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The Current Transcript for March 4, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: It's a good night and it seems to be getting even better. They don't call Super Tuesday for nothing.

MATT GALLOWAY: Don't call it a comeback. Former Vice President Joe Biden has turned the race for the Democratic nomination on its head. In a moment, what happens now in the fight to face Donald Trump? And later on the show.

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VOICE: We need to reduce the impact this crime has on our society. I wish no one were in my shoes.

MG: A drunk driver killed Sheri Arsenault's son in 2011. Would decriminalizing impaired driving for first time offenders reduce intoxication behind the wheel? The change in tactic has been tried in B.C. and Manitoba with surprising results and it's being considered in Alberta. It has some surprising supporters behind it. And we'll hear why coming up in an hour. Also this morning. Stop touching your face. This is advice you keep hearing is the coronavirus continues to spread. Easier said than done, said the guy who has his hand on his chin right now. We'll explain why. But we'll start this Wednesday with a Super Tuesday for Joe Biden. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Joe Biden comes out ahead on Super Tuesday

Guests: Richard Goodstein, Julian Mulvey

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VOICE: Just a few days ago, the press and the pundits had declared the campaign dead. And we were told when we got to Super Tuesday it'd be over. Well I'm here to report, we are very much alive. And make no mistake about it, this campaign will send Donald Trump packing. This campaign is taking off. Join us. We need you, we want you and there's a place for you in this campaign.

MG: For Joe Biden, it certainly was a Super Tuesday. In just a couple of days, he has gone from being a joke to a juggernaut, taking Texas, North Carolina, and at least seven other states. For Bernie Sanders, perhaps not so much, even though he did win California, the biggest prize in the Democratic Party's slate of primaries.

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VOICE: No matter what happens, if this campaign and I don't know what will happen, but if it comes out to be a campaign in which we have one candidate who is standing up for the working class and the middle class, we're going to win that election. So I am excited about where we are. We have come a long, long way.

MG: Last night, a whopping one third of the pledged delegates were up for grabs in the hunt to be the Democratic presidential nominee. It could be a couple of days before we know the final tally, but we do know enough this morning to try to figure out what it all might mean. And to help with that, I'm joined by two Democratic Party strategists. Richard Goodstein advised the Bill and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns and Julian Mulvey was a top advisor to Bernie Sanders four years ago. Gentlemen, good morning to you both.

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Good morning Matt.

JULIAN MULVEY: Good morning.

MG: Richard, we'll start with you. Did the voting in Super Tuesday go as you thought it would unfold?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: I don't think even the most optimistic person in the Biden campaign foresaw what happened last night. This was Donald Trump's worst nightmare. I mean, he put the arm on Zelensky in Ukraine for a reason. That he knew that Biden was going to be his toughest opponent and the coalition that Biden put together last night, the Obama coalition of black and college educated suburban voters and non-college educated voters as well, is really something that every Democrat who can step back and have some distance on this was always hoping and praying could be put together because that's a coalition that can beat Donald Trump and handily.

MG: We'll come back to this in a moment. Julian Mulvey, for you, how did the vote unfold?

JULIAN MULVEY: Well it was an astonishing turn of events and an astonishing comeback for Joe Biden. Dial, scroll back just nine days ago and the Sanders team was telling reporters they were looking to deliver a knockout punch to Joe Biden in South Carolina. Instead, Bernie has now been knocked back on Super Tuesday. So it's a real turn of events.

MG: He did win Utah. He did win California, some big states. Is it as bad, Julian, as some people might be suggesting for Bernie Sanders?

JULIAN MULVEY: Well, the momentum now has clearly shifted from Bernie to Joe Biden. And as you look ahead to the next set of contests on March the 10th, we have Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Washington. You know, the states are starting to me and Michigan will be the big contest there. And in 2016, Bernie did very well there, scored a huge upset. But the calendar is now going to start to tilt back in favour of Joe Biden on the 17th. You have Arizona, Florida and Ohio. And so as they look out across the calendar, you have to see an again, an astonishing turn. The advantage now seems to be pivoting over to Joe Biden.

MG: Richard Goodstein, explain how this happens. A week ago, Joe Biden is written off for dead, doesn't even campaign or advertise in some of the states that he won last night. How does this happen?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Well, I think Democratic voters basically stepped back and had to face the possibility that Bernie Sanders, an unreconstructed socialist who we saw in the first few states, was doing nothing to expand the base, notwithstanding his claims to the contrary, Could be the Democratic nominee. And the prospect of that really kind of got everybody's attention and the implications of what it would do for US Senate and House of Representatives candidates was so startling and disturbing that I think there was this rallying around obviously, the black vote we saw in South Carolina was was going to go pretty consistently for Joe Biden in the 60 to 65 percent range. And then when Klobuchar and Beto O'Rorke and Buttigieg endorsed him, there was this sense that, OK, if they think Biden is the guy, I guess that's a pretty good judgment that I should kind of assign a lot of value to if I'm a Democratic voter in one of these Super Tuesday states. I think it's as simple as that.

MG: But let me stop you there. I mean, I'm looking at polls from across the spectrum, from Yahoo, from Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, NPR, the list goes on and on. These are polls that were done in February and they show Bernie Sanders would handily beat Donald Trump in a general election. So where does that concern come from?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: I'll tell you exactly where it comes from. Look at the poll for Medicare for all. When you ask people, how do you like Medicare for all? They go oh, that sounds great. And the next question is, how do you feel about losing your health care? They go what? And that's the problem. That's what happened between those polls you just cited and yesterday. Is it in theory kind of the idea of Bernie Sanders seemed fine. And then when they actually had to face the real possibility that he was going to be the nominee, it was kind of like that second question on Medicare for all, they go, no, that's not what we had in mind. That's what happened.

MG: Julian Mulvey, a lot of people say that this is about the establishment and that's in backing Joe Biden, the establishment stopping the future of the Democratic Party. Stopping the new wing of the Democratic Party. Is that what this is about?

JULIAN MULVEY: You know, I think certainly when you speak to Sanders people, that's what they are feeling. And I think, you know, again, in an unexpected turn of events, was this sudden coalescing of Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar dropping out in the wake of South Carolina and then so quickly getting behind Joe Biden over the course of the weekend and that re-alignment changed everything. If you are in the Bernie camp, you always aware or very hypersensitive to feeling that the establishment is out to stop you at every turn for a number of reasons. And so they're looking at that and they're thinking that. And they have made, you know, a big part of their campaign has been has been built around that message, that fundraising operation on, you know, through email, which is one of the which is the envy of every other candidate and makes a real point of driving that outsider us against the establishment message line. And it's been it's been tremendously productive in terms of raising money. But also, you know, the worry here for the Sanders team is how do they build beyond their core base to to to reach out across the party and I get the sense that they thought that they didn't have to and that they were going to be able to get through this to secure enough delegates before they were going to have to try to reach out and broaden that coalition. But now now they're on the back foot and they're going to have to rethink things.

MG: What about that electability piece that Richard is talking about? Is it that the people had a peek under the hood and perhaps weren't completely satisfied with what they saw? Or is it as simple as that? I mean, again, the polls would show that Bernie Sanders, if you believe the polls, where they are right now, Bernie Sanders would handily beat Donald Trump in a general election?

JULIAN MULVEY: Right. You know, those polls are dangerous because they're they're dangerous to take a look at right now. But of course, we can't help ourselves. So Bernie likes to say that, you know, in nearly 70 polls that have been taken, he does beat Donald Trump at this point in time. And that's been a big part of their messaging for simple reason. Democrats are desperate to find the right candidate, the candidate they think is tough enough to beat Donald Trump. But Bernie's team thinks that Bernie has his appeal, lies in the fact that he could bring new people in, disaffected voters, outsiders, and he has that outsider mantle. But I think, you know, as this is coming to focus here, there's been something of a flight to safety potentially among the voters and something that has sort of been overlooked a little bit is you know, Bernie had a tough week. He this last week. He has, he scored a giant win in Nevada and I think that caused everyone some surprise. And that was eight or nine days ago. But the next day, there's a big 60 Minutes interview on television and he gets caught up defending Fidel Castro's Cuba.

MG: Right.

JULIAN MULVEY: And that starts off like a bad week. I have a suspicion that people got a little bit worried that this would be a harbinger of, you know, the fights to come, that Bernie would get somewhat caught up. He's he's usually very good in debates about defending socialism or being a democratic socialist. But it started there. And then he walked into the debate on Wednesday of last week. And he had a tough he had one of his more uncomfortable debates where he couldn't he didn't really have his footing and wasn't as competent as he has been. And that was the lead up then to this incredibly powerful personal endorsement from Congressman James Clyburn, where he invoked his late wife in a very moving endorsement that then galvanized South Carolina and had a ripple effect across the country.

MG: You talked about a flight to safety, and there are a lot of people who thought perhaps and this is a couple of weeks ago that maybe that flight to safety would go in the direction of Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, spent half a billion dollars largely on advertising. Here's how it worked out for him.

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VOICE: As the results come in, here's what is clear. No matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible. In just three months, we've gone from 1 percent of the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for president.

MG: Richard Goodstein, half a million dollars for, pardon me, half a billion dollars, $500 million to win American Samoa. Money well spent for Michael Bloomberg?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: And I would say on top of that, think about had Bloomberg not been in the race last night, it would have been a rout. If you assume and I think it's a proper assumption that most of the Bloomberg voters would have gone for Biden, not for Bernie. And if you tacked on Bloomberg's numbers to what Biden got, it would have been a rout of historic proportions last night. So, Bernie shitbags lucky stars that Bloomberg was in, at least through last night. I think at this point, it's a fair bet that sooner rather than later. Bloomberg, a rational guy, if there ever was one, is going to get out. He seems quite disinclined to do anything to help. Bernie Sanders at this point wants desperately to get Donald Trump out of the White House. And therefore, I think that we're setting probably some trepidation about how Biden's going to perform on the campaign of its one on one against Trump. He's going to put all his support money in unprecedented numbers behind Biden. And let me to say one thing, if I can, Matt, regarding this whole notion of of kind of a Biden-Trump race. I know there are Democrats or people you know, Republicans claim they're lip licking their chops because Biden makes all these faux pas. You know, Kellyanne Conway's husband thinks that Donald Trump has some really mental deficit and is addled. So, I mean, it kind of goes both ways and the one thing that Donald Trump can't get, there's nobody like Volodymyr Zelensky, he can put the arm on to get is decency. People realize that Joe Biden is a decent, empathic, caring human being.

MG: But they didn't believe that a week ago. They didn't believe that two weeks ago when he was stumbling in the debate stages, on the debate stages when he seemed to be.

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Oh actually they did. I actually think that they everybody thought that he was carrying and decent everything, but they just had some misgiving about his ability to kind of carry the torch. They've overcome those for obvious reasons.

MG: Julian Mulvey, what happened to Elizabeth Warren? Terrible night last night. Lost her home state of Massachusetts, came in third there. What went wrong for her?

JULIAN MULVEY: You know, this is, you know, as a progressive, as a huge fan of Senator Warren, this has been a tremendous disappointment. And, you know, I'll pin point it, at least my take very specifically, you had to dial back to October. And Warren's campaign does a few things incredibly well. She has a message. She's actually very good on the stump. She hasn't to the active supporters. But they had a digital first campaign where they wanted to. And they they placed they had did not press a lot of stock and, you know, some traditional television communication. And there was a critical moment in October when Bernie went up on television in Iowa. And then shortly afterwards in New Hampshire, Pete Buttigieg was already up in Iowa, and she allowed the race to start to move away from her. At what was a high point for her, which was the beginning of October, where she was in the twenty 26, 27 percent nationally, she did not lay down the foundation in Iowa. She got up on television very, very late in New Hampshire and allowed every other campaign to get up and out, communicate her in those two critical states. So she really failed to launch in those states. And the thing about momentum is that you don't realize it's over until it's too late and so it's been a disappointment.

MG: Let's talk a little bit about what happens now. Richard Goodstein, how difficult will it be to unify the Democratic Party? It seems like there are two very different visions for what the party should be. We've talked about establishment versus revolution if Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee, how do you go about unifying that party?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: If Bernie Sanders is the nominee, I think we will be talking about things flipping yet again. At this point, I think the odds are very, very strong that it's going to be Biden. If you want me to hypothesize about Sanders, we've already had Senate candidate, Democratic Senate candidates say if a socialist is at the top of the ticket, they're going to have to distance himself from him because they don't see themselves winning a state like Arizona or, you know, or North Carolina or Georgia. That's not a good environment in which somebody who's going to be accused of being a socialist, the candidate themselves for the Senate, let's say, will do when the person on top of the ticket is a self-avowed socialist.

MG: And yet he's built a coalition that is overwhelmingly young, African-American, young vote, the Latino young voter, a young white vote as well. Does that not diminish that future wing?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Where was it last night? I mean, Matt, where was, other than California and again think about if you took out all the early voting in California that were cast basically the same day of the Iowa caucuses in some cases, if you took out those early votes, I actually don't think we'd be talking about how impressive the Sanders coalition was. So there was a study of this, end on this, In The New York Times yesterday, 40,000 people were surveyed by two Yale professors and what they basically concluded is that Bernie Sanders would have to increase turnout among young people by 11 percent. And in contrast, Barack Obama to basically compensate for how many moderates he would presumably lose and they're obviously making assumptions. Barack Obama, in contrast, increased black turnout by 5 percent. So the upshot, I think, is the Sanders theory is unsubstantiated based on kind of real live empirical information.

MG: Julian, you worked for Sanders in 2016. Is it unsubstantiated?

JULIAN MULVEY: Well, you know what I would say is this is that Bernie speaks to the economic anxiety of working and middle class Americans, you know, very bluntly and sharply and his economic message is very powerful. You know, you have a, we have, this is going to be a tough road to navigate for the Democratic Party because Sanders supporters are so enthusiastic for him and I don't see them going away. We're headed to Milwaukee, which is the site of the convention and it's going to be very difficult to bring. It's going to be very tricky and challenging now to bring the two wings of the party together.

MG: Well, there's been questions, Julian, as to whether Sanders supporters, given the two very different visions of the party, would stay home if Joe Biden were to be the nominee. What do you think of that?

JULIAN MULVEY: Well, yeah, I certainly hope that's not the case.

MG: Is it possible?

JULIAN MULVEY: I think, you know, it's certainly it's, you know, one of Joe Biden's great strengths, I think, is bringing people together and listening to people and potentially winning them over. And they're gonna have to, the Biden campaign will be acutely aware, I think, that they're going to have to work extremely hard to bring over, frankly, a lot of Bernie supporters who are going to be somewhat suspicious of Joe Biden.

MG: Richard Goodstein, just have a minute or so left. If you're Donald Trump and you're waking up this morning, how are you feeling?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Oh, again, I think this was your worst nightmare outcome, because, again, they had this fantasy this time yesterday that this was going to go through to a very contested convention, the Democrats are gonna be torn apart and and he had still the hope that Bernie Sanders was going to be his opponent. And today he sees Joe Biden getting the very votes that Hillary Clinton lost among kind of downscale white voters, non-college educated white voters. That's you know, Joe Biden cleaned up in Oklahoma and did very well in other states, in Maine and Massachusetts that's had a predominance of white voters. And that's exactly where Biden did well and that's again, that's why Trump put the arm on Zelensky because he knew that Biden was the guy that could beat him. And he saw last night that, holy cow, this is the guy I'm going to have to run against and I don't know what to do now. I'm running in a Fox News poll down nine points today.

MG: We'll leave it there. More certainly on this to come. The race is nowhere near done. Thank you both.

RICHARD GOODSTEIN: Thank you, Matt.

JULIAN MULVEY: Thank you.

MG: Richard Goodstein, former adviser to the Bill and Hillary Clinton campaigns. Julian Mulvey Democratic Party strategist, key adviser to Bernie Sanders in 2016. The news is next. And then part of our identity as Canadians: downhill skiing. The clock could be running out on that. You'll meet an activist with radical ideas on how to save the sport and perhaps the world.

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VOICE: If we're going to solve this problem, we have to get the outdoor industry to act more like the NRA.

MG: Well, that's interesting. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. More on that in about six minutes time. Stay with us.

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With temperatures rising, many of central Canada's ski hills could be shuttered by end of century: report

Guests: Daniel Scott, Auden Schendler

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

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MG: Still to come, some people believe there is a better way to punish drunk driving, one that saves police time, but also keeps more offenders off the road. We'll hear more about this approach coming up. But first, we're going to shred some powder.

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[Sound of skiing]

MG: That's the sound of winter for a lot of people, whether you're a skier or a snowboarder, there's nothing quite like it. The wind on your face, the sun bouncing off the snow. Every winter, Canadians chase that thrill of flying down a hill with nothing but fibreglass strapped to their feet. For this mom at a resort in Ontario, skiing is much more than an excuse to just get the kids out of the house.

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VOICE: It can be a lifelong sport. I think a real piece of our heritage. You know just the camaraderie that you get. You don't even know people that you sit with on the chairlift, but I don't know, you just you've got this common thing and the gorgeous sky, you know, the ability to just be with nature. My youngest son started at four and if everything goes well, he could ski well into his 70s, 80s and you can take it anywhere. Giving them the opportunity to do this now is so fortunate.

MG: So how long will that fortune last? Warmer temperatures mean even less snow and already this year, a handful of ski and snowboard World Cup events have been cancelled in Europe. Daniel Scott is director of the University of Waterloo's Master of Climate Change Program, and he recently published a study looking at the impact that climate change could have on Canada's ski industry. Daniel, good morning.

DANIEL SCOTT: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. Tell me about this study and what you found when it comes to the future of skiing.

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah, we've been looking at what climate change means for the ski industry, ski to or winter tourism for almost two decades. And so the latest study is where we actually looked at all across eastern North America, so Ontario, Quebec and new in New England or northeast region markets to see how they compared how competitiveness would change, which types of ski areas we might lose to climate change. How resilient, though, they'll be and importantly, how different the future for us ski tourism in the ski industry might be based on our climate choices over the next decade.

MG: I want to talk about what that's going to look like. How did you go about predicting the future, though, and predicting what kind of snow there would be on the hills in the years ahead?

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah, that's a great question. So 20 years ago when I started doing this, I started in the Ontario market and what I was hearing from the ski industry themselves is they said, look, we're seeing stuff in the press and it's not representing our operating realities. They're not the people who are doing this modelling or just modelling a natural snow pack. They're not putting our snowmaking into it and it's misrepresenting our risk. And, you know, I took that to heart. So we came up with a new model that has the natural snowpack in it, but also builds in their ability to make snow under certain conditions into the amounts that they can do with their current sun snowmaking systems. And so we've then utilized that same model again in Quebec and in the United States, across the United States, in Austria, China, Norway and other places, other countries have used it as well.

MG: Take a look at the number of ski days. If you look at Ontario and Quebec, what could change in years ahead when it comes to the days that people can actually ski?

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah. So in our current model, the sort of current average season length and this is across all those areas in both provinces. So Quebec is about one hundred thirty seven days, Ontario about 117. And if we as as a globe, if we achieve the Paris climate agreement and the ambitions that we have in there, the seasons would drop down to about a hundred and twenty one days or minus 12 percent back in about 100 to day average, which is also minus twelve percent in Ontario. And if we don't achieve that and we sort of continue along the trajectory that we have now in terms of emissions, those season losses would go up to about 15 to 21 percent. And this is at mid-century. So if we look later in the century, those emissions, those losses in the ski season go up.

MG: How bad could, I want to get to the finances, but how bad could it get? If you take a look at I mean, those are under the Paris climate targets, which to your point, we may or may not achieve and there's great struggle to try and figure out how this country would get there. If it gets as bad as some people are predictingm what would that mean for skiing?

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah, if you look long term, you know, into the late sort of decades of this century in Ontario market. And if we continued sort of the mission to directly there were on now you could lose up to 60, 50 to 60 percent of the ski season. So for some of those Geary's, that's just not financially viable. So what would be we would be left with is a sort of shell of the current regional market in Ontario. Quebec would do better. They have a colder climate. They have a bit more elevation there further away from the Great Lakes. So in Quebec, you know, even under that higher emissions scenario, their losses are usually less than 25 percent and they have a longer season to begin with. So. But good chunks of the market would be lost. And that's that's something known to your previous interviews point. You know, there's there's there's, you know, millions or billions of dollars in revenue and business. There's thousands of jobs, but there's that cultural component as well. It's a lifestyle for many people.

MG: Even under the modest targets that people are trying to achieve, what would that mean financially for those resorts for and the towns? I mean, I grew up in a ski town in southwestern Ontario, and the town is essentially built around the ski industry. What would it mean for those industries and for the economies that are based around that if you have a 10 or 15 percent drop in the available ski days?

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah, it's partly the timing, but, you know, that's a great point because I think it was about seven years ago when when Blue Mountain is one of the bigger Ontario ski areas couldn't get open. Their layoffs were in the 1500, 1600. You know, it was temporary,but that gives you an order of scale. Right. So it's like shutting down a manufacturing plant or something in those towns. Many politicians overlook the importance of tourism in our economy. And to your point, many, many communities, that's that's a huge employer both summer and winter. So if there's a big drop in people coming or a big gap in terms of operating ski areas, there's real losses there. And we've sort of looked at a couple of different indicators of what a financially viable ski area would be. So you have to be a let get open for Christmas New Year break because that can be about 25 percent of the revenues for some places. And then you have to have a season length of, you know, many and they've told us, well, if if we can get to 100 days, we can recoup our operating costs and stay in business. And in Ontario, even in the 2050s, you know, you go from about 94 percent of the ski areas that can do that now down to about 20 percent or even less. So we know even if we achieve the Paris climate agreement and emission reductions related to that, there will still be some losses in these eastern North American ski markets.

MG: We heard a little bit of the sound of skiing at a ski resort in Oshawa, Ontario. Mark Rutherford is the general manager there. Have a listen to what he's got to say.

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VOICE: Years ago, we used to get all our water from a creek that went across the bottom to tributary of the river. And in 1997, we built our first off-line reservoir and we've expanded on it three times. So all of our water is held in an off line reservoir. We put out just over 40 million gallons of water this year to get open. We used to average around 26 million gallons, but in the last couple years, a mild milder the temperature is, the less conversion you get from the water. And the more mild temperatures and rain we have, the more snow we lose. So we have to regain and remake that. We make all of our snow now between minus three and minus 10. I mean, years ago, all the equipment was aimed to make snow at minus 15, minus 20 to maximize those cold temperatures and we just don't get them anymore. So we've invested a lot of money in ultra low energy, still making equipment that allows us to make more snow at more marginal temperatures and reduce our carbon footprint.

MG: Snowmaking is a huge part of a modern ski resort or a modern ski industry. It takes a lot of water and energy to make that snow. What's the environmental impact of that?

DANIEL SCOTT: So most of that water, at least in eastern North America, is held in reservoirs. So it's not coming out of natural water bodies and it's you know, essentially borrowed over the winter. Where they're putting snow up on a hill, 99 or 90 percent plus of that runs down in the spring into the same watershed. So it doesn't go anywhere. It's not used in the sense of for irrigation and of a farm and then it evaporates and actually disappears. It's there to be reused again. And then on the energy side of things in Ontario and Quebec markets, that energy is already basically zero carbon because we have a new killer and hydro grid and Quebec has a hydro grip. So they're essentially low carbon to no carbon already. So even if you have to double the snowmaking, you're not doubling some kind of carbon emissions. So so in that respect, that's where we want all of the tourism sector to get to is having that. Sort of low, clean carbon grid. And then if you have to use more energy. Yes, you have to pay for it, but it's not contributing to climate change.

MG: Are you a skier?

DANIEL SCOTT: Sort of. My wife has an Austrian family. So I think they get that with their passports.

MG: I just wonder whether I mean, as you say, this is part of in some ways, our heritage. Skiing in this country, what we would miss if it were to disappear even in a moderate amount.

DANIEL SCOTT: Yeah. We've done some serving with skiers in the Ontario market and New England as well. To ask the question, almost like the woman that you interviewed earlier said, you know, would you continue to get your kids into ski lessons, et cetera, if you had to take them to to a resort ski area two hours away as opposed to a local ski area. And then my wife and I asked ourselves that question, why would we take them all away? And when we surveyed skiers, they're remarkably resilient. They they want this to happen. They want to keep that that winter sport, that cultural peace for their kids. They want to see them learn and be able to pass that on. So they are actually a very resilient group I've found.

MG: Daniel, thank you. It's great to talk to you.

DANIEL SCOTT: It was great. Thanks for having me.

MG: Daniel Scott is director of the University of Waterloo's Master of Climate Change Program. It's not just lower elevations that are struggling with climate change. Some of the world's big mountains are adjusting as well. Auden Schendler has been hailed as the man who will save skiing. He's a senior vice president of sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company. Auden, good morning to you.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of what you heard from Daniel Scott there? Some pretty bleak forecasts on where skiing could go.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Yeah. Daniel's been doing this work for 20 years, and I remember I've been following it when he his first report came out. I don't think he was that well received by the industry. You know, they didn't want to hear doom and gloom. The the reality is that I'm less sanguine than he is. You know, there's there's a lot of research on this. And, you know, recent meta studies say that 90 percent of resorts in North America won't be able to get opened by Christmas by 2090. You know, to me, that's just a call to action. It says the trade groups that have power and and the big industry leaders who wield political influence in Washington and Ottawa, they need to step up in response to that and protect what what they can. It's not about protecting skiing forever. It's about mitigating the damage. You guys were talking about the Paris Accords. We're not going to achieve the 1.5 targets in the Paris Accords. That would be a superhuman achievement that appears out of reach. We're unlikely even to achieve the two degree limit. So things are are not great, but that shouldn't discourage us. It should, you know, give us an attitude of, well let's fight this thing and let's reduce the damage.

MG: You're out there on the hills. What do you see already when it comes to a changing climate?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: You know, just on the ground, we have measured a month, less winter than 50 years ago. So that means days with frost. So you're seeing that you'll see more and more rain events in winter. This is especially plaguing the northeast and generally warmer temperatures. The Rockies happen to be warming faster than the rest of the country.

MG: So you're the guy who's going to save skiing?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: No, I'm terrified when I hear that.

MG: No pressure.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Yeah. I think of myself as a happy warrior versus goal oriented. You know, we're not going to save skiing in large parts of the country by the end of the century, even by mid-century. I mean, there are resorts that are already closing due to climate change. There's one in New Jersey called Hidden Valley that didn't have snowmaking infrastructure and was low elevation. The Guardian just had an article on, you know, a ski resort that was planned in Italy and it just didn't happen. Scotland, Europe, they've had many resorts closed down. So we're in the middle of this and it's sort of how we manage it.

MG: How are you going to start managing it?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Well, you know, my complaint against the industry and actually against corporations in general is they say we have a climate problem. You know, the warming trend is in place. We probably won't achieve the Paris targets. So we're going to respond to that by reducing our own carbon footprint. And that's admirable, but it really has nothing to do with solving a global systems problem. The ski industry is mostly responding to climate by cutting carbon footprint. Well, you could eliminate the ski industry's carbon footprint entirely and it wouldn't affect the world. So if we're gonna solve this problem, we have to generate political will. And the way to do that is to get the outdoor industry to act more like the NRA. You know, the NRA is in a lot of people. It's about five, five million people, two million of which are active, the outdoor industry. They and they own their they're issue in Washington. The outdoor industry has never wielded political power, but just just the membership of raii, the retailer is 17 million people. So you have this vast, powerful, young, aggressive, you know, semi crazed group of self-described environmentalists. Why don't we weaponise them? That's the way we're gonna solve this problem.

MG: I can't imagine a lot of people thinking that you would draw a comparison between people who love the outdoors and the NRA in terms of skiing, but it's an interesting line to draw.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Yeah because it's about identity. And the NRA is successful because it's people's identity to be gun owners. And in the ski industry, you're a skier. You know, I have a friend and I'm talking the outdoor industry broadly, my friend says I don't climb. I'm a climber. And skiers feel that way, too. There's a lot tied up in who you are and where you came from if you're a skier or snowboarder.

MG: Tell me about what's happening at Aspen and what happened with this old coal mine?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Well, Aspen has always said what should we be doing? We've been working on climate for 20 years. And we did all the things that you're supposed to do, change light bulbs, build green buildings. We started saying, is any of this enough given the scale and scope of the climate crisis? And the answer was no. So we said, look, in addition to being highly political and trying to build a movement through our work with protect our winners and our marketing, we should also do model projects that reduce carbon emissions at scale and can be replicated throughout the world. So the project you're describing was a result of us saying how do we generate a lot of power like a lot and reduce carbon tremendously. And it turned out there was a coal mine about an hour and a half from us near the town. And it, like a lot of coal mines here, leaks methane. Now, methane is a super potent greenhouse gas, but it's also what you cook your food with. So this product was being vented into the atmosphere and wasted. So we developed a partnership with the mine where we captured that methane. So it's not going into the atmosphere. Creating carbon pollution ran it through three giant 18 cylinder truck engines each a megawatt and power and we produce three megawatts of baseload power. Now, to give you a sense of how much that is, that's enough to run our entire resort, which has four world-class ski mountains, 18 restaurants and three hotels year round. We don't get the power, it goes into the grid. But in the act of burning that methane and converting it to CO2, so methane has a 84 greenhouse gas potential and CO2 has a one carbon offset or the carbon destruction that results from that is triple what we use annually. And again, we don't get that credit, but the point is, here's a model for the rest of the world. This is the only one of its kind in the United States.

MG: And something that you can do on scale to really make a difference.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Right.

MG: You can imagine that there are people who are listening who would say you're talking about climate change and skiing. And I mean, skiing is unaffordable for so many people, even you don't have to go to Aspen if you're trying to ski at local resorts and hills here in Ontario, it's impossible for a lot of people to be able to afford that. If you're talking about climate change, there are much bigger things to worry about than whether people can go and slide down a hill. What would you say to them?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Oh, absolutely. I'd agree 100 percent. And, you know, beyond that, that we're a centre of conspicuous consumption. We have a restaurant where people spray champagne on each other. You know, it's Aspen. Welcome to Aspen. But my point would be, what then are our obligations in the world if we are a centre of power and influence? We can just sit here and spray champagne or we can recognise the opportunity to drive disproportionate change. And so, you know, you could say, well, hey, let's see if I really wanted to access power, should I be in a place that has extreme wealth and private jets lined up at the airport? Yeah, probably because that's where the power is. So we're trying to use that influence. We have to drive change. You know your point about skiing being irrelevant? Yeah, it's exactly as irrelevant as art and culture and recreation and any of the things we do as human beings that make us human and that push society into new ways of thinking.

MG: Have you been able, I want to come back to the art thing, but have you been able to turn the heads of the people who are spraying champagne on each other, the folks are flying in and the private jets to get them to think differently about this issue because it's right on their doorstep because it's in front of them on the hill that they love to go to?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: You know, part of that is theoretical. We're trying, but part of it is real. So let me give you a quick example of that. Recently, we had Bill McKibben, who basically is the most important climate activist in the world, come to Aspen. Before he came here, he emailed me and he said, Hey, Odone, you know, I'm really looking forward to coming to Aspen because I've spent the last three days in jail. Well, what was happening? He had protested JP Morgan Chase branch in Washington, D.C., because JP Morgan is the number one investor in fossil fuels in the world. And the person he was interfacing there with was a manager who really had no power and didn't know anything. So it was a little unfair. Well, 10 days later, he's in Aspen learning to ski and he talks about JP Morgan. And it turns out that one of our owners is on the board of JP Morgan. And I approached him and McKibbin said I'd be happy to talk to him. So within the course of 10 days, thanks to the Aspen Effect, McKibbin went from talking to someone with no power at all to one of the board members of J.P. Morgan.

MG: What do you love about sking? You were comparing it to art. What do you love about being on the mountain?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: You know, Aspen has this interesting history. It was founded in 1947 by a Chicago industrialist. And he and his wife's vision was, this place is beautiful. It's got fishing and hiking. And they started the ski resort and they said, what if we injected culture and science and art and music into this community? And the vision would be that Aspen is so beautiful that when you arrive at takes you out of your usual life and you have the opportunity to be open to new ideas. And the vision they had was you'll come here, you'll be changed and you'll go off and improve the world. So skiing is a sublime activity that's unique in so many different ways. Your previous one of your previous guests talked about interfacing with nature. But what's unique about climbing is about skiing is that at the end of the day, it's the only sport where you gather together with friends and community and debrief. How'd it go? Did you see me in that powder? Did you see me go over that that lip and catch a little air? I mean, this is community and history and culture and human beings will tend to slide down on snow if you give them a slope and something to slide on. So it's part of who we are.

MG: The way that you talk about it speaks to to how passionate you are about it. And you were mentioning protect our winters. Chris said about you, he's like us. He's a skier. He's a climber. He's a dirt bag. He really has the passion for the sport and this life that we all have. What does that give you in the work that you're trying to do, the fact that people identify you with the sport?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: I'm a sleep in the dirt guy, I'm a climber. I still see myself as more likely to sleep in my car than in a fancy hotel. So I just think it's helpful to have someone who's part of the community advocating and wielding power.

MG: Do you think, you have kids, do you think you're your kids or your grandkids or your great grandkids in futurew will they be able to ski?

AUDEN SCHENDLER: You know, I think skiing is going to remain at high elevations and in certain areas by the end of the century. But that's not solace because you don't want a elite sport where only a few people can access it. You want these small resorts where people learn how to ski and become passionate and then one day they go to Jackson or Aspen or Whistler. So, I mean, the short answer is no, my grandkids probably aren't going to ski, but I think in the interim, my kids and my grandkids will be involved in a battle that's far more important than whether they ski or not. Far more gratifying and in the end, there'll be other things that will replace skiing, but hopefully we will have protected the climate enough that they can do those things.

MG: Auden, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you.

AUDEN SCHENDLER: Hey, thanks for your interest. Thanks for having me.

MG: Auden Schendler is the senior vice president for sustainability with the Aspen Skiing Company. He was in Aspen, Colorado. It's winter across Canada. Your thoughts on this would be welcome. You can reach us through the website, cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. Coming up next, in about 90 seconds, we'll talk about driving under the influence. Alberta is rethinking the way that it punishes drunk drivers and it's looking to B.C. and Manitoba, where police can forego criminal charges for first time offenders. We'll tell you about that tactic coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. Stay with us.

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'Ludicrous' drunk drivers may not face charges under proposed changes, says mother of man killed

Guests: Andrew Murie, Sheri Arsenault

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Getting behind the wheel while you're drunk or high is a dumb thing to do. It's also an easy way to find yourself in jail. But in Canada, there's more than one way to punish impaired drivers and not all of them involve a criminal charge. If you are a first time offender in British Columbia and Manitoba, police can issue you a fine or licence suspension so long as you haven't caused any injury or damage. And this approach is now being considered in Alberta and it's found support in some surprising places. Andrew Murie is the CEO of MADD Canada or Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW MURIE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Explain how this works. In British Columbia, if you are a first time offender and you're pulled over and found to be impaired behind the wheel, what happens?

ANDREW MURIE: So the first thing that the police do is they give you two independent road tests on two different devices so that there's no doubt that you've failed the breathalyzer. The police will look at the driver in the circumstances and so in certain cases, if there's any kind of injury, property damage, they can't issue these administrative sanction at the roadside, they must proceed with criminal charges. If they proceed with the administrative program, you get your vehicle impounded for 30 days right at the spot and then you get a year licence suspension and other things that kick in during that year, like an alcohol interlock and other types of alcohol assessment. So the focus is very much on rehabilitation of this driver, so they don't come back into the system versus the criminal system, which takes a long time to process. And the bottom line in British Columbia, there's been a 50 percent reduction in alcohol related fatalities and we have not accomplished that, not only in Canada, but the rest of the world. So it's an incredible program.

MG: A 50 percent reduction in alcohol related fatalities?

ANDREW MURIE: Yes. And they've actually maintained it for the last eight years. They've been consistent with it.

MG: Why do you believe that that has anything to do with the way that the law has changed?

ANDREW MURIE: These two things. One is that people do not like their car impounded and so they'll go to any means to avoid that. And so that was one of the big driver points in British Columbia, because it was the first province to start impounding vehicles at roadside. And the second thing is a criminal charge these days takes about four hours to process, plus court time where the administrative charge takes about an hour. And so you have way more officers on the road to stop and enforce impaired driving laws than you did under the old judicial system.

MG: How much resistance was there to this at the time when this was introduced in B.C.? Because you can imagine people saying that if you are caught, you know, driving while drunk, this is against the law, you should face the full effect of the law. And that could mean, yes, the suspensions that you're talking about and having your car impounded, but also means that this is a criminal offence. What kind of resistance was there to this?

ANDREW MURIE: There was a lot initially a lot of the licence establishment thought they were going to lose, you know, their business. And ultimately, what ended up happening in British Columbia, because the effects of the program were so immediate, the death rates started to fall so quickly that, you know, alcohol sales returned. People continue to enjoy themselves and enjoy alcohol beverages, but they made more responsible decisions because of this new law when it came to drinking and driving.

MG: People have called this a decriminalization of drinking and driving. Is that fair?

ANDREW MURIE: No, Because if you decriminalize, it means you don't lay criminal charges anymore. What this does is, as I call it, it's another tool in the tool box, where the police officer in certain circumstances to use this administrative sanction versus criminal code charges.

MG: Do you believe that Alberta should follow the lead of British Columbia and Manitoba?

ANDREW MURIE: I think every province to follow this.

MG: There's some people who take some concern with this approach, but for people who, again, would assume that this lets drivers off the hook, why is this something that MADD supports?

ANDREW MURIE: If you actually look at the focus of this, it gives some punishment because you get your vehicle impounded. You also have to go through all these separation things from alcohol and driving like an alcohol interlock. You have to be assessed for alcohol and if you're alcohol dependent, you have to get a treatment program. And so the whole focus of all those sanctions is ultimately what we want.

MG: Which is to prevent people from drinking and driving.

ANDREW MURIE: Exactly. Where the criminal system tends to focus on, you know, penalties, which are fair, but we haven't had the success with that system that we've had with the administrative system.

MG: Have a listen to Jerry Steele. He's a criminal defence lawyer in British Columbia and he believes that sometimes drivers end up being penalized for no good reason.

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VOICE: These roadside devices ride around in the back of the police car. They're a small handheld unit and it cannot detect mouth alcohol, which is a huge problem. So it is entirely possible to blow or fail on those devices without actually consuming any alcohol. So there are great concerns with the reliability of these devices. And they were only ever meant to give police officers reasonable grounds to take somebody back to the police station and blow in the breathalyzer machines. And one other problem with these machines is drivers who have problems breathing and respiratory illnesses are not able to blow in these. And in British Columbia, there is no alternate procedures if they can't blow. They just deem it a refusal and they will suspend that driver.

MG: Andrew Murie what do you make of those concerns that the machines that that are in, as he says, the trunk of the car of the police officer aren't reliable if this is the test that you're going to be giving on the side of the road.

ANDREW MURIE: These roadside devices have been challenged and been upheld by the court. You know, they're just as reliable and accurate as the intoxilyzer or the one that's used at the station. The other thing that they've done to safeguard against device not working properly is you have to fail two separate devices.

MG: What happened in Manitoba because Manitoba has a similar approach, but it's not exactly the same as British Columbia.

ANDREW MURIE: There is no doubt that because British Columbia was the first, there was some flaws with the program, which, you know, the province of British Columbia was corrupting and a lot of the powers to run this program were under the powers of the superintendent, which can be challenged within a judicial system in the court. So a couple of cases went all the way to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. They were upheld in Manitoba then basically correct all those.

MG: The best thing that Manitoba has that British Columbia didn't have is what?

ANDREW MURIE: They've actually put all the various functions of the administrative sanction in their highway traffic act. So it's clear that their legislature limited the type of challenges to the legislation to make sure that there was proper police protocol and that these sanctions could be used only in certain circumstances. So it really created a tight framework for police and, you know, the Crown attorneys, when they could use the system.

MG: Hasn't satisfied everyone. Have a listen to James Wood. He's a criminal defence lawyer in Winnipeg.

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VOICE: Obviously, there's some issues with due process and whether or not just handing out a fine without the ability to go to court and defend yourself, rather, you just have to deal with potentially a hefty fine and a serious driving prohibition that could affect your entire life. It also begs the question of if an officer pulls over someone that may have a prior history or perhaps they just don't like, they have the option of just pursuing this criminally and it opens the door for racial profiling in a way that, you know, certain people may get a fine and other people may get a criminal code charged.

MG: Andrew Murie, do you worry that due process has been undermined here and that to James's point, this could open the door to racial profiling because it's at the discretion of the officer on the side of the road?

ANDREW MURIE: This is a very serious situation in which, you know, in planning for these type of programs, there's a lot of conversations to go to, extreme caution to avoid any perception of racial profiling or undue process. And so, you know, there's really three steps here. The officer has to have a lawful reason to pull the person over and then when they've actually pulled the person over, they've had to give them two separate tests. And so the person has failed above zero eight twice before they can even go to these options. And, you know, as the lawyer said, if, you know, they've had a past record, well, in Manitoba, they don't have a choice. If you're a repeat offender, the officer has to go criminal. This is only available for those people fitting into the system for the first time with certain circumstance. So I think they've taken tremendous steps. We haven't seen the challenges in Manitoba that we initially saw in British Columbia. So I think, you know, my assessment, others, we've done a really good job closing those loopholes to be a due process, but to keep impaired drivers off the roadway as well.

MG: And that's what you sees as the value of this? These are counterintuitive approaches, but ultimately the goal is to keep people who are impaired off the roads. And you say it's working.

ANDREW MURIE: It's working. Yeah, that's the bottom line for us.

MG: Andrew, thank you. It's good to talk to you about this.

ANDREW MURIE: OK. Thanks, Matt. Bye bye.

MG: Andrew Murie is the CEO of MADD Canada. These are counter-intuitive, but also controversial approaches. Not everyone supports them. Sheri Arsenault is with me from Edmonton. Her son Bradley was killed in 2011, along with two friends by a drunk driver. Sheri, hi.

SHERI ARSENAULT: Good morning.

MG: I want to talk to you about these laws, but just first, could you tell me a little bit about Bradley? Who was he?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, Bradley was my 18-year-old son. He had just graduated from high school and was about to start his post-secondary when on November 26, 2011, a drunk driver mowed his little car down from behind, killing my son Brad and his two good friends, Cole and Thad.

MG: I'm sorry for that. I can't imagine that something like that just, I mean, in addition to the awful pain that you go through, it must colour how you think about impaired driving.

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, it does. And I mean, I've studied it. I've talked to anybody I could find from crown prosecutors to defence lawyers to the students in B.C., to everybody, just to to see every angle and learn all I can about it.

MG: You said that the decriminalization, these are your words, the decriminalization of impaired driving is a ludicrous idea. Why are you so opposed to it?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, it is a ludicrous idea. And you know, when Mr. Murie says the deaths have gone down 50 percent in B.C., nobody including him will show me that actual stat. What I have found in my studies is deaths have gone down in every single province of provinces that don't give an administrative fine instead of a criminal charge. They're down right across Canada. So I attribute they may be down because we have increased use of seat belts. Our cars are much safer now, airbags. Roadway, improve mills such as divided highways and flattened curves. I mean there's many, many factors over it, 10 year period that can attribute to why deaths are down.

MG: The advocates who support this and you heard Andrew talking about that say that the message that's sent is a very powerful one, that if your car is seized for certain period of time, if your licence is seized, if you have an interlock device that you need to blow into before you can actually turn the car on, that that sends an incredibly strong message to people about the cost of drinking and driving, aside from, you know, the personal cost that you and your family have gone through. Why doesn't that sit right with you?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, it doesn't sit right with me because everybody knows that a criminal record is the biggest deterrent. A criminal record is what every drunk driver is why they fight it. They don't care about the money. They don't care about not driving for one year. What they care about is the stigma of a criminal record. It would affect travel. It would affect employment. It can essentially affect just about everything you do. So that is the biggest deterrent is the criminal risk.

MG: Those criminal charges are still within the discretion of the officer. That for drivers who have caused injury or damage and if it's not the first time that they've done something like this, they could still face criminal charges. I guess people would wonder why that threshold wouldn't satisfy your son?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, two reasons. The minute a drunk driver, I mean, we've been working for three, four decades to make people aware of this and it's in the criminal court for a reason. The minute they turn on their key, they are committing a federal crime. They are just as culpable whether they get pulled over and stopped or if they end up causing a very tragic collision. They're just as culpable. The one that just got stopped is just lucky. Lucky he didn't kill anybody or himself. So, you know, to go backwards, this decriminalization of impaired driving is literally taking our country, Canada, back a giant ten steps and Canada already is the most lenient country in the world regarding impaired driving.

MG: You met with the Alberta justice minister about this?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Yes. I met with him a week or so ago and discussed it with him, although he didn't give me any details. He just confirmed that they were, this was something they were definitely looking at in Alberta.

MG: What did you say to him? I mean, you've told us a lot. What did you say to him specifically?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, I mean, I the same thing that is not hard to see that the criminal record is the best deterrent. To go from a from losing a licence for one year down to three months like in B.C. to go from a thousand dollar fine like it is right now down to five hundred dollars fine, like in B.C., it's essentially giving everybody a freebie. And, you know, I can only hope that Albertans don't want to go backwards in time. You know, they're telling me one of the reasons is the court overload of, you know, importionate amount of impaired drivers clogging up our courts.

MG: Yeah. Let me just read a little bit of the statement that he sent us. One of the things he said is, is that all options or his office says, that all options are on the table and that they want to keep impaired drivers off the road, ensure tough sanctions. We also view this with an eye towards speeding up the justice system, clearing up the backlog in the courts and saving police time. And I guess the argument is that these charges, because the court system is already overloaded, these charges just add to that overload. And if there's a way to punish the drivers without putting them through the system, that might be more efficient. What do you think of that?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, firstly, this is a problem all across Canada and decriminalizing impaired driving is not the answer. What they need to be doing, at least looking at first, is why? It's 2020 now. Why are there so many impaired drivers in inner courtrooms clogging them up? And that is because they're not tough enough on them in the first place. Essentially in Canada, you have the freedom to drive as many times as you want until you kill someone and that's so now to take it one step back and make it a little administrative fine is ludicrous to me.

MG: What's tough enough? Just your point, people still drink and drive. And I mean, to a lot of people it just it scrambles the mind to think that people continue to do this. What is the tough, given what you've gone through, what's the tough sanction?

SHERI ARSENAULT: Well, you know, the reason people do it, good people, bad people, people of all walks of life continue to engage in this and it's because everybody knows the chances of getting caught are unbelievably low. I believe a stat, whether it was out of MADD or Rob polls are out of Edmonton here, the chances of being caught are 1 in 2000. Now, I don't even know anybody who's been drunk 2000 times in their life, but it happens, I guess. So people are not afraid to get caught. They don't think they'll get caught. They don't think they'll kill themselves or their passenger and they don't think they'll kill innocent people. They get home safely every time, so they're willing to take that gamble.

MG: Sheri, I really appreciate you talking to us. I'm sorry for what you and your family have gone through.

SHERI ARSENAULT: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

MG: Sheri Arsenault in Edmonton. Her son Bradley was killed along with two of his friends in 2011 by a drunk driver. Your thoughts on this would be welcome. You can reach us through the website at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact link.

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Avoiding touching your face can prevent transmission of viruses

Guests: Mary-Louise McLaws

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

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VOICE: There are some pretty basic things around transmission of this type of infection. It's spread through close contact, mostly through breathing and breathing in somebody's respiratory droplets. But we also know that it can happen from contamination in our environment, from touching things and then rubbing our eyes and our face.

MG: That's BC's provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry speaking yesterday after the ninth case of COVID-19 was confirmed there. As you heard her say, one of the key ways that people are contracting this virus is by touching a contaminated surface and then touching your face. Doctors around the world are urging us to stop touching our faces right now. But if you ever consciously tried to do that, you know, perhaps it's easier said than done. Mary-Louise McLaws is a professor of epidemiology, health care infection and infectious disease control at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Mary-Louise, hello.

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: Hello. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. You have studied how often we touch our faces. How did you go about doing that?

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: Well, we were looking at the sise of particles for influenza and then we thought, well, gee, I wonder if people can contaminate themselves with flu by putting their hands to their mouth. So we've got ethics approval to watch our medical students because they're a captive audience and we observed over 2000 observations because they were in a lecture theatre for an hour and there were many of them and we did this several times. Then we had a look at the average number of face touching per student and it was an astounding 23 times per hour and at that.

MG: 23 times an hour?

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: Mhm. Yes. 23 times are now at about 10 of those touches involved a mucous membranes, so the mouth, the nose or the eyes or a combination, which means that if your hands are contaminated with a virus or bacteria, that's a really nice way of getting that pathogen into your body. So if you put COVID-19 near your nose, you could then breathe that particle into your lungs. We're not sure how it gets into your lungs if you put it to your mouth or your eyes, but nevertheless, we do know that people touch their nose an awful lot of times. So at least a third of the touches was to the nose.

MG: So this could be a couple of hundred times a day.

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: Oh, yes, exactly. We humans preen ourselves all the time and we looked into why they were doing this, because none of us were anthropologists and we found that there was little written about it. But it would appear that we are the only animals other than our ancestral primates who touch our face. And it's been suggested by anthropologists that maybe this was a way of either reducing stress or sending nonverbal signals to each other, such as preening ourselves. So when you watch somebody on television that might be getting a bit nervous, they may have a particular way of showing that by either moving their hair down or rubbing their neck or whatever is their signal for I'm feeling a bit anxious and I'm trying to relieve that anxiety.

MG: One of the things that people have learned, aside from the fact that they're learning how many times they've touched their face, is how difficult it is to stop doing that. Doctors are telling us, don't do this, don't touch your face. If you want to avoid getting this virus, you don't need a mask, you can wash your hands, but keep your hands away from your face. Why is it so difficult for us to stop doing this?

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: Yes. Well, look, our parents have told us, stop touching your nose when you're little, but after a while, they stop nagging, just like they stop nagging when they're teaching you how to handle hygiene after going to the bathroom. So when we become adults, we often revert to a behaviour that we've learnt as a child. And some of us may touch our face more often because it's something that either genetically we reckon we remember to do or that our family does and we're mimicking our family. But I would really like an anthropologist to an a behaviourist to check on all of this, because when we were doing this, we found one other study only from Japan and we couldn't find anything else, but obviously, we're not the only country. I mean, we are very multicultural here, but it would and our students are highly multicultural in the medical faculty. So it's across the cultures and just the other day, I was in a conference and I was watching my colleagues, they were sitting at a table listening to a very riveting discussion. And I was just looking for a couple of minutes and I was watching them and I'd counted to eleven touches and I just stopped counting because I thought, yep, they're all doing it. It's what we do.

MG: Well if it's what do we do, how do we get people to stop doing it?

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: So while we're touching our face, that's okay if our hands are clean, but we're not very good at cleaning our hands except for after going to the bathroom. However, we still have a lot of other bacteria and viruses such as noravirus that you want to protect your children from. So we're going to have to get into the habit of saying to our children, wash your hands to protect yourself and others, because while you may have the bacteria in your mouth or up your nose, others may not. So you're protecting the herd. So we need to keep our hands away from our nose.

MG: What do you think is more difficult, not touching your face or not checking your phone constantly?

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: In Australia, I'd say not looking at your phone constantly because they're only just realizing that touching is a problem and they're starting to talk about it now in Australia. So I'll get back to you on that one, but I'd say first of all, phone or phone looking particularly while crossing they're road and walking down the footpath, but I think that now the COVID-19 has brought it to our attention, the importance of keeping a hands away from faces, particularly during flu season. We might see a slight change in behaviour.

MG: Easier said than done a lot of people seem to believe. Mary-Louise, thank you.

MARY-LOUISE MCLAWS: It's my pleasure.

MG: Mary-Louise McLaws is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. That's it for The Current for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. Tom Power speaking with Harry Styles, pop star once of the boy band One Direction. You could go and grab the superfan in your life, crank up the radio. Maybe that superfan is you. That's coming up in just a few moments on Radio One. In the meantime, one more thing about COVID-19. It's not just the face touching that is now being discouraged. This virus has changed the way the people are greeting each other. Handshakes are out. The NBA is recommending that players start giving fans a fist bump instead. Here at The Current, we wanted to put some other options to the test. Vanessa Greco and Ben Jamieson are producers on this show. They also happen to be friends. And so we challenged them to find a new, more sanitary way to greet each other. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VANESSA GRECO: Hey, Ben.

BEN JAMIESON: Hey, buddy.

VANESSA GRECO: Ready for some hygenic greetings?

BEN JAMIESON: Yeah, of course, let's do it.

VANESSA GRECO: First up, we got France. So traditionally they're all about kissing on the cheek. Whoa. But these days, etiquette coaches are saying that it's enough just to look directly into someone's eyes when you greet them. A little bit like this.

BEN JAMIESON: Are you going to blink? Like, what's happening here?

VANESSA GRECO: I don't know.

BEN JAMIESON: When are you allowed to blink?

VANESSA GRECO: They, they didn't say,.

BEN JAMIESON: Oh, OK, well, let's do Iran now. So apparently in Iran, the foot shake is the new hand shake.

VANESSA GRECO: I'm sorry. Foot shake?

BEN JAMIESON: A foot shake. You know, we just to tap our feet together like.

VANESSA GRECO: Whoa!

BEN JAMIESON: Nice.

VANESSA GRECO: All right. Well, the next greeting is from Australia.

BEN JAMIESON: Ow. What was that?

VANESSA GRECO: What, it was a back pat.

BEN JAMIESON: I think a pat is a little bit of an understatement.

VANESSA GRECO: Well, I've got one last one to throw your way.

BEN JAMIESON: All right.

VANESSA GRECO: It's pretty straightforward.

BEN JAMIESON: OK. Let's see.

VANESSA GRECO: You ready for this? The United Arab Emirates, the UAE is recommending that people stop their traditional nose to nose greetings and say hello and goodbye exclusively by waving.

BEN JAMIESON: Oh, I love it.

VANESSA GRECO: Goodbye.

BEN JAMIESON: Goodbye.

VANESSA GRECO: Goodbye.

BEN JAMIESON: Bye.

[Music]

Mar. 4, 2020 episode transcript

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