The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - This Will Hurt But Canada Can Win This War Because We've Done It Before.

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

A tweet by a leading Canadian businessperson today made me turn back the pages of Canadian history for inspiration. COVID-19 is going to cause massive disruption and despair but together we can and will beat it.

and hello there this is peter mansbridge with episode number two of the bridge daily that's right the first bridge daily was last night focusing on covid19 as we will do with the daily version of the bridge and uh the reaction has been very positive. I've got to say, a lot of you contacted me through the different methods of doing that, through email directly or through Instagram or through Twitter. And I really appreciate all of your comments. And the overwhelming majority of you, I think just about all of you, if not all of you, want the whole idea of a daily episode of The Bridge to continue. So we will, at least for a few days, and we'll,

you know, all along together assess this as to whether it's worthwhile. The focus of The Bridge daily is not to stay in touch with the latest news of the day, because that's almost impossible for a hobby podcast like this. Things are changing all the time. Numbers are changing. Issues are changing. People are changing on a constant basis. But what I hope to do through this, as we tried to do last night, is look at the stories behind the stories and certainly the stories behind the big stories of the day. There's lots to talk about and sometimes when you're so focused on the news of the breaking nature, there are things that you don't get talked about and should get talked about and should be, we should be reminded of. I hinted yesterday about

trying to bring in a little history into this podcast, and that's what I'm going to do eventually with this one tonight. Also, there have been some comments. Most people like these shorter ones. I designed yesterday, well, you know, it'll be five or six minutes. It ended up at twice that, and I think this will change over time. I think shorter is better. Most of you say shorter is better for a daily. However, there were some people who said, no, no, no, give us longer. Well, I think what we'll do

is we'll just do it each day and we'll see where it ends up time-wise. So that's a sense of where we are as we start episode two. And I'm going to start it by reading you a tweet that I saw on my Twitter feed this afternoon, Tuesday afternoon. And it was from a name that's familiar to a lot of Canadians. His name is Perrin Beattie. Why is that familiar? Well, currently he's the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, but Perrin Beattie was also a former president of the CBC. But I first got to know Perrin Beattie when he was a cabinet minister on Parliament Hill. He was one of the youngest cabinet ministers ever. When he got into a cabinet portfolio in 1979 with the election of the Clark government, a government that I covered

as a parliamentary reporter on Parliament Hill. But Perrin now is the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and here's what he tweeted today. Are you a manufacturer who can retool to manufacture critical medical equipment? If your answer is yes, the federal government wants to hear from you as soon as possible. The need for ventilators and N95 safety masks is particularly acute. Please contact, and then goes on to give a contact person inside the Canadian government. Now, I looked at that with interest because, you know, this strikes to the heart of, in many ways, what makes you proud to be a Canadian.

I'll tell you why. Right now, there's lots of reason to be grateful, thankful, and in total admiration of our frontline healthcare workers, whether they're doctors or nurses or hospital administrators, anyone who works around a hospital or in the healthcare industry, because they are at the front lines of this fight against COVID-19. They're risking their lives in many cases. They're away from their families they're there to help you so we have nothing but admiration for them uh the same with other areas of the public service could be firefighters or police officers any number of different areas. And tomorrow, as the week goes on, I'll be getting into some discussion about that.

Those that we don't normally think of who we should be grateful for at a time like this. But why did this tweet get me going? It got me going because it reminded me of a part of the Canadian effort during the Second World War. And it points to this very thing that Perrin Beatty is looking for help on. How industry motivated and out of a sense of certainly some public service and public duty can help at a time like this. And when you think of the Second World War and how Canadians responded and how Canadian industry responded, we always talk about those who volunteered in our army and air force and navy and in the convoys that crossed the North Atlantic, as we well should. But also Canadian industry responded in an enormous way.

You know, you always hear, especially North American industry in general, you always hear the stories about how the typewriter company switched and became a company that made machine guns, or how the underwear company switched and started making parachutes and did it in almost overnight transformation and did it in record numbers. And it was things like that that helped win that war. As North American industry, both the Americans and the Canadians,

responded to not just serve their forces, but to serve all the forces of the various allied countries. So, you know, when the Second World War started, you know, Canadian industry was actually still struggling in the midst of what was an uncertain recovery from the Great Depression. Now, you know, I got some help today from Veterans Affairs, Canada's Veterans Affairs, in looking back at some of the statistics and some of what we did.

And so I, you know, jotted some stuff down here, and it's really, it's incredible. The total value of Canadian war production was almost $10 billion. That's $100 billion in today's dollars in doing things like that. You know, like that transformation almost overnight. This was where C.D. Howe, who was the cabinet minister who was in charge of the newly created at that time Department of Munitions and Supply, it kind of controlled and coordinated

all aspects of war production. And that department was, in effect, one of the biggest businesses in the world when it was in full operation. It coordinated all these purchases made not just by Canada but by British and other allied governments for everything from tanks and cargo and military ships, aircraft, guns, small arms, ammunition, as well as uniforms, minesweeping equipment, parachutes, I'm reading the list here, firefighting equipment, and hospital supplies.

It also created 28 crown corporations to produce everything from rifles to synthetic rubber, all the materials that were needed to successfully fight that war. And here's three examples of companies that transformed, as we said, almost like overnight. You have the story of the Canadian Cycle and Motor Company, Western Ontario, that's just, you know, on the edge of Toronto. It made, obviously, bicycles, and they also made hockey skates before the war. They took over the manufacture of armaments, including gun parts, tripods for Bren guns, and cradles and pivots for anti-tank guns.

They go from bicycles and skates to the light and heavy machinery of war. There were spin-off industries born of wartime conditions. Example, industrial engineering of Vancouver produced a much improved chainsaw. Now you're going like, chainsaw? What'd that have to do with the war? Here's what it had to do with the war. Many of the lumberjacks went off to war. Here's what it had to do with the war. Many of the lumberjacks went off to war

and there was still a desperate need for timber, for wood. And so they had to think of new ways to get lumberjacks. And they got some new ways to get lumberjacks by getting, some people weren't necessarily physically able to do the jobs in the old way, and had to adapt the chainsaws. And that's what a company like Industrial Engineering of Vancouver did. Liquid Carbonic Canadian Corporation, which was a Quebec company, had a soda fountain division, which was turned over, wait for it, soda fountains. They turned that into a company building tank parts.

There was a desperate need for housing to put people into two-bedroom or four-bedroom homes in different parts of the country. They built houses. This was for various troops and families of troops in different parts of the country. Some kind of adequate housing. So what they do, they set up a corporation, Wartime Housing Limited. And they made two models. And I'm

just telling you this because wait till you hear the prices. The two bedroom residence, that sold for $1,982. Think of that. Imagine you're in Vancouver, and you've got a two-bedroom house for $1,982. Four bedrooms? Not that much more. $2,680. Anyway, bottom line,

out of Canada's population of 11.3 million people during the Second World War, the total number of workers engaged in essential war industries was over a million, with approximately 2.1 million more engaged full-time in what was called essential civilian employment, which included agriculture and communications and food processing, all leading towards helping out on the home front of the war effort. So I tell you all those stories and those transformations because, you know, reading Per and BD's tweet made me think about that. Canadian government's looking for a company that could switch to making ventilators or N95 safety masks. I'm sure there are lots of companies out there that'll do it.

And they don't, obviously, you know, just like in the Second World War, they didn't do this solely out of public service. There was also a buck to be made in all this. But the driving force was if we're going to win this war, and we're all going to benefit from winning the war in a human way, we first of all got to ensure that our troops are properly supplied. And right now our troops are those frontline health care workers. They need help.

And so there'll be a call. This probably won't be the first call for help from industry in trying to better production on things that are desperately needed. So that's your behind the news story for this day. As I said yesterday, I want to always try to close out with some of the basic things we've all got to keep in mind because we're all in a situation where we're trying to practice social distancing. It's extremely important. And those who are ignoring this request, ignore it not just at their peril, but the peril of everybody they meet, whether it's

friends or whether it's family, whether it's their brothers and sisters or whether it's their parents or grandparents. So keep social distancing in mind. Keep self-isolation in mind. I'm in self-isolation right now because of circumstances which I've explained before and will have to be for another half a dozen days. Doesn't mean you can't go out for a walk. Can't go out and have some fresh air. It just means you're isolated from other people and you stay away from other people. So we keep that in mind.

And then it comes down to the most basic of things that we've all got to do. Wash our hands. Wash our hands. You know? It's amazing, really, that we're having to continually remind ourselves to wash our hands. I mean, haven't we done that all our lives? Well, we have, but not to the extent we're doing it now. And where there's even to the point online,

there are lessons on how to wash your hands effectively. 20 seconds, intertwined fingers, the this, the that, the whole bit. It's all there. There's no reason why you shouldn't be doing it. Don't touch your face unless you've just washed your hands that's maybe the hardest thing of all how many times you'd normally touch your face in a day I don't know I've heard estimates anywhere made hundred to a thousand times a day most people in some fashion touch their face trying not to do that that's tough okay

how long did we go here today 15 minutes way to go Pete really kept it short that's the bridge daily for this Tuesday thanks for joining us and please

we'll be back in 24 hours.