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The Current Transcript for May 20, 2016

Host: Kelly Crowe

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: All whales in captivity are all psychologically traumatised. It’s not just Tilikum.

VOICE 2: If you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don’t you think you’d get a little psychotic?

KELLY CROWE: What goes on in the mind of a captive killer whale? The documentary Blackfish took a provocative look at SeaWorld's orcas, putting aquarium amusement parks on the defensive. And now an amateur film featuring Canada's last captive orca has triggered a law suit by Ontario's Marineland.

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We've all been trained to believe in this ancient adage that geography is destiny. And I argue that connectivity, in fact, is destiny.

KC: National borders are vanishing, new mega-cities are emerging and it's all good, according to author Parag Khanna. In half an hour, we'll hear more about his visions for our hyper-connected future, including some surprising predictions for Canada.

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You do the best that you can with the available resources and I think that that is going to be the situation with drones. If this gives them access to a higher quality health care, then, at a minimum, I think it’s worth giving it a try.

KC: Can drones save lives? That's the latest question as innovators design flying robots to deliver medicine to remote parts of Canada and the world. But new technology brings with it new risks and new ethical questions. I'm Kelly Crowe, and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Marineland launches $1M lawsuit over unreleased orca film

Guests: Zach Affolter, Naomi Rose, Lori Marino

[Music: Marineland theme song]

KELLY CROWE: Many Canadians are familiar with Marineland’s long-running jingle. The Niagara Falls based aquarium and amusement park is about to kick off its 55th season. But like other similar facilities elsewhere in the world, there's tension under all that jubilance. In fact, Marineland is involved in several lawsuits against defendants with connections to the animal rights movement. In 2013, the park launched a 1.5 million-dollar lawsuit against former walrus trainer Phil Demers, who claimed conditions at the park were harming the animals. Marineland is also suing former trainer Christine Santos for 1.25 million dollars for talking to the Toronto Star about the condition of the park's only orca. The park says their claims are false. And In a 2013 video posted on Marineland’s website, the park maintains that its facilities have been thoroughly inspected and vindicated.

SOUNDCLIP

Take a close look at the creatures the radical Animal Liberation Movement has been telling you are being abused at Marineland. Oh, they got the Toronto Star to believe them. And, of course, investigators from Canada’s accredited zoos and aquariums were called in. So was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Animal abuse is a horrific breach of trust and a terrible crime. So, what did all those investigators find? Nothing. No animal abuse. No charges laid. The tests of the water system: clean and clear.

KC: Marineland has just launched another lawsuit. This time the defendant is a 19-year-old college student from California who's making a short film about a captive whale. The unreleased film is called Black Water and includes footage of Marineland's only orca, a female named Kiska. Marineland is seeking one million dollars in damages. Zach Affolter is that student and he joins us now from in San Diego. Hello.

ZACH AFFOLTER: Hi.

KC: So, Zach, you were served notice about this lawsuit just a few days ago. Why is Marineland suing you?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Yeah. I wasn't expecting them to come after me, being that my film is going to be released online for free and I'm a college student. I think that they're frightened my film might hurt their profits, as any business would, but that was never its intention. My main goal with Black Water was to simply explore what orcas might possibly be feeling in captivity.

KC: Now, you're being sued for a million dollars. What was your reaction on seeing that number?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Yeah. I was definitely shocked, initially. I wasn't expecting them to come after me since my film was non-commercial. It was going to be released online for free.

KC: So how are you to cover the legal costs now?

ZACH AFFOLTER: I've created a GoFundMe account for my legal fees and I also already have representation.

KC: So you mention it's about depression, but it is also about this orca, am I right?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Yes, that's correct.

KC: So what happens in the movie?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Black Water is a short narrative non-commercial film set in the eyes of this captive orca and how she may perceive the world and how she may be feeling given the fact that killer whales are incredibly social and intelligent. And it's basically a fictional story in which Kiska is essentially dragged down by her own emotions and struggles to overcome them. And the script actually is based on my own struggles through depression and how I was able to overcome it by realizing that there is meaning to what I was going through. So, it does dive into the ethical question of keeping cetaceans - dolphins other whales - in captivity, but it also illuminates our emotions and how, as the title depicts, they can pull each of us down and that in the end there's a meaning to it all.

KC: So what footage in the film has caused Marineland to be so upset?

ZACH AFFOLTER: I think they just believe that I had somebody actually go to the park and film, which isn't true. I just collected footage online off of YouTube.

KC: They seem to think that this footage was obtained by an employee that had signed a confidentiality agreement, is that right?

ZACH AFFOLTER: That's what they said, but that isn't true.

KC: Okay. So, how did you get the footage?

ZACH AFFOLTER: I just collected it online off of YouTube. If you type in Kiska on YouTube, a bunch of results pop up. I made sure not to take anything that Marineland actually posted. And, again, my film is non-commercial.

KC: Now, they think that you knew it was illegally obtained. How do you respond to that?

ZACH AFFOLTER: I don't think it was illegally obtained. I mean, the footage that I found online was just on YouTube. That's my understanding. I didn't send anyone to Marineland. I didn't have an employee [laughs] to get the footage for me. I don't know where they got that.

KC: Well, is it undercover footage? I mean, is it stuff that you wouldn't get if you were just a tourist watching the show?

ZACH AFFOLTER: No. No, no. It's something anyone could have gotten.

KC: And nothing you say nothing particular happens. The whale just floats around.

ZACH AFFOLTER: Yeah, that’s correct.

KC: Now, what generally is your view about whales being held in captivity like this?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Well, personally, I don't agree that orcas should be kept in captivity. I think that they're too social and intelligent, even if there might be some educational value in keeping them in captivity. Initially, way back when I was in sixth grade - I'm in college now - I actually wanted to become a SeaWorld trainer. So I was on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. So I know the other side of the argument and how they feel.

KC: Can you understand why Marineland might seek legal action, because they’ve passed animal welfare inspections.

ZACH AFFOLTER: Right, right. And in the film, I'm not saying that Kiska’s trainers don't love her or aren't doing a good job taking care of her. It's just sort of exploring and raising up the question, so to speak. And I think that they're just worried that my film might hurt their profits, as any business would. But, as I said before, that was never its intention.

KC: What's the plan now for releasing the movie?

ZACH AFFOLTER: Pending the court hearing, I'm not going to release it until there's a decision from the court. But if I were to release it, it would just be online on YouTube for free.

KC: So was there any intention of any commercial gain at your end at any point in this process.

ZACH AFFOLTER: No. I would never have made any sort of profit from the film at all. It was just simply a passion project so I could tell the story.

KC: Okay, Zach. Well, thank you very much for talking with me.

ZACH AFFOLTER: Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you.

KC: Bye bye. Zach Affolter is the director of Black Water, a short fictional film. Marineland is suing him for a million dollars. He was in San Diego, California. We contacted Marineland for an interview. They declined, but provided the following statement: “The whole issue would have been avoided if Mr. Affolter had simply acted reasonably and provided copies of the Marineland images he hoped to use and sought permission to use them, which is the normal legal and acceptable way to do these things. Instead he has, to date, refused to provide any information and does not even at this point except that the courts of Ontario should be permitted to consider the issue and decide fairly. So, Marineland is taking basic reasonable steps to have the court protect its interests as anyone else would.” My next guest has visited and seen Kiska the orca more than once. Naomi Rose is a biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute and has been involved in the animal advocacy field for over 20 years. She's in Washington. Hello.

NAOMI ROSE: Hi, how are you?

KC: I'm good. You just heard Zach Affolter explain what's happening. What do you think?

NAOMI ROSE: Well, I wasn't aware that it was fictional, that he was exploring his own experience with depression. I just thought he was making a film of concern because he has these concerns about their welfare at these parks. So knowing that, now that I realize it was a passion project, as he put it, it makes this lawsuit all the more troublesome to me. I just find it really quite appalling, actually, that Marineland would go after such an articulate and progressive young man who's just trying to help people with depression. It doesn't make them look very good.

KC: Well, he's also an activist, though. I mean, he doesn't deny that he has spent some time in this area as well.

NAOMI ROSE: Absolutely. I know Zach. I've met him in my travels with my advocacy, so absolutely, he's an activist and he doesn't believe these animals belong in captivity. Neither do I. That doesn't make anything he's done with this film subject to a civil suit. It just doesn't.

KC: Now, Marineland is saying these images were illegally taken. What do you think about that?

NAOMI ROSE: Well, I think Zach answered that question. I am not familiar with how he made this film. I'm not the right person to ask. You asked Zach and I think he answered it pretty well.

NAOMI ROSE: In your experience, how does Marineland compare to other facilities, like SeaWorld, in terms of how it responds to this sort of criticism?

NAOMI ROSE: Yeah, Marineland is unique. They're the only marine park, that I'm aware of, a marine theme park, that files lawsuits like this. Most of the other parks, if they do have any issues with anybody doing anything that they feel is either defamation or illegal, in terms of commercial or non-commercial, et cetera, they deal with it out of court. They settle it out of court, if it gets to that point. They do not go to court. It doesn't reflect well on the corporation, on the theme park, to constantly litigate, especially when you're dealing with young people who are expressing their freedom of speech. I just think it's a very poor corporate response.

KC: Now, this isn't the only corporation that's been challenged this way and there's a change happening, we've been hearing, in terms of who's levelling the criticism. It's coming from inside, from trainers, et cetera. Can you talk a bit about that?

NAOMI ROSE: Well, prior to the death of Dawn Brancheau, which was the incident that was featured in the film Blackfish, prior to that, most insiders, whether they were trainers or executives or anybody, tended to stay relatively loyal to the company if for no other reason than that several of them do require the signing of nondisclosure agreements. So getting information from the inside was relatively difficult for advocates on the outside, such as myself. But after Dawn Brancheau was killed a lot of former trainers, particularly from SeaWorld, started stepping forward. Several of them were featured in the film Blackfish and, subsequently, others have stepped forward, such as Phil Demers. So, I think that the quality of the information, if you will, that we're now receiving as advocates is that much better because we're actually getting it, as it were, from the horse's mouth.

KC: What kinds of things are you hearing?

NAOMI ROSE: You know, I always thought things were bad. I'm an orca biologist by training and so I have a very clear and scientifically based opinion about the suitability of that species for public display, the suitability of that species for being confined in concrete tanks. But I thought I knew how bad it could be as a result of that knowledge, but when I started hearing some of the things that go on behind the scenes that were not public knowledge that I was unaware of, I was shocked and that's tough to do to me these days, to shock me.

KC: Okay. Well, thank you, Naomi, for talking with us today.

NAOMI ROSE: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you.

KC: Naomi Rose is a biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute. She was in Washington, DC. There have been many campaigns calling for Marineland to relocate Kiska in her retirement, but it's hard to find the right place to put retired aquarium animals, like dolphins and whales. One organization is trying to change that. The Whale Sanctuary Project is a US non-profit that wants to build a retirement sanctuary in the ocean. Lori Marino is president of The Whale Sanctuary Project. We've reached her in Kanab, Utah. Hello.

LORI MARINO: Good morning.

KC: What do you make of the case of Kiska?

LORI MARINO: Well, I think it's very unfortunate that that young person who is expressing his freedom of speech is being, in a sense, punished this way.

LORI MARINO: Now, we're talking about what happens to these captive whales and dolphins once they're too old to perform or to stay in the facility. What is happening most of the time right now?

LORI MARINO: Well, what's happening to these orcas who are in captive facilities is that they just languish and there's really nowhere for them to go that's an alternative to concrete pools and that's why The Whale Sanctuary Project wants to build the first seaside sanctuary for them in North America.

KC: And so tell us about that plan.

LORI MARINO: Well, our mission is to, again, build a seaside sanctuary along either the east or west coast for orcas and/or beluga whales. And we are a new organization but we are made up of some of the very best experts in all of the fields that are required to try to bring this project to fruition. Dr. Rose, with whom you've just spoken, is on the board of directors and we have several others who will get this job done.

KC: What are the challenges you face in terms of taking care of the animals in this kind of a sanctuary?

LORI MARINO: Well, the challenges are very similar to the challenges that one faces whenever one's taking care of a large marine mammal and that would be making sure that the residents are safe, healthy, and that their welfare is as high as possible. In a sanctuary, the animals’ wellbeing is a priority.

KC: But you would have to teach them life skills, I understand.

LORI MARINO: Well, only if we decided that a particular individual was a candidate for release. If not, then they can stay in the sanctuary for the rest of their life and be cared for while living in an environment that restores as much of their natural environment as possible.

KC: Now, we hear often from organizations that these captive animals couldn't survive in the wild, but you're saying you would consider some of them for release?

LORI MARINO: It really would be taken on a case by case basis. The point is that we're building facility that would be able to allow orcas and belugas to stay there for the rest of their life so that their welfare would be enormously improved, but at the same time, they would be cared for and kept safe and looked after.

KC: So just describe the difference in their in their lifestyle, I guess, between being in the theme park and being in the sanctuary that you're imagining.

LORI MARINO: Oh, gosh. Well, you know it's a difference that makes a difference for these animals. They're currently living in concrete tanks. They are on a schedule. They don't really have any way to make any choices about what they do, when they do it. And in a sanctuary, the kind of sanctuary that we're building, an authentic sanctuary, they would have a lot more space, a lot more depth to the water which would allow them to dive, and that's something that they actually like to do. They don't like to log on the surface the way they do in concrete tanks. They would have the ability to decide when and where and what they want to do on a daily basis and they would feel the rhythms of the ocean and have a much more variable dynamic environment that is much, much closer to the environment that they were meant to live in.

KC: Now, are you considering places in Canada at all for this, possibly?

LORI MARINO: Yes. We're in the middle of site selection right now and we are looking along both the east and west coast. We are looking on the east coast along Nova Scotia and Maine and in the west coast, along upper Washington in the US and Vancouver.

KC: And would people be able to see the animals in this sanctuary?

LORI MARINO: Yes. The law requires that there be some display of the animals and there would be. That would mean that people would be able to come at certain times to view the animals and we would have a visitor centre where we would present authentic information about who these animals are and why they need to live in the ocean.

KC: Have you had any interest from any of the theme parks, in terms of retiring their animals with you?

LORI MARINO: No. And we don't expect to have any, initially, because obviously this is a very new idea for them. SeaWorld has just made the decision to stop breeding their orcas and I think they need time, for instance, to get used to the idea that there really is an alternative business model for them. And that's the same for both aquariums in Canada.

KC: How long till you'd have something ready, do you think?

LORI MARINO: Three to five years is what we're anticipating.

KC: Okay. Well, thank you very much for talking with us today, Lori.

LORI MARINO: You're very welcome.

KC: Bye bye.

LORI MARINO: Bye.

KC: Lori Marino is president of The Whale Sanctuary Project. She was in Kanab, Utah. But now we'd like to hear from you. Do you still visit parts like Marineland? Do you worry about the treatment of whales at aquariums and amusement parks? Let us know. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC or post on this story on our Facebook page or email us by clicking on Contact at cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Kelly Crowe in Toronto and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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How connectivity reshapes world map

Guest: Parag Khanna

KC: Hello. I'm Kelly Crow in Toronto and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: theme]

KC: Still to come, how drones could help people in remote areas of Canada get better and faster health care. That's in half an hour. But first, floating an idea about water.

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I do think that the United States needs Canadian water, that it would be willing to buy that water at a reasonable price, that Canada has surplus water and that Canada could profit by this. In fact, it could be mutually profitable, be profitable to the United States, profitable to Canada, could be worked out. I think this is coming. I'm just I'm trying to urge it along because I think time is so pressing.

KC: That was Utah Senator Frank Moss speaking to the CBC in 1967 about his support for the North American Water and Power Alliance. The idea of redirecting huge volumes of water from Canada to the US may seem like a proposal from the dusty past, but my next guest thinks it’s worth a second look. It’s just one of the ideas in his new book. Parag Khanna is the author Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization. He’s a former advisor to the US National Intelligence Council and he also worked as the senior geopolitical advisor to the US Special Operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Parag Khanna is now a CNN Global Contributor and he joins me in Toronto to talk about his book. Hello.

PARAG KHANNA: Hi.

KC: So what is connectography?

PARAG KHANNA: Well, connectography is the fusion of connectivity and geography and we've all been trained to believe in this ancient adage that geography is destiny. It's the gravest saying that you can utter and train kids to believe about the world and the deterministic forces of the world. And I argue that connectivity, in fact, is destiny and that we, as a species, are building so much infrastructure - think of transportation, energy, communications networks, highways, railways, oil pipelines, electricity grids, fibre optic cables - wrapping the world that, in fact, this connectivity is really the arc of history. And if you combine it with urbanization - most of the world's population moving to cities - we really are a global, urban, and networked civilization, more than we are a world of 200 discretely divided nations with their states and boundaries. We’ll always have states and borders and boundaries, without a doubt, but what's much more important about the world today and in the future is that we're all physically connected to each other and that has all sorts of implications for the economy, for geopolitics, and so forth. So the book is an exploration of all of the consequences of total connectivity.

KC: So how is connectivity different from globalization?

PARAG KHANNA: Globalization is embodied in all of this connectivity. And even the word connectivity, when we say it today, people think of just their mobile phones and the Internet and they think of it as a nonphysical thing, they think of it as ethereal. But, of course, the Internet is a very physical thing. It even has a geopolitics. There is a competition over where Internet cables are laid down across the ocean floor, where servers are, where data is stored, who controls the ISPs - the Internet service providers - around the world. There's an intense geopolitics of the physical Internet. So the globalization is so many things. It's the movement of goods, of people, of knowledge, of capital, of technology, of ideas. All of those things happen because of infrastructure. The more infrastructure—

KC: So, connectivity is the mechanism for globalization?

PARAG KHANNA: Yes.

KC: Okay. Well, a lot of pundits would say that this is the most dangerous time since World War Two. You don't seem to agree with that.

PARAG KHANNA: They'd be wrong about that. You don't get to pick your own facts, right. Since 1989, particularly since the collapse of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've had no major wars. You’ve had a communications—

KC: We’ve had minor wars.

PARAG KHANNA: Minor wars, which is very different from World War Two, which you mentioned earlier.

KC: And other issues that make people nervous, such as terrorist attacks and things like that.

PARAG KHANNA: Plenty of it and, as you mentioned earlier, I've worked in Iraq and Afghanistan for the US military. I've been in all the worst places in the world without exception. So I'm not trained to believe that the world is a Pollyannish perfect peaceful place, quite the contrary. However, in my analysis of the nine major wars that have been predicted since 1991, since the year the Soviet Union collapsed - we've had major predictions of major warfare between China and Japan, China and ASEAN countries, China and America, India and China, India and Pakistan, North and South Korea, Iran, Russia - many predictions of major war. None of them have them escalated and the reason is because of all of this connectivity. It's not just because we've decided that nuclear deterrence is very fearful, although that's a major factor too. But we now have financial integration. Our supply chains are located in each other's countries. Much of what we buy is made from things that are manufactured abroad. We have, of course, trade interdependence. There are many, many factors today. We're physically connected to our rivals in many ways. The United States is now a major oil exporter to China. Ten years ago we thought that the US and China were going to fight a war over Arab oil. Instead, in today in Beijing, the leaders wake up and they say, we need energy security? Let's buy oil from America, not fight with America. It's a very different world. So nine major wars predicted in last 25 years. None of them have broken out. Connectivity is part of the reason why.

KC: Don't you say it's not open war, but it's actually a constant tug of war.

PARAG KHANNA: Yes. That’s right. We are always at war, but it's a supply chain war. It's a war to gain the maximum economic benefit from all of the value added that connectivity brings. It's about who controls the energy supply. So Saudi Arabia is now selling less oil to the US. Instead, the US is now going to be the world's largest oil exporter. In the tug of war over who gets to provide the energy for whom, the US scores a point, Saudi Arabia loses a point, right? When it comes to global value chains the tug of war that's going on is that China is saying, if you want to sell electronics here, you have to manufacture them here, you have to transfer the technology, you have to build your factories here, you have to train our workers, and then we're going to take that technology and put it into our own companies and then they’re going to become your competitors. That's a tug of war over commercial markets.

KC: So who wins? Whoever has the resources wins?

PARAG KHANNA: No one ever wins the tug of war in the end. The tug of war is a permanent feature of today's world. Every city, every country, and every human being is part of this tug of war. We are also struggling to figure out where do we fit in the global value chain. Manufacturing workers in Michigan have lost their jobs in the tug of war over the manufacturing industry in global production to Asia, right? They lost that round of the tug of war. They can get it back if America decides that it wants to invest more in high technology goods for automobile parts and so forth, and create those jobs in the US, then they can win the next round of the tug of war. But it is a constant reality.

KC: To what end?

PARAG KHANNA: The end of, obviously, having a more prosperous and stable and secure country.

KC: Sounds like you're measuring it through consumption.

PARAG KHANNA: No. I would never measure through consumption. We consume plenty already, but that doesn't mean that America has benefited or that America has taken all of the openness and connectivity that it has been the architect of and used it to create a more equal society, right. America is still highly unequal, so consumption alone is not the measurement. Actually, providing more connectivity to people who are disconnected, who have been cut off, who have lost their jobs is the measure of whether a country is well governed.

KC: Now, there are some interesting parts of your book that will be of interest to Canadian readers. You predict the development of what you call the North American Union. What would that look like?

PARAG KHANNA: Well, the North American Union is actually a relatively old idea. It's about saying let's take this NAFTA agreement and think beyond just trade between one country within its borders and another country in its borders. Let's talk about all of the investment flows. Let's talk about the fact that America and Canada are connected by freight railways, by oil pipelines, now by electricity grids, by a huge mobility of people across the border every single day. Let's think about trade. Let's think about investment. Let’s think about migration. Let's think about water. Let’s think about the Arctic.

KC: So would this prediction for the future be different than what it looks like right now?

PARAG KHANNA: Yes, in the sense that if you think about how, since9/11, it’s become harder for Americans and Canadians to transact with each other because of more or less irrelevant security procedures that probably haven't really enhanced anyone's security, but they've certainly created a lot of friction in what is the world's largest trading relationship. I mean, this incredible complementarity that the US and Canada have. Instead, we should reduce those frictions and think about more complementarities. One of the arguments in this book is that we should think about a corridor that links Chicago and Toronto with Detroit just conveniently sitting at the halfway point. The way to revive Detroit is not to fight for low wage manufacturing jobs. It's to build infrastructural connectivity across our border to build that second bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, that Canada has generously offered to build and America won't even pay for a toll booth on its side of it. That kind of connectivity is going to enhance the ways in which our industries cooperate with each other much more efficiently.

KC: But Canadians historically have always been nervous about this vision, a fear that this is a way of the US just dominating Canadian resources.

PARAG KHANNA: And I’m cognizant - that I'm here in Toronto today - that I'm an American and I'm not advocating that there be a super-national European style institution, that Washington be declared the new Brussels, and that everyone is subordinated to the President Trump, who fortunately is not going to get elected. I am saying that this is about-- This is very good for Canada, quite frankly. Your exports, which are very significant and 75 per cent of your exports go the United States, are slowed down by the frictions that are largely unnecessary between US and Canada.

KC: But you have some predictions, some really, sort of, flashpoints for for Canadians in this book when it comes to water. So you're saying it's time to dust off plans for the great recycling and Northern Development canal, also known as the Grand Canal, and the North American Water and Power Alliance. So what exactly did those two plans lay out?

PARAG KHANNA: Right. So students of Canadian infrastructural history will know that, actually, going back to the fifties and sixties, there was talk about how the North American water basins and systems could be more integrated because of growing water demand in the United States. Now, 50 years later is when actually the western part of the United States has really reached a critical—

KC: Not more integrated. Basically, Canadian water would go to the US.

PARAG KHANNA: It would be sold, yeah. At the time, you know, we have far more sophisticated management systems around water today and water pricing today than before, so the notion that there's going to be some great suctioning of Canadian water is probably misplaced.

KC: But, I mean, California is dying of thirst right now. So you in the book suggest that Canada's water would be the solution.

PARAG KHANNA: So Canada's water is part of the solution. There are a lot of things that California is thinking about, such as greater conservation. They're investing a lot billions of dollars in desalination. They need to work on capturing the runoff from glaciers in Montana, which are technically in American sovereign territory, and bringing aquifers to merge together better with the river system, the Colorado River and so forth. There are ways in which Great Lakes water can help to replenish some of those aquifers and feed this water ecosystem and natural channelling system amongst basins that is there in North America and it could help. So it's not really about stealing water, but it could be priced in the way that Canada is not selling away its most precious resource. Water is, of course, a renewable resource in Canada.

KC: So, someone will pay for it?

PARAG KHANNA: Yes—

KC: But there are some people who think selling water is basically a violation of some pretty basic concepts.

PARAG KHANNA: Again, I think about the North American continent geologically. I don't think about it first and foremost as political, right. God gave us this common geography, if you will, the North American people and the North American geology. Such as if you think about the shale gas formations that split across, obviously, the US/Canada border, those are a shared resource and both the US and Canada are benefiting tremendously from exploiting that resource.

KC: I just want to bring you back to water question again. We asked Maude Barlow, who is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, about what she thought about the idea of Canada implementing this Grand Canal idea. And let's listen to what she said.

SOUNDCLIP

The most popular government you can imagine would never be elected again if they ever went along with a plan to re-energize the GRAND or the NAWAPA projects. They have been soundly rejected by generations. I mean, there have been different schemes. There were those. There was one to export water from Newfoundland. There was another to export water from Lake Superior. In every case, Canadians rose up and said absolutely not. There's something visceral about water. It's different than other kinds of things. You know, people understand that without water you die, without quality water your life doesn't have quality. And people have a very, very strong reaction to the thought of selling water and selling out the water heritage. So I pity any government that would dare try to re-enter into any kind of discussion on those projects or anything like it. And I don't think it will happen.

KC: That was Maud Barlow, who actually has a book coming out called Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada's Water Crisis. So, what do you think about what she had to say?

PARAG KHANNA: I could not possibly disagree with anything she had to say about the mentality or on the visceral nature and importance of water. She's absolutely correct, from a very emotional standpoint and, obviously, about the role that it plays in Canadian politics and the ways in which proposals that have existed in the past, which, by the way are Canadian proposals, not American proposals, in previous generations. So she's absolutely correct. However, again if you take a pragmatic view of, not of water being sold in the sense of a finite resource that is that is sold and once it's gone once it crosses the border it's gone, but think of it as something of water sharing and yet profitable sale kind of agreement of a renewable resource. It could spur, first of all, through pricing it appropriately, and water has never been priced appropriately in North America. We've treated it like a free resource and that's something that Americans are even more guilty of than Canadians. But there is a way for Canada to sell an ongoing streaming supply of this asset that actually teaches Americans to treasure it more because they're going to pay for it.

KC: But your vision has everything having a price.

PARAG KHANNA: Well, if you don't price an asset, and many countries are = learning this right now, whether it is energy and oil or whether it is water, if you don't appropriately price it in the same way that Arab countries have had cheap oil for a long time and even had cheap water, which they shouldn't since that's very precious there. They're learning to appreciate something. And water pricing in the United States is something that's really up for negotiation now because we realize just how poorly we've managed it south of the border.

KC: In your book you predict, I think, a tripling of the population that goes along with climate change and opening up—

PARAG KHANNA: Yeah. And this is very interesting and perhaps less controversial, because thanks to my friendships with Canadian scholars I've been exposed to some of the white papers and research, such as Canada 50 million and things like this. You're actually having a sophisticated conversation in this country about what might happen when you become one of the prominent, most profound food production centres in the world. And if climate scientists are correct that the world temperature is going to rise to four degrees Celsius above the baseline that scientists are using from the 1990 levels, then food production is really going to get wiped out or hit very hard in places like Brazil and America and India and China and Australia - the countries that are the five biggest food producers in the world today. Meanwhile, Canada and Russia, you are the two largest countries in the world and almost totally depopulated, are going to be producing a huge amount of the world's food for a world that, at that point in time - maybe 2040, 2050 - will have nine or ten billion people. So Canada is thinking seriously right now about who's going to produce all of this food? Where are the people going to be? Where are the agricultural production zones going to be?

KC: What are your answers to those questions?

PARAG KHANNA: Well, so, again, I think Canadians have done some research on this and I paint a picture of Canadian geography that is slightly more colonized and urbanized by people working in mechanized agriculture. Your infrastructure is built out substantially because you are going to be a key anchor, the pivotal anchor of the entire world's food supply chain, and there's going to be a lot more people living here. Now, Canada seems less uncomfortable with this, actually, than with the water issue because, again, your own government has done research on the doubling of the Canadian population, what it means. Your new prime minister is very interested in infrastructure build out. All of the new trade routes and shipping routes that are already emerging as a result of the Arctic sea ice melting are also part of this equation. So there's a lot in this book about the kind of Arctic supply chain, geography, and shipping routes, and ports, where Hudson Bay becomes very important as a shipping corridor into the interior and so forth.

KC: So, you seem very enthusiastic about climate change and its potential.

PARAG KHANNA: No. I mean, of course not. If you look at the maps in the book, of course, they're downright frightening. And I worked obviously with leading scientists around the world to make these projections. So what I've done is to fully discuss the potential scenarios and consequences around this world that we are doing a terrible job of preventing. And someone has to say, what are the demographic scenarios for a world where the billions of people who live on coastal megacities in the tropical regions in the Far East suddenly find that their cities have drowned? Where are they going to go? And where is the world's food going to come from? This is not a joke by any stretch of the imagination.

KC: So what are you saying? Because the book doesn't deal a lot with the social unrest and the just displacement that will happen if the scenarios you're predicting come true.

PARAG KHANNA: Well, to be honest, this is the only book that deals with those things, but they're so speculative that you can only imagine so far. So this only book where you're going to find talk about what happens when coastal cities get flooded and populations have to get relocated into interior regions. How are we rebuilding those redundant infrastructure capacities? What's going to happen if we need to have mass migrations from south to north as a result of the desertification of the entire arid belt of the world across South Asia and the Middle East and Africa? So I have deep speculation in this book about it, both philosophically and even logistically around migration. I am a champion of the free mobility of people. I do believe mobility is a human right. I don't believe that that means that billions of people suddenly should be invading Canada, but I do believe that there is a certain geographical and demographic and ecological responsibility that is going to be thrust upon Canada in the coming years. I'm glad that, unlike Russia, you're a very open society and are having this conversation already, because, I’ll tell you, I’ve spent a lot of time in Russia also. They're not nearly as open-minded about the future that is awaiting them.

KC: But how the Americans this this concept that you're presenting? You have the presumed next leader of the Republican Party, supported by millions of Americans, saying we need a wall along the southern border to stop political and economic refugees from heading to the United States. What makes you think the American people will go along with all this stronger integration from Mexico and other places?

PARAG KHANNA: Well, there are many, many kinds of integration. The United States is the architect of the world trading, world financial system and has been its greatest beneficiary. The fact that that is lost on Donald Trump is not really my fault, you know. I write books that hope to educate people like him and his supporters and, for that matter, Bernie Sanders and his supporters - two different sides of the spectrum who make common intellectual errors and analytical errors about trade. The fact is that they blame China and they blame Mexico and they blame everyone for American policy mistakes, which is to say, not retraining workers for higher end jobs. If you would listen to them, you would think that every American is a truck driver or a factory worker. Meanwhile that is not the case. There are far more young Americans who wake up every day trying to figure out how can they use TaskRabbit and Uber and apps to get jobs and do jobs and make ends meet and earn money than there are factory workers. And whatever jobs are now outsourced to Mexico into China are going to be taken by robots anyway. I don't see Donald Trump railing against the robot. So the fact is that his lack of sensible accounting or analysis of what's really going on in globalization is just a symptom of a much deeper problem in our policymaking establishment in America, in Washington to find good solutions. The fact is that American companies are benefiting from all of the trade and exports to Mexico. Mexico has finally liberalized its energy sector, so American oil companies and gas companies and banks and investors are actually helping to sell energy to Mexico and that is good for the American economy. Donald Trump just wants to prevent a certain number of illegal migrants from coming into the country. It will still be and probably always will be one of the world's most trafficked and crossed borders in the entire world. The wall is this symbol, if you will, of a stance against illegal immigration. Most people don't support illegal immigration anyway. So we've made a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to his silly wall.

KC: So do you think one day we might actually see a borderless world?

PARAG KHANNA: No, not at all. We have 200 countries in the world today, 200 sovereign states. That's four times the number of sovereign states we had when the United Nations was created. I am a political geographer. I know that there are more borders than there ever have been in human history. But that's exactly the point. This is a stage in history where because we have so many countries many of them, unlike Canada, are very small. No country can survive on its own. Every single country in the world imports food. Most countries import fuel. Every country is involved in trade and investment. The smaller our countries are the more we have to actually be connected with each other to survive. People who write about today and yesterday are trapped in this conversation where they think that the map of the world is frozen in time, but it's my job to point out that it's constantly evolving. And right now, we are building, literally, 150 times more length of connectivity of Internet cables, of railways, of roads, and pipelines than we are borders. 150 times more, but our maps show us only that which is 150 times as small, which is political borders. So if we get our maps right, we might start to appreciate the benefits of connectivity a lot more than we presently do.

KC: Okay. A lot to think about there. Thanks very much for talking with me.

PARAG KHANNA: Thank you.

KC: Parag Khanna is a CNN global contributor and the author of Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization. He was in Toronto. I'm Kelly Crowe in Toronto and you're listening to the Friday edition The Current.

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Drones could offer better health care to remote parts of Canada

Guests: Keller Rinaudo, Philip Reece, Dr. Greg Ross

KELLY CROWE: Hello I'm Kelly Crowe and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

And in any case, most of the people, you know when you are sick, either you go to the doctor immediately or you never go. There are many people who say they'll go, I'll go tomorrow. I'll go tomorrow. And unfortunately in a country where the roads aren't that good, tomorrow is in most of the cases, too late.

KC: That was Rwanda's Minister of Health, Agnes Binagwaho. For many people living in Rwanda, medical help is both tantalizingly close and impossibly far away. The country is tiny, about half the size of Nova Scotia. But most of its roads are unpaved and often washed out by rain. It can take hours for essential supplies to reach rural communities when they can reach them at all. That's why Zipline, a Silicon Valley startup, will be setting up a drone network on behalf of the Rwandan government this summer. It will cover about half the country and it will be used to deliver blood, vaccines, and other medical supplies. Rwanda isn't the only place looking into drones to improve health care. Pilot projects are taking place here at home too. So today we ask how drone technology could shape the future of health care in Canada and abroad. Keller Rinaudo is the CEO of Zipline, he's on the line from Dar El Salam, Tanzania. Hello. So, how did you and your partners come up with the idea for Zipline?

KELLER RINAUDO: You know, about two and a half years ago I was actually here in Tanzania and near meeting with a researcher named Zach and Zach had designed an early warning alert system where they had given about 300 mobile phones to doctors and health workers and asked them to send a text message to a central system when they had a patient whose life was in danger, but they didn't have the medical product they needed to save that person's life. Zack showed me this huge database of information of patients names who doctors had texted in about saying that that person was in danger, and the really startling thing for me was that no help had been sent to any of those patients because this was a research project. It was in that moment we really realized that half of the system existed. We knew when people were in trouble but the other half of the system, thanks for letting us know, help is on the way, hadn't been built yet and we knew that that was the problem we could use our expertise to solve.

KC: And so what did you actually build?

KELLER RINAUDO: We've designed everything from scratch. We build zips and hubs. Zips are 22-pound, so about 11-kilogram, airplanes that fly autonomously and they run on lithium ion batteries, and hubs are modified shipping containers that hold the planes. We can set up a hub next to any warehouse and instantly enable that warehouse to do up to 150 deliveries per day to any location in a 75 kilometre radius.

KC: And why did you take the idea to Rwanda first?

KELLER RINAUDO: Well, Rwanda is a unique country. It has a very innovative government, almost kind of a startup of a government, with really smart innovative people who are investing heavily in technology and health care. It was Rwanda's vision to use this system to put all of the citizens of Rwanda within a delivery of an emergency blood transfusion and ultimately within a 15 to 30 minute delivery of any essential medical product they could need. And so our goal is that by the end of 2016, we will have we will have two systems operating in Rwanda that will cover the entire country.

KC: Have you started yet?

KELLER RINAUDO: We're actually deploying the first system in July, so we will do the first flights in July.

KC: What are some of the biggest challenges that you're hoping to overcome with the drones?

KELLER RINAUDO: The simplest challenge that's hard to appreciate until you go and spend time in these environments, is that getting out into the villages, making deliveries to the last mile is extraordinarily difficult because of the state of the roads. In Rwanda, 75 percent of all roads are unpaved, which means that during the rainy season they're typically completely unpassable, and Rwanda is actually a very developed country in that respect. Many countries in Africa have far fewer paved roads. There are also challenges when you're looking at health commodities like blood, and vaccines, and rabies vaccine, and anti-venom. There are many medical products that are very expensive and have short shelf life and you just don't know when you're going to need them, or what you're going to need until someone's life is on the line. For us it's really all about speed and being able to make deliveries on demand in a way that is not dependent on pre-existing infrastructure like roads.

KC: Okay, so you're delivering medical supplies, so they are very precise. I mean, there is a risk of contamination, temperatures have to be kept stable, you have certain doses. How do you actually know that you can do this?

KELLER RINAUDO: We're working closely with a few professors at Emory University and we're also working very closely with the Ministry of Health. It turns out that the way medicine, first of all the way medicine is delivered in this system today, is far from perfect [laughs] and if you've ever gone and spent time and in these environments, it's pretty clear just how challenging the circumstances are that health workers are working in, but the advantage of moving really fast is it actually makes things like maintaining cold chain much simpler. Most vaccines for example, can handle temperature excursions of up to eight hours. So, when we're making a delivery on average in 30 minutes, even if that vaccine is warming up a little bit in transit, it's not really a problem. Typically what we'll do is we just include a basic amount of insulation in the packaging to ensure that during the flight, whatever's being delivered doesn't leave its thermal requirements.

KC: So you're just going to drop blood or vaccines on the ground?

KELLER RINAUDO: Yeah, as odd as that seems, it's a pretty simple solution. We are dropping the packages in such a way that they come to the ground very slowly and accurately. The products will actually be subjected to way less force and vibration than they would be subjected to on a motorcycle.

KC: And will there be expertise on the ground; people who know what to do with these supplies?

KELLER RINAUDO: Well, yes, absolutely, especially when it comes to blood, we're only delivering to existing transfusing facilities. These are facilities that already have all of the tools and have a doctor who knows how to perform a blood transfusion, it really is just a problem of supply and the fact that these transfusing facilities often run out of blood, and they often do not have plasma and platelets, and they often may not have the type of blood that's needed to actually save a patient's life, so we're not really trying to train people to do new things, we’re more making sure that they have the product that they need to do what they've already been trained to do.

KC: Now you can do this in Rwanda because of certain circumstances in regulatory environments. You couldn't just do this anywhere, is that correct?

KELLER RINAUDO: One of the advantages of work in Rwanda is that we have a government that's really innovative and willing to lead the world in terms of using this kind of technology to save lives. Currently we couldn't do this in the US because any commercial operation of UAV outside the line of sight is illegal, understandably because from the FAA's perspective, they have to move much slower because the air space is vastly more complicated than it is in Rwanda. So, in reality I think it's actually interesting because most people think that technology will first be developed in a place like the US and will only then trickle down to places like Rwanda. But, in this example, I think the exact opposite is true. Small countries in the developing world with very high and clear needs are actually leading the way in terms of using new technology and showing what it's capable of.

KC: Are you planning to take this to other countries?

KELLER RINAUDO: Definitely. I mean all of the challenges that I described are actually not are not only unique to Rwanda and that you find them in many other countries across the continent of Africa, as well as in many other developing countries, but you also, believe it or not, see these exact same problems in the US in many rural hospitals and clinics. Someone may not have access to a safe blood transfusion and that often results in a life flight for that patient to a more urban hospital. Even when you look in the US, the standard of health care available to people who live in rural and remote locations is much lower than the standard of care provided to people who live in cities, and a big part of that has to do with just basic access to products.

KC: Now people might say-- some people become a bit skeptical about drones and the technology suggesting it is not really going to amount to much more than a military weapon or, essentially a toy. What do you say to people who would doubt the drones can actually serve the public good?

KELLER RINAUDO: The thing that we really run into more than anything is people think that it's just absolutely crazy that we're doing this in Africa first. Everybody says there's no way this is going to work in Africa, and to that I think it's interesting because that's actually exactly what people said about mobile phones about 15 years ago. [Laughs] People thought there was no chance that mobile phones were going to work in Africa because they'd been burned so badly trying to bring landlines and computers here. The reality was that mobile phones allowed many countries in Africa to leapfrog the absence of pre-existing infrastructure like landlines in a way that really just provided an immense value in a cost effective way, and you just see an explosion of mobile phones here. I think in similar ways, drones are going to allow countries in Africa to leapfrog the absence of roads. The need in countries across East Africa is actually much higher than it is in the US, and so I think that's one of the things that is most motivating to us in terms of helping these countries innovate and lead the way in using this kind of technology to save lives.

KC: Okay, well let's leave it there, thanks very much, Keller Rinaudo for talking to us.

KELLER RINAUDO: It was my pleasure.

KC: Keller Rinaudo is the CEO of Zipline, which will be launching a drone health care project in Rwanda this summer. He was in Dar El Salam, Tanzania. Here in Canada, drones have already been used to deliver equipment, and help locate people and accident sites, but there are both technical and regulatory challenges to overcome if drones are to become a bigger part of our health care system. I'm joined now by two people who are exploring those possibilities. Philip Reece is the CEO of InDro Robotics and he's with us from Salt Spring Island, BC. Dr. Greg Ross specializes in the use of remote technologies in health care. He's the associate dean of research at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and he's in Sudbury, Ontario. Hello to you both.

GUESTS: Hello.

KC: Greg Ross, what do you think of what Keller Rinaudo has planned for Rwanda?

GREG ROSS: I think it's a very exciting development. Personally, I'm a tremendous fan of drone technology. I think this is just going to revolutionize so many aspects of transportation in our society in the future. I couldn't agree more about the hurdles, we've got a lot to overcome but where there's a need, it's going to be used. It’s very, very exciting and I think in jurisdictions like Rwanda, they've got very specific health care issues, very specific geography issues to deal with. I think the potential for using drones to deliver goods and services along the lines of what we’re talking about is very critical so I'm really excited about the possibilities.

KC: This pilot project is about to take place in Rwanda, is that something that could work in Canada?

PHILIP REECE: Oh yes, very much so. I mean, we brought a lot of our experience to Canada from the work that we've been doing with the United Nations in Haiti, Nepal, and Kenya, and it's exactly the same thing that Keller was experiencing. There are less regulations and more of an appetite to experiment; to overcome the hurdles. In Canada here we have a lot of similar hurdles, particularly when you get more into the northern rural areas in Canada and delivery of items is a real concern in the medical industry.

KC: There are regulatory issues in Canada that don't exist in Rwanda, is that correct?

PHILIP REECE: Yes for sure. We have been working closely with Transport Canada now for, gosh three years, and they are moving towards that. We were very clear with them at the beginning where we want to get to, which is autonomous delivery of an identified need item such as blood, in this case. Transport Canada helped us identify the hurdles we have to overcome and we’re still going through those hurdles. We have got through a number of them and we've run a number of test cases where we're actually flying beyond visual line of sight, which as Keller highlighted, that was one of the main problems in the US, you have to fly your drone within line of sight of the operator. Obviously in Rwanda that's not the same issue.

KC: In Canada, the way I understand what you're saying, is you have to be able to see the drone the whole time you're flying it.

PHILIP REECE: The current regulations for an operator coming in would be within one kilometre, which is across the line of sight and Transport Canada have given us the permission to extend that to five and ten kilometres, but we need complete control of the scene from A to B. It is only really a test case if that couldn't be used in a real life situation because you've already built the infrastructure, you might well take the blood yourself.

KC: Greg Ross, you've been researching the use of drones in health care. What needs in Canada could drones best address? Where would they have the biggest potential to improve healthcare?

GREG ROSS: I think the critical discussion we have to have is, what role are the drones having, and I would advocate that they play an important role as a transport device. They are moving materials and some of the examples we've been talking about like vaccines, and blood, and medicines, and that kind of infrastructure, I think drones potentially are going to play an incredibly important role in doing that. But, for example, in our own area in northern Ontario where we deal with distances like we do, which is hundreds of kilometres between small communities, the infrastructure is going to be a long, long way in coming and I don't know if you can make the assumption that it's going to improve health care. It's going to offer tremendous advantages, in my opinion I think in the coming years we're going to see wonderful new tools for transportation that will be able to take advantage of it, but I think the challenges in health care and health care delivery, at least in our area, really don't relate to moving goods from A to B necessarily. They relate more to access of patients to health care and many other things that I don't think drone technology will necessarily improve. I think we have to have, you know put it in context, and can't necessarily assume that there's going to be an increase in the health of the people of Northern Ontario because we have drone technology. I don't think that that's a given.

KC: Before we go any further, where are they being used now? Are they being used, Philip Reece, anywhere routinely in Canada right now?

PHILIP REECE: Yes, we have been speaking with Dr. Ross’s area in Northern Ontario. We do almost daily flights in the Renfrew area, and that's working primarily with paramedics and the fire department there as well. They use it a lot for situational awareness in an accident scene, so they'll send up the drone above the accident scene, transfer that information not just back down to the pilot operator, but also back to command and control so they can see just exactly how the scene is developing. If they need to put extra resources on, and they have to use UAV for delivery of essential items, but that was more for getting a PFD to a boater, who was out on a boat still in the line of sight, but we had to get a PFD to his wife out there. Similarly, with an [indecipherable], we’ve been involved with the search and rescue. We actually delivered an EPI-Pen to one of the rescuers and administered it to someone he was out searching for. So yes, it's a daily occurrence already that UAVs are being used in industry.

KS: We contacted Tim Caulfield, he's the Canadian research chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta. Now he thinks drones do offer some opportunities, but he also sees some risks with the technology. Let's listen to what he has to say.

SOUNDCLIP

Any time that you are delivering health care in a rural setting, there are challenges and this has been an issue that Canadian health care providers have had to deal with for decades, obviously. What is the standard of care in that setting? Are there confidentially issues when you are delivering specimens or drugs or other needs over a long distance? Who is the practitioner on the other end that is going to be working with the patient? You don't have direct access to the patient so that causes some other ethical legal privacy concerns. So there's a whole bunch of concerns we've dealt with-- with things like telemedicine and other kinds of technological advances, but you want to balance the benefits against these kind of risks.

KC: Greg Ross what do you think of the concerns Tim Caulfield raises?

GREG ROSS: Well, you have to consider that, but you know my own opinion would be that these things can be overcome. Really, what we're talking about is what's the payload and what do you lose on the payload on a drone, or a helicopter, or an aircraft? Those things have to be considered and are absolutely critical, but they certainly could be overcome.

KC: He also raised the issue of this potential risk to patient privacy. Let's listen to him again on that point.

SOUNDCLIP

You know, you could be carrying sensitive information back from the patient, for example a DNA sample and as you probably know, there have actually been a couple trials using blood samples with drones in other jurisdictions. So there could be sensitive information coming back with a drone, and the drone could go down, it’s unmanned and you know, lots of things that could happen. They're rare, probably, because the technology is evolving. In addition to that, you may have drugs or other sensitive information going towards the patient. So again, sensitive information could be there if the drone is not 100 percent reliable. I don't want to overplay those risks but they exist.

KC: So Philip Reece, in terms of the current technology, are there mechanisms in place that can help guarantee a chain of privacy when drones transport sensitive items like blood samples?

PHILIP REECE: Yes, Mr. Caulfield brings up a good point that you couldn't use the same kind of drone technology that Keller is in Rwanda where they're actually parachuting down the blood samples to the ground. Obviously that wouldn't work in Canada so we've developed a vertical takeoff and landing so it actually takes off in a similar way to a helicopter and then transitions into a fixed wing, heads to its end location where it's going to do the delivery, and then reverts back to its helicopter configuration and lands at a set point. So, you do actually have control of the sensitive information, or the samples, or what have you from point A all the way through to point B. We can then deliver it to a set person. That person would get a message to say okay, the UAV is inbound and two minutes out, please go, and then the person meets the UAV. So, there is a chain of custody there. Mr. Caulfield is right, of course. The UAV could have an incident, go off course, have a bad landing, but that could be said of pretty much any transportation. Mail is only mail. It’s only as secure as when it works.

KC: Right. Greg Ross, is there some particular health care policy that would have to be put in place to ensure patient privacy?

GREG ROSS: Well, undoubtedly they would but I don't think they'd be much more than extending existing policies to cover perhaps a new mode of transportation. So, for example, you know I totally agree, a drone can crash, so can an airplane crash. Those emergencies have to be dealt with but, I'm positive that policies could be in place to ensure confidentiality, security, safety. I think all those measures frankly can be dealt with.

KC: For both of you, I’m just wondering how ready do you think Canada is for this kind of drone use here?

PHILIP REECE: I’ll answer that from a Transport Canada position, if you don’t mind, just because we speak to Transport Canada an awful lot. They do have the appetite and we've bound to resolve this challenge, and they want to get to the end, the government, so obviously, you know it's a long process and has to go through lots of approvals, but there are some champions within Transport Canada that are definitely pushing toward this. We do have a lot of regulations to overcome, still.

KC: What do you think, Greg Ross?

GREG ROSS: Yeah, I totally agree and I believe that our society, in the medical profession in particular, would be wide open to looking at new avenues of delivering things that offer advantages. We're currently doing this obviously with things like airplanes and helicopters and those things are unimaginably expensive, and if we can even take a very small proportion of that work and move it into more cost effective mechanisms, I think it's potential for great benefits.

KC: Are there limitations though at this point? Are we getting excited about the latest shiny new thing?

GREG ROSS: I think drone technology has proven itself to the point now where it's absolutely unequivocal that these things are going to offer tremendous benefit. If you just look at what they're doing in imagery, I don't believe it is a shiny new toy, I think these things are going to be very, very useful, but as I cautioned earlier, I think we're going to have to keep in the context of drones, we have to be cautious about using terms like drones will be delivering healthcare. I think drones will be delivering health devices, maybe information; there are going to be a lot of applications for them in the future. I don't know if they are going to replace you know sort of a health care provider standing in front of a health care utilizer.

KC: I'm curious what you both think about the idea that pursuing technological fixes could distract from a real need to improve the human to human health care that is needed in remote parts of the country.

PHILIP REECE: We've been working quite a lot with Renfrew paramedics and Mike Nolan out of there, one of the other projects he works on a lot, an in-home medical response, which is where paramedics spend more time with the at-risk patients, and he's been able to do that by embracing technology which has freed up some of the paramedics time, which allowed them to go and sit with people who are at risk. I think drones obviously are going to come into this sooner or later, and my hope is that they will free up other medical assets and personnel so they can concentrate on the needed tasks. Can you imagine two paramedics in a vehicle transporting a blood sample, or a cure of some sort, and they've got to travel in the car for three hours, whereas we could fire it off in a drone and it would be there within 90 minutes. Those personnel could have been off doing other needed tasks.

KC: What do you think Greg Ross, are we at risk of being distracted and maybe putting resources in places where they might not be best used?

GREG ROSS: I personally don't believe that that is going to be an issue. I think a lot of people would suggest today that one of the problems of our healthcare system is we can't afford it, so we have to move to more efficient ways of delivering everything. I believe that drones in the future are going to offer tremendous cost savings and tremendous efficiencies, and I believe as that comes online that people are not going to be reluctant to take it on. I don't think governments are going to be reluctant to support research programs in this field because quite frankly, in relation to the budget of medical care, it's just a rounding error on the coffee budget, so I think there's a lot of room to do some outstanding work in this field and there's going to be great developments in the future.

KC: Okay, well let's leave it there, thank you both for talking with me. Philip Reece is CEO of InDro Robotics. He was on Salt Spring Island, BC and Dr. Greg Ross is the associate dean of research at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. He was in Sudbury, Ontario. That's today's edition of The Current. Earlier in the show we heard Parag Khanna talk about how countries are growing increasingly more connected and how we are moving closer to a borderless world. It's an idea that was touched on by US Secretary of State John Kerry at a commencement speech in Northeastern University back in early May. We'll leave you with his thoughts as today's last word. I'm Kelly Crowe in Toronto. Thank you for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

You're about to graduate into a complex and borderless world. Believe me that this is critical because you're entering a world where thinking globally is absolutely essential to seizing opportunities and confronting the challenges that we face. Today we face a world that is much more complicated, less hierarchical, where non-state actors play a central role, where dangers like climate change, terrorism, and disease do not respect borders. Now, for some people that is all they need, simply to climb under the sheets, close their eyes and wish the world away and shockingly, we even see this attitude from some who think they ought to be entrusted with the job of managing international affairs. Well, their desire to turn inward and to shut out the world may be especially seductive in an era as complicated as this but it is not a responsible choice for the most prosperous and powerful nation on the planet, which happens to also be the leader of the free world. [applause]

[Music: Extro]

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May 20, 2016 full episode transcript

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