The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Who and What Is Underwater in Canada's Arctic?

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Our guest is historian and author, Professor Adam Lajeunesse of ST FX University in Nova Scotia.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Canada, according to Justin Trudeau, is on a clear path to reach NATO's 2% defense spending target. Could we get there by buying new submarines for Arctic defense? That story coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to Tuesday. Welcome to another feature interview today. Tell you with whom in a moment. But first of all, Justin Trudeau yesterday made it clear at a conference in Montreal that Canada is on a clear path to hit NATO's defence target of 2% of GDP for each country that is a member nation of NATO. Canada has been taking a bit of a beating from some of its allies over the last while, not just the United States, on the fact that that target has not been met yet.

So the question is, how are you going to get there? Because it involves a lot of money. And one way of potentially getting there, and you heard us talking about this yesterday with Dr. Jenna Stein, is the submarine program. Canada could be buying as many as a dozen new submarines. It takes a long time to get them, but it takes a lot of money to get them too,

and that's a lot of spending. But to understand this issue, you've really got to understand the history of submarines in Canada's Arctic. Because it's just sort of assumed that everybody knows it. Well, I don't think so. I like to think I'm kind of in touch with what's going on in the Arctic to a small degree. But I'm learning every day. I'm certainly learning on this issue of submarines in the north.

Who has them? Who doesn't have them? Who uses them in our north? Who doesn't? Who might be? There's a lot of good questions there. And today, to answer them, somebody who's been on the bridge before, it's been a while, a couple of years,

since Dr. Adam Lajunas from St. of X in Nova Scotia has been on the program. But he's an expert, right? He probably doesn't like to have that phrase used, but he is an expert on these subjects. He's an author. He's a historian. He understands the Arctic. He understands the submarine program. He's written on it. He's got a number of books out there. Technically, he's a PhD associate professor and coordinator of the public policy and governance program

at St. Evex University. Also holds a research chair in Arctic and marine security at the Brian Mulrooney Institute of Government at SFX. And he's a Fulbright scholar. So listen, he's got lots of credentials and they're all real. They're not like me and my honorary degrees. These are like the real deal. Anyway, we're going to talk to Adam, the professor, in just a couple of minutes. But let me remind you of our question of the week, because there's an early deadline on this of noon tomorrow. And the question basically falls out of last week's decision by the Trudeau government

to offer up $250 checks to millions of Canadians and also for a GST-free holiday from sort of mid-December to mid-February on not everything, but on a lot of goods. So the issue was, was this the move of a government desperate to try and get people back supporting it as a result of being down more than 20 points in the polls? Or was this smart public policy at a time when a lot of people are suffering because of inflation, because of the high cost of food, you name it.

So that is the question. Last week on Good Talk, and usually Chantel and Bruce and I are basically there to talk about politics, right? That's what we do on Fridays. And you seem to enjoy that. And so we were looking at this issue through the political lens, and it was pretty clear what we thought of it. But I got some letters over the weekend saying, yeah, it's not fair. You know, there are people who are suffering out there, and this is good public policy. So that's the question. That's the question for this week. Was that decision good public policy or was it just all about politics?

So I want to hear from you on that question. And it's possible, you know, it's possible it's both. Right? But you're never shy about your feelings, so let's hear them. And noon tomorrow is the deadline. Anything after noon tomorrow, eastern time, is not going to be in the program, okay?

So that's one. Two, name and the location you're writing from. Those two have to be in. And keep it relatively short, and that way we can get as many in as possible. The guideline is usually a normal paragraph length answer, not the 16 paragraphs that some people send. That's just not going to happen.

It's not going to get on. I'll read it, but it's not going to get on the air because it just crowds out too many other opinions. Okay, there you have it. That's what we're going to do for this week's question. Deadline tomorrow at 12 noon Eastern time. Okay, I want to run Professor Lajunesse without interruption. So as a result, we're going to take our break right now,

and we'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Tuesday. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. Our guest this week, Dr. Adam Lajunas, the Mulroney Chair in Arctic and Maritime Security at St. Evax University in Nova Scotia.

He's been on the program before. He's great to talk to you about the subject we have today, which is all about submarines in Canada's Arctic. So.

Stand by. And listen. Because you're going to learn some history and you'll learn some basic facts about the situation right now. So let's get started. Here we go with Dr. Adam Lejeunesse. Professor, I guess the best way to start this is to try and define what we're talking about.

I mean, obviously we're talking about submarines in the Arctic, but for the purposes of this discussion, what's the Arctic? What do you see as the boundaries for the Arctic in this discussion? Well, I think you could ask 10 different academics and get 10 different answers about what exactly the Arctic is. From the perspective of submarine operations, from a Canadian perspective at least, what we normally mean are two distinct regions. The first, of course, is the Northwest Passage, which are the straits within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago connecting the Beaufort Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, several different straits running through Canada. Now, of course, the second

region is the Polar Basin, that area north and northwest of the Arctic Arch, of course, the second region is the polar basin, that area north and northwest of the Arctic archipelago, the Arctic Ocean, which during the Cold War was, of course, a contested region with American and Soviet submarines moving back and forth and practicing the use of those polar waters, both as missile launching sites and potentially as an avenue of attack. Okay. It would help for a lot of listeners, and I should have said this beforehand, is if they got a map and had it in front of them. You know, your basic almost school map of Canada,

which always includes the Arctic. So basically what we're talking about here then is the Northwest Passage and north of the Northwest Passage. And the Northwest Passage is tricky because there are any number of different Northwest Passages. But if you assume the one that was first traversed and moved from there north. So what I want to try and understand is

when did submarines start going into that area and north of it? Well, the Americans started to experiment with under ice submarine technology pretty much right after the Second World War, undertaking some very daring exercises north of Alaska with World War II era submarines, accepting a decree of danger and risk that we would never take today. And then, of course, they continued on throughout the entire Cold War, and that technology and the capacity, the design of the submarines getting better and better. The Americans started working in the Canadian Arctic across the Northwest Passage in the 1960s. These were, of course, nuclear attack

submarines with power plants capable of sustaining a submarine under the ice or underwater for months at a time. Essentially, they had an unlimited range. That's what made these submarines so capable for the Arctic. You could stay underneath for as long as essentially your food held up. In 1962, they sent the USS Skate through. And then over the 1970s and 1980s, the Americans explored almost every channel of the Northwest Passage for different reasons, both to do hydrographic surveying to figure out where they could go and how they could get there, and working with the Canadians to test our increasingly sophisticated under ice detection systems, looking, of course, for the Soviets, should they begin to trespass in our backyard. Okay, well, let me back you up on a couple of things there. As soon as the Americans started going into Canadian waters, underwater, did we know about it? Was Canada fully aware? Yes, absolutely we were.

So the first voyages in the 1960s were built on a lot of the hydrographic work that was done by Canadian icebreakers, looking for Russian bombers, they were, of course, surveying those waters because they needed to bring supply ships up to build these radar stations. So as they were surveying these waters, the American Navy was asking the Canadian Coast Guard to look for potential submarine routes. You know, they were already thinking about this in the 1950s. And of course, the Canadian Navy, I should say Navy, not the Coast Guard at the time, was very happy to do this, right? This wasn't a sovereignty issue. This is a continental defense issue. Both the Canadian and American governments recognized the need to begin exercising more control over these waters as part of continental defense. So in the 60s, when the Americans were sending these submarines north, there were Canadians on

board. There was, you know, certainly Canadian involvement. when the Americans were sending these submarines north, there were Canadians on board. There was, you know, certainly Canadian involvement. So the Canadians were fully aware of what was happening. And of course, like I said, they were providing some of the hydrographic surveying to make these voyages possible. Am I right in assuming that at that time we had no submarines capable of doing anything like that? No, absolutely not. At the time, it was really the Americans that were working in the Arctic. Even the Soviets were really just starting to experiment with under-ice operations, but it was really the Americans that were at the forefront pioneering Arctic under-ice operations with their submarines.

So as far as we knew at that time, the only other nation under our eyes was the Americans. Yes, absolutely. Now, there's no record of the Soviets having ever sent submarines to the Canadian Arctic. But then again, we may not simply know about that. The Soviet archives were never opened to us. We don't have those records we may suspect we may assume but the only records we have of foreign activity in the canadian arctic at least is of the americans okay i in a moment i'm going to get to when we think that changed but let me go back to

something you said in your earlier comments which was the americans recognized that canada had a certain expertise in underwater technology in terms of listening and knowing what was going on when did that start when did we have that capability well that is a long long process stretching over decades it was really in the 1960s that both we and the Americans started to realize that we needed better situational awareness in the Arctic. Because of course, if the Americans are moving through the Northwest Passage, there was at least the future possibility that the Soviets would do the same. And we were worried about two things. And the first was that Soviet submarines might in the future use Canadian waters to bypass what was called the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap, Jaiuka gap. So you could send submarines through Canada to bypass the heavy NATO defenses around the Greenland-Iceland area.

So it was a backdoor, if you were. The second consideration was that at the time, shorter range missiles meant that a Soviet submarine firing either conventional or nuclear weapons on North America needed to get a lot closer. So we started to think, well, the Arctic, the Labrador Sea, the Beaufort Sea, even the Hudson's Bay area might be a firing location for Soviet missiles. So both we and the Americans realized more needed to be done to understand and monitor this area. So over the 60s, over the 70s and into the 80s, we were working with U.S. defense labs to build sono buoys, under ice, fixed listening systems, set systems, a whole bunch of different technologies were tested out.

A lot of American tech being used by Canadian defense labs with partnerships across D&D, different American defense and civilian experts and labs. It was a huge project, series of projects really, designed to build some kind of under ice detection system. Now, how effective it ever was, we don't know, that's still classified, but we know that by the 80s at least, we were making serious efforts to try and track and identify any Soviet submarines that might come through. You know, at different times, in explaining that technology, the Canadian officials have said, well, you know,

it wasn't just to look for Soviet subs. It was also, you know, tracking fish movement and weather trials and all of that. Was it a combination of all these things, or was it mainly, this is a defense mechanism that's what we're using it for you know it's hard to say because of course understandably so many of these records are still classified right i would say from my reading this was purely a defense issue i mean some of these sensors were magnetic sensors looking for the magnetic signature of soviet

submarines you're not you're not looking for fish stocks with magnetic sensors. And then obviously, where these sensors were positioned clearly indicates that this is a defense mechanism. So there are three choke points that you can use to access the Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic Ocean. And these were the choke points that Canadian defense labs were working with the Americans to deploy these prototype sensor systems. So I would say that this is purely or at least largely a defense consideration. I want to move gradually towards where we are in the present. But on the way there, I want to totally understand the difference

between conventional subs, which is what Canada has and has always had, versus nuclear-powered subs, and their abilities in a region like the Arctic. Am I correct in assuming that conventional subs are basically for above surface? They don't really go under surface if that surface is ice. Well, it's a little bit more complex than that. So at the heart of the difference is the reactor core. So what is the power source for this submarine? Now, a nuclear power powered submarine, a nuclear attack submarine or ballistic missile submarine has a power source that is essentially

infinite for practical purposes. And so this submarine can stay under the water or under the ice for as long as it needs to. It only needs to surface in order to reprovision the crew. As long as you have food, you can stay under the water. Now, a conventional submarine has a much shorter lifespan under the water. It has to surface in order to recharge its batteries. So it runs on a diesel engine, which has exhaust, which means it needs to be on the surface, or it runs on batteries under the water,

and those batteries need to be re be on the surface or it runs on batteries under the water. And those batteries need to be recharged on the surface. So modern diesel submarines can still stay under the water for weeks at a time, but their power level is rather limited, which means if they're underwater and they're looking for an extended stay underwater, they're moving rather slowly. So for the Arctic, what this means is you cannot project power deep under the Arctic ice with a conventional submarine. It simply doesn't have the range and the staying power to move under the ice. It also often, depending on the type of submarine, is going to have a much harder time surfacing through the ice because these are

traditionally much smaller submarines. They don't have the same weight as a big American nuclear attack submarine. So it's much harder to surface through the ice. From a safety perspective, too, you need to be able to surface through that ice in case something goes wrong. And so it is very dangerous to send a conventional submarine deep under the ice. So what Canada is looking at, all of the different designs from the different countries that we're looking at right now, they all have an Arctic

capability to a certain extent. They can go under the ice. Any submarine can do that. Like I said, the Americans had submarines in the 1940s that they were testing under ice. The question is, how long can they stay under ice? How far can they go safely before they have to return? So what Canada is looking at is not an Arctic submarine per se. They're looking at a submarine capable of operating along the ice edge, something that is operating in the blue water in the open ocean, but with the capacity to pop under the ice for a little bit and pull back. Well, that sounds great if the ice keeps retreating,

but it doesn't sound like you've got much penetration into the region that you're concerned about if it doesn't. So I think here's where we need clarity, not on the submarine itself, but on the mission that it is meant to achieve. And I think when people talk about an Arctic capability, they are sometimes talking at cross purposes about two different things. So on the one hand, you have these American nuclear attack submarines that have been operating in the polar basin for generations now. These are the kinds of submarines, these are the weapon systems

that the Americans and NATO more generally would use to secure that region and to project power through the Arctic and even against Russia, God forbid, in the event of war. What D&D and the Canadians are actually looking at when they're talking about Arctic capability is a guard for those back doors that I talked about earlier.

So in order to get into or out of the Canadian Arctic, at least from the east or the west, you need to move through some strategic choke points. You need to move through either Bering Strait on the western coast or you need to move up the west coast of Greenland in the east. You can't access the Canadian Arctic except from the Arctic Ocean without going through those choke points. So I believe D&D, when it talks about an Arctic capable submarine, wants a submarine that can guard that front and back door to our Arctic. And of course, if you're moving through the Canadian Arctic from the Arctic Ocean, trying to get into the Atlantic, you have to go through that door.

So that is just a vital contribution to continental defense and to the Arctic more generally, because even if you can't be in the Northwest Passage safely for an extended period of time, you can watch the doors in and out of it. Okay. I think you've explained that really well. Just to ensure that I'm getting it right, we're talking about, in this case, basing the submarines at the two doors, the two back doors on east and west. You don't have to go through the Northwest Passage.

You don't have to be in through the Arctic archipelago. You're just on either side watching who's coming in or leaving. Yeah, it's pretty much as simple as that, Peter. Now, if you want to add a layer of complexity, you have to remember that the Russians today have inherited Soviet capabilities. They can operate in the Northwest Pass capabilities. They can operate in the Northwest Passage. They can operate in the Arctic Ocean. And if they so choose to do so, then there's nothing that we could really do. And so it's not simply a case of working independently,

watching those two doors. We're doing that, but we're doing it as part of a much broader continental defense initiative with the United States. And so while we are doing that, it's the Americans with their somewhat unique Arctic capability, able to work in the Arctic Ocean, the polar basin, and monitor that area. And these activities shouldn't be done in isolation or in silos. They have to be integrated into that bigger continental defense picture that I talked about. And during the Cold War,

and this is something most Canadians don't understand, is we worked so closely with the Americans on that big continental defense picture. I think we sort of reflexively think of American operations in the North, American submarines as a violation of Canadian sovereignty, somehow threatening to us. The reality is, even as governments were sometimes arguing over the politics and the legality of Arctic sovereignty and the existence or non-existence of freedom of transit rights, the submarines were operating there

in a very well, in a very neighborly fashion, for lack of a better term. D&D and the American Navy were working together. These operations were taking place and it was not damaging to Canada's sovereignty claims in any way. And of course, we were there because we had that bigger picture in mind.

We knew that the Soviets were a there because we had that bigger picture in mind. We knew that the Soviets were a threat, and we knew that regardless of political or legal questions of sovereignty, this was a cooperative endeavor that needed to be undertaken, and we did. Have we ever had any firm proof that the Soviets have been in our Arctic waters? No, no firm proof at all. That's not to say it doesn't exist, but I think it's safe to say that this is one of the more classified defense subjects that you can look into from both the Canadian and American governments.

They're quite reticent to release documentation on submarine operations. Because, you know, it's not just the Soviets who have these capable submarines, right? The British have them, the French have them. I assume the Chinese have them. Russians obviously have them. Would any of those countries have to have, or would they ever ask permission? Have they ever asked permission? Have the Brits or the French been in the Arctic?

To the best of our knowledge, the French have never been there. But once again, very classified subject. That's not to say they haven't been. The Brits, we know, do have a history of operating in the polar basin, in the Arctic Ocean. We know that they've been there. We have pictures of them surfacing at the North Pole. Now, whether or not they've been in the Canadian Arctic, well, that's a little bit hazier. We know that in 1979 and 1981, the Brits, the Americans and the Canadians were working together on what were

called the Canada, UK, US Arctic exercises, which was a combination of polar deployments of nuclear submarines and tests of Canadian listening systems. So we know that they were there, but it seems from the available evidence that they were there as part of a broader NATO alliance framework. So they were there, but they seem to be working with us. Let me just go back to the backdoor thing again. I should have asked this at the time. But could either conventional or unconventional nuclear submarines work in that role? Yes. You can really monitor space with any kind of submarine.

And that seems to be the role that the Navy is looking to fill with these submarines that we're looking to procure. Still early days, we're still defining the concept of operation, but really any submarine can hold and monitor and defend a space. Now, despite being generally less capable than their nuclear cousins, conventional submarines actually have some important strengths. Because they don't have a nuclear reactor, which needs to be on all the time, cooled and pumped, conventional submarines underwater are actually quieter. They're smaller, they're stealthier. They are actually more capable of silent listening and defense of a fixed region.

Year-round operation on the backdoor thing? Is that possible? It is. So it depends what time of year. You're going to be operating in a different space because of the ice. However, the exit from the Canadian Arctic, from the Northwest Passage, you know, there will always be a relatively confined area that moves into the Arctic that is ice-free. Now, whether or not that's the sort of west coast of Greenland or more off the southwest coast of Greenland into the Atlantic, depending on the time of year, your defensive line, if you will, will move up or down. But there will always be a place where a conventional submarine can operate to watch those doors.

What about cost? Is there a drastic difference between the cost of the kind of conventional subs that Canada may be looking at versus your basic nuclear-powered sub, if there's such a thing. Yeah, there absolutely is, and that's the reason we're not looking at nuclear power. Is that the reason? Is it all about cost, or is it about our kind of thing about nuclear on the military side? Well, I hope it's not about preconceived notions

about nuclear power more generally. I would say Canadian society is actually falling back in love with nuclear power. If you look at the media trends, if you look at what the government is talking about, I think climate change is driving us back into a reconsideration of how dangerous nuclear power is relative to the alternatives.

A nuclear submarine is not nuclear armed. It does not have nuclear weapons. That's merely the power plant. It's the engine. That's all. Yes. And I think it's the cost. So nuclear submarines are going to be much more expensive.

They're twice as large, much bigger crews. And there's really only a couple of countries that make them. Now, the reality is, even if we wanted to procure nuclear submarines, if we went to the Americans tomorrow and said, you know, we'll take 10 off the shelf, please. The Americans don't have shipyard capacity to build them because the American Navy has ordered their own. I mean, no country really has the shipyard capacity to get us these submarines. The real question, however, is the logistics. To build a nuclear submarine, you're not just looking at the added cost of the submarine. You need different port facilities, specialized port facilities, a lot of very

specialized logistics, nuclear handling technology. You need a lot of training. You need a lot of equipment. About two-thirds of the cost of a nuclear submarine acquisition would not be the submarines. It would actually be specialized port facilities, equipment, logistics, just to maintain and manage these submarines. So quite frankly, I think the cost is prohibitive for nuclear submarines for Canada. And I think the Navy did the smart thing, pushing them aside right away and defining our requirements as conventional submarines. And it's not as if the conventional ones are a bargain, as you say.

That would be a huge expense. Absolutely. The conventional submarines, like any complex military equipment, they're going to be very, very expensive. That's just the reality of procuring modern warships. What does your gut tell you? I mean, you study this for a living. The talk is of 12, and they could be, what, mid to late 30s

before you see them delivered. What does your gut tell you? The thing about defense is, you know, things change all the time in terms of what's the right thing for a defense strategy. And when you're looking, you know, 10 to 15 years down the road, that's a challenging prediction to be making. So if you're asking what my gut is saying, Peter, I think I'm quite worried. I'm worried because the procurement environment that we have today is not conducive to the threat

environment that we have today. We don't have 15 years to build this. This isn't 2010, 2005. We don't have decades to select, procure, build, train, bring online. We need these submarines yesterday. The idea that, frankly, the Russians or the Chinese may wait for us to have gone through this lengthy process, 2030s, early 2040s, to bring this fleet online, well, that's ridiculous. The threat is today. It is absolutely today. I mean, we look at Europe, we look at what's happening in Ukraine. We look at the near weekly threats as the Chinese government are making over Taiwan. We need these as soon as we can possibly procure them. So there's different directions that we can go.

So there's several different countries with different design options that we can procure. And the Navy has been very good in saying that we want something that is in service or very nearly ready to go. We're not designing our own. That is a whole can of worms that would create a disaster. There are several European options which are about to be built. They're just at the beginning of construction. The one option that is ready to go with the hot production line is the offering from South Korea.

And that is probably the fastest submarine that we could bring into service. So the considerations here are how quickly can we get these? Are we bringing them online in 2030 or are we just starting to bring them online in 2035? That is a very important consideration. The next consideration is crewing. So we want 12 of these or up to 12. Today, the Canadian Navy has enough crew for maybe two submarines, give or take. So we would need to not only bring these submarines online, we need to train the people to operate

in them. That's a serious consideration. We need to start bringing them online as soon as possible, not just to get the submarines themselves, but we need to start training new crew. Well, if the South Koreans build subs as well as they build cars these days, that sounds like one pretty good option of the options that are out there. We don't have a great track record on subs in terms of the ones we've purchased, their serviceability.

I remember when the latest ones, what are they, Victoria class that we bought used from Britain. I remember back in the day when I was working for the CBC, we traveled on the first voyage of one of those subs as we were coming to Canada. It had sprung a leak halfway across the Atlantic, which was not a great start. And it hasn't really been followed through with great finishes either.

Well, the thing to remember about the Victoria class is this was never meant to be the next class of submarines that we would drive into the distant future. The Victorias were meant to be a bridge of sort between our Oberon class, which we were retiring, and whatever would come next and so the navy procured the victorias as a that's what was out there we can find these we can get them right away so we're going to we're going to use these to maintain our capability until we can transition to the next thing we just let the next thing drop and we used the Victorious far longer than I think we had originally intended to use them. And the reason we got those was because we didn't

want to lose all of the Arctic submarine capability within our crews. You can't just go five years in between submarine fleets. If you lose a submarine class, if you have to retire them, you can't tell all of the crews to just hang out for a few years until the next boats are online. They'll go away. They'll go do other things. And then when you have your new submarine class coming into service, you can't put an ad on monster.ca for submarine crew.

The experience doesn't exist. You need to maintain it. If you lose it, it's an extraordinary difficult process to get it back. So when we're talking about timing of the submarines, it's not just that the threat is today and we need these now. We need them as soon as possible so that we don't lose all of that capability. Right. You need a commander of a submarine with 20 years of experience and you can't hire someone with 20 years of experience.

You need to build these now to not lose that corporate knowledge. Of any of the existing, it's four, right? The Victoria class submarines. That's right. And two, as you say, two are operational. Have they ever been up into the Arctic as we defined it earlier? Yeah, they have. I think a couple of times, there's one famous photograph of Stephen Harper up North with a frigate and a

submarine and a few aircraft, but like any other conventional submarine, they have capability. They can go under ice. Anything that can go underwater can go under ice. But they're not designed for that. They don't have the sensors. They certainly don't have the hull strengthening to surface through ice. This is not what they're meant for. So the Canadian Navy has only ever sent the Victorias up north

for a few almost symbolic voyages, to the best of my knowledge. Professors, it's been a fascinating conversation, as it has been the other time you were on the bridge, and we really appreciate your time. Obviously, we're going to be following this story and see what headway not only the current government makes on this, but the very, you know, likelihood that there could be another government within another year and what approach they're going to take on this same question.

It's going to be a challenge for whoever's sitting in the seat of power in Ottawa. Professor, thanks again. Thanks, Peter. Always a pleasure to be here. And always a pleasure for us to talk to Dr. Adam Lejunas from St. FX in Nova Scotia. Hope you enjoyed that conversation. And I, you know, I, I love submarine stories. I love submarine movies.

You know, I've seen them all. At least I think I've seen them all, going back to, you know, Second World War movies about U-boats and British boats and American boats and, of course, current movies as well. I should mention, you know, I mentioned during that conversation about the time CBC traveled across the North Atlantic with one of the new Victoria-class submarines, new to us, old to the Brits who sold it to us, and the problems they encountered. I didn't want to leave the impression that I'd been on that trip.

I wish I had been on it, but I wasn't on it. It was Dan Bjarnason, great reporter, good friend. We worked together in Winnipeg in the 70s. Anyway,

Dan was on there with, I think it was Brian Kelly, who was a freelance cameraman in London,

but did a lot of work, or did in those days a lot of work with us, the CBC. And I think he was the camera on that shoot with Dan. Could be wrong on that, but I think he was.

Okay, before we go today, tomorrow's an encore edition, remember that. Before we go today, though, we've got time for a little end bit. I like this one. It was in the New York Times. It was a newsletter about thinking about your health before you get on a plane. And this was based on research with Dr. Paolo Alves, who's the Global Medical Director of Aviation Health at MedAir, which provides remote medical assistance to airlines.

Anyway, here's a couple. I'll just give you these quickly. If you often get motion sickness, look a seat over the wing because that's more stable than anywhere else on the plane, fore or aft, okay? Over the wing. Reconsider your trip if you have an ear or sinus infection. When you're in flight, congestion can make it harder to adjust to changing air pressure,

which could result in pain, bleeding, even a ruptured eardrum. Yikes. Untreated toothaches and postponed root canals can be similarly painful during flights. You notice any pain or swelling? Get it looked at before you fly. Here's Dr. Alvarez's number one tip. If you're not feeling well in general,

avoid flying or clear it with your doctor first. Many of the heart attacks that we see happening in flight, for example, retrospectively, the person will say, you know what, I wasn't feeling well before boarding. When you pack, make sure you put your medications in your carry-on luggage, not your check luggage. A check luggage is not going to do you any good if you suddenly need your meds and that check luggage is down in the belly somewhere. Bring your own water on board, not just because it's important to stay hydrated. Ideally, the suggestion here is you should drink

eight ounces of water each hour. So that, you know, on a long flight, not only are you going to drink a lot of water, you're going to make a lot of trips down the aisle too. If there's flight turbulence, flight attendants must stay seated, so you could be thirsty for a long time. That's why they're saying bring your own water. And here's another little tip.

You can also bring peppermint or ginger tea bags, which can soothe your stomach. If you get stomach trouble, ask a flight attendant for some hot water. At the airport, before you board, avoid carbonated drinks with meals for at least an hour before boarding. Eating a large meal increases the chance of swallowing air, he added. This is Dr. Elvis.

And all that gas will expand in high altitudes. That can hurt sometimes so badly, people think they've got appendicitis. Before you board, take a second to run through a checklist of everything you need for the flight, including snacks, over-the-counter meds. Ask yourself, what would make this flight better, safer, and healthier? There's more. Go to the New York Times newsletters. What to do to get ready for a flight.

There's lots of little things in there. Anyway, you might find some of that interesting, even if you just find one of them. Learn something every time. I haven't realized drinking that much water on the flight, especially long flights. You know, you do those transatlantic flights, which I do, you know, a fair number of times a year.

That's a good thing to know. All right, that's going to wrap her up for today. Remember, tomorrow is our encore edition, but tomorrow is also have your answer to the question we mentioned at the top of the program today by 12 noon Eastern time tomorrow. I'm Peter Ransbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. Hope you enjoyed the program. Talk to you again in 24 hours.