The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Yikes, Not Another Bank Failure

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Today's program is all about regulation -- first in the banks and then in sports.   The latest bank crisis brings back memories of that classic "run on the bank" scene in everyone's favourite Christmas movie, "It's A Wonderful Life".  Meanwhile in sports, many athletes are railing against referees getting in the way of the game. Author Bruce Dowbiggin tells us what's happening. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Yikes! Not another banking crisis. Now calm down. Now is not the time to panic. Or is it? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Well, as we all know, there are a number of things that can sometimes throw fear into the hearts of men and women. And one of them is the image of people lined up outside a bank with the doors closed, locked, signs on the doors of the bank saying we're closed, we'll open when we can, but for the moment we're closed. That doesn't stop people from lining up.

And why are they lined up? Because they want to get their money out of the bank. And we saw those images again, and we're seeing them again, as a result of a bank collapse, first of all, in California, one of the biggest banks in the United States, I think the second or third biggest bank ever to close its doors, having to shut down. Now, the panic on the faces of those people lined up is that in some cases they've got hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars in accounts in those banks that are closing.

It reminds you of that scene. You know, it's funny, we usually only talk about the movie It's a Wonderful Life at Christmas time, right? But there is a scene in It's a Wonderful Life about a run on the bank and the attempts to try and stop that run. The panic that sweeps over the community. Well, that's what this looks like right now. Now, all the officials are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not 2008 all over again.

This is very different. Well, you know, maybe it is. Maybe it is very different. But that has not convinced people who fear that they're going to lose all their savings. You remember 2008, the worldwide banking crisis. Well, it wasn't worldwide, didn't affect Canada, you know, there was an effect in Canada, but it wasn't the same because we have strong banking regulations, not so much in the United States. And as a result of 2008, when huge big banks collapsed,

new regulations were put in. This will never happen again was the promise. Well, clearly, it has happened again. To the extent, is it? To the extent of what happened in 2008? Well, the experts are saying, and they're lined up on television shows across the United States, no, no, no, this isn't the same.

It is an isolated incident. It's a bad thing. It should never have happened, and there are going to need to be investigations into finding out why it was allowed to happen. But it's not bad thing. It should never have happened, and there are going to need to be investigations into finding out why it was allowed to happen. But it's not the same. And the government has stepped in and said nobody will lose money. No investors will lose money. They'll all be covered.

Well, we'll see. We'll see how deep this is. We'll see how far it goes. We'll see how many people are impacted, and we'll see how much money is involved. But this is ugly. Now you can tell that people are having a hard time trying to figure out just how ugly it is, how serious is it. And it's really important that the media plays this straight up.

The New York Times today, the headline on the New York Times, at least early this morning, was, a new bank panic question mark. Right? Is the U.S. at risk of another financial panic? And points forward instead of backwards saying, we'll find out more today. You know,

will the markets collapse during this day? Or will it be up and down at different times? How far does the government step in to try and stop the panic? Now, that's the New York Times headline. The Huffington Post is a little different. Banks quake as failure fear spreads. That's not good. Imagine if you're Chrystia Freeland, Canada's Minister of Finance. She's, what, two weeks away from her much expected budget at a time already of some financial crisis in Canada in terms of interest rates, in terms of inflation,

government spending. What's she going to do?'s spent months preparing for this budget. You know the old saying, finance ministers only have two big days in a year. One is the economic statement day, usually late fall. The other is budget day, usually early spring. And they spend months planning. They have meetings with all interested parties

and segments of the economy. And by now, that budget should be locked in, probably has been for the last week or two. Everything's got to be prepped. It's a big document. So with two weeks to go, bang, suddenly there's a collapse of a major U.S. bank. And signals that other banks are in trouble as well.

How serious is it? How widespread is it? Does it impact Canada? There are Canadian elements to this story, but we have this image, and I think it's more than just an image, of a Canadian banking system that is very tightly regulated, and these kind of problems can't happen.

Well, we've all heard that before, haven't we? Anyway, so Chrystia Freeland's sitting there in her office ready for the budget two weeks from today, and suddenly this happens. And I'm sure they had some wind of this going on over the last few days. But basically, suddenly this happens. What is it going to change on the budget process? What does she have to reconsider about what her plans were? Or does she have to reconsider anything?

So this in the moment is a huge story. Could it get worse? Could it get bigger? You know the word contagion. We just went through two years or three years of that with a pandemic, and it applies to banking as well, the banking system. With the pandemic, the concern was, you know,

you got to wear a mask, can't go out. It's contagious. This virus is contagious. It'll spread. Well, contagious. This virus is contagious. It'll spread. Well, so is the fear is contagious. And that's the fear in the banking system, that when people see a run on one bank, those at another bank go,

geez, I better get my money out of my bank. And if that starts, look out. So governments are trying desperately in the U.S. to say this is isolated. There is no cause for panic. But that hasn't stopped some people from worrying and taking some action in terms of taking money out. And if there is a run on the bank,

just like that image from It's a Wonderful Life, look out. That's huge problems. Okay, that's where we are. Hopefully, you know, this is going to blow over. That by midweek, we'll be off and talking about something else. And Chrystia Freeland can relax. That her budget's not going to be impacted by this.

Well, or not, right? Okay, that's all I'm going to say on this one today. We'll be keeping a close eye on it, obviously, over the next couple of days, and we'll see where it goes. However, we are going to talk about regulation, really, in a very, very different way. We're going to talk about regulation in sports. For those of you who have been listening to this podcast for a long time,

you know that I'm a bit of a jock. Well, I'm more than a bit of a jock. You know, I love watching sports. This weekend I watched hockey. Fantastic game on Saturday night. Edmonton, Toronto. We could only hope that those teams end up in the Stanley Cup final because it would be something to watch. There'd certainly be lots of goals.

Goaltending perhaps not so hot, but lots of goals. Lots of pushing and shoving. It could be quite something. Anyway, I watched hockey on the weekend. I watched the golf. And I watched some basketball. It's a common thread about all this these days. Oh, and I watched a little bit of exhibition baseball.

The common thread is about regulation. And we'll talk about that when we come back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, wherever that might be. All right. We talked about banking regulation. Now we're going to talk about sports regulation.

And when we talk about that, we're talking about refereeing. and there's been, it seems to me this year, more discussion about refereeing than we've seen in the last few years. And sometimes it just feels like it gets in the way of the game. And we've had players and coaches and managers, journalists, sports beat reporters, speaking out about what is going on with referees. Are they getting in the way of the game?

We had Fred Van Fleet from the Toronto Raptors last week, literally, you know, blowing up on camera and saying, I know I'm going to get fined, I don't care. And he was fined of $30,000, $35,000

for the things he said about the refereeing in a couple of games the Raptors had played and in particular one referee. But that wasn't isolated. We've seen coaches in the NHL

understanding they were going to get fined for what they said, but they were furious at the way games were being handled. So what's going on? Well, I thought any number of people, good friends of mine who i could talk to on this uh but i want to stretch out i want to get away from the toronto bubble on some of these stories and so i uh tracked down my old friend bruce dobigan we used to work together at the CBC years ago. Bruce is a very opinionated guy. He and I don't agree on a lot of things, mainly about politics and et cetera, et cetera.

I'm not even going to go there. But I have a number of books on the um on on i guess more or less the business of hockey uh and his latest one that he wrote with his uh uh with his son uh evan um it's called inexact science and Science. And it basically is a study of how the draft system works, but with particular examples. And I know, you know, I've known Bruce for years, and I've known Evan since he was just a kid, who used to caddy for his dad when we went golfing.

Anyway, it's been a successful book, but, you know, if you look up Bruce Dobrigan books, and there's a whole raft of them, mainly on hockey, but not just on hockey. So anyway, I tracked down Bruce. Lives in Calgary now. Travels the country. In fact, right now, I think he's en route from one end of the country to the other by car.

But tracked him down and said, this is what I want to talk about. And he was more than happy to do it. So let's have that discussion. My conversation with Bruce Dobrigan. So Bruce, you know, complaining about referees is nothing new. We've known that in all sports forever. But this year, it does feel different. Why is that, do you think?

Well, what has changed is that in the old days, if you had bad refereeing or bad umpiring, it was put under the headline of the luck of the draw, the roll of the ball, a puck luck, whatever it was. Bad calls going against you were sort of written off that way. We didn't have video replay. We didn't have virtual strike zones. We didn't have all the information that social media brings us about what was a ball and what was a strike. And so we knew we couldn't get better. And I think our expectations of refereeing were maybe a little bit lower in those days.

Today, it's totally a thankless task for somebody to be an umpire or a referee because everything is scrutinized. Video replays, et cetera, have made everything look, you know, made us all into judges. And finally, the leagues continue to use referees as instruments to change the way the game is played. In the old days, there was a set of rules in the NHL. You called those rules.

Now in the NHL, they want to encourage this or they want to discourage that. And so now all of a sudden, the referees are given a new assignment, a new task. I think the NFL is probably the worst because from year to year, they alter what is pass interference or what is holding or whatever. And they ask the referees to change the nature of the game and of course that frustrates fans and then there's gambling and and you have to wonder whether the gambling which is so much a part of the game especially so in in hockey you watch a hockey game now on canadian television and it seems to be brought to you by

all the different gambling agencies and there's there there's not only ads, but there are kind of segments within the game. Now, does gambling have an impact on something which seems as distant as refereeing? Well, it's huge. It's a huge impact on pro sports. Gambling has always been there. Billions of dollars were wagered every week on an NFL game or NHL hockey. We just never knew about it. It was all some guy operating out of his car somewhere or in a barber shop.

We didn't necessarily see it, and we didn't think of it in those terms. But for pro sports leagues who are looking for new sources of revenue, to a certain extent they're losing some of their broadcast revenue as traditional broadcasting, regional broadcasting seems to be fading away. They're looking for new sources of revenue. And one of those sources, of course, is the marriage with now legalized gambling. I believe in the United States, I could be wrong, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 25 states now have legalized gambling. Here in Canada, Ontario is the only area that has legalized gambling. But it's a whole new source of money for the leagues.

And the leagues have to sort of figure out a way that they can be happily married to the betting industry without corrupting their sport. And so it's become exceedingly important. I say this because once in a while I have a couple of nickels on a game. But it's become exceedingly important that the fans who watch the game can be assured of the integrity of the outcome we we can't have referees and umpires you know making mistakes for instance i i did a column i was just looking back and some of the stuff that i've written uh and and this was talking about i think the 2021 world series and the home plate umpire was laz uh diaz and he missed 21 ball strike counts throughout game

four of the world series now and two or three of those calls of course affected the outcome of the game we can't have those things if we're going to have a marriage with with with the gambling industry uh where we have a guy at home plate the umpire who's basically freelancing and he's not calling the game the way it's supposed to be and and, and as you know, Peter, when you watch a blue Jay game, they have the virtual strike. So you can see as well as the next person, whether the ball's in the strike zone or not. The announcers grudgingly now reflect that. And,

and so it represents the future of the game. And I should tell you that my neighbor down in Florida, we have a family place in Florida. My next door neighbor is working as part of an experimental group who are doing the virtual strike zones in minor league baseball this year. And his job is he literally sits on the bench in the dugout and he monitors the ball strike calls. The computer tells him in his ear within an eighth of a second, whether it's a ball or strike. And my friend's job is to monitor that and then make sure that the umpire calls calls it the way that the computer has told them to call it and then all the technical stuff that goes on so that when they introduce the virtual strike zone which

could be as early as next year maybe two years from now uh that they have a system that works well does it not make the umpire irrelevant in that particular case? It kind of takes everything away from that person. Well, the umpiring union will tell you, yes, they're very upset about it. But then think of all the other things the home plate umpire has to do. He has to call plays at the plate, obviously, and out at the plate. He has to call a ball's foul or fair as they go down the line. He also now, of course, with video replay, the home plate umpire is the one who puts on the headset and talks to New York where the headquarters of MLB is,

and he's the one who does that sort of stuff. So there will always be the fourth umpire, the home plate umpire, but it won't be that monumental responsibility for calling balls and strikes. As I say, I don't know if you've ever seen it, Peter, but there's a website called UMP Scorecards, and you can go on after every game and see just how good the umpire at home plate has been calling balls and strikes.

Some of the numbers on the season, it's just incredible. Guys are about 91% of their calls are correct. Now, that's pretty good for the human eye, but again, for the outcome, to be honest honest we have to have 100 and the virtual strike zone gives you that what about the changes that are happening i'm going to get to hockey in a minute because that's where my my real concern is over all this but in baseball while we're on it i mean there are big changes this year on everything from the time allowed the for the pitcher to to you know to deliver a pitch to the batter to respond to the size of the bases.

And there are a lot of changes going on. How does that impact everything? My favorite is the pizza boxes now that they use for bases around the second base and third base. They've made the bases, for people who don't know, they've made the bases bigger so that they think it's safer. There'll be fewer problems with a larger base uh the guys coming together won't have as much chance of hurting each other etc so i think it's like 18 inches across right now uh that'll be good for base stealers because you'll get to second base quicker when you try to steal a base uh the more important one that you just you just hit upon it

of course is the pitch clock. And that's something that's been worked on in the minor leagues for the last three or four years where they've done this. And I've just been watching some of the spring training games, and you can see it's going to fundamentally change how the games are played. And another reason for that, Peter, is that the broadcast people, and that's the world you come from, of course,

the broadcast people really want quicker games. They don't want major league games to go four hours all the time. And the pitch clock is an attempt to try to get games to come in in the range of two hours and 45 minutes to three hours and 15 minutes. They want that for the broadcast people. They also don't want 18 inning games, which go on forever and blow apart your broadcast schedule and ruin your advertising schedule. What, what you put on the air. So those are, those are some big changes. As I say,

the pitch clock is going to be the one that's going to be really significant in baseball. And some guys will be able to deal with it. And some other guys won't. I mean, it'll be the end of the guys who like to walk around the mound and scratch themselves in places. They shouldn't stalling waiting for the next pitch or or the guys who put on their batting gloves and readjust them every time for those guys they're gonna have to come up with whole new pre-shot or pre-pre-pitch rituals and for those guys too peter i mean you know it's they're superstitious they have to do the glove thing twice etc if you

can't deal with it it's's going to be no mercy. Is it all about time on the pitch clock, or is it about accuracy? I mean, what is it really all about, the pitch clock and everything that's going into effect this year? The pitch clock is just to get shorter games, quicker games. One of the great things about the NBA is they're able to guarantee a broadcaster a game that typically is over within two and a half hours uh it's a package that they can sell and they can pretty much guarantee now they do have overtime etc once in a while but that's that's for broad modern broadcast purposes an nfl game let's say it's

three hours but baseball's meandering on to three and a half to four hours all the time and it's it's not a saleable product and and you know you having kids you know this they don't have the attention spans that we did or maybe they have alternatives to sitting there for three and a half hours that we didn't have but the idea of sitting there all that time and waiting for the the play to continue uh is yeah it's just for the younger generation it's a no-go just to get back to the gambling issue for a moment because i i find that um theory on your part like really well disturbing in some ways uh certainly you know it's glaring in terms of the impact that it could have i mean i remember the super bowl this year remember in the last you know 30 seconds or something there was a call made by a referee that was controversial i think most people in the end agreed you know

once they got away from the passion of the moment that it was probably the right call but the call uh it was appeared at least borderline and it must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars or at least it had the potential of that. Yep, it did. Pass interference call late in the game. And, yes, half the people who watched that game had hysterics because, you know, they were going to lose. And then another half felt like, oh, well, the gods are smiling on me

that they called that. The NFL is just in such a bind, Peter, because added to all the stuff that I talked about earlier about how they want to change the game, they want to make it more scoring. They make it harder for defensive backs, etc. In addition to that, now, of course, we have this thing about gambling and everything, everything has implications. And it's not like the players and the referees and the broadcasters don't know what's going on. It's always been a quiet secret, but now it's out in front. And it's something that the league has to confront when there was a lot of blowback after the game from fans from Philadelphia.

And the league really had to deal with that and had to stance that kind of fire from people. And you can bet on so many things these days. You can bet live during the game. You can bet on the next play. You can bet on the next pitch. You can bet on the next shift in a hockey game. In golf, you can bet on the next shot that the player has. Everything is now a variable in terms of gambling. And again, they have to give out the impression that everything is on the level. Who's making money from all that, you know, aside from the bookies and those who may win on the bets. Are the leagues making money from gambling? Well, they cannot by law.

They cannot get into the gambling business per se. But what they can do, and I presume you've seen some of the MGM casino ads with Wayne Gretzky and McDavid. What they can do, of course, is do partnerships in terms of promotion and sponsorship, the likeness of of the uh the team logos etc they can do that type of a thing but they can't get involved in any of the direct betting stuff that would be illegal but they can do the these marriages and because legalized gambling is in such an early stage again in ontario there are three or four big

companies all scrambling to be the big dog. With all the competition that's going on, everybody's looking for an advantage. And thus, they're also paying pretty good money to the leagues for this service. And it's found money for the league. And they have to obviously do what they have to do to keep it going. And the biggest thing, as I say, is coming back to the referees in hockey and in football. First of all, that they're competent competent that they look like they're competent and second that doesn't look like something's on the take uh we have had some cases in the past i remember the nba had a gambling scandal a referee who was tipping off gamblers etc the one good thing about it is though

peter is that uh as opposed to the old days when these are all guys, you know, nicknamed Lucky and Knuckles and those guys, they're all behind the scenes, is that it's now a corporate and it's a transparent industry. So the idea that things are going on behind the scenes the way they did in the past, that won't necessarily happen. Everything is above board. And some of these companies are publicly traded etc so it is it's a different industry but the implications are still very serious are you surprised that players are involved in those ads i mean you've got two of the biggest you know players in the league both playing for canadian teams you know uh mcdavid from your province of alberta and and matthews from here uh from ontario are you surprised that players are doing the promotion for betting services?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, I have to point out the extreme irony of Wayne Gretzky doing the MGM ads. I think I spoke to you on your show years ago when supposedly Wayne's wife got caught in a quote unquote gambling scandal and we had the whole PR exercise of an oh Wayne never gambles he doesn't know sports gambling all that sort of stuff and now here he is he's the lead dog for MGM casinos and sort of you know the nose stretcher that's involved in that one that all of a sudden Wayne Gretzky has suddenly discovered gambling. The thing about the players and taking the money is, first of all, the money's there, right?

It's hard to turn money down. You've got a short career. You've got to maximize it when you can. But the thing that's changed, too, between yesterday and today in terms of pro sports is in the old days you could bribe players. They weren't making a ton of money. You could easily get a guy to throw a game for 25 000 but a guy like austin matthews or conor mcdavid they're they're making 12 13 million dollars a year the nfl and the nba and the mlb guys they're making

25 30 million dollars a year they're kind of hard to bribe the idea that that getting too close to the gambling industry means that they're going to be shaving points etc it it kind of hard to bribe. The idea that getting too close to the gambling industry means that they're going to be shaving points, et cetera. It kind of begs credulity because they don't need the money. Money they've got, probably what they need more is tax credits or charitable donations than getting involved with gamblers. So I think the feeling is that because it is above board and it's visible and we can see who they are and who they're associated with,

that in some respects that makes it better than it was before. All right. I want to get to hockey in particular on a couple of fronts and I guess basketball as well because in both those cases in the last couple of weeks, there have been pretty loud cries from the players and from the coaches that the refereeing is substandard and there are bad calls being made. They're not putting motive behind those bad calls, but they are saying, well, actually, the coach in Calgary was putting motive,

saying that when you go into Toronto, all the referees side with the Leafs, which, believe me, if you're in Toronto, you don't quite see it that way. But nevertheless, the complaints about the quality of refereeing, and here's my beef. You tell me why I'm wrong about this. What I don't understand is why referees aren't accountable, like everybody else who's on the ice or beside the ice, the coach, the manager, the players,

they've all got to do scrums afterwards, right, and explain what they did right or wrong and be grilled by journalists in different ways about what happened on the ice. The referees, they leave the ice, that's it. They're untouchable. You can't question them. You know, the argument is made, well, you know,

the league itself does its, the accountability with referees. Well, yeah, maybe. But there is no stand up and explain that call you just made and why you made it and why it's the right call and it's the same in basketball as we saw you know just last week with the raptors were outraged a number of games so why is there no public accountability on the part of uh of referees well you you've touched on a bunch of things there uh first of all in theory there's supposed to be a pool reporter who can go down to the referee's room to get reaction after the game in various

sports i'm not sure if it's all sports but from my experience in the in the the press box that there is a pool reporter who goes down oftentimes it's somebody like the from the canadian press or one of the wire services uh who does it it goes down to get some quotes from but yes it's somebody like from the Canadian press or one of the wire services who does it. It goes down to get some quotes from. But, yes, it's not particularly satisfying to hear that. You also have a problem with the referees in the NBA and the NHL are full time. But the NFL referees, they're part time referees. These guys work as bank presidents during the week and then they do the games. So there is a sense of maybe not taking it as seriously as possible.

I have to separate NHL and NBA. NBA is such an interpretive league. Anybody who watches it knows there's a million different calls and nuances, and the referees kind of massage a game in a way with the NBA. There's rules and there's standards, et cetera. But when LeBron has the ball, he can travel, he can do whatever he wants. They don't call him. They have a way of managing NBA games, which leads to the kind of outburst we saw from Fred Van Fleet last week about the nature of NBA

refereeing. It's ever thus, and I don't know that it's going to ever change, Peter. Basketball just is a game with so many moving parts and so many interpretive things about what's a foul and what works and what doesn't work that I don't think it'll ever get there. For the NHL, the optic that maybe doesn't work is that these guys go on season after season. We think they're not very good referees and yet the NHL still returns them to play. Part of that is, of course, the referees and the umpires have unions, and they're very strong, and they protect their members, et cetera. But it would be better to see some churn in the officials that we could visibly see the guys are not getting assignments or are not getting contracts for the next year.

I watched, again, the NFL this year, and supposedly it was the all-star refereeing crews, and I'm just shaking my head and saying, those are the all-stars? I mean, really, what grading system are you using? The NHL has the same issue. The guys who will call the final series for the Stanley Cup final, are they really the best referees,

or are they politically connected within the union, or are they guys, are they really the best referees or are they politically connected within the union or are they guys who are friendly to the league? You know, there's all sorts of questions about it that make it very difficult to answer. So it's not satisfying. It's never going to be satisfying. I think that hockey, because of the nature of hockey, I think you have a better chance of calling things in a more cut and dried way than you do in basketball. The point that Van Fleet was making, and some hockey players agree with this too, is that the referees are getting in the way of the game. You know, some of their calls are determining, some of their controversial calls end up determining the outcome of the game.

And that they, it's like they're stars themselves. I mean, the NHL even credits the one referee because of his kind of showmanship style and the way he makes calls. Are they getting in the way of the game? Certainly in the NHL, not the way they used to. When I grew up, the referees were stars. They were characters. They were guys who had personalities.

For a long time, they had the referee's name on the back characters there were guys who had personalities uh for a long time they had the referees name on the back so you could see who they were but the nhl has had a long-term policy to sort of de-emphasize that the the personality the referees they wish all the referees to be the same the public not to know their names to not know their styles etc uh it is it is a little irritating when you get the guys who do the showmanship thing. That's where the NBA too. And in particular college basketball, they have all these referees who are, you know, it's showtime for them. And I can, you know,

I've been watching games and they make a call and I said, listen, you know, I didn't turn in and turn on the TV to watch you get, get in front of the camera. So your could see you. Just call the game. Get out of the way of it. And there are guys who lose that perspective. But I would think that in the NHL, again, their attitude is to try to de-emphasize the personality of the referees. But there are large websites, Peter, that will tell you, you know, this referee or that referee, what his record is calling home games in Toronto,

what his record is calling games on the road in Edmonton. Everybody in the gambling world knows exactly what their preferences are and what their records are. You can't hide that sort of thing. So it's a problem that the NHL has, and all the leagues have, is there's too much information. Too much information. Boy, let me close this out by going back to something you said a few moments ago, and I know you were just kind of making light of it or joking, about the bank president during the week, the referee on the weekend.

Is it true that in the NFL, they're not full-time jobs, the referees, and the NFL, perhaps one of the most financially secure leagues in the nfl they're not full-time jobs the referees in the nfl perhaps one of the most financially secure leagues in the world they make they make billions of dollars uh but their referees are part-timers whereas in the nhl more games obviously um but they're full-time jobs absolutely they're bank presidents they're guys who do other jobs high school principals uh yeah during the week they go home on sunday they fly home and they'll work during the course of the week obviously the off season they can work there too but the nfl people have railed about this for years get serious about your referees so that you have a uh so that you have a core of people who

are doing this job all year round, studying tape. Again, they're not sitting there deciding on a guy's mortgage in the morning and then calling a foul in the evening. That has been a complaint for a long, long time. And the NFL shows no inclination to change it. Bruce, always good to talk to you. It allows me to have the jock in me uh come out at least

once every few months or so take care thank well you and i are lucky that they didn't have they don't have people after our shows who would take apart our shows and break them down the way things get broken down now we were lucky we'd show ended nobody thought more of it maybe that works for you i haven't seen that on my side. Maybe not, maybe not. All right, take care, Bruce. Good to talk to you. Bruce Dobrigan joining us to talk about the regulation of sports

through the referees and the controversies that seem to have been more this year than in past years and some of the stories behind them. Bruce, as we said, a very successful author on the sports front, and his latest book, In Exact Science, that he wrote with his son Evan, is available. You can find it at bookstores or just Google Bruce Dobigan books, and you'll find a way to get them.

Hey, what have we got on time? We've got time for a couple of end bits. Absolutely. Here's one. As I said, Bruce from Calgary, right? Bruce lives in Calgary. And there's always that rivalry between Ontario and Alberta, Toronto and Edmonton or Toronto and Calgary.

Here's one where Toronto wins. It's a clear win. Who has cheaper parking in downtown, Toronto or Calgary? Now, I know you're all going, of course, it's Toronto. No, you're mostly saying Toronto must be more expensive than Calgary. Wrong. Calgary is the most expensive place in Canada for downtown parking. A study by the real estate services firm JLL has found that Calgary has the most expensive monthly parking rate in Canada.

$366 a month for downtown parking. Toronto, a bargain price of $347. Vancouver, $300. Calgary wins clear. In fact, Calgary in North America is the third highest. Just San Francisco and New York ahead of Calgary in North America is the third highest. Just San Francisco and New York ahead of Calgary. Why? You guessed it.

The downtown core is relatively small in size and not a lot of parking available. Some of the estimates say they're short 100,000 parking units in downtown Calgary. That explains why it costs so much for parking. I bet you didn't know that. I bet you needed to come to the bridge and the NBIT section to find out that fact of life. Downtown parking in Calgary is expensive. Well, here's another one, and we'll close out on this. You know, I remember being at Westminster, the British Parliament, and I was doing a story that would be held with footage of some really old documents

that are stored at Westminster to deal with past laws. And so we got approval. We went in there, into Westminster, to look up these old documents. And they said, okay. They had a table laid out, and they had the old parchments, scrolls. Edelman said, now, you can only touch them if you wear white gloves. So the person who was in charge was wearing white gloves,

and we put on our white gloves. Myself and I think producer Stephanie Jenser. So we did that. So I found that, you know, I thought, well, obviously, you have to wear white gloves. You've got to be careful. So that's what surprised me when I saw this headline in the New York Times the other day.

For rare book librarians, it's gloves off. So that's what surprised me when I saw this headline in the New York Times the other day. For rare book librarians, it's gloves off. Seriously. People who handle rare books for a living are used to doing battle with a range of dastardly scourges, including red rot, beetles, and thieves. But there's one foe that drives many of them particularly crazy, the general public's unshakable and often vehemently expressed belief that old books should be handled with Mickey Mouse-style white-cotton gloves. The glove thing, it just won't die, says Maria Fredericks, the director of conservation at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Every time it comes up, I sigh deeply, said Eric Holsenberg, the director of the Grolier Club, the nation's oldest private society of book collectors. And then I give my three-sentence explanation of why it's, to use a milder term than he did, bunk. To politely sum up the current consensus, gloves reduce your sense of touch, increasing the likelihood that you might accidentally tear a page, smear pigments, dislodge loose fragments, or worse, drop the book. And whatever their associations with cleanliness,

cotton gloves attract dirt. They also tend to make hands sweat, generating moisture that can damage a page. Rubber gloves, while moisture-proof and generally better fitted to the land, are too grabby. There are exceptions. The best way to handle a rare book is with clean hands and caution. What about those exceptions? Why'd they do what they did in Westminster when I was there? Here's the answer to that. This is also in the New York Times piece. There are exceptions to the bare hands rule.

Books, including some kinds of photographic materials, are best handled with gloves. The Library of Congress recommends clean, nitrile gloves. The same goes for books made from ivory or encased in metal bindings or certain kinds of cloth. For example, the so-called Lincoln Bible, which Barack Obama and Donald Trump used to swear their oath of office, barehanded, is sometimes handled with gloves to avoid damage to the velvet binding.

And then there are, wait for this, poison books. In the 16th and 17th century, budget-minded book binders sometimes recycled cheap manuscript waste paper as a binding, coating it with arsenic lace green paint to mimic leather. And in the Victorian period, some publishers used binding cloth dyed with colors like Shields Green, an industrially produced hue also containing arsenic.

If you do happen to touch one of these 19th century bookish equivalents of red M&Ms, don't panic. The moral of the story is don't lick the books, and you'll be fine. All right, we'll keep that in mind. If you're in a rare bookstore, whatever you do,

gloves or no gloves, don't lick the books. All right, lots to think about on today's program, and if you have something you want to think about on today's program. And if you have something you want to say about it, send your comment in to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Keep it short and crisp. Make sure you put your name on it.

Make sure you tell me where you're writing from. All right. That's it for this day. Coming up tomorrow, Brian Stewart will be by. It's Tuesday. We always talk on Ukraine and believe it or not, there's always new stuff to talk about and there is tomorrow. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, your turn and the Random Ranter. Friday, Good Talk where Chantel joins Bruce and I for more talk about, well, mainly about Canadian politics and what a week last week was. We had huge numbers for both Smoke on Wednesday

and Good Talk on Thursday. Huge numbers on our YouTube channel for the video content of those discussions. So keep it coming. Keep cards and letters coming. for the video content of those discussions. So keep it coming. Keep cards and letters coming. Even the nice ones. We accept nice ones here at the bridge.

They don't all have to be dumping on us. You can occasionally put in the nice one. Just kidding. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.