The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What do Madonna, Elon Musk and COP 26 have in common?

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

The eyes of much of the world are on Scotland this week as the COP26 climate conference begins with much anticipation of just what can be accomplished.   And they're talking about it all around Scotland too, even in the 13th century cathedral here in Dornoch, Scotland.  Which lads to the title of today's episode.And then, has the cashless society finally arrived?  Personal finance writer Rob Carrick joins us with his take on something that affects us all.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. So, what do Madonna, Elon Musk, and COP26 have in common? Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest-growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to. You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades.

Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. conditions apply and hello there again once again peter mansbridge in scotland dornick scotland and scotland is the place to be this week all eyes are on Scotland from all over the world, including many places in Canada. Because this is the launch, started yesterday, of COP26, the big climate conference, where the world gathers to try and determine what they're really going to do about climate change. You know, and I, you know, I scanned the headlines on COP26, you know, in the last few hours, and you got headlines like, summit is the last best hope to hit climate target. You got France and the UK told, end your dispute.

That's the fishing dispute, right? Or you'll wreck the COP26 summit. Bad weather causes delays on train route to Glasgow COP26 talks. That's ironic, right? Bad weather caused by climate change? I don't know. Delays trains. That's bad weather, man.

So, you know, when you've got the arrival of all the climate rock stars, Greta Thunberg arrived over the weekend. Ahead of what they're saying is going to be a chaotic week in Glasgow. I mean, they've had all kinds of issues in Glasgow, quite apart from climate. They've had a garbage strike, one thing after another. But it's the normal kind of stories before a big conference. Everything that could go wrong is going to go wrong,

are the kind of stories that you tend to see before any big summit or world meeting. And then when they actually get into it, they start to focus on the real issues, right? I want to assume that will be the case this time around as well. Now, you heard the tease when this started. What do Madonna, Elon Musk, and COP26 have in common? Get your fingers on the buzzers. You know the answer to that one?

I'd be surprised if anybody knows the answer to that, but nevertheless, this is a pretty smart audience to listen to the bridge. So it wouldn't shock me if some of you did. Here's my story. As I've told you, we're coming to you on the bridge for a few weeks from Dornick, Scotland. That's in the north, in the Highlands, north of Inverness, about an hour's drive north of Inverness. And if you went another hour or so north of Dornick,

you'd be at the top of Scotland and you'd be taking the boat over to the Orkneys. So Dornick is a great spot. It's home for the world-famous Royal Dornick Golf Course. And it is world-famous. And just last week, you know who they made an honorary life member? The great Lorne Rubenstein, who's written for golf magazines and papers,

including the Globe, for years. Lorne's friend. One of the books he wrote was about his year in Dornick, living in Dornick. Anyway, they love him here because he always says, deservedly so, great things about Royal Dornick. It is, on the latest ranking I looked at, the number four course in the world. Okay. Anyway, I digress. Dornick is home for a lot more than just the golf course. It is also home for its 13th century cathedral,

the Dornick Cathedral, which is a spectacular structure. And through the centuries and through the various battles and tribulations and controversies that have hit the Church of England, the cathedral has stood and has been a worship place for many, many, from not just Dornick, but from, well, literally from around the world. And the minister who has been in charge of the Royal Dornick Cathedral just retired a short time ago.

She was a favorite of none other than the Queen who used to come up from, well, didn't come up from Balmoral, but the minister went down from Dornick to Belmoral to minister for the queen. But the cathedral is a beautiful spot. So beautiful that it's always been rumored that Madonna and Guy Ritchie, who used to be married, got married here in Dornick at the cathedral.

Well, actually, that's not true. They did get married not far from here at Skibo Castle. But they did come to Dornick Cathedral when their son was baptized. You know who was married here? You're starting to get it, right? Elon Musk was married here in 2012 in the Dornick Cathedral. Don't ask me why. Maybe that's where he got his inspiration for teslas i don't know

but he did which brings us to the third leg of this story that i've been telling which is cop 26 the climate conference it's not being held in dornick it's not being held in the Dornick Cathedral. But, it is being talked about in the Dornick Cathedral. Now, I'm not a churchgoer. I haven't been... You know, I used to be, when I was a kid, I was a choir boy. They put me in the choir because they hoped I could sing, which I couldn't. But this was after we'd just come over from England and I looked the part.

I had it, if you want. And you'd have to read my book to know what I'm talking about on that. But nevertheless, so I used to sing a lot of the you know, be a lot of the, you know, be a part of the choir for the hymns that are a part of the regular church service. Wonderful hymns that span the ages and span time. Hymns like all Things Bright and Beautiful. All things bright and

beautiful, the Lord God made them all. See, now you know why I didn't last in the choir. But nevertheless, today at the Dorna Cathedral, I wasn't last in the choir. But nevertheless, today at the Dorna Cathedral, I wasn't there, but I've talked to some who were. The whole service, not today, yesterday,

the whole service was built around the theme of protecting the earth. And therefore, the sermon talked about that, and the hymns that were picked talked about that, including all things bright and beautiful, including we plow the fields and scatter, including touch the earth lightly. So the minister was building a case for concern about our planet.

And obviously that's going to be the discussion throughout this week in Glasgow at COP26. So, here's the end of the story. The service lasted about an hour, and the person I talked to who was in the service, when they came out, they followed out a number of people, including this one woman. Let's say elderly woman. Followed her out, and when they got to the bottom of the steps,

this woman turned to her friends and said, that was terrible. That was as if it was organized by the Green Party. So there you go. Climate change is an issue that still, in some cases, divides people and sets up some strong opinions in various camps. The overwhelming majority of people believe that climate change is real and things have to be done, and that's why they're expecting big things out of COP26.

But that group that used to represent 20 years ago, half of those who felt that climate change was not real, that group is down considerably. But it still exists. And that woman who came out of the church today after listening to an hour of a service that was clearly designed to talk about the protection of the earth and touching the earth lightly, all things on earth, all things bright and beautiful. She wasn't sold. So it'll be an interesting week.

There will be protests in Glasgow that have already started that would suggest things are moving too slowly and there'll be protests that have suggested things are moving too slowly, and there'll be protests that have suggested things have moved too fast. It'll be interesting to watch play out. But now you have a great answer to the great trivia question,

what do Madonna, Elon Musk, and COP26 have in common? Right? Aren't you glad you didn't miss the bridge today? When we come back, something much more general. Much more general. But something I think that's impacted us all in the 2021 months since we were hit with COVID, it's got a lot to do with what's in our pockets. We'll talk about that when we come back right after this.

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This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. Okay, back with The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Dornick, Scotland for another week before we head back to Canada. It's been wonderful. The weather has been spectacular, but it kind of changed this weekend. Changed to the point where it was, you know, pretty blustery and, you know, cold would be a stretch, but it was certainly cool. And we're in the highlands. We're not at the point yet where you can see snow capping the tops of the highland mountains, highland hills.

But it won't be long now, that for sure. And over the weekend, it was kind of a reminder of my old churchill days because we saw and i and apparently they were seen by a fair number of people in north america as well um the northern lights made their appearance over the highlands. Those large splashes of green, like strokes from a paintbrush. That was pretty spectacular. I could see them over the highlands. And as I said, it reminded me, when I lived in Churchill, Manitoba, we'd see the Northern Lights all the time.

So often that there were nights where you'd walk and you wouldn't even look up because it was kind of a calm place. Okay, hey, another night with the Northern Lights, whoopee. We had a rocket range there run by the National Research Council. It doesn't exist anymore, but they used to fire rockets up into the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, to try and understand why they exist, what makes them. That was late 1960s. Alright, I told you that we want to talk about something

for a few minutes that's, you know, I think impacts all of us. How many times since COVID started have you used cash? Cash? You know, remember what cash is? Like coins. bills, $5 bills, $10 bills, $20 bills. I know in my case, whatever I had in my pocket when COVID started remained in my pocket for about a month,

and then I set it aside and never touched it again. So have we really finally approached that moment of the cashless society? Are we being pushed into that? Well, I was intrigued by a headline I saw in the Globe and Mail before I came over here. These are your excuses for still using cash to pay for stuff. It's a column by Rob Carrick, and I love Rob Carrick's pieces in the Globe. He's kind of a personal financial services kind of guy. And the stories that he writes, and they can be about real estate

or they can be like this, about cash, are ones we can all kind of reach out and touch because we're all involved somehow in many of the issues that Rob talks about and you learn from it. So what did I do? I tracked down Rob. I told him I wanted to talk about cash. Here's our conversation.

So Rob, I guess I remember, you know, I'm a little bit older than you. So I remember growing up as a kid in the, in the sixties and first, you know, hearing and seeing my parents talk about credit cards and the first kind of columns came out about the impending cashless society. So let me start from there. I know, are we there yet? Are we at the cashless society? No, we're not. And we're very close. We're edging closer. But I was sort of educated on this recently. I wrote a column for my newsletter, my email newsletter saying that we're heading towards the cash. I personally am just about through the doorway into the cash society,

but readers told me they are not. Many of them told me they are not. Some said they like to keep cash around for giving to homeless people. Some said they like to keep cash around for giving for tips. Some said they like to keep cash around for that small, small, tiny group of retailers and restaurateurs who only accept cash. So it showed me that there is sort of a foundational bedrock demand for cash. But for the daily transactions that most of us do, I think the pandemic has taught us plastic rules. Yeah, I tend to agree very much so on that. And in fact, I look at my own case as an example. I always used to have cash in my pocket, some cash. I used credit cards a lot, but I always had some cash in my pocket and always had some cash in my wallet.

I suddenly realized, I don't know, halfway through the pandemic that the cash in my wallet had not changed since the day before the pandemic. I was still looking at the same $5 bill and the same $20 bill that had been there before. And there was no longer cash in my pocket. So, you know, clearly the pandemic has changed the equation to a degree. The question is, when the pandemic is over, and it'll end sometime, do we revert back, or has it just been too long that we have, a certain number of us have developed new ways? A survey was done about this topic, and what it showed was that about one-third of Canadians said they're not going back.

They enjoy the plastic lifestyle. I think more will actually stick with plastic. I mean, why would you go back to cash? What is the advantage of cash? Some people say, well, I can put cash in my pocket. I know that's my budget. And I do get that. But with the apps we have for following your bank account on your smartphone, you can keep in touch with what you're spending is very easily just go into your account, see how much money you have before you go to the store. You can lose cash. You can't lose plastic. I mean, we can, but you just sort of call your bank and cancel it and then you're covered until you get a new card, which you can do by just going into any bank branch. I think the tangibility of cash appeals to people, you know, for teaching kids about money, that might be another application for cash. But by and large, for your day-to-day purchases, I've failed to see any real advantage of it. You know, one of the issues becomes privacy, right? And, you know, we were all work up about privacy issues surrounding credit cards and debit cards and all that when they began.

We kind of got over that to a degree. I mean, one of the advantages, I assume, of cash over credit is that you're not leaving a trail behind you. True, true. You know what, when you use all your credit cards and your debit cards and your reward cards, I mean, part of the business of offering these things is tracking what people are doing and then aligning them with offers to buy stuff. But there's a good side to that. I mean, you're going to be offered things you might want. Maybe your services can be tailored to your needs a little bit better. I mean, it's a trade-off, right? We give up our privacy, but we get services and we get improved offers. And I, for one, am'm willing to make that compromise.

Now, I know there are a number of people who are very privacy-oriented. This is a very Canadian thing, very privacy-oriented. I don't want people tracking what I'm doing. And I think if that's you, then cash is the way to go. I respect that. And I recommend cash to you for sure. You won't be tracked that way. is it an age thing the differences yeah I think I think it definitely is I mean I have two millennial sons who barely know what what cash is and a check is like a museum piece to them but you know a lot of seniors they say I'm not comfortable with a smartphone and you know the plastic is a bit iffy but one thing I point out is if you've got mobility issues, you know, you've got arthritis or other conditions and you're not your hands are not what they once were.

Tapping is a lot easier than fumbling with cash and coins and everything else. Just tap your credit card, tap your debit card. You can do it for purchases up to $200. I know a lot of seniors who are stunned at how useful that is and how comfortable that is. You know, I guess it was about 10 years ago or so, I picked up one of those small little billfolds that just holds credit cards, right? So you can, in my case, I keep that usually in a front pocket. My wallet is in the back pocket. But I have found over time, because especially through COVID, that I don't use my wallet. You know, if I move my driver's license up into that credit card billfold, that's all I need.

I don't need my wallet anymore. And I kind of look at it on the nightside table or wherever I leave it at night, and I think, you know, that's been part of my life, you know, since I can remember, you know, having a wallet in my back pocket and that's departing. So I, you know, that too, is a kind of move away from the cashless society. I agree. You know what, about a year or two ago, I got rid of my wallet and I got sort of this little billfold slash credit card holder, all my plastic goes in there. There's a little clip there and I do have a 20 or a 10 stuck in there. It's basically turning to dust in there because I haven't touched it in so long.

Got rid of my wallet and all those little extra cards, I loaded on my phone. So I have like my air miles and aeroplan and all that stuff. I have it on a phone app. So when you go to a shopper's drug mart and you're collecting your optimum points, you just put your phone down on the, on the sensor pad and you get your points. So I probably have my number of cards by adding them to my phone. I pay for stuff on my phone.

Cause you can load your credit card and your debit card onto Google pay or Apple pay and use that. And so I first scoffed at that. Why would anybody want to use their phone to pay when you've got this handy credit card in your pocket? But I somehow found it to be darn handy, and I really like it. But if you're not good with cell phones, you don't like cell phones, you don't have a cell phone, you're a senior, you've never got used to them, then that's not going to work.

Plastic is the next best thing. The wallet, you know what? I think that maybe for Gen Y and younger, wallets are going to be a thing of the past. You'll have a little thing to hold your plastic. The rest will be on your phone. There will be no wallet. Did you resist moving towards cashless? You know, I resisted the phone aspect. I thought, why, you know, these phone pay applications, this just seemed unnecessary. But I tried them and I liked them.

I didn't think I would, but I did. I thought the first time I did that, I thought, okay, I'm doing this again. But the rest of it, no, I'm kind of, you know, in my job, it's, you know, part of my mandate is to investigate new forms of banking and commerce and paying for things. And so I felt it was my duty to do it. And it registered right away. Cash is fine, but I just thought the plastic is better because when I go to look at my account on my phone or online, I see everything line by line tabulated. Cash is, I can't keep track of cash the same way. Did I have $40 or $60 in my wallet?

All those 20s, they stick together. Thought I had 100. It looks like I had 80. Where'd the 20 go? Did it fall out when I grabbed all the bills to pay somebody? I don't know. Electronic is like all the accounting's done for you. Where's the future? You say your focus, your mandate in your job is to be constantly kind of updating yourself on where things are. What's down the road? What's incoming on this front? That's a good question. You know, I think the first frontier will be to eliminate the check.

That'll be sort of a milestone on this journey. There's still a lot of people, particularly seniors, who like the tangibility of a check. But I am a proselytizing for e-transfer, and I am finally getting some traction on that. I have a lot of people using e-transfer, and none of those say, oh, I don't like that. E-transfer is awesome. You never write a check to someone and have to wait like 18 months for them to cash it or they tell you they lost your check. You send the eTransfer, it's out of your account, it's out of your hands. It's great. Love it. So when we get rid of checks, that'll be a milestone. When, you know, the number of bills in circulation starts to decline, maybe the bank of Canada says, you know what, we're not making coins anymore. That'll be another milestone.

And then, you know, I think we'll have a, we'll have very close to a cashless society. And then we'll maybe we'll have alternative payment forms, maybe cryptocurrency will be a super common thing. And we'll decide, are we going to pay with, you know, Canadian dollars or Bitcoin or one of the other coins, we may have all the apps on our wallet and decide, I want this to be a dark transaction. So I'm paying with crypto, I don't know, know i that's quite possible i think we may have like a uh sort of a side-by-side parallel payment system now you're scaring me because you're scaring me as the the consumer who can only handle so much you know like i finally figured out e-transfers in the last year and like you i i use them all the time they're i think

they're fabulous um but cryptocurrency i i'll never get convinced on trying to figure that out how you could do the you know argument aside about whether it's you know whether whether it's how real it is or how concerned we should be about it but all those arguments aside i just don't get it like i can't figure it out you know it's it's a speculative commodity really it's not a currency like that's a that's a but i was watching some uh some crime type show the other day and oh no it's actually so billions that's what it was like a show about a millionaire hedge manager hedge fund manager and the da is out to get him and the hedge fund manager is talking he's paying some guys for

to do some sort of uh under table dark deeds. And he says, I'll send you the payment in crypto. So it's like, if it's in television, it's in the system. And I think we're all on our way to sort of making our peace with it, understanding what it is, using it in specific instances. I think you can live a happy, healthy life without ever touching it. And I think many people will, the majority will, but, you know, there are crypto machines in a mall near me. I'm not sure what they do. I'm not sure anyone even uses them or that they're hooked up to anything, but they're there. I think this is, there's too much interest in this for it to go away. I love your theory that if it's in television, it's, it's getting close. If it's not there already in terms of, of how we react to it.

Have you watched squid game yet? You know, I haven't, I wasn't, you better not. You know what I I'm going to, because I'm told that the, you know, like it's this idea of these, it's a critique of capitalism and these poor victims are all indebted people. And I thought, well, I have to watch that. And I will, but I have not yet. No.

Yeah, it's funny because you can take the argument, you know, I've just started it and it is kind of addictive in a very strange kind of way. But that take on it, you know, that it's a challenge to capitalism in terms of, I mean, it's also, you could also argue that it promotes democracy because they have an option, but I won't get into it more than that. I'll let you deal with it yourself. No, I won't spoil it. Okay. Who's being left behind in all this? We talked a little bit about, you know, the elderly people, but beyond that, who's getting left behind? Well, you know what, at the low, low end of the income scale, homeless people, if you don't have a bank card, if you don't have a phone, how do you participate

in this system? So, so that, that is an aspect of things, you know, people saying, well, if I only have, I only have plastic and payment apps on my phone. How do I give to a homeless person who I think could use some money? And so I see a couple of options for that. One, take a few bills in the denomination of your choice and stick them in there and keep them around to give out as you see fit. Or give to a homeless shelter and a charitable donation or a food bank. I'm starting to see charitable options where you can give with your card. For instance, the Salvation Army, those kettles, there's now a tap option on many of them. So I think we're migrating slowly to that, to being able to transfer money to people who aren't part of the system. But let's be honest, if you're in the day-to-day and someone gives you cash,

if you're homeless and you've got a cup and someone fills your cup, how do you translate that into lunch if they only take plastic? That's going to be a challenge. We're going to have to figure that one out. I mean, you need to be in the system to be able to fully participate in a cashless society, and some people aren't, and that will have to be to be addressed i mean that's why we can't make cash just poof go away i did not know that there was a tap option now on some of the the salvation army kettles that's that's really showing you know where the future if i was running a charity i

would want people to be able to give with the greatest of ease. And if I was depending on people putting cash in my little box on the counter of stores, that's old school. It's not going to get filled. But if you put a little tap option, type your card here for a $2 donation in your local food bank as you check out an X or Y store, I think you're going to do a lot more business that way. You know, in one of your first answers, you talked about, you know, the person on the street who's, you know, got the cop out and, you know, and the people going by don't have cash. And, you know, it struck home because, you know, the corner store that I use when I'm

in Toronto has a fellow who's been out there seemingly for years. Same guy. He sits on the sidewalk. He's very nice, seems to be aware of the things that are going on, you know, in the world around him. But he has the cup out. And trying to, I found myself trying to explain to him, you know, it's COVID. I don't have any cash. I've got nothing in my pocket. I've only got credit card and that's all I use in the store here. And he says, it's COVID. I don't have any cash. I've got nothing in my pocket.

I've only got credit card and that's all I use in the store here. And he says, it's okay. I hear you. I hear you. Maybe next time if you have something, that'll be fine. But, you know, it captured exactly what you're talking about for some people who are resisting the move and at least partially resisting and want to have something in their pocket.

Listen, this has been a fascinating discussion. I enjoyed having it, Rob, and I appreciate your time. Thanks very much. Thanks for inviting me, Peter. So that's Rob Carrick, who's a personal finance columnist at the Globe and Mail. And he has a newsletter, and his stuff comes out every week and at least once a week. And as I said, I always find it fascinating. I always find that it kind of touches at a kind of grassroots level,

street level to a lot of different people. And so if you have an opportunity, check in on the, on Rob Carrick's newsletter. I do find it, you know, really, it's a real sign of the times that the Salvation Army kettle, in some places, has a tap option. Makes sense, today's world. But it's just getting your head around the changes

that we're witnessing on all kinds of levels. And man, that's one of them. All right. That's going to wrap it up. We sort of had a number of things to discuss on this day, as we will all throughout this week. I haven't really decided where we're going to go tomorrow. I've got a number of options to consider. Wednesday, of course, is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce will be here from Ottawa. Thursday, once again, options are open. And I promised a show on libraries, and it's going to be one of these days.

Could be tomorrow. Could be Thursday. And I find that equally. And, Jay, if you told me six months ago, oh, you're going to do a show on libraries, I would have said, right, okay, well, we'll talk to you soon. But I'm glad I did. It's a big topic, certainly around here, because in many ways, it's clearly not the historic birthplace of libraries, but libraries are extremely important in the United Kingdom.

And ensuring that they survive is equally important. And there are a couple of new books coming out. And we've got the authors of one of them, two profs from St. Andrews, down the coast in Scotland. St. Andrews, home of, that's right, the Open, the British Open, if you will, but it's the Open. Grandest, oldest golf tournament in the world. But these two profs are going to have a chat with me about their new book and about what it says

about libraries and about us. And it's not just a Brit thing. It's all of us. So looking forward to that. Friday, good talk. Sean Talley Bear, Bruce Anderson, kind of wrapping up the week on the national political front. So that's your week ahead.

I'm looking forward to it. Hope you're looking forward to it. Hope you're looking forward to it. Hope you enjoyed my singing. Okay. We'll talk to you soon. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.