The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Canada/US border has been open for more than a week -- how's that working for you?

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

A different way of monitoring how something is working -- nothing official, but the Instagram "diary" of a Seattle couple is more than interesting.  Plus lots more in today's potpourri edition -- is the end of COVID's worst in sight? Why are people quitting their jobs? And why are we hoarding electronic waste -- you won't believe just how much.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's been more than a week now since the borders opened. How's that working for you? Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest-growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news! With Questrade, you don't have to. You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades. Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. Looking for a way to zhuzh up

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So how's that working for you? This is kind of a minor league test on it, but I love it because it's real people doing real things. It's not some media organization checking out the borders and hidden cameras. It's not some government agency monitoring things like the Auditor General or somebody like that. This is just ordinary people doing their thing. So how did I find them? Well, like many of you, I do engage in some social media, not a lot. I have two platforms that I kind of monitor and use.

I use the promotion for this podcast, and that's Twitter and Instagram. Now, I don't spend a lot of time on either one, but I spend a little bit of time. Twitter I usually almost exclusively use to watch the progress of legitimate news organizations on various stories. So I use that as a way of monitoring stories. Instagram, I use because I really like pictures.

And there are some great pictures on Instagram. But I also use it as a promotional feature, and I follow any number of different people, usually ordinary people, who I've developed a degree of trust monitoring their pictures or their stories. And you know what I mean by, you know, developing a degree of trust. In other words, I don't think they're, what's that term Bruce uses, wackadoodles, and I know some people object to that, but I don't. You know, I mean, listen, some people are kind of wacky.

They just are, and sometimes they think I'm wacky, and that's okay. They can think that. I don't mind that. When you take it beyond that in terms of describing people, that may be going a little too far. Nevertheless, here are the people I'm talking about on this particular situation and trying to get a kind of sense of how the border thing is working out.

And the best way to test it is to go back and forth across the border, right? So there's this couple that I follow from Seattle, Washington. They call themselves the Two Dusty Travelers. And they're just ordinary folk, right? They're, you know, good people. Emily and Aaron, that's their names. Emily's a nurse. Aaron's a teacher.

They, you know, they describe themselves as those who believe in science they're activists for their various causes which they describe as stuff that matters they believe in ethical and sustainable travel if you go on their Instagram site you'll see some amazing pictures of the different places they've gone hills and mountains that they've scaled. Anyway, as I said, they're from Seattle.

So they came up to Canada the other day. And basically what their story on Instagram is, and that's short. We're not talking a big, long, extensive thing here. But basically what I see in their story is the difference between coming into Canada and going into the States. All right?

There are a lot of differences. As you know, I don't need to give you the numbers again there are a lot of differences between how things have played out on the covid story in the u.s and how they played out in canada so far all right so let me just kind of describe some of the pictures in their story, Instagram story, if you know what that means, versus an Instagram post. So one of the first pictures you see is a happy, smiling, two dusty travelers in their cars looking at the camera.

It looks like a selfie that Emily took. And they're holding their United States passports. And here's what the story says. To drive across the border, we were required to show proof of vaccination and negative COVID tests within the past 72 hours and our passports, of course. So that's one of the ways it starts. They're at the border with Canada. Next one. next one you have to download the arrive can app to fill out your info and upload

your proof of vaccination okay so these are the things you have to do to get into canada and they're coming up from the states now emily writes aaron got randomly selected for another COVID test at the border crossing, and that happens, random testing, right? They give you a home testing kit, you make an appointment to Zoom with a public health official to walk you through the process, and then you drop your swab off or have FedEx deliver it. Easy peasy, she concludes from that. They got themselves what they describe as a super cute Airbnb with a view of Vancouver. I get asked a lot about COVID safety with Airbnb hotels.

As long as you're masking up in shared spaces like elevators and lobbies, it's safe. A nice picture of, clearly, a nice-looking Airbnb in Vancouver with a great view. British Columbia's vaccination rates are excellent, and we

saw everyone complying wonderfully with the mask mandate. Well, they must have been going to the right spots in Vancouver and in BC, because there's arguments about just how well everybody's masking up. Proof of vaccination is required almost everywhere. I would have felt comfortable dining indoors,

except that we're going on vacation with my mom in a few days, and I'm extremely protective of her. So we decided to stick with outdoor activities and take-out dining, just so that we wouldn't have that small worry about giving a breakthrough infection to my mom. We're probably being more careful than we need to be, but we're okay with that. And good for you. Now here's the last one. It's just a one page in her story. And it's very simple because after a few days in Canada, they went back home to Seattle. So they go through the U.S. border, and this is all she says. Getting back into the U.S. was a breeze.

No testing, zero questions asked about COVID or vaccination. Now, I'm not sure whether Emily's making a statement there about how she feels about the American situation of coming back into the country or not. But it sure comes off like a statement to me. After page after page of talking about the Canadian situation coming into Canada, with some degree of respect and admiration, she kisses off the going back home in a couple of lines that basically say nothing happened.

Nobody asked anything about anything in terms of COVID or vaccinations. Now, I don't know about you, but gee, you know what? I kind of prefer the way we do it. It may take a few moments longer, but it seems like they're actually checking. Now, once again, I'm not going to go through the numbers, but maybe when you hear a little story like that, you get a sense of why the numbers are what the numbers are. Moving on.

And today is kind of a potpourri day, because I once again have a lot of stuff here that I find pretty interesting. And it kind of fits into the stories we're telling. Yesterday, we had that fantastic session with Dr. Isaac Bogoch. And if you haven't heard it, you probably should check into it. We call it Paging Dr. Bogoch, Paging Dr. Bogoch. And we deal with a lot of the issues around COVID because we haven't talked to the good doctor in almost two months.

And so this brings us up to date on what we're looking at now and what we're expecting through this winter. But one of the things we talked about was whether we're, you know, are we at the tail end of this thing? You know, is there light at the end of the tunnel? How long is that tunnel? Like, I mean, go on. At some point, we can see the light, but, but man it still looks a long way off

anyway i was thinking of that when i read this piece in the economist which is basically headline covet 19 is likely to fade away in 2022 fade away and that's an optimistic way of looking at it. But here's what they say. Pandemics typically fade away rather than ending outright. While there will be local and seasonal flare-ups, especially in chronically under-vaccinated countries, and there remains the risk of new variants capable of beating vaccines,

experts and watchers predict that the current pandemic will fade away sometime in 2022 and become just another endemic disease. The main catalyst is medical science rising to the challenge. So that's a little more explanatory than the headline on the story is. And I think it does tend to kind of fit with some of the things Dr. Bogoch was saying yesterday. The Economist goes on, The combination of infection and vaccination explains why in Britain, for example, in the autumn, antibodies to the COVID were detected in 93% of adults.

That's pretty impressive. Think of the combination of vaccination and treatment as a series of walls, each of which blocks a proportion of viral attacks from becoming fatal. The erection of each new wall further reduces the lethality of COVID. Those are the words of Edward Carr, the deputy editor of The Economist. Okay, let's move off COVID. This is a bit of a stunner. It came from RBC in their regular analysis of economic trends and conditions in Canada. That's what they say. There are currently more than 870,000 vacant jobs in Canada.

And over one-third of Canadian businesses are grappling with labor shortages. 870,000 vacant jobs in Canada. Ongoing shifts mean there won't be enough unemployed workers to fill in gaps in other industries, particularly hospitality. The squeeze will push wages higher, but other benefits like flexible work arrangements will also be critical as firms seek to retain or hire employees. It's expected that this will continue into next year. Now here's the other thing that's happening, and I feel some guilt on this.

Worker shortages will continue to challenge Canada's post-pandemic labor market as the baby boom generation, that's me, continues to move into retirement age. Yeah, that was some time ago, depending on what you think retirement age is. Roughly 23% of the working age population is expected to be 65 years or older by 2024. Well, I'm certainly in that bracket. I'm already 73. And like a lot of baby boomers who have hit retirement age, I'm still working. I'm still working because I enjoy it.

I'm still working because it keeps my mind energetic. In some ways, I'm working more than I did back in the national days, which were almost five years ago now. I do this podcast every day. I'm writing books. Off the record, still on the bestseller list. You can get your copy almost anywhere. I do a little teaching, sit on a few boards, charitable boards. I give speeches and I do documentaries. My next one is on the Arctic. You heard me broadcast from the Arctic a couple of months ago as we were developing some of the material for this documentary. Still some more stuff to shoot.

We hope to air it in February or March on CBC. So I'm still doing a lot of stuff. The difference between now and then is I'm doing it at my pace and I'm doing it at my pace. And I'm enjoying it. Anyway, those numbers I find quite remarkable. 870,000 vacant jobs in Canada. And here's the conclusion of this RBC analysis. Higher wages aren't the only thing workers are seeking in their post-pandemic careers.

They are increasingly looking for suitable hours. Hey, isn't that what I just said? My pace? Those contending with child and elder care are seeking greater autonomy in work scheduling. That's an RBC analysis. Okay, looking south of the border, and we touched on this about a month or so ago when we talked about the number of people who were quitting their jobs

and asking you whether you were thinking of quitting yours and why. So the Americans just went through another record month of people quitting 4.4 million americans quit their jobs in september of this year officially breaking august record for the most americans to quit their jobs in a month roughly 8.7 million americans or about 6% of the U.S. workforce, quit their jobs between the two months of August and September. For every unemployed American in September, there were 1.4 job openings. So where is this happening?

Industries with demanding hours and where potential exposure to COVID-19 is greater. 6.6% of all workers in accommodation and food services quit their jobs in September. Entertainment and recreation and also education and health services each wave goodbye to more than 50,000 workers in September. All that data is coming from Bloomberg. Those two are staggering numbers. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We've got a couple of really interesting things coming up. One in particular, and I'll leave you with this to think about.

On planet Earth, what... Let me get the right way of saying this. Here's the question. What? Let me get the right way of saying this. Here's the question. What's the planet's heaviest artificial object? Okay? Think about that. Because I'm going to give you a comparison between it and the amount of junk waste electronics that are out there. And I'll, once again, second time in this podcast, hold up my hand and say I'm guilty on that front too. But it starts with the question, what is the planet's heaviest artificial object?

We'll give you the answer when we come back. Our Black Product sponsor is The Economist. If you don't already know, its expertise lies in making sense of the world's most important developments. It offers completely independent opinion and analysis, giving you a balanced global view of an issue Thank you. get 50% off the annual digital subscription to The Economist. This gives you access to the website, their app, podcasts, newsletters, webinars, and more. It's a great offer, and we think it'll make a difference the way you see the world.

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Go to chefsplate.com, click the sign-up button, and apply the code THEBRIDGE. That's one word, THEBRIDGE, to get 50% off your first two boxes. And hello once again, Peter Mansbridge here. This is the bridge that you are listening to and you are listening to it on either channel one, six, seven Sirius XM, Canada, Canada talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. It's available in both those methods. And we're glad you've joined us.

Big week ahead, of course. Yesterday's, still people are listening to the podcast from yesterday, The Bridge Yesterday with Dr. Isaac Bogoch, and if you haven't heard it already, you can easily download it. Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce will be back. And Friday, Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. Thursday, I think Thursday, there have been a tremendous amount of letters.

And I know lately I haven't done the weekly letter run. But there have been a lot of new letters from new writers. And I love to see that. So if you have some thoughts on any of these subjects we're talking about, don't be shy. Drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And we'll try and make Thursday's show a kind of your turn, a mailbag show, and look forward to it.

All right. We've talked a lot about, don't worry, we're going to get to that question about the heaviest artificial object on the planet in a moment. So keep thinking about that. But first of all, we've talked many times in the last, well, geez, the last year about how polarized our country, our neighbor to the South, especially in politics has become, but, and you report by the Pew research center.

And you've heard me talk about Pew before. They're an American research center, but we're very well respected around the world. And you report by Pew concludes that even in a polarized era, deep divisions remain in both partisan coalitions. So let's look at this for a second, because I find this really interesting, and I hope you will too. Here's why it matters. Republicans and Democrats agree on very little, but there is a wide diversity of views within both groups. And we don't usually talk about that.

These intra-party disagreements present multiple challenges for both parties as they complicate the already difficult task of governing in a divided nation. This also highlights the utter importance of coalition building to reach success. The only group without a clear partisan orientation is called the stressed sideliners, who have lowest political engagement and make up 15% of the public. Stressed sideliners. I think we've all feeling a little stress over the last couple of years on a number of these fronts. But 15% of the public describe them, did my voice just break there? Sounded like it, right?

Hasn't done that since I was in the choir at St. Matthew's Anglican Church when I was 12 years old in Ottawa. Stress sideliners. 15% of the public. Very low political engagement. Alright, let's get to the actual two groups and how they split

because this this is what is the you know kind of headline part of this new report from the pew research center there are two different groups of liberal democrats remember with just the other day on Good Talk, last Friday, we talked about whether or not Canada was shifting to becoming a more progressive politically-based country. And I had a lot of interesting mail on that, I can tell you. Anyway, there are two different groups of liberal Democrats, concludes Pew. Progressive left, who have very liberal thoughts on virtually every issue,

and establishment liberals, who are just as liberal but toned down on the urgency of change. Two other democratic groups are more moderate. The mainstays are democratic loyalists who are less liberal, and the outsider left who are deeply liberal, young, and have voted for Biden, but feel frustrated with the political

system, including the Democratic Party. Okay, so there's your, you know, progressive side split into four different groups, right? And so they fight amongst each other. And we've seen that play out on the various bills that Biden's been trying to get through in the last month or so. Of note, the four Republican-oriented groups include the intensely conservative, faith and flag conservatives, and the committed conservatives, those who have similar views but with a softer edge,

particularly on issues like immigration. The populist right, who have less formal education and are highly critical of both immigrants and major corporations. The fourth group within the Republican-oriented groups is the youngest and the least conservative GOP-aligned group. They're the ambivalent right who have conservative views on the size of government and other broad themes, but also favor legal abortion and say marijuana should be legalized.

Now, this is all good to know. Why this matters? It matters because we tend to lump everyone into basically two categories when we're dealing with the Americans and to some degree in Canada as well. We say there's the left and there's the right. Not recognizing that on the left, it's split between, as Pew concludes, four different groups, and the same thing on the right.

And some of those battles internally can be more difficult and more challenging to resolve than a basic left-right battle. And it happens here, too. I mean, look what's going on with the Conservatives. You know, I get letters saying, oh, you're whining about the Conservatives again, and Bruce is, you know, moaning about Aaron O'Toole. Listen, we're just reflecting what's happening within that party, and it's a struggle that's going on there.

Some of this happens for opposition parties, and the Conservatives, having been in opposition more than the Liberals over the lifespan of this country, it seems to happen to them a lot. And you can sort of go to each one of the Conservative leaders. Well, not everyone, but many of them, where there have been battles within that party. And there's clearly one going on right now. When you have members of the caucus,

like yesterday, the conservative Senator Batters, standing up and saying she wants a challenge to Erin O'Toole's leadership and she wants it now, not waiting a couple of years. And she's not alone. And the fallout from having lost the last election just lingers on. And it's a daily battle. Every time he tries to change the message, he's confronted with this fight again.

Now, part of the reason for that fight is that that party split internally on a number of fronts. Just like this Pew research concludes on the American left and the American right, that it too is fragmented. All right. Here's our final topic for today and we can all buy into this and as i said before i can put up my hand and say i'm guilty

and i'll explain to you why first of all what the answer to the question what's the planet's heaviest artificial object? Hands on your buzzers if you know that. Hands on your buzzers if you know that without having looked it up on some search engine. Here's the answer. Apparently it's something like 50 million tons. It's the Great Wall of China.

How many of you have been there? I stood on the Great Wall of China first time in 1976, May of 1976. Mao Zedong was still alive. Zhou Enlai had just died. I stood on that wall, which in the stretch that they opened, the kind of the tourist stretches, was a lot steeper than it looked. You were huffing and puffing by the time you got up to the one area

they let you walk up to. But I remember standing there going, I need a picture of me on this wall. And at that moment, I was alone. The group that I was with had already moved on. And so I took my little camera, my, you know, I don't know what it was, a Canon or something like that, but it was, you know, a camera that you put film in. And I held it up with my left hand,

and I tried to frame it in such a fashion that I hoped it would show the wall and me in it, and I took the picture. It was like the original selfie, right? But unlike selfies today where you get instant gratification of knowing whether you got the picture or not, here I had to wait until a film came back from the drugstore after I got back to Canada to see whether I was actually in the shot. But it worked.

It worked, and not only that, it's in Off the Record. Did I mention that book yet? Available to all great Canadian bookstores right now on the bestseller list. Anyway, that picture's in the book. But I digress. The Great Wall of China is the planet's heaviest artificial object. However, do you know what weighs even more than the Great Wall of China?

What weighs even more is the collection of waste electronics that we have developed. Now, this assessment comes from an international expert group dedicated to tackling the global problem of waste electrical and electronic equipment. This is a story that the BBC has on their website. They point out that the value of those discarded materials is vast. That's a value, not just a weight. The world's electronic waste has a material value of $62.5 billion.

That's U.S. dollars. More than the GDP of most countries. A ton of discarded mobile phones is richer in gold than a ton of gold. The waste includes items such as mobile phones, fridges, kettles, televisions, electric toys, or sports equipment. Mobile phone development, for example, has been so fast that it's led to a market depending on rapid replacement of older devices.

We know that, right? You get a new phone, and six six months later there's another new phone that's better and it has this and that and whatever and you end up dumping the old one keeping the buying the new one well not everybody does but many of us do consumers can also be reluctant to recycle their personal electronic equipment. A study in Britain showed that as many as 40 million unused gadgets are languishing in our homes. And that's where I hold up my hand and say, guilty as charged. I don't know why I've saved them, but I've saved them.

I've got every mobile phone back to those ugly big ones. But all the BlackBerrys, I had them all from the very first one. I've got them all. I've got them all stuffed in a box somewhere. And there's, I don't know, 15 of them. And I don't know why I keep them, but I've kept them, like I guess many other people have kept theirs. You know what's in just smartphones?

Let me give you a list of some of the things that are in it that are worth money, that only just weighs away, but the different materials that are in phones, that only just weighs away, but the different materials that are in phones, gallium used in medical thermometers, LEDs, solar panels, telescopes, and has possible anti-cancer properties. Arsenic used in fireworks as a wood preserver. Silver used in mirrors, reactive lenses. Indium used in transistors, microchips, fire sprinkler systems as a coating for ball bearings in Formula One cars and solar panels.

Yttrium used in white LED lights, camera lenses, and can be used to treat some cancers. Tantalum used in surgical implants, electrodes for lights turbine blades rocket nozzles and nose caps for supersonic aircraft hearing aids and pacemakers she's they're sitting in a box in my den consumers want to do the right thing concludes the bbc but need to be adequately informed and a convenient infrastructure should be easily available to them so the disposing of e-waste correctly becomes the social norm they also point out that

recycling electronics rather than throwing them away reduces greenhouse gas emissions. In the UK, reports the BBC, the organization Material Focus has a postcode locator for people to find their nearest e-waste recycling point for items such as toasters and on on on with the list i don't know whether we have that i'm sure somebody if you know that we do you'll somebody will send it to me and i can i can mention it on the your turn on thursday but that you know that's a great story. And every once in a while you see stuff on electronic waste. I know Marketplace on CBC has done stuff.

I think W5 did something on CTV as well. So electronic waste is not a story that's gone unreported, but clearly the impact has not been felt. If we're sitting on this horde of electronic materials that we've deemed to be waste, and yet they're full of things that could be used constructively and well for our own benefit. Okay, that's today's show. Hope you enjoyed it i enjoyed giving it to you and i enjoyed learning more as i always do on these kind of potpourri days some fascinating stuff

all right that's it for tuesday tomorrow once again wednesday bruce anderson smoke mirrors Once again, Wednesday, Bruce Anderson, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Not sure what Bruce wants to talk about tomorrow, but we will come up with something. We always do and look forward to it. So for Tuesday, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.