Travellers continue to battle wait times and cancellations at airports, but experts say there won’t be relief anytime soon

Guests: Jenn MacDougall, Scott Keyes

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VOICE 1: We didn't actually get a notification from Air Canada. What happened was I happened to see a news article about them cancelling a bunch of flights, but three out of four of our flights were cancelled with no notification. Pretty much just a week beforehand.

VOICE 2: You go to Edmonton, get off the plane. We all stand around about 45 minutes to an hour. No sign of our luggage. Nobody. There was two bags came off the carousel. 27 people went over to the luggage desk because that was how many people didn't have their luggage.

VOICE 1: Our flight got delayed twice the evening that we were supposed to fly out, and then it got cancelled maybe three hours before it was supposed to take off. They said the only thing they could do was put us on an overnighter that was Saskatoon to Vancouver, and then Vancouver back to Toronto. So unfortunately, once we got to Vancouver, that played out on Vancouver, also got delayed two or three times and then was finally cancelled around 11 p.m. Then the customer service employees had to go home. They had run out of hotel vouchers, so they told a line up of hundreds of people to just go find their own accommodations for the night.

RB: Wow. Three Canadians, three miserable travel experiences, their home from their journeys now, but not quite ready to put the experiences behind them.

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VOICE 1: I'm going to keep at them until I get something. I'm going to keep messaging back. I mean, I probably won't sit on the phone for hours and hours and hours, but I mean, there are protection laws that they have to compensate people and they need to be held accountable. We're owed, I believe, $1,000 per person for a delay over nine hours. And honestly, the reasons they gave in the automated emails were super, super vague. I don't believe them when they see that it was out of their control. So I would absolutely take it to small claims court if they don't plan on compensating us.

VOICE 2: Was WestJet that I'm dealing with, I put in for compensation for delayed baggage. Their system is absolutely horrible. I even tried today to log on to see if there's flights down. You can't access anything.

RB: The summer travel season off to a rough start. Nothing puts a damper on vacation, like getting stranded at that airport for three days with children. Jenn MacDougall and her three children were travelling home to Nova Scotia after a visit to Yukon. They made it eventually. And we are reaching Jenn at home in New Waterford, Nova Scotia. Good morning, Jenn.

JENN MACDOUGALL: Good morning.

RB: You're still standing. So that's good. .

JENN MACDOUGALL: Yeah.

RB: What was the first sign you were not going to get home smoothly?

JENN MACDOUGALL: When we left Whitehorse and got the Vancouver, our connecting flight was gone.

RB: And then what happened?

JENN MACDOUGALL: And then they flew us. They said that they were going to fly us to Toronto later that day, but I wouldn't get there in time to reach my connecting flight to Sydney. So they were going to put me up in a hotel with meal vouchers and then fly me out the next morning. When I got to Toronto and my connecting flight was still there. So I went down to the gate and I said to the man there, I said, This is my original connecting flight. Can I still get on this flight? And he said, no. And I said, Well, this is the original flight that I had paid for from the beginning. It's still here. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to get on it when I have the boarding passes for this flight in my hands. And he said, there's no room for three extra people. You'll have to find some- you'll have to get a hotel. I said, okay, what am I supposed to do if there's no hotel vouchers? Just sleep on the floor with a six month old baby? And he said, Yep, that's what you have to do. So that's what I had to do. I went to the customer service line. They told me there was no hotel vouchers left. I said that I was promised one in Vancouver, that it was written in my file to give me one because the Lady of Vancouver had said, I'll put everything in the file. Anyway, they didn't. They refused, and they were completely arrogant about everything. So then we ended up having because at this time it's 12:30 at night and my flight was supposed to be 7:30 the next morning to go and try and find a hotel to get, you know, it just it didn't make sense for the couple of hours, so I had to put the kids to sleep on the floor in the airport about 3:00 in the morning. I got a notification is that they cancelled by 7:30 in the morning flight and they wouldn't be able to fly me out until Tuesday.

RB: Oh, my God. And then what happened?

JENN MACDOUGALL: Yeah. And then I decided. Well, I said I can at least get this far as Halifax and my mother in law was in Halifax, and then we can figure out stuff from there. So the next day they flew me to Montreal so I could get my connecting flight to Halifax. I get to Montreal. They cancel my connecting flight to Halifax when I get there. So here I am, stranded in Montreal with three kids.

RB: Laughing because it's so crazy. Not because it's funny.

JENN MACDOUGALL: It's awful. Yeah. Yeah. I ended up getting a hotel at my own expense that night, but this. At this point, we had no luggage. We were wearing the same clothes for three days. My baby had no diapers left, and we ended up getting a hotel. By the time we got to the hotel, all the stores were closed, so he had to wear the same diaper all night and into the next day until I found somewhere to go get them diapers. We get to the airport, they postpone our flight three times. And then we finally got in Monday night at midnight into Halifax when I was supposed to arrive Saturday night into Sydney.

RB: Oh. And so you have a six month old. And how old are the other two?

JENN MACDOUGALL: Seven and 15.

RB: And what were they- how did they experience it? What was it like?

JENN MACDOUGALL: Well, the seven year old's completely like he he's traumatised by it all. He cried for two days. Yeah. He just didn't because he hasn't flown since COVID. So that's all he remembers right now. Right.

RB: And how has, I mean, you've explain how Air Canada handled it throughout, but how have they responded to you now?

JENN MACDOUGALL: They haven't responded to any emails any, nothing. They haven't even spoke to me since it happened. And my daughter's baggage was five or six days before we got her luggage and her Invisalign braces were in there, which kind of messed up her mouth a little bit. Yeah, canker sores and everything, because she couldn't change her braces because her luggage was lost.

RB: I mean, was it worth it? Was it worth going in the first place?

JENN MACDOUGALL: No. No. No. Not at all. Yeah. How? Not at all.

RB: How are you doing? You said the seven year old traumatised. How are you doing?

JENN MACDOUGALL: I'm okay, except for all those extra expenses I wasn't expecting to pay, which kind of put a damper on this end of the trip.

RB: What would you like to see Air Canada do to rectify this?

JENN MACDOUGALL: I definitely want my money back that I spent. Like. Absolutely. And I would like my flight reimbursed, too, because they didn't follow through with their end of this. So I. Whatever. I don't know. They haven't gotten back to me, so I don't even know what they're even thinking or anything like. I have no idea what's what's going to happen.

RB: You know, you see these pictures on the news of of people stranded everywhere, bags stranded everywhere. Did that give you pause when you initially left? And were you thinking to yourself, maybe or maybe I'll be a lucky one in this won't happen or.

JENN MACDOUGALL: Well, Whitehorse and Vancouver weren't like that. Yeah. It was until I got to Toronto and Montreal where the chaos was. Yeah. The other two airports were good.

RB: All right. So, are you still recovering from the holiday?

JENN MACDOUGALL: Yeah. Oh, yeah. To say the least. I mean, it's been, we got here four days later than I was supposed to. Then my friend had to drive to Halifax to pick us up.

RB: Oh, my gosh.

JENN MACDOUGALL: Because I was supposed to fly right to Sydney, but Air Canada didn't fly me there, so she had to drive up to pick us up.

RB: All right. Well, you are having a little bit of a laugh about it, so hopefully you will you'll be able to recover it and get some action and some response.

JENN MACDOUGALL: Yeah, hopefully they get back to me soon.

RB: All right, Jenn, I wanted a good example of travel nightmares. And unfortunately, you were it this morning. Thank you.

JENN MACDOUGALL: Thank you. Welcome.

RB: Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a good day.

JENN MACDOUGALL: You, too. Bye bye. Bye bye.

RB: Well, Jenn MacDougall is in New Waterford, Nova Scotia. That's just one of a whole lot of stories. Scott Keyes is hearing many stories about chaotic travel these days. He is the founder of Scott's Cheap Flights. Scott, good morning. Hello.

SCOTT KEYES: Thank you so much for having me.

RB: Thanks for being here. So obviously you know a lot about flying. Are you surprised by what we're seeing right now?

SCOTT KEYES: I would wish to say that I'm surprised, but unfortunately, this has been something that has been happening periodically in the lead up to the summer. There have been these periodic meltdowns where delays and cancellations really end up creating a domino effect, where we've got hundreds, if not thousands of cancelled flights. So that seems like it's something that has been much more endemic and widespread.

RB: So what's causing the problems? Give me your sense.

SCOTT KEYES: Yeah. So it's been largely a story of labour shortages. So airlines not having enough pilots, which many folks have heard of, but also not having enough ground crew, gate agents, you know, airports not having enough security staff and that causing just tons of bottlenecks and delays in the system. So not having enough pilots creates problems because obviously airlines, a need a pilot need two pilots to fly a plane. Yeah, but that also means that they can't schedule as many flights as they would like to, and that when a pilot calls in sick, when there's thunderstorms, they don't have many pilots just sitting at home waiting to be able to be called in. And so when you don't have those reserves available, the end result is that when cancellations begin, they become much worse than they would if the pilot situation were fully staffed.

RB: I'll come back to the other staff, but let me focus down on the pilots, specifically. The Air Canada Pilots Association sent us this statement, quote, Training pilots and preparing them to be actively on the line is a time consuming and rigorous process, as it should. While we have welcomed back the roughly 600 pilots who were furloughed due to the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as about 100 newly hired pilots to date, it takes time for pilots to complete the training process. Is that what's going on here, that they've just been either, A, not flying enough or they're trying to get people up to speed? In terms of the hours?

SCOTT KEYES: Yeah, look, that's the crux of the problem is that pilot is not an entry level job. You can't just go hire people off the street and say, okay, go fly the plane. I certainly wouldn't want that to be the solution to what's ailing us. And I think what's especially happening right now is that we are paying the bill for many of the decisions that were made in March and April of 2020, when many airlines were seeing that travel demand dropping 80, 90%, totally unprecedented. And viewing this as an existential crisis, would they even survive? And so for the airlines, they were not only trying to shed costs as much as they could by buyouts, early retirements for pilots, but also pausing hiring of new pilots. And so that's why there's not a simple or easy quick fix here.

RB: What about the other stuff that you were talking about? You know, the baggage carriers, the people at security, those are people, obviously that were let go, as you say, during the pandemic. Why is there such a hard time getting these people back to these jobs now?

SCOTT KEYES: Indeed. Indeed. So that is a different reason for why it can't be easily fixed, because those are more entry level type positions. You really can just go get people off the street and hire them to start more or less tomorrow as a baggage handler. But you are competing as an airline for that talent pool, for that labour pool with all the Amazons of the world, with the DoorDash and the food deliveries and Ubers and all the other sorts of opportunities. You know, with the widespread labour shortage throughout the economy, it's just much more difficult for airlines to find the workers today than they used to. And I think we're seeing how difficult it is to run an airline operations smoothly when you only have 90% of the staff that you need, rather than 100% of the staff like we saw in pre-pandemic.

RB: You've obviously been hearing some of these scenarios from passengers, from people who are using your website to book flights. What does it mean? And for your customers who want to fly somewhere, what kinds of things are happening?

SCOTT KEYES: It's meaning that a lot of folks, you know, when they're taking their first vacation since the pandemic began, are really kind of eager, excited kids out of school. And they're finding that in many cases, at best, their flight is getting delayed. And at worst, many folks are finding that their entire vacation plans have been upended. And so, you know, my advice for them is a few kind of quick and easy things. First, don't check a bag if at all possible. Look, I used to never check a bag. Then I had kids. And it's almost impossible not to check a bag now. But if it's possible to avoid checking a bag, that'll mean that you don't have to wait in line. But it also means that if your flight winds up later getting cancelled or you've missed your connection, you are able to get rebooked on a different flight. Much easier when you don't have a bag sitting underneath some plane somewhere else. So don't check a bag. My favourite bad advice show up early to the airport and show up even an hour earlier. It'll be worth it to make sure you don't miss your flight. And one one of the things that I think many folks don't necessarily realise is that if you need to get in touch with phone support, you don't have to just call the airline's main hotline, because Air Canada doesn't just have offices in Canada. They've got offices in the U.S., in Mexico and, all over the world. And you can call any one of those international offices and get a hold of an agent who can handle your reservation just the same as the folks in the main Canadian office. And so call those international ones where other nobody else is calling and you're going to get through much quicker.

RB: You'll know nobody else is calling until now.

SCOTT KEYES: This is the problem with good advice once they starts using it, you have to keep going to the next one.

RB: You know, people are complaining obviously as they're travelling, they're complaining in their own countries and it seems it's the worst, you know, in the country where you are. It's happening around the world. Can you give us a sense of the places that are hardest hit by this?

SCOTT KEYES: That's right. So, you know, as bad as things are in North America right now, it's still the fact that the vast majority of flights are flying and flying on time. I don't want people to get the wrong impression that your flight is definitely going to get delayed or cancelled because it's still 90-95, sometimes 98% of flights that are operating and operating on time. But in Europe, that is not the case right now. In Europe, the travel chaos is an order of magnitude worse than it is in North America. So airports like Amsterdam and London Gatwick that are cancelling flights left and right and capping the number of planes that they're allowing to fly in because they don't have the staff available to support a full schedule. You've got Scandinavian Airlines, which are whose pilots are on strike right now, and they've got 77% of their flights are cancelled. The airline just declared bankruptcy. And so, you know, I don't want to tell folks any time your flight is cancelled, it's awful. It stinks. It's hard to deal with, but things could be much worse. Just looking across the ocean, over to Europe.

RB: All these cancelled flights that are happening again, not just in Canada, it's happening in the U.S. and in Europe, where airlines just pre-emptively cancel hundreds of flights. What's going on there?

SCOTT KEYES: So the predictable ones are airlines saying, oh, my gosh, we do not have enough pilots to fly this schedule that we put in place, you know, months ago. And that's the difficult thing for airlines, is that they have to set their schedule many months, you know, up to a year in advance. And they just kind of have to take their best guess on not only what the demand for those flights will be, but how many pilots and crew do they have to support those operations. And in normal times, that's not terribly difficult. But during the pandemic, when everything is so variable and things are moving so quickly, it's becomes extremely difficult for airlines to predict that. And so you're seeing airlines doing some amount of proactive cancelling cancelling flights months in advance, even during the extremely profitable summer months. But then you're seeing some amount of unpredictable cancellations. So those are things like weather. But then you also see, you know, look, tomorrow morning, some number of pilots wake up and feel sick and that is unpredictable for the airlines. And the end result is cancelled flights.

RB: Shouldn't they have known shouldn't airlines have known that there would be pent up demand? I could have predicted that there would be lots of people that wanted to travel this summer. Why couldn't they have seen that?

SCOTT KEYES: Yeah, look, I think the answer in short is yes, they should have known. The answer in long is that while yes, they should have known, I think they were hoping they would get things better fixed by now. Right. And it is an extremely difficult thing for an executive at somebody who's working at the airline management office to say, look, I've got this product flights and everybody wants to buy my product. There is no cap to the amount of money they're willing to spend. Folks are so hungry to take vacations. Should I stop selling them this product because they are bang on my door to buy? And it's a hard thing to say no because again, it's still an educated guess in terms of how many pilots and and crew you think you'll have. So I think they aired on the side of optimism and in large part they're paying the price for that today in the form of more cancelled flights than they should have been prepared for.

RB: Are you hopeful that this will get sorted out through the course of the summer? And I guess are you oing to fly anywhere? Are you willing to do that?

SCOTT KEYES: So I am doing a little bit of flying this summer, but do I have hope for the summer? I wouldn't say things aren't going to turn sunshine and rainbows overnight. It's going to stay a turbulent, if you will, summer. But things will improve, I think, drastically after Labour Day just because you won't have as much strain on the system.

RB: So not to be cliche, but pack your patience is really.

SCOTT KEYES: Pack your patience. That's that's exactly right.

RB: Scott, thank you so much for this. Appreciate it.

SCOTT KEYES: My pleasure, Rosemary. Great chatting with you, too.

RB: Scott Keyes is the founder of Scott's Cheap Flights. He was in Portland, Oregon. We invited the heads of Air Canada and WestJet for an interview. However, both airlines declined and sent statements instead. Air Canada says: "Most of the flights affected are to and from our Toronto and Montreal hubs. These will be mostly frequency reductions, affecting primarily evening and late night flights by smaller aircraft on transborder and domestic routes. Our international flights are unaffected with a few timing changes to reduce flying at peak times and even out the customer flow. Customers are notified automatically when flights are cancelled. Some we are able to rebook immediately, while for others we will continue to search for alternatives" . And from WestJet we got this: "We have been able to stabilise our operation to prevent reactive cancellations. However, there remain significant operational challenges across the Canadian aviation ecosystem that fall outside of our control, contributing to significant delays. As a result, our number one priority is ensuring our guests arrive safely to their destination as on time as the current aviation landscape allows for". So there you go. The CBC News is next. Then we'll continue our look at summer travel woes because there's a lot of them. I'll be speaking to the head of the Canadian Airports Council. I'm Rosemary Barton, and you're listening to The Current.

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RB: Hello. I'm Rosemary Barton, and you're listening to The Current.

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RB: Still to come, our documentary, Winds of Change takes us to the Shetland Islands in Scotland to a community divided over a big clean energy initiative. And we continue with our presentation of the Cbbc podcast, Unlocking the Fountain. But first, looking for a one way ticket out of the travel mess.

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RB: You may be hearing about the chaos at some airports in Canada and abroad. Worse yet, you may be experiencing it firsthand. Cancelled flights, missing luggage, long line-ups and unplanned sleepovers at the airport.

SOUNDCLIP

So I went to the desk and I said, This is my original flight. I have my boarding passes for this flight. Can I get on this flight still? And he said, No, there's no seats. So I said, What am I supposed to do now? Sleep on the floor with a six month old baby? And he said, yes, that's what you'll have to do. And he turned his head. And I couldn't sleep, when we had to sleep on the airport floor, because I'm not falling asleep with my three kids sleeping. So I had to sit up all night.

RB: If you're just joining us before the news, we talked about the scenes playing out in airports in Canada and abroad. For some insight into some of the underlying issues and potential fixes, I'm joined by Monette Packer. She's the interim president of the Canadian Airports Council. Good morning.

MONETTE PASHER: Good morning, Rosemary.

RB: So why are airports such a mess right now going in?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah, I mean, I know this is incredibly frustrating for for passengers. It really is heartbreaking to hear these travel stories when people have been waiting so long to travel. And it's certainly not the experience. They expect it at Canada's airports. There's a number of issues at play and have been at play for some time now over months. It started off with border processing and the health measures that are in place at our border. They slow things down and we have planes held in metered to come into our facilities. It sets off a cascading effect for air carrier partners when flights get delayed. And then it is very difficult to recover in these times when we're short staffed across the across our sector. So we're seeing labour shortages for our airline partners, but also have been at security and air navigation and CBSA, which is our customs. So baggage handling really across the system, we've been seeing labour shortage issues. So it's a number of factors. And really, our our system just isn't that resilient yet. We've been two years where we've been less than 30%. And we're standing back up so quickly in terms of, you know, we've seen passenger traffic peak at peak times be at 90 and 100% at some airports. So it ramped up very fast.

RB: You talked about the health measures. Domestically, those health measures have now been removed and the chaos remains. So how much control do airports have over the situation we're experiencing?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah. So I think the important part to remember there is even though they're removed domestically, they're still in place at our border. In terms of our international border, there's still a vaccine mandate there and testing has been paused until they're able to move that off site of the airport come mid-July. So that does impact border processing and the delays that are at our international border impacts domestic travel. We're a network when people are coming in internationally and they're and they're moving on like Jenn was to New Waterford or Sydney, you know, those that impacts our entire network and entire schedule. So it's an interconnected and complex system and we're seeing those delays across the board because the entire system is delayed.

RB: But but given that we know that those measures were going to be in place and they've just, as we said, the domestic pieces just removed. Why did airlines and in your case, I guess airports not staff up appropriately? And why are you having such a hard time getting the labour back in place?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah, it really comes back to this is an industry that has been really acutely impacted. You know, we're talking over two years, we've essentially been shuttered, tourism and travel. So we're getting back to finding those workers. A lot of them have moved on to different careers. It's been more challenging because the labour pool is is smaller. And also these positions even we've made some progress. You know, our government agencies, CATSA, have recently hired a thousand people are moving forward and we are seeing steady progress and it takes time to get those people trained with security clearance up and running efficiently in our airports. And I think we're going to continue to see that steady progress as we move forward in the coming weeks. We've also seen our air carrier partners, you know, move forward in decreasing flights for this summer. And as we move forward in the coming weeks, that will help as well. We should see less last minute cancellations. We needed them to move forward to decrease some of the peaks at our airports and smooth out this process and improve it.

RB: I understand obviously you were shuttered and those people were laid off and went off to either do other things or not. But are you trying to get them back by offering better pay, better working conditions, better hours. What are airports doing proactively to do to fix that?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah. So these are third party partners. So CATSA is a government agency. CBSA is a government agency. Our airline partners, these aren't airport employees.

RB: Baggage handlers aren't airport employees?

MONETTE PASHER: No, they're not. Actually, baggage handlers are employed by the airline. So that's part of, I think what people are starting to understand more now about our system is it is so complex and when it's working, it has been working for decades, you know, things move seamlessly. But when we're having challenges like we are in in getting our industry back up and running, it's a very complex industry. So it is, it has been a challenging process in order to make things smooth again.

RB: I did ask this question to Scott Keyes earlier, a travel fellow. I'm not sure I understand why it wasn't able to be predicted by airports and airlines. Surely there was a sense that travel was going to return to a normal kind of volume this summer, and surely that could have been planned six months in advance, no?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah. So, you know, we started the year with an Omicron, you know, really shuttered again January, February, March. Our industry was less than 30%. And we were planning for this summer, planning for a ramp up. All surveys and industry experts would have expected our industry to be at about 70% this summer. So we expected a big ramp up in demand. We knew people wanted to travel and we think there was anyone across our system that would have expected that we would have been at 90 or 100% and back to 2019 levels. Industry experts predicted that we would get there in a few years. So we expected a big ramp up and we expected a lot of people wanted to travel, just not as intense as it was.

RB: But that's surprising to know that that couldn't be predicted, though. I mean, we knew that there was pent up demand and we certainly knew that there was pent up income, that that Canadians were sitting on money and ready to spend it. So so why and I'm not obviously blaming you here, but why do you think that that mistake was made, that there was a misread?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah, I think there was. You know, there was an expectation that we would have strong demand for sure. I think it's you know, we're talking about a 20% flux here in terms of getting back to 2019 levels. We would have thought it would have taken another year or two to get there in terms of in travel demand. But I think the biggest piece here has been the labour shortage issue in terms of getting those people back to work has been a challenge. And we haven't we've just really in the last few weeks have been able to bring back unvaccinated workers who was part of that labour pool, people that were trained and wanted to come back to our industry and they're now able to. And those people are starting to get back into the system, getting trained, getting their security clearance, and that will help.

RB: Surely those weren't certainly those weren't large numbers, though. The people who were unvaccinated, given the number of Canadians.

MONETTE PASHER: You're talking hundreds for airline partners, which is significant in these times when we're when we're short, you know, they're back to 90% staffing. And anything that can push them up to that 100% is certainly welcome in these times.

RB: What should airlines and airports be doing right now that that isn't happening? What would be the thing that would really help fix this problem more quickly?

MONETTE PASHER: I think we're doing, you know, we're working together collaboratively to move forward and get people back to work as quickly as we can. I think moving forward, you know, not having vaccine mandates at our airports would make a big difference in moving forward for international travel and to smooth out that process and just ensuring that we plan forward for the fall and how we can make sure that our industry isn't shuttered again and our borders don't close. And if we have these measures in place that we're able to navigate it better as an industry, to see our industry to go down to under 30% for over two years is incredibly frustrating and challenging when we need to ramp back up.

RB: So when do you think this will be resolved? We do see some waves of of COVID happening now and into August as well. So when do you think this staffing shortage and these issues will be resolved?

MONETTE PASHER: Yeah, we're seeing steady progress in terms of hiring and bringing people back on at our airports. Airlines ramping up staffing and have reduced schedules. I think in weeks we're going to see things smooth out even more. And steady progress as we move forward. But we do anticipate a bumpy summer. It's a busy time. And so I think, yes, steady progress, I would say.

RB: Monette Pasher, thank you so much for your time this morning. Appreciate it.

MONETTE PASHER: Thank you.

RB: Monette Pasher is the interim president of the Canadian Airports Council.

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Winds of Change

Guest: Monette Pasher

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton, and this is The Current. As the effects of climate change become more apparent around the world, the push is on to get countries moving away from fossil fuels. But it's a transition that's not always easy. Just ask people living on the Shetland Islands north of Scotland. The islands are about to become home to the UK's largest wind turbine farm. The current producer, Samira Mohyeddin, went to the Shetland Islands this fall around the time of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Here's her documentary, Winds of Change. It first aired in December.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The moment I land in Samburgh or as Shetlanders call it "Sombra", the wind just envelops me. The air is salty and warm, and in the tiny portable like airport, it really feels like I'm not in Scotland anymore.

LAURIE GOODLAD: I always joke... I always tell them that they'll not get any haggis, kilts and bagpipes here. It's just not part of the culture.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Luckily, I have a ride waiting for me because the only bus doesn't come for another hour.

LAURIE GOODLAD: And like the place, names are all quite different, they're all really Scandinavian sounding and I don't think that Shetlanders feel particularly Scottish. My name is Laurie Goodlad, I'm a writer and tour guide. I've lived in Shetland all my life.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Laurie and I are the only ones on the road. The one road. To the left of us are low green rolling hills filled with sheep and small stone structures. To the right are some colourful houses, green rolling hills and more sheep. We're only 600 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, and although called the Shetland Islands of Scotland, we are much closer to Norway than we are to London.

LAURIE GOODLAD: I can trace my family back 9/12 generations, and that's something that I think that, that we're really fortunate. Living in a community like Shetland, we've got really strong oral history like I can name like great great grandparents back through the family tree. And I think when you look at a lot of communities, they don't have that same sense of belonging that we enjoy here.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: It's true everyone was saying hi to Laurie, the airport attendant, the bus driver, the fisherman. In fact, every car that passed us, when a car did pass us, would wave hello and I know what you're thinking. That's just small towns. But this felt different.

LAURIE GOODLAD: It's just different. We've got like our own flag here and even today, like you'll hear like older people saying, Oh, the worst thing that ever happened to Shetland was when we got into the law book. I think as well, because Shetlanders weren't allowed to speak the language any more. Scotland, in a lot of ways, oppressed everyday Shetland when they were here. They say that the only thing that Shetland ever got from Scotland was the expense of grain and greedy ministers.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Laurie tells me how the islands came to be a part of Scotland and what it meant for Shetland to become a base for the UK's oil industry.

LAURIE GOODLAD: In the 19th century we had the Scottish landowners came in and evicted thousands of people from their homes to make way for large scale sheep farming and meant that thousands of people emigrated away from their home, away from Shetland. They went to North America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, because they were forced off the land, they had no, they had no rights. And then in the 1970s, again oil was discovered in the North Sea and Shetland was the kind of base for the oil industry. Although Shetland has benefited hugely from the oil industry that the council at the time was able to get a really good deal. But the wind farm there's no good deal for Shetland. And again, it's just coming... It's just an outside company coming in to strip more resources from Shetland with little care what the islanders want or need.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The wind farm law is talking about was first proposed back in 2005, but construction only got underway a year ago, and that's because there was real pushback from the community. The wind farm has and is causing serious divisions and becoming a real source of anger and anguish. Supporters of the project say it will raise money for the islands, create jobs and help meet renewable energy targets. Shetlanders opposed say the development is just way too big and not necessarily green.

LAURIE GOODLAD: We've got a wind farm, Burradale wind farm here, which people are not opposed to that produces about 20 percent of our summer energy requirements. It fits the island, it fits the kind of scale of the island. What we don't want to be doing is carrying the energy burden for the whole of the UK. Why should we carry the energy burden for the central belt of Scotland? Like what did the central belt of Scotland ever do for us.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The Burradale Dale windfarm that Laurie is talking about has five turbines and they all have names. Betsy, Mina, Brenda, Sally and Karen. The plan for the new one is to have over 100.

LAURIE GOODLAD: It's even caused like fallouts within families of people who are maybe for and against it. It's really like just torn the heart out of the community in many ways.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: I'm leaving Lerwick, Shetlands main port and most populous island, and I'm heading towards the wind farm. It's about 35 kilometres north on the highest part of the island. 70 kilometres of new road has been built to get all of the equipment here. The wind farm itself is going to take up 96 hectares. That's about a square kilometre.

[SOUNDCLIP: Samira and Aaron greeting each other]

AARON PRIEST: I'm Aaron Priest, I'm stakeholder manager for Viking Wind Farm.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: I start inside the visitor centre. It's a trailer with pamphlets and safety equipment, and it's quiet in there but outside... Not so much.

[SOUNDCLIP: Loud, aggressive wind]

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: It's so windy!

AARON PRIEST: So yeah, so we always work on the basis that if you can't build a wind farm when the whole world is moving to net zero in the U.K. and potentially Europe's windiest place, then there's something wrong. So, uh, the resource you can see for yourself is second to none.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: OK, it's not enough to say the Shetlands are windy. The wind here is a wall. I really have to put my head down like a bull and just push through in order to move.

AARON PRIEST: So we're just outside the main compound for the Viking wind farm. Looking out to the West, you can see a path to the wind farm works out in the west side of the site and you can see a road cut in as well for a new public road that's being built. Viking wind farms 103, 4.3 Megawatt turbines. That will meet all of Shetland's needs from now on. At the moment, Shetland relies on a diesel power station in Lerwick to supply its needs but ultimately, once Viking is up and running and the connections are made the local grid will be supplied by clean wind energy and the rest will be exported to the Scottish mainland and help in the UK's push to net zero and decarbonisation.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The resources there and then some. But as Laurie asked, Why should this little community be carrying the energy burden for the UK? Aaron Priest chalks up the pushback to growing pains.

AARON PRIEST: There's a mixed response to the transition from oil and gas to renewables, and just the transition to net zero isn't without its ups and downs, but ultimately, Shetland Islands Council has approved this project twice on the grounds of the major economic benefits to Shetland and the need to diversify the Shetland economy, and the Scottish Government's approved it twice. The community stands to gain, as well as the jobs and employment, economic diversification, there's a £72million community benefit fund so there are lots of wider benefits for the community here. And ultimately, oil and gas will slowly phase down. There is a pressing need to transition the economy here away from that.

[SOUNDCLIP: clicking sound]

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: That's the sound of a peat digger at the wind farm. According to scientists, the Earth's peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the planet's forests combined, but peat only grows about a millimetre a year. And while the Scottish Government has pledged 250 million pounds to restore Scotland's peatlands, the Wind Farm project is digging up tons and tons of it.

LAURIE GOODLAD: It's complete greenwashing. That's just madness and the area that they're digging up at the moment. This place and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of peat. Peat is known, scientifically known, to be a better carbon store than a rainforest. But if they were thinking of a rainforest that would be visible and so people would be up in arms. But because it's always described, peatlands are described as empty landscapes. Nobody seems to bat an eyelid. That they're literally digging up an entire ecosystem and a peatland is such a diverse ecosystem that supports so much life and locks in so much carbon and with every scoop of it they've got a [inaudible] they're just releasing that into the environment.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Peat is an important ingredient in some single malt scotch, and it covers 50 percent of the Shetland Islands. People who oppose the wind farm talk a lot about the amount of peat being dug up for the project as being one of the main reasons they oppose it.

AARON PRIEST: The majority of peat on the site were on is actually in heavily eroded condition and is actually a net emitter of CO2 and methane, so there's a 260 hectare habitat management plan to help actually reinstate that peat to seal that peat in and stop it from emitting CO2 to stabilise it and then over the longer term to return that to active blanket bog. So we're in the business of trying to leave things... The peat in better condition than we found it overall.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Like everyone I've met, he points out, he's from these parts too

AARON PRIEST: I'm a Shetlander born and bred. I'm very proud of this project, very proud of the employment that it's creating and the long term prospects for economic diversification in Shetland. This will be the UK's most productive onshore wind farm.

LAURIE GOODLAD: People here are quite pragmatic, and we do understand that Shetland has benefited hugely from the oil industry. We do know that, but we also know that we have lost so much with the coming of the oil because of that money and people moving into the island. Yes, it brought jobs. But we have lost an awful lot. We've lost a lot of culture as well. So in many ways, Shetland has already paid the price for energy. We've already made that sacrifice, why are we being asked to make another sacrifice all over again?

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: A couple of kilometres just south of the wind farm is Weisdale Valley, a hamlet in the central mainland of Shetland. I'm going to see the Morrisons and their house Setter. People name their homes here. It's a beautiful white stone house with an arch doorway sitting upon a winding green hill.

[SOUNDCLIP: Samira greeting the Morrison's]

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: I'm led into this cute little kitchen and the fire alarm in there keeps chirping. They don't know how to fix it. Mrs. Morrison quickly begins preparing tea and toast with butter and apricot jam.

[SOUNDCLIP: "Thank you so much. You don't have to do that".]

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Mr. Morrison and I head into the living room, which has a brick fireplace and large windows. Behind the living room as a greenhouse. A new addition to the house. And it's filled with plants and rocks that Mr. Morrison collected from when he was working on the house.

DONNIE MORRISON: My name is Donnie Morrison. I'm a native Shetlander.

EVELYN MORRISON: And I'm Evelyn Morrison and I have lived here since I returned to Shetland in 1972.

DONNIE MORRISON: This place was in my family from 1917. My grandfather bought this place. The house had been standing empty for about 40 years, so I felt it was kind of appropriate to restore it, never expected in my wildest dreams that this was going to happen.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: I ask Evelyn how they first came to know about the wind farm.

EVELYN MORRISON: I think it was a leaflet, a pamphlet came through the door.

DONNIE MORRISON: Yeah.

EVELYN MORRISON: We'd heard murmurs about it but, that was the first time we saw the full extent. I just couldn't believe it, right by the house. This morning it was about half past five, and I lost count of all the cars and vehicles that were going up the hill, on top of the hill. And it's just unbelievable that this was going on.

DONNIE MORRISON: I used to be able to stand there that night and hear the... How shall I describe it? You can tell the change of the season up here. Now, you're standing at night, you hear generators 24/7. You look out, you cannot see the northern lights now because there's floodlights at night.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The Morrison's home directly faces the sight of the wind turbine farm. There are very long and newly paved asphalt roads, with lots of trucks and construction trailers and diggers lining the roads up to the wind farm site. The £72million community fund is just not enough for them to overlook the blight on the landscape.

DONNIE MORRISON: [inaudible] at this big community benefit fund that everybody's going to get millions, but we're paying for it. What benefit does the community need? I mean, it's just money.

EVELYN MORRISON: Yeah, but the community, there is no community... [cross talk]

DONNIE MORRISON: There's no community, the community is gone, the community is bitterly divided. So the community benefits fund is a god damned lie. It's just a bribe, a disgusting bribe and the people falling into it. If everybody said stick it... But they won't. Shetlanders... And Shetlanders are the most double people you would ever find, they'll be nice to your face and stab you in the back. They always have been. And I can say that because I am a Shetlander.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Speaking with Donnie and Evelyn, I can tell how much the divisions in the community are bothering them.

EVELYN MORRISON: And the folk down here they're against it as well. Three families behind they're against it, and then the next again house is the son of the big landowner...

DONNIE MORRISON: They're all for it.

EVELYN MORRISON: Who are all for it. So yeah, and it's difficult sometimes because we've had friends and we've thought, I wonder if they're for or against it. You don't quite know, so you're chatting carefully and don't speak about the wind farm.

DONNIE MORRISON: Utter destruction, our way of life has been here for thousands of years. That means utter destruction of an environment that's been here for thousands of years, destroyed in less than a decade and you can't take it back. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's destroyed. It's very sad. Very, very sad. I feel angry, but I also feel very sad that the industrialisation of what was a pristine environment.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: The Morrison's were actually one of the families who helped raise over £200,000 to try and fight the Viking Wind Farm project, but the Supreme Court in London ultimately ruled in favour of the wind farm.

EVELYN MORRISON: It was like about maybe five or six old judges sitting around a table and I'm sure half the old men sitting there in that room were just thinking when are we going to get away to get our glass of whisky.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: Donnie and Evelyn haven't looked out the window once since we began talking.

EVELYN MORRISON: I try not to look to be honest, I try to look that way.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: They did everything they could to stop the Wind Farm project from going ahead. As I look out, I can see the trucks making their way up the hill and the diggers continuing their work. I can't help wondering how long Evelyn can continue looking away.

EVELYN MORRISON: And it's just unbelievable that this was going on. It's just horrible, really...[gets choked up]

DONNIE MORRISON: It was lovely up here before and now, it's just, Hey ho, this is progress and we're saving the planet.

RB: That documentary was produced by Samira Mohyeddin. It originally aired in December. Coming up after your regional update... the next episode of the CBC Podcast "Unlocking the Fountain." Host Keith McArthur looks at how age-prolonging drugs for your dog, could work for you too. I'm Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current.

Episode seven of the CBC podcast Unlocking The Fountain

RB: am Rosemary Barton and you're listening to The Current. It's time to continue the Cbbc podcast, Unlocking the Fountain. Here is host Keith McArthur with episode Seven Dog Years. Today he explores how our pets may be the first ones to benefit from life prolonging drugs and what that could mean for humans.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH MCARTHUR: Can you tell me your full name?

CELINE: Yeah. It's Celine Leah Gary Juliette Halioua. So it's a mix of German and Moroccan. And so if you can pronounce one half, you can't pronounce the other half.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Professionally. She just goes by Celine Halioua. Her mom loved animals.

CELINE: So you'd always find these poor little animals on the side of the road and rescue them and take them home. So I grew up taking care of, like, baby raccoons that we would find turtles, opossums. He built a bird cage in the back. I grew up with horses. Like 18 cats. Growing up, we had two dogs. So there's amazing photo of me in a crib in our backyard in Texas, and it's me asleep. And then there's like ten cats all over the yard perched on the crib, perched on me, you know, well, sunbathing and in a dog sitting at the foot looking at me. And I just feel like that really explains, well, kind of what my childhood was like.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Being surrounded by so much animal life. Awesome. But being surrounded by death. And each time an animal died, Halioua felt powerless.

CELINE: Yeah. I met the first pet that I remember dying, actually, is my hamster hammy. I couldn't fix Hammy being dead or, you know, my first horse passing away or any of these things and just. Yeah, that feels like that. It's hard to expand. That feeling just frustrates me.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Maybe it was the animal deaths that made Halioua more aware of her own mortality than other kids. Or maybe it was the fact that she grew up with a troubling cardiac arrhythmia. Whatever it was, she became increasingly interested in ageing and how to stop it. Fast forward a few years. Hollywood has a degree in neuroscience and flies to England to do a Ph.D. at Oxford. But before she starts her studies, she reaches out to Laura Deming, the preteen scientist who'd grown up to become a rainmaker for funding early stage ageing companies.

CELINE: So I sent her an email. I come spend a week with her in San Francisco. Flew all the way over.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Emailing someone you don't know about visiting them at their work on another continent. Sound familiar? It was the same tactic Deming herself had used at 11 years old to land a job in the lab of her scientist hero, Cynthia Kenyn. Deming offered Halioua a short internship.

CELINE: And at the end of the internship she gave me a full time job offer and three days to say yes or no. So I flew all the way back to Oxford the entire time, sitting in the tiny economy class bathroom, sobbing, because I was trying to decide whether I wanted to stay at Oxford or go work for Laura. But obviously I decided to work for Laura.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Celine Halioua would become Laura Deming's second in command. One of her many jobs was to meet with researchers assessing potential investment opportunities. Meanwhile, Halliwell was also noodling a business idea of her own, an unconventional one. Dog longevity.

CELINE: We've shown lifespan extension in mice so many times, just so many times. And scientists care, but nobody else really cares. And it's because it's not really it's not tangible. And so the kind of idea is that can take, you know, your best friend and, you know, with a drug or product, make them live a longer, healthier life, at least a healthier life. That would be an incredibly valuable thing to, you know, give somebody in their family to give them more time with their best friend.

KEITH MCARTHUR: I'm Keith McArthur and this is Unlocking the Fountain, a podcast about the mysteries of ageing and the scientific quest to slow, stop or reverse it. Scientists know several ways to make animals live longer, but so far they haven't really shown they can do this for you and me. So now some researchers are focussing on our canine companions. And not just because age related medicine could provide a measurable joy for millions of dog owners, but also because bringing a drug proven to add years to dog lives could attract new scientists and investors to human longevity research and maybe speed up the process for developing drugs that could add healthy years to our lives.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: But what if a kitten got to do with your experiment? The kitten had a birthday last week. It was five years old.

VOICE 2: What happened to it?

VOICE 1: Will it go on forever? Almost surely. Heart failure. But only after 60 years of glorious youth. That's 200 for a human being.

KEITH MCARTHUR: This is episode seven, Dog Years. There are several reasons why dogs are so compelling for ageing research. First you can prove an effect on longevity much quicker on an animal that lives 10 to 20 years than on people who live many decades longer. Second, almost all of the longevity tests that have been done on animals so far have taken place in labs. Dog trials can take place in homes in less controlled domestic environments, more similar to the human experience. Third, getting regulatory approval for a doggy drug is easier than for a people drug. Though the process still takes years. And one other thing people really, really care about their dogs.

SOUNDCLIP

CONNOR: He's sniffing the mike.

KEITH MCARTHUR: My son, Connor, he's 17. And our Goldendoodle Quincy, four. Tell me about Quincy.

CONNOR: Quincy is very good, you know, warm, very snuggly.

KEITH MCARTHUR: So I'm doing this episode on, like, because the whole series is about people ageing, dog mortality. Yeah. Do you ever think about that? Like, obviously dogs live a much shorter time than we do.

CONNOR: Sure. Yeah, I'll cover his ears. It's weird, because sometimes I'm, like, petting him and I get kind of freaked out by that. Like, he will probably be around, like, only be around for, like, a short portion of my life. Right.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And does that make you sad?

CONNOR: Yeah.

KEITH MCARTHUR: If there were a pillow say that he could take, that would make him live happen to live a couple extra years. Would you want him to take that?

CONNOR: Yeah, I would. It's a few more years that he can live and sort of experience the world, and that would be nice. It's a few more years that we can live and sort of have him here because he's a really good boy.

KEITH MCARTHUR: We'll come back to Dogs and Celine Halioua. But first, there are some crazy facts about animal ageing that we've got to talk about. And nobody knows more about this than Steve Austad, who we met way back in the first episode. He's the zoologist who's betting that someone already in their twenties will live to 158 that sort of stumbled into ageing research.

STEVE AUSTAD: So I was an English major and my idea was that I wanted to write the great American novel. So after I got my degree, I set out to, to, to gain the experiences that I assumed that one needed to write the great American novel. Because I come from a very, you know, working class, regular background. I didn't think there was anything at all interesting about it. So I spent some years hitchhiking around the U.S. picking up odd jobs. I was a taxi driver. I was a pool hustler. I worked as a messenger in New York City. I was a newspaper reporter. And then I fell into by accident. And I fell into this animal training gig for the movies in Hollywood.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Lost that handle the bear in a Paul Newman movie.

SOUNDCLIP

The bear that he grew more civilised.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And an elephant and an episode of The Bionic Woman.

SOUNDCLIP

Oh, my God, Jamie, your foot. Do you know how much weight he had on it?

KEITH MCARTHUR: He was also the bionic woman's foot double in that one.

STEVE AUSTAD: And that really awakened an interest in me in science that had been latent since I was in high school. When I was in high school, I remember my biology teacher saying, You're going to be a biologist. And I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. But yet, once I started working around the lions day in and day out, month after month after month, I it was true. I'm just fascinated by what makes animals tick. And I thought, if I'm not going to do this the rest of my life, maybe I could do this more in a more formal way by getting a Ph.D. in animal behaviour and and then studying it. And scientifically.

KEITH MCARTHUR: One of Austad's early research projects involved field research with possums.

STEVE AUSTAD: We had to recapture the same animals every month and as I did that I realised how quickly they would change. They'd be in the prime of life and two months later I get them and they would have cataracts and their muscles would have shrunk and they may have had parasites. And by the time that I published the work on the opossums that I had started off doing, I'd completely lost interest in that and I'd really changed my focus to ageing.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And with opossums. What. What was it that you found interesting about the fact that they were ageing so quickly?

STEVE AUSTAD: Just the fact that that they're as big as they are and things that are of that size don't age that quickly.

KEITH MCARTHUR: It defined a general rule of thumb. First observed by Aristotle over 2000 years ago that big animals live longer than small ones. African elephants live about 60 years. Kangaroos? How about a decade? And ants? Roughly eight months.

STEVE AUSTAD: But a housecat doesn't really start to get old until its teens. Late teens, quite often. Or these things. In 18 months, wood would be falling apart like this. And I just couldn't imagine how or why that might be happening. And it's still a mystery to me.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Possums are a scientific outlier because they age so quickly. Assad has also studied animals on the other extreme. Clams that are still reproducing at 500 years of age. Naked mole rats that don't appear to age at all for the first two decades of their lives and can live another ten years after that. And then there are hydra's.

SOUNDCLIP

A strange terror strikes. Aaah! The hydra/

KEITH MCARTHUR: I met the multi-headed snake monsters from Greek mythology.

SOUNDCLIP

If they cut off, one head two more shall take its place.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Not the bad guys from the Marvel movies, but a one inch long aquatic animal that doesn't have a brain or muscles or a respiratory system. But when it comes to living long, this animal is the best in the world.

STEVE AUSTAD: And hydras is a little small freshwater organism, and it looks kind of like a sea anemone. And as far as anybody knows, those things don't age, at least in the laboratory.

KEITH MCARTHUR: This doesn't mean Hydra are immortal. Sometimes they get eaten by a fish. Sometimes they catch deadly diseases and die of those. But the odds of those things happening in any given year don't go up. No matter how many years a hydra lives. While humans and pretty much every other creature become weaker and more likely to get sick when they get older, a hydra is no more likely to succumb to death in its thousandth year than its first. One study estimated that in a controlled lab setting, about 5% of Hydra would still be alive after 1400 years. What gives Hydra these super powers? We've talked a few times about the hayflick limit, how human cells can only divide 40 or 50 times before they die. But hydra cells, they don't care about the hayflick limit. Their cells can divide indefinitely.

STEVE AUSTAD: So those cells, for some reason have discovered a way not to wear out. They can just keep cranking out new cells year after year, decade after decade. I think what we might be able to discover from the Hydra is how do they keep from wearing out?

KEITH MCARTHUR: Scientists are still trying to figure that out because if they can, it could be another clue for how to extend life span in people. But aren't dogs. Aristotle's notion that big animals live longer than small ones. It's often true, but there are plenty of exceptions, including when it comes to domestic dogs. And that was the insight at the heart of Celine Halouia's big idea to extend canine lifespan.

CELINE: Big dogs have about half the lifespan of a small dog. So a Great Dane, purebred on average, will live somewhere between 6 to 8 years, maybe nine years, while a Chihuahua has an average lifespan closer to 15 or 16 years or maybe longer. And it's really weird for context that within the same species you see a 2x lifespan differential. I don't think you do see that in any other species. And the reason why is because we inbred dogs so much after we domesticated them to, you know, have fluffy dogs for this or herding dogs and work dogs. But the way people did that is by breeding dogs like similarly together. And often we're in the same litters together and it just causes all these genetic issues. And that's why, you know, German shepherds have hip dysplasia, so their hips fall out a lot. Flat pace breeds have a hard time breathing. Many different breeds of dogs through tumours. And the thesis is that another genetic issue that we accidentally introduced is making big dogs have an accelerated ageing profile.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Most dog breeds were created over the last 200 years. But there's evidence that people have been selectively breeding dogs for millennia. Get this. A recent archaeological discovery in the Siberian Arctic found 9000 year old skeletons of two different breeds of domesticated dogs. The biggest dogs had been mated with other big dogs to help with hunting. Smaller dogs had been bred to pull sleds. And 9000 years of breeding has resulted in this strange situation where small dogs live twice as long as big ones. But why? Well, back in the nineties, Cynthia Kenyon manipulated a single gene to double the lifespan of tiny, transparent worms. She was suppressing a hormone known as IGF one, which plays a role in both growth and ageing. Dogs also have IGF one. And it turns out that when you breed the biggest dogs with other big dogs, you're creating puppies with higher levels of IGF one. And that means they grow bigger and age faster.

CELINE: The bigger a dog gets, the higher the levels this dog has of IGF one circling in its blood and also the shorter average lifespan that a dog has. So it's a very strong correlation on both sides.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Okay.

CELINE: So it seems like we've basically accidentally created on the little dog side a equivalent to what Cynthia Kenyon on created with worms that looked 200% longer and on the other end made big dogs be the opposite.

KEITH MCARTHUR: How you was initial interest was in whether targeting IGF one could prolong human lifespan, but since that would take decades to prove, she decided to start with dogs. Privately. She worried this idea was a little too cute that her colleagues might not see it as serious science.

CELINE: So for a really long time, I was actually really embarrassed of the idea because it just sounded kind of I don't know, I always had a picture in my head that was going to develop ageing drugs for humans, and there's a very traditional path to do it. And you find that ageing drug development for cancer or osteoarthritis or whatever. And I always kind of thought I was going to do that too. I remember for like six months I was talking to people about this idea and you know, people ask when I'm working on it, be like a dog longevity and be really quiet about it, basically.

KEITH MCARTHUR: But eventually she had to bring the idea to her boss, Laura Deming.

CELINE: And yet when I told her about it, she was actually sceptical at first. And most people are.

KEITH MCARTHUR: But Deming warmed to the idea of helping Hollywood launch a company that focussed on dog ageing, while also testing a theory with potential human implications. She provided some Start-Up Capital and Hollywood started meeting with investors to raise more. The company launched under the brand name Loyal in early 2020. Another start up in the space. Rejuvenate Bio was founded by celebrity geneticist George Church. Side note, my wife and I went to meet with church at Harvard a couple of years ago. He helped us in our quest to find cures and therapies for our son Bryson's rare disease.

GEORGE CHURCH: MRI or anything like that.

CONNOR: They have. So the brain is normal.

GEORGE CHURCH: That's what we expect. That's good. That's good. Very good news. I think it's just probably quite reversible.

KEITH MCARTHUR: He's a fascinating guy involved in dozens of futuristic science and medical projects, including one to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction using gene editing on an elephant. Anyway, his ageing company wants to use gene editing to target two age related genes in dogs.

GEORGE CHURCH: And if it works in dogs, we might try it in humans soon thereafter.

KEITH MCARTHUR: That's Church from a TED Talk. Rejuvenate has already shown that boosting age related genes can treat kidney disease and diabetes in mice. The most advanced therapy when it comes to dog longevity is one we've already talked about for people. Rapamycin. That's the promising anti-aging drug discovered in the soil of Easter Island.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: My name is Matt Kaeberlein. I'm a professor of lab medicine and pathology at the University of Washington. I've been studying the biological mechanisms of ageing since I was a graduate student, and.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Kaeberlein is head of something called the Dog Ageing Project. And you're a dog person?

MATT KAEBERLEIN: I am a dog person, yeah. I've always had dogs. We we had three until recently that we actually lost two of our dogs this year. So we're down to one.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Kaeberlein was one of the first researchers to make the connexion between ageing rapamycin and the mTOR protein.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: You know, we and now many others have shown that in lots of different animals. If you if you provide rapamycin you get lifespan extension. It really seems like rapamycin is improving function during old age in pretty much every organ and tissue where you look. The other thing that's been really exciting is the observation that you can actually start treatment with rapamycin in middle age and still get many of the same benefits that you get from starting at young age. And to me, that was a real paradigm shift in the field because prior to that, everybody thought you had to start at very young age in order to get these big benefits.

KEITH MCARTHUR: So that sounds promising. But even if you start at middle age, it would still take decades to show that rapamycin is prolonging human life. In a small trial, Kaeberlein and his colleagues showed that feeding rapamycin to dogs for just ten weeks improved heart health on an echocardiogram test. But a second trial didn't replicate those positive results.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: It could be because we went to a lower dose. It could be because our sample size was small in the first trial. And so we were moving ahead with the what we call phase three. That's the real trial. That's the that's the study that is designed to answer the question Does rapamycin slow ageing in dogs? It's a three year study. 500 dogs.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Kaeberlein is expecting that the dogs on rapamycin could live a couple years longer.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: That's the primary end point and we'll be looking at multiple age related diseases and heart function, cancer incidence activity, cognitive function, all the things that based on the mouse data, we think there's a pretty good chance that rapamycin could have an effect if it's going to have an effect in dogs.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And what about other pets?

MATT KAEBERLEIN: I often get asked by cat people, you know, why are you doing this in dogs? Why are you not doing this in cats? And the one legitimate answer I can give them is, Have you ever tried to get your cat to take a pill? It's just much easier to get dogs to take pills. So there's. There's no reason to think that rapamycin won't work the same way in cats. But but it is certainly, you know, as any dog owner will know, most dogs, if you put some cheese on it or peanut butter or something, they'll they'll be happy to take the rapamycin pills.

KEITH MCARTHUR: If rapamycin works on dogs. You can bet there'll be a market for other pets, too. Is the science of pet longevity ready to go mainstream? There are signs of that. Not only are rapamycin trials about to begin, but George churches rejuvenate raised $10 million in 2021 to test age related gene therapy on dogs and eventually people and Halioua and her team at Loyle have identified an existing drug they think could prolong the life of big dogs. They've already enrolled 500 dogs for preliminary research and are hoping to start drug trials in 2022. Drugs for pets still need regulatory approval, but the process doesn't take as long as drugs for people. Not as many trials are required, and manufacturers don't need to prove that their drug is better than other drugs on the market, just that it works.

CELINE: Generally speaking, it takes about 3 to 5 years to get a dog product to market.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Haliouawas not ready to talk about pricing for the drug just yet. But she says loyalty's goal is to ensure broad access. And the founder is no longer embarrassed about telling people she's in the business of helping dogs live longer. What's people's reaction?

CELINE: Oh, they think it's hilarious. I remember after I raised my first round of funding, I mean, walk around San Francisco, people would recognise me as a dog lady. People had already who they were like, Oh, yeah, I heard about you. You're trying to make dogs live longer. There's very few people who have a controversial take on whether we should have dogs live longer and healthier lives. Right. Like we all like dogs are kind of the best versions of what biology can produce.

CONNOR: A pet. Yeah. You want pets, don't you?

KEITH MCARTHUR: It's conceivable that by the end of this decade, every vet visit will include a consultation about proven drugs to extend your dog's lifespan by a couple of years. So we're still a long way off from having treatments that could allow dogs to live 25 or 30 years.

STEVE AUSTAD: Yes. And I mean, yes, that's absolutely true. And I think that's also true that we're a long way off from having treatments that could allow humans to live, you know, 100 and 4050 years. That's sort of the same, you know, difference in in percentage. So I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And what if he is wrong? What if we are much closer to breakthroughs that were not decades to human life? How would that change the world? And why are some people so afraid of this? Next time on unlocking the fountain.

MATT KAEBERLEIN: We might get a slower rate of change and innovation. We might have dictators who want to live forever. We might have older relations with our own relatives.

CELINE: If we want to extend life. What are our reasons and what are the trade-offs and how can we consider the implications before we go down the grounds?

MATT KAEBERLEIN: You're talking about a several fold increase in the world's population. We're already dealing with climate change. Even at our present population.

RB: Tomorrow, we'll bring you the final episode of the CBC podcast, Unlocking the Fountain Dream or Dystopia. That is our programme for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Country legend and Jolene chanteuse Dolly Parton's coming up. Her book store song Teller My Life in Lyrics tells the stories behind some of her most beloved songs. She talked with Tom Power about some of her favourites. Don't want to miss that. I'm Rosemary Barton. Thanks for listening to The Current. See you back here tomorrow.

The Current Transcript for July 6, 2022

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