The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Airport Chaos Continues

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Cancelled flights, long delays, and angry passengers.  Its chaos for hundreds of thousands of passengers in different airports around the world. It's also Tuesday and our weekly check-in with correspondent Brian Stewart on Ukraine -- it's "grim" for both sides.  And Canada's top ten weather facts -- see how many you get right!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The airport chaos continues. What a mess. And hello there, last day of May 2022. Tomorrow it's June. And in summer months, as we're approaching, thoughts go to travel. Lots of people traveling. Want to travel after not having traveled for the last couple of years. And that leaves you options.

You can travel by car. You can travel by air. You can travel by air. You can travel by train. And in some places, not many, you can travel by bus. And you know, I was thinking about that last night because I'd mentioned in yesterday's podcast about how much time I used to spend driving from city to city, community to community back in the 60s and 70s. That was my primary mode of travel. And they were all, you know, relatively short hops. You know, Ottawa, Toronto. Toronto, London, Ontario. Portage to Prairie to Winnipeg.

Portage to Prairie to Regina. Regina to Prince Albert. All those kind of trips. And I had a, you know, old beat up 10 year old car and most of those times. But it always seemed to manage to make it. You know, you'd be driving in the middle of the night

and you'd just be wondering, oh my gosh, is this, is it going to make it? You'd be watching not just the fuel gauge, you'd be watching the temperature gauge. Was it overheating? Was the engine going to blow up? And there were times in those days when I traveled by bus.

Whatever that bus carrier was, sometimes it was Greyhound, sometimes it was Greycoach or something like that. And those bus travels, they were almost always full. You know, you were lucky to get a good seat. You're especially lucky if you ended up sitting beside someone who didn't snore or didn't, you know, burp or worse. Sometimes you just wanted to sit beside somebody who wouldn't talk so you could sleep or what have you. But these days, travel is much more challenging. Traveling by bus is not an option for a lot of people who depended on it to get

from community to community. I got a letter last night from a listener who was basically calling me an Alita snob because I talked about air travel. When there are still many people in communities across the country who used to depend on bus travel, who can't anymore because it just simply doesn't exist. Because bus routes have been cancelled and bus carriers, for a

variety of different reasons, COVID was one, just a lack of revenue is another. They've canceled routes. There's still some inter-border bus travel. I think there are four or five or half a dozen locations across Canada where there are trips like Toronto to Buffalo, Vancouver to Seattle, I think is one. There's, as I said, there are four, five, or six of these different routes. But you want to go from, you know, a small town to small town,

those possibilities in many cases in Canada just don't exist anymore. There have been replacements for the big national carriers in some locations, but not many. So, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm an elitist because I travel by ear. But, you know, for the most part, I haven't stopped thinking about those who travel in by other means, whether it's train or, I mean, I still do most of my travel by car. I mean, let's face it.

I'm in and out of Toronto a couple of times a week. That's by car. That's 300 clicks, the round trip. So I'm still traveling by means other than airports. However, having said that, tens of thousands of Canadians, hundreds of thousands, if of thousands of Canadians, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are using air travel around the world now after not having used it for two years. Families are

booking holidays, using up credits they had from earlier times and cancel trips from the past. And it's put this enormous crush on flight schedules, many of which have been cut back because there were layoffs. I won't go through all the reasons. There are lots of them, layoffs at airlines, layoffs at security firms, layoffs at ground staff for airlines.

I mean, it's just, there's a collision of two things happening. Increased demand, the inability to service that demand. And it's chaos in the airports. And it's more than that. Checked your passport lately? Maybe you should. If you have one or if you want to have one, you can't get it overnight or in, you know, three or four days

like you used to be able to. Even if you paid a premium, you can't do that anymore. There's a huge backlog on passports. I think I read the other day that it's up to 12 weeks in Canada to have your passport renewed. Well, you're not going to get anywhere without a passport. Obviously, foreign travel is one,

but passports or driver's licenses, you need those for ID when you're checking in or trying to board an aircraft. so if you're in that situation you better do something about it and it starts by finding your passport and looking what the expiry date is and i think in some locations when you're traveling that expiry date better be more than three, four, five, six months in advance, or they're not going to let you in. So check your passport. Find out what the process is to get it updated or renewed.

And be prepared on that front. If you're traveling by air. Or if you're simply traveling by car. And you need proof of ID. And you need a passport. Better make sure it's up to date. But all these things that we've taken for granted in the past. Just don't exist at the same level anymore.

And if you're planning a trip this summer, which I know a lot of people are, and they're not elitists because they're planning on traveling by air. It's something they may have saved up for for months, if not years. And the last thing you need is at the last moment to be hit by that crunch of chaos at your point of departure. So there you go. All right, it's Tuesday, and Tuesdays for the last, well, more than three months, have meant our weekly update on what's happening in Ukraine. And I've got to say, for the last, I don't know, month. If you were hoping for the Ukraine side to make substantial gains

and perhaps even victory over Russia, things looked good in spite of the horrors of this war. And this war is full of daily horrors. Well, our man Brian Stewart, who has been keeping us ahead of this story for the past three months, is going to join us again now because we're at a, it's not really necessarily a turning point, but we are at a major point in this conflict. And he's going to explain why now, because things have changed a bit. So this is an important discussion, as every week has been. Brian, of course, the former foreign correspondent for the CBC, for NBC, and as a freelance writer. Covered many conflicts overseas, dire situations in different parts of the world.

And so we draw upon his experience and his knowledge and his understanding of the current story to give us our take on what's happening. Here's our latest conversation. So Brian, it seems like each week we start this off by saying, well, we've hit an interesting moment, and each week there has been one, and this is no different. Let me preface it this way. We had warned listeners at the beginning of this conflict

that attention spans only last so long, and the world's detention span on Ukraine actually lasted quite a long time. But you've noticed over these past couple of weeks that it has started to slip for two reasons. One, it has been a long time on one subject. And two, there are other things to distract attention, especially in North America with the shootings in Buffalo and then in Texas.

And people have been looking elsewhere. And you watch the nightly news and you don't see a lot from Ukraine. In fact, you see, if anything, that they've started to pull resources, in other words, news coverage out of the Ukraine area. But meanwhile, with that happening, at the same time, time the situation the story has not kind of disappeared the story is perhaps even more interesting than it was a month ago so let's break it down first of all give us the general overview in terms of what's happening on the ukraine conflict well on the ukraine war which is continuing at a ferocious pace, there are a series of Russian advances on the eastern front. And these are not just make-believe advances.

They are real advances where they are moving in through the Dondas using massive artillery barrages and rocket fire and air attacks to basically crumble Ukrainian defenses where they can and push them back. Ukrainians, on the other hand, are desperately trying to hold the line in the east to give up as little as they can because they know getting it back would be terribly hard if lost interestingly enough in just the last 48 hours ukrainians have also launched a counteroffensive in the south towards one of the few towns that it actually lost early on kersong a city actually so you have a lot of fighting going on and both sides are heavily battered and very weary as they fight on. Well, you're making it sound like it's a kind of a grim situation on both sides. So let's take it in a little more detail. First, from the Ukrainian side.

Well, from the Ukrainian side, their great problem is lack of weaponry. Not manpower. They actually will outmanpower a troop of the Russians easily. But they lack the heavy weapons that the Russians are now using. And they desperately need long-range weaponry that can go after the

Russian areas of supply, artillery bases, tank congregation areas rail lines and the rest so that they need all that very badly and the west has been very slow in giving them the really heavy stuff um and the ukrainians are saying we would be doing much better we would be even pushing russians back more convincingly now if we if the West would just own up to the pledges it gave to begin with to support us to the hill. It's not doing that. And Ukraine's getting very nervous. That's the problem with the Ukraine side right now.

It's starting. People are starting to notice among Ukrainian diplomats and leaders a kind of nervousness that wasn't there three weeks ago. They're starting to ask themselves, can we really count on certain countries now, like Germany, like France, like Italy, to support us? And if they start going weak and start wanting us to keep giving up land to the Russians to make an easy peace for the world, how long will basically the European Union remain united behind us?

And then the Americans have been giving by far the most and are promising more. But the Ukrainians notice that Americans are also getting very nervous about giving the Ukrainians long-range weaponry that can actually be so long-range it would strike inside Russia. And that is something America has not wanted to see from the very beginning. So it's a perilous time for the Ukrainians. That's for their, the Russian side, you want to talk about their problems at the moment yeah just before you we get to russia when there's this uh sense that the ukrainians feel the germans and the french in particular are going weak are they in fact going weak well that's hard to judge are they going weak or are they uh employing very bright diplomacy to try and end this war

as you've talked to janet stein and others on your program diplomacy eventually will have to end it some european countries are trying to play the middle role now you can be cynical as many are and say yes a country takes out its role i'm going to be a real tough hardline defender of ukraine and give it lots of weaponry or no i think i'll pick up the role of being a peacemaker which means i'll phone bootin every week and say come on now how about some talks but definitely the germany price promised far more big weaponry to the ukraine than it is delivering uh it is looking far more uneasy now about supporting ukraine to the hill so uneasy that internal german politics are showing signs that the current coalition that's running the country may crack because a lot of germans are saying you lied

you promised the ukrainians all this heavy weaponry and tanks and artillery the rest of it and you're not delivering it. So the German government has a lot to prove right now, and we're going to see whether it does. The French government is playing that very sophisticated role of saying, yes, we send in armaments, but surely Macron is the man, the president of France, is the proper person to be leading Europe when it comes to diplomatic sophistication. And that's the role that France is kind of playing at the moment. Well, they're both saying that it would be a big mistake for Russia to lose. France is implying, as Italy is implying, as Henry Kissinger has implied, that it would be a good thing for Ukraine to give up territory to bring this war to an end for the benefit of all.

And this drives the Ukrainians mad, as you can imagine, what they're going through to hear this from the sidelines. Maybe you guys could really start thinking of giving up a big chunk of your country so we can all get back to doing business as usual and getting on with a more peaceful existence. I mean, it's easy for you guys to say that, but what about us? All right, let's flip the coin and look at this grim situation from the Russian side. Why is it grim for them?

There's no doubt it was three weeks ago, but as you say, things have changed, at least in appearance in those three weeks but yet it's still grim for Russia it's grim on many fronts actually remember it really the war is fought in three areas on the battlefield in the economies and the battle of will and there's no question Ukraine has more willpower than the Russians are showing the troops troops are demoralized. Their supplies are awful. But really, for a force that isn't big enough for the task, and I have to, I can't emphasize that enough. I haven't met, listened to a single military analyst who thinks the Russians have anywhere near enough troops in the fights to really win. They've lost already some staggering number of almost a thousand tanks,

over a thousand other armored vehicles, a lot of their equipment is breaking down, their supply has been a mess from day one and continues to be a mess. What they're trying to do to keep an advance going to please Putin is throw a lot of these battered battalions they've got, battalions that should be sent home to be, you know, retrained, rested and repaired completely. They're throwing them together in this combination battalions and throwing them back into the battle where the troops are saying we've had our we've done our bit. We've had we've suffered too much. And one picture I want to present is that their front line now is 72 miles long. You know, forces of 120,000 troops advancing on a front 172 miles long while also occupying large

areas of ground, that's an insane amount to task them with. And what is happening is they're starting to run out of steam. Yes, they can keep an advance going behind these incredible artillery barrages. But once they get there, they're almost done. They're like a heavyweight fighter who punches himself out in the 11th round and just has no more steam left. And at home, they've got a lot of problems in Russia because voices are starting to speak out in ways that they would not have even a few weeks ago.

I mean, veterans groups are saying we've analyzed the pictures of our failed to take their sons in Ukraine because the supply system isn't good enough. You've got some politicians now, five of them in a row in the East, saying it is now time for Russia to get out of this war because we don't have the means or the will right now to fight it. We have a senior Russian diplomat in Geneva who quit his job and said he won't serve Russia anymore. He's too ashamed of what it's doing in the Ukraine. You have a major economist in Russia saying, we're not judging this war, but we have to tell you it is very costly. We're going to have to come up with 90 billion euros over the next equivalent of euros over the next year or so to keep this thing going. You're having supply problems that

economists are pointing out. You don't come out and say it's a crazy war. You come out and say, we'd like to supply you with more tanks to repair the ones that have been destroyed, but we can't get any parts from the West. We're having to order parts from washing machine makers i kid you not washing machine makers to put in tanks that could

be supplied and sent out to the uh to the ukraine and some of the tanks they are sending out are from the 1960s the cold war era i'm not sure what the-72, which are noble old tank that goes on forever, but ones even before that. So this is, you're also, I think, getting a sense that so many people are on what are called bill blogs or war blogs. So many people now can go online and tune into groups that are military analysts or military, ex-military, talking about war.

A lot of average people right now are getting information back from the front of maps that don't look good, of true casualty figures that look absolutely awful. It's now estimated the Russians have lost 15,000 killed and maybe 60,000 wounded, which is just a staggering number. I think that's 60% or something of the original force that were ready to go in on the evening of February the 24th. They had to be replaced, but to be replaced by people who haven't trained well enough, who don't want to be there, want to be anywhere else in the world but in the Ukraine.

So Putin knows that there is some discontent. The public are still behind him. But, you know, in any kind of system, even an oligarchy like this, you don't want that bitterness, anger, and paranoia to start creeping into the crowds and the people shopping are not finding their goods and we're ready to support the war up to the hill for three months. But after three months, things start

looking really bad. And if I could say one last thing on Russian woes, long term the picture looks better for Ukraine. If Ukraine gets the support it's been promised and a steady supply of weaponry. And if the war lasts until August, Ukraine will then overwhelmingly outnumber the

Russians. They will have close to 500,000, possibly 700,000 in arms, where the Russians will still be struggling with a bare 150,000. And economically, I think the Russians will be somewhat devastated by the war. Ukraine will be devastated, but it's got a Marshall Plan waiting to pick it up. That's a vital thing that every Ukrainian and every European knows, that we won't wait five years to build back Ukraine

once there's peace. The money will flow in from around the world. And you and I have both seen how cities and countries can pull themselves back together again once peace is brought about and rebuilding begins. I think we're going to leave it at that. You've given us a lot to think about there, Brian, and a lot to chew on in terms of what the current situation is and what impact it could have in terms of what the current situation is and what impact it

could have in terms of the next weeks months and this continuing debate about is this going to be you know a long war that could go on for months if not years or is it something that could come to a conclusion in the next couple of months you've given us lots to think about on that i want to leave with just one thing because i think it's important the great thing about these conversations we've had with you each week is you've been managed you've managed to kind of isolate things that aren't being talked about generally uh in terms of uh the daily coverage of this conflict and you made us think and one of the early ways you you did i guess it's more than a month ago now you signaled that this war given the uh the the uh the uh damage it was doing to the russian tank formations

was signaling that we could be at the end of the era of the tank warfare and you said that was interesting we had a number of uh letters about saying, wow, really? Could that really be what it means? And I just see that in the last couple of days, the Daily Telegraph has a piece on exactly that point. This could be the end of tank warfare as we have come to know it. So another good reason why we listen to Brian Stewart on a weekly basis on his commentary. Brian, thanks very much for this. We'll talk to you again soon. Okay, Peter. Great. Thank you. Brian Stewart joining us with his weekly commentary on the situation in Ukraine

and some interesting facts about the current situation and one of the reasons why we keep our eye on this story. And, you know, one day a week, part of one show a week, I think is the least we can do on a conflict that has so much impact on that part of the world and, that matter on canada keep in mind that um there are more people in canada with a background from ukraine than any other country in the world except russia so there's a lot of interest in the ukraine story and we're going to keep covering it at least on this one day a week with brian okay we're going to take our break. When we come back, some really interesting facts.

Facts on the Canadian weather system. Oh, yeah. That's when we come back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode, right here on Channel 167, Canada Talks on SiriusXM Canada. And also, wherever you get your podcast from, whatever your favorite podcast is, or you download it from that platform,

that's how you get to listen to The Bridge. And we welcome you no matter what method you use to listen to The Bridge. Okay, I promised some stuff about Canadian weather. And why did I promise that? Well, here we are on the last day of May. May 31st, 2022. And at least in this community, Stratford, Ontario, we are looking at the warmest day of the year so far.

They say it's going to be 30 degrees here today. It's already moving up very quickly. And after kind of a long, drawn-out spring, there are a lot of people looking forward to a day like this. I'm not a big fan of the, you know, really warm days. And sometimes I wonder, do I prefer the really warm days to the really cold days? I'm not so sure. You know, there is a certain degree of, I don't know what I was going to say, likeness that we like like the extremes.

For me, I think the colder days are more fun. I like it sort of, you know, if it's going to be warm, I like the sort of low to mid-20s. But I'm not going to argue today. Warm weather is great weather. And I keep that in mind because I was talking to relatives in Manitoba yesterday who cannot believe they're getting hit by another one of these, I think they're called the Colorado weather systems, which dump all kinds of precipitation. You know, a few weeks ago it was snow, now it's rain. And it's the last thing they need more of right now,

and especially in the agricultural areas of Manitoba, as flooding is existing. And it's a problem. It's a big problem. At a time when farmers across the breadb basket of Canada are desperate to have good crops this year to try to make up for some of the issues that are going to be created by the situation in Ukraine which is going to have a huge impact on many parts of the world that depend on the bread basket of Europe which is Ukraine to supply them with much-needed grains.

So this is a big situation in Manitoba. Anyway, it got me thinking about an article I'd seen recently in the Canadian Geographic, which has, I think it's the top 10 kind of weather facts about Canada. Now, some of these I knew were suspected, but many of them I didn't. And they're worth keeping in mind. You know, when you're having one of those dinners at home with friends or relatives and you want to have a little contest

during the dinner about what's this that or the other thing those often turn into some pretty hilarious evenings anyway here's some facts about canadian weather number one as far as countries go, Canada is pretty much the coolest. Literally. Advise with Russia for first place as the coldest nation in the world. What do you think our average daily annual temperature is? Okay, think about it.

I mean, we've got great days like this where it's going to be 30. And you know this summer will produce days much higher than that in different parts of the country. But we also have some pretty cold temperatures in the winter. So what do you think we average out at? Take a guess. At least put it this way. Do you think it's plus or minus zero? Well, for those of you who said minus, you were right. The average daily annual temperature in Canada is minus 5.6 degrees Celsius.

Minus 5.6. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Canada, and for that matter, in North America, was registered at a little tiny place called Snag in Yukon. It's just kind of inside the Alaska border. North of the, just north of the Kluhani National Park. A beautiful area. So what did they register there?

How cold did it get? Minus 63 degrees Celsius. That was on February the 3rd, 1947. It's been warmer ever since in Snagged. It's never been that cold again. Canada is deadly cold. More Canadians die each year from exposure to extreme cold temperatures than from other natural events, according to Stats Canada. An average of 108 people die annually from the cold in Canada, while only 17 succumbed to other nature-related events. Bring out the shovel.

The greatest single-day snowfall recorded in Canada was February 11, 1999. So that was the last century, okay? Now, I'm not sure. I've never heard of this community. It's in British Columbia. It's kind of central BC, east of Kitimat. It's a community called Tatsa, T-A-H-T-S-A. It was blanketed with nearly a meter and a half

of the white stuff, 145 centimeters to be exact. That broke a record of 118.1 centimeters of snow that fell on Lake Lease Lake, British Columbia, Lake Lease, L-A-K-E-L-S-E, Lake, B.C., on January 17, 1974. Neither is near the world record. We're not world record holders in snowfall. The world record belongs to Silver Lake, Colorado.

When on April 15th, 1921, somebody had their meter stick out and recorded a world record of 192 centimeters at Silver Lake, Colorado. You interested in this stuff? Find it interesting? There's a couple more. This is from, once again, the Canadian Geographic.

Okay, what do you think Canada's coldest city is? I can tell you that I, you know, having lived in many of these, I thought that Edmonton was probably going to be the coldest city in Canada. Wrong. It's not. What do you think the coldest city is? If you were looking at Saskatchewan, you were right. It's a tie between Saskatoon and Regina.

With minus 50 recorded on February the 1st, 1893. And January the 1st, 1885 in and January the 1st, 1885, in Regina. That first one was in Saskatoon. The most recent sub-40 degrees Celsius temperature recorded in a Canadian city, still not Edmonton, and not in Saskatchewan. In fact, not in Western Canada at all. It was in Sherbrooke, Quebec, minus 41.2, January

15, 2004. As most Canadians know and have experienced, this country can deliver a wide range of temperatures, from cold weather nights or cold winter nights to hot summer days. Interestingly, among Canada's large cities, Regina lays claim to both the country's lowest recorded temperature and its highest. The city sweltered at 43.3 degrees Celsius on July 5, 1937. Likewise, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, both holding cold weather records themselves, also posted some of the highest recorded temperatures for large Canadian cities. They tied for second place at 40.6 degrees Celsius, Winnipeg, on August 7th, 1949,

and Saskatoon on Juneune 5th 1988 there's going to be a test on this so i hope you're keeping all of these there's a saying in canada and i found this this saying exists in countries and communities all around the world but there's this saying that if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. Never could that have been more true than in Pinscher Creek, Alberta, where Canada's most extreme temperature was recorded. The mercury soared from minus 19 degrees Celsius to 22 degrees Celsius. Get this, in just one hour. Can you imagine? Minus 19 degrees Celsius to 22 degrees Celsius in just one hour. Where do you think the foggiest place in the world is?

I bet you most people get this. It's in Newfoundland. In fact, it's in the Grand Banks, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. And here's the final one. And this is a point of pride for some Canadians. You know the UV index? It measures the intensity of the sun's ultraviolet radiation in the sunburn spectrum. As UV increases, the sun's rays can do more damage to skin, eyes, and the immune system. In 1992, scientists at Environment Canada developed the index as a health protection tool for Canadians, and it's now forecast for 48 locations across the country.

And other countries look at the way we came up with the UV index and use it as well. Maybe it's surprising. We're known as one of the coldest countries in the world, yet we came up with the idea of the UV index. And what we should know about those really hot days and the damage they can do to our skin

and to our eyes. Alright, that's your little added bonus feature on this day on the bridge. We've covered a number of topics today. Hope some of them have been useful to your knowledge of the world around you. That's it for this Tuesday episode of The Bridge. Tomorrow, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson will be back and we'll do what we normally do.

We'll sort of put our hand in the basket of possible topics that are happening in our country and around the world. And we'll have Bruce's take on whether we're looking at smoke, whether we're looking at mirrors, or whether we're looking at the truth. That's tomorrow right here on The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. We'll be back in 24 hours. that's tomorrow right here on the bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. We'll be back in 24 hours.