away from the adult age, the physiology is a little different and people do want to make sure that the vaccines are working as well. They have different immune systems in under fives

and that often can be a little piece of what's happening as well as the intrinsic, even beyond regulatory, but the intrinsic population need and want to make sure that things are very, very safe for very small children. Combine that part, which is true of any vaccine, not just COVID, with the fact that for under fives, this particular virus does seem to be quite benign, meaning that very few of those children end up very sick. The bar is very, very high to make sure that this is an exquisitely sensitive safe and sensitive but safe vaccine before we approve it because the risk to the individual child of getting very sick is small and therefore we want the safest possible vaccine for them so is the if the question were do you think there's an issue with safety in those under fives that's holding this up i don't i think it's more a product of us having a very high bar before

approving things for under fives is it coming i'm sure it's going to um but do i think we should rush it because otherwise we're never going to get out of the pandemic because the under fives aren't vaccinated no i don't think that's true as long as we have great uptake in the older people including the older children i think we'll leave it at that uh for this week there there's a a tone of optimism uh running through all of your answers uh today and you know we've talked a lot over the last couple of years and so it's good to hear that tone for a change i hope it i hope it stays with us all yeah you know um i think my biggest concern right now is that we just keep watching very carefully because the uncertainty level is so high about what next virus is coming i think i've said

to you before the virus is still dating and changing quickly but we can live with what we've got right now if people do it well. You know what? A bit of masking, a bit of testing. And I seek to think people are going to keep doing those things if they're available to them for the most part. And that does make me confident. Someone wrote me about an Edmonton grocery store the other day in Alberta where things have gone away fairly quickly. And they said, you know what? Almost everyone is still masked. That gives me hope. Yeah.

I was at a Leaf game the other night and everyone wasn't masked. Maybe half were masked. That worried me a little bit. But we'll see. We'll see how things go. Dr. Barrett, it's always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for this. Pleasure.

Dr. Lisa Barrett, on her last point, or second last point, about variants, I don't know whether you saw, like I did last night, the 60 Minutes program with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC in the United States. And she took the correspondent from CBS into one of the labs of the CDC that is actually watching the whole variant situation. And the major technician who was a part of this, answering the question said, listen, right now,

we do not see a variant on the horizon of the Omicron nature. So that's good. I mean, that's a great situation to be in. But he underlined, at the moment, we don't see one. They can come along fairly quickly, but at the moment, they don't see one. Anything like Omicron or Delta before it, and that's all we're hoping for.

We can handle the little stuff, and we're going to have to handle it probably for the rest of our lives. But it's the big stuff that causes the problems that we've witnessed over the last couple of years. So let's fingers crossed that we're at where we all hope we're at on this story. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. I hope you enjoyed the two conversations. I know I certainly did. With great admiration

for both of our guests today and the challenging roles that each of them are in. So I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Tomorrow we're going to, on the Ukraine story, we're going to look at the refugee situation because it is overwhelming. They're approaching 2 million refugees out of Ukraine.

And it's a country of only 41, 42 million. So what is, how is that going to be handled? I mean, it's, you know, we witness the pictures. What's the story behind the pictures? We'll talk to Sam Nutt from War Child Canada. And we'll have another element as well tomorrow. And I'll tell you about it tomorrow when I know what it is. Wednesday, of course, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth.

Bruce will be by. Thursday is your turn. Friday will be good talk when Chantal and Bruce join us so we're going to leave it at that for this day I'm Peter Mansbridge thanks so much for listening we'll talk to you again in 24 hours