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The Current Transcript for February 26, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: I drank at six, seven and eight and I drank with the customers. Everybody had a wonderful show and I wallowed in my misery.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: He is one half of the team that created Montreal's joebeef and four other eateries. One of Canada's most celebrated restaurant empires and David McMillan has always revelled in the bonhomie, offering exquisite menus, the finest wines and renowned hospitality. None other than Anthony Bourdain called them the princes of gastronomy. But in a business where the success often relies on excess, David McMillan realized he needed to pull back, confront himself, confront his drinking and the reasons behind it. And in that process, in his sobriety, he looks at the restaurant business he loves and the people who work in it a little differently now. David McMillan shares his story in half an hour. Also today, it's Canada, it's winter and if you're a driver, you're in a rut.

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VOICE: Heard this huge bang and it felt like the car literally broke. We were both obviously shaken up. I was crying cause I was really scared.

AMT: You know the feeling of the thud, the swerve, the dread of the evil pot hole, a pot hole swallowed a car in Edmonton. It set off the airbags in Guelph. You know you can be anywhere in the country and your tires will find one, but did you know that a road where potholes are filled when they are tiny can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut road repair and slice five percent off your personal fuel costs? We're peering into that money pit called the pothole in an hour up. But we begin by looking at the future of the federal NDP, after a by election that has given Jagmeet Singh a place in parliament.

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I will be your champion. I will take each and every one of you with me to Ottawa, where I'll fight for you in the House of Commons.

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Jagmeet Singh's win could reboot NDP, but only if party stands on firm socialist ground, says former MPP

Guests: Ed Broadbent, Chery DiNovo, Farouk Karim

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VOICE: There's so many people out there that count on us. They need us and so I know people have worked really hard over these past couple weeks. I know it's been a long slog, but I hope you've got more left in the tank. I hope you do because we just have eight more months to let the people know that thy can choose a government that stands up for people, not for corporations. That doesn't give handouts to SNC-Lavalin, but stands up for everyday Canadians.

AMT: Jagmeet Singh reacting to his hard victory last night in the federal byelection for the British Columbia riding of Burnaby-South. The NDP leader will now for the first time have a seat in the House of Commons. And today New Democrats are hoping that will give him a chance to turn around the party's flagging fortunes before the next election. Since the NDP's disappointing results in 2015 it has fallen even further in the polls and struggled to raise funds. Add to that some high profile missteps by a rookie leader and a symbolic loss in another byelection yesterday and Tom Mulcair's former Montreal riding of Outremont and it is understandable why so many, why many have been asking if the NDP can regain momentum before Canadians go to the polls in October. My next guest believes that the NDP can. Ed Broadbent is the former leader of the federal New Democratic Party. He's now chair of the Broadbent Institute. He joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hello.

ED BROADBENT: Good morning.

AMT: Well it has been a trying time for your party since the last election. How are you feeling about the fortunes this morning?

EB: I am just semi-ecstatic. Let me put it that way. Jagmeet not only won, he won by just short of 3000 votes in the constituency that in a general election we had won by only 500. He he did remarkably well. I was not surprised by that at all. This would be an important shot in the arm for the party. He'll be in the House of Commons. We're running around I don't know, 16-17 percent in polls within a few, within margins up and down. This is excellent striking distance to totally rebuild. The Liberal Party is in disarray and scandal laden, backed away from its equality programs it didn't deliver on. I think we're in a very good spot now with Jagmeet in the house.

AMT: You know there are those who have argued that he should have run sooner, but do you think that the timing now, given what's going on with the Liberals, is actually even better?

EB: I don't know if it's better not, if there had been an opportunity, a seat that was clearly winnable, I think it would have been better for Jagmeet to have been there, but it was important for him to run in an area where we had a good chance of winning. Anyway that came up now and he came through in splendid fashion and you know I've been there. I've been, when I was leader, became leader in the party back in 1975, I had four years to get known before the 79 election. Jagmeet has had that time and hasn't been in the House. So I'm not surprised that we're down in the polls because being in the House of Commons matters. Leading the battle for you know social justice and being seen lead the battle is very important and being in the House of Commons is key for that and he's there now. So I'm feeling good about it.

AMT: And the CBC poll tracker puts the NDP nationally at 14 percent. What does he have to do between now and the October election to build that party status?

EB: Just establish rapport with not just middle class Canadians, but blue collar Canadians, particularly ordinary working families and doing so by building on what he did in the byelection. I was following it from afar here, but he concentrated on housing and national pharmacare programs, two very important bread and butter issues for people not only in Vancouver area, but across the country. He has to establish rapport with those kinds of families now that are hurting economically, whether it's because of precarious jobs or incomes that really haven't grown. There's a lot of social justice issues out there that he can and I'm remain confident he will tie in to.

AMT: Now Ed Broadbent, the party did lose the byelection in Outremont, the riding that Tom Mulcair had held. What do you read into that?

EB: Well it was you know disappointing. It would have been good to hold that seat, but I'm also a realist and looking at things politically and that seat was a Liberal seat for 100 years before Tom won it in the byelection and Tom, I remind your listenersit was a former Liberal himself. So he was known in a constituency that had been Liberal. So it's gone back there. I don't take that lightly, it would have been great to hold on to it, but we did you know a respectable 26 percent of the vote in there and it'll be very interesting when the general election comes next fall, just to see how well we may do in that general election in Outremont.

AMT: Well you know the NDP won 103 seats under Jack Layton's leadership, becoming the official opposition for the first time. Did he set an unrealistic benchmark for the NDP?

EB: No he set a benchmark, was just a splendid leader and people identified with him. Hopes were very high and we got a setback and it's no secret Mr. Trudeau then campaigned on a virtually NDP agenda, most of which he has abandoned since. He started out I might add, Mr. Trudeau did in third place, a distant third and managed to win a majority government. We're now going in at third place and I am confident as I've already said, given the atmosphere the Conservative Party has moved further to the right. Mr. Trudeau is profoundly disappointed and allowed Canadians not just unethical grounds, but on a progressive agenda and the opening is there. The volatility in a modern electorate is real. People do change their mind and do so even big time in the course of the campaign.

AMT: Now I should say that we did ask Mr. Singh to join us this morning. He declined. How would you rate his leadership so far?

EB: I'd say his leadership has been excellent in terms of reaching out to new people and he's shown what he can do from a personality point of view of identifying and mobilizing in this byelection we've just seen. But it's been a terrible situation, I repeat. I had this experience of becoming leader of a third party, but at least when I did, had four years to build before an election. He's done that in relative obscurity, when he's not in the House of Commons. You know he may travel around as he did, being in Vancouver, but the national media is not there with him and he wasn't, he just wasn't visible for many Canadians. Most Canadians I venture to say, don't know him yet and now that he's in the House and now that he'll be campaigning from that very important site, I think he will get known. He can mobilize people and he's got a good chance of doing that now.

AMT: Well Ed Broadbent, thank you for giving us your views on all of this.

EB: My pleasure.

AMT: Ed Broadbent served as leader of the federal New Democratic Party from 1975 to 1989. He is now chair of the Broadbent Institute and he joined us from Ottawa.

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VOICE: When I was growing up, I could have never imagined someone like me ever running to be prime minister, but guess what we just told a lot of kids out there that yes you can.

AMT: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on the deeper symbolism of his election to Parliament after winning the riding of Burnaby-South last night. For more on the path forward for the NDP after those byelections, I'm joined by two people with close connections to the party. Farouk Karim served as press secretary for the federal NDP caucas until 2016. He is now with the Canadian Union of Postal workers. He joins us from Ottawa. Chery DiNovo served for 11 years as an Ontario New Democrat MPP. She is now the minister and that is religious minister. She's an ordained in the United church, minister at Trinity St. Paul Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts in Toronto. Chery DiNovo is with me in our Toronto studio. Welcome to you both.

CHERY DINOVO: Pleasure.

FAROUK KARIM: Good morning.

AMT: Chery DiNovo, I want to start with you. So Ed Broadbent, the elder statesman of your party, believes that there is a lot of hope for the NDP in this upcoming election. What do you think?

CD: Absolutely there's a lot of hope. First of all, one has to acknowledge the fact that this is the first racialized leader of a political party in Canada. So that's historic. But the party.

AMT: Federal political party.

CD: Yes absolutely, but the party has to change. The party has to change.

AMT: How so?

CD: First and foremost, we're looking at polls that say that socialism as a word is now more popular than capitalism for millennials. We have to re-engage with our socialist roots. We have to remember that we're the party of Tommy Douglas and the social gospel quite frankly going way back and that really those roots have popularity now, not only popularity, but they're the principled root. That we need to take stands that are in dramatic contrast to liberalism and neo-liberalism and centrism, that no one needs another Liberal Party and if we do that ,yes I think we'll win.

AMT: Farouk Karim, what are the biggest challenges you see for the party between now and the October election?

FK: Well with the election of Mr. Singh yesterday night, It gives him a second chance to make a first impression to Canadians. Since he has become a leader, it has been a tough 18 months, up and downs, some somewhat understandable being a rookie leader and having a learning curve, but now that he's going to enter the House of Commons, he's going to have six months to give a good impression to Canadians and answer the two most fundamental questions than any party leader has to answer: who who am I and who am I fighting for?

AMT: Now Mr. Singh spoke with the CBC's Wendy Mesley on Sunday and she asked him about challenges that lie ahead. Let's listen to that.

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VOICE 1: Can you turn your party around in time for the big election in October? You've got money problems. You've got MPs are not entirely behind you, the polls don't look great. Could this be what one senior strategist calls a save the furniture campaign?

VOICE 2: Well the people always say this about the New Democrats and I'm not concerned about that criticism. What I am concerned about is what people are going through and the struggles that people are faced with and I'm confident, looking at the options. They have Conservers that tell people that it's up to them to deal with their problems on their own. You've got to go it alone. You've got Liberals that have showed very clearly that people don't matter. They have not made solving the problems that people face a priority and then you've got an option of choosing New Democrats, who have time again and again shown, that we are fighting for people.

AMT: I'm wondering how satisfied you guys are with that traditional and how satisfied you think traditional NDP voters will be with that answer, Chery DiNovo?

CD: Let's put it this way. The bad news is you know we've had our polling in Quebec. The bad news is we're losing MPs who are not running again. That's the bad news. The good news is that this is a reboot could be a reboot. That means it's completely capable of being a leader in such a reboot. If if and only if the party starts focusing on policies search focusing on principles. Again we dont need any any you know slippery language. Are you worried that the party for the people we are the party for working class people were the party that stands on firm socialist grounds. I hope that takes positions positions like for example being very adamant around our opposition to pipelines being very parol doing something for the environment. And that has been a slippery slope across Canada. So we have to be dramatic about that. We have to be dramatic about things like not supporting a U.S. led coup in Venezuela. We have to differentiate ourselves from a year from our son. You know Justin we have to do that around taxation too. I mean we've got a perfect example in the states of Orcasio Cortez calling for a 70 percent wealth tax. Why dont we do our policies like that. Why dont we start talking about taxing the wealthy and the rich. You know we had Amazo and low paid no taxes last year. We should be shocked and horrified by this as Canadians, right across America. We need to do something. We need to be dramatic.

AMT: You're talking about being unapologetically New Democrat.

CD: Absolutely. Remember Regina manifesto, that's who we are at our principled base. Let's return to that. You know we're up against a right wing that's returning to their base. We saw that in the People's Party in Burnaby-South. 11 percent you know for a woman who is homophobic, transphobic, who represents the worst of the right, we see the worst of the right of Doug Ford in Ontario, let's be the best of the left.

AMT: Farouk Karim, what do you say to that? Do you agree?

FK: Yeah I think the sentiment about appealing to voters who are angry about their situation or anxious about the economy situation, I think that's a key for the NDP moving forward. Mr. Trudeau got elected in 2015, arguably because progressive voters gave them their vote and millennials give them their vote. This time around three years and a half after the election and six months out from the next one, I think he has disappointed a lot of people who thought he would be different and that's an opportunity for the NDP to make sure that they present a vision that appeals to those voters who wanted a change from the 10 years of the Harper. Government appealing to their sense of having a good paying jobs, appealing to resign of having coverage on medications that they need, appealing to their anxiety of homeownership and having an affordable housing. Those are all issues and climate change, obviously that's like our existential crisis, but those are all issues that Mr. Singh had has campaigned on in Burnaby-South and the beauty about it is it becomes a testing ground for the general election. He has gained some experience on federal issues, experience campaigning on those issues and hopefully he brings that to the House and puts the government's feet to the fire.

AMT: You know the former leader, Tom Mulcair has expressed concern about the short timeframe between now and the federal election. This is what he said in January of this year on the CTV program Powerplay.

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VOICE: The major problem with Jagmeet's initial decision, which was not to seek a seat in the House of Commons was that he thought he would go out there and just meet people. Well you can give a nice speech to the Chamber of Commerce in Powell River in B.C., but it's not going to be on the nightly news. A well crafted question, a question period will be. So now people are finally going to get a chance to see what he's made of. Would that be enough? It's not very much, but it's certainly better than the situation he's in now, which is frankly nobody gets a chance to see him and no one is paying much attention to what he says.

AMT: Has he lost valuable time, Chery DiNovo?

CD: Well it's interesting to hear Tom Mulcair talk about that. I mean talking about differences in the polls in a very short period of time. If you look at the last federal election where the NDP was you know the best guess to win. We should have been government and we were government and we were government because of our policies and because of the campaign we ran out. And the Liberals who were running below us significantly in the polls, also gained fantastic ground. We can do the same. We can do the same if we run a campaign that is based on principles and that shows us as a different, a truly different choice from any centrist party including Liberals.

AMT: And Farouk Karim let's talk about him being in the House and going after issues. On Huawei he stumbled in an interview. He wasn't even aware of the issue that he was asked about. On SNC, the Conservatives own it, Lisa Raitt has come out of the gate really like owning the opposition and the questions on that one. How does he get a piece of that?

FK: Well now that he's going to be in the House, all the spotlights are going to be on him. So it's going to be for him to take the ball and run with it. On the China situation, the last time a federal leader fumbled a question on China, he became Prime Minister and that's Justin Trudeau. So all of that is a learning curve.

AMT: Oh c'mon, he didn't know the Huawei issue. When he was asked about it, he was running in BC.

FK: No, I'm getting there, I'm just saying that in the learning curve, it happens that some issues you don't answer, but I mean six months after the last election, who would have thought Trudeau would have been prime minister. Six months out of the 2007 Democratic primaries, who would have thought that Obama would have won. Six months out of the mayorship in Montreal who would have thought that he would lose his membership. Six months is a lot of time. Three weeks ago, who would have thought that the Trudeau government would need in so much trouble. So there's ample time and opportunity to lay down the case and I think Mr. Singh is going to do it. He has now become now a winner since yesterday night. So he can put that, he could put the last 18 months behind him and start building for the next election.

AMT: We're almost out of time, but Chery DiNovo we know that there are about 11 NDP MPs out of the 40 who have said they will not run again in October. People are looking at that in a negative light. Do you see that as an opportunity to find more people to talk about what you're talking about?

CD: Well let's put it this way. None of this is a death blow or body blow to the NDP, if and only if the party does a very clear shift to the left and really start to stand on principle. So people know what the NDP stands for. As distinct from the Liberals, that's what we need, policy, policy, policy. And again if we go route and stop trying to play the game that Liberals have played for a long time and start being a real alternative to the right wing, which is gaining some strength in this country then we'll win.

AMT: We'll have to leave it there. Thank you both for weighing in.

FK: Thank you.

CD: Thank you.

AMT: Chery DiNovo served as an NDP MPP in Ontario for 11 years. She's now an ordained United Church minister. She's now at Trinity St. Paul's Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts in Toronto. Farouk Karim was a press secretary for the federal NDP caucus until 2016. He's now with the Canadian Union of Postal workers. Stay with us. The news is next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. We're back with David McMillan to talk about sobriety. This is The Current.

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Why this Montreal chef says up-and-coming cooks need to learn about wellness, sobriety

Guests: David McMillan

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, pothole season is in full swing in most of Canada. Right now hundreds of thousands of car-crunching holes litter Canadian roadways. We will hear the horror stories and how filling them is not only good for your car, but for the environment as well. But first too much of a good thing.

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VOICE: Toby, we're going to, we're a bit drunk and we've been out a lot, but we're going to cut smoke meat sandwiches of the bar. Are you in?

AMT: Well that is Chef David McMillan in 2012 out on the town in Montreal with Vice's food channel show, Munchies. David McMillan is the co-founder of one of Canada's most successful restaurant empires anchored by the famous Joe Beef. At the time of the recording you just heard, a night in his life was the night of excess, hopscotching from restaurant to restaurant, bar to bar, eating too much and drinking even more. Eventually David McMillan had his fill. He is sober now and he's written about it for Bon Appetit, in a piece called "My restaurant was the greatest show of excess you'd ever seen and it almost killed me." David McMillan joins us from our Montreal studio. Hello.

DAVID MCMILLAN: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: Sounded like you were having a good time in that clip. When you hear that version of yourself now, what goes through your mind?

DM: Oh nothing really. I have no regrets. You know I had a lot of great times. I built that company you know with many other people in a festive environment. So it is what it is, but moving forward things are different.

AMT: You have written that you and the people you surround yourself with ate and drank like Vikings. What did that look like?

DM: Well the way that we practice hospitality here in Montreal is full throttle. We cook grandiosely, we live grandiosely, we drink grandiosely. That's the way it was you know and that's how we built the restaurant and that's how we really worked at getting this international reputation that we profit from today.

AMT: Well you were really the and I'm not saying you're not now, the host with the most.

DM: Thank you kindly.

AMT: I mean talk to us a little bit about what it would be like when you were in the restaurant and people were there to eat and how you kind of how you interacted with the customers.

DM: Well first and foremost, I'm a very private person actually. I'm quite an introvert till 6:00 comes around, when the customers start to arrive, but to turn the show on you know we started off with a glass of wine you know and then a few years later and a decade later, you know it was just I drank wine to receive customers. You know and I have chefs from all over North America and they come to the restaurant and they want to partake in a night of Joe Beef, the way that we practiced the restaurant industry. Now some restaurants practice their own tasting menu, very quiet restaurant, someone in a suit and kind of intellectual cooking and I get that. That was never our game plan. Our game plan was modeled after celabatory restaurants of the world. We enjoyed excessive drinking of champagne and naturale wines and dessert and cheeses and seafood towers and rabbits cooked for two and a whole ducks you know. We still do that today. I just realized that some people eat and drink responsibly and then there are some of us who don't. I'm one of them.

AMT: So what were you like as a person when you were doing that?

DM: People really enjoyed a version of Dave, the extrovert powered amd fueled bynatural wine. I enjoyed doing it. I enjoy making people happy and I enjoy people having a wonderful experience in the restaurant they still do today but I got to a point you know and by the way I practised the restaurant business that I was no longer happy and I didn't know or understand how to turn on that other David McMillan at 6p.m. without consuming wine. You know I kind of look towards alcohol when I needed to bring out that entertainer in me that wasn't naturally there.

AMT: So when did that life start to lose its appeal?

DM: I think you know I was never sloppy. I was never unkept, I always showed up at work. I just got to a point where I was no longer happy. I got really healthy at one point, like five years ago I lost an excess of my weight and I started working in the gym and all that, but I seemed to like double up on alcohol oddly because I was really restricting my calorie intake with food. I was addicted to food. Of course I was a food addict from a very young age raised medicated with food first. I medicated with beer in my teens. Marijuana, shisha, you know drugs and you know in my twenties when I became you know in the restaurant industry, wine was a constant study. Wine was a huge part of my life as important was wine as food is. We do two things in the restaurant. We sell food and we sell wine. I was involved in both. I still am.

AMT: So you reached a point though where even the most spectacular wonderful meals had kind of lost their, they weren't so special anymore.

DM: Yeah you know the first time you had truffles was kind of cool and the 50th time it's whatever you know, it's just like broccoli. I drank all the wines that I wanted to drink and my life for it just wasn't a subject that interest me any longer and I just became unhappy. I find blamed the rest right for a while. And it wasn't the rest rides fault. You know it was me I was an alcoholic. Now whether I change career and you know I fight about maybe I should just go and you know sell fruit and vegetables at the market in the morning, but I discovered later on in rehab that an alcoholic is an alcoholic whether he works here or at the CBC or at a Joe Beef restaurant. Yeah so.

AMT: So did you realize this or did someone intervene, like what was that process?

DM: I usually try and not drink again on Monday Tuesday Wednesday and then I'd fail by Thursday a drink again on Friday. I wouldn't drink Saturday but then we'd go to the lake on Sunday and go on Sunday and there just seemed to be a constant repetition in failure I just couldn't really string together seven days no matter how hard I tried I got to a point where I just literally given up. I said this is me. I'm David McMillan from Joe Beef. I entertain five nights a week and two days a week at the college and I was resolute in two people pleasing co-dependent behaviour and giving myself to the people to the public. I will entertain you every night. The show must go on. I drank at six seven and eight and drank with four customers. Everybody had a wonderful show and I wallowed in my misery. I'd no longer enjoyed wine, food, the restaurant business, life in general and my staff got together at one point and it's interesting I did as a talk on stage at the corona theatre of Sam Sifton from the New York Times and it was a big thing I was like in January of last year and I remember being backstage before going on stage and that's when I kind of really realized that I was an alcoholic because I'd never wanted a drink more so than before I stepped on stage with them. Oddly I did the talk, everything went well and the next morning an interventionist called Bob came up stairs to my apartment and we knew each other. he'd intervene some of my staff in the past actually. And he just looked at me and goes it's your turn and I said let's go. And that was it.

AMT: So who is he?

DM: Bob is a sober coach and he lives down the street. He's a friend. We've known each other for years. You know he'd observed me he knew my time was coming. Although he never told me and then that was it he intervened me assessed me and he set me off to a rehabilitation centre here in Montreal which was brilliant I reckon highly recommend was called Chatsworth. It was gruelling kind of university level sit in the class room pen and paper eight hours a day education in co-dependency alcoholism and rehabilitation. It was a brilliant program and I learned a tonne of things from there.

AMT: What did you learn about yourself that you hadn't known before?

DM: Well first I thought that I was struggling with alcohol for just a couple of years. Then they really just did it backwards inventory of my life and they figured out. First of all they explain me the language of sobriety. They explained to me that all addicts and alcoholics are have co-dependent behaviour problems and all addicts and alcoholics are also co-dependent. And we just went through all of those things and I soon realised that you know were after traumatic events of my childhood and in my teens and you know they could almost pinpoint the days when I started medicating. They just showed me the whole thing and how it works and a blueprint of my life. And when you know when I screwed up wise ruler and you know what my character flaws were and my character defects were and what led me to use alcoholism as a medicator and then followed through at the end to show me how to live past it and through it.

AMT: I'm guessing they didn't tell you, you screwed up thought. They were a little kinder to you than you're being to yourself.

DM: Oh I still don't think I screwed up like I said I have no regrets. I just didnt, you know I understand cooking. I understand baking. I understand making desserts. I understand cheese and fish and wine on a level that very little people understand. But I knew very little about the language of self care. I learned very little about alcoholism I knew very little about the 12 step program I knew nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh now you know and having gone to the rooms and spoken to with our kinds of different therapists and having surrounded myself with sober people and people who speak very intelligently about the disease that they have. I've gained a new life and a new respect and a new interest.

AMT: So when your whole vacation has been food and booze and hospitality and that excess you talk about. How do you go back after rehab? How do you maintain sobriety and still be part of that world?

DM: You know that was a big challenge for me going back to the restaurant was terrifying. You know in rehab they more or less stated to me that I should really look at a career change completely. But all I know is the rest of business I've been in it since I'm 17 years or them forty eight now. Ray I've spent the majority of my life educating myself cooking and serving wine and being good at it for a long time I hope by have. So when you got when you went to where I went I went back. A friend of mine Ryan Gray who had worked with me for a decade at Liverpool house who left and opened is on rest right now. Norah grey and Elayna were someone that was close to me and someone that had gone to the rehabilitation center that I went to and he knew that I was taking some time off and he called me one day, I said watching Netflix. I'm going to find the bottom of Netflix. He said why don't you put on your apron and come to and work with me a little bit. We'll drink San Pelligrino and have a good time and I'll show you how I do this and I did exactly that. I put on my apron, I put on my white shirt, which I hadn't done in a long time and I worked the pass. The pass is where we dispatch food from the kitchen to the dining room.

AMT: And you did it with San Pelligrino?

DM: I did it with sparkling water and Kambucha and Ryan Gray and jokes and just found the love of being in the weeds and doing my work and being exhausted and going home and having tea before I go to bed and watching Netflix and I just normalized my life right to a point where I still am surrounded by wine, but I just realised that there's a drug in wine called alcohol which I have proven time and time again that I don't use responsibly.

AMT: So it sounds like you discovered as you did that with your sparkling water, you discovered something?

DAVID MCMILLAN: Well you know I had been medicating for so long and I've been like working for so long and so many years that I've kind of lost a lot of joy somewhat. I think I get the 16 week mark of sobriety. And they told me this in rehab this year 16 weeks you're going to see some real changes in some chemistry a year your brain starts to fix itself. You know the depression alcohol is a depressant. It's as if the press starts to really leave your system somewhat and really olic literally to the day when I get to 16 weeks. I woke up in a love there was sunny outside and it was a beautiful day and a new way to groom myself and go downstairs and work in the restaurants I was happy to see everybody that was happy to have tea and coffee and all of a sudden I became not self-centred in my addiction to aware like what am I going to eat what I'm gonna drink who am I going to talk to. You know I was like I really like these people that work here and a lot of them sat in an intervention and saved my life and I just got this second wind about working and you know I wanted to be a better dad. I wanted to be a better employer I wanted can I look at the staff now in a different way you know where I want everybody to be happy trying to normalise a very difficult profession. First in my restaurants may an hour later and I have this beautiful business a year I went to rehab with guys that were like leaving rehab to go to jail to go back to failed businesses failed marriages and awful situations. I left rehab going back to a really wonderful place and with a different mindset and it was a second chance and a joyous occasion and I've never loved working more than they do these days.

AMT: How did that affect the staff?

DM: Yeah that was the most incredible part is when I started listening to the staff, when I started being not self centred, when I started being joyful at work, there seemed to be a trickle down effect you know from arguably I see sit at the top of the pyramid with my business associate inside those restaurants. And if I am dark and drunk and in a bad way I am kind of giving an open license to everybody to be dark. Abuse of alcohol and food and in a bad place. Now as I got better it seemed that some of the staff mimic me a lot of people came out of the woodwork and said you know what Dave but I am also struggling with certain issues and we addressed everybody case by case and most people are fine of course like you know 80 percent of the people in the restaurant, they use and drink wine responsibly, but there are some of us who don't.

AMT: And suddenly they had permission to talk about it and confront it.

DM: Absolutely. So now it's an open forum. You know one of our employees J.C. has had a meeting every Sunday night for restaurant workers in one of our restaurants.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit more about that because it's like an AA type meeting, a little little different, but at one of your restaurants every week.

DM: You know right now it's just an AA meeting. It's a support group that works kind of like an AA. It might be an AA meeting further down the road, depending on what the group decides.

AMT: But it's mostly restaurant workers who show up right?

DM: Yeah mostly restaurant workers that show up, but you know anybody's welcome. We never turn away anybody. We are committed to people who are sober and people who want to get sober at Sunday night meeting.

AMT: How much of a stigma is there still in the restaurant industry about talking about addiction?

DM: Oh there is, you know it was amazing like this article really blew up worldwide, so many shares. The industry again, once again, you know very quiet. You know very few retweets or endorsements of the article on social media. But that was to be expected right. The industry always shies away from misogyny, alcoholism you know low pay, long hours. There's a lot of things.

AMT: So do you feel like you have a responsibility to your staff who might be struggling to help them more now?

DM: I don't feel a responsibility. I just want to do the right thing. I would like that people that I work with, dont' go for I necessarily the things that I have gone through. I had a very difficult apprenticeship. I worked for many meatheads. I am a product of an archaic apprenticeship system. I worked in verbally abusive violent mysoginist restaurants all over the world and I would like to now in the twilight of my career, I have arguably a few years left, if that and I would like to put an exclamation point on it and spare people that work with me or my peer group unneeded suffering. I would like it if possible to be able to set up things to make sure that people have options that they dont have to have a traumatic experience in the restaurant business like I did because I am still very much in love with the restaurant business. I love cooking and having people over to the restaurant and giving them wine. You know I am by no means preaching don't drink, I'm saying please drink and please eat. Just do it responsibly.

AMT: You have said that you spend a lot of time with charities raising lots of money and now you want to be able to give back a little bit with your own staff comes to therapy if its needed.

DM: Yeah absolutely. You know for years we unsolicited daily for multiple charities and I noticed that we raised an incredible amount of money for all kinds of different things that I'm not directly affected by related to or have a relationship with. This year I realise once I got over so many people are reaching out to me in my immediate circle that I had no resaw so the rest right are ready operates Uttam razor thin profit margin. I found myself taking money out of my own bank account to send people to therapy to be assessed. Spending money on these issues I said how is this that you know I raise money for all these things well I dont. We dont even have any resources whatsoever in this city for the rest right workers. This article has brought out a lot of people out of the woodwork so we are going to plan a dinner an event and raise money and put it in an account with a therapist to literally have therapy certificates or assessment certificates as kind of the first step that I'd like to get to have somebody express that they do have an issue that I can just give them as through difficult and they can go see a therapist. We used to give them beer and wine we might as well just give them a hundred dollar thearpy, one hour.

AMT: Sounds like a great idea.

DM: I think it's a good start yeah.

AMT: So you know your restaurant does have that reputation built up over the years. Customers and other chefs would come with certain expectations, they'd want a drink with you. How do you react to them now? How do they react to you?

DM: Generally it's 99 percent positive right, but there are like some people who avoid me or try to find out when I'm not working because they're going to come to the restroom to get sloppy they love it right. That's all fine. Everybody's day is coming you know. Those who are suffering and I'm there for anybody who's out in the cold and if they need to come out of the cold, they can call me and I'll be there for them.

AMT: You just have to be a viking. You'll still be welcoming.

DM: You know I just, it's a disappointment, especially when it's a young chef, you know two young chefs from Los Angeles that bought our first book eight years ago and bought our second book and you know post on Instagram, pictures of themselves, cooking our food in their homes, wearing our Joe Beef tshirts, when they come to the restaurant, you know I do feel this like sense of responsibility and it does like irk me that I can't have this celebatory drink anymore with these people.

AMT: What advice would you give to someone who might be listening right now and as they hear you, it sounds all too familiar to them like you know and maybe they don't have Barb to knock on their door?

DM: Sure absolutely. I did have a recovery of privilege somewhat. I understand that and it's not easy for everybody. Before I would have never interventioned myself. I absolutely completely suggest that just go and sit in the back row of an AA meeting, go to a couple. You might find one that you don't like, you might find one that you like very much, but grab a coffee and just listen. Listen to the language and people's stories and their journey and you might find inspiration in it. And there are resources you just have. As hard as your work to you know make money to put drink in your mouth. Just spend a little bit of that same effort on looking at the options out there and that's just literally a great start is just walking into the room, sit in the back row and listen.

AMT: Is there anything you wish that you had asked yourself somewhere along the line before you got to those meetings?

DM: What I do wish is that I would have been made aware of these things in cooking school right or in my apprenticeship. I find that you know I can make bread, I can turn a lamb inside out, I can bone a rabbits in and out. But you know the conversation in cooking schools of you are now leaving this to go out and to work in a business where 50 percent of the sales that you will be making is alcohol related. I said there has to be as much attention as there is to pastry and to butchery and bread making. There has to be maybe have that facet in cooking school.

AMT: That's a good point because you learn how not to cut yourself with the knives and how to not burn yourself in the fire.

DM: You learn how clean. You learn hygiene, you know how to clean fish, but you know absolutely nothing about self-preservation, wellness or you know what to do or where to go if you get in a dark spot.

AMT: When you look in the mirror now David McMillan, what do you see that you didn't see before?

DM: A bit greyer now. I don't know.

AMT: That's okay, what else do you see?

DM: I'm humble in my sobriety. I have no regrets like I said before, but I do have kind of one that I wasted a lot of time being unhappy right. And if I have anything, any advice to give anybody is like it's don't waste any time being unhappy. You know alcohol is very cunning. It makes you self-centred somewhat. Now I'm not self-centred. I enjoy other people right. The biggest bonus of all this is that I've discovered the love for my friends and the people around me. I feed off them. It's absolutely wonderful. I didn't do that before.

AMT: It's really great to talk to you. Congratulations.

DM: You're very kind. Thank you.

AMT: David McMillan, the chef and owner of the Montreal restaurant, Joe Beef. We reached him in Montreal. Let us know what you think of what he's saying there and the journey he's been on. You can tweet us @TheCurrent CBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurernt. And if you're just joining us and you missed part of that, you can find it on podcast or online cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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AMT: Stay with us, in our next half hour, mind the gap, the one in front of you on the road. We're going to find out why ridding Canadian roads of potholes, may not only save your car's suspension, but also the environment and your fuel bills. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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How fixing pesky potholes could help fight climate change: expert

Guests: Tracey Billing, Dave Hein, Hao Wang

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. It's as much a part of Canadian life as a beaver or a moose, but no one's going to put it on a coin. It arrives during the last embers of autumn, it digs in during winter and then explodes in the first warmth of spring. It's the pothole, of course it's already here and it's not even close to the first warmth of spring. Powered by the freeze thaw cycles or so we think. As the seasons change, hundreds of thousands of potholes have taken the rightful places, right in the middle of our roads. They wreck rims, bend bushings, pop tires, they cause many drivers, maybe even you right now, to use vocabulary that would even make a teenager blush. Today we are diving deep into potholes metaphorically, you can keep them out of your tires or your tires out of them if you want and what can be done to cut their costs to cities and drivers. So we've gone around talking to all sorts of people and we know that people think there are fewer potholes in other places, but everybody knows there are more potholes whereever you go, including in Guelph, Ontario where Tracey Billing and her daughter Mikayla had their own run in with a pothole earlier this month. Tracey Billng joins me from Guelph ,Ontario. Hi Tracey.

TRACEY BILLING: Hello.

AMT: What happened?

TB: Back in February 2014 or February 14th, 2019, my driver and I were just heading home from a local high school hockey game and we approached an intersection here in Guelph. She was driving, she's a new driver, she's only 16 and I said you slow down at the train tracks because there's a rough road side and she did. She actually literally stopped at the train tracks to go over the track. And what appeared to look like two large puddles because they were full of water and slush, she had her head over the track and she went over the track. My car actually bottomed out, it banged. It made a huge bang and it felt like the car was splitting in half. The airbags deployed and it really scared us. I had no idea what was happening, but literally those potholes destroyed my car. My car was totalled.

AMT: And she couldn't even see it?

TB: Not really, no. Like we knew it was bumpy and we knew there was pots holes, but we didn't know how deep and how big they were and she slowed right down to be very cautious of these potholes.

AMT: This was right on the train tracks?

TB: Right on the train tracks, yes.

AMT: So you're stuck there are the airbags deployed and you're sitting on a train track?

TB: Yes.

AMT: That must have been frightening.

TB: It was very frightening and you know with all the traffic around us that's trying to fly by and we both did get out of the car. We were both okay at that point in time and a local tow truck company was coming in the opposite direction and he stopped and he was able to get the car off tracks thankfully, but it was stuck.

AMT: What's the damage to the car?

TB: It totalled. It was a write off. So the whole bottom, so it bent the whole frame underneath, the whole suspension was gone.

AMT: And what about you two? How jarring was it to your bodies? What happened, like how are you?

TB: Afterwards we started feeling a lot more. My daugther got the airbag right in the chest. Her sternum was quite bruised. She possibly could have a hairline fracture in her sternum. We don't know they could see in the xray and for me it was my back, from the impact of going straight down with the car. So my lower back is still bothering me, but it was my neck and my lower back.

AMT: So again this thing happens and you're not even sure what it is because it's just out of the blue?

TB: That's right.

AMT: And did they fix that pothole now?

TB: Oh yes. They actually closed the road, closed that direction, the westbound direction after the accident and they patched it. I wouldn't say that it's repaired. It's been patched. They'd probably repair it come spring, but they just patched it. I've lived here 20 years and I've never had a problem going over those tracks. I drive them daily, multiple times a day.

AMT: So what do you do about the car? Like who's going to pay for that?

TB: That's what I'm trying to deal with right now. I put it through an insurance claim and the insurance company is telling me that I have to pay for my deductible and I don't believe I should have to. It's putting through as if it was my fault and it was not my fault at all. I believe it was has to do with the city or CN Rail so at this point in time they're investigating further.

AMT: It's not clear if it's the city or CN Rail that is the responsible for that piece of property?

TB: Right now we're going through with CN Rail because it was CN Rail that did do the repair or the patching of it when they did repair it.

AMT: Have you got a lawyer then looking into this?

TB: Not yet, not at this point. I'm just waiting on the insurance company, the insurance adjuster to see what investigation they've come through, but they're very adamant that I need to pay the deductible, which I don't believe so and I've kind of put my foot down on that and I'm not budging.

AMT: And how's your health now? This was since this happened, how's your health and Mikayla's health?

TB: Mikayla's doing better, she's healing. She missed, Mikayla's an athlete and she plays ringette as well and as a goalie and so she was out of her net for about a week and a bit and she's slowly getting back into it bit by bit. As for me, my lower back is still bothering me and I require it for physical work. I clean houses for a living and so I've been slowing down. My pace has been a lot slower at work, but my clients have been very grateful and have been accomodating for me as I've been working, as I can't afford not to work.

AMT: All because of a pothole.

TB: All because of a pothole.

AMT: How's Mikayla taking this as a new driver? How's that affected her confidence on the road?

TB: I'm pretty surprised because the following Tuesday she actually had driving lessons and she got right back behind the wheel and I'm very proud of her that she did that. Most young drivers would actually be afraid to get back behind the wheel and her instructor was very proud of her for doing that.

AMT: Well it's an incredible story. Tracey thank you for sharing. We're going to talk more about how ubiqutous these things are with our next guest. So thank you.

TB: You're welcome.

AMT: Take care. Tracey Billing, her car was totalled when it hit a pothole. She's in Guelph, Ontario. My next guest has spent more than three decades studying potholes and road services in Canada. David Hein is a principal engineer at Applied Research Associates. He has been commissioned by the Transport Association of Canada to write a report about the pothole problem. That report is coming out in May. David Hein joins us from Kitchener, Ontario. Hi.

DAVID HEIN: Good morning, Anna Maria. How are you?

AMT: I'm well, what are you thinking listening to that story just down the road from where you are?

DH: Yeah I'm thinking a few things. One of the comments I would make is that CN Rail is extremely possessive over their property. They are, unlike a city, who does road patrols and can identify issues and things like that and react to them, you don't have people in CN Rail drive around, looking for potholes on their crossing. So if there was a serious safety issue, potentially the city might have been able to do something, but ultimately it's CN Rail's property, so it's up to them to probably deal with this.

AMT: Okay. You just so as you listen to that, first of all, I guess what are the factors that can cause potholes?

DH: There are a lot of factors that can cause potholes. We build roads to be able to handle all vehicular traffic and we basically design them for heavy vehicles, heavy trucks and so pavements bend. The road across the pavement bends downwards. That causes stresses and strains and the payment structure will potentially ultimately eventually if it continues to bend us like taking a paperclip and burning it back and forth. Eventually the paperclips got a brick so the road gets older you have more bending a and you have more potential for damage and cracking occurring and the roads surface and the culprit is really water. And so when water goes into the payment structure, the first thing they teach you and themen engineering what as well as keep the warra away because it affects the materials and the response to the load. Water doesn't compress unthawed you have water trapped on the pavement you drive across it. What happens is the bending causes the water to move and go someplace. So there it's going to score out of the time it's going to go in between layers and it's exacerbated it's more of a problem in the fruit farm we have here in Canada because water expands about 7 percent when it freezes and so it will go somewhere still carve Struss sort of cause movement pushing of the materials round and eventually cause a defect in the pavement to help Charles. I just came back from kawaii actually and there are a huge number of potholes and away there are no freestyle there but there are still major potholes caused by water. Other factors typically include things like the effect steering paving operations. So when were laying the fall down there may be other big particles maybe separated from the small particles something you've kept really Sezer in construction and so it causes higher waves higher air spaces in between the aggregate particles and ashphalt, which is a place where the water will go. So when the water wants to go out and causes propositions like that, you typically don't see very many potholes on newer roads obviously because.

AMT: Because they haven't been damaged yet.

DH: Exactly.

AMT: David Hein, I've got a little factboard, that I want to play. I want you to listen in. This is the pothole picture from coast to coast.

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VOICE 1: Since January 2019, the city of Toronto has repaired approximately 17,000 potholes.

VOICE 2: Since 2015, Toronto said its crews have filled an average of 224,440 potholes per year, at a cost of more than $5 million annually.

VOICE 1: That amounts to about $25 per pothole.

VOICE 2: According to the city of Edmonton, on average for 455,000 new potholes appear each year on Edmonton streets.

VOICE 1: The population of Edmonton is just over 900,000, so that's about one pothole for every two people in the city.

VOICE 2: Winnipeg city records show roughly 200,000 potholes are filled on average per year. And the city's budget for pothole repair is $1.8 million.

VOICE 1: Meanwhile in Vancouver, city records show road crews fix on average 43,000 potholes per year.

AMT: So there you go. Dave Hein, what's the worst pothole you've seen?

DH: Oh I certainly haven't seen one as I've heard Tracey there saying, typically potholes are much smaller than that. I've seen, it depends on where you go. Actually the biggest pothole I think I've seen is probably in Newfoundland, where very carefully avoided going into that pothole particularly because of its size. You can't tell. I mean water usually fills them, they're a low spot and so as you heard from Tracey, you know she didn't know what to expect.

AMT: So when we look at the cost of potpholes what should we be doing differently?

DH: Well the first thing and it's interesting that the clip you just played because those statistics are in my report exactly because you want to get a handle on how bad is the problem. The best thing to possibly do is to prevent the pothole from happening in the first place.

AMT: And so how do you do that?

DH: Well we pay more attention to construction. We pay more attention to the amount of money that we spend on preventive maintenance activities. One of the chronic problems we have is that you always hear about a backlog of needs and transportation at any field and ultimately we have not reached London roads and we dont do that anymore. We most of our concentration now is on rehabilitation and maintaining the existing road infrastructure that we have that is more difficult. Pavement is quite variable. So it's a horrible timing its about when do you intervene to improve the road conditions such that you dont get the potholes from happening in the first place.

AMT: And every jurisdiction will tell you we don't have the money.

DH: Absolutely.

AMT: What's your solution to that?

DH: Well we need to have sustainable funding. The problem is as roads dont fail catastrophically typically. So if you show a big hole in a bridge someplace and the potential for the bridge falling down, you know ipeople react to that. We have water, tainted water problems, and those are the problems that people react and throw money at. The problem with payments is that they deteriorate gradually and so it's like well you know I could do that one next year or we can wait a few more years for that one because something else is more important. So it's about funding and it's about having preventive maintenance activities, doing things to prevent the potholes from occurring in the first place.

AMT: And you're a big fan of toll roads, are you not?

DH: Well I'm a big fan of user pay that's for sure. We have a lot of de facto toll roads in Canada with public private partnerships across the country, ranging from Vancouver to Edmonton to Ontario to the Confederation Bridge. And we don't, public funding, having the government ever four years decide they're going to fund some infrastructure programs is a wonderful thing, but it's not consistent. It needs to be continuous and if you have talling activities or other alternate methods of getting funding for these things, people can react quicker and make it so that we don't have potholes in the first place.

AMT: And what do you see, do you see the political will for that?

DH: Oh there's no political will for that generally. People are very adamant against tolls, against any other taxes, particularly the US is particularly that situation. One of my clients is the New York Thruway and the payments they are significantly aged and they have tons of work they need to do and no politicians are going to say geez I'm going to triple the tolls on this roads because there's no stomach for that. You know there's going to be backlash at the time of the next election.

AMT: What about building our roads better? Do we actually build them well?

DH: Well that's an excellent question and actually after 35 years in this business, I'm on a one person tear to try and make people build things better. I do a lot of technical courses and teaching at workshops of explaining how to pave. You know ultimately you get what you pay for. I'm not a fan of the low bid process where you take the cheapest person who's put a bid in the process. In my mind, maybe I'm just getting old and cranky, but in my mind we used to spend more time on construction inspection and having proper specifications and ensuring that we got what we paid for and a lot of the work that I do now is go and forensically look at problems that occur and defend municipalities or cities or owners against contractors who may not have done the best job that we could have, but you know the cities and municipalities need to have the right people in the field to ensure that they get what they pay for and in many cases they don't even know what they're looking for.

AMT: So we need to call this out when we see this in our cities.

DH: I would love to have that happen because we need to have more, there are friends of mine who do this kind of work and I said what's your problem today and the questions or the comments are you know I have to do four times as much as I used to do. I can't get to the job sites you know on a regular basis and then when there is an issue or a problem, the contractor or somebody goes over their head to somebody else and all of a sudden I get call saying that you know why are you being so tough on these people? It's really, it's really really important. It certainly could help significantly to ensure we get decent product that's going to last a long time.

AMT: So this is all about infrastructure?

DH: Yeah and I think it's very much so, it's about infrastructure. You get what you pay for and if you don't invest in it, it's like changing the oil in your car you know and you got to do it every 5000 kms, you decide well I can't afford it so maybe wait till 6000 or 7000 then it's 10000 and all of a sudden your car falls apart and you wonder why. Well it's obvious.

AMT: Well keep speaking out David Hein.

DH: Yeah, I'm known for that. That's for sure.

AMT: Okay well thanks for talking to me today.

DH: My pleasure. Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: David Hein is principal engineer at Applied Research Associates. His report commissioned by the Transportation Association of Canada on the problem of potholes and what can be done will be released in May. It is not just cars and people taking a pounding from potholes, the environment is suffering the impact as well. According to a new study repairing roads will help tackle climate change. Hao Wang is the study's lead author and an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We have reached him in Green Brook, New Jersey. Hello, Mr. Wang.

HAO WANG: Hello, good morning.

AMT: Good morning. So tell me how fixing potholes helps climate change.

HW: Yeah actually that's a very good question. So we studied these topic about several years ago. We are looking at how their road surface is changing for example by fixing potholes or even doing early repair to preventing potholes this would changing the load resistance of your car tires, so basically you have less fuel consumption. So by burning less gases, basically you are getting less carbon dioxide coming from the tailpipe. Eventually this will save global warming potential on climate change. So actually this is a very logic, but unfortunately many people are not looking at this. So they may not realize actually by repair roads and also fixing potholes have such a big impact.

AMT: So first of all can you quantify that? Fewer CO2 emissions? What's the reduction?

HW: Oh yeah actually in other studies we look at the different repair techniques actually from the simplest like crack seal. So basically you just clean and seal the cracks before it comes in to interception cracks and also potholes. We're also looking at the more complicated repair techniques for example a thin overlay. So in this case you are putting a little thing with your feet on the surface by fully power in the paddle part horse. So by doing different techniques we are looking at point five to four per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emission as compared to not doing things. Don't look at this small percentage actually. This is actually real big number if really you are seeing like 2 percent or 4 percent of the greenhouse gas emission coming from the highway side. We know actually, for example, based on the EPA data from U.S. the trendspotting concept actually is counting the one third of the carbon dioxide emission and auto sectors and among the transporting sector, highway actually contributes 70-80 per cent of the carbon dioxide. So in this case we really want to cut it, yeah.

AMT: So you're saying as much as 4 percent. Did I hear that right?

HW: Yes as compared to the load repair case. Yeah.

AMT: Wow and as you went through this, you were looking at Department of Transportation data in the United States right? That's what you were using?

HW: Yes we are using the long-term data base, which actually is an open data base, it's not just a secret database, it's open to the public. Everybody can download data and use it, especially for researchers. Yeah.

AMT: Okay so if you can you can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, what about the actual if you get to them when they're cracks as opposed to giant holes? What do you save in repair costs?

HW: Yeah actually saving a repair costs even higher basically. We are looking at a up to 10 percent of the cost. So basically this including the fuel consumption cost, the maintenance cost of your tire and your vehicle and in this case also maybe sometimes because of fixing potholes. You're also causing traffic delay, which also cause travel time cost. So the saving on the vehicle cost side actually is also significant by doing the early repair to preventing potholes actually.

AMT: And what does the jurisdiction save by doing early repair?

HW: Actually preventative repair has been used by many agencies, I believe so, at least in the U.S. and basically the agencies are doing different types to repair techniques. But traditionally we're only looking at ok when's the best time to just repair it based on the cost side. They are never looking at okay what's the carbon footprint brought by that road repair techniques. So our study tried to really compliment the kind of practice. So why you decide what's the best timing to pay are only looking at a cost, but also looking at what's the impact of these repairs.

AMT: And the people who have the power to change the budgeting and the scheduling for the fixing of roads, how have they reacted to what you've discovered?

HW: It's a complicated question. As Dave mentioned actually the agencies are always limit funding. So in this case it can not repair the roads. Also we have all the different infrastructure, in the highway you have bridges, you have retaining walls. So basically you need to use the funding wisely on different assets and other relays basically we're looking at a very complicated payment issue. Not only the traffic but also climate condition affects the pothole formation for example what are called aware hardware freedom the thought cycles. So really we need to use some prediction tools to predict okay how much is stored will be correlated in future and we use the money wisely. Agencies now start to realize that value album these events to Avesta towards Zenin methodologies and seeing the improving at least in New Jersey we're seeing fewer potholes over the years. Yeah.

AMT: Well it's the perfect time of year to talk about this in Canada, have to tell you.

HW: Hopefully I believe Canada will become better for sure. Yeah.

AMT: Okay well thanks for your work. Those are interesting numbers to think about. Thank you.

HW: Thank you.

AMT: That is Hao Wang, he's an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at Rutgers University. He joined us from Green Brook, New Jersey. His study was published in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. Didn't think you cared did you, but you do, don't you? Have you had a jarring encounter with a pothole in your city, we do want to hear from you. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. E-mail us from our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. If you took a photo of that, we want to see it. So send that to us as well, cbc.ca/thecurrent. I want to tell you about a story we're going to bring you later this week. It's about platonic parenting and we're not talking about stressed new parents who joke that their relationship is platonic. We're talking about people who want to raise a child with someone else, but are not looking for a romantic partner. It is something to Toronto residents Tatiana and Brendan are doing. You're going to hear from them. They met online and they started to get to know each other.

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VOICE 1: Brendan spent time with my daughter, met each other's families. We made vacations together to Europe. We really committed to get to know each other, build trust and learn about what our vision was in terms of the kind of family we wanted to cocreate.

VOICE 2: For me it was certainly we had a sort of a significant moment. Tatiana had suggested that we sort of share a list of things that was important to us.

VOICE 1: And I called it the magical wish list, anything goes on that list.

VOICE 2: And so mine turned into a sort of a letter essentially that I wrote her kind of thing and a whole thing on just why I wanted to be a parent and where it stemmed from and what was important to me and it just kind of flowed out and Tatiana saw my letter and her mom was taking care of her daughter. She called her said we're going to need some more time. I think we ordered some more wine and we just talked. We just shared. We really, it's just we dropped to a deeper level at that point. For me I realized then this was it. Tatiana was who I wanted to have a child with.

AMT: So later this week we're going to hear more from Tatiana and Brendan and what the implications are of plutonic parenting may be for parents and for children. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Tom Power talks with the writer-director Larry Charles. He's worked with Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Sacha Baron Cohen. He's talking about his new Netflix series, Larry Charles: Dangerous World of Comedy. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC radio app. Get it free from the App Store or Google Play. We're going to leave you with one more take on potholes. This is a musical take. It's from private radio host Dave Lawrence and two of his colleagues from UP 93.1 FM in Fredericton. The title of their song is "The Pothole Song." Here we go. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Song: "The Pothole Song"]

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Feb. 26, 2019 episode transcript

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