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The Current Transcript for October 23, 2024

Host: Peter Armstrong

Prologue

[Music: Theme].

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE VOICE: We were working with a bunch of folks who have done science and worked on the fisheries on the Great Lakes for, for decades. And even those folks were shocked when we were able to show them what was going on under the waves with our robot.

PETER ARMSTRONG: At close up at the bottom of the Great Lakes exposes a shocking site, a vast carpet of an invasive species numbering in the quadrillions. In half an hour, we'll speak with a team of documentary filmmakers exploring the shock and wonder of the Great Lakes. Also, this morning.

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ELON MUSK: We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition every day from now until the election.

PETER ARMSTRONG: That's right. Elon Musk is going to pay random lottery winners a million bucks every day between now and the election. The mercurial billionaire, once a rival of Donald Trump, is now all in on getting the former president re-elected. But we begin with the Bank of Canada's supersize rate cut. Good morning. I'm Peter Armstrong, sitting in for Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Bank of Canada rate cut

Guests: Frances Donald, Ron Butler, Robert Asselin

PA: As expected, it was a big one. This morning, the Bank of Canada announced a major cut in interest rates down by 50 basis points. The bank's been consistently cutting its key overnight lending rate since June. This was their fourth straight cut in almost as many months. But today's change was much more substantial. To talk about what it could mean for the sluggish economy and for ordinary Canadians, I'm joined by Frances Donald. She is the Chief Economist at RBC. Frances, good morning.

FRANCES DONALD: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

PA: Great to have you. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem has just started speaking in Ottawa. One line that he said in his opening statement really jumped out at me. Let's take a quick listen here.

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TIFF MACKLEM: If the economy evolves broadly in line with this forecast, we anticipate cutting our policy rate further to support demand and keep inflation on target.

PA: 50 basis points was, it sounds like just the start. What do you, what does that tell you about the future path ahead for rate cuts?

FRANCES DONALD: Well, Peter, I think you've pulled the most important line, which is this is not the end. This is much closer to the beginning. This is a central bank that is telling us the economy just still isn't where it needs to go to do what Tiff Macklem says "stick the landing of this deceleration." And interestingly, even though the Bank of Canada knows its cuts interest rate a lot and it expects to cut them more, it still hasn't revised its outlook for inflation or growth. And that tells us it knows that this economy still needs more support from rates. So, another 50 basis points in December is a reasonable call. And we're likely to see interest rates fall to at least 3% and potentially even as low as 2% over 2025.

PA: And just walk us through that, because like we've spent much of the last two years almost uniquely focussed on inflation. But now, as you say, we're starting to look at GDP sluggish. It's been negative in per capita basis in seven of the last eight quarters. The unemployment rate continues to tick up. To what extent are we kind of in a race here to get rates as low as we can in order to try to stave off a recession?

FRANCES DONALD: Well, race is a good way to put it. And in part, the central bank probably is worried about what they would call downside risks or potential problems ahead. And we're seeing a little bit the whites of the eyes of that, job openings have continued to decline. There's now two unemployed people for every job opening. Businesses have expressed in surveys that they're still concerned about the outlook. The unemployment rate has been rising steadily for just about two years now, and that's enough for the base candidates to feel as though we've tamed inflation in year-over-year terms. We got to get on with it. And that's where those jumbo cuts are probably coming in. This was the first of them. They'll probably hear commentary that there's more to come, but it is a little bit of a race. And just a reminder, you know, the economy is still absorbing the higher rates. It takes almost two years for rate moves from the Bank of Canada to work their way through the system. So even though we're in an easing cycle, we're balancing the prior impacts of higher rates with these new rate cuts. And that's hard for an economy to digest. It creates bumps along the road.

PA: You know, this slowing was done by demand. The idea was that if you raise rates, it'll slow the economy. That'll get inflation back under control. And if we pull off the, the perfect move, we can do that without slipping into a recession. Now, it seems like that recession risk is suddenly under foot and very real. Does it tell us that maybe the Bank of Canada went too far or did it leave rates too high for too long? Or was all of this just kind of the inevitable cost of bringing down inflation?

FRANCES DONALD: Well, I think we should give central banks a little bit of grace on this one. We went through one of the largest inflation or price shocks of our generation, some of us in our entire lives. And understanding what drove prices higher hasn't been cut and dry for any economists or central banks. A lot of folks have pointed to how much of the inflation was globally driven. Port strikes, supply chains being misaligned. Shortages from COVID. That wasn't really the Bank of Canada's responsibility to solve. But underlying the surface, we've also seen a ton of government spending, which has increased prices. We've seen huge flows of immigration. And so, the Bank of Canada has had to apply its judgement as to how much of this was on them to fix and how much of it was global. But a reminder that central banks all over the world are cutting interest rates, including in the United States and Europe. So the time has come now to think more about the downside risks than the upside risks for prices.

PA: We've had this steady stream of cuts since June, and that hasn't moved the needle. In today's opening statement, Tiff Macklem said that today's interest rate decision should, in his words, "contribute to a pickup in demand." Even if you factor in however much, we're at like 1.25% in rate relief just in the last few six months or so, if that hasn't moved the needle a few hundred bucks a month into people's pockets, what will?

FRANCES DONALD: Well, it takes a lot longer, so most folks won't see that right away. They have to renew their mortgages. See those lower rates come through. It's really variable rate mortgage holders that will feel that. That's a really small, poor part of the population. So, there's two things at play. One is rates are still higher than they were two years ago, but also there's just not enough rate cuts in the system. And that's what gives economists faith that there's going to be more rate cuts ahead so that rate cuts don't work is that they've been too small, too little, and some may say too late so far. And this is why the Bank of Canada is indicating as long as inflation continues to stay below that 2%, even if it's bumpy, there will be more rate cuts ahead.

PA: There's another line in here that I just want to run by you. And Macklem says, "In Canada, the economy grew at around 2% in the first half of the year. We expect growth of 1.75% in the second half. Consumption has continued to grow, but is declining on a per-person basis. That tells me that the bank believes we will avoid a recession. Does that match with what your forecasts are telling you?

FRANCES DONALD: Well, when I hear you say those words, I think even as an economist, that's a lot of technical jargon. What does it even really mean? So a reminder that a technical recession is two quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product, which is a way that economists try to measure the health of an economy. But it hasn't worked in Canada because we've been adding so many folks to the economy that the pie has been getting bigger. But everyone's share of that pie has actually been getting smaller. Was really fascinating to me in this report this morning as I scan it as the Bank of Canada is focusing a lot more on what they call per person elements of growth, per person consumption and focusing on how the health of the individual is really struggling versus the health of the aggregate economy. That's really good news for Canadians and I think it speaks to their understanding that actually, even if some of this headline data looks good on the surface, there are challenges underneath that's going to be supportive of more rate cuts ahead.

PA: All right. Smart stuff, as always. Francis, appreciate you.

FRANCES DONALD: Thank you so much, Peter.

PA: Frances Donald, Chief Economist at RBC.

PA: Ron Butler has been listening in on all of this. He's a mortgage broker, the founder of Butler Mortgage and the host of the Angry Mortgage podcast. Ron, good morning.

RON BUTLER: Morning.

PA: How, how happy should people with a variable rate mortgage be this morning?

RON BUTLER: They are happy. They are unreservedly happy. It is great news for all of them. Same for people who hold home equity lines of credit, who have balances on those instruments. It's great news. But Frances is eminently correct. The news on the economy is not good. The Bank of Canada Governor assuring everyone that he will keep reducing the Bank of Canada rate is out of necessity. There's, there's going to be a brisk trip down to 2.5, in my opinion.

PA: So we've had whatever it is now, 0.75% leading into today and now 50 basis points today. So, 1.25% rate relief just in the last 5 or 6 months. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has these average monthly mortgage payments. In Ontario, it was $2700. In B.C., it was $2900. If you've got a mortgage and the average mortgage in Canada around whatever it is, $650,000, this is probably like close to 200 bucks in your pocket, right? A 50 basis point change?

RON BUTLER: Probably closer to 150. That said, that said, the, there, as far as I just alluded, there is just it's not everybody has a variable rate mortgage. [MG: For sure.] But it's great news, great news for people who could expect a renewal. And we have millions of Canadians expecting renewals over the next two years because it's, it's clearly a path for lower rates than the for 4 or 5 and 6% rates that they were seeing just a year ago. So, yeah, it's going to be better for everybody. But it's also true that most of those people had a rate of about 2.29. So, no matter how you slice it, it's still [PA: still going up.]

PA: Yeah, exactly. Now, the Bank of Canada, when it was pausing rates six, seven months ago, was saying we don't want to start bringing down rates too quickly. And a part of that was telegraphed to be a concern that if they started bringing down rates, they'd refuel Canada's notoriously bonkers housing market. That didn't happen. Does a 50 basis point cut change that? Do we see a reacceleration in housing prices in Canada as a result of this?

RON BUTLER: Well, we've experienced in some provinces decade, decade lows [PA: Right] in the sales volume and certainly in British Columbia and Ontario. Prices are not going up even if sales activity has increased slightly. So, I think the Bank of Canada Governor, who has got access to tons of information and, and up to date, minute-to-minute information from the Canadian commercial banks, I think he's got a pretty good idea that the housing market is in a bit of a slump and it's not going to go gangbusters anytime soon.

PA: I can wrap my head around what this means for sort of residential, you know, people buying and selling their primary residences. What does this mean, though, for new housing? Are there going to be investors going back in and trying to, you know, invest in, you know, pre-construction condos again? Like, where are we on that and how important is that piece of all of this?

RON BUTLER: Well, it's incredibly important because these are like a 100, 200, 300, 400 units at a crack in Ontario that make up 80% of all new housing is a high rise, which is ground to a complete halt. There's no new projects going up or ridiculously low compared with past years. So, it's a, it's a grave concern because ultimately it means much less supply in four years. And will this help? It won't hurt, but it's not the answer. There are so many structural problems in terms of just how much development fees and taxes and permit delays and additional studies and red tape that municipalities and provinces have brought to the into the fray, that it's not going to start getting better anytime soon.

PA: And that, that's sort of the concern, right? That you combine all of this, interest rates come down that should even if it's just by a little bit drive up activity and put a floor at least under some home sales figures. At the same time, as you say, we're not going to see as much new construction. Where are we on affordability and what needs to happen to get, you know, all of these people that have been priced out were hoping they could get back in. It's not looking so good right now.

RON BUTLER: It's not looking good. The only small ray of sunshine is for renters in Ontario and British Columbia. Average new rents are, have come off, and in some cases, in Toronto, they've come off about 8%. So, you know, not everybody is going to own a home. So, it's good news that really outrageous rents are coming down a bit. But for people who want to own a home, they are probably going to need substantial price reductions even with these somewhat lower interest rates. And we will run into this supply side mess sometime in the next by the end of 3 or 4 years.

PA: So, what is the scenario then that could possibly bring down substantially housing prices in Canada? Is it just simply we need to build more stock, which as you've now pointed out, we ain't doing?

RON BUTLER: So, the possible answer is, and it's a very sad answer, is a real hard landing, a true recession, a real economic contraction, that it will just drive house prices down because there's not a whole heck of a lot of people who are interested in making a major purchase when their brother-in-law or sister-in-law's just been laid off their job. I mean, there is an element of grave concern that comes to the people's lives and that kind of a real drop off in sentiment, that leads to lower prices eventually. I lived through it in 1991.

PA: Right. A lot of us did. Ron, we're going to leave it there, but thanks for this. Really appreciate it.

RON BUTLER: Thank you.

PA: Ron Butler is a mortgage broker who services the greater Toronto area, Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary. He's also the founder of Butler Mortgage and the host of the Angry Mortgage podcast.

PA: Okay. So we talked to Francis about sort of the macroeconomic "where are we now?" Ron filled us in on the housing side of this. The last part we want to talk about is business sentiment, business investment. Where does that stand? Robert Asselin is the Senior Vice President of Policy at the Business Council of Canada. We've reached him in Ottawa. Robert, good morning.

ROBERT ASSELIN: Good morning. Peter.

PA: What's your reaction to the scale of this cut?

ROBERT ASSELIN: I think this shows that the bank sees the economy as being weak and that we need to accelerate cuts. I think given the reliance on housing consumption in our economy, they were also very sensitive that, you know, that was a big factor in their decision. But I think the most important thing for me, Peter, is that for people who are happy, who are happy today and they should because they're going to pay less in interest rates. Monetary, monetary policy is not a substitute for pro-growth policies. It's not an engine of growth per se. And I remember everyone that from 2008 and 2020, we had very low interest rates and we're still a sluggish economy. So,I think people have to check their expectation on what today means going forward. The.

PA: It's such.

ROBERT ASSELIN: A weakness in this economy, it seems to me.

PA: For sure, because it's such an important nuance that I think does get sometimes lost in this conversation. But you can draw a straight line, like if people have that extra, you know, what did Ron say? $150 in their pockets because the interest rates have gone down. That ideally means they're going to go out and spend it. But if they're not confident that the economy is going to get better, they might stash it under their mattress and say, well, "I don't know. There's a rainy day coming up ahead." What do, how do business owners sort of gauge that and get a sense of where demand is going to be? I know there's an enormously complex sort of wing of the, of the industry, but but it's such a difficult thing to get a read on, isn't it?

ROBERT ASSELIN: I agree. And a lot of Canadians have been, have been doing this: saving for rainier days. You know, there's this sense that the economy is shaky, that price levels are very high, even though inflation is decelerating. And there's just an important notion between price not rising as fast and price levels still being very high. And that won't come down. And so people are, I think, saving more. That affects businesses. People, of course, are conscious that consumers are wary. They have, they're still paying much more than they did a few years ago on on food prices and stuff like that. And so at the end, I think it comes back to our growth model, our growth model right now and Canada's population growth and consumption. And if these two things are not going to yield to more productivity, which again, this is efficiency is what drives economic growth, I think there's more worry to be had going forward, Peter.

PA: No, for sure. And again, I'm just sort of scanning through what the Bank of Canada has said, what Governor Tiff Macklem has been saying in his opening statement. And one of the lines is that business investment is expected to strengthen as demand picks up and exports should remain strong, supported by robust demand in the United States. That sounds very easy and cut and dry. Is that what businesses are seeing and expecting on the ground?

ROBERT ASSELIN: I think you have to distinguish also in the scale of businesses. In Canada, we're relying a lot on SMEs versus large firms because...

PA: SMEs being small- and medium-sized enterprises.

ROBERT ASSELIN: Exactly. And the range show a disproportionate compare vis a vis the U.S., for example, where you have much larger firms, larger firms that have more financial capacity, they can invest more in R&D, in long-term investments. And this is why scaling our small, medium enterprises is so important as a matter of policy. And so, I'm worried that because we have a disproportionate amount of SMEs in our economy and, you know, SMEs are not a bad thing, but they are restrained from investing in the future and skilled work, skilled workforce innovation, R&D, all these stuff that larger firms can do more easily. So, I do think that's a structural weakness in our economy.

PA: You know, we've talked, you and I about this before that when, when monetary policy was trying to be used to bring down inflation, we were supposed to not have as much fiscal stimulus, fiscal policy from government spending. That didn't really work out. But do you think governments across the land might feel a freer hand now that inflation is back on target to, to get back into investing in business policy?

ROBERT ASSELIN: Yeah, I'm actually worried about that. I think fiscal policy has always been stimulative since the pandemic, both at the provincial, federal level. It has not been helpful for the Bank of Canada, I think. And now the, the reflects will be to spend more, I think, especially at the federal level. We're coming to an election. I think the current government have shown over the last nine years, this is the, that this is what they like to do. The problem is these investments have not raised what I call our productive capacity, our ability to be more efficient, more innovative and grow the earnings we earn for each hour work that we work. And so, if we spend more on consumption, sending cheque to people, cheques to people, the latest example being Doug Ford wanting to send in cheques to everyone before an election, I think this will be really harmful. This is not the way to grow the economy and we must not be complacent about this. Fiscal policy will only work if it enhance our productive capacity as a country.

PA: Indeed. We're going to leave it there. Robert, thank you for this. Always appreciate your insight.

ROBERT ASSELIN: Thank you.

PA: Robert Asselin is the Senior Vice President of Policy at the Business Council of Canada, is a former policy adviser to Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and to Paul Martin. The CBC News is coming up next. And then...

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Speaker 1: If we got in a boat right now, and went out anywhere on Lake Ontario and dropped our robot down to 100 feet, I can pretty much guarantee you what we'd see. It's just a carpet of these mussels.

PA: Quagga mussels. They've adapted to the deepest, darkest, coldest depths of the Great Lakes, and they're able to have up to a million babies per year each. Coming up, how a Canadian filmmaking duo explored the impact of the invasive mussels, and discovered a century old shipwreck along the way. That's coming up in six minutes' time. I'm Peter Armstrong. I'm sitting in for Matt Galloway. You are listening to The Current.

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An invasion at the bottom of the Great Lakes

Guests: Zach Melnick, Yvonne Drebert

PA: I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current. Matt Galloway is on something of a road trip. He's in the U.S. to bring you two special election programs. Earlier this week, Matt was in Arizona. Today, we found him in Michigan. Matt good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: Peter, good morning. How are you?

PA: I'm very well. I'm excited to hear About what? Why Michigan?

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, why not? In some ways we were trying to think of states where, you will see a real impact in these states when it comes to the general election. And Arizona obviously is one of them. Michigan, another huge swing state, but it's also a state, as you would well know, as somebody who covers economics, that will have a direct impact on what happens in Canada as well, particularly around the auto sector. We wanted to come down here to talk to people about how the decisions that they're making here will impact us in Canada, but also how they're sorting through those decisions. It's complicated and people are hot on a bunch of different issues. And so, yeah, we rolled up into Michigan and I'm in Detroit right now, but we've been out and about in the greater Detroit area talking to people about a bunch of different things.

PA: You know, when you talk to people about the Greater Detroit, the Detroit-Windsor Corridor, that whole area, as you say, auto industry at the heart of that. What are you hearing from people there about where they see the future of that industry?

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, literally, when you come in from the airport, you see these duelling signs along the highway about EVs, electric vehicles. Some of the signs say that EVs are going to take your jobs. They're pointed directly at autoworkers who might be nervous that there will be fewer workers required to build those vehicles in the future. The other signs talk about how EVs have created tens of thousands of jobs in this city and in this region. And that's kind of the heart of the debate. There is a lot of rhetoric around the idea that Kamala Harris has an EV mandate, that everybody will have to get rid of their internal combustion engines at some point in time and drive an EV. She has said that that's nonsense. But as you know, I mean, misinformation, disinformation, social media means that a lie travels pretty quickly before people can catch up to it. There is a lot of attacks from Trump when it comes to what it's going to mean for people's livelihoods in a community where people are already struggling with the cost of living. We spoke to a couple of people who service the machines on the assembly line at the Stellantis plant, and we met up with them at the Empire Grille, which is right across the road from the Stellantis plant. And that's where everybody goes after the shift change. They came in and they had lots to say. Have a listen.

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VOICE 1: Everybody's kind of sitting down right now on their hands waiting for what's going to happen. And we've seen the slowdown. I've been in this business for 35 years. And I'll tell you that this is the slowest I've seen at preelection, scary times. I worry more about my grandchildren, future grandchildren than I do, quite honestly, about myself. It's a big concern.

VOICE 2: People with any common sense would understand that this country is not ready for electrical vehicles right now. We don't have the infrastructure to do it. It's being forced upon people. And in a state that's so auto heavy, this, of course, is a real big concern.

MATT GALLOWAY: The union that represents autoworkers, the UAW, has endorsed Kamala Harris. The head of that union, wore a T-shirt that said "Trump is a scab," but it's not certainly a uniform opinion. We will later on this morning, go off to meet the guy who has created Autoworkers For Trump. And he says that Donald Trump is the, the man to best represent the interests of those who work in this sector, not just now, but, as you heard, I mean, generations down the line. So, we'll hear from him coming up a little bit later on today.

PA: It's interesting you say, it's not a uniform opinion. Michigan is so interesting because it's not a uniform state. It's wildly and richly diverse when you go into the different regions. So, who else are you going to be talking to?

MATT GALLOWAY: While Dearborn is one of those communities where you see that it's got the largest Arab-American community in the country, one of the largest mosques in the country. If you go to East or Dearborn in particular, and you drive through the streets, many of the signs are in Arabic. There's great sweet shops and tea shops. And the war in Gaza has had I mean, often foreign policy has no real impact on what happens in a US election. This is very different because the war in Gaza has had a real personal impact on so many people who are in Dearborn. Everybody that you talk to has some sort of familial connection to the Middle East, and there is a real pushback to how the Democrats have handled that war and also what Donald Trump is pushing when it comes to how he would approach international conflict. We spoke spoke with a young woman who is an activist. She led the Abandon Biden movement, which was trying to get people in her community to step away from the Democrats as a protest vote. She is now all in on Donald Trump and says that people in her community, even if they don't support his policies, need to vote for Trump or vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party leader, which essentially many people believe would be supporting Donald Trump to send a message to the Democrats. Not everybody believes that. Obviously, in the community it's really split. But you really see and it's important because the Democrats have only won this state by small margins. [PA: Right.] And if there is 80, 90, 100,000 people in that community who are willing to file a protest vote, that could have a real material impact on the state as well.

PA: Can't wait to hear your reporting on this. Thanks so much, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Thanks, Peter.

PA: Matt Galloway will be live in Michigan tomorrow for a special edition of The Current. Tune in then. I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current.

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FEMALE VOICE: There is quadrillions of Quagga mussels in the Great Lakes. In a week's time, every gallon of water in Lake Michigan could have passed through a mussel.

MALE VOICE: Those mussels created a system that is really now much different than what we had seen before. This just incredible, the clarity of the lake.

MALE VOICE 2: Clearwater, from an aesthetic perspective, people kind of love that. But from an ecosystems perspective, it really means nothing's there. Nothing's growing. The offshore waters have been described as a biological desert.

PA: That is from the opening of a new documentary called All Too Clear. The view, which shows us is the depths of the Great Lakes is shocking. Vast carpets of quagga mussels, as you heard there, in the quadrillions. The filmmakers are husband and wife, Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert. They're with me now in our Toronto studio. Good morning to you both.

ZACH MELNICK: Good morning.

YVONNE DREBERT: Thanks for having us.

PA: Yvonne, let me start with you. What did you, what did you even think when you first saw that footage of all these mussels, carpeting the bottom of the Great Lakes?

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah, I, it was shock, actually. And we were working with a bunch of folks who have done science and worked on the fisheries on the Great Lakes for, for decades. And even those folks were shocked when we were able to show them what was going on under the waves with our robot.

PA: It's amazing. Like, what was it like for you? Did you have a sense that it was as sort of vast as this?

ZACH MELNICK: We had a sense because we had images that science folks had been filming over the years, that the cameras that have been available up until now, were just not as good as what we're able to use. So, we're able to get a great image in over 100m of water down there. So, that's very deep.

PA: Which is kind of hard to see. Like, I hate to point that out.

ZACH MELNICK: If there's [inaudible]. Yeah, it's extremely dark. It's like, it's like half a moon of light down there. So, we can have cameras now that can show us this vast landscape completely transformed by the mussels.

PA: I probably should have started with this, but what exactly, and am I even saying it right? Quagga mussel? What is this thing?

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah, Quagga mussel. [PA: Quagga.] Actually, the cousin of the zebra mussels, which you might be familiar with.

PA: Oh, OK. Yeah, I've heard more of that. Sure.

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, it came in at about the same time as the zebra mussels. But now, they've out-competed the zebra mussel. And the reason we don't really see them is because they often like to start deeper. [PA: Right.] But now, once you get down to if we got in a boat right now and went out anywhere on Lake Ontario and dropped our robot down to 100 feet, I can pretty much guarantee you what we'd see. It's just a carpet of these mussels. They can, they can colonise any part of the landscape. They don't need to stick to things like zebra mussels.

PA: Right. Because that was the trick with the zebra mussels, is they'd stick to things and grow that way. If these just sit on the bottom, Zach, are they just like breeding like crazy down there?

ZACH MELNICK: Absolutely. So they're able to each have up to 1 million babies per year. [PA: Whoa!] So, these things have just proliferated. But the crazy thing is that they love the deep waters, where the zebra mussel loved [PA: inaudible] shallow waters. Quaggas are just adapted to even the deepest, darkest, coldest depths of the Great Lakes.

PA: And do we know how the quagga mussels ended up here?

YVONNE DREBERT: Yes. So we think they got here in ballast water of cargo ships, just like their friends, the zebra mussels.

PA: Right, right. Yeah, that's how those got here, too. Right?

YVONNE DREBERT: And just like the Round Goby, that invasive fish.

PA: And not to put too fine of a point on it, but how, how big of a problem is this?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, it's hard to say. There's a lot of problems in the world. [PA: Sure.] But for the the Great Lakes, you know, we think this is probably the biggest ecosystem change to go on since the glaciers. I mean, [PA: Really, eh?] There are so many, right? That they're able to filter all the water in Lakes Huron in Michigan, you know, in a week or two. So, that is fundamentally changed how the lower part of that food web works and that affects things like algae but affects the zooplankton and then which the little fishy goes right up to the big fish that us as humans like to eat, especially the Lake Whitefish, which is the most important commercial fish species in the upper Great Lakes and have huge cultural importance to communities throughout the Great Lakes. [PA: For sure.] In fact, that's when we first started getting into this, is that there's been a virtual collapse in this species around the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula, where Yvonne and I lived, and we kind of looked out our back door and wondered "What the heck's going on out there?" And this is not just in Georgian Bay, it's throughout Georgian Bay, it's throughout Lake Huron, it's throughout Lake Michigan. And it's having a really huge impact on communities and almost nobody knows about it.

PA: It's funny how for granted we can take the Great Lakes water system because they're just right there. My, I have two 11-year old sons who recently asked me a really simple question: What was happening here in Toronto during the, during the Ice Age? And I'll be honest, I didn't know. And so, we looked at it, we found this huge ice sheet and then, you know, the melting and the Younger Dryas and the cold and everything came, and we've gone down this rabbit hole and it's a fascinating little bit of, of history and of information. And it's wild and interesting. How much did like, as you say, you guys are from Lake Huron. How much: Is it just that simple looking out your window and seeing "What is going on out there?" that sort of sparked a lot of this?

ZACH MELNICK: Absolutely. You know, we live on Lake Huron. We look out there, but almost nobody knows what the heck's going on out there. And so, we really wanted to to use this advanced new technology that allows us [PA: Yeah] to go to the deepest part of Lake Huron or Lake Superior. Yvonne and I can go out and check out the very deepest part of Lake Huron on a Tuesday, where before, that would have [PA: Cost]. Exactly. It would have been a huge ship it would have required, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars a day just to go out there. But we've spent more than 150 days exploring the underwater world of the Great Lakes. And, you know, we started out looking at mussels, but we were able to film a whole bunch of stuff that no one has really been able to see before. And now, filming underwater wildlife in the Great Lakes is really what we do.

PA: What is it with the cameras? Because it really is a really fast and incredible change in the technology we're using to document this.

YVONNE DREBERT: Oh, for sure. So, not only are cameras getting smaller and they have these amazing chips that basically let us see in the dark. [PA: Right.] The other thing that's happening is that the, the mussels are making the lakes about three times clearer than they were, you know, 30 years ago. [PA: Is that a fact?] So now, we can see...

PA: Because they eat up all the algae.

YVONNE DREBERT: They eat up all the algae. So now we can see, you know, 150 feet, 200 feet underwater. Whereas if we tried to do that, you know, in the '80s, we would have been able to see 10 feet, 20 feet. So, you know, this problem also allows us to see what's actually going on down there.

PA: And divers don't have that chip that, like, you can't see in the dark. Right? Like that's a pretty clear benefit right there.

ZACH MELNICK: Divers have certain limitations, right? They can only be under for so long. You know, we can go to 200, 300, 400 metres deep. And that's very, very dangerous. And it's extremely cold down there. [PA: Yeah]. Right? So...

PA: How cold is it down there?

ZACH MELNICK: It's between like two and four degrees. [PA: Is it. it's that...] On the bottom of the lakes yeah. All the time.

PA: At the bottom. Cause Lake Superior and Huron are so deep.

ZACH MELNICK: Exactly. Yeah.

YVONNE DREBERT: And the other thing that happens is that, that robot has a 12 hour battery life, right? So, that lets us, you know, spend time with fish and animals in a way that just hasn't been possible before. [PA: Right, right.] And so, we get to see things that even scientists are surprised by.

PA: And as you say, you got some pretty neat surprises. Tell me about the shipwreck you guys found.

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah. So the ship we found was called the Africa. It went down in 1895 in an early season snowstorm on Lake Huron. And unfortunately, all 11 members of the crew were lost. And so, we came across this wreck. You know, it was just a Saturday in June. We took our friends out. We didn't quite know what we would find. We put down our robot and, you know, of course, lots of expletives that are allowed on radio. But then we had a mystery on our hands. What ship was this? Because, of course, it's all covered in quagga mussels. And we figured out it was a ship called the Africa. And then we broke the story with our friends at Canadian Geographic. And then, four descendants of Hans Larsen, the captain of the Africa reached out to us. And actually this past summer, we were able to take them out and put our robot down and show those descendants the final resting place of their ancestor.

PA: That's amazing. We've got some tape of that sort of behind the scenes. Let's take a listen here.

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE DESCENDANT: It has survived surprisingly well. It was so fascinating to see the cargo inside.

ZACH MELNICK: I think it right up against the side here. And that's why. Let's have a look in here. That looks like coal.

DESCENDANTS: Oh, it does, doesn't it? Oh my. [cross talk].

ZACH MELNICK: Let me just turn on some of the lights here.

FEMALE DESCENDANT: Oh My heavens.

YVONNE DREBERT: Oh, it is.

ZACH MELNICK: It is. Look at all that coal. Wow.

FEMALE: Oh my goodness.

ZACH MELNICK: I wonder, like, just count the number of times people went "Oh, ooohh." Like, what was that like? It must have just been jaw dropping.

YVONNE DREBERT: I mean, it's the kind of thing that happens once or twice in your life: This, this time of true surprise and true discovery. And then, being there with people who have this deep, deep emotional connection to this story, you know, that's been 129 years in the making for the family. You know, it was something that you just don't experience any other time.

PA: What do you think it was like for the family?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, I don't think they knew really how powerful it was going to be. But then, I think they did have a real emotional reaction to it. And it is quite shocking. Right? I mean, these were folks in their, in their 80s, right? So they, this whole technology is completely new as well. And so to be able to take them into peer, you know, 270 feet underwater and to get this glimpse that they never thought they would, where they're the resting place of their ancestor, I think is it's quite an emotional thing.

PA: You know, we talk a lot about the ecological impact of of these quagga mussels and the impact that's had on this these bodies of water. It also clearly, as these the images showed, has an enormous impact on research and science and trying to figure out what happened to these kinds of things. Yvonne, what does it mean for those people that are out there trying to find these wrecks and trying to get information about what has happened, and the history of these lakes?

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah. When we started this show, we really were focussed on the ecology, the environment. But when we found the shipwreck, it really hit home the impact that these animals are even having on our cultural heritage. So, the mussels are slowly burrowing into that wreck with their, they have these little sticky threads called Bissell threads. They're building on top of each other, causing more weight. So slowly, that wreck is going to fall apart because of these mussels. So those stories, that connection to our past, they're actually disappearing because of those quagga mussels and things like World War Two planes that are under there.

PA: Right? Because there's quite a few of them.

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah. And so the mussel waste is actually acidic, so it's happening even faster. They're destroying even faster metal artefacts of our history. And, you know, a lot of folks are on a quest to try to figure out, can we document these things before they're lost?

PA: I remember talking to somebody during the outbreak of the zebra mussels, and I was like, "This is terrible. My God, what can we do to stop this?" And their answer was both prophetic and I thought a bit of a joke. It was like, well, something else will come along and eat them and that'll probably be a whole new set of problems. What can be done? And if these ones just took an old problem and made it worse, is there a likelihood that the next wave of this will be even worse than the quagga mussels?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, your friend was absolutely right. [PA: Right, they nailed it.] So, the reason that the zebra mussel is much less prolific now is because of the Round Goby, another invasive species which evolved with the zebra mussel in Eastern Europe. They came over as well, and they can eat those zebra mussels when they're really small. [PA: That's right. Yeah.] They can eat quagga mussels as well. But just the scale of that quagga mussel invasion is thousands of times greater than we ever saw with the zebra mussels. And so, they're just not able to eat all those guys. [PA: Right.] And so is there anything we can do about it? You know, we looked far and wide while making this film to try to find potential solutions. There's a lot of work being done in the United States, too, that has some potential. But right now, you know, we basically have to wait for nature to try to adapt to this ecosystem change.

PA: The Great Lakes are unique in a whole bunch of ways, but also in that it's a multi-jurisdictional area. Is, is somebody doing something that we can learn from somewhere else that, that might apply to this if we can all get our sort of ships going in the same way?

YVONNE DREBERT: A lot of the most interesting work that's being done is actually being spearheaded by the Indigenous communities and First Nations [PA: Oh, wow] around the Great Lakes because they can just move a little faster than some of those traditional institutions, government institutions. And so, one of the cool things that we followed was some work by folks with the Sioux tribe from northern Michigan, and they're doing some pretty amazing work with the White Fish to try to help them adapt to this new environment. If we can help them get through right now, those populations survive this moment, maybe that'll give them enough time to adapt to live in this new world created by the mussels.

ZACH MELNICK: So what they're trying to do is to restore the ancient forgotten really, river-run whitefish all around the Great Lakes. The whitefish, the species most it impacted [PA: Sure] by the quagga mussel. They used to spawn in rivers as well as way out in the Great Lakes. But those river populations that were all wiped out years ago because of logging and...

PA: Polluted and logging and people...

ZACH MELNICK: Yeah, yeah. But now those rivers are doing a lot better and there's almost no mussels in them. So, the Indigenous communities of Northern Michigan are trying to bring the whitefish back to the rivers in that area. And if that works, if the whitefish thrive in the river, if the baby whitefish thrive in those rivers, then maybe we can replicate that elsewhere [PA: Right] over here as well. Again, to help those fish, those very important fish, get over this tremendous ecosystem change.

ZACH MELNICK: I have to admit, this is going to just show you how sort of silly I am sometimes. When I first, when we first talked about doing this, I heard the story and was like, "Oh, wow! It's amazing! Why don't they just send like, front-end loaders to go in and dig them out?" I know that's incredibly simplistic and probably a little dumb, but what prevents us from just going and getting them and getting them out of there?

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah. So, one of the challenges is the depth. They like these deep waters. [PA: Right]. And so for a human working at those depths, it's always a challenge. But one of the things that is tried is something called a benthic mussel masher. So, a giant masher that's just, [PA: Really?] You know, scraping over the bottom of the lake because honestly, the lakes are now monocultures of mussels. There's nothing else down there [PA: Right, right]. So, there has been some experimental attempts to see what happens if we just kind of scrape these guys off the bottom. But there was a time when people thought: "We can't really do anything about this." And it's only recently that there's kind of been the will there to make a change here to save our native fishes.

PA: And I mean, not, not to pat yourselves too heavily on the back, but what is the importance of getting word out there and doing a film like yours to make sure that people actually understand: what's at risk? What's happening? And that, we are and still in dire need of a solution?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, when we first learned about this happening about 10 years ago, that technology simply wasn't available to show people what was going [PA: Right, right] on in a way to make them care. Right? So, we just were able to use this latest available technology for filming underwater and show people those endless expanses of mussels. And I think what we want is just people to think a little bit more about the people who use the fish of the Great Lakes and the fish that a lot of people eat and have a a cultural relationship, too. And just the wonder that is in the Great Lakes that we sort of look out at and we think a lot about the oceans and the whales and the sharks and but what we really wanted to do is get a few images where the Great Lakes looked like reefs in the ocean.

YVONNE DREBERT: Yeah, for a long time we've only been able to imagine what's going on under the waves. But with this film and this technology, we're able to see it. We're able to really connect with it and spend time in underwater environments in a way that we haven't been able to before. So, while we can see these really degraded environments, we can also see these really amazing environments and see what's at stake if we do nothing.

PA: It is so cool. It does make me wonder: Now that we have this technology, where are you going to look next?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, one of the coolest places that we found working on this show were the underwater mountains of the Great Lakes. So you hear a lot about seamounts...

PA: The, wait a second...

ZACH MELNICK: In the oceans, right? [PA: Yeah.] Well, there are the same kind of things out there in the Great Lakes. These are areas that are almost oases of biodiversity and oases of, of natural abundance. And so, the end of our show, we actually go to one of these and, and that's where a lot of life is thriving. But there are several of these really cool underwater mountains and we want to do some more exploring of these, sort of, offshore mountain ecosystems.

PA: That sounds amazing.

YVONNE DREBERT: Of course, we want to find more shipwrecks.

PA: Well, there's that, too. I just want to sort of wrap things up and want to hear from both of you on this, that there is an equal amount of wonder and amazing things in this and a little bit terrifying of things that are happening. When you do a project like this, it can feel like you're almost snowed under with both of those. What is it out of this project that gives you the most hope?

YVONNE DREBERT: Well, I think if folks watch the series, you'll see that episode three is called The Silver Lining. And in any invasive species invasion, there's going to be losers. But of course, there's also going to be winners. So, the lakes might now be more like they were just after the glaciers, these low nutrient environments. And there are a bunch of fishes that are no longer in our lakes because we kind of overfished them and didn't do so great there. But now might be the time that we can bring those fishes back that belong here. Our native fish seem to be a little more resilient than non-native fish [PA: Right] and kind of reboot the ecosystem to what it was like, you know, thousands of years ago.

PA: What about you, Zach?

ZACH MELNICK: Well, for me, the real thrill was being able to get down inside a Multispecies School of fish and just be with them for a couple of hours and just watch them. And to be able to see that sort of wonder that's unfolding out there. You know, 35 million people live around the Great Lakes, but we have no idea that there's this like ocean-like ecosystem [PA: Right] going on out there. And to be able to capture that even just for a minute, I think was the real thrill for me. And I knew when we when we were able to, to do that, that audiences are going to, I hope, connect with it like we were able to when we were out there filming.

PA: Well, having seen some of this, I almost guarantee you they will. Thank you for the work, and thank you for making the time to come in and talk to us about it today. It's been great.

ZACH MELNICK: Our pleasure.

YVONNE DREBERT: Thank you.

PA: Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert's new film is called All Too Clear. You can stream the three-part series on TVO.org starting on Friday. If you're in Ontario, the series premiers this Saturday at 7:00 P.M. on TVO.

PA: Coming up after your regional update, Elon Musk wants to see Donald Trump back in the White House.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: This election, I think, is going to decide the fate of America. And along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilisation.

PA: Musk is promising to give away $1 million every day until the U.S. election. If you live in a swing state and sign his online petition to, quote, "Support free speech and the right to bear arms," that's coming up, I'll ask, "Is this even allowed?" I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

Musk’s million-dollar election giveaways

Guests: Ryan Mac, Nora Young

PA: I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

ELON MUSK: I have a surprise for you, which is that we are going to be awarding $1 million to, randomly to people who have signed the, sign the petition every day from now until the election.

PA: Yeah. Yeah, you heard that right. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is promising big money to U.S. voters, but only if they sign his online petition pledging support for the First and Second Amendments aimed at rallying support behind former President Donald Trump. They also need to be registered voters and live in one of the seven swing states that are crucial to winning the upcoming election. Now, if you're wondering if handing out cheques like this during an election campaign is actually legal, well, so are election law experts. Ryan Mack is a tech reporter for The New York Times. He co-authored a book called "Character Limit How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter." Ryan, hello.

RYAN MAC: Hey, how's it going?

PA: Pretty good. Thanks for doing this. Can you just, I mean, it is kind of hard to wrap your head around, but walk us through this latest offer from Elon Musk. What is he trying to accomplish with these cheques?

RYAN MAC: Well, it looks like he's trying to accomplish the building of a database of potential voters at this point. This all started a couple weeks ago when he was offering $47 to people who referred others to sign this petition. And this is a petition, I guess, echoing your commitment to free speech, the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. And it's since evolved from there into this sort of lottery, this, this giveaway that he's doing for the next couple of days up into Election Day, where he's giving, like he said in the clip, $1 million away a day.

PA: I mean, over the breadth of U.S. election history, have we ever seen anything quite like this?

RYAN MAC: I haven't, no. I mean, there are a lot of laws in place as well around things adjacent to this. But no, I've never seen essentially the world's richest person offering up his wealth as a means of driving people to the polls.

PA: And you sort of touched on this, that there are laws adjacent to this. Do we know whether this is, in fact, legal or not?

RYAN MAC: It seems like it's up for debate. There are a lot of legal scholars who say, yes, this is actually illegal. But there are others that have said that there's actually a wrinkle here, which is that he is he's not actually registering people to vote. You have to be already registered to vote to sign this. [PA: Right.] Especially this petition. Right? You're just giving away your name, some personal information to this organisation which is run by his his Super PAC. But it's, it's kind of this grey area. And so, I think it's up to the courts to decide there could be legal challenges in the coming days. But yeah, we're kind of in uncharted waters at this point.

PA: You mentioned his Super PAC, the Political Action Committee. Musk is just shovelling money into that. Can you tell us a bit more about what the PAC is and how that money is meant to be used?

RYAN MAC: Sure. It's a PAC he formed back in the spring, even before he had committed publicly to supporting Donald Trump. That happened in July after the assassination attempt. But he has been talking about collecting, you know, money from his friends and from other donors. Thus far, he's disclosed that he's given about $75 million to the PAC. And yeah, we'll see how much he gives in the future. There's been a lot of talk about him giving as much as $180 million. Thus far, we've only seen, you know, $75. But those disclosure forms still have have yet to be disclosed. or...

PA: But we should get those, right? I imagine we'll get those by about the middle of this month, or will we have to wait till almost Election Day to see them?

RYAN MAC: That'll come, you know, potentially after the election as well. And there's, there's different cycles that those come out in. So, we may not know the full extent until after the results come in.

PA: You know, your piece mentions and there's a really good job of sort of chronicling when Elon Musk kind of goes all in on something, whether it's at SpaceX or Tesla or now an election, he becomes fairly obsessive about it. He was sleeping in the Tesla factory at one point. Can you just describe how active or involved he is in the day-to-day efforts to get more votes for Trump?

RYAN MAC: For sure. He's, he's quite involved. You know, he was stumping at rallies for him in the last couple days, you know, doing these events around Pennsylvania. And he's moved a base of operations to the state as well. He views Pennsylvania as kind of the linchpin in the election. And if Trump wins, he believes he'll win, win the election. So, he has focussed all his time and energy into the state as well as his money, you know, with those giveaways. [PA: Right]. And that's a pattern we've seen in the past. You know, when he believes strongly in something, he is going to go all in. He is going to sleep on the factory floor. He is going to, you know, work into the late night developing rocket parts, for example, at SpaceX. And it's just, it's just how he operates.

PA: He is, of course, still running and owning X, formerly known as Twitter. I remember when he bought it with the crazy price tag of $44 billion. People even then were raising the question about, "Well, if you're owner of a social media platform like this and you do eventually get overtly political, how are we going to account for what that would be in terms of like a campaign donation and such?" Can you just walk us through how the platform right now, and how his use of it is being used as a factor in this election?

RYAN MAC: It's a huge factor. I mean, he is now not just the owner, but he is the most followed account. He has more than 200 million followers. Anything that he puts on that platform essentially drives the conversation and it becomes a major talking point. It becomes a trending topic. You know, he has a ton of replies and engagement on the platform. He's often algorithmically boosted to that "For You" tab that you see on there, the kind of curated tab for most users. And anecdotally, I've seen a lot of people say in recent days that, you know, when they log into Twitter, the first few tweets they see in that "For You" page are his own. You know, and that has a huge impact on a place where a lot of people discuss politics and social issues and culture.

PA: And Musk, of course, hasn't always been a Trump supporter. Trump certainly hasn't always been a fan of Musk's either. Do you, in reporting this, did you get a sense of of an explanation for the turnaround, like what happened there?

RYAN MAC: Yeah. If you, if you rewind two years ago, they effectively hated each other. [PA: Right?] You know, this was someone who said, you know, Trump should sail into the sunset, for example, and not run for re-election and supported Ron DeSantis early in the cycle. Donald Trump called Musk a B.S. artist and a con man and someone who would come to the White House and would get on his knees and beg if he, if he needed to for, for help. And now you have this kind of marriage of convenience, this friendship. They're talking multiple times a day. I think Donald Trump realises the power that comes with an Elon Musk endorsement and the popularity that comes with it. Musk himself views Trump, you know, in various ways, but I think he sees him as a much more favourable candidate to the Democrats, especially when his various companies are under investigations and inquiries from federal regulators. So, you know, there is a, I guess, a bromance of necessity at this point.

PA: And I mean, it has moved all the way through bromance. I mean, Trump has basically, I don't know if he's offered him a job, but he certainly talked about giving Musk a specific kind of position within government when all this is over. Do we have a sense of what that could look like?

RYAN MAC: Yeah, and that came up in a, in an interview that they did on Spaces, the X livestreaming platform, this idea of a government efficiency commission, which Musk kind of offered up, you know, randomly in some ways. But he's talked about wanting to oversee government spending, oversee government regulation. And that has now become a central point of, of Trump's economic platform, this idea that he's going to reduce spending, cut jobs that are not needed, in his view, and he's saying that he's going to put Musk in charge of that.

PA: So on the one hand, he's been promised a job with power and influence. On the other hand, he runs several companies that are wildly dependent on government money, government spending. As, as you know, SpaceX acts as a massive government contractor. Doesn't this have conflict of interest written all over it?

RYAN MAC: Yeah, you can say that multiple times over for the various tie-ins that his companies have with the government. But yes, that that is the question we're all asking. And you have someone like SpaceX, for example, or a company like SpaceX that takes in billions of dollars a year in federal contracts from the US government. You know, it's the biggest customer. I'd say their biggest customer is the US government. Beyond that, you know, you have companies like Tesla who are under investigation from things like NHTSA for for the self-driving technology.

PA: That's the National Transportation Safety Administration?

RYAN MAC: Right. And you have, you know, I think we tabulated it, but at least 20 federal ongoing investigations and inquiries into his companies right now. There are various conflicts that we may we may not even know about, you know, and those are the ones we just know about. And so, this is, this is kind of unprecedented.

PA: I mean, I do sometimes wonder if we're making more of Elon Musk than we would of other sort of media barons in the past. He's certainly not the only billionaire to get this involved in politics. What does make his situation unique, though?

RYAN MAC: I think his enthusiasm. You know, I don't remember Rupert Murdoch going on stage and jumping [PA: Jumping around] behind a candidate and, you know, rallying a crowd, for example. I mean, that, that kind of public facing effort I've never really seen before. Financially, he is, he is going all the way as well. You know, we're talking millions of dollars and it's kind of pretty clear as to, you know, why he's doing it. You know, we talked about this conflicts of interest as well. And, you know, what's at stake for Elon Musk? It's pretty blatant in some ways of why he's doing this.

PA: Which kind of leads you to the last question is: If Trump doesn't win, do you have a sense of what Elon Musk will do next?

RYAN MAC: I don't. But I've kind of taken this view that he'll be sort of fine in the sense that his, his company, you know, SpaceX, has a virtual monopoly on getting things into space. You know, the US government is completely reliant on his company. Tesla is still a dominant electric vehicle manufacturer around the world. So, from a business perspective, I think he's going to be just fine if, even if Trump does lose.

PA: He certainly has billions of dollars still, even after probably paying too much for Twitter. Listen, Ryan, thank you for this. I really appreciate you taking the time.

RYAN MAC: Thanks for having me.

PA: Ryan Mack is a tech reporter for The New York Times. He co-authored a book called "Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.".

[Music: Indie jingle]

PA: I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current. You know the major social media players: YouTube, Facebook, X, but have you heard of Rumble? It may not be a household name, at least not yet. But, it's one of the world's fastest-growing online platforms, and it's harbouring many content creators who've been banned by some of the more mainstream networks. Take conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

SOUNDCLIP

ALEX JONES: All I've seen in the last few years is preparation for martial law, civil unrest, race war is the cover for it, to try to stop Trump.

PA: After countless platforms gave him the boot for spreading misinformation, he found a home in Rumble. Rumble's mission is to protect a free and open Internet. Many of its users say it's one of the few remaining bastions of free speech on the Internet. My colleague Nora Young is with the CBC's Visual Investigations Unit. She's here to help us decipher what led to this platform's soaring popularity. Good morning. Nice to see you.

NORA YOUNG: Good morning. Good to see you.

PA: So, let's just sort of set the stage here. What exactly is Rumble?

NORA YOUNG: So it's a platform for content creators to share video. So, you could say it's a YouTube competitor, but it has some important differences, especially in the way it deals with moderation, which we can dig into.

PA: How many users does it have? Because the numbers were, I found, a little surprising.

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, this year's second quarter results state they have average global monthly users of $53 million compared to $50 million in the first quarter of 2024. But that growth has been relatively recent, right? Rumble was founded in 2013 and it's just sort of ticked along. And then, things really took off around 2020. Rumble has said that from 2020 to 2023, Rumble increased its monthly active users 36 times over. And that was largely because of an influx of popular creators who were either demonetised by YouTube or were just seeking a platform that wouldn't censor their views. And Rumble said that growth is because at a time when many competing platforms began introducing more restrictive content moderation and monetisation policies, Rumble attracted many new users and content creators through its commitment to freedom of expression and promoting the interests of content creators.

PA: And I've heard a couple of different versions of this. What's the Canadian connection here?

NORA YOUNG: So it was founded in 2023 by two Canadians, one of them tech entrepreneur Chris Pavlovski, who's from Brampton, Ontario, and he's now the CEO. And the interesting thing also about Rumble is the way that it's growing. Like in addition to just being this video sharing platform, they host Truth Social. That's the ex-clone started by Donald Trump's media and technology group. And they're also advertising their cloud services as an alternative. And they have Rumble advertising centre, which is their alternative to Google ads.

PA: And like, you know, sort of, we know what YouTube is because it's kind of one thing. We know what Facebook is because it's maybe a couple of things. How is Rumble different from those?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, in terms of content, there's certainly a range of content available. But a key thing is that you can find content creators who've been kicked off other platforms, right? Like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who we just heard earlier. They also, for example, have Russell Brand, whose videos promoting COVID misinformation were demonetised on YouTube. And there are also figures like self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, who's been kicked off multiple platforms.

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ANDREW TATE: The situations men are in, if they were reversed, would be global tragedies. Let's take the war in Ukraine. Right now, there are men dying in a ditch getting blown to smithereens in Ukraine. They've sent their wives away to Europe for safety, and their wives are found new husbands.

RUSSELL BRAND: Well, loads of stuff to talk to you about. Some of it is covering, again, further information about the cover up around the vaccines, like they covered up information about people being negatively affected, cardiovascular problems, that sort of stuff.

NORA YOUNG: So that's a little bit of Russell Brand on the end there. You know, so obviously, YouTube is the platform giant, but it's partly the type of content that differentiates Rumble.

PA: I, whenever we talk about these social media companies, we end up talking about moderation. How does Rumble tackle moderation?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, they tolerate a much greater range of speech than the mainstream competitors, although they do have terms of service that limit what you're supposed to be able to say, specifically content that's racist, anti-Semitic or promoting hate. They've also tied, as I said, that growth to resisting stringent content moderation. And this is where it becomes an interesting question, not just for, you know, for technologists, but just for all of us who use the Internet. Right? What's the appropriate amount of moderation and limitations on speech online? And what's the balance between free and open debate that we want versus the ability to publish material that might be misleading or harmful? And that's obviously an ethical debate that we continue to have. But it's also a subject in the culture wars in the U.S. and increasingly in Canada.

PA: I mean, that it's an interesting fact that it's ongoing, right? [NORA YOUNG: Yeah] At where the needle is, keeps moving. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski has defended his site. We've got a clip of him here speaking with the writer, Glenn Greenwald.

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CHRIS PAVLOVSKI: We're constantly under attack by the media. We're constantly under attack by, you know, everyone that's, that doesn't like to hear independent voices, wants to silence voices.

PA: So, he says they're under attack. How, how does he defend his moderation policies and the accusations that the content on that platform is spreading, not just misinformation, but dangerous misinformation?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, Rumble has consistently presented that limited moderation as linked to what they call a, quote, "free and open Internet." Our CBC colleague Jonathan Montpetit reached out to Rumble for a few questions on this story, and a Rumble spokesperson wrote "The irony of a story on misinformation pushed by the CBC, which is funded by Trudeau's government, is almost too much to believe. The best antidote to misinformation is more information, which is exactly what Trudeau and the CBC do not want." End quote.

PA: How, can we even sort of compare how Rumble's approach to moderation compares to like the bigger platforms, YouTube or Facebook?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, I think you can write like all these platforms have terms of service that dictate [PA: Yeah] what you're supposed to be able to say and what you can't. And this question of appropriate moderation comes up often. Like, for example, in the U.S., the House Judiciary Committee has been investigating online moderation and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg recently said he, quote, "Regretted succumbing to pressure from the U.S. government to remove COVID content." TikTok is currently facing a lawsuit alleging that a video posted on its site led to the death of a child. [PA: Right?] These are broad concerns, broad political concerns. But meanwhile, social companies, social media companies all rely on legal protections that largely absolve them of responsibility for the content that their users post. But I want to understand more about the thinking behind different takes on moderation. And so, I spoke to Northwestern Law professor Paul Gowder about why the largest social media companies tend to moderate as much as they do. And he said that for a company the size of a Facebook, you have to appeal to as many people as possible.

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PAUL GOWDER: And so when you scaled essentially the entire world, number one, you need a lot of revenue, the kind of revenue that can really only be supplied by mainstream advertisers. So, some of these smaller, more niche companies that might be targeted at a particular smaller audience have a lot less economic incentive to do the kinds of strict content moderation that the big companies try for.

NORA YOUNG: So, I mean, it's an ethical question. It's a political question, but it's also a bottom line question, [PA: Right.] Yeah.

PA: I did a quick Google search of Rumble, knowing you're coming to do this. And the first thing that comes out, there's a bunch of legal battles, mostly around advertising, which I found really interesting because that's the big money-maker for these platforms. There's one involving this firm called "Check My Ads." Can you just walk me through what's happening there?

NORA YOUNG: Sure. Yeah. Remember I said Rumble CEO is Canadian [PA: Yeah] and the company was founded in Canada? So, the Check My Ads institute was co-founded by Canadian Claire Atkin and by Nandini Jammi. So, there are always secret Canadians [PA: Right, they're everywhere] involved in these American issues, we're everywhere. So, you have these two Canadians at the heart of this U.S. culture war. And now, Check My Ads is a group that focuses on critiquing problems in the digital advertising economy, which is a $700 billion with a B U.S. dollars industry annually. And the premise of their work is that the opaque business of digital ads are funding misinformation and extremist content and contributing to the toxic character of our online lives. So, one of the things they've done is show when ads for products show up alongside controversial or offensive content, because brands, of course, want what's called brand safety. And they say they're targeting bad faith producers or publishers, rather. And they've issued several critical reports about Rumble. So, this is, the lawsuit, Rumble's suing Atkin and Jammi for defamation. And we can quickly get into the weeds on this, Peter.

PA: Please? Yeah, [NORA YOUNG: But] you know, I like the weeds.

NORA YOUNG: Yes. But the specific claim is that Check My Ads wrote about how Rumble claims to be anti-big tech but allege that they rely a lot on Google ads for revenues. Now, Rumble says that Google ads now represents a very small amount of their revenue stream. There've been strong statements on both sides regarding the CMA lawsuit. The CEO, Pavlovski, has said they have no choice but to hold anti-free speech zealots accountable. So, as you can imagine, we requested comment about the suit from the parties involved. Rumble said "We do not commenting, comment on pending litigation. Check My Ads told us due to the nature of our ongoing litigation, we cannot comment on Rumble's business mode." But we asked Claire Atkin at Check My Ads about how Rumble characterises them, including that zealots comment. [PA: Yeah]. And she referred us to their moderate, their motion to dismiss Rumble's complaint. Check My Ads, I'm going to read this quote. Sorry, it's a bit long, but [inaudible].

PA: Yeah, go for it.

NORA YOUNG: "Check My Ads has a mission of making advertising markets transparent and seeks to give advertisers the ability to make informed choices about who hosts and profits from their ads." And then I'm paraphrasing brands can choose whether they want to keep advertising on that platform. Quote, "By filing defamation suits like this, she says Rumble makes no secret of his desire to bring an end to this oversight." She also wrote to us, "Rumble loves to talk about free speech when it comes to providing a platform for people who were kicked off YouTube for anti-Semitism, racism, health disinformation or misogyny. They apparently don't like free speech so much when it criticises Rumble." End quote.

PA: There's a lot there. [NORA YOUNG: Yeah.] Can we just zoom out for a second? We just did this segment just before you came on about Elon Musk and how he is offering these million dollar lottery winners using his wealth and his platform clearly at X to steer the U.S. election campaign. Can you put a finger on, on the kind of influence that Rumble is having in shaping the political narrative right now in the United States?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting, isn't it? The role that all of these players are having and maybe in particular Elon Musk and X, where it is right now? I mean, if you're talking strictly in terms of user numbers, of course, Rumble is dwarfed by giants like YouTube. [PA: Sure, yep.] But what's more relevant is its role as a place for right-wing opinion, including opinions that you can't find on other social media platforms. And then, as I mentioned, Truth Social. That X-clone started by Donald Trump is hosted by Rumble's Cloud Services. Rumble was the exclusive broadcaster of the Republican National Convention. And one of the backers of Rumble is Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. So, [PA: Right.] There's a lot [PA: Key point.] That's a key point. There's a lot going on there. Right? And I think this is what is so interesting is the role that social media platforms are playing in shaping the conversation that we have in the actual political sphere. We've seen that most acutely in the U.S., of course. But, you know, we're starting [PA: Yeah, sure] to see that in Canada as well.

PA: Absolutely. I mean, we're at a weird point in the maturity of the debate over free speech on the Internet of the role of these Internet companies. With that in mind, like, what does the growing popularity of something like Rumble tell us about the larger debate and the struggle that these platforms are having when it comes to what is free speech? Where does moderation kind of find that fine line?

NORA YOUNG: I mean, this is the question, right? What's appropriate to moderate versus acceptable parameters of debate in an open society? And that's going to be very much a moving target. And the thing is that, you know, all of the social media platforms want to claim to be neutral platforms. They all kind of claim this, and they also claim that they're not responsible for the content that users post. This is what the famous or infamous, depending on your point of view. Section 230 of the U.S. Telecommunications Act allows for, you know, you can be a [PA: Right] platform and you're not [PA: For sure] responsible for that content. And all the major platforms face calls to moderate that content, right? But the thing is that all those social media giants want to make money from not just content, but the most engaging content, right? [PA: Right]. And so, therein lies a real tension in the nexus around the politics and the business models of these companies. Right? Like as law professor Paul Gowder reminded me, all the giant social media companies have something like an integrity team responsible for maintaining a long-term standard for the platform, but they also have an engagement team responsible for driving time spent, active engagement with content and so on. And we know from our long experience with social media, Peter, what drives engagement is not usually, you know, moderate balance, well-considered [PA: Often fuelling conflict]. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So therein lies the huge tension that goes beyond Rumble to our broader situation that we find ourselves in now.

PA: Well, fascinating work. I'm really glad you're able to do it and especially glad you're able to come on the show and talk about it. Thanks for this.

NORA YOUNG: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

PA: Nora Young is with the CBC's Visual Investigations Unit.

PA: That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. And a reminder that coming up tomorrow, The Current is going to continue our special on the road coverage of the U.S. election. Matt Galloway was in Arizona on Monday. Tomorrow, he's in Michigan. It's a key battleground state where early voting is already underway. We'll hear from Michiganders with very different thoughts about who is the best person to take their country in the right direction. Until then, here's Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues. I'm Peter Armstrong, sitting in for Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Music: Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye]

Wednesday, October 23, 2024 Full Transcript

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