The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Ukraine, what's really happening?

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

The Ukraine story this past few days has been intriguing.  Have we reached a turning point?  Brian Stewart is back with his insight and research on what's really happening in the war with Russia.Plus, will doing thousands of steps a day help counter dementia? A new study says "yes".

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Ukraine, what's going on and what should we believe? You know, as most of you know, I used to be involved with a nightly newscast, The National, of course, on the CBC, but it has been five and a half years since I was last on The National. Now, a lot has changed in those five and a half years about the landscape of television news. You've heard us talk about this often on The Bridge over the last couple of years, but listen, things have changed. And one of the things that's changed has been the continuing impact of 24-7 news. And one of those impacts has been that many people feel the nightly newscast, as it always used to be, is kind of irrelevant now.

That people already know what's going on. They've heard it all day. Now, I think there's a good argument still to be made against that and to be made for the integrity of the nightly news program. But I get it and I understand why people say that. I also understand that the 24-7 news phenomenon has impacted the way we look at various news events. That they become kind of out of date fairly quickly and we move on from one big story to the next because of the way 24-7 news kind of just keeps feeding it out there. You know, it's like an assembly line of news, and certain things take on kind of a life of their own. We've been witnessing one over the last few days, almost a week now,

with the death of Queen Elizabeth and the ascension of King Charles III. And all that has made us look at the royalty in a new way. We'll get bored of that story. You know, we will get bored of it and we'll move on. Before it, for most of the last month, was the story of the one-term, twice-impeached president of the United States, Donald Trump, being investigated by the FBI and the Department of Justice and the move on his home in Mar-a-Lago and the finding of all these different classified and top-secret documents in his home. And now, whether or not they're going to charge him.

And every day, it seemed, for most of the last month, there have been developments on that story. And so we've taken that along. Just when we were starting to get tired of that, the Queen story happened. Now, keep in mind that for most of the beginning of this year, the story, certainly from kind of mid-February on, was Ukraine and the war taking place there and the impact of having a number of different countries including Canada involved in supporting Ukraine.

But we started to get tired of the Ukraine story. Kind of around the mid to late spring. And it started dropping off the top of the news agenda. It's back. And it's come back in the middle of these other two stories, Trump and the royalty. So obviously something big is going on. But what exactly is it?

And what do we know for sure? That's the question that we wanted to try to answer today. And if you've been listening to The Bridge for some time, ever since the beginning of the Ukraine story, we've had my old colleague, my good friend, Brian Stewart, on every Tuesday, former war correspondent, former foreign correspondent, former NBC correspondent, former CBC correspondent. We've had Brian on because he takes a particular interest

in all stories of conflict, but especially ones in, you know, Europe, given the history of European conflict over the years and similarities at times to what was going on in the Second World War. Anyway, Brian's been on every Tuesday throughout the spring to try and explain this to us. Now, when we took the hiatus for July and August, Brian took one as well. So we haven't heard from him since, I guess it was around mid-June. But now is the time to do it. Because of the stories of the last few days of Ukraine has made a huge impact against Russia. The invading Russian forces have had to turn back from certain areas,

or at least so we're told. Is this a turning point in the war? What do we know for sure? And most importantly, I think, how did we find out with any sense of confidence what is actually going on so that is kind of setting the table for our discussion that we're going to have right now with my good friend Brian Stewart so you ready for? I'm ready for it. Let's go. Here's Brian. Brian, this is the way I want to start because before we get into what all the stories are that

are circulating, I want to try and understand how we're getting those stories. I raise that because I've watched more than a few reporters in Ukraine who are trying to cover the conflict saying we can't get to the front lines. So we don't have firsthand knowledge of what's happening there. We're hearing all these stories. We don't have firsthand knowledge. So given that, how do we know what we think we know? Well, you're absolutely right. The reporters that are covering the war are not getting to the front, except a very few Ukrainian and Russian reporters. So essentially,

it's the word comes from the military of both sides. And that, of course, is very restricted, too. So we're not getting a full picture even from the official versions. intelligence that is looked at all over the world of satellite imagery, of cyber reading, of hacking, and of the analysis being put together by, I would think, thousands of top military analysts who are working this war with the information coming in. That is a lot of information that can be checked. I mean, you can't hide a Berto tank anymore. The satellite imagery picks it up. You can count how many Russian tanks have been destroyed and how many abandoned, how many taken over by the Ukrainians. The death toll, well, there's the traditional espionage that goes on all the time,

the allies trying to read each other's mail and things like casualty figures. So I think we're getting a fairly good grip there. But the sudden change of the war and the course of the war is playing out before a huge international audience. Try and think of that. We couldn't have seen anything like that in the Second World War or, you know, even Vietnam, where experts from all over the world, any number of retired generals and young, keen military analysts, not only in the West, but in Russia as well, get to look at this stuff and say, oh, my can count the the damage here i can i can even count

the miles or the kilometers that the ukrainians are advancing i can see them crossing the river so it's almost impossible even as both russia and ukraine try and corral and and control the information it's impossible for both governments to really do it fully. In fact, a lot of the information, I'd say most of the information is getting out. I put one rider in that. We're not seeing the fighting. We're not seeing how many prisoners are really being taken. We're not seeing the atrocities right out. We're not seeing how filthy and dirty a war is on the front. But we are getting the overall picture very clearly i think all right well we can be thankful we're not seeing some of that stuff but i understand

and appreciate what you're saying without seeing it or knowing about it it's hard to make the you know real judgments on what's happening so right of what we've, especially just in the last few days, of what appears to be a, I don't know, somebody calling it a turning point in the war, everybody seems to be saying it's extremely significant. What do you believe of all the things that we're hearing based on your own knowledge and what you've been reading? I think there's no doubt that this is a turning point. I'm not saying it's a turning point that will lead to an end of the war soon. I think it's going to be a long war, frankly, into next year. But I think it's obviously a turning point because the breakthrough that has occurred is so novel. It forces both the Russians and the Ukrainians to see a different form of war.

It forces them into decisions that they probably weren't even thinking of months ago. We've seen a change from a slow grinding war where a big news headline was that one village in Donbass or something was captured after two weeks of fighting. And the analysts would say, my gosh, they've got this village now. That's a significant gain. Now the Ukrainians have been gaining 20, 30 villages and towns and cities in one day, sometimes almost in hours. So we have the crushing and breaking of the russian northern front the north western front really above russia uh it being routed and we have an ongoing operation still on the south as well so we have ukrainians launching two major offensive as well and one has been historically eventful, the breaking of the Russian capacity to operate

in the Northwest, which is cutting off their lines of supply, which is forcing thousands and thousands of troops to retreat across the river, Key River there, the Oskill River, and has put the Russian military military command in otizy i just saw it within hours the russian commander of the whole donbass front has just been fired for incompetence for this disaster now he only got the job on august 26 so the poor guy the poor guy didn't have a lot of time to prove himself i don don't want to make light of any part of the war because it's always serious, but it's a turning point. It's a turning point.

Okay. Let me raise this northern area. You used the word retreat. The Russians are saying they're regrouping, which I guess is their way of saying they're retreating. But how were they taken by such surprise i mean they appear to have been totally caught with their pants down um in the in the north in terms of the uh approaching ukrainians why didn't they see

this coming well uh you're absolutely right in your analysis there. They were. It was an intelligence military disaster. And by the way, let's underscore the fact that this is not just the West saying it was a disaster. This is coming from the Russian military civilian analysts, all those military bloggers out there, former military generals and colonels and keen followers of the military who are pro-Kremlin, pro-the war, they're giving it titles like disaster or catastrophe. I mean, there's no hiding the fact this is a great military disaster. The problem seems to have been, I think, one that goes back to something we mentioned at the very beginning of the war the russians simply don't have anything like enough troops to man a front that runs over a 1100 uh miles in length um when the the war of attrition caused more and more casualties the russians it got more and more worn out depressed

I think Morel has been a huge problem as a supply and in the South the the Ukrainians have given a very telegraphed Southern punch trying to get to uh here's on uh that whole area and that has forced the Russians to because they're so short of troops, to pull troops out of the north, out of the east even, the eastern central front, and move them to the south. That left the Russians in the north staggeringly undersupplied. There were whole groups of a thousand Russian troops in place uh first of all I had no flank protection many of them were the worst troops Russia could even bone because it would seem to be a secondary front so they were putting National Guard in and and on units like that and they had the weakest

some of the weakest Russian elements were also left because they did not believe the Ukraine could put together a significantly large force. And I'm talking about a force of like 15,000, 20,000 to punch through the lines. And when the Ukrainians punched through those lines, I think they were surprised because they didn't think the Russians would be quite so ill prepared as they turned out to be. And very sensibly, like great generals do, they exploited the success and drove further and further and further, capturing 3,000 kilometers of territory in two utterly key cities, Izyum and Kupyansk, which were the logistical center

for the whole Russian northern, northwest, and even many of the eastern center for the whole russian northern northwest and even many of the eastern front for the russians so that's a disaster and at some point the russians obviously thought they could resist but they couldn't resistance was sporadic so they retreated in a full retreat across the river and i think every, that river I mentioned, Oskil, and I think every knowledgeable Russian, and there are many who are watching it online and social media, know clearly that this is a disaster.

There's no hiding it. And Putin made things worse by, in the first days, nothing really was happening. Everything's going according to plan. And they had a big festival to honor Moscow, which the soldiers in the field apparently were

furious about. We're dying out here and being routed and you're having fun in Moscow. So the morale is a really serious problem. Let me ask this question about the Ukrainian forces because obviously they're not doing this on their own.

They've been supported by Western nations, including Canada, but mostly the U.S. and Britain, with millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars of equipment, training, all kinds of stuff. I assume they are also getting intelligence, especially from American satellites, et cetera, which can help them plan these kind of maneuvers into areas that weren't expected. You're right.

They've been getting intelligence, very, very good intelligence, it turns out, since even before the war. They weren't inclined to believe all of it. But since the war, at least, they've been getting tremendous amount of intelligence from, I think, the Five Eyes, which include Canada, Britain, and the United States, of course, especially the United States, but a lot of European and NATO armies as well. They have their own very good intelligence service.

So I think this is one area where one of many areas where the russians have been absolutely outplayed uh disastrously from their point of view outplayed by great intelligence on one side and miserable intelligence on the other and you're right about the money you know billions upon billions of dollars have been fed into not just the armament war not just bringing in ammo and and new cannons and rockets and ammo but also intelligence satellites that are up there apparently a canadian design satellite is doing one of the best jobs with this geolocation ability to see movement through clouds through dark days and rainstorms, the rest of it. And that has been very valuable to the Ukrainians, as they said many times.

So you're right. Absolutely. It's a very one-sided struggle when it comes to intelligence. You know, the danger here, of course, is, you know, getting ahead of ourselves in terms of assuming what's going to happen here. I mean, it is a turning point, as you suggested, but you also cautioned at the same time you called it a turning point, that this is still going to drag on. So this doesn't mean that it's suddenly going

to be over shortly, that the Russians are in total collapse. You're not going that far. No, not at all. In fact, I think there's no way that Putin can retreat from this. There's no way he can call this war off and say, okay, we're bringing everyone back to Russian soil. He's in a desperate situation now. And he's putting a lot of force on the Russian military to come up with some successes. And they're saying, well, what success? We don't even know what the plan is at the moment. I think the war will unfortunately go well into next year. We're going to have a slowing down period when the rains come. And as we've seen before, Ukraine becomes very hard to move armor across except on roads. So there comes to be a slowing down. There'll be a winter, a hard winter. And that's when I think the Ukrainians are going to put in a huge effort to build a major force for big offensives in the new year, in the next spring. But I also think Putin's going to put a lot of effort, and we got to start sweating a little bit about what he might come up with, to bring up more manpower, which is the absolute critical thing, and bring in more

threat against the Ukrainians. And we don't know just how far those threats are really going to go. We really have no idea. But we think we do, we wish we'd had, we don't really know how Putin sees this war, except most analysts that I've been listening to say he actually believed Russia was winning up till very recently. He thought the West was starting to cave in morale. He thought the Ukrainians couldn't do much more than they were already doing, which was just crawling forwards. And then suddenly this turning point offensive by the Ukrainians has left him and everybody, I think, in the Kremlin and throughout the Russian military quite aware that this war is going sour very fast. They don't have a plan for it. Is there a possibility that instead of leading to a longer, drawn-out war

that will go into next year and beyond, possibly, is there also the possibility that this could lead to the negotiation table, a serious attempt at negotiation? Well, I'd like to think so, but in fact, I don't see how it can, if it means Russia giving up a lot of the territory they captured by force of arms, because to the world that is going to be seen, and not to mention to the Russian people and the Russian military and right-wingers, terrible route a retreat uh I don't see how

they're going to win back the plus the territory they've already lost so I think they're going to move more to big threats another bombardment cycle against the Ukrainian cities killing as many civilians as they can and logistics and bringing power outages the rest of it uh but i don't think uh i can't see how a mediator can go to the moscow and also go to kiev and say okay guys are you ready to talk the ukrainians are going to say surely wait a minute we're we're winning we've we've got the ball and we're across the line and we see victory ahead of us and it's going to be total victory, not partial. Or you could go to Moscow and say, are you ready to talk now and come to a conclusion?

And they're going to say, you know, now's not the time to talk. We just had a horrible catastrophe in the battlefield. We've seen other countries with this dilemma. You don't negotiate when all is falling apart in your hands. So they're going to try and restore the situation, whether they can or not, is a very big question. I personally think they can't. But always with Russia, as we've said many times in our talk, don't underestimate them because you never know what they might come up with. Okay, here's the last question.

Aside from all the things we've talked about in the last 15 minutes or so, what surprises you most about where we are right now? That's a good, very good question. And, you know, there's so many things that surprise me. I'm saying, I'm surprised at just how awful uh the russian uh command has been russian planning russian intelligence russian supply i mean i don't think more than a handful of world global international specialists would have predicted a war like this remember this huge defeat in the northwest follows the big big defeat they had

around kiev when the war first broke out so it's actually the second big route that they faced and i always thought as you know that ukraine would put on a very very powerful show and had been underestimated by the world and that has proven to be very much the case but i certainly didn't think the russians would be this inept and i also thought that the generals would be a little more uh forceful at trying to get across to putin the message that this is not going well we need to go beyond this thin little army you've given us to something very major a big call up of many people a draft a draft in Russia. And I think, of course, many people didn't quite realize Putin doesn't want to do that, no matter what the news is.

Tell me this as the absolute last point. Where's the Russian Air Force? I'd like to know. I mean, from the very beginning, that's another surprise. I mean, this much-vaunted air sports with very good planes and we thought really good pilots has been very hesitant to take casualties and it's emerged more during the war that one of the big problems is russian pilots aren't trained nearly up to nato standards and they don't have the defensive technical capability on their planes that NATO planes do. And they're very, very leery

of opening themselves to Ukrainian and, let us say, NATO-donated anti-aircraft missile fire and the rest of it. So they really had not had a big, huge effect as now. I also thought, by the way, I should say quickly, I thought the Ukrainian Air Force, small though it now is, would have more significant breakouts, yououts, big missions of 20 at once. That hasn't happened yet. I think they're holding their Air Force back for an absolute crucial, critical moment. Okay, we're going to leave it at that for this week. It's good to have you back.

Missed you for the last couple of months, as I know our listeners have, because they've been writing, where's Brian Stewart? When's he going to tell us what's really going on there well today we get the first installment uh for this fall of what's really going on in ukraine and uh brian thanks look forward to talking to you next week my pleasure peter always brian stewart and it's our pleasure always to hear from brian you know a journalist and a person of great experience, especially on the international scene and knows how to get at some of these stories in a way that I think many others don't. And he offers a perspective on things that, you know, informs us and gives us a broader view on what's really going on. So good to have Brian with us. We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we've got some, what did we start calling them at the end of the season last year? The end bits. Some end bits. Some different little stories that I think you'll find interesting. That's right after this. And we're back. This is The Bridge for this Tuesday.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And no matter how you're listening to it, we're glad you're with us. All right. I talked about end bits. I talked about little bits that, you know, we save up over time. And I always say, you know, you need some extra little bits that uh you know we save up over time and i always say you know you need some some extra little bits of information that are worth mentioning when we have the time to do

it so we're going to do a couple of those uh today because i these ones we've been saving for the last few days and i think they really are uh interesting and well let's see whether you think they're interesting. Do you remember at the beginning of the pandemic? Remember back then two and a half years ago before vaccines when we were locked up when we were kind of isolated in our homes and looking for different things to do. I did a little thing once, and this is early on, about steps and doing 4,000 steps a day. And a lot of people really got into that, right? They wrote and said, I'm already doing 4,000. I do 6,000. You know, I can do 10,000. And, you know, on it went. I worked on 4,000, did it around my garden. I can remember one time because, you know, those were back in the days where you didn't leave

your house, right? And, you know, I talked about walking around and around and around and around the backyard. So here's the story about steps. A new story. Because this marries two things. It marries the step thing with what people certainly of my age and younger and older than my age, I'm 74 now, you worry about, and that is dementia. And so steps can play a role in this, according to this new study. You know there's a study a day on something, right?

But this study was led by, the fellow's name is Boria del Pozo Cruz in the Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics, the Center for Active and Healthy Aging of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, together with researchers from the University of Sydney in Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia. So listen, this is a study that spanned the world, okay? It's controversial to some people, they don't buy into it, but clearly these two places do buy into it, and here's what it concludes. That walking between 3,800 steps and 9,800 steps daily

may significantly reduce an older person's risk of dementia. Right? 3,800 to 9,800 steps a day. So this is what they say. Our findings suggest that approximately 9,800 steps per day may be optimal to lowering the risk of dementia. We estimated the minimum dose at approximately 3,800 steps per day, which was associated with 25% lower incident dementia. Taking more steps per day was associated with

steady declines in the risk of dementia. Adults who took about 9,800 steps a day had a 50% decrease in their dementia risk. After that point, only limited benefits were found. So when you've reached 9,800, you can stop. The largest decreases in dementia risk were associated with taking approximately 6,300 purposeful steps per day for a 57% decrease in risk. Now, as I said, not everybody agrees with this. There's been some kind of blowback on it. The Mayo Clinic says the average American already walks 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day,

or roughly 1.5 to 2 miles a day. Mayo suggests taking an individualized approach, finding out how many steps a day a person's walking now and then working gradually towards the popular recommended target of 10 000 steps if possible by aiming to add a thousand extra steps a day every two weeks okay so if you start at 4 000 steps a day after two weeks go to 5 000000 after another two weeks go to 6,000 you get it Now what did they do to come up with all this the the group from Denmark and Australia? This new study followed 78,430 adults so a lot of people age 40 to 79 who wore wrist accelerometers for nearly seven years. So there you go.

I don't know. The way I look at it is it's not going to do you any harm to do steps a day, 4,000 to 10,000 steps a day, and it may give you that benefit. Okay. Here's another one. Another health related one. This one's about sleep. This one is about trying to ensure that you get a peaceful, restful sleep.

It's a study done by Stanford University university and the danish center for sleep medicine they got together did a big study and they say if you do this right if you reduce the number of disruptions in your sleep you can lower your sleep age by up to 8.7 years. I'll buy that. Tell me how I do that. Now, they have, among other things, it's a pretty technical study.

I won't get into it all. It's all in the Daily Mail in London, actually. But they have six things you can do to have a more peaceful sleep. What surprised me is the one thing that I think is very real on this is not in their list of six, and that is don't use your phone as the last thing you do at night in other words like reading from your phone using it to you know scroll through you know the news of the day or twitter or instagram or whatever social media you use don't do it and i've tested this myself you know i

i used to do this a lot to my phone, and I was not getting a peaceful sleep. I stopped doing it as the last thing I did before I went to sleep, and boom, I fell asleep right away, and it was all good. So that made a big difference for me. Something to do with blue light. I don't understand that, but whatever. Blue light. But here are the six things in this study, they say. Some of them sound kind of obvious, but nevertheless, worth repeating.

Do not perform heavy exercise within two hours of bedtime. Now, you see some people go out and they run. They jog. It's the last thing they do before they go to sleep. No, don't do that, according to this study. Don't go lifting weights. Don't do that, according to this study. Don't go lifting weights. Don't do that. Next, keep a consistent wake-sleep cycle so your body is prepared to sleep.

In other words, set a time. Want to go to sleep at 10 o'clock at night? Go to sleep at 10 o'clock every night. And your body will get used to that and expect you to do that. Ever watched your pet? Now, I don't know whether it whether all pets but i mean our dog bella who we sadly lost this summer after 14 years she used to go to bed every night like clockwork like an alarm went off usually around 9 30 and she'd get up, look at us and go, I'm going to bed. I don't care what you

guys do. And she'd leave and go and get in her bed. I think they know something, right? Make the environment as sleep friendly as possible, including darkness and a comfortable temperature. It's got to be dark for me to fall asleep. Do not take any naps after 3 p.m. Churchill used to take these like Churchill naps, like mini naps, like 15 or 20 minutes, right? But they were usually in the mid-afternoon. I guess just before 3. But then he was up all night anyway.

Avoid eating any heavy meals within two hours of sleep. Smart. Do not drink alcohol or consume caffeine in the afternoon. Doesn't say you can't do that at night i think that's like what so okay i get it you drink your caffeine in the morning but do not drink alcohol in the afternoon does that mean like you're done on alcohol if you're going to drink it you got to drink it in the morning i don't know that one confusing. We'll pass on that one. Okay. Here's your next one. How long was it going to take before this happened? Remember in those early days, we had nothing

to gauge whether we had COVID or not. We used to do these, you know, like funny breathing exercises, and that would tell you. Body temperature obviously had an impact. And then we got rapid testing, right? And that would tell us if we had COVID, positive or negative, right? You know what they've got now? Or they have developed, I don't think it's out yet. A COVID app that detects virus in your voice is more accurate than lateral flow tests. According to this study that Sky News

is reporting on. Trying to see who did the study. Well, University of Cambridge, so I guess they know something. They're no dummies. They know more than just how to row. Get that? Users will be required to give information about their medical history,

smoking status, and demographics, and record some respiratory sounds, such as coughing and reading a short sentence. And that app that you can put on your phone will be able to detect COVID in people's voices with potentially high precision, they claim, using artificial intelligence, according to researchers. Results can be provided in less than a minute and are said to be a significant improvement

on the accuracy of lateral flow tests, scientists say. 89% accurate in the tests they've been doing. Cheap to use, which means it could be adopted in low-income countries where PCR tests are more expensive. Well, that's good. That's fine, as long as they've got something to help treat people who've got COVID, or better still, have vaccines to prevent them from getting COVID, At least prevent them from getting a serious case of COVID, a hospitalization case. Okay, here's the last end bit for today. I like this one. This is not a medical.

This is just a kind of thing. You know the rush to get electric vehicles, EVs? And people are, there's no question that people are more and more interested in EVs. And they're signing up to get EVs. And they're saying their next car will be an EV. So, Bloomberg has a piece on the most popular electric vehicles

that are out there. They've done a study. And that study was completed for them by Strategic Vision. Figures show the share of respondents who said they definitely consider each brand and who answered, I love it, when asked about their impression of quality. Okay. So, what's the number one rated electric vehicle? Toyota. Second is Honda. Toyota at 38% of those asked.

Honda at 32%. Guess what was number three? Number three in terms of electric vehicles, which one would you buy? Number three at 26%, not that far behind Honda or Toyota. Number three is The Apple car. Now what's interesting about that? Apple doesn't have a car yet. So the headline in this Bloomberg, I mean, they're talking about it and they're working on it, but it's not out there yet. The brand ranked highly in a survey of new vehicle owners released this week, Apple's car is beloved before it even exists, is the headline in Bloomberg. So there you go.

You got a brand name that has that kind of impact. What can I say? All right. That's it for this day. that's it for this day that's it for this Tuesday the bridge tomorrow Wednesday smoke mirrors and the truth with Bruce Anderson

I'm going to be in Halifax tomorrow still doing the podcast I'll be in Charlottetown Thursday it's all part of the much delayeddelayed book tour from last year when Off the Record came out, which was the number one bestseller, by the way.

And I'm looking forward to meeting people in Halifax and Charlottetown who are going to hopefully turn up to talk to me, get books signed, you name it. I'm looking forward to doing that. And Halifax on Wednesday evening, it will be at the Halifax Central Library. And on Thursday evening in Charlottetown, at the Florence Simmons Performance Hall in Charlottetown.

So in both those cases, I can't wait. Love the Maritimes. Love Atlantic Canada. Love Halifax. Love Charlottetown. Hopefully we'll see you there. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge.

Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.