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The Current Transcript for February 15, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Prologue

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BILL GATES: If anything kills over 10-million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly-infectious virus rather than a war.

MATT GALLOWAY: There are very few people who could say, I told you so when it comes to the global crisis we're living through now. Bill Gates is one of them. In 2015, tech giant said we weren't ready for the next pandemic. Now, he's spending billions of dollars to fight COVID-19 around the world. This morning, in his only Canadian broadcast interview, Bill Gates talks about vaccines and innovation, the role that philanthropy can play in public health, and why he's using this moment to urge action on another existential threat, the climate crisis. Also, this morning, what have we learned so far to protect us from that next pandemic? Not enough, says a Canadian member of an international panel looking at the global response to COVID. We'll hear from her in 40 minutes. And later,.

WOMAN: Women are clearly expressing a desire to have to delay childbearing right now. And as more time passes, I think the fuller effects are still going to unfold, and that's going to be a decline in fertility.

MATT GALLOWAY: Months ago, you might have thought these locked down times would lead to a baby boom, just the opposite, in fact. In an hour, why researchers are already seeing a drop in global birth rates as the uncertainty of this moment continues. We start, though, with lessons on this pandemic and pandemics to come from the fourth richest man in the world. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is "The Current".

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Bill Gates on climate change, the pandemic, and tackling big world problems, part one:

Guest: Bill Gates

MATT GALLOWAY: Bill Gates changed the world with a vision of a personal computer on every desk in every home. He's the co-chair of one of the largest charitable organizations in the world. And through it, he's donated one-point-seven-five-billion dollars to the fight against COVID-19. But his new book tackles another complex, multilayered, wicked problem facing this planet. It's called "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Bill Gates, hello.

BILL GATES: Hi.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thanks for being here.

BILL GATES: Yeah. It should be fun!

MATT GALLOWAY: We are, I don't need to tell you this, in the midst of this global health emergency right now. Explain to me why now is the time to put out a book on climate change and fighting climate change?

BILL GATES: Yeah, I actually wrote the book in 2019. But then, as the pandemic was coming along in early [chuckling] 2020, that did not seem like a good time because our foundation, with our expertise in vaccines and infectious disease, was, you know, totally focussed on helping to end the pandemic. You know, that's still a super serious problem. But I do think talking now about what long-term challenge we ought to keep in mind as we put out all these recovery funds, it's a great time to look at a climate. You know, the pandemic reminds people we count on government to look ahead to avoid terrible things happening. And amazingly, young people are more interested in climate than ever, no matter what their political affiliation is. Certainly, in Canada, the U.S., Europe, we see a lot of energy around this. And, of course, we've got this goal to get to zero by 2050. And so my book is about what kind of plan would make that come true.

MATT GALLOWAY: These are really big problems. I mean, whether it's tackling a pandemic or whether it's tackling climate change, and the scale of them can be almost paralyzing and overwhelming. People don't do things because of how big they are. What are the strategies that you employ to approach thinking about solving big problems like that?

BILL GATES: Well, I had my experience at Microsoft in terms of finding the best engineers [chuckling] and, you know, backing them on long-term software dreams. And constantly, you know, trying to make sure we were being realistic about the challenges. Likewise, at the foundation, we've done a lot of new vaccines and had great success in reducing childhood death. The pandemic, you know, only needs a few tools. You know, better diagnostics, better drugs and the vaccine. I'd say it's much easier to [slight chuckle] solve than climate change because climate change just touches so much of the the physical economy. But it is about, you know, experts, in this case, engineers, scientists, modellers, you know, coming together around a plan and really educating the public that in some cases there are investments that... that need to be made now.

MATT GALLOWAY: You describe the problem of climate change with two numbers, 51-billion and zero. Explain the importance of those two numbers?

BILL GATES: Yeah, 51-billion is the tons of [slight chuckle] CO2 equivalents that we're putting into the atmosphere every year. And that, you know, different countries have different parts of that. Different areas like manufacturing, electricity, transport, agriculture are all part of that. Zero is where you have to get to in order that the temperature stops rising with all the negative effects that causes. And so it's very daunting. You know, if it was only a 30 per cent reduction or something like that, it would be dramatically easier.

MATT GALLOWAY: You make the point, and I think this is a point that some climate activists might be upset by, which is that we shouldn't waste time kind of nibbling around the edges and trimming emissions by 20,30. Instead, we got to swing for the fences. We have to aim for zero by 2050. Why is that the goal?

BILL GATES: Well, it's very important to have short-term goals, for example, getting more electric cars out or using more solar and wind. You know, we have to go full-speed on those things [chuckling] even to get those two sectors, which are amongst the easiest of all the types of missions to get those to zero. But if we only focus on the easy parts, if we don't work on steel and cement and beef, then we're going to find ourselves at 2050 without those solutions. And so we need to look at those hard areas and actually look at how expensive making green steel is or green cement and go get the innovators, whether it's through basic R&D spending by governments or high-risk start-up companies or, you know, the R&D spending of some of the larger companies. We need to draw all of that innovation power in and actually accelerate it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Can I ask you about cement? You say there's five questions that you have that that every climate conversation needs to have, and one of them is, what is your plan for cement? Why is cement such a big deal?

BILL GATES: When you make cement, you release CO2 in two ways. One is that to get the heat, to take the limestone and cause the calcium to break out from the CO2, that heat, when you're... you're creating CO2s you're burning the hydrocarbon. And then that that chemical reaction of the limestone breaking down also puts out CO2. And so cement would be more than twice as expensive if you insisted it be done without emissions. And so it's amongst the most difficult things, and the scale of the amount of cement we make is, you know, really unbelievable. In fact, some people wouldn't even think of it because we keep using the word, you know, energy. And, of course, cement isn't really energy.

MATT GALLOWAY: So is it possible to tackle that? I mean, without stopping building, which we're not going to do, can you make green cement? Is it... is it possible to actually do something like that?

BILL GATES: Yes, absolutely. There's a Canadian company, CarbonCure, which has a way that's being deployed, making a meaningful reduction. It starts out modestly at about 10 per cent. And they have a plan where they hope to get over 30 per cent. So if you take that idea, and ideas from other companies, yes, we... we can drive that down. We don't want cement to be super expensive because in developing countries, you know, they still haven't built basic shelter for all of their people. So even though the... The rich countries could use less, if you take the planet as a whole, it's only just [chuckling] that we do build houses for billions who don't have them. And so we need... we need innovation.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned Canada, and you say in the book that government policies matter, that there are a lot of different actors in this, but government policies really do matter. Successive governments in this country have set all sorts of emission targets over the course of years, and we haven't met a single one. So what happens if we boot the 2050 one, too?

BILL GATES: Well, then, if.. if... if countries are not doing their part, then other countries will also feel like, hey, why should we make sacrifices for this? You know, Canada and the U.S. are similar and that historically we have had a lot of emissions and we're well-off countries. So all the other countries look to us, both the U.S. and Canada make a lot of money, have a part of their economy that's going to have to transition. The hydrocarbons are, you know, job-creating assets. And so, how you manage that transition? Which of those things can be turned into green approaches? What new industries you want to get involved with? It's a tough problem. But unless the U.S. and Canada do their part, the rest of the world won't. And then we'll have all these natural ecosystems disappearing.

MATT GALLOWAY: What more would you like to see from Canada?

BILL GATES: Well, the first thing is to increase your research and development budget. You know, those are the kind of open-science ideas. And in 2015, in the Paris Agreement, I got together with leaders, [chuckling]including Prime Minister Trudeau at the time. Commitments were made about R&D increases, and some increases came through. Also, you want to have policies that encourage the start-up companies, help them, you know, share some of the risk with them. And then you want policies like tax credits that help encourage buying of these green products, even when their price is somewhat higher. And through those things, we... that's how we can drive this ecosystem. You know, it's going to be hard. Anyone who thinks this is easy is missing the scope of what we have to change.

MATT GALLOWAY: You mentioned the idea of a just transition, which is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot and can strike people in different ways. For people who have a livelihood that's based in the resource sector, they will say that the just transition isn't just at all, that it's abrupt, and it's going to leave them on the side of the road because their livelihoods are wrapped up in things like oil and gas. What do you say to those people?

BILL GATES: Well, 30 years, you know, is not overnight. And they're making a very fair point, particularly, you know, there's a region of the country [chuckling] that is particularly involved in hydrocarbons, you know what... what new industries are going to go there? There are things like green hydrogen, you know, that has to be piped and manufactured, you know.... you know, you have a car industry or, you know, the manufacturers with plants in Canada going to make the transition for electric cars. You know what's interesting? GM, who has plants in Canada, made this rather bold decision to only sell electric cars in 2035. And so, you know, bringing in those workers and talking about what those new opportunities are and are they going to be prepared for them? That's got to be part of the dialogue here.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's also an individual responsibility that you talk about. And, I mean, in the book, you admit you're a rich guy, you have a private jet, you have a huge house, with a big carbon footprint that's all wrapped up in that. If it's not easy for you to achieve this and reduce emissions, what does that say about the rest of us?

BILL GATES: Well, it's, actually for me, I'm spending a little over seven-million a year to more than offset my emissions. And that was very educational that [chuckling], you know, I was the first one to go to the airport and say, hey, I've got to get aviation biofuel, and, you know, it... it... the cost to do that is way too high. I'm paying over 400 dollars a ton. And, of course, I can brute force it. But we need to bring that cost way, way down, what I call the overall green premium. And that's where innovation comes in because if we can get it down by 95 per cent, then it is affordable, and the world... the world can get to zero. But without innovation, it's going to be impossible. Now, everyone can, you know, use a little bit less, but it's when they're contributing to the policies that get us to zero. I think that's their greatest impact.

MATT GALLOWAY: You are one of the leading voices who've been warning about the risks of climate change. And you've also, you know, been out in front in warning about the possibility of a pandemic in that TED Talk from 2015. What's it like being the guy who sees these major threats kind of around the corner, and is the voice of doom saying this is coming and you need to act now?

BILL GATES: Well, hopefully, it's constructive if I can take both the... my experience at Microsoft and the resources that I have from that and apply them to some of these tough problems that the marketplace won't go after, you know, like vaccines for children in Africa. You know, that's been a super successful effort that our foundation has given tens of billions to that. Here with climate, you know, [chuckling] reading all the books and meeting with the experts, you know, I... that's what I enjoy. And so the fact that activists have got this on the political agenda, you know, I congratulate them. I... I wouldn't know how to do that. What I do know how to do is say, OK, given that, you know, politicians are listening, what exactly are the steps? What would a real plan look like so that 10 years from now, all these idealistic people are not saying, hey, you know, this... this really isn't going to come together. And, you know, missing goal after goal.

MATT GALLOWAY: We're almost a year into this pandemic. And I think about a quotation from Dr. Mike Ryan at the World Health Organization. He made it about a year ago, and he was talking about how to tackle a pandemic. He said you have to be fast. You have to have no regrets. The virus will always get you if you don't move quickly. What was the cost of us not taking that advice, do you think?

BILL GATES: Well, there... there were mistakes made when we didn't get ready before the pandemic hit. And my 2015 talk was about the infrastructure we needed in place and even practising what I called germ games, which are like war games, but you're simulating the disease. It would have been obvious that you have to deploy the commercial diagnostic sector as fast as possible, which the U.S. Bungled that. And so you during that period of exponential growth, any mistake, you know, means the difference between what happened in Australia and what happened in the U.S. So, you know, it's tragic. We'll be doing postmortems and, you know, we have to get this pandemic done, and we have to invest so that the next time a pandemic comes, we'll get on top of it, and the number of cases can be kept very small.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do you hope we've learned from this pandemic that would help us when the next one comes? Because to your point, it's not an if it's a when?

BILL GATES: Yeah. Well, I have to say infectious disease, because the rich countries had made so much progress, when we talk about global health, really, [chuckling] we're talking about malaria and TB and diseases that are mostly in the developing countries. Now that there's this attention to, wow, we have to be ready for this, the pace of innovation like mRNA vaccines or there's a way of doing diagnostics that will be, you know, 10 times more scalable than anything done before. The amount of innovation, which countries, because they've lost trillions, [slight chuckle] are now willing to fund the small number of things needed. We're going to make great progress in global health, and that will help us not just be ready for the next pandemic. It'll help us with polio eradication, malaria, measles, all that area that... that causes so many deaths, mostly in poor countries.

MATT GALLOWAY: How do you wrap your head around the velocity of innovation in this moment? I mean, a year ago, people were saying, if we get a vaccine for this, this will be years down the line. We have multiple vaccines now, and there are hundreds that are in development. How do you... how do you process that?

BILL GATES: Well, our foundation had been investing in mRNA vaccines, along with DARPA, which is part of the U.S. government for over a decade. And when the pandemic hit, no such vaccine had been made. But so we were hopeful that it would work. Dr. Fauci and I would often say the vaccine is going to take 18 months because we didn't want to create false hope. The fact it was done in 12 months is both a combination of amazingly good work by Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna and a bit of luck because mRNA up until that point, hadn't... the right way to make it stimulate the immune system hadn't... hadn't been found. And so, you know, that's amazing. We have three other vaccines, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Novavax, that should be approved in the first and second quarter. And so, yes, these... these companies, they got a lot of money from the U.S. Government and a thing called SEPI that our foundation helped create. And so that money, and these companies, now we can see the end. You know, we may have to make a... a.... a little bit of a new vaccine for the variants, but that's... that's why this will come to an end.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's going to come to an end for some people sooner rather than others. And you have been a supporter of COVAX, the program that is meant in large part to help low and middle-income countries access doses of the vaccines. Canada is planning to take from that pool. Canada has invested in COVAX, hundreds of millions of dollars, but is planning to take vaccines from that pool. What do you think of that?

BILL GATES: I think it's predictable that when there's a shortage of medical intervention like this, that the rich countries who funded the R&D and trials will be early in line. The only way to really deal with that is to make sure we get big vaccine factories in India going in parallel. The U.S. Is going to keep the U.S. Vaccines by and large. And, you know, likewise, Europe, you know, has responded with a little bit of export restriction when, you know, the AstraZeneca forecasts went down. Fortunately for the world, the biggest vaccine factories are in India. [chuckling] You know, Serum sells five times as many vaccines as... as Pfizer does. They just happened to make two dollar vaccines. And so we've done something novel, which is to have the vaccines put into those Indian factories. And I call those second-source deals. And right now, they're making AstraZeneca. But fairly soon, they'll also be making Johnson and Johnson and Novavax. So we just need a lot more capacity so that these bidding wars don't determine where the vaccines go.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is that vaccine nationalism going to prevent or going to delay those low and middle-income countries from getting the vaccine, do you think?

BILL GATES: Absolutely. The best case is that the developing countries are about six months behind in terms of the... when they reach a certain level of coverage. And the worst cases, about 18 months. And, you know, we're going through that right now, getting the second sources up. But, you know, whenever it comes to health commodities, you know, only governments and philanthropy can stem the normal market outcome, which is, you know, whoever can pay the most is in the front of the line.

MATT GALLOWAY: We have to pause here for the news. But when we come back, more of my conversation with Bill Gates. You'll hear his thoughts on how to speed up vaccine distribution. We'll talk about those wild conspiracy theories. You may have heard about him. And we'll talk about some of the ethics around philanthropy and philanthropists like Bill Gates having such a large role in global public health. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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Bill Gates on climate change, the pandemic, and tackling big world problems, part two; why we need early warning systems for future pandemics

Guests: Bill Gates, Joanne Liu

MATT GALLOWAY: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current".

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MATT GALLOWAY: Still to come, when this pandemic started, many people wondered if we would see a COVID baby boom. I mean, we're stuck at home, nothing else to do. As it turns out, though, this past year is looking more like a baby bust. We'll talk about dropping birth rates in half-an-hour. But first, more of my conversation with Bill Gates.

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MATT GALLOWAY: We've been speaking this morning with the philanthropist and tech giant Bill Gates, you can check out the full interview on our website. This is a conversation about the big global problems he's working on, including climate change and COVID-19. And when we left off, we were talking about the scramble for vaccines that could leave poor countries behind. Here's the rest of my conversation with Bill Gates.

MATT GALLOWAY: There's a push to take the market outcome out of that and say that the vaccine companies need to turn over the IP so that they, yes, they make less profit. But you could put it, you know, a nail through the coffin of... Of... of this pandemic. Is that something that you support?

BILL GATES: If it would create one additional vaccine, then I might support it. But, in fact, making vaccines is not about the... the IP here. It's about these factories being exactly right and passing strict regulatory review. And so, no, this is not somebody... something where somebody at home can just make vaccines. There are very few high-quality vaccine factories in the world. And so we've gone through all of them to say, OK, how do you get the Indian regulator? How do you get this thing going as quickly as possible? And IP is not the issue. All the... when the vaccines are made in India, there's no royalty or payment [chuckling] flowing back to the vaccine inventor. That's, you know, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Novavax, it's free. So all we're paying through COVAX with take Canadian and other supporters. We're just paying the marginal cost of manufacture.

MATT GALLOWAY: Your foundation contributed at least one-point-seven-five dollars billion in response to the pandemic. How do you determine in the work that you do in philanthropy, how do you determine where to spend money?

BILL GATES: Well, our biggest thing, the majority of our foundation's work is global health. We do a lot in agriculture, which connects to climate change. We do other areas, including innovation in education. But health is the biggest thing. And in health, it's pretty simple. You go look at the deaths. You know, what do children die of? It's malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea. What do adults die of? That's TB and HIV. And, you know, magically, we can have new vaccines, you know, even for all those diseases and really make health more equitable that your chance of dying, you know, which is today 100 times greater in Africa, dying by the age of five. We can, over time, have health justice with these new innovations.

MATT GALLOWAY: You have extraordinary power in that. I mean, your foundation contributes 12 per cent of the WHO's budget. That's more than many nations. You can move quickly. You don't need a number... to go through a number of the steps that perhaps other layers of government might or what have you. Do you think it's... it's right that a private organization has that much influence over global health?

BILL GATES: Well, if... if you care about the diseases of the poor country, then what we've done, you'd probably support. When we get going in the year 2000, 10-million children die under the age of five. And today, that's less than five million a year. And it... it's not us alone. We've worked with many governments to create a thing called Gavi that buys vaccines [chuckling] for these poor countries. So it's a field that... that has had a lot of impact. You know, I guess I could influence the boat market by buying boats or something. [chuckling] I've chosen measles and malaria and diarrhea and pneumonia. I wish there were more people involved in this, philanthropists and governments, you know, we save lives for less than a thousand dollars per life saved. And, you know, it's... it's tragic that this was ignored for so long. You know, when I first gave 30 million from malaria, I became the biggest malaria funder. That's a disease that, at the time, was killing over a million children a year. So, you know, pure market-based systems don't deal with the health needs of the poorest. And that's, you know, why giving the money back, you know, is... is something that, you know, it's great that... that I'm able to do that.

MATT GALLOWAY: I'm sure you've... you've read about this idea of the "Bill Chill", which is that some academics and some organizations are reluctant to criticize your work, they might be in the same field because they're worried about funding and they're worried about funding concerns. Do you... in the power that you have, how do you ensure that you're not stifling other perspectives?

BILL GATES: Well, any idea that somebody has on how we can do better [chuckling] on polio or malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, the more critics we have, the better. If you have ideas about that... the main thing is people don't care about that stuff! They don't know about it! I wish there were 10 times as many experts saying you should have done this and you should have done that because, hey, we're just trying to... to... to have people live healthy lives. And, yes, we make mistakes. Now, we have a very smart group. We've done a lot of things right. But, you know, the main problem in global health is that people just don't pay attention. They don't care.

MATT GALLOWAY: Who tells you no? I mean, as somebody who has a lot of power in that field, who is it that you trust to... to... to push you back a little bit?

BILL GATES: Well, I'm... don't think of me making all these decisions [chuckling]. I have... it's just like at Microsoft. I didn't do everything at Microsoft. [laughing] We have an amazing malaria team. And, you know, they're looking at drugs and vaccines and bed nets and, you know, ways of reducing mosquito populations. And it's kind of amazing. And whenever I meet with them, you know, I wish I could give them even more money so they could go even faster with what they're doing. But they're the ones who are setting those strategies, going out to all the universities and the experts. And, you know, the malaria field, sadly, is a very small field that you can get everyone together in a single, you know, room and talk about, OK, what looks promising and what doesn't?

MATT GALLOWAY: There are people who believe crazy things about you. I mean, there are these wild conspiracy theories that you created COVID in a lab, that the vaccine is going to give people some sort of chip, and you're nodding as I'm saying this. How do you... how do you wrap your head around those theories?

BILL GATES: Yes, there's a lot... there's like millions of messages saying those things. You know, they mention me, a lot of them mentioned Dr. Fauci. I, you know, I hope that we can make the truth more interesting than the conspiracy theory. I mean, the main way it becomes real is if it makes people not wear masks or not be, you know, open-minded about taking the vaccine, you know, and that can not only protect them but people who they might transmit the disease to. And so it's been, you know, wild. Now, the pandemic has people reaching for simple solutions to explain, OK, why did this happen? And isn't there some evil person behind the curtain there? I hope we're creative about whether it's in the mainstream media or digital media, how we get the truth to be more people, more aware of it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Does it require some sort of regulation? If you think of what social media has done in terms of, you know, pouring jet fuel onto that fire, does it require some sort of regulation to ensure that those things don't spread as quickly as they do?

BILL GATES: Well, in the most extreme case, we have something like, you know, Holocaust denial or saying, you know, that the pandemic is not real. You can probably define some things that you just shouldn't spread around because they're, you know, so false and kind of titillating. But as you get into the mainstream, where, you know, it's less black and white. I think you're going to let the information flow, but you're going to have true information in there and... and commentary that hopefully, you'll figure out how to get people to also pay attention to that. I mean, in many cases, like in polio, where there were rumours about the vaccine being bad. In Nigeria, we went to the religious leaders, and they set the example by vaccinating their children, and that helped get rid of this notion that there was something bad about it. So figuring out who people trust, just saying to them that you're wrong, wrong, wrong [chuckling] if you're not someone they... they're disposed to listen to, that alone doesn't seem to work.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just before I let you go, we just have a couple of quick things that I wanted to ask you. One is just about this year. We've all been through a lot. And, I mean, I know you've been through a lot personally, and your father died in the fall. And we've all suffered some degree of loss. What have you learned in this... in this really unusual year?

BILL GATES: Well, I've enjoyed... enjoyed one thing, ironically, which is that our kids have been [chuckling] at home more than they would have been, instead of being at college or high school. They've been around the house. You know, this idea that maybe we don't need to travel quite as much, you know, and that we can, you know, stay at home more and use the new tools. It's interesting that, you know, even I've been surprised by how well the office-type work that our foundation does has continued without anyone going near our office buildings for ten months now. And, you know, it is a reflective time. You know, you've got the tragedy not only of the deaths, but also the educational deficits we're creating. And, you know, the inequity here has been extreme. You know, if you don't have an Internet connection, you've got a small house, the inner-city schools are not doing online as well as the suburban or private schools. The racial difference in this disease outcome has been devastating for Hispanics and Blacks. You know, and you put on top of that the visibility of the injustice caused by George Floyd's death. So, you know, I... it certainly makes me reflect on how lucky I am that I have, you know, a great Internet connection. My kids can come home. I get to do interesting work. I have to say our vaccine work, which, you know, was totally boring to everyone [chuckling] up until a year ago. Now people are like, hey, tell me about the E484K variant. And I'm like, Oh, hey, I'm your man!

MATT GALLOWAY: You remain optimistic coming out of this year. I mean, you're... you're a relentless optimist.

BILL GATES: Yes, the pandemic is an incredible tragedy. We weren't prepared for it. We bungled it once it came. But there's some brilliant things going on. And we will get back to, you know, building back and [chuckling], hopefully also, you know, take on other big problems where climate change is at the top of that list.

MATT GALLOWAY: [00:51:56] Bill Gates, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Thank you very much.

BILL GATES: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And his new book is called "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". What do you make of his plans for the future, particularly his audacious and broad-reaching ideas of how to tackle climate change? We'd love to hear from you. You can email us: thecurrent@cbc.ca. You're listening to "The Current" on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway.

DONALD TRUMP: [camera clicks and background chatter] We were very prepared. The only thing we weren't prepared for was the the media. The media has not treated it fairly.

BORIS JOHNSON: Wash your hands with soap and hot water for the length of time it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: As always, we will prepare ourselves for the worst possible scenarios, but we will, hopefully, see the best possible scenarios.

MATT GALLOWAY: As it turns out, one of the many lessons learned from this pandemic was just how unprepared the world really was. Now, the World Health Organization has commissioned an independent panel to investigate the global response to COVID-19 and explain why we need an early detection system to help keep people safe, now and in the future. Dr. Joanne Liu is one of the experts on that independent panel. She's a Montreal physician, and the former international president of Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres. Doctor, good morning.

JOANNE LIU: Good morning.

What do we know at this stage, almost a year into this pandemic, about what went wrong with the initial global response to COVID-19?

JOANNE LIU: Well, there's a couple of what we call early failure, that a cascade of early failure. And it came at three different, I would say, level, at the detection level, alert level, and that the response from member states of WHO. I think at the detection level is... is the fact that as soon as we discover about this new virus, and then more about it within a few days and then out find out that, most likely, there was possibly a human-to-human transmission, I think the principle of precaution should have been applied very, very early on. And I would say discussed and transmitted to... to the world. The other, I would say, is about the alert. Is the public health emergency an international concern? The WHO convened the meeting at the end of January on the 22nd, but declared it on the 30th. And we want to know what happened during those few days that could have been, you know, called a bit earlier? And then the third part is about once you declare the public health emergency of international concern is what do people do with it? Is how do they react? And then what we see is is, generally speaking, it took, you know, a few days, basically, in the Southeast Asia area, but for the rest of the world, it was more in terms of weeks, four to eight weeks, to react and do something about this public health of international concern.

MATT GALLOWAY: You call it a cascade of failures. Did one naturally lead into the other? Is that what happened? I mean, that... that once some of those failures began to unfold, that things kind of spiralled from there?

JOANNE LIU: Yes, exactly. And it's as well to emphasise the role and... and... and the crucial, I would say, element of the speed of response to a pandemic like COVID-19. And every day counts. For example, if you were to take just a general, I would say, the fact that they were before COVID-19 hundred thousand of international travel every single day, meaning 11-million travellers. If you delay, I would say, any measure on travel by one day or two day, you can see are much more the virus can spread. And so speed is really, really the vital variable because if you don't move faster than the virus, you'll never get the upper hand on the epidemic.

MATT GALLOWAY: When it comes to detection, there were a number of countries, including Canada, that had early warning systems in place in years past to respond to global health crises. In Canada, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network was pared back before the pandemic. What was the effect of that?

JOANNE LIU: Well, the thing is, again, it's just a question of speed. If you have the early warning system and then you can detect very early on, it means that you're going to be able to react and act when the epidemic would be at a very, very low level of community transmission. So... so it's going to be much easier to circumscribe and tame it. And so this is why it's so, so important. And the reality is, what happened, and what our investigation has somehow highlighted, is the fact that the way we found out was was more trough more informal channel like the social media. And so, as we said, you know, we're trapped in the analogue era, but we live in a digital age, the way we dealt with our early warning system for COVID-19.

MATT GALLOWAY: Once those signs were there that this was something to be alarmed by and to pay attention to, why don't you think that countries like Canada perhaps did not act fast enough once it was clear what was going on?

JOANNE LIU: We had no experience of such, the magnitude of such an epidemic that became a pandemic. So we... we could not imagine what would be the impact at the outset. And then after that, it was more a question of the mindset and being unable to just say what would be the worst-case scenario? How can I prepare myself do I apply the principle of precaution, meaning I don't have all the elements and everything, but how can I make sure that I protect the population? And... and so we in that respect, we... we... we didn't have the right mindset. We decided instead of looking at it and just say, let's see how things will unfold. And we went in the incremental way in terms of our response instead of, and like we see it now, that the countries who are faring much better, the emerging observation is that straight from the beginning, they went full-on on it, try to circumscribe it and try to to control it by strict travel ban and a strict public health measure.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do you feel that governments in Canada, they talk... and we hear a lot of talk around balance, that we need to balance public health measures with a number of other things, including primarily the economy? Do you feel that governments in Canada, when you talk about, you know, moving quickly and being full-on, as other governments did, that here, that balance perhaps was... was out of whack?

JOANNE LIU: Well, the thing is now we look at things in hindsight, and this is why you cannot... you cannot blame, per se, specific government. Everybody was learning as they were going along. And so... so that to what we see is the mitigation approach of of going and wait and see and going gradually as not paying off because basically, it gets us into this dynamic of lock-in, lockout, lock-in, lockout. And that yo-yo approach is much more detrimental on the long run. We know that if we have the right public health approach, we... and then we basically decrease the community transmission very, very low. We're going to be able to to relaunch the economy. And this is what is happening right now in Australia and New Zealand. And they're more or less back to a close normality pre-COVID-19.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the meantime, as we wait for this pandemic to end, one of the things that will hopefully get us to that finish line are the vaccines. There are, as you know, many concerns in this country around the vaccine procurement strategy. But there are also concerns that our procurement strategy in terms of withdrawing vaccines from the COVAX pool, which are largely meant for countries that can't afford to purchase vaccines on their own, that that will delay a global vaccine rollout. Are you concerned about that?

JOANNE LIU: Yeah, this is a great question, and this is really close to my heart. Yeah, I'm deeply concerned. And I have huge sympathy on the fact that Canada needs to be vaccinated. And we need to have as well some of our priority, I would say, subset of population to be vaccinated like the elderly and as well like our front line worker being medical and non-medical. So that's for me, a given. That being said, I think that as well that we cannot let the virus run loose around the world and keep mutating while we are protecting our population here. So we need to somehow find the right balance in vaccinating Canadians as well as vaccinating in other part of this world because if... if we want to defeat COVID-19, it's not only here in Canada but needs to be across the planet. Otherwise, it's going to come back at us in a mutated form, and we will be not well protected and most likely.

MATT GALLOWAY: Why is it important to be discussing this right now, one of the things that you'll often hear from those who perhaps are decision-makers is that it's too soon to begin looking back at decisions that were or weren't made, things that could or couldn't have been done. Why in the midst... we're still in the middle of this pandemic. Why is it important to have conversations like this right now?

JOANNE LIU: Well, I think it's important to learn of what has happened so far. And we've learned so much, you know, since the beginning. We learned that there was some valnurable population. You know, the greatest thing about about, you know, tackling and responding to pandemic, it's how it is such a humbling exercise because pandemic has no mercy. It's like a tornado. It goes to a country and wILL uncover every single weakness of our health care system. So once we know where are the weaknesses, we need to fix them. And then, we spot some of those places like the elderly homes, the long-term care facilities.

MATT GALLOWAY: Because I think that's... That's the real question is, is why is it that, for example, there are more deaths in long-term care homes in the second wave of covid-19 than there were in the first wave? Given knowing what we we know from what happened before, why didn't we act to prevent that from happening again?

JOANNE LIU: Because I think that we have a difficulty to understand that this where... Where things go wrong It's often in the implementation. Basically, we know that we have to try to do protection of our long-term care facilities. We knew that we have to protect our health care worker. We knew that they shouldn't work in many different facilities. We knew that we have to apply that what I call the principle of reciprocity, if we shield a vulnerable community, we need to protect them as well in terms of access to health care, but in terms of mental health. But the thing is, we send memo and just say do that, but you don't know how to do it until you have to do it. And we thought that because some places in Canada have learned, that the rest of Canada have learned and have seen. And I think that we were overconfident, that because we got hit so hard the first time around, that just by the fact we've been hit so hard that we have learned. This is not how we learn. Overconfidence in tackling pandemic can be deadly.

MATT GALLOWAY: This is an important conversation to have, and it's important to have it right now in the midst of what we are still dealing with. Doctor, I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

JOANNE LIU: Thank you very much.

MATT GALLOWAY: Dr. Joanne Liu is a Montreal physician and an expert on the World Health Organization's independent panel investigating the global response to COVID-19. Well, coming up after your regional update, some may have expected a baby boom nine months after lockdown. Early numbers show it's just the opposite. We'll talk about dropping birth rates and hear firsthand why some women are putting off having kids. I'm matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current".

[Music: Theme]

How COVID-19 is impacting birth rates

Guests: Rick Noack, Dianne Cordero, Kate Choi

MATT GALLOWAY: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". COVID-19 has impacted almost every part of our lives from where we're living to how we work, including the decision whether or not to have a baby. Nearly a year into this pandemic, data is emerging that shows fewer women are choosing to have kids. Rick Noack has taken a close look at how COVID-19 is contributing to the decline in the number of babies being born in France in particular. He's with The Washington Post. Rick, good morning.

RICK NOACK: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: You were in the French town of Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris. What were you seeing there in terms of how much the birth rate has declined in that town?

RICK NOACK: Well, it was really quite a bizarre situation I was there around one-and-a-half weeks ago, and I arrived in the Saint-Denis hospital, the public hospital, and I found a lot of unoccupied nurses and midwives there, who were all kind of puzzled by what was happening and going on. Out of nine delivery rooms there, only one was in use. And everyone was, you know, found it quite bizarre to see births declining so much there as a result of the pandemic, and especially if the lockdown was imposed around nine, 10 months ago.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do we know about how that is comparing to the rest of France? is data starting to come out?

RICK NOACK: Yeah, so we don't have national data yet. That's going to be probably released toward the end of the year. But what we're seeing, especially from hospitals in regions that were really hard hit by the virus, is that birth rates appear to have declined by around 10 to 25 per cent in comparison to last January. And that's quite, quite a lot. One doctor I was talking to said that he'd never seen a decline like this throughout his career.

MATT GALLOWAY: In your reporting, what have you learned about what the main reason is for this declining birth rate in France?

RICK NOACK: Well, there appear to be numerous reasons. Certainly, the fact that people were crammed indoors played a role, the fact that there was a lot of uncertainty about the virus itself and what was going to happen with this pandemic. You know, at the time, we didn't know what we know today. But one major factor also appears to have been the economy. And that's something that's come up again and again in history. When you look at economic crises or events that have adversely impacted the economy, there often is a decline in births. And that certainly is being linked to... to the decline in births, and in Saint-Denis by a lot of people.

MATT GALLOWAY: And are you hearing that directly from families who are making those decisions in terms of the social conditions that they are living through?

RICK NOACK: Yes, I visited a project in Saint-Denis that was founded during the first lockdown to provide help and food aid especially, to mothers in distress, because people there realized and noticed that the number of mothers in distress surged in the first weeks of that lockdown. And even today, I came across quite a few mothers there who said, you know, I would like to have another child, but I just can't afford it at this point. And, you know, I'm grateful for the help that I've been receiving, but it's just not enough.

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, and that help is interesting because France has been giving substantial subsidies to members of the population during the pandemic. What's your sense as to why that isn't making a difference?

RICK NOACK: Well, I think in Sanit-Denis, the situation is a little special because quite a few people there are undocumented migrants, including some of the people I spoke to. So they have fallen through that sort of welfare net. But for a lot of other people in France, it appears to be just this broader uncertainty over whether the state is going to be able to... to keep up with this aid in the long run until the end of this pandemic? There's a recent study that was done that showed that actually, the economic concerns were highest in the months after the lockdown had ended. So the end of the lockdown certainly didn't bring any relief when it came to when it came to economic anxieties.

MATT GALLOWAY: One of the other things we're seeing is an effect of this pandemic on the abortion rates in France. And again, women would have any number of personal reasons that would influence their decision whether they had an abortion or not. But what are you learning about how this pandemic has affected the abortion rights?

RICK NOACK: In Saint-Denis, it hasn't impacted the overall abortion, the number of abortions, so the number of abortions has remained steady throughout 2020. But what the... the director of a hospital-linked women's care centre in Saint-Denis told me is that the ratio of women seeking an abortion because of domestic violence did surge last year, especially in the months after the first lockdown was over. So there has certainly been an impact in that regard that probably isn't limited to Saint-Denis and probably has been observed in other towns across France and probably other countries as well.

MATT GALLOWAY: I was gonna say, do we know whether what we're talking about now is limited to France? I mean, what are other countries in Europe reporting right now?

RICK NOACK: It doesn't seem to be limited to France at all, and I don't think there would be a reason why it would be limited. In fact, in Italy, 15 major towns have been reporting an over 20 per cent decline in births in December, which would make sense that we're seeing the impacts there even earlier because the virus first arrived in Italy, and Italy was the first country that imposed lockdowns. So the assumption is that we're going to see the same trend in other European countries, probably in the United States and North America.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about beyond Europe and the U.S.? I mean, if you take a look at developing countries, what do we know about how the pandemic has affected birthrates there?

RICK NOACK: So developing countries are a little more multifaceted in this regard. There are some developing countries that are probably going to see a similar decline, but some developing countries will see the opposite effect, or at least are estimated to see the opposite effect, including countries like the Philippines, but also Indonesia. The Philippines also had a very strict lockdown. And there, the lockdown also meant that access to contraceptives was massively curtailed and disrupted. And that has led to... to a surge in unplanned births and pregnancies.

MATT GALLOWAY: What are demographers saying about what they think the long-term impact of a declining birth rate would be on France?

RICK NOACK: It really depends on what is going to happen over the next months, how long this pandemic is going to last and what the sort of long-term implications are going to be? Quite a few people I spoke to were confident or optimistic that the birth rates could easily recover and quickly recover, given that some mothers may only have postponed their plans to have a child. But if this crisis continues for a longer time, we might see a surge in cancelled projects to have a child. And that would certainly leave a lasting mark and pose many problems on a continent like Europe, where demographic decline has been a long problem.

MATT GALLOWAY: Rick, good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

RICK NOACK: Thanks so much for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Rick Noack covers international news for The Washington Post. He was in Paris. In Canada, some women are deciding to hold off on having kids because of this pandemic. Dianne Cordero is one of them. She lives in Toronto. She has a four-year-old daughter. Dianne, good morning to you.

DIANNE CORDERO: Good morning, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: This is such a personal thing to talk about. And so I really appreciate you being willing to... to discuss this. It's important.

DIANNE CORDERO: It is, yeah.

MATT GALLOWAY: When did you start thinking about having a second child?

DIANNE CORDERO: Well, I think I started thinking about it the moment my first daughter was born, but then reality set in. And having a child is a lot of work. [both chuckling] So it took us a few years to consider having a second. So we started trying again in, I think, January of 2020, just before the bomb hit.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so when the pandemic arrives, I mean, what was going through your mind in that context?

DIANNE CORDERO: Well, shortly before, I guess mid-March, is when the pandemic kind of hit for me, like in my mind, when I really realized it was... It was real. We had just... I had just taken a pregnancy test about a month before, maybe a couple of weeks before, and realized that I wasn't pregnant. And I had been fairly disappointed, not terribly surprised. I mean, you don't always get pregnant as quickly as you want to, but I was disappointed. And then when the pandemic hit, I was so glad. [chuckling] I remember thinking, imagine going through this while pregnant and then having to go through what we went through with our first child, which is, you know, wonderful and lovely, but exhausting and really do need a lot of help going through that without the help and then the uncertainty that we were living in.

MATT GALLOWAY: Can you tell me more about why you would use that word glad to describe your emotions in that moment?

DIANNE CORDERO: I think it just... it just felt like a terrible time to try to do something that is one of the hardest things that I've ever done. So my first child was a lot of work and a lot of people have, you know, sort of a very easy time with their first. And they just kind of, you know, they eat and sleep all day. It's easy peasy. [Matt chuckles] But we had a bit of a rougher time. She had colic and she was not sleeping, way worse than your average toddler or your average baby who, you know, doesn't sleep much, but. So it was rough, and we relied on my family to help us a lot and, you know, community, going out with other moms and talking to them and getting advice from them was huge. So it really felt like experiencing this, again, without that safety net of friends and family, would have been really, really rough.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so is that decision.... again, these are personal questions, is that decision on hold right now? Is that something, given the moment that we're in and all of the anxieties that are swirling around, plus, as you say, the simple fact that that support network isn't as available to you as it might be, is that a decision that's been put on hold for now?

DIANNE CORDERO: It's tough to say. I change my mind quite often, but in my case, it may be a permanent decision. I'm a little older than your average mom, so I'm possibly a little too long in the tooth to consider having another child. And a year ago was not that different, but each month that goes by feels like an eternity in my 40s. So it's, for man people, I feel that they're putting this decision on hold. In my case, I believe I might have made the decision to just have an only child, which was always going to be a possibility given my age but was not my ideal.

MATT GALLOWAY: What is it like to make those decisions in this moment, when... when there's so much that's up in the air right now?

DIANNE CORDERO: It's... [deep sigh] it's tough, it's a little heartbreaking, I don't really want my daughter to have this decision... to know that this decision was made based on a pandemic like it's not you know, I didn't I didn't say, you know what, I'm going to have one child. There's nothing wrong with having an only child. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that. And many, many times, I thought she was going to be an only child. But to say you were almost going to have a sibling to grow up with, and then the pandemic happened feels little, it just feels a little out of my control and not... not a decision that I got to make.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, as parents, we always think about the world that we're bringing our children into as well. And you hope that that world is a secure one, one that is going to wrap its arms around them and make them feel loved and... and set them up for the best possible future. Do you think about that as well in terms of the world that the child would be brought into in the midst of a pandemic?

DIANNE CORDERO: I do, in a way, I mean, my daughter is is more impacted than I think a second child would be by the pandemic, given that, you know, she's lived her fourth year of life, her third year of life I guess, she just turned four in lockdown. You know, she's been home from day-care for 11 months, not seeing any other kids. So she's a little more affected. I think a second child would probably it would be their norm. Things would be a little less shocking to them. But moreover, I think, you know, you mentioned, you know, having society wrap their arms around her, well, her sibling would be the one to do that. So I feel like that impact is greater than the impact of the world at large.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do you have any regrets when it comes to decisions that you did or didn't make with this? I mean, the hope is that, you know, we're heading towards the finish line, and maybe it's a little bit further away than people want to, but we're not going to be in this situation forever.

DIANNE CORDERO: Yeah, I don't think I have regrets. I think I have other ideas. I think I'm going to... I believe we're actually looking into being foster parents. And, you know, we could foster older the kids that might be closer to my daughter's age. It might be a very different experience. We might end up adopting through foster care. There's... there's other options. So I don't really... Not to say I don't believe in regrets, but I try not to focus on them. So I think it's not an option to change my mind to go back. So looking forward, there's... there's other ideas, other possibilities.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's really important to think about. Just that, yeah, to your point, I mean, what else can you do in the future rather than looking back?

DIANNE CORDERO: Right.

MATT GALLOWAY: About what you could or couldn't do? I really appreciate talking to you. Again, this is a personal conversation, but it speaks to a larger issue that's happening here and abroad. So, Dianne, thank you so much.

DIANNE CORDERO: Thanks so much, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

DIANNE CORDERO: You too. Bye-bye.

MATT GALLOWAY: Dianne Cordero lives in Toronto. This is something, when it comes to birth rates in the midst of a pandemic, that Kate Choi has been watching in Canada. Kate is an associate professor of sociology at Western University. Kate, good morning to you.

KATE CHOI: Good morning, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do we know about birth rates in Canada since the start of this pandemic? I mean, it's been almost a year. Where are we at?

KATE CHOI: So, in Canada, data about the birth numbers for December 2020, which is the first month where we would actually see the impact of the pandemic, are available for British Columbia. And what we are seeing there with the preliminary data is very much in line with the patterns that we are seeing in many developed countries that Rick just mentioned, specifically relative to December 2019. The number of births decreased by 12 per cent from roughly 3,600 to thirty 3,100 births. Whether this is a pervasive pattern that will be observed across Canada remains to be seen.

MATT GALLOWAY: Are you at all surprised by this? Again, this is early data, but what you're hearing anecdotally, but also what Rick was speaking about through his reporting and what you've learned, are you surprised by this?

KATE CHOI: So when the stay-at-home measures were first implemented, many people forecasted a COVID-19 baby boom. But as the pandemic became more prolonged and more deadly, many family demographers, including myself, predicted a drop in births based on historical patterns that suggest that fertility tends to decrease when there is a long-lasting, catastrophic event resulting in high levels of uncertainty. So, no, I wasn't very surprised.

MATT GALLOWAY: What were you seeing historically? I mean, if you take a look at those patterns, how does this fit into other things in past?

KATE CHOI: So this is... there are two examples, one is the 1918 Spanish flu, and what we saw was that there was, in fact, a decrease in fertility shortly after the 1918 Spanish flu, whether in some regions that was a temporary decrease, accompanied by a rebound. But for others, it was the beginning of a move towards smaller families for at least in the decade following. And then there is the more recent Great Recession, where we actually saw that in many countries, fertility tended to decrease and continue to do so even until now.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me more about that and what some of the reasons would be as to why women in this moment would postpone having babies.

KATE CHOI: That's a wonderful question. And we can think about three reasons. The first one, as Dianne just mentioned, as well as Rick, it deals with economic uncertainty. So during the pandemic, we saw a spike of unemployment. And although we have seen some level of economic recovery, some people continue to be unemployed. And we have also seen bouts or cycles of economic lockdown followed by economic reopenings. And these are the conditions that make people nervous about their economic future. And parents do not want to bring a child into this world when they don't know when their next paycheque is coming from. The second reason has to do with child care. And after the school and day-care closed, parents have been filling that particular void. And at times, they're working about twice as much to provide adequate childcare to their children. And when parents are exhausted or overwhelmed for the added child care responsibilities, including providing home-schooling to their children, they're probably not thinking that this is a wonderful time for them to bring the added responsibility of caring for a newborn. And then finally, there is the health risk to both the mother as well as the infant. And although we know that pregnancy does not necessarily increase the risk of COVID-19 infections, we do know that pregnant women are more likely to contract more severe forms of COVID-19. Furthermore, infants at the time of delivery or shortly after delivery, they can contract COVID-19. And because their organs, such as their lungs, are not fully developed, they can develop a more severe case of COVID-19 relative to children.

MATT GALLOWAY: So when you hear Dianne Cordero say in some ways that she felt relief when she learned at the beginning of this pandemic that she was not pregnant. Do you think that that's, given what you've described, could that be a shared sentiment among many women that in this moment now is not the time?

KATE CHOI: Yes, I believe that that would probably be the shared sentiment among many women that have chosen to delay their fertility, the health uncertainty, as well as the added responsibilities of childcare and the economic uncertainty probably are all factoring in and contributing to the feeling that she feels glad that she's not pregnant at... at this moment.

MATT GALLOWAY: We have also learned over the course of this year that this pandemic has not affected people equally, that there are specific groups, and there are various cohorts of the population here and in the United States and elsewhere that are being hit disproportionately hard by COVID-19. Has that impacted what we're talking about?

KATE CHOI: There... there hasn't been any data that has looked at how whether the fertility decrease has been larger for certain groups? However, based on knowledge about how COVID-19 has affected individuals differentially. If I had to speculate, I would pick that it probably has affected the fertility behaviour of two particular groups of individuals the most. The first group is probably, as you heard with Dianne just now, women who are at the very or near the end of their childbearing years, who for them, the need to delay having children during the pandemic may actually mean that they may not be able to have the additional child. And in some cases, it may also be a decision to forgo parenthood altogether. Then, there are reasons for us to believe that low-income families, which includes large shares of racial minority parents, will also be disproportionately affected in terms of fertility. And, for example, we know that these are the individuals that have been hit the most economically and have had the hardest time experiencing the economic recovery. We also know that a high share of low-income individuals are represented an essential and frontline work, which means that they have to be present in their work, and they cannot work from home. So day-care and school closures probably prove to be particularly stressful for this group of individuals. And finally, low-income individuals are those who are residing in neighbourhoods that have been the hardest hit by COVID-19 infection and death rates. So the health risks to pregnant women and infants will be higher for these individuals.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just in the last couple of minutes that we have, I mean, these are obviously intensely personal and intimate decisions. But if you take a look at the big picture implications for Canada, what would they be generally if we were to see a steep decline in birth rates?

KATE CHOI: That's a great question. So if we think about the Canadian economy, there are several parts of Canada that actually have a labour shortage. And fewer children means fewer future workers, and which suggests that labour shortages in these regions may be exacerbated by the fertility decline should it become a permanent fertility decline. And then, we also know that Canada right now has a lower below-replacement fertility levels. And what that means is that fewer children, even fewer children, will mean greater problems associated with population ageing. And fewer children right now, as I indicated earlier, means fewer working-age populations in the future. And that means that one worker in the future will have to support more retirees. And that may imply higher taxes for these individuals, or that programs aimed at supporting seniors like the Old Age Security Program will run at a deficit, or that the benefits will have to be spread out across more retirees.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just briefly, did you see in the work that you did looking at past crises, a birth rate that shot back up after the economy recovered? Or could this have a longer lasting effect?

KATE CHOI: So we know from prior work that in some places in the Nordic region like Finland, that the... the fertility drop rebounded after within a five year point afterwards. Having said that, we know that fertility has been decreasing steadily over time. And many social scientists cautiously predict that the fertility drop right now may further accelerate the downward trend in fertility that has been ongoing for a very long time.

MATT GALLOWAY: Kate, it's good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

KATE CHOI: Thank you very much, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Kate Choi is a demographer based at Western University in London, Ontario. Your thoughts on this welcome. Coming out of Dianne's experience, perhaps you'd like to share your own story. You can reach us through the email: thecurrent@cbc.ca That's it for "The Current" for today. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's "q" Tom Power speaking with the very popular poet Rupi Kaur. She will be speaking about Internet culture, sudden fame and how all of that affected her mental health. She has a new book out. It's called "Homebody". You'll hear about that coming up on CBC Radio One in just a few moments time. It's a Monday. It's a holiday in many parts of this country, Family Day in many provinces. Islander Day on P.E.I. We will leave you with a tune to get your week off on the good foot. The Supremes and "Baby Love". I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to "The Current". Take care. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: "Baby Love" by The Supremes/R&B]

February 15, 2021 Episode Transcript

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