The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Russians Have Had A Very Bad Week

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

We all have bad weeks but the Russians have just had a VERY bad week and Brian Stewart is here to tell us why.  Plus what is Volodymyr Zelensky up to as he globe-trots to some of western Europe's key capitals? And some quick end bits on polls, four day school weeks, and a bizarre US space program.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The Russians have had a very bad week. Brian Stewart is here to tell us all about it. And hello there, Peter Vancebridge here in Toronto. Yes, it's Tuesday, and that means Brian Stewart will be by. The foreign correspondent, the war correspondent, the man who has had his finger on the pulse of the conflict going on in Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia, with the rest of the world watching and in many cases actively involved. So what's been happening in the last week or so? Well, it's quite the story.

It seems the Russians have had just one thing go wrong after another. Anyway, Brian will be by in a couple of minutes, but I wanted to first talk a little bit about polls. You know that we've had this ongoing discussion for the last few years on the bridge about polls, how accurate are they, what are the issues surrounding polls, how life sometimes reflects around polls, political life that is, and certainly the media life. Well, there's a fascinating story going on in Alberta right now. The election, as you know, is coming up in a couple of weeks on May 29th. And much expectation since the beginning of this campaign as to what might happen.

The polls have been kind of relatively tight, but suddenly in the last couple of days, you have two very different polls from two credible polling operations, which, you know, they both can't be right, or at least you wouldn't think so. But here they are. Abacus, which we've often talked about, the Abacus polling group, which is based in Toronto and Ottawa. Abacus has the NDP ahead

by 43 points to 35 points, which is a significant gap, about eight points, that would suggest an NDP government if the election was called at the time the poll was taken. And specifically, everybody looks at Calgary. Calgary could be the deciding area in the election campaign. Edmonton is pretty much a NDP stronghold, and rural Alberta is pretty much a conservative stronghold. So Calgary becomes this sort of target area to look. And in Calgary, Abacus has the NDP ahead 42-36, which helps give them that overall lead. Now, that's all very interesting, and the poll came out just over the weekend, and there was a lot of excitement in the NDP camp that they were ahead and looked like they could be about to form a government. Then, suddenly, a different poll is leaked. I was done for a private client.

We don't know who. But it was done by the Janet Brown polling operation, and she is extremely well-respected as well, especially in Alberta. She's based in, I think she's based in Calgary, but she's definitely based in Alberta. She has almost the mirror image, not the mirror image, the reverse image of that abacus pole. She has the progressive conservatives ahead 51-40. And in Calgary, that key area, she has the conservatives ahead 51-36.

So there's your difference. Your difference is in Calgary. What's happening in Calgary? Who's ahead? But overall, you look at those numbers and they are, you know, they're the opposite numbers. And you say, well, hey, they can't both be right, unless there was an incredible shift in a matter of a day or so. So if they both can't be right, then somebody's got to be wrong. And I guess after the election, in two weeks, we'll look back and say, you know what? Blank was wrong. And their reputation, one assumes, will be somewhat damaged by that. I don't know. It's an interesting

story. I don't think I've ever seen two polls, two respected polls, polling companies, so drastically different with their results. So it's an interesting story, and it plays into the hands of those who say, you know, enough on the polling story. There are polls. I don't believe polls. Polls useless, polls are this, polls are that but other people, live or die on the results of polls

and they're going to be looking at this one and the polling history books will look at the difference between these two with two weeks to go in a campaign anyway, just wanted to mention that, I'm sure you'll have your thoughts on that history books. We'll look at the difference between these two with two weeks to go in a campaign. Anyway, just wanted to mention that. I'm sure you'll have your thoughts on that. And if you do, don't be shy. Send them along. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. All right. As I said, Brian Stewart is by with his regular commentary and thoughts on the direction in which the conflict in Ukraine is taking and some very interesting points in today's conversation with Brian. So enough from me. Let's get at it.

Here we go. My conversation with Brian Stuart. So Brian, we all have bad weeks, but it seems like the Russians have had a particularly bad past week. Put it in context for us. We'll go through the different items one by one, but the overall picture, why is this like one of the worst, if not the worst week the Russians have faced during this conflict? Well, you know, things are going wrong for them kind of all at once and big things are

going wrong, which is a really bad sign because, of course, the Ukrainians are building up for their big counteroffensive that everybody's waiting for that could come any day now. So now is not the time for things to be going badly, but in fact they are. And people are beginning to wonder, they're going so badly, maybe the big counteroffensive is already underway. Maybe the Ukrainians have decided, let's just take this on a few stages at once and not a one big push. I don't believe that, but as you say, they're not going well. In Bakhmut, you have to go there first.

The Ukrainians have suddenly launched pretty big offensives on both wings, basically, of the Russian offensive there. They've attacked the Russians in the south of the battle and in the north. They've driven two battalions into a retreat that looks like a rout. Two of the battle and the north they've driven two battalions uh into a retreat that looks like a route two of the top commanders were killed um the wagner group as usual is screaming blue murder that they may be surrounded if the russians keep advancing and has noticed the russians are also i'm sorry take that back the ukrainians are also attacking now, not with a one or two tanks that we've been used to seeing them, very small unit attacks, but up to 40 attacks and a thousand men at once. This looks to be not the beginning of the big offensive, but it certainly looks to be an attempt to pin the Russians down in various places. Kramina and Soledar and areas like that, right down to the very south, Kherson, which seems to be pinning down the main Russian units as much as possible. So they have to defend the line. But then the Ukrainians can figure out, okay, we know where their good units are pinned down.

Where are the weak units that can really clobber? And that's part of the strategy. Pin the good ones down so they can't move, then hammer the small ones to break through. On top of this, the British Ministry of Defense, which comes down every now and then with very insightful intelligence read of the Russian, what state they're in, what's the sort of big picture? And they've got some excellent listening intelligence. The British came down just a couple of days ago with this statement that the Russian army is in no state to defend itself against a highly motivated Ukrainian army. It routinely only conducts very simple infantry-based operations. It is unlikely to be an organization which will cohere large-scale military effect along a 1,200-kilometer, that's 745-mile, front line under stress.

And what the Brits are really saying here is it is so weak, it is only able to move fairly small infantry units. It's not able to use armor en masse, and it can't maneuver well enough to reinforce any breach in the line that the Ukrainians might now break through. Okay, let me take a couple of these things you've mentioned and break them down even further because they're fascinating. Let's deal with the British one first of all. And I raise it because this week you've seen Zelensky in London meeting with Rishon Signak, the British Prime Minister, and the Brits once again ponying up to the armaments bar with more weapons for Ukraine,

just as the Germans have done and the French have done. So those, you know, the triple-headed kind of Western European alliances is starting to deliver when others were beginning to wonder whether they were backing off. So, you know, combined with that British Ministry of Defense analysis of where things stand, plus all these new armaments going in, there must be a, one assumes there must be a feeling on the part of the British, the French, and the Germans, that Ukraine could be in the position to really finish this off. I think there are two views that are conflicting, and they're both causing sort of the same rush to send weapons.

And one is that, yeah, you know, maybe the Russians really are as weaker than we thought, and maybe the Ukrainians, the training and the equipment they've got is going to give them a chance to really win. Now would be a time to back up that power to win when it's needed. But another thought might well be, and this seems to be, maybe it's a divided thought, that the Ukrainians aren't as strong as we had hoped. They will launch their offensive and it may fail or it may go much weaker in terms of wins than we expected. We'll get the blame for not having supported Ukraine enough. So now would be a very good time to rush whatever support we can give in in time before that, you know, to next on the next phase of the war and i think

that's really what a lot of it is i mean the british have had a good record by the way pretty good they don't have much to give but they do give some really top-rate stuff uh but it's the the germans have really hung back now they're suddenly you know in more Leopard tanks and over 120 armored vehicles, really warming up to Ukraine. And the French are sending more in, as you pointed out. I think this is, the thinking here must be on several reasons. First of all, they're thinking about the big offensive and how it could go and how they'll look good and how they'll have most leverage, which is uh if it goes good or ill but the other thing they're thinking about is they're worrying a lot about the United

States now there's no secret of the fact that in Europe the fear is that the Americans might lose their intensity of feeling towards Ukraine and start backing off and supplying less armaments. And that means it's going to be up to Europe to pick up a lot of the slack there. And I think that's very much on their mind. And that other thing that we've mentioned on the bridge several times, I think, is also in the capitals. Everybody's starting to look at Poland now and say, you know, they're becoming the power in Northeast Europe. You know, we're getting a little uncomfortable. I mean, Poland's coming out of this the big hero, and somehow Germany and France, we're coming out of this the slackers.

And we can't let that happen because, you know, it should be a Paris-Blon alliance in Europe, not a perish the thought Warsaw-London Alliance or something like that. So I think there's a lot of that catch-up to do, trying to match the poles for their muscular intensity. Tell me about these British Storm Shadow cruise missiles that Ukraine now has. Yeah, we don't know how many they got, but they're very, very good missiles. They have a range of, I think it's about 120 miles. And what's really interesting about them is they're extremely precise. They can hit any targets within the Russian occupied territory now which means

even the crime mean in the Crimea and they have a tactic worked out where where when they are sent in to take out say headquarters a massive armaments dump barracks that kind of stuff that stuff, that they send in American decoy missiles in front of them, the US ADM-160 small decoy missile, which goes ahead, confuses the Russian radar, gets them all confused. And that allows the British cruise missile to go into that much deeper territory that the Ukrainians were able to hit at before. I think it's also brought some alarm to the russians of course because uh this is a cruise missile that certainly would give ukraine the ability to go much deeper beyond its own border into russia if it so choose to do that in an extreme situation i'm not suggesting for a moment, and I don't think they are,

wishing to do that right now. But we don't know in an extreme situation they might want to have that ability to threaten to go deeply inside Russia. Well, one thing's for sure, they're not shy about it anymore, about the potential to strike inside Russia. It seemed at the beginning of the war

either they were unable or they were unwilling to take the fight inside the Russian borders. But now they seem to be, they're quite prepared to do that. And they're equipped to do that. I think so. And then there are leaks suggesting that Zelensky really basically had plans to strike deep inside Russia. And one has to believe that they least their underground movement has ability to do sabotage inside Russia.

And some drones have gone in deep inside Russia. allies were really leaning on kiev and said for heaven's sakes we cannot afford to uh to have russia uh you know they go escalate escalate on us and then turn towards tactical nuclear weapons and all that i think now the fear of russia doing that is much as much declined and therefore the ukrainians are more inclined to suggest it would be good as a retaliation upon Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure and all that. And also, frankly, they don't have to fear the Russian nuclear threat anymore because it's very clear China and India, two of the few friends Russia now has, are leaning very heavily on Moscow, saying basically, we don't even want to hear you threatening to use those kind of weapons. It's not in our world. We don't want a part of that. So don't even think about it. And I think that gives the Ukrainians the thought, you know, at some stage here, you know, maybe we could start attacking the major military airfields inside Russia or those giant fuel dumps or the railway lines, things like that, that wouldn't cause a lot of civilian casualties, but would give a message to the Kremlin that, you know, you might be in our range soon, too. I see they knocked down a couple of the Russians, Russia's top-rate jets.

They went the Su-34 and the Su-35. Yeah. That's got a few eyebrows raised in Moscow. Very much so. They brought down four Russian craft, really, in a space of about four hours, which has not been seen in this whole war again. And this has some real meaning. The Su-34 and the Su-35, you know, they're sort of top line, a bit old,

but they're top line fighter bombers and multi-role fighters. And they were just taken out, as were two of the big sort of transport and headquarters and intelligence helicopters, the MIHs. Two of those went down. Nine crew were killed. All four were shot down in the Bryansk region, 50 miles inside Russia all at once. And the Russians indicated right off, they thought they were shot down by air-to-air missile of some kind, which suggests Ukrainian planes may have, in fact, shot them down from the border with their missile, or some long-range missiles went in and got them all at once. Or this other suggestion was perhaps it was sabotage, though that seems, you know, that would be remarkable

to take out four at once. I think the message here, which is important, is that Russia's opponent can do it because almost the last thing they've got in their back pocket to bring into this war would be a giant air armada. They haven't really used their air force in any major strength. You know, it was effectively used for a few days. Beginning of the war after that, hardly at all.

I mean, they fire most of their weaponry from inside Russia because they're so fearful of Ukrainian air-to-ground, sorry, ground-to-air weaponry and anti-aircraft weaponry. And they're afraid of losing that highly precious, extremely expensive, sophisticated Russian air fleet. But under a major attack, if this war goes right to the wire kind of thing, you might expect to see hundreds of Russian aircraft come streaming down in a major attack on the city, the major cities, the infrastructure, and on the army units. Well, the Ukrainians are getting the message across, you may think we're not as defended as well as we really are.

But this is a message to you that if you send out hundreds, you are going to lose a giant number of your best, most technical and most expensive air weapon. It'll take you 15 to 20 years to back your losses if you do that. So that's a pretty powerful message before. No kidding. And offensive. What do you think Zelensky's up to? And I ask that question because, you know, a year ago, you could hardly get him out of his bunker, right?

Television crews were having to go down to see him. The word was don't come out. The Russians might be able to hit you from wherever they are, so stay in. Now he's like a globetrotter. Obviously he was in Washington not too long ago, but just in the last week or so he's been on this European tour. He was in the Vatican. He was in Berlin.

He was in Paris. This week he was in London, as we said, meeting with the Prime Minister Sunak. And, you know, what's he up to? I mean, as you suggested, obviously he's looking for more arms, but he doesn't have to actually go there to do that. So I'm wondering what you think might be up on that. You know, it's an interesting selection of places, Vatican, Berlin, Paris, London.

Yeah, it really is. And, you know, I think several things are up with good leaders. They have several operating motives at once. And I think the first one is he wants to really get his foot in the door, get his message across to these four leaders before a negotiating phase which might follow fairly soon after a big offensive you know in weeks after the big offensive it's possible the russians may decide to start negotiations and he would be urged by the world. And he wants to make sure that the

ducks are lined up in terms of this is what Ukraine could accept. This is what we would not welcome from you as suggestions. And if you want to help our position, this is what we want you to do to influence the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, and all the others. So part of that, I think, is a pre-negotiated tour with the thought that negotiations might lie somewhere in the six, like six to nine months. That's part of it. I think the other part of it is also, you know, America might not be as reliable as we wish. Who knows what the next year is going to bring? I want to get across the message to, you know, to London, Paris, Berlin and others. He's already done it and others like Warsaw.

You know, you're going to have to pick up the slack if you want to stop Russia. If the America loses interest, it's just, you know, seen to that kind of possibility. And the third thing is, I think it's all, again, he's messaging Beijing, messaging Russia, messaging the Kremlin. We have allies, and we want to keep reminding you the fact that most of the world that you, China, want to trade with are our friends. And Russia, that you fear as future enemy, they're our friends. So don't take for granted that somehow all our friends are going to lose their will and walk away and leave poor old Ukraine naked. That's not going to happen. And even the Pope's going to pay a little more attention now before he speaks out and makes his comments.

And he's going to be alongside a sensible peace negotiation now and not a slimsy one. Okay. So those are two things. Yeah. I want to take a quick break because I want to come back with another question about our friend Zielinski because there was something you mentioned about, you know, five or ten minutes ago that I want to follow up on

because I've been thinking about it a lot myself lately, that we may have just had the wrong impression of Zielinski, the warrior. So let me get to that right after this and welcome back you're listening to the tuesday episode of the bridge brian stewart of course is by with his latest commentary on the situation in Ukraine. And we've covered a lot of topics already about what has been a disastrous last seven days or so for the Russians. But I want to spend this second segment talking a little bit about

Zelensky. Because you mentioned a few moments ago that perhaps he's more of an aggressive guy than we thought in terms of some of the actions the Ukraine army has taken of late and this clear indication that they've been good striking inside Russia as well so either you know either he was that way all along or circumstances have led him to say, you know what, now's the time for us to really make a push and we'll drop our sort of waiting for the Russians to come with us. We're going after them.

Obviously, the offensive is part of that. But there seems more of late that we're seeing from this guy. There is. You know, I think he's a very complex individual, but I think several things working on his mind is, one, we want to confuse the Russians as much as possible because they're not thinking very fast or very successfully. And we want to keep them guessing as to what happens next.

You know, that pre-code over the Kremlin, whether one drone did an attack on Putin and the infighting going on between the extreme nationalists and the army and the Kremlin and stuff like that. He is a warrior. He's trying to confuse his enemy quite as much as possible. But the other thing about him, when you think of all the leaders in the world today, what's the one leader who doesn't ever seem to say stupid things? I mean, it's very hard for you to think back now and think of one case where Zelensky put his foot in his mouth, you know, where he said a stupid thing or did a stupid thing. And this is most unusual for any leader has to work in a 24-7 news environment.

The rest of it, he gives a press conference every single night. Not a press conference, a speech every single night. Imagine, yet he doesn't put his foot in his mouth. And, you know, somebody once said, understand, Zelensky, you have to know what staff is around him. It's like trying to understand Kennedy. You can't without knowing who was in the White House in those White House years, right? Well, he's surrounded by a lot of former TV producers, people who really study the effects that certain projects are going to have on people. The way people respond to ideas.

And they're very clever they're thinking a lot of focus groups and the rest of it what would really affect the Canadians what would really affect the Americans emotionally and the rest of it and I think he spends an awful lot of his time sitting there um yeah when he's done talking to his generals and his intelligence units and just talking about how can we keep ukraine in the news on everybody's conscience and still the good guy in this scenario you know and and and how can we keep showing the world we've got a lot more friends than russia has and then the country the most friends in the end is really going to be the strongest here i think he also there is one other element to him,

and I think like a lot of Ukrainians with an awful long history to that country and tragic past of that country and having seen it invaded and, you know, his own family, the Holocaust memories and the rest of it, I think he's got a fair chip on his historical shoulder. And who can blame him in any ways? And I think if he sees a chance to get a poke in, a long-time opponent, he's going to take it. He's sure going to take it if he can see it.

It would be wrong of us not to mention, before we wrap this episode up, our friend Evgeny Prokofiev, because it's been an interesting week for him. He, of course, is the head of the Wagner Group, and we spent a whole episode on him last week talking about him. But he's had a, like, he was already pulling off some bizarre scenarios

up to last week, but this past week has been unreal. I mean, there's suggestions that he has been telling the Ukrainians what the Russians were about to do. He's been like this super spy on the Russian side feeding the Ukrainrainians can you believe that of him i can't i know i noticed the economist magazine is taking to referring to the increasingly hysterical progozian i mean imagine the man in charge of the most vicious fighting force in russia is increasingly hysterical because every day you know he comes out with some more landish thing. But this leak, you know, I don't dismiss these leaks out of hand because a good many of them have turned out to be quite true. And in fact, the leak is that he was going to Ukrainian intelligence, not his Russian intelligence, his enemy intelligence is saying we can do a deal

here you know i mean you just you guys just pulled back from bakhmud and putin really wants it so let me capture it that would look really good and in return for that i'll tell you where russian positions are including some really perhaps weak ones that you can hammer. I have never in my life, never in my military history, come across anything so outlandish as that. He denies it, but I think it's one or two Ukrainian officials have confirmed they were talking to him. You know, it used to be said one of the weirdest things about Second World War was the head of the German intelligence was actually talking to the Allies halfway through the war, but it was never entirely confirmed. But I've never heard of anything quite like this.

And it suggests the guy who, and every day, if Zelensky's giving a nightly speech, so is Bregosian now. He comes out every night with a landish claim. But some of his claims give away an awful lot. They give away the fact that his Russian allies aren't performing well, the army around him he doesn't trust. There's an absolute Donnybrook going on in Kremlin between the right-wing different podcasters and military bloggers and the Kremlin intelligence units and what have you.

And all of that is spewing out and falling into the hands of Western intelligence because this guy can't shut up. You know, I don't know what future he sees for himself, but it's weird. Weird is, well, I guess it's a bit of an understatement, really.

I mean, we always wondered from the very first week, how is it that Western intelligence, which often flubbed the ball badly in the past, in our experience, performed almost flawlessly over a month. An awful lot of people in Moscow were talking, in the Kremlin were talking. And one has to wonder if Mr. Boghossian wasn't already in some of his advanced chatter with others. Would anything surprise you now, after what we've witnessed in the last while? Yes, a sudden indication that Putin thought it was time to talk. If we got either that or, you know, suddenly Putin took a leave of absence for medical reasons, you'll notice that's one way out. But I think if we suddenly out of the blue, the Russians saw the chips are not in our favor at all here, we could be really humiliated.

We're going to have to give up a lot. It'll be hard to survive, but we better go ahead with it. Let's get negotiations underway. That would really surprise me because it's sure not going to come from Kiev. I mean, not until they've launched their offensive and see what they can do not going to do it but you know that would surprise me but other than that almost anything from the russian side uh would surprise me i've grown to some expect surprises from the ukrainians they're so devilishly clever in their military operations and the way they handle themselves.

And so nothing from them would surprise me, but from Russia, a burst of sudden efficiency and a burst of desire for peace talks would certainly surprise me. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this week, Brian. Okay. Fascinating stuff. It just never stops. Week after week, you end up tantalizing us with new stories. All right.

Thank you, sir. We'll talk to you again in a week. Okay. Thank you. Have a good one. Brian Stewart with us as he is every Tuesday or has been every Tuesday for more than a year now talking about the conflict in Ukraine

and its various strange, bizarre stories that have spread out from the conflict itself. So always lots to talk about on that story on Tuesdays with Brian. Okay, we've got time for a couple of end bits. We know you love end bits. First one comes from the BBC. Okay, we've got time for a couple of NBits. We know you love NBits. First one comes from the BBC.

So I'm going to test your memory here, for starters. Do you remember what Project A119. Project A119. It's part of the U.S., I guess, defense policy, or was, during the 1950s. Okay, I know most of you weren't around in the 1950s. Some of us were, and we know who we are. But did we ever hear about Project A119? Because it's quite the story. As I said, the BBC has a piece on it right now. Set the scene, first of the Soviet Union.

Now, they knew they were dealing with an ally at the end of the Second World War, and they had the upper hand. The Americans had the upper hand. They had developed the nuclear weapons. They dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No one else had it. And that was supposed to be the way it would be kept. But of course, these things never play out that way.

And it became clear in the early 1950s that the Soviets had developed a nuclear weapon as well. And they were pushing ahead, fast-tracking their space program to the point where they were ahead of the Americans. So at a time in the 1950s, it looked like not only was there a Cold War on, but that the Soviets were winning the Cold War on every front, weaponry and space technology. Remember they launched Sputnik,

they had a dog in space, then they had a man in space, then they had a man orbiting the Earth. All of these things, or certainly most of them, before the Americans did. So there was concern in the White House, in the Pentagon, the CIA. What have we got to do to look like we're ahead? We've got to get ahead of this. So Project A119 was born. What was it? Well, the headline in the BBC story makes it clear. The crazy

plan to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. That's right. The Americans had a plan that they would fire a missile to the moon and detonate it right on that, you know, the kind of line between lightness and darkness on the moon as it goes through its circular pattern, right? And this would be a huge show. Everybody would see it, you know, if you happen to be looking at the moon. Certainly the Soviets would know what was happening. And this was going to show that the Americans were, in fact, leaders in the space race because they could pull off a stunt like this.

So what happened? Did they ever do it? No, they didn't. This was kind of 1958, 59. The plan was well underway. And, you know, interestingly enough, we never would have found out about this except for a young scientist was part of all this.

He was part of the work being done on it. His name? Carl Sagan. That's right, the future visionary. In fact, the existence of Project A119 was only discovered in the 1990s because Carl Sagan had mentioned it on an application to an elite university. So what happened? Why didn't they do it? Were they unable to come up with the technology to pull it off? I don't think so. I think they knew how to do it, and they were proceeding on that front.

But at the same time, the Americans were catching up. They were catching up on the space race and would eventually, as we know, lead it by landing Neil Armstrong and his pals on the moon in 1969. But that pathway was clear. And in terms of the Cold War, the Americans were stepping ahead. The Soviets were doing things that caused themselves problems in the international picture. Whether it was Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968,

the whole Cuban Missile Crisis and the way the Americans appeared to have won that crisis. So all this was kind of laid the picture for saner heads to say, you know what, we don't need to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. And they didn't. So there you go. There's one end bit. Here's the other one. This is a lot different.

This is a story about the American school system. And it's interesting because you have to wonder whether the same kind of thing isn't being thought of in different parts of Canada. This is an Axios news story that came out just the other day. And the headline is, four day school weeks are gaining steam but students are suffering. So I'll just read a little bit of this, because I think you'll find,

I know we've got a lot of teachers who listen to the podcast, because they write to me. I'll be fascinated to see what they think of this. Teachers and retired teachers. School districts nationwide are rapidly adopting a four-day school week as they seek to cut costs and fill teacher vacancies

by dangling three-day weekends, despite research showing meaningful learning losses that result. Now, once again, this is in the States, right? But one assumes there are different officials looking at this here as well. 850 school districts in the U.S. representing thousands of individual schools have dropped the fifth day of instruction up from 650 districts in 2019. That's according to yet-to-be-published data compiled by the Four-Day School Week Policy Group at Oregon State University. Four-Day School Weeks are most popular with rural, western districts,

though the trend, which gained steam during the COVID pandemic, is also catching on in metropolitan areas. Almost 60 Texas school districts have made the switch. Suburban districts in Denver, in Phoenix, San Antonio are now taking the plunge. Most schools adopt the four-day work week by closing on Fridays, although some close Mondays instead. School days are longer on the other four days

to compensate for some of the lost hours. Some schools offer daycare or activities on the remaining weekday that school is closed, for which parents usually have to pay. The pluses include less burnout and more family time for students and teachers, plus less bullying, according to one study, while minuses include... let me get there, one 12-state study found reductions in both math and English language arts achievement in districts that adopted the four-day schedule. Another found lower math scores in kids who attend four-day programs,

plus higher absenteeism and lower on-time graduation rates. A RAND Corporation study found only weak support for the three main reasons the districts apply for the four-day week, saving money, reducing student absences, and attracting and retaining teachers. There's also a contagion effect. Some districts adopt a four-day-a-week schedule to poach teachers from nearby school systems that already have the policy in a death spiral that undercuts the whole market. So is this the next great debate within the education system?

Seems to be happening in certain parts of the U.S. Whether it's happening here or not, I don't know. I'm not familiar enough to know. Perhaps it's already taking place in some parts of the country. And if it is, I'm sure I'm about to hear about it. So once again, the old adage, don't be shy. Drop me a line, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's going to wrap it up for this day.

Tomorrow, Bruce Anderson returns after a week off. Bruce will be by with Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Thursday, it's your turn, so get your cards and letters in, plus the random ranter. And on Friday, we'll hear from Chantal and Bruce on Good Talk. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. Talk to you again, 24 hours. Thank you.