The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Are We Missing? (2)

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

International Affairs analyst Janice Stein joins us again for the latest installment of "What Are We Missing".  We look at countries that should be in the news but for the most part, aren't because the focus has been on Ukraine.  Today: Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Nigeria, Cameroon, Turkey, and Syria. Plus, an end bit on the latest trend on the work week.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. What are you missing? What are we not talking about that perhaps we should be talking about? We'll catch up on what are you missing? You know, in the past year, and for good reason, there's been so much focus on Ukraine and the war with Russia and the way the world has responded, that a lot of other things, a lot of other important stories have kind of dropped by the wayside. Well, that's why early last month, which was early this year, we chose to start a new

segment with Janice Stein, the University of Toronto professor, great friend, wonderful political scientist, an expert on foreign affairs used by different countries around the world for her expertise, that we'd check in with her every once in a while on a segment called, what are we missing? Or what are you missing? In other words, what's happening in other parts of the world that, you know, we're not talking about that perhaps we should be checking in on? Well, that's what we're going to do again today, because there's an endless supply of those kind of stories, right? We started off with our first episode. We looked at about eight to 10 countries, and it was amazing. Got a lot of mail, a lot of positive reaction to the idea, but we also got a lot of mail saying, hey, why didn't you talk about such and such a country. So there's a little bit of catching up to do,

and the beautiful thing about it is I know I'm going to hear from listeners who say, hey, wait a minute. Why didn't you talk about this country this week? And so the hits just keep coming, right? We'll keep talking about various places around the world. The whole idea is to try and do, it's almost like spinning the globe and stopping it and going, okay, what about this country? So that's what we'll do again today.

But before we get there, you know, we lost Canadian royalty again this weekend. I mean, you know, I understand. Life goes on. Things happen. We lose people. You know, last weekend it was Peter Herndorf, one of the greatest cultural icons this country has ever known. He's been involved in so many things.

Peter was a friend. And it was hard for many of us to lose him. He's not just been a friend, but a mentor. And on the cultural scene, whether it was the CBC, the National Arts Centre, Toronto Life, TVO, Luminato, the list goes on. And losing Peter in his early 80s felt like we were being robbed of such an important person in the Canadian cultural scene. Well, this week, this weekend, we lost Gordon Pinson, one of our country's greatest actors and nicest people. You know, you read the, those who've wrote about him over these past couple of days and they always get around

to that point. You know, great actor, no doubt about it. But what a wonderful person. And he was. And it's the way he's going to be remembered. You know, a couple of years ago when my friend Mark Critch and his beautiful wife, Melissa Royal, got married in Newfoundland. They asked Cynthia and I to come out to the wedding, and we did. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was fabulous and such a great location in their little coastal hideaway.

And there was a big kind of wedding party dinner thingy. And, you know, everybody who was anybody in Newfoundland was there. And so they were all seated in kind of like this barn thing, an old theater. And Mark had selected where everybody would sit, right? And so where are we sitting? We're sitting with Gordon, Mr. Benson. Now, Cynthia knew Gordon well because she'd done a number of shows with him over the years. I'd met Gordon a few times, and it was an honor to sit with him. You know, at that point he was approaching 90,

but that famous smile, that smile that kind of wrapped the whole room inside it. And, you know, we sat, we laughed, and we toasted and the whole bit for Mark and Melissa. So this weekend we lose him. I guess one of the great things about actors and writers is that we can always find them, right? We can always see Gordon. You know, you could try and go through the archives and find Quentin Durgin's MP. I see over the weekend, was it Catherine McKenna, the former cabinet minister, asking the CBC, why don't you run that series again?

It was great the first time. It would be great to see it now again. The story of a rookie MP's time in Ottawa. Well, will they do that? Who knows? I don't know. There may be copyright issues. There may be all kinds of issues.

But, you know, it's hard. It's hard to imagine a Canadian cultural scene without, well, these two people we've lost in the last 10 days. In it, whether it was Peter Herndorf or Gordon Pinson. But, as we said, life goes on. And life will go on. It certainly does not mean they'll be forgotten. Because they won't be, nor will all the things they fought for and worked for and enjoyed doing.

Those will always be a part of us. All right. Let's move on to what are we missing or what are you missing with Janus Stein? Do you want to know a little more about, is there anyone out there who's never heard of Janice Stein? It's hard to believe. You know, when I look at, you know, there's all kinds of things written about her online,

including, you know, Janice Stein, Canadian political scientist, international relations expert, specialist in Middle East area studies, negotiation theory, foreign policy, decision-making, and international conflict management. Not a bad lineup of things, right? Also responsible in many ways for the birth and operation of the Munk School for Global Affairs and Policy Issues at the University of Toronto. So Janice is a force, has been for decades, and continues to be so.

Helping us out here at the bridge every, I don't know, month or six weeks we'll be doing this. So let's get right at it. Here's the latest episode of What Are We Missing? All right, Janice, let's start with Haiti because the connection between Canada and Haiti goes back more than a few decades. It's strong, especially in Quebec, but almost 200,000 Haitians live in Quebec. And there's always been this feeling that Canada is there to help Haiti. But of late, people are

beginning to wonder why we should be doing that. The place seems in perpetual chaos. The only, you know, most of the Canadians who go there aren't going for the beaches. They're going in uniforms of, you know, soldiers or police or aid workers. So what is up with Haiti? Let me paint a pretty grim picture of where things are at right now, Peter. No official in the Haiti government currently has been elected. That's a showstopper right there. Yeah, absolutely.

Half the capital is controlled now by gangs. You know, one of the names, Jimmy Barbecue Chavias probably tells you everything you need to know about the quality of these gangs. But these gangs, it's really interesting. They are providing all the services. You need medical help, you're on one gang or the other, that's where you go to get medical help. They control the schools. So anybody who comes into Haiti now negotiates with the gangs. That was true in the last big UN intervention.

It doesn't matter what people said in public. Either you do deals on the ground with these gangs, or you can't assure your safety. That's, in a sense, a total breakdown of the state. The last time we saw something like this really was in Somalia, where very, very similar conditions. So the United States, which, as you well know, is preoccupied, phoned Ottawa and said, please do this for us. Please send a peacekeeping force because public order is broken down and their big interest is controlling the refugees' flows. Well, there was a long, agonizing discussion inside our government. And effectively, it was a quiet no,

because there's no prospect for success. So what are we doing? We are sending armored vehicles to the police who have to confront these gangs. And we're sanctioning the gangs and trying to control the supply chains in collaboration with the United States. But it's pretty grim, Peter. It really is. And there must be a degree of political pressure on the government in Ottawa because of that block of Haitian voters or Haitian Canadians in Quebec. It's not an insignificant number.

It's a large number. We've had one of our governor generals, as you know, came from Haiti. They have a real interest. And there are NGOs and civil society organizations in Haiti that Quebecers really strongly support. So there are links. So there's real political pressure on the government. And there's also political pressure coming from Washington. The tone of the discussion is, do this for us.

We've got our hands full right now. This is something where you have a comparative advantage. Do this for us. We've got our hands full right now. This is something where you have a comparative advantage. Do this for us. But in fact, Peter, we don't have a comparative advantage. There's no way that any peacekeeping force goes into Haiti now and either does deals with the gangs or takes the gangs on. And there's really terrible violence. And the public in Haiti does not support a foreign intervention. The last one was so terrible. It was UN-led.

It left cholera behind it. It left Haiti worse off than it had been before the intervention. There's no real support inside the country for this the um you got to wonder how you know we're sending armored vehicles to the police or the army or whomever in in haiti and yet jimmy barbecue or whatever his name is is probably i mean the way you make this sound he's probably got control of the elements of the various police and army forces, too. That is absolutely correct, Peter. The police is completely infiltrated because in order to secure the physical safety of police officers who go out in the street, you have to have an understanding with the gangs who control different neighborhoods in

the capital. So if you send armored vehicles to the police, I can assure you that the back and forth between one of the two big gangs and the police is an ongoing discussion. And some of those vehicles will not stay with the police. There really is not a good external solution to this. But you have to ask for Haitians who live in Port-au-Prince and are terrified. They can't take on these gangs either. These are militarized gangs. This is truly rule by gang it just you know clearly it sounds like the chaos is just going to continue there's no magical solution to this you know

inside you know it's really interesting because it's not chaos it's orderly it's you know you know what i'm saying it's similar to mafioso rule it's orderly there You know what I'm saying. It's similar to mafioso rule. It's orderly. There's extortion. There's kidnappings if you take on the gangs. But if you need medical help, you know where to go. And it's order. It's just order imposed by gangs who are really brutal.

All right. Let's move on. Same kind of part of the world, but a little further west, and that's Mexico. The name Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador should be familiar to us by now because he's been president of Mexico for like five years, almost five years. He's known more by his initials, AMLO, than anything else.

But this is a guy that we probably should be watching closer than we tend to. You're right there. You know, we have integrated trade, North American trade, Mexico. We often forget about Mexico, but Mexico is one of the three. Take our auto trade, for instance, which is integrated. Mexico is a big part of that. And the other thing we're seeing, Peter, is factories that are leaving China for a whole variety of reasons. Many are relocating to Mexico.

So Mexico deserves a lot of attention. But the news coming out of Mexico is not encouraging. AMLO is a populist. When I look back on the early years of the Trump administration, Trump really missed the opportunity there. Because there was somebody who sounded a lot like him. He ran against the elites. He has talked about the brown skin coming together to oppose exploitative elites. He's attacked the Electoral Institute

in order to change the rules. He's taken on freedom of information. And front and center, by the way, are journalists who report on the corruption in his regime. This has been the most difficult few years for journalists, for independent journalists in Mexico. He's relentless in his pursuit of journalists who are critical of the regime. That is always, always a bad sign. He's cut the budgets of agencies that

oppose anything that he does. So coming out of Mexico, and to be fair, Peter, these are the chattering Mexican classes who travel to Ottawa or Toronto or New York or Chicago. There is a chorus now of comment from them that they feel that he has crossed the line and that Mexican democracy is truly a risk. You know, it's funny because you're right. One of your first comments there was we don't talk about Mexico and yet they really are like they're one of our partners on this continent, right on the North American continent. They're the third amigo amigo so to speak and um and yet we don't talk about it there's all kinds of issues playing out in mexico um and safety thoroughly is one of them and every you know winter we hear about you know some canadians who've been caught up on the the

various safety issues that are applying that country but now you've got a president who's a populist and yeah and is doing things that uh you know wouldn't normally play in this country we certainly hope not uh so how that impacts this this relationship it's interesting because you know that our government um historically has not paid enough attention to Mexico, has woken up really a little bit in the last 18 months, I think partly because of the experience they had with Trump, where they had to make some common cause. But this is the irony, really.

If Trump had been a little smarter than he is, he would have understood that he had a comrade on the other side of the border who actually shared a lot of his views. Instead, as you remember, he took them on and used all kinds of derogatory language and drove AMLO into a place where he just opposed Trump and was actually interested in Canada, ironically, because he could level the playing field just a little bit. And we needed the Mexicans very badly when we were renegotiating NAFTA. But we'll continue to need them because trade is regionalizing all over the world. And our region is North America. So whenever I have a chance to talk to our government, I say, this one matters to us.

We need to pay more attention here. And AMLO's got another year and a half. Can't run again. Can't run again. That's what they always say. That's what they always say that's what they until they do um okay the last last time we we did this you know tour around the world early last month um i got a number of letters afterwards saying oh why didn't you do this country or why didn't you do that country most of the most of the mail i got on in that vein first of all

everybody loved the the idea of doing this, and that's why we're going to try and do it every, I don't know, every month or every six weeks. It should be great until we run out of countries. But the one country that got mentioned a number of times in those letters was Peru. So why should we care about what's happening in Peru these days? Well, Peru is part, in a sense, of the cluster of countries where there was a lot of hope for democracy. But it's also part of what we've come to call democratic backsliding. Here's one that boggles the mind, Peter.

Peru has had six presidents in the last five years so if yeah yeah sounds like italy you know with the coalition governments right it sounds like italy exactly uh and if you believe that you need some political stability in a country in order to address both the economic issues, environmental issues, social issues, and you're changing government less than a year over the last five, you're not going to do well. The last president was from the rural, poorer part of Peru. So, you know, long awaited again. The parts of the, you know, the indigenous populations that run throughout South America that don't get the voice in government that they should. And so Castillo comes to power. There's no way to read this, Peter, but to say, again, the chattering classes in Peru lined up quite quickly against,

mobilized their resources. And yes, there was fraud. And yes, there was graft. But this is not a new story in Peru. Castillo was impeached and was replaced by an interim president. They only have an interim president now, Dino Bilardi. And you have seen news stories where effectively the whole of the tourist sector, big parts of the capital are shut down by protests. These are the rural poor that have come. They shut down Machu Picchu, for example, which is the biggest source of hard currency earnings for Peru. And they are staying and they want her out, Dina Bilardi.

This is an example. And, you know, it fits a bigger picture that, you know, I've talked about, Peter. These are polarized countries, deeply polarized. There is no middle ground. And it's that polarization. We're seeing it in Peru. We talked about it last time in Israel. I hate to say it, but the United States polarized

where people move away from the center, and you get a politics where the other side is the enemy. That's what you've gone and proved right now. They're at an impasse, frankly. Listen, you see it on the edges here too, right? Yeah. We're not immune to this.

Polarization is an issue in many different parts of the world, and we see it happening here, not to the extent we've seen it in the States or certainly in other countries, but it's there. And it wasn't there in this degree 10 years ago. I'm glad you said that because I talked to many Canadians who I would say are in denial about that, Peter. It is here. It is here. Well, I hope they're right and we're wrong, but it doesn't look that way um okay one of my great images that i have when i look back through history of the last century uh and there are

many of course but one of them is is uh macarthur arriving in the philippines you know waiting ashore i said i'd return and i've returned you you know, after abandoning the Philippines when the Japanese were taking over most of the South Pacific in the early part of the war. Anyway, he did return. And he'd probably be pretty proud today because American troops are returning to different parts of that area of the world, including the Philippines, right now. What's up with that? Well, is that a story, Peter? We could spend all of our time

really talking about this one. First part of this story is that Fernando Marcos, known as Bongbang Marcos, the son, the son, the son of, let me put it this way, of Imelda Marcos. Let's not talk

about her husband. Let's not talk about her husband. Let's just talk about the mother here. The shoe collector. The shoe collector of all time, okay, is now president. made very clear he is resentful of the United States, took China to court on the violation of territorial waters, got a judgment and then said, well, that's fine. I got the judgment, but I'm not going to do anything about it and launched a really intense drug war, very violent drug war against the southern part of the Philippines.

Bongbong Marcos gets elected with a really significant majority, 60% of the vote last year. That's not small in that country and reverses everything that Duterte put in place. So ends the violent drug war. And frankly, we know a lot about using that kind of violence to fight drug traffickers. It really doesn't work. Spreads the violence. That's part of the story in Mexico too.

But then looks at what China has been doing, not only in the Philippines, but more broadly in this part of the world, matches up with the Indo-Pacific discussion that starts in Japan and has virtually taken over the way we think about this part of the world and reverses Duterte's decisions to ask the Americans to leave. And there is now, and this fits your mental image, there is actually now ongoing discussions about American forces returning to Subic Bay. So not only reversing what Duterte had ended, but going beyond and expanding the American presence.

Philippines, you know, are in the eye of the storm. They live in many ways by their fishing industry. And China has the world's largest fishing fleet. It fishes all the way up and down the Pacific coast, southern Pacific, northern Pacific, and Marcos has just changed gears. So I think you're right. McCarthy would look at this and say, we've never left. Yeah, right. Okay, we're going to take

a quick break in there we're a little around halfway through our little spin around the globe and we'll pick it up right after this and welcome back you're listening to uh the bridge Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Our guest today, Janice Stein, she's back with What Are We Missing? We started this a little more than a month ago, where Janice comes in and we look at a certain number of countries each episode that haven't generally been talked about and why we should be keeping them in mind.

And we're having a good time on this episode. Now we're going to go to Africa now, where there are a couple of countries we're going to focus in on for a minute. And if we're going to get through this list, Janice, we're going to have to pick uh for a minute if we're going to get through this list janice we're gonna we're gonna have to pick up the pace a little bit but the two countries in africa that we're going to look at are nigeria and cameroon first of all nigeria why nigeria huge election took place yesterday in nigeria we're still waiting for the results, Peter. Two big governing parties, each have candidates in the race, but has really captured the popular imagination here,

is a young 61-year-old, young. Yeah, that's young. That is young. That's young. Peter Obi. And representing the digital, young Nigerian, urban Nigerian, Peter Obi and representing the digital young Nigerian, urban Nigerian

who is a long shot to win this. I was on the phone yesterday with a friend of mine in Lagos who represents this young digital generation. They are out in force monitoring the election and he said, well, he's not sure that Peter Obie has enough to break through. But he predicted, and it looks like he's right, this is the highest voter turnout that we've had in a Nigerian presidential election. election, because partly there's no incumbent. It's a real race, but still one accomplishment,

Peter. And the third successful transition, nonviolent, peaceful transition in Nigeria. He was really excited. And as I said, he represents the future generation of Nigerian leaders, optimistic about Nigeria, knew the election was going to be held and was confident that, yes, it was violence, but that it would be successfully managed. And it was. I love hearing stories about high turnout rates or, you know, better than normal turnout rates. You know, as we've said, you've said before, I've said before, our friend John Turner used to say, you know, if you believe in democracy, you've got to participate, right? You've got to play. And the easiest way to participate is to vote.

You know, if you're not going to run or if you're not going to go to all town, you know, town hall meetings and all that, at least vote when you're participating. So good for them if the turnout rate was high. Cameroon. Cameroon is such a Canadian story here, Peter. We've got a Canadian story in Africa from two perspectives, okay? And they've reversed roles. In the Cameroons, there is two provinces, if we call them that for the moment, who are English speaking and they are separatists. That's why I say we flip the narrative between the Cameroons and Canada. They want a separate ambisonia. They claim they've been marginalized for years.

A violent conflict erupted in 2017. Thank goodness we never went that route. 800,000 people displaced in the Cameroons. And here's one for you, 600,000 kids out of school. Absolute catastrophe, frankly. So our government was approached, can you mediate? And we agreed. And we had two or three secret meetings, nothing in this country secret,

secret meetings between the French and English-speaking factions. The French, of course, are the government in Quebec and other congenial locations in this country. Signal goal for Canada to become the formal mediator. Our minister announced, and as soon as she did, the government of Cameroon pulled out and said, we are not interested in any formal process. Good on the minister. She said, well, we think you are. And she has not walked away. And neither have the diplomats behind her who are leading this.

But this is, I think, an interesting Canadian story. We've got the skills here. We know something about flexible federalism. Yeah. Some argue it's too flexible. It's too flexible, but we have made it work. We never descended into the kind of violence. And here's where, in fact, not in myth, we actually have some assets that will be helpful if there's any interest whatsoever.

Obviously, the French majority, their concern is that the mediation not lead to a sovereignty association deal in which the sovereignty is so big and the association is so small you've heard this discussion before peter that's gonna say i love how the jargon hasn't changed in nothing 50 years right um okay we we uh have time for two more and these these two are countries that we often talked about on a regular basis until Ukraine came along. And while they've still been mentioned, not to the kind of dominance they had been before the Ukraine war. Let's start off with Turkey or Turkey A,

as the Turkish government would like us to say to differentiate it from the animal or the bird, right? That's right. So Turkey A. That's an Erdogan innovation, right? Right. I want the country to be called Turkey A. Right.

Erdogan and Turkey A are absolutely key countries, key in all of this. Peter, if you're looking for a strategic country right now, we're not going to stray into any Ukraine-Russian agendas. But boy, Turkey has been key in moving that grain. It is one of the few mediators with credibility on both sides. So Erdogan is really positioned, and he is holding up, as you know, Sweden's entry into NATO. So he's got a big, big reach.

He's also an autocrat and a populist who has been elected multiple times, but has been elected by stifling the opposition. And he is up for reelection again in May. The Turkish economy has had one of the highest inflation rates. He's compromised the governor of the central bank as well. He's taken him on. So his popularity was declining. And then this massive earthquake hits Turkey,

which is absolutely a catastrophe. Again, it just happened that on Friday, I was part of a group where one of his people was in the meeting. And you could tell he was stunned by the scope of the earthquake by the inability to get aid in um and for erdogan the timing could not have been worse because there was shoddy construction and beyond that you and i both know that when bad things happen, we all blame the incumbent government. So this may be the moment when Erdogan's rule actually faces serious challenge. The general expectation is he will postpone the election or he will delegitimate a candidate who runs against him. He's done this

before. Just a really critical moment for Turkey right now. He's a hard guy to count out. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that there was a massive coup attempt, which appeared successful, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it took him a couple of days, but suddenly he was back. So, you know, it's dangerous to call him out. It for sure is. Peter, I think he's one of the most sophisticated political operatives in a complementary sense. He crosses the East-West divide. He's able to resist his own armed forces who have a tradition in Turkey of overthrowing presidents they don't like. This is a really, really sophisticated person who doesn't fit neatly in the in this autocracy democracy divide that Biden's imposed on us, but is an absolutely key player in Asia, in Europe, and in the Middle East as well. Okay.

Last country on our visit today. Once again, a country that we talked of continuously in the years before Ukraine, and that was Syria. Now, Syria has been affected by the earthquake as well, so we've heard snippets here lately from Syria. Now, Syria has been affected by the earthquake as well, so we've heard snippets here lately from Syria. But there's Syria with Assad seemingly still well in control, even though he seemed to have the world lined up against him, with the exception of, you know, Putin mainly. But he's still there, and he's still in power, and he still,

you know, has his thumb on the opposition. You know, Peter, that earthquake nightmare for Erdogan, gift for Assad. So same earthquake playing so differently on both sides of the border. First of all, Erdogan has now said to the Syrian refugees that have been a problem for years and years, go home and we guarantee you can come back. We will make sure you can come back. So there's a huge exodus now of Syrians returning to Syria for the first time since the civil war. Secondly, the whole UN apparatus is now dealing with Assad because they want to get humanitarian aid in on the ground to the part of Syria that was affected by the earthquake. So people who would have nothing to do with this guy because he was so

brutal are now in negotiations with him to get, say, passage for humanitarian aid into the country, as is the U.S. government. Gift for this guy, right? Gift. We're going to leave it at that for this month, Janice. This has been terrific, as always. I mean, you take us on this kind of world tour and your sort of endless knowledge of what's going on in so many different places uh it is a gift for us

and you know and the listeners react to it that way uh whenever they well let me just say what a pleasure it is to talk to you peter it is a special treat for me. Well, the mutual admiration society here will continue. Thanks, Janice. We'll talk to you again soon. Bye now. Janice Stein, University of Toronto. Political scientist, extraordinaire, and known by and used by governments around the world

for her knowledge. You know, we started this program today talking about two gifts to our country that we've lost in the last week in Peter Herndorf and Gordon Pinson. And we end the program with a current continuing gift in Jana Stein. And we're so lucky to have had her with us. For this segment that we're calling, well, we call it one of two names. We call it What Are We Missing? or What Are You Missing? But I think it's mainly What Are We Missing?

Because that is kind of the global nature of things. And I imagine you sitting there with your, you know, your Atlas open or your globe spinning and stopping at these different countries as we tour the world and look in. And we do try to space it out, so you get a kind of global tour. But we will do it again. So if there are countries you want in our little tour,

then drop me a line at the mansbridgepodcast at gmail.com and we will try and fit it in got time for one end bit before we leave for this day you know mondays were the mainstay on this program for a couple years was the discussion around the pandemic around covid and one of the issues that we often talked about from the earliest days was what was this impact going to have on our work patterns and our, you know, stay at home or go to the office work pattern. And you've seen different industries tugging and pulling on this during the pandemic and in the period since the worst of the pandemic seemed to end.

Well, you report in Bloomberg, they've been doing a study specifically in Manhattan and in New York, trying to understand what is the current impact on this stay-at-home or work-from-the-office situation? Because it has obviously gone through a number of different scenarios over these last couple of years. Well, here's the current one. This is what Bloomberg says. We found that despite all the hand-wringing about empty office cubicles, employees are actually back at their desks. They're just not returned in full force.

The in-person work week has shrunk to three days, with workers typically commuting in on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, sometimes Monday. On Friday, however, the office is a ghost town. Now you think, okay, that's's interesting but what impact has it had well it's had a huge impact in new york city the change of this once again from bloomberg the change is costing manhattan at least 12.4 billion dollars a year in the form of reduced commuter spending. When workers spend less time in the office, about a 30% reduction in this case, they also eliminate some purchases of meals, shopping, and entertainment nearby.

That poses a problem for cities like New York, which have infrastructure built to support central business districts districts and the workers that once spent five days a week there. Everything from restaurants to coffee carts to shoeshine stands rely on weekday warrior traffic. Public transit systems, including the Manhattan Transport Authority, also need the support of riders' fares. cities use sales and income tax revenues to help fund their operations the issue is global this is why this little story matters to us the issue is global as workers and cities all over the world spend less time in the office now city leaders businesses and everyone else have to figure out how to cope with an ecosystem

that's being thrown off balance you see it you know like we live in strafford obviously so that we don't see that this impact but we also spend a lot of time in toronto because both of our works schedules bring us to Toronto. And we have a condo in downtown Toronto. And the beauty of living in downtown Toronto on the weekends is it's really quiet. Yeah, it's really quiet. The weekday, not so much. But the pandemic's changed everything. You know, the downtown was very quiet during the pandemic. Now, not so much, but it's quieter than it used to be. So in real terms, you see exactly what that Bloomberg story is talking about. Fewer people are using

downtown core the way they used to, and as a result, everything's impacted. You know, as that story says, everything from the transit system to restaurants to shoeshine stands, you name it. So I always think back to those first days of the pandemic, and we were always using the phrase, you know, nothing's going to be the same anymore. And some were saying, yeah, yeah, we always say that. It'll eventually be the same. Well, maybe eventually it will be the same, but it hasn't happened yet. It's not the same. Well, maybe eventually it will be the same, but it hasn't happened yet. It's not the same.

It is different. Things have changed. Lifestyles have changed. We'll see whether that's permanent or not. Tomorrow, Brian Stewart is back. He's back. He's back with his thoughts on where we are in the ukraine russia war as we move into year two wednesday smoke mirrors and the truth with bruce thursday your turn and the

ranter other huge numbers last week for the ranters final part of his trilogy on the leaders and there was some discussion about that some people feel that it was like too much contributing to the nasty feeling that a lot of people have towards politicians. But he listened, which is interesting. Anyway, the ranter will be back, and he's moving away from politics. He's done his political rants.

And then Friday, of course, Good Talk. Now, Chantel is off. If you listened last week, you heard the preview. Chantel is off hiking across Iceland. Just the thought of that is something thrilling. And Susan Delacorte will join us to fill in for Chantel this Friday with Bruce on Good Talk. All right, that's preview of the week.

Lots to go. Lots of excitement. Enjoy your day. Enjoy your week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.