The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Does Truth and Reconciliation Mean To You?

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

For many in the country, today is a day of opportunity to consider our shared history and help determine the path forward. Some thoughts on that, and then later a a new report on climate change and a chat with one of the world's leading authorities on sea ice and the massive loss of sea ice currently underway in both the Arctic and Antarctica. And then a bonus edition of End Bits!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Have you thought about that? Maybe you should. That's coming right up. And hello there, welcome to a new week. Peter Mansbridge here. I'm in Stratford, Ontario today. In many parts of the country, well, for all parts in terms of federal institutions, this is a statutory holiday. It's the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and we're encouraged as a nation to think about

that, think about what that means. In different parts of the country kids have marked this day by wearing orange. Some did it on Friday, others are doing it today. But it's an important day when you consider that one of the foundations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a few years ago, there were 94 calls to action, calling on governments and institutions and Canadians in general

to be called to action on certain things. So far, only 13 of those calls to action have actually been completed so far. And there are obviously people who are very concerned about that. They were kind of letting it slip through our fingers. The opportunity that was given us to think about our shared past, and quite frankly, we're often challenged to think about our shared future. My own feeling is you can't think about the future until you kind of agree on the past, that we have a shared history.

And therefore, days like this, it's only one day a year, are an opportunity for us to do that. Because as that Truth and Reconciliation Committee reported in 2015, it's been eight years now since that report came out, and included in the many wise sayings and thoughts and conclusions in that commission report, was this, without truth, there can be no genuine reconciliation. And so one has to deal with what's the truth about these stories that we hear about our past.

And we all have to come to grips with that. And there have been some who are not in agreement with the committee's findings on a variety of different things. You may be one of those people, or you may be one who wants to be encouraged to learn more, to understand more about our past. I'm going to offer you a way to do that today. I'm not sure how many of you get Zoomer magazine.

I mean, obviously, it's for seniors. It's for Zoomers. But it's accessible. It's accessible online. So is an online dialogue called The Conversation between journalists and academics on a variety of different issues. Well, Zoomer has reprinted a piece that was in The Conversation. And if you're wondering how to see one of those things, just Google them, theconversation.com,

or just go directly to it that way. Same with Zoomer. But this article was written by Daniel Heath Justice. He's a Cherokee Nation citizen, professor of critical indigenous studies at the University of British Columbia. And Sean Carlton, who's an assistant professor in the Department of History and Studies

at the University of Manitoba. As I said, the article, you can find it online in the conversation, or you can find it at Zoomer. And it deals with some of these issues that some people haven't come to grips with. Either they're not sure, or in some cases they deny. Like what the commission said about genocide, that what was done to those who were put in residential schools was a cultural genocide.

And some are trying to split those words and saying, oh, okay, well, cultural genocide isn't the same as genocide. Sorry, that's not the case. It's concluded by a variety of different institutions, including the Canadian Historical Association, that it's fully warranted to use the term genocide against indigenous peoples on what was done with the residential school situation.

Remember, the United Nations defines genocide as the destruction in whole or in part of a nation or an ethnic group. That's one thing. There's a lot more in the article, obviously, on the genocide question. You should read it if you're unsure of where you want to place your feelings on this. Were residential schools actually a school? That's another thing. Read this report.

You won't have any doubt about that. You'll hear some say, ah, yes, this, you know, some of the things that happened there were wrong, but they learned new skills. That issue is addressed as well. Residential schools had good intentions. Really?

Look at the articles. We're ignoring all the good things that happen in residential schools. You've heard that before. But look at the argument against it. There's a lot in this article, and so I'm heavily recommending that you read it if this is a day where you are spending some time thinking about this issue.

Here's the last thing I'll say on the issue of the things we're supposed to be thinking about this day. You've heard before that the survival of a culture is often based on the survival of its language, right? That's been an argument in Quebec for decades, if not centuries, that the language has to survive if the culture is going to survive. Well, there are some people in the Indigenous community

who are getting concerned about what's happening on the language situation. When you look at the latest Stats Canada figures, figures. There are approximately 237,420 Indigenous people in Canada reported that they could speak an Indigenous language well enough to conduct a conversation. Those figures from 2021, last year they were taken, and that figure was down by over 10,000, or almost 5% from 2016. The number of Indigenous people reporting an Indigenous language as the language they first learned at home in childhood continues to decline. There were 184,170 Indigenous people with an Indigenous mother tongue in 2021. That's down almost, or just over 7% from 2016. Now, obviously, there's not just one Indigenous language in Canada.

Do you know how many there are? I didn't know this. I should have known this, but I didn't know it, because it's an important part of the culture. You want to make a guess? 10? 20? 25?

Over 70 Indigenous languages are spoken across Canada. There's a diversity of experiences across the country. All right? So, have I given you something to think about? I'm sure some of you will say yes, you have, and others are going to say no, I knew all that, or I don't agree with any of it. Well, I hope we're all prepared to open our minds a little bit because this

issue to me is an important part of us building our road to the future, is understanding our past. Okay. The rest of today's shows, you'll be interested to know, deal with end bits. A lot of you love the end bits. And I've been delinquent a bit in catching up with some of them. I've got lots of them. So I've got a few, including some climate change ones,

and we've got a short interview. I think it's about 10 minutes long with a leading climate scientist that we're going to run here as well, because I promised you when we talked to Catherine Hale a couple of months ago that we would stay on this, try to do something every week in some fashion on the climate story. Well, we're going to update you on one element of the climate story in a moment, but lots else on NBITS today.

Some really interesting ones are going to surprise you, I think. But first, we're going to take this break. And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, leading our end bit section today is a story out of Antarctica. You may have noticed this in the last few days, but there was yet another one of these studies that come out every once in a while

about the Arctic or Antarctica, the two opposite ends of our planet. This study was from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center on Antarctica, okay, the southern pole. What did it decide or what did it determine or what did it report? It reported the lowest level of sea ice in Antarctica on record. Right now.

The lowest reported year before this was not last year. That's a little different than what we tend to see on climate stories elsewhere. Not last year, not the year before last, not anywhere this century. You go back to the 1980s, I think it was 1986, was the lowest level on record. How much lower is this year's in terms of sea ice? Now, Antarctica is a huge area of land, right? Not land, a huge area of sea.

Some land, but it's huge. This year's level of sea ice is 400,000 square miles. 400,000 square miles below that last record from 1986. Now, what's 400,000 square miles? Well, it's bigger than the state of Texas. That's how big it is. And the drop in the amount of sea ice is going to have an impact. Why is it happening?

Is it automatically assumed that it's climate change? Well, let's find out. I'm going to talk to one of the world's leading authorities on the sea ice story. There are many of them, and some of them are in Canada. But I reached out to Dr. Cecilia Bitts. She's at the University of Washington. She has studied both the Arctic sea ice situation in Canada,

and she has a lot of people she works with on the Canadian front, and she has been and studied the Antarctic situation as well. She's a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, and I wanted to reach out to her to find out what we're supposed to make of these incredible numbers on sea ice in this latest report from Antarctica. So here's our conversation. By the way, she's at a conference in Europe right now.

I reached out to her and tracked her down in Grenoble, France, where she's meeting with some of her colleagues, and they're discussing, among other things, the sea ice thing, because she's a recognized international expert on the sea ice story. So here we go. Here she is, Dr. Cecilia Bitts. Professor, these are pretty startling numbers that we're witnessing from Antarctica, but I want to start by having you put it in context for us. What does this degree of sea ice actually mean? Why should we be concerned? Well, the loss that we've observed in the Antarctic winter, our summer, is unprecedented. It's like nothing we've seen before, but it's so far outside of what we've seen before that it's really startling. It's a kind of anomaly we would expect, you know, once in a thousand years.

That's pretty significant, Dan. How much of it is attributed? I mean, the automatic assumption is, oh, well, this is all because of climate change. How much of it is, can we attribute to climate change? I should say that one in a thousand years would be what we would attribute to normal in natural variability. So, to do that kind of analysis you're asking for requires more time. We will do it to actually try to put proportions on it.

But given that the frequency of this kind of occurrence naturally is so rare, it just suggests to me that it is climate change. The exact fraction is really hard to quantify. It takes modeling. Well, I think a lot of people will appreciate the fact that you don't automatically leap to climate change, that it does need more study to ensure that that is the reason why. It does, but I think the probability is just so high

that I would say very likely climate change. Okay. There are some factors that cause this kind of natural variability like El Nino and the southern annular mode. They're both large-scale circulation phenomena, and they are highly related to Antarctic sea ice, but neither of them was this far outside of normal. So we don't have the normal cause and effect relationships that we would look for immediately

to explain it as an internal variable, your natural variability. Let me try to understand, because I've been a bit surprised when I read things like sea ice is, the loss of sea ice is significant, and these terms in Antarctica are very significant, but don't automatically assume that melting sea ice means higher levels of ocean levels, of water levels. Oh, right. Yeah. So, by the way, it's Arctic sea ice that's very significantly declined,

but Antarctic sea ice until 2015 was actually advancing. It was increasing in area, which was also surprising. But it was very modest. And then since then, it's plummeted now three times. But to answer your question about sea level rise rise because sea ice is already floating in the ocean when it melts it fills in the hole so it actually doesn't cause sea level rise directly but because it's like an amplifier of climate change you know it's it's this highly reflective surface and so when it shrinks it it warms the climate more because it absorbs, it reveals this very dark ocean comparatively, which absorbs more sunlight.

So it's part of an amplifier. So if there's land ice nearby, like a big glacier, as in the case of Antarctica, it can indirectly cause sea level rise because it amplifies the warming over the glacier. So when the glacier melts, it is different than when ice on top of the water melts. That's right. Glacier isn't floating. It's external to the ocean. It runs off into the ocean. Right.

I was up in the high the high arctic and you know canada's high arctic two falls ago about this time of year uh two years ago and one of the glaciers that we visited uh not that far from greece fjord um you could hear from a mile away you could hear the water running off it, you know, to give some sense of just how much water was pouring off that glacier. Keeping it in that theme, tell me about, because you've studied both and you've been to both the Arctic and Antarctica, what's the significance that both, at least in this moment, are going through this loss of sea ice situation?

How rare is that, that both the extremes, polar extremes on the planet, are going through the same kind of thing at the same time? It's very rare. And normally they are, if anything, out of phase. So one is increasing when the other is decreasing. Because of the ocean's large-scale circulation, it tends to be across the equator, so when one hemisphere warms, the other cools. And that is the main hemispheric pattern scale that we have. And so it is unusual to have them both be pacing and the Arctic,

not sure if you mentioned already to your audience that it was the sixth lowest on record this year, which, you know, this is also an extraordinary situation. It was really close to a tie though, for a third through sixth place. They're very, very similar. very very similar so it was one of the lowest years how how worried should we be or how concerned should we be that it's happening in in both places more or less at the same time i think we should be concerned. I think it's very clear. Our climate is experiencing unusual extremes, and extremes are often what harm people the most and harm ecosystems the most.

The Antarctic ecosystem is very different, very fragile, very unique. There's species that exist at the poles that exist nowhere else. And lots of humans. That depends on of course the Arctic. I'm personally concerned for humanity and our future. And is the overall scientific community in some unison on that concern? Oh, I think so um the scientists are in large agreement you know huge numbers scientists um 90 99 i mean a huge number they're occasional i could say

very critical people who are um really interrogating it more rigorously, but even them, I think, today have a hard time denying the basic warming that we've observed. Yeah, the scientists are in unison on this to a great extent. You know the major sort of comeback from those who, you know, deny or don't accept the conclusions is that, hey, this is kind of, you know, this comes up at different times in the planet's history. You see the changing degrees of temperature. You see the changing situation in Antarctica and to a degree in the Arctic.

You yourself suggested at the beginning, this has been what? It's been like 50 years since we've seen something this extreme in Antarctica. How do you respond to that, to that sort of challenge to, oh, let's not get overly worried. This happens. It just happens by the way i i just said we hadn't seen it in 50 years but it's not like we had seen it prior to that um we just had no record 50 years so uh why don't you say you know these really large extremes are the telltale signs, right?

I guess because when we start seeing extremes just everywhere, like this summer, right? We had heat extremes all over the planet. planet, it starts to be really impossible for us to see this, you know, numerous extremes at the same time, right? It just makes it even less probable to have multiple extremes. And I would just say again, extremes are really what means the most for people, right? That's what the risk is highest, the harm is greatest for extremes. And we have seen extremes on so many different fronts, especially this year, whether it's, you know,

the wildfires, hurricanes, flooding. I mean, there's just been a lot of seemingly everything. How surprised would you be if you put your predicting hat on and i know you deal with facts and analysis analyzing what you actually know has happened but how surprising given the past changes on the antarctica front the next summer would be oh it'll start building up again you know it could start building up again the sea ice right and so it could uh but i uh if i had the record in front of me i could look at how often it goes like above average anymore and i'm not i'm not expecting that um so, it could be higher than this summer, Antarctic winter or summer, but the likelihood of it going back to normal seems very

low. In the case, in the Arctic, that's even more clear because the Arctic, at summer's minimum, has lost about 50%. And there's no chance it's going to go above normal anymore. It's just, you know, year after year, it's definitely well below normal now. They're talking about, I don't know whether you agree with it, but they're talking that in the post-2030 years now, that it's going to be open water in the Arctic.

That's right. That's what our models show. And they have, incidentally, I was on a paper that made that prediction for 2040, so not quite 2030, but close to it, in 2006. So this isn't a new prediction. Models have been showing us this and we've been sounding the alarm for 20 or 30 years now

and now it's happening I think it's a good point to say that we made a good forecast unfortunately it's what's happening I wish it weren't let me just close these comments with you reemphasizing again. You touched on it a little earlier, but the significance of sea ice, and let me ensure that I'm getting this right.

The significance of sea ice is that when the sun's beating down on the earth, sea ice is a reflective model. It sends it back up into the atmosphere, the heat. The sunlight. The sunlight. Without it. Which is heat. Right.

Without it, it's hitting the dark sea and it's not reflecting at all. And that has the impact on climate. That's right. That's one of them. And there are a few others, but they're all amplifying. So, yeah, sea ice protects us. It's important for the planet. It protects the planet from being warmer than it would otherwise be. important ecosystem itself, but I think something that really speaks to me about its importance is that it protects erosion from a lot of villages around the Arctic where it damps the waves in the fall, especially when the storms are largest. And now when sea

ice is retreating so severely in summer, it regrows much later in fall. And so the fall season when the big storms are hitting, the coastal communities are experiencing a lot of high waves that are just eroding their homelands. It's very dangerous. It is dangerous. And it's going to open up so many different discussions and debates about the impact if we're going to look at an Arctic, in our case, in the Canadian case, that's open, if not all of the year, most of the year, in terms of shipping traffic and there will be sovereignty issues.

All of that comes to the fore and it becomes quite the discussion. Professor Bitts, I know you've taken your time to have this chat with us. I know you're overseas right now. I hope you enjoy your time there, and it's been great to talk to you. Thank you very much. Dr. Cecilia Bitts, that's B-I-T-Z, if you're looking her up. If you're Googling her or going to your search engine, you will find a lot of interesting stuff at her site on the University of Washington.

That's where she normally is. She was in Grenoble, France for this discussion that we just had. But on her site, there's great maps, moving maps, giving you an indication of the movement of sea ice in Antarctica. So you can see that if you so desire. Where's all this leading? You know, it is going to have more than just disruptive weather patterns that cause havoc on our planet. It's going to be a lot more dangerous than that in terms of temperatures continue to go up.

So how dangerous and when? Well, this story in Newsweek.com in their Better Planets section. Scientists actually have come up with an estimate of when humans could become extinct. Now, I know that some of you are going to say, oh, come on, Peter, get real. Well, get real.

It's not going to happen in our lifetimes or anybody we know's lifetimes. But their prediction is in 250 million years from now, the planet could be without human existence. Now, go to this chart to have a look, because a lot of things start to happen when it gets that warm, in terms of the reshaping of the planet's surface, to the point where all the continents that exist today

will no longer exist as individual continents. They'll just be one supercontinent. A supercontinent called Pangaea Ultima. So go to newsweek.com, go to their Better Planet section, and look up this story by Jess Thompson. Scientists estimate when humans could become extinct. All right. That's one thing you don't have to plan for.

250 million years from now. Okay, let's move into a different kind of story. It's another end bit. From the worldwide research community that serves the bridge. This is from History.com. Have you ever heard of Private Henry Tandy? Private Tandy was in the British Army during World War I. He served

in France. And in a battle near the end of the war, he reportedly encountered a wounded German soldier and declined to shoot him. Now here's Tandy's background. The native of Warwickshire took part in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 and the Battle of the Somme in 1916, where he was wounded in the leg.

After being discharged from the hospital, he was transferred to the 9th Battalion in France and was wounded again during the 3rd Battle of Ypres at Passchendaele. That was in the summer of 1917. From July to October 1918, Tandy served with the 5th Duke of Wellington Regiment. It's an amazing war record this guy's had, right? Just listen to those battles he was at. Ypres, Somme, Passchendaele. Now, it was during this time, from July to October of 1918,

that he took part in the successful British capture of one particular town in France, for which he earned not just a basic medal, not just a high medal of courage. He earned the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery. He can't get bigger than that. The VC winner, Private Henry Tandy. As Tandy later told sources, during the final moments of that battle in October of 1918,

as the German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandy's line of fire. I took aim, he said, but couldn't shoot a wounded man. So I let him go. The German soldier nodded in thanks and then disappeared. You're probably wondering, will you get to the point? I'm getting there. A photograph that appeared in London newspapers of Tandy carrying a wounded soldier at Ypres in 1914

was later portrayed on canvas in a painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matagna, glorifying the Allied war effort. As the story goes, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Germany in 1938 to engage Hitler in a last-ditch effort to avoid another war in Europe,

he was taken by the Fuhrer to his new country retreat in Bavaria. There, Hitler showed Chamberlain his copy of that same painting and this is what Hitler is reported to have said to Chamberlain looking at the painting

he pointed to the British soldier and said that's the man who nearly shot me okay now that whole story shot me. Okay? Now, that whole story remains somewhat in dispute, though evidence does suggest that Hitler had a repro of that painting as early as 1937.

So what do you say about that? Aside from maybe he should have pulled the trigger? Might have saved the world? Incredible story if it's true. Okay, how are we doing on time? We've got time for a few more here's an oil story the International Energy Agency has concluded this from the New York Times

that the peak of oil production in the world is near. But climate change is far from solved. What that means is peak oil production is close, and then it's going to start going down. Cleaner energy technologies like electric cars, this is from the New York Times piece,

cleaner energy technologies like electric cars and solar panels are spreading so rapidly that the global use of oil, coal, and natural gas could peak this decade. But countries will still need to pursue more aggressive measures if they want to limit global warming to relatively safe levels, the world's leading energy agency said. That's just last week. In a new report, the IEA issued an updated roadmap of what it would take to slash the world's energy-related greenhouse gas emissions to nearly zero by 2050. Doing so would probably prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels, a goal many world leaders have endorsed in order to lessen the risk

of catastrophic climate disruptions. Well, that's all very interesting, but as we all know, there are countries that are far behind in dealing with this issue, and the impact that has on the world figures can be substantial. While it's still technically possible to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report said the window has narrowed, and geopolitical conflicts such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and tensions between China and the United States could make the task tougher.

You know, the other day, driving in downtown Toronto, I saw an SUV that I'd never seen before. It was a Rolls-Royce SUV. Apparently they cost like $300,000. It's still on oil. But Rolls-Royce says they're going to discontinue all diesel and petrol motors

in the biggest change in their history. This U.S. edition of the Sun newspaper. They call the Rolls-Royce the extremely popular car. Well, yeah, maybe it's popular to look at. Not a lot of people own them. The extremely popular car giant Rolls-Royce said they will start to phase out all of their models that run off oil or petrol. Rolls-Royce was founded in 1904, built its reputation on the quiet grace of the powerful V12 engine. And that's true. I mean, it was a luxurious car, but it was so quiet.

I remember as a kid, I think I was like five years old. We were living in Kuala Lumpur in what was then Malaya, now Malaysia. And somebody at this gathering we were at, our family was at, was driven there, I think it was the high commissioner or what have you, was driven there in a Rolls Royce. And it came up the driveway and you could not hear a thing. Could hear the engine. It was that quiet.

And I remember asking my father, where's the noise? Where's the engine noise? And he said, Peter, that's a Rolls Royce. You don't hear the engine. It's kind of like when you hear an electric car go by now, right? You don't hear anything okay two little ones

why do maple syrup bottles have those tiny little handles on them? this is just today in Reader's Digest. First of all, maple syrup was something the indigenous people gave to us. Right? In the earliest days, it was more of maple sugar than maple syrup but when it

became maple syrup and started packaging it it was packaged in glass bottles with those tiny little handles on it there's no

actual reason for the tiny little handles but they still exist today because it's part of like the original look. So it's sort of a thing in that sense. So that's the answer to the question.

Why do they have such tiny handles? They started in the somewhere in the 1800s. Because if you have one of those bottles, you know, you can just pick it up in your hand, right? And you don't want to use the little tiny glass handles because your fingers end up, there's syrup all over the place, and you end up, you know,

getting your fingers stuck in the tiny little handle. All right. We're running out of interesting things to talk about here. Here's the last one. This is a shocker. You know, the most, the favorite drink, not alcoholic, the favorite sort of drink in Britain and the UK, is tea, right?

We drink tea. Yeah. Tea. Not anymore. Coffee has now apparently ousted tea as the UK's favorite hot drink. Tea is woven deep into this from the New York Times. Tea is woven deep into Britain's cultural fabric, having arrived in the 1650s

after Dutch traders brought it to Europe from China. Centuries of tradition made it into the nation's favorite hot drink. But coffee, a longtime rival, has increasingly challenged that status, and a recent survey suggested it had finally ousted tea from its prime spot, setting off a war of stats as the two industries defend their beverages.

The recent coffee boom can be traced to the late 1990s and the early 2000s, when mass market coffee chains, including Britain's Costa Coffee and American brands like Starbucks, kick-started a national espresso obsession. A study published last month by Statista was small. It only had 2,500 people. But 63% of respondents said they regularly drank coffee, with only 59% regularly choosing tea.

Well, that's almost a margin of error. It's only four points, but still. Coffee's ahead. Sharon Hall, the chief executive of the UK Tea and Infusions Association, said in a statement that Britons were drinking more than 100 million cups of tea each day. Two million more than the estimated total for coffee. Bolstering coffee's case,

British shoppers bought nearly twice as many packs of coffee in supermarkets from August 2022 to last month compared with tea, according to data shared by the coffee people. But this evidence is contestable. A pack of 200 tea bags would last far longer than a 200-gram bag of ground coffee, which would normally make about 30 cups. The overall money spent on coffee in British supermarkets was also more than double that of tea, though coffee is typically more expensive. All right, this is all news you can use, right? You can dazzle your friends and family at the dinner table by throwing any one of these end bits out at them.

Look at everything you've learned today. It's just another day on the bridge. Coming up tomorrow, well, Brian Stewart will be by for his latest update on the situation in Ukraine. Wednesday, it's Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, your turn, and if you have thoughts, especially on any of these end bits,

please write them in early. To the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Friday, good talk. Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. And this weekend, this weekend, Chantelle Hebert, and Bruce Anderson.

And this weekend, this weekend, we're heading into Thanksgiving. Can you believe it? Thanksgiving already? And the weather, at least in central Canada, and I hope it's the same for you elsewhere, has been spectacular over the last couple of days, and it's supposed to stay that way right through until Thanksgiving. Let's see if that's the case. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. I'll talk to you again in 48 hours.