The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Your Turn on Election Interference, AI and The Ranter!

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Lots of comments this week on two of our programs this week -- how the PM has handled the election interference story, and our discussion with Michelle Rempel Garner on Artificial Intelligence.  Plus the Random Ranter worries about our American neighbours.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Thursday, your turn, the Random Ranter. It's all here, coming right up. So, are you excited? A lot of you seem to be excited. You've been writing all week. So, are you excited? A lot of you seem to be excited. You've been writing all week. And you know what you've been writing about? Obviously, you've been writing about some of the news of the day,

some of the issues of the day, some of the ranters' comments. You know what else you've been writing about? You're so excited. You're excited because tomorrow, tomorrow, guess who's back? She's back, Chantal. That's right. Chantal Hébert will be back tomorrow, back from Iceland. We'll have to get her to spend a couple of moments telling us about what it was like. Right? I know more and more Canadians go to Iceland now. We'll have to get her to spend a couple of moments telling us about what it was like.

I know more and more Canadians go to Iceland now. For a while, it was kind of a stop-off point while you switched planes to get to Europe because Iceland Air, whichever Icelandic airline it was, was offering really good deals to get to Europe. But you had to stop in Iceland, Reykjavik, on the way there. But now people are going to tour Iceland because it's a fantastic spot and you hear from people, I haven't been there. And I guess I'm going to have to at some point. I mean, I've flown over it.

I flew around it. Remember that, what was it, a volcano or something a few years ago? It caused all those problems. So, but tomorrow, she's back. And she truly is what many of you say she is. She's a national treasure i remember when i first started working with chantal and i guess it would have been in the early 90s one of the many forerunners of uh at issue and we started using her and initially

people weren't so sure. Really? Is she going to be on all the time? And then they started to fall for her. And they fell heavy. And they have right across the country. I think I've said before that you travel with Chantal or not.

If you travel with her, it's one thing. You see it. If you're not traveling with her, a lot of the people who come up to you or come up to me, sorry, hit the microphone there, to talk, say, what's Chantal really like? Oh, I miss Chantal. I really like Chantal. I only watch you to listen to Chantal.

All those things apply at different times. Anyway, she's been away for one week, and the letters have poured in. When's she going to be back? She's only been away one week. She's only missed one show. Now, unless she's fallen in love with hiking across Iceland, I believe she will be back tomorrow. So that's that. Let's get to your letters. And I need

to remind everybody once again. I do this, I don't know, once a month or so. That when you write, you should include where you're writing from. That's helpful. Okay? As well as your name. But you should also try to condense your thought. The number of letters I get say,

I know it's supposed to be short, but really I couldn't stop myself, which means I've got to stop myself. I've got to start to find one part of your letter to use. So I shouldn't complain about working. But just a reminder. Now, some of you are fantastic at it. You write the really short ones, you know, one line, two lines, three lines, one paragraph. That's the way to do it. Not surprisingly, we'll start off on the issue of this issue of election interference by China

and what's been admitted and what hasn't been admitted and what they're going to do about it and is there going to be an inquiry, is there not going to be an inquiry, when did so-and-so know about it, et cetera, et cetera. All those questions are still in the air until we hear from the special rapporteur. Okay. First up, Adrian Hill, Nepean, Ontario.

That's in Ottawa. You know, I went to high school in Ottawa to Glebe Collegiate, one of the big schools that we played against all the time. I played football and basketball, not very well in either case, but I sounded good. And we played against Nepean, and they were like arch rivals. Glebe, Nepean, Glebe, Lisger. But Nepean had great sports teams.

So whenever I see that name, my mind goes back to that. Adrian Hill writes, Here's an odd thought from a lifelong liberal. The one individual everyone would trust to do an unbiased and thorough investigation without fear of government interference, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Really? That's what you think?

They would be unbiased and thorough? Yeah, quite possibly. I know that's been floated around already this week, including some suggestions that even Stephen Harper wouldn't satisfy Pierre Palliev. He'd find something wrong with that too. I don't know who it's going to be. I suspect it won't be anybody who has any relationship to politics of any kind, any stripe.

Okay. Vaughan Stewart in St. Catharines, Ontario. Same subject. On the topic of the election issue, I'm a little confused. The seemingly interchangeable use of interference and influence cloud the issue for me. I assume interference means that an election law was broken or some action taken is designed to prevent or hinder electors voting. For example, a few elections back, there was a controversy about an email

sent out on election day telling people that their poll had changed. I don't think that was a foreign country. This type of behavior should be dealt with by legal authorities. Influence to me are efforts to persuade people to vote in a certain way. Political parties, interest groups, all try to do this

leading up to an election with varying percentages of truth in their claims. Zavi Kuchar. I'm not sure I've got that right, the pronunciation, but Xavi is in downtown Montreal. Bruce's analogy, and this was just yesterday, Bruce's analogy of five-year-olds chasing a puck on the ice matches my perspective perfectly.

The pundit class was speculating about public versus in-camera. This was the puck everyone was distractedly chasing. The overall situation with respect to China is so much more complex. This inquiry, debate, and intentional distraction by PMJT has me metaphorically screaming from the bleachers of the action behind the play. The list of issues I refer to is well known, so I won't dissect them, but for completeness, we'll list some of them. Money laundering by organized crime linked to Chinese Communist Party entities, hacking of business and IP theft,

coercion within Canada of individuals, etc., etc. But the most important point is that the way we are dealing with the issues is indicative of an underdeveloped political and civilian culture of dealing with divisive issues. Alf Chetan. Alf doesn't mention where he's writing from. Didn't we find during the convoy process, to our horror, that the police, military, and security agencies were filled with many right-wing elements. No, I don't think we found that they were filled with many right-wing elements.

I think there were clearly some supporters of the convoy process inside some of the security agencies. I'm not sure there were many, but there were some. Are we discounting the possibility that this whole issue was manufactured by these elements? Where are the specifics? After all, we've known for years that the Chinese attempt to impact elections around the world.

That's correct, we have, including here. That's not news. Someone paid for buses for a nomination. That's been going on for decades. As the commercial once said, where's the beef? I'd expect a lot more specific allegations to justify the intensity of this story. Specific allegations are always helpful in trying to understand this kind of a story. So you're right there.

A number of letters about our first program of the week this week, and that was with Michelle Rempel-Garner, and the discussion was about artificial intelligence. In fact, we had a lot of comments about that, including from Jeff Lavery in Orleans, Ontario. Great podcast on Monday with Ms. Rempel-Garner. Typically, I do not agree with her when it comes to her politics, but on the issue of AI, I completely agree that it should not be political

and we need to know more sooner rather than later. You know, I've known Michelle Rempelgarner for, you know, a fair number of years and she's a spark plug, there's no doubt about that, in Ottawa and had made a reputation, especially in her early years, of really going for the jugular when she was in a fight with the opposition parties. You know, when she was in government, she's in cabinet, and she loved the cut and thrust of politics.

Now, this is different. And I think everybody who listened to her on Monday, whether you agree with her take on AI or not, could tell that she was looking at this through a nonpartisan lens. She wanted a good discussion on it. And we had a good discussion. And not everybody's agreed with her as i said but the letters have been appreciative of the fact um that she was on

the program and she talked the way she did uh diane sabaran in winnipeg i must say at the outset that artificial intelligence does not capture much of my attention, mostly because I do not really understand it, and at the same time, it scares me. However, your conversation with Michelle Rempel-Garner has illuminated my perspective and somewhat reduced my fear of AI. You chose well, Peter. Your guest was able to talk about AI in understandable terms, and the subject became more palatable. Having an expert speaking in this context, although I recognize they do have their place, would not have yielded the same effect.

Bravo for venturing into this topic, and I hope to hear more of it for my own and your audience's benefit. Thank you, Diane. That's kind of you. Tim Pohl is also from Winnipeg. I was listening to your interview with Conservative MP Michelle Rempel-Garner today. Really interesting stuff.

I agree that we need to stay on top of things like this, but I was hoping that the conversation would get around to the topic of AI and the future of jobs. We couldn't get to everything, but it's a good point. I've heard that self-driving trucks are going to very soon be on the highway, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently, there aren't too many jobs where AI will not eventually become superior to people. I've heard that even lawyers will be largely edged out by AI robots. This might ultimately be a bigger issue than AI impersonating humans.

So we need our politicians, like Michelle Rumpelgarner, to look into this not too far off the future and consider how the economy might run when Canadians no longer work. Yeah, you know, Tim's got a point there. There are all kinds of stories around about how this could be used, and some suggesting it's much sooner than later in some areas where that computer can replace the human, including at radio stations across the country. We don't want to see that happen.

Pam McDermott in Burlington. I'm so very surprised that I agree with Michelle Rempel-Garner. AI is definitely a non-partisan issue, and I too worry that it's capable of eventually destroying any trust we have left in the information we hear or see in the media with serious consequences. I also agree we really don't know where this is heading and wonder if there are any safeguards in place

for when it exceeds our cognitive abilities and there are possibly negative outcomes. Amazingly enough, I also agree with her that we cannot trust industry to regulate itself and government can move too slow. Michelle's idea that we should have safety checks and balances like that of pharma and create a non-partisan research ethics board is excellent. Also, educating people on how to navigate this information and disinformation, acceleration, is an excellent component to how we deal with this huge step forward. Another suggestion is labeling information that is AI-generated with a check sources or AI-generated label.

Of course, that opens up. Whom do we trust to do that accurately? It's so complex. I'm really glad you had Michelle on and you do a fantastic job, blah, blah, blah. Sure. Sorry, I was too embarrassed to read that last part. But there's another letter about, you know, they had a perception of Michelle Rempel-Garner based on her sort of political partisan, and she's not going to lose that.

She can be, as I said, very aggressive on some of those issues, but on this one, she's stepping back. She wants a good conversation with everybody, and she's kind of a little peeved at some of her own colleagues, both conservatives and liberals and NDPers, that they're not serious enough about this issue in the sense that they're not learning about it, they're not discussing it, and they're not looking at the possibilities. Austin Ziegler. Where's Austin from? I'm not sure.

Thank you for your thoughtful conversation with Michelle Rempel-Garner on AI. I appreciate it when politicians are reasonably well-informed. And Ms. Rempel-Garner's description of large-language model AI is fairly accurate, if a little too full of enthusiastic descriptions of the technology itself. I dispute her predictions that AI are soon to be smarter than humans. This has been claimed with tedious regularity for the last 60-70 years, as new techniques and investor funding are applied to the same problems. When it comes to regulation, however, Ms. Rempel-Garner is wrong. AI can, should, and must be regulated.

Well, I'm not sure she said it shouldn't be. She said we should be discussing that. AI is not intelligent, and the misbranding of the fantastic statistical inference techniques, which are in use as AI, causes people to project human qualities onto it. Nor does AI exist in isolation.

These statistical models are used by people, governments, and businesses, and even if the technology were neutral or beneficial, it's neither, the uses people put it to should be regulated, as with any new development, whether technological or social. All right. So you see a good mix of comments to the subject of artificial intelligence, and that's good. I'm glad we did get that kind of reaction. That's the whole idea behind some of the things we discuss on this program is to provoke you into thinking about particular issues. You don't have to agree with us. You don't have to agree with me or with Bruce or with Chantal

or Janice Stein or Brian Stewart or Michelle Rumpelgarner or whoever it is that's on the program. You don't have to agree with them. You just have to go, how do I feel about that, whatever that issue is, whatever that topic is? How do I feel about it? That's the idea behind the bridge, is to get you thinking, right? Speaking of getting you thinking, how about that ranter?

Last week, the ranter punted on politics, Canadian politics, and instead focused on what he sees as the great hope for energy in the future. And for him, it's hydrogen. Now, he didn't claim to be an expert. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He said hydrogen needs a great salesman. It needs somebody to get out there and sell hydrogen. So the hydrogen rant prompted a few letters. Don Robertson writes from Edmonton.

We hear from Don every once in a while, and he doesn't have a guaranteed slot on here. But we'll put this one on. Don writes, it's been a while, but I can now say that I agree with the random ranter about something. He doesn't like, he's been after the ranter for some time. But he agrees with him on hydrogen. He's right about how great it is and how it is the energy of the future, but he is a little late with his call for investment.

Canada already has many hydrogen-producing companies, and the country is one of the largest producers of hydrogen in the world. Or so the Internet says. Well, my gosh, you can believe everything you read on the internet. Also, the world's largest hydrogen plant is presently being built in northeast Edmonton. That's a fact. I remember a couple of years ago driving out to the airport in Edmonton, and the big airport is south of Edmonton.

And I saw this huge, huge warehousing area. Or it looked like a warehouse. The closer you got, you realized it was a greenhouse. But huge. You know, it was acres big. Cannabis. Or at least that's what the cab driver told me. Thanks, Don.

Aaron Aitchison. Or Atchison. Atchison. Aaron's in London, Ontario. Originally from St. Thomas, or just outside St. Thomas. I listened to your episode with the random renter today. While I love the enthusiasm he has for hydrogen, and I felt similarly when I first started looking

into its applications, as a lawyer in the area of energy and infrastructure, now with some experience on these projects, there are significant challenges. Storage is difficult and expensive. Transportation through existing infrastructure is too. And if we're still talking about sending hydrogen across the ocean to Europe, there are limited possibilities for this using existing shipping resources. All of this is going to take some serious investment and time. And I think that's basically what the renter was arguing about, right?

Or putting forward. It needs his salesman. It needs somebody to, whether it's a person or a government or somebody, to get behind the idea. That's his take. That's his rant. Ian Burgess. Great piece from the ranter yesterday on hydrogen.

I really love how this guy put some effort into learning some basics. I didn't completely agree with his thoughts on electric vehicles a few months ago and his characterization of the lithium illuminati. I love that phrase. But I appreciate that he puts some challenging ideas out there. He does, no doubt about it. I'm a big supporter of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, but it is important to have a deeper understanding of how hydrogen is produced before it is characterized quite as favorably as the ranter framed it. Hydrogen can be formed from an electrolysis of water that converts H2O into H2 and O2 through the use of electricity. If you can make the electricity without burning fossil fuels, then you have a winning idea for storing energy in the form of H2, which when you burn it won't generate any CO2.

However, don't kid yourself. Basic thermodynamics will tell you that you didn't get any additional energy beyond what you already had in the green electricity. You just stored most of that energy in a form that can be used when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. And that, ladies and gentlemen, ends your class in chemistry and whatever else for today. No, thank you, Ian, for that. Cliff Carroll McDonald.

I heard your show with a random ranter talking about hydrogen yesterday and had to respond. By the way, we love listening to your show in this world of fake news. It's good to listen to something that makes sense, even if I disagree with the opinion expressed. Exactly. We normally hear your show in Sarnia, but at present we are in Porto Escondido. Oh, I'm sorry. That must be so hard.

On hydrogen. One, hydrogen is just an energy storage device like a battery or a hydraulic dam. If all the cars on the road were replaced with hydrogen, where does the energy come from? Because there's not enough in the current electrical grid. Where does the water come from? This sounds silly, but when you talk of converting water to oxygen, hydrogen, that is fresh water. While there's research into salt water, the conversion so far is hydrogen with chlorine gas and oxygen.

Using fresh water for this conversion may create larger problems, like no fresh water. We have a serious winter. So when we're driving and all this water is created, it drops on the road. If there is heavy traffic like the 400, that's a highway in north of Toronto, it may turn into a huge skating rink. Now, if you're stuck on the road for several hours and have to run your engine, you may have a pool of ice to drive through. I'm sure there are other problems, but I think we need a little more analysis, or we could make the problem worse. Thank you, Cliff Carroll McDonald.

You know that Highway 400? If you know Toronto, if you know southern Ontario, you know there are a lot of different 400 highways. There's the 401. There's the 400. There's the 403. There's the 416, the 417. There's a lot of them.

And I remember, and I've raised this a couple of times with people who should know the answer to this question, but they didn't seem to, and I know I'll get letters on this now, so I'll throw it out there. The 400 series of highways, I was told by somebody who flew for the RCAF during the Second World War, that all those 400 series highways were named after Canadian squadrons based in Britain during the Second World War. 400 squadron, the 401 squadron, 417, etc., etc. I don't know whether that's true, but I love the story. And even if you're going to write to me and tell me it's not true, Peter, I'm going to keep believing it, because I like the thought of it, and I think of it every time I'm on one of those highways. That it represented the squadrons and those guys who flew those incredible missions

during the Second World War. Here's the last letter on the ranter's rant on hydrogen. Derek Marcoux, we've heard from Derek before, he's a professional driver in the Maritimes from Oromocto, New Brunswick. Truck driver. The ranter was correct last Thursday. Hydrogen will be the green fuel of the future.

Originally, I wrote a backgrounder of my past to try to convince you that I have a credible experience upon which to offer my conclusion, but in the end, I don't care if you or your listeners agree or not. Do so at your own peril, as a former leader of mine would say. Over the past couple of years, I've been spreading my time, spending my time, listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I spend about 50 hours a week behind the wheel, and when I'm not in heavy traffic and I can afford some cognitive effort, I use that time to improve my knowledge of the world while I work. Here's a list of audio books from my library that I've listened to that

leave a trail of crumbs that could feed the ranter's rage. Numbers don't lie. Energy and civilization. The end of the world is just the beginning the cloud revolution the hydrogen revolution and superpower I'm glad you said they were audio books there Derek and this image of you roaring down the highway in your semi and reading a book

but no of course you wouldn't do that that reading a book. But no, of course he wouldn't do that. That had something to do with hydrogen, that letter. But I love hearing from Derek because he's a guy. He's a guy out there on the highways and okay all that talk about hydrogen and it's related to our friend the ranter screams what's the

ranter got to say this week so buckle in here he goes our weekly visit with the Random Ranter. Here we go. You ever read the news and wish you hadn't? I read a bit about the Conservative Political Action Conference in the States, and it left me with just one question. Has America gone crazy? I don't know about the whole country, but the Conservatives at CPAC? They're definitely nuts.

There were attacks on LGBTQ rights, attacks on voter rights, and attacks on what's left of reproductive rights down there. One speaker even went so far as to call for the eradication of trans people. That's right. Eradication. And let's not forget the guns. They can't get enough of them. And that's saying something because they've got a lot of them. Like, I'm thinking most of them.

But apparently, that's got nothing to do with all the daily mass shootings. The solution for that one? More guns, of course. And praise the Lord. Let's not forget about the people leading the charge on all this. The radical, hypocritical, religious right. Or as I like to call them, the Christian Taliban. Praying away the gay wasn't enough for them. Now they're

obsessed with what people have in their pants and who has access to it. Me? I think they just secretly like saying the word penis. Of course, not all Americans are crazy, but there's enough of them that crazy has managed to go mainstream. Think about it. Daily mass shootings, the storming of the Capitol, racist elected officials, the criminalization of abortion. It goes on and on, yet ho-hum, business as usual. Normalize it all you want. For me, it's alarming. I mean, if it gets any worse, they're going to have to move Margaret Atwood into nonfiction. And you know, I'm barely scratching the surface. I'm sure some of you think I'm being disrespectful, but is speaking the truth disrespectful? I guess it is when you're

a Canadian, because as crazy as America is, we're tied at the hip to it. They're our closest ally and our biggest trading partner. They defend our borders. They buy our goods. They keep us going pretty much every way. So maybe my disrespect is misplaced and I should really just go with despair because there's not much we can do about the situation. Not much, except to try to limit some of the worst things from getting a stronger foothold here. I mean, we have some of the same problems. Ottawa was occupied. Sadly, we've got our own mass shootings. And hey, we've got some extremists too. So what can we do? How can we push back from such a weak position? Well, to start, there's a far too large segment of our population that needs to learn the Second

Amendment means nothing on this side of the border. The government needs to take another crack at gun control and once and for all explicitly ban handguns. Just handguns. Make it simple. Let's just make it illegal to own a handgun in Canada. And for once, let's just get it done. Secondly, let's entrench abortion and LGBTQ rights in the constitution rather than relying on Supreme Court interpretations of the law. And let's Daniel Smith proof it and somehow make those rights supersede the notwithstanding clause. And while we're at it, instead of following, let's try leading by example. We can start by fixing a few things, like our health care system, like education, like our tax code. I doubt the U.S. themselves would notice,

but we'd look great for investors who want access to America, but without all the crazy. Finally, let's boost our aluminum production in time for next year's CPAC. I hear there's going to be a run on tinfoil. A random ranter with his offering for this week. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, the final selection of letters on this week's Your Turn, right here on The Bridge.

We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Thursday episode. You just heard the random ranter. We're more with your turn in terms of your letters and your thoughts on the issues of the day. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, let's get at it.

Our final letters for this week. First one comes from Gareth Wilson in Bowmanville, Ontario. I know I won't be on the radio today and, well you are. Yeah boy, do the Leafs still have a lot to prove, but we'll always have a glimmer of hope, right? You got that part right. Your smoke mirrors in the truth edition the other day when Bruce went to talk about the Canadian media in the context of the Fox conversation, but stopped short, made me think you guys should do Went to talk about the Canadian media in the context of the Fox conversation.

But stopped short. Made me think you guys should do a deep dive into our news organizations. But I'm going to Costa Rica next week, so maybe after the 14th, okay? Love the podcast. Hey, Gareth, you can listen to it down there in Costa Rica. You can get the bridge anywhere in this hemisphere because that's just how important it is. All right? You can get it on Sirius XM throughout North America

at its regular appointed times, or you can just download the podcast, whatever you want. We've done a number of issues about the media and deep dives on the media, but I hear what you're saying. Paul Masson from Ajax, Ontario. Paul writes, just read this article in the Globe and Mail.

You probably saw this the other day. The Globe headline was, average of 25 senators skip each legislative vote. That's a lot. There are only 100. I find it so offensive that so many of these legislative leaders in positions of influence don't show up in person or virtually to do the job. They are paid handsomely to do. What kind of example does this give to the electorate? If this was a case study in civics for a class of underage voters, what would the takeaway message be?

I think it would be interesting for you to take a deeper dive on the... People love that phrase, eh? Take a deeper dive on the motivations behind why they take in the roles and the inability to step up and fulfill with a simple act of casting their ballot in exchange for the handsome salary and perks that come along with that position. You know, we've been discussing the Senate and what senators make and how many turn up for years, right? Patrick Tellen writes from Lorignal, Ontario. It's ironic that one of Tuesday's end bits was about an American municipal politician

concerned about a dollar store coming into his town. Well, on Wednesday in Ottawa, Canadian federal politicians were being grilled. The three major grocery, sorry, the federal politicians were grilling three major grocery CEOs about food costs. The first politician wants to restrict the market to unnaturally inflate product prices, while the second group is wondering why prices are so high. Politicians need to allow natural competitive market dynamics that affect product placement and pricing, not petitions or committee testimony. When available, consumers will find their best value.

You know, I think generally, Patrick, you're right, but these are difficult days out there, and that's the motivation behind these hearings that's going on right now. Barbara Musgrave in Mississauga, Ontario. We watched on television last evening the speech to Parliament by Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU. Her speech was inspiring and made me proud to be a Canadian.

However, I noticed when the camera panned out, well, panning is when you're going back and forth. I think you're saying zoomed out. Well, it doesn't matter. Many conservatives, including their leader, Pierre Polyev, were not in attendance. This, to me, sends a bigger message that we should take note of. Should the leader of the opposition not have been there to show that we are a country united in our support toward the EU and Ukraine? Let's consider that the EU represents many countries, and what is the message being shown? Being prime minister is more than yelling insults. Should he not show he's willing to stand by the allies of Canada,

such as Mrs. von der Leyen? What was he afraid of, or does he not believe in her message? I wish I could answer your question, Barbara. I'm not sure why Polyev was not there. Did he have a prior engagement that he couldn't get out of? Was he traveling? I know he was in Ottawa earlier in the day yesterday. And his office, at least the last time I checked, was not answering that question.

Where was he or why wasn't he there? Okay, time for our final letter of the week. And it's going to revert back to what we talked about at the beginning of this program today. The letter comes from Cynthia Johnston. Where is Cynthia? Let me see. I don't know. I'm sure it's in here somewhere, but I can't see it.

But it doesn't matter. Here's her question. I really enjoy your podcast, one of very few that I listen to on a regular basis. The periodic international check-in is a great addition. That's with Janice Stein, right? You have repeatedly mentioned Chantal's hiking trip across Iceland. I may be wrong, but I had thought that she had said that she was going to cross-country ski, not to hike.

Perhaps I'm incorrect, and I'm sure that she will set the record straight when she comes back, which she will. I don't know. You know, you very well may be right. But just for some reason, I had this image of her hiking up and down the hills of Iceland. And isn't cross-country skiing kind of a way of hiking? I tried that one on Cynthia and she said, yes, except you don't go uphill.

That's not the idea. Anyway, Cynthia, like the rest of you, is looking forward to tomorrow when Chantal Hebert arrives back on the scene. And we all look forward to her take. You can be sure that she's been tuned in some fashion to listen to the stories and mainly this China one that have been going on. What's she going to say?

What will she have to say about it? The world awaits. The worldwide reach of the bridge on Friday's Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce Anderson. All right, that's it for this day. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again tomorrow.

Look forward to doing that. And we'll see you in 24 hours.