The Current - Will more drones soon be whizzing past your window?

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

New regulations around drones will soon make it easier for Canadian pilots to take to the skies. We look at how the devices are already used for things like moving organs for transplant between hospitals — and the implications for privacy if more and more flying cameras are buzzing past your yard or balcony.

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I asked him if he killed Pepple. He said yes and I'd be next. Available on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Picture this, it's a dark winter evening. You look out your window and you see a large object hovering above in the night sky. It's not a plane, not a UFO,

it's a drone. This is over my house right now. What is that? I look to my left and I see two big drones. They were propeller driven going very slowly. I saw these drones with my own eyes. Six foot drones. I mean that's that's not some somebody who went to Best Buy. There was panic in parts of the United States last month due to a sharp increase in drone sightings. Many of those sightings near US military bases.

Still not exactly clear what the drones are being used for or who was controlling them but officials said they don't pose a danger. Here in Canada we will likely be seeing a lot more drones flying up above and that is because Transport Canada is changing its regulations, allowing pilots to fly drones further distances and carry heavier loads. This is a promising change for people who are using drones in innovative ways.

People like Dr. Chef Kishavji, who's a thoracic surgeon, chief of innovation at the university health network in Toronto, and Dr. John Palavdich, who is the University of British Columbia's Chair of Rural Health and Medical Director with the Carrier-Sakhani Family Services, a First Nations healthcare organization. They both join us now. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning, Matt. Dr. Khashavji, how are you using drones right now at Toronto General? So So what we've tried to do is when we do an organ transplant, each organ is individually

transported in an airplane of its own. That's very costly and obviously not very good for air pollution and other things. So we're looking at ways to scale transplantation so that you can transport more organs more effectively, more cost effectively and with less pollution. So the idea came about of can we use drones, remotely piloted automated drones to transport organs. And so we developed a box to preserve the organs the way we would at the temperature we would to fly drones, to fly organs with drones, uh, from, from Oregon donor

hospitals to Oregon transplant hospitals. You're doing this already. This has happened already. And I've heard the story before, but tell me about the first successful transplant that was using a drone to transport the organ. So in September of 2021, we did the first in the world, transplant of a, a transport of a

drone, uh, a lung for transplant by drone from Toronto Western to Toronto General Hospital at UHN. And the idea was, even though that that wasn't a very long distance, it's how to fly a drone safely in the city. Most people don't know that in the city, it's how to fly a drone safely in the city. Most people don't know that in the city,

it's difficult to fly drones because of down drafts of the long buildings and so on, but also the issue that there are a lot of radio frequency interference with drones and the GPS system. So we designed a drone with United Therapeutics that would be able to function with the radio frequency interference, better GPS and safety.

So that if the drone engine failed, it would cut all the engines and a ballistic parachute would fire, which would bring the organ down to earth safely. You were standing on the roof of the hospital waiting for the lungs to arrive? Yeah, that was pretty stressful. I was going to say that's kind of nerve, it's not like waiting for a package from Amazon or something like that. No, no.

And the thing is it was like, you wouldn't believe the sigh of relief I had when I saw the drone come over the tall buildings and towards us at the, on the roof of Toronto General Hospital. Because like this is a world first and it is difficult to do, but I think it will open the door to us being able to safely transport organs this way. So we're working with a number of authorities,

Pearson Airport and everything. We now have a drone port at Pearson Airport. And with the city of Toronto, we've created a drone corridor from, from YYZ to TGH so that when we're in that corridor, other planes know it and we get a takeoff and landing slot just like a plane so that we can transport organs into the hospital and, and through commercial airspace.

That's the next big hurdle for us. I want to bring Dr. Polovic into this conversation, but just the last point on that is that's a better option than, I mean driving would be a nightmare because traffic in Toronto is a nightmare, but that would be a better option than using for example a helicopter? Yes, and a much less expensive option and a much better, less polluting option. But the thing is, you know, this is going to develop along with, as drone technology evolves.

Like, can you imagine just saying, you know, calling somebody in LA or in Vancouver and saying, okay, put the lung in the drone, I'm sending the drone and send it back to me. You know, in that way, you don't send a lear jet clear across the continent to pick up one lung. That sounds like science fiction to a lot of people. We'll come to that in a moment.

Dr. Pelović, how have you been using drones to provide healthcare? Yes, good morning. So the context of which we've been using drones in North Central BC is kind of at the polar opposite of what you just heard. Our context is really in the rural and remote context. So away from tall buildings in Canada's vast geography that which is sparsely

populated, many indigenous communities, many rural communities, many remote communities find themselves very disadvantaged to accessing healthcare resources. So we partnered with the Stellatin First Nation as well as a village of Fraser Lake in north central BC about a couple hours to the west of Prince George which is kind of in the in the in the belly button of our province and really tried to look at how drone technology might positively influence the medical supply chain. And so this was a project that was the genesis of which was trying to enhance access to medical supplies during the pandemic, in which many communities found themselves locked down. And so we flew over 1200 flights between these two communities, trying to understand,

most importantly, what needed to be considered on the ground in a remote First Nations community, but also a rural community. What kind of personal health resources, what kind of technology and so forth was needed. And really what we're trying to do is understand how we can look at moving medical supplies, pharmaceuticals. If somebody needs a piece of equipment for something at home like dialysis, or does somebody need medication?

Does somebody need life-saving blood products? We have a habit in our country of moving patients to resources as opposed to moving resources to patients. Oh, that's really interesting. And really what we're trying to do is reverse that trend and bring healthcare resources and augment that through drone technology to communities that, again, are most disadvantaged.

How do you think that will be assisted with these new drone regulations that are coming from Transport Canada? And we don't know what's going to be in them, but one of the things is allowing drones to be flown further. Yes, so flying further is one thing. There was also another earlier regulation which required people to have their eyes on a drone

as it traveled from A to B and back to A again. And so during our first phase of our project here in British Columbia, we were able to successfully acquire a certificate for what they call beyond visual line of sight. So that is when the drone took off from one port and flew to the other, it didn't have to be followed mid-flight.

As all your listeners will appreciate, intuitively, the communities that are going to benefit the most, certainly in a rural and remote context, are those that are furthest away from healthcare resources. How were you doing that then? If you had to have eyes on the drone during those flights to remote communities, how were you doing that? Well, so we had to put somebody halfway between Stellatin and Fraser Lake during the first phase. But as we go further, working with Transport Canada as a partner, it became very

clear that we can't put people on top of mountaintops across this massive nation of ours to watch drones go by as they go to their destination. And so we've been able to, again, acquire a certificate for beyond visual line of sight. I believe the new regulations, we will partner further with Transport Canada to, again, to push what has historically been a rather rigid framework around what is possible with respect to flying drones and go further afield, go hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to communities that are really remote and deliver these medical supplies.

That's what I'm excited about. I think there's massive opportunity here. Chef, what do you see there? I mean, you talked about this idea of you don't have to fly a Learjet. If you have regulations that don't require line of sight, what is the potential there? I think the potential is huge and the point that was brought up was how big our country is. And there are parts of Canada that are really

third world in their access to medicine and we can help that. And as technology with remote patient meetings and drone delivery of medicines and technology continues to develop, we can look after those people better. So I think that's very important work that's being done in BC and so on. So beyond visual line of sight does mean we could send a drone to Calgary to pick up an organ and bring it back or move it all over the country and so on. So as we develop the science and technology of organ preservation, then we can say, well, you know, we can have a drone bring the organ in, in the middle of the night, fine, and transplant it in the morning kind of thing. So I think it really has the ability

to scale transplantation. And the other important thing is every innovation can't continue to drive costs up. When you think about flying a Learjet across this continent and back to, to transport one organ, you're talking about a $40,000 cost, right? With a drone, it would be, you know, a few

dollars literally. So for each organ. And so I think that those are the kinds of things. And, and I think the really important thing is we, we and Dr. Prowlidge has a very important use case. We're saving lives doing it. So it, it behooves everybody, Transport Canada, the

airport authorities, you know, NAV Canada and so on, to say this is an important use case and we need to push the boundaries. So I think this is a big step. And that's possible to fly a drone that far, that fast enough. I mean, again, with organ transplant, you and I have talked about this before.

I mean, time is, time is everything. Yeah. So, so we have developed a technique knowing that you can preserve lungs at 10 degrees and we've put little packs in these coolers that keep it at 10 degrees. So you can preserve a lung for 24 hours now. That means we could pick up a lung anywhere in the world.

Now, drones that fly clear across the world are gasoline powered still right now. So the electric and the hydrogen powered ones are the ones we're working on to make them go further. John, what difference, you talked about this idea that we have a society wide, a sense that you bring the patient to the care rather than bring the care to the patient. What difference, if the promise that we're talking about is realized, what difference will this make in the lives of patients? So healthcare resources can continue to be again sparsely accessed by many in rural Canada. And if you could, for example, if you're in downtown Toronto and you walk two blocks, you're going to bump into probably more than one pharmacy.

If you're in a community that's bereft of access to pharmaceuticals services, you find yourself having to drive hundreds of kilometers, hours, often certainly during a Canadian winter down very dangerous roads. If you're in a First Nations community, down for service roads. Bringing medicine, for example, to communities where they don't have local access to them would be transformative. We find ourselves, it wasn't so long ago, I was in a remote community, I had a very sick patient, I had two young UBC residents with me, and the patient needed to be intubated. And I had to help the residents understand that we couldn't intubate the patient because

we didn't have enough medicine. And we didn't have enough medicine because it takes hours and hours and hours for transport to come to retrieve the patient. And so we could have intubated the patient, but I would have quickly run out of medicine and it would have been a very dangerous situation. And so helping learners understand that in these remote resource poor areas, that is from a medical supply standpoint, you have to make decisions about what you're going to use and what you're not going to use. That's a very different construct than if you find yourself in a metropolitan area where clinicians work

every day and never run out of medical resources. And so I see being able to treat acute illness in a much better way, bringing blood products, life-saving blood products to patients in communities that don't have access to just blood and bringing medical supplies, medicines themselves, as well as different technologies to communities. It could be very transformative. When you think about the inequities in the healthcare system, we could do a lot to

minimize, to eliminate those inequities. This is so interesting. I have to let you both go, but Jeff, you are there in addition to being a thoracic surgeon, you're chief of innovation. How much of your time is spent thinking about, about this future? All of my time, kind of.

You know, I think we need to think about better ways to do what we do. And, and you know, as things have developed, like CRISPR gene editing and drones and so on, we just completely can transform the way we practice medicine today. This is fascinating. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. Dr. Polovich, thank you very much.

Good morning. Dr. Shafik Ashavji is a thoracic surgeon and chief of innovation at the University Health Network in Toronto. Dr. John Polovich is the University of British Columbia's Chair of Rural Health and the Medical Director with the Carrier-Sacan Academy Family Services. That's a First Nations health provider. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Along with the promise of drones, there are questions about other ways this technology might be used from privacy concerns to the weaponization of drones. Kristin Thomason is an associate professor, chair of law, robotics, but other ways this technology might be used, from privacy concerns to the weaponization of drones. Kristin Thomason is an associate professor,

chair of law, robotics, and society at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. Kristin, good morning to you. Good morning. We are expecting these new drone regulations from Transport Canada at some point in time. As you understand it, what do you think is going to change? Well, as was mentioned in the earlier conversation,

I think one of the most significant changes is opening up more opportunity for this beyond visual line of sight operations. So that means that you can fly drones without having to be able to keep an eye on them at all times. And that does allow for these kinds of incredible innovations that you were just talking about. Transport Canada has, Canada as a country has does allow for these kinds of incredible innovations that you were just talking about.

Transpond Canada has, Canada as a country has really always been sort of on the forefront in terms of the drone industry, drone regulation, and this would continue that trajectory. But it also, of course, opens up potentially a wide range of other uses of drones beyond just in the medical sphere. I mean, for people who aren't in the drone universe, if I can put it that way, how big of a deal is this? I mean, where are we going to see, now you occasionally, we can talk about this in a moment,

but occasionally you will see a drone buzz above you, or you'll see it in various circumstances, policing, for example, but are we going to see many more drones in the skies above us? I mean, anecdotally, I don't think it would be overnight that we would suddenly see a lot more drones in airspace. It does mean that there would be more opportunity, especially, I suspect, especially commercially. And that is where I could imagine or envision that in the coming future we might start to see more drones as if commercial organizations are able to operate more widely. Google, Amazon, Facebook, like all the big tech Silicon Valley companies have been

proposing to use drones for delivery, Amazon in particular for last mile delivery. So if we do see the industry and the industry is guided by regulation, so really if we see Transport Canada regulating in that direction, that's where we're going to see some pretty significant social change. In terms of, you mentioned law enforcement using drones, it's always been interesting to me when law enforcement

agencies across Canada started to develop drone programs. There was a lot of, there was some pushback and in response to that, there was always an explanation of like, oh, we'll only use it for these limited occurrences. You see them everywhere now. You see them in front of you. If there's a traffic incident, a collision or what have you, often there's a drone that's deployed.

And it's something that we, at least in like the legal and law and technology field, would refer to as mission creep. So once you have the technology and once you have the legal and law and technology field, would refer to as mission creep. So once you have the technology and once you have the regulatory permission, let's say, to do something, even if there's an intention initially to maintain some limits, usually what you see is that intention wears off and drones start being used in much wider ranges of circumstances. We just saw the situation in Los Angeles where a civilian drone hit one of the Canadian super

scooper bomber planes, water bomber planes. They're fighting these fires and the plane was out of commission for a couple of days at a critical point because some person was flying a drone in a space where they weren't supposed to be flying the drone. If there are more drones up in the skies, how do you make sure that those sorts of things don't happen? That's the kind of thing Transport Canada I I think, has been grappling with for a while. We've actually seen situations like that.

I mean, it's a horrible situation. And we've seen situations like this where drones are interfering with commercial aviation or, in that case, like rescue aviation and shutting down. Like, I mean, Heathrow years ago was shut down because of some drone spottings, which I think later turned out to be a plastic bag floating in the air or something. But just to the point even that when you suspect that there's a drone that increases the risk and danger. And yeah, I mean, I think that is a real consideration. I think, so the drone regulations that we have now and what I imagine we're going to continue to see are focused very much on airspace

safety. And that is, I mean, that makes sense to me because that's Transport Canada's sort of mission raison d'etre when it comes to airspace is to keep, keep us on the ground safe and keep people who are flying through airspace safe, IE physically safe from, you know, collisions and things. Um, the, one of the big challenges with the

regulations is that we don't have really a clear-cut way that our laws address the social impacts of drones. So the example that you mentioned would be more in the scope of what Transport Canada has been thinking about, and there are attempts at limiting how drones get into commercial aviation airspace. It's not perfect, but there has been a lot of effort to work on that. And we haven't seen high profile stories like that in Canada to the same extent.

But the social side of drones, I think, is something that we're really not focused enough on in Canada. Let me ask you about that. And I want to play something for you. Our colleagues at CBC in Halifax spoke with a group of neighbours who were being harassed by somebody who was flying a drone over their property most And I want to play something for you. Our colleagues at CBC in Halifax spoke with a group of neighbors who are being harassed by somebody who is flying a drone

over their property most nights. Have a listen to this. It is disturbing and it needs to be stopped. And I want to be able to enjoy my life peacefully and happily as possible. And, you know, our neighbors, we have a great community here. And we all want the same thing. So you wrote about this, this is one element of privacy

where you might be sitting in your backyard, you look up, there's a drone there. What is that drone doing? And then it flies away. And you have no idea who's taking the picture. Do we have rights when it comes to privacy and trespassing when drones are involved? Oh, it's complicated.

And this is something that I think has always existed. We've always had this really tenuous grasp on privacy, especially when we're outdoors and in public spaces. And drones just sort of, you know, move right into that vacuum in the law and regulatory space. So, you know, when you're on your property, there are some property-based rights, but I mean, the biggest challenge is always going to be you don't know who's flying it. So,

unless you happen to be in a situation where you do, for some reason, know who's operating the drone, even if you have a right, how do you vindicate it? And again, there are being these stories in the backyard and people in their buildings, suddenly the drone is flying outside of their condo. Well, and the way that we expect privacy isn't just, you know, that there's rules that say you can't intrude on my privacy. There's, you know, we have infrastructural ways that we protect our privacy. Like, if you have a balcony that's up high, you expect that people on the sidewalk

aren't looking at you when you go out onto it. And so you have certain expectations, and those expectations can now be pretty easily undermined because of the capacities of drone technology, which are the same capacities that make it so incredible for things like lung transplants, right? So it's, you know, it's double-edged, I guess. And the challenge is, especially when you're out in public, like if you're at a park or say you're on a

beach and a drone's flying over you, this has happened a lot. And you're worried the drone is filming you, your family, your friends, whatever the case might be. There's not really clear, there are some laws that maybe come into play, but depending on the circumstances, it's not really clear what rights you have, what rights the drone operator has.

Um, you know, maybe they understand what they're allowed to do from the Transport Canada regulatory side of things. But what Transport Canada regulatory side of things, but what about the interpersonal side of things? That hasn't, that's something that many of us have been calling for in Canada and we haven't really seen the same rush to deal with as we have integrating drones into airspace.

The other element, and we're out of time, but let me just ask you this very briefly. The other element is kind of a philosophical question that people are trying to wrap their heads around, because there is a benefit to having, you know, companies deliver things by drone, there are fewer cars on the road, if they are electric rather than gas powered, perhaps less pollution or what have you, but the sky is a public place in many ways. And so how is that challenged by things from corporations, from hospitals, from individuals flying in that public space?

Yeah. I mean, there's a real risk of commercializing public space. When commercial aircraft first became something that was possible at commercial aviation. Something kind of similar happened culturally and socially where there was this concern of the ways in which airplanes were going to impact people's enjoyment of being outdoors and quiet and etc. We have this expectation of what the airspace is like or what space when we look up is like and that's being shifted. And of course, society does adapt to some technological change, but usually law has to play

a really important role in there as well. And with drones, I think it is even more poignant because the impact on airspace is like right down where we're walking around or is just above our houses, the noise is more audible. You know, the concern about who's operating something and what kind of data they're collecting is much more real than it is with commercial aviation because the laws of physics have served to protect us from some of this for a

long time. So philosophically, I think this is something where, you know, people should be able to have an input and a voice into what is happening with public spaces. Across the board, we're seeing sort of a loss or an erosion of that public or sharedness. And I think when it comes to aerospace, drones are a real game changer potentially. This is so interesting. Kristin, thank you very much for this.

Thank you for having me on. Kristin, thank you very much for this. Thank you for having me on. Kristin Thomason is an associate professor and chair of law, robotics and society at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. She was in our studio in Windsor. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.