The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - THE BRIDGE -- Your Turn (and mine!)

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Some of your thoughts and questions and comments about everything from politics to Covid.  And a little bit of me explaining what its like to launch a new book.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Thursday. That means it's kind of a your turn day. Coming right up. Roll Up to Win is back at Tim Hortons with more prizes than ever. This time you might roll a Tim card, a Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, a Hilton Getaway, or even the all-new 2022 Volkswagen Taos. You're allowed to push your luck a little because every roll wins. Just scan the Tim's app when making a purchase on select products and win every time. Rules apply. Open to registered Tim's Reward members in Canada only. No purchase necessary. Full context details on the Tim Hortons app. Copyright Tim Hortons 2021. So what did I mean by a kind of a your turn day?

Well, I do have letters. I've got like three or four weeks of letters since the last time we did a your turn, which is delinquent on my part. There's no question about that, and I'm sorry about that. I can tell you I've read all the letters, but now many of them are kind of out of date in terms of topics of the day. However, I've gone through and I've picked a selection of what I think are really good letters. And so I will be reading excerpts from those in a few moments. But I've got to start on, you know, some degree of self-interest. As you have heard over the last while, I've got a new book.

It came out in the last week. It's called Off the Record. And it's a kind of collection of stories of various things that have happened during my career that really haven't had much publicity. They weren't the news story of the day, but they're really interesting. They're kind of the stories behind the stories. Well, the book business is a challenge because obviously you've got to write a book.

I was very successful last year with my colleague Mark Bulgich when we wrote Extraordinary Canadians, and it debuted first week at number one on the charts in Canadian nonfiction. And we were obviously very proud of that fact. And so I was a little gun-shy going solo on this new book, Off the Record, and wondering how it would do. I spent a lot of time working on it and writing it

and putting it together and discussions back and forth with the publisher and the senior story editor from Simon & Schuster. And, you know, I was pretty keen on this, but I was nervous. And I was certainly nervous in these last few weeks as all the writing was done, couldn't change anything, book was out there being printed and starting to circulate in stores to get ready for launch day, which was a week ago. So you do an enormous amount of publicity.

I've done, I think, somewhere between 50 and 60 interviews in the last two weeks around the launch of the book. And, you know, you're extremely grateful that radio stations and newspapers and TV stations are giving you this airtime. But there are only so many questions they can ask, and therefore a lot of the questions are the same. But you're trying to make your answers sound like it's the first time you've ever given them, which can be challenging. So there's pressure on that. The hours are long, but clearly the reward is you sell your book. So you do it. And there are these kind of stages of the book business that, you know,

you've probably heard of before. I mean, it's one thing, it's hard enough to write the book. It's hard enough to get it published. And then it's really hard to sell it. It's tough. It's tough work. Long hours. And it comes around after the first week of it being on the shelves that the lists come out to tell you how you're doing.

And you have no idea. There's heavy competition in the book business. There are lots and lots of books being published all the time. Some do extremely well. Some not so much. You know, a lot of books just simply don't sell. So the last couple of days, we've been waiting for the list. And because of the holiday weekend over Thanksgiving, certain elements of all this got delayed by at least a day.

So it was yesterday when we got the first week sales figures. Guess what? Number one. Debuted number one off the record, which is, you know, beyond one's wildest dreams. And as much as you're hoping that you're going to at least get in the top 10, number one seems a bit of a stretch to hope for. But we made it in a race with a lot of competition. But the number one Canadian nonfiction book of the week, and they can never take that away from you, right? Mark Bogut and

I used to say last year, you're a number one bestseller. And you are, even if that only lasts a couple of days. So at least you can always say, hey, I was a number one bestseller. So I'll take that. Lots of books coming out in the next couple of weeks as this torrent of new books moves towards the holiday season when book buying and book giving is a big deal. Next week, Mark Messier's book comes out.

The Hockey Hero, The Hockey Star. Hockey books always sell well in Canada. Thus asked my friend Bob McKenzie, who's been very successful. In fact, it was Bob who talked me into doing something like Extraordinary Canadians last year based on the success of one of his hockey books. He said, why don't you try this?

Why don't you try something like this? And so I did. But anyway, Marc Messier's book is expected to do extremely well and challenge for the number one spot right out of the gate, but especially so as you get closer to Christmas because Canadians like to give hockey books at Christmas. And there are a lot of hockey books out there. And there are every year.

International Competition. You know, Bob Woodward's book. Peril. It's written with Bob Costas. Costa. Sorry. Costa says the sports guy. But Bob Woodward, Watergate.

Well, Watergate, Schmartagate. We beat him last week in the nonfiction category, in the overall, the big numbers for U.S. and Canadian books. We were number two, I think, in that. Dave Grohl's book. And you know who Dave Grohl is? Well, he was in Nirvana. And he's in the Foo Fighters.

So a very popular musician with a lot of great stories to tell. And his book is called The Storyteller. And it was number one last week in the overall, the big numbers, U.S. and Canada, American and Canadian authors, and we were number two to his book. I think it was number five was Bob Woodward's book, which had been number one last week or the week before. So we're feeling good.

We're feeling pretty good. And not surprisingly, some of the letters I got are about the book that have come in over the last few weeks. So, I thought I'd, you know, I can't like interview myself. Last year I interviewed Mark Boguch about Extraordinary Canadians. We had a great program out of it, and you seemed to really enjoy it. But it's a little hard for me to say, okay, so Peter, why did you write this book?

Well, I wrote this book because I can't do that. But I can answer some of your questions about the book. So why don't I do that? Zach Shalala writes from Moncton, New Brunswick. I went to my local Chapters bookstore this morning and picked up a copy of your new book off the record, and I'm looking forward to reading it straight away. I'm a member of a small book club, and we take turns picking the current read. Naturally, I'll be picking Off the Record when my turn comes up again. I wanted to know if you had any suggestions for discussion topics on the book. What does the book say about the Peter Mansbridge in the year 2021? What compelled you to write this book?

Well, here's what I'd suggest. Zach, I wanted to tell stories. I'm a bit of a storyteller too. I like to tell stories and I like to tell stories that go beyond the story. That's what this book is full of. But it's also full of ideas and thoughts about journalism, journalism today. And so I suggest if you're going to ask for a topic around your book club, why don't you use this book to spur a discussion about how your other book club members feel about journalism today? What's their most trusted source of news? It's a really good question and prompts interesting answers. I mean, what do they, do they go to television for their news? Do they listen to the radio, read a newspaper, go online, use social

media? What is their most trusted source of news? That's a good question. And here's another good question. In one word, what is it they're concerned about in today's journalism? If they could use one word to describe something they don't like about journalism today, what would that word be? I'd try that at the book club. See how that goes over. Andy McMillan writes,

Hey Moose. I tell the Moose Bridge story in there. Love the book. Listen to it. In a couple of days, the sound quality was perfect. Please read Extraordinary Canadians as an audio book. Well, Andy, I never did Extraordinary Canadians as an audio book, as you are aware. And perhaps I'll have time at some point to do that,

if there's a demand for it. There is a demand for the audio book of Off the Record. And so I spent a couple of days in the summer working with a studio in New York, actually. I did it from my home. I used my podcast microphones, et cetera. And we recorded Off the Record. and that's what's out there and mainly because of you know quite a demand audiobooks sell they don't sell great they don't sell anywhere near as much as hardcover books and we all thought that was going to go that way.

But I listen to audiobooks. It's a great way to drive. I drive back and forth, Stratford, Toronto a lot, and we listen to audiobooks. So there's your answer, Andy. Sarah McDonald writes, could you share the names of those books you recommended from your trip up north? Sure.

In fact, where is that book? There it is. It's on my desk under a bunch of stuff, so I have to pull it off. No, that's not it either. You know what? I don't have it here.

I think I left it in Stratford. I'm in Toronto today. But it's the story of Grease Fjord, and you can just punch it in, into Google and it'll come up. The book about how people were moved to Greece Fjord in the early 1950s, I think it was 1952 or 53. And it is a compelling story of how we treated the Inuit in those days. Never gave them a say in the decisions that were made for them by the powers that be in Ottawa

and the difficulty they had in establishing a home in Grease Fjord. That's the one book I absolutely recommend. If we're going to try to understand our past and our history and reconcile some of the things that have occurred in the past, we've got to start with some knowledge. Sarah also asks, any comments on why it's taken so long for Trudeau to put together his cabinet? This is a good question, right?

The election was almost a month ago. We still don't know when the new cabinet is going to be sworn in, and effectively the new government takes over from the old government, which still exists. And it had hoped to be next week, but I don't think it's going to make it for next week. The governor general, I believe, is going to be overseas,

and the governor general usually deals. It doesn't have to be. It can be the chief justice of the Supreme Court can fill in for the GG. But the GG is in Germany on an official function. And so it may be the following week if they want the GG, Mary Simon, to be in charge of the, I was going to say the festivities, the pomp and pageantry of that day. But it is a long time to wait for a new government to be sworn in.

And, you know, why don't I toss this out to Good Talk tomorrow, to Chantel and Bruce, see what they have to say about that. It's been, as we all know, an interesting number of weeks. Here's a couple of stories that relate to letters that I continually get. Longtime listeners of The Bridge will remember that, when was it now, a year ago or earlier this year, that we did a special on EV, electronic vehicles. And we were, you know, trying to understand the pros and cons of electronic vehicles and where they were heading.

And one of the things that always pops up when you have this discussion is this question of range anxiety. In other words, sort of gone beyond the price factor. Not most, but a lot of car manufacturers are making electronic vehicles now, and it's always been a concern about how expensive they are. When Teslas first came out and they were, you know, extremely expensive. But that has been, I mean, they're still expensive, but that concern has been replaced by what's called range anxiety. How long do these things last, you know, without being recharged?

So here's a couple of interesting stories on that. And they're in response to, I don't know, probably a couple of dozen letters that I've had over the past few months on EVs and range anxiety. And just how you find chargers in certain places. So here's one. Here's on the range anxiety. Looking to overcome range anxiety,

Israeli company Stordot has developed new lithium-ion batteries that are capable of fully charging in just five minutes. I'm reading this from the Optimist Daily. According to the Guardian, the company had already demonstrated the extreme fast charging battery in phones, drones, and scooters, and has raised some $130 million to date through investments from companies like Daimler, BP, and Samsung. The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety, said Doran Meiersdorf, the CEO of Stordot. But if the experience of the driver is exactly like fueling a petrol car,

this whole anxiety goes away. So if they can do it in five minutes, it really is, you know, not a lot different than going to your local gas station and filling up. That takes three, four, five minutes, depending on how much gas you're getting. Now, this one is interesting. What do you think might be the first country in the world that's going to say, if you build a new house, you have to have an EV charger built in? Now, which country do you think that might be?

That's a big world out there. A couple hundred countries to choose from. What do you think that might be? That's a big world out there. A couple hundred countries to choose from. What do you like? Who do you like? Okay. Three, two, one. If you said England, That's right. England. You'd be right. Well aware of this concern about range anxiety and charging infrastructure, the British government has decided to introduce legislation that will require all new homes and offices to feature electric chargers in England, a move that will make it the first country in the world to do so. As part of the new law, all newly built homes and offices will have to specifically feature smart charging technology that can automatically

charge vehicles during off-peak periods. Every new office block will also be required to install a charging point for every five parking spaces. What do you know? Now, we live in a house in Stratford, Ontario. We have this little condo in Toronto because both of us are in and out of Toronto all the time for work. It's a lot cheaper than staying in a hotel. And the debate in this condominium, like so many condominiums in the country is around the cost of installing electric chargers

for electronic vehicles. So England, can you believe it? England leading the way. All right, moving along. Chuck from London, Ontario writes in. First of all, he declares his political bias. He says, I'm a left-winger. I'm left-wing.

Keep that in mind, whatever I say. So he wants to talk about the People's Party. He actually makes some interesting comments here. Where do I stand on if the PPC should be allowed in debates? On one hand, it will only strengthen the resolve of Max Bernier's followers who will see him as legitimized and the story is legitimized. On the other hand, hiding him and suppressing him does the exact same thing. I think he needs to be on that debate stage. His ideas need to be challenged and he needs to look like he has

no idea what he's talking about. And only this will prevent further people falling for this misinformation. You know, I like a lot of what Chuck is saying here, because I do think it was a mistake not to have him around during the debates and the interviews at all the networks and the papers and everybody does. Some did. Some interviewed him. But not in the big prominent way they were interviewing others. And it's the only way his information can be challenged now. Listen, maybe he knows something nobody else knows.

But we never knew. We never found out. And yet he was getting considerably more votes than he's ever had before. Chuck says, in conclusion, the story that the mainstream media is missing is themselves. Their refusal to challenge the duopoly of our government. They have favored the status quo so much

that they are delegitimizing themselves, allowing misinformation and parties like the PPC and Trumpism to thrive. That's Chuck's view. Bob Podlasek. Greetings from your biggest fan in central Illinois. I'm a retired college professor after 36 years and a product of the Bridgeport neighborhood in the inner city of Chicago.

Also, I did work in Calgary for about two years. I'm always comparing your take on Canadian politics versus my take on Chicago and Illinois politics, where violence dominates. You represent a genuine, authentic Canadian. I don't know. Some people might disagree with that, but nevertheless, thank you for that, Bob. Your Wednesday, October 13th, 2021 program, that's just a couple of days ago. Well, actually actually it's yesterday

had me jumping out of my chair it seemed to reflect the mindset of the elitists in the washington swamp but not a bit of information about the common on the street middle class american citizens not sure if that's true bob but nevertheless but nevertheless. In the U.S., only 29% of the citizens trust the media. I don't know where you found that figure. I know the numbers are way down on trust for the media, but I've never seen them that low. 56% say that the media is the enemy of the people. Well, I know one guy who says that anyway.

Fauci's credibility has been sinking rapidly. I'm not sure that's the case. Has he taken some hits in the last year? Absolutely. Are they deserved? I'm not so sure. Lots of things have changed in the last year and a half. All of this illustrates the fundamental cultural differences between Canada and the United States, but are not reflected by the elitists in the Washington, D.C. swamp.

Well, I think that's the point we were trying to make, Bob, that what we learned in 2016 is a lot of the unrest in certain parts of the United States, and we see it here in Canada as well, is in the great urban-rural divide, especially when some people in the rural parts of both countries feel they're not seeing themselves or their views represented on programs they watch or newspapers they read. And that's a divide that can cause all kinds of potential problems, as we've witnessed.

Societal impact of working from home. Okay, Pat Grassi from Montreal writes a fairly lengthy piece on this. And it is questioning, and I think we're going to have to do a program on this again. And I said I don't want to be unfair to Pat because I think this is a really good topic, but I think it takes more than just reading the letter. And Pat's wondering whether we can talk to Bruce about this. And maybe we will.

Maybe we'll talk to him about it in the next week or two. But it's, you know, the various issues surround working from home. Service levels are severely compromised, inefficiency rules in the public service, everything is in the box, so to speak. The Zoom meeting, a loss of community, erosion of decorum, decency and empathy. These are all good questions, and we should have a proper discussion about it. You're listening to The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. Jeff Dubrow writes, I think he's in Ottawa.

And, you know, we had a program last week on Good Talk where we talked about how the different parties operate in terms of their relationship with their leaders. Having worked, and here's what Jeff has to say, part of what he has to say. Having worked with parliaments around the world, I believe this comes down to the matter of scalability of the British parliamentary system down to smaller parliaments, although Canadian political culture may play into this as well. As Bruce mentioned last week,

members are more likely to show their independence when they realize that they are not eligible for a party perk, such as a cabinet position, committee chairmanship, parliamentary secretary, etc. This cascades all the way down to the smaller legislatures in Canada, which are even worse because there are so few private members in a smaller province, a government MLA may be one resignation away from a cabinet post. Why show any type of independent thought that is going to get you in trouble or rock the boat? Being a good party soldier is where it's at. The only mechanism MPs have is one of the positive features of our outdated electoral system. At the end of the day, as again was discussed

during your panel discussion, parliamentarians need to be re-elected in their ridings, and so my assumption is that they will push back and caucus in private while towing the line in public. If we ever look at changing the electoral system, we need to avoid going to a party list system. I've worked in countries where with party lists and the MPs are no more than bureaucrats with a seat in parliament. Good point. Stefan Renik in Ottawa. I'm really enjoying the bridge, especially Good Talk. People love Good Talk. In the last Good Talk episode, Peter pluralized the word caucus as cockeyed.

Okay. I got quite a few letters on this. I was joking because it sounds so funny. But people quite correctly point out, Peter, there is no such pluralization of caucus to cocci. It is caucuses. But cocci sounds so much funnier. Don't you think? At least I did.

That'll be the next title for my next book cockey maybe not um but uh stefan makes a good point not sure if he was joking but it's Caucasus. The background of the word is uncertain, but some suggest it's of Algonquin origin, a theory I like and which reminds of me the fact that the Iroquois Confederacy had a strong governance tradition. Absolutely, they did. I always like to hear from our friend Dr. Jane Rusnak in St. Catharines, Ontario She always writes really long letters

Of which I can't read them all But she noticed When I was talking to Dr. Isaac Bogoch A couple of weeks ago When we were getting the big update on COVID That's still a really popular podcast. You can go back and listen to it. I think it was two weeks ago now, or maybe even three,

right after the election, where we brought everybody up to date, and the issues still stand, as discussed on that day. But at one point, I mentioned to him, have GPs, general practitioners, been used enough in all this? They've been kind of on the sidelines, really, on the vaccine distribution, the majority of them. And we talked about that a little bit. Well, it perked the ears up on Dr. Resnick in St. Catherine. So let me just read you a small part of what she had to say.

Even though only some family physicians were able to administer COVID vaccinations in their office, they have been extremely busy with COVID-related issues throughout the pandemic. We have been dealing with a significant rise in mental health issues, depression, anxiety, substance use, across all age groups. Early on, we needed to answer patients' questions and concerns about the illness itself, then about the vaccines, then about the variants, then about vaccine side effects, hesitancy, then about boosters and childhood vaccination and so forth. We've also had to manage our patients' symptoms who have had COVID, sometimes on a daily basis, to advise them when they needed to go to hospital

or to follow them once they returned home, and also to manage their long COVID symptoms and time off work to hospital or to follow them once they returned home, and also to manage their long COVID symptoms and time off work. COVID-19 has been a daily conversation with at least some or all of our patients throughout the pandemic. I will never be so glad as when the day comes that I don't have to discuss it, but those goalposts are nowhere in sight. Isn't that the case?

They are nowhere in sight yet. You know, there's been a flurry of optimism around the COVID story in the last week or so. We've seen numbers dropping in the states. We've seen the peak, it seems, of the crisis in parts of Western Canada, namely Alberta, and still in Saskatchewan. The numbers in Ontario and Quebec are kind of flattened, but they're flattened high. So this is not over. The numbers on vaccines are terrific, and there's no question that the success of the fight against COVID-19, the areas that we can call a success, are almost directly related to vaccines.

But they're also directly related to the, how are the people, you know, using masks, socially distancing, you know, I was going to use the word obeying. It's not really obeying, but following the whole idea of vaccine passports. I'm a believer. I know some aren't. I'm a believer. You know, I watched the Leafs game last night. They won, by the way.

They were unbeaten in this NHL season. All this talk about the Leafs choking all the time. They have not lost a game in the regular season so far. 1-0 is a great record to have. They should stop everything and award the cup now. But I watched that game. I didn't go to it last night. I was tied up on book promotion.

But I watched good chunks of it. And the place was, know basically full the uh you know they've relaxed the rules in ontario not everybody's totally comfortable with that but you know you've got to be double vaxxed they want you to wear a mask all the time. Most people weren't that I could see inside, but you had to wear them. You had to wear your mask when you're going to your seat. But the place was full. And for all intents and purposes, it looked like it's over, but it's not over. And it's going to be a while before it is over. I just keep hoping that, you know, while certain elements are returning to life and returning to almost normal, it's going

to be, you know, I'm not a doctor. I don't know. Is there a fifth wave coming? Is there a sixth wave coming? I don't know, maybe. I like to think that by next spring, certainly this summer, this will be done and dusted. But that's just me, and that's just hope. All right.

Tomorrow is Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert joins us from Montreal, of course. Bruce Anderson is in Scotland. And if it all works, he'll be joining us as well. Now, there's a lot of time between now and then. Time to order. Off the record, go to your local bookstore. You can find it anywhere.

It's available everywhere. Your local bookstore, just down the street, around the corner, they've got it. All of various places you can order online. Indigo, Amazon, go to Costco. Costco. line indigo amazon go to costco costco indigo is a great partner i'm doing an indigo instagram live tomorrow night seven o'clock eastern you can watch that that'll be fun costco is a great partner they've been selling thousands of books, apparently. So it's all good. And it's a number one bestseller. Couldn't resist. Sorry. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.