Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

The Current Transcript for December 11, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This negotiation has been an existential challenge for our country and at times an existential drama.

LAURA LYNCH: Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in Mexico City gripped her copy of the new trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, seemingly relieved that the drama, as she puts it, is done. Now though, it's on to Ottawa for debate and ratification. And that's where we'll start today with our national affairs panel. After that.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The explorations of the past usually assumed great risks that we would consider foolhardy today. But these risks have been super important for driving our technologies.

LL: Andrew Rader is part of a team striving to emulate explorers of old by forging new discoveries in space. In his new book, he traces our desire to travel into the unknown from centuries back. To learn lessons for the future. That's in an hour. Also today, the secrets of the war in Afghanistan. A trove of documents reveals a new glimpse of the real and deadly challenges faced by Canadian soldiers on the ground there. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

NAFTA 2.0 will help bring certainty to the Canadian economy, but Ottawa must still grapple with other worrisome economic indicators, observers say

Guests: Katie Simpson, Heather Scoffield, Kelly Cryderman

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: All of us together have finally accomplished what we set out to do at the very outset. A win-win-win agreement, which will provide stability for workers in all three of our countries for many years to come.

LL: The new NAFTA deal is all wrapped up with a bow just in time for the holidays. And while Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland may sound merry, the latest job numbers, declining foreign investment and worries about regional alienation are raising fears that the future may not be so bright. And of course, who knows if a Grinch is lurking in the shadows because new NAFTA still has to be ratified by each country. Here to look at all of us is our national affairs panel. Katie Simpson is a senior reporter with CBC News. She's been covering the NAFTA talks and now the deal. And we have reached her in Mexico City. Heather Scoffield is an economics columnist for The Toronto Star. She's in our Ottawa studio. And Kelly Cryderman is a Calgary-based reporter for The Globe and Mail who covers business and politics, and she joins us from there. Hello to you all.

KELLY CRYDERMAN: Hi there.

HEATHER SCOFFIELD: Good morning.

LL: Heather, let's start with you. What are the positives you see for Canada in this new trade agreement?

HEATHER SCOFFIELD: It's a big relief, I think, to from from the business community point of view to just have some stability and to know that there is something finally written on paper that, yes, it still has to go through ratification. But it looks like, you know, everything's lined up for that to finally happen. So, you know, for the last three years, business, every time you want to go and make an investment and every time you want to think where you're going to put your next dollar, you've been surrounded by this uncertainty and not knowing, you know, what's Donald Trump going to do next? What he's going to demand for his own economy? What are the rules of the game? And so you have second thoughts about investing in Canada. And so this gives some kind of certainty in a very, very uncertain world. I mean, there's all sorts of other things out there, for sure, but this is one big piece that is finally settled.

LL: Katie, you are in Mexico City. What was the mood like among Canadian delegates at the signing ceremony in Mexico City's national palace?

KATIE SIMPSON: I think there is a sense that this is actually now in the final stretch and they can finally proceed with the domestic ratification process and they're relieved. You know, everyone thought that this was going to be over about a year ago when they signed off on this in what those areas, the sideline to the G 20 people knew it would be difficult with the changing political dynamic in the United States. However, now there seems to be a bigger sense of relief. But one thing that I want to point out that was really strange inside the room is when the Americans got up to speak at yesterday's signing ceremony, it was U.S. Trade Representative Robert Light Hazar who spoke on behalf of the American delegation. And he was it almost became uncomfortable the way he was gushing about the Americans or about the the Mexicans and and how the president was a historic figure in and how they put the best person possible in this position to negotiate this. And they didn't let politics get in the way. And the key to that is the Americans were so pleased to get the concessions out of Mexico that they were able to get that bulb light higher was just he couldn't contain himself at this ceremony yesterday.

LL: Okay. Well, we know then that it's going to be a big selling point for Trump in Washington then. But tell us what's in this agreement that allows the Canadian government to frame this as a win-win-win, as Chrystia Freeland said.

KATIE SIMPSON: Well, Chrystia Freeland and the Canadian government is trying to take credit for some of the changes that were added to this agreement and when not, the negotiations are originally began back in 2017. The the conservatives that actually criticized the liberals for trying to put some things in there that were too progressive. Typically around the environment. Well, what do you know two years later when it's time for the Democrats to have a say in all of this in the United States? That the environment would be a big deal. So the changes that have been added to this agreement relate to environmental and labour provisions and making sure, particularly in Mexico, the Mexican companies live up to the labour standards. And they've they've sort of changed the onus here that if a company is believed to have been violating the standards and not meeting the standards that that have been set out by this agreement, it's up to the company to prove that it is in violation of the. The law is up to that, that they are following the rules that are in place. It reverses the onus. And so there's there's a big push to make sure that inspections can be done in Mexican facilities to make sure, again, there are those standards and make sure that there is the right to collective bargaining in Mexico, things like that. So the major changes are really targeting are really targeting Mexico. But there is one change that really stands out for Canada, and that has to do with pharmaceutical drugs. The new NAFTA, the one that was negotiated in 2018 that all three countries signed off on, had this provision that large pharmaceutical companies could develop and be protected from generic companies taking their science to make generic drugs for 10 years in Canada. The current law or the current rules are it's eight years. So this would give those big pharmaceutical companies two more years to make those big profits. And it would mean that the higher drug prices could be charged for an additional two years. Well, the Democrats got that entire provision stripped out, so it'll remain status quo in Canada.

LL: Kelly Cryderman in Calgary, what is the view from there? Is Canada seen to have lost any ground in this agreement?

KELLY CRYDERMAN: Well, you know, I think in for all the reasons that Heather and Katie have laid out, there is a sense of relief that there is any stability and any solid agreement that can, you know, really be relied on as as as Canadian companies look for investment, as they look for some kind of stability. I think, you know, there this does not put an end to what might happen out of the U.S., the Donald Trump administration. This does not put an end to the uncertainties there. The ratification process for this will take place in the U.S. maybe a day after the impeachment vote. So there there's still a lot of uncertainty. I think what is really interesting to me is and what is interesting to Albertans and a lot of respects, it is the messaging that came from Chrystia Freeland on this. Of course, she emphasized at in Mexico City yesterday that that this will this new NAFTA deal will require a 70 percent North American aluminium component, of course, that is focussed at Quebec, our major aluminium producer. And that that was important because right away you had bloc leader Mr. Blanchette saying that this deal isn't good enough for Quebec. So I think the messaging on this back to Canada was really interesting because we have a government, a minority government that needs to rely on the other parties. The other parties are going to be looking at the deed and details of this deal. And and really they will have an actual say in this, unlike if if this agreement had come to fruition before the October vote that led to a minority government. So I think the messaging back to the conservatives, to the bloc, to the NDP is really interesting in this case.

Heather, we are there are growing concerns about the health of the Canadian economy as this deal is signed.

What do the latest job numbers tell us?

Well, we had we've had a really great year in terms of job creation until last month. Where where where the where we had a major setback. And, you know, every economist will say, OK, let's let's look past the number. You have to you have to look over over time and not get too carried away about one month. But, you know, there is there are certainly a lot of concern. I think that the global economy is slowing down and that growth levels in Canada are just not what they are. What what we've become used to, they're not what they used to be. And going forward, we won't be seeing a lot of strong growth. So, you know, there's there is a fear that this one month will be a sign of things to come or that or that, you know, we're just heading into a period of slow growth and weakness generally that even if people are getting jobs, they're not getting there. There's just not a lot of momentum in the economy so that our standard of living over time is is eroding.

Well, jobs are one thing. Heather, what are other indicators that suggest the country could be heading for recession in 2020?

Well, I don't think, you know, nobody nobody's crying recession yet in a serious way. But we do have quite a few challenges on the horizon that that that suggest some some some tough times. And I think in investment is one of the one of the things that. Few people are concerned about it. We had some ups and downs for sure, but especially in the oil patch and I think. Kelly. Kelly knows a lot about that, but that they are in the third quarter, we had some really concerning investment numbers. And and, you know, with all the uncertainty that we see globally, that that looks to be a sign of things to come.

And Kelly, how surprised were you by the national numbers given unemployment in Alberta?

I was surprised to see such a dramatic turn in the national numbers. Of course, a low ebb economy is something that Alberta has been dealing with the last five years. And there are a lot of striking numbers in the Statistics Canada job report for November, of course, is just one month. It's a snapshot. But we saw, you know, not only the drop in job numbers nationally, but in Alberta. We saw another increase in the unemployment rate. Another 18000 jobs lost. And really strikingly, a really high jump in the unemployment rate among young men under age 25. Basically in it, one in five young men in Alberta under the age of 25 is unemployed right now, according to the November numbers. And, you know, if that's not a political issue, I don't know what is when you have young men without work. And what was really striking to me this week as federal finance minister Bill Moreno saying he doesn't he doesn't worry too much about recession. And, you know, I worry about that personally, because we have in Canada, in the global economy, seen years of growth. And any time that cyclical process reaches this point, I think, you know, policymakers need to be very worried about recession, about a lot of a lot of possible headwinds. So it's I just you know, that the concern from Alberta is whether the federal liberals are taking those economic concerns seriously, of course.

Katie, during the election campaign, the Liberals promised to deliver on on both climate action and economic growth. And I'm wondering how much of the agenda hinges on bringing foreign investment back.

Well, that is certainly something that has been a challenge for the Liberal government when it was when it had its majority mandate. I think one thing that we're going to see now that the big chunk of the NAFTA negotiations is sort of put to bed. And Chrystia Freeland, can you get back to Canada and take on this new role that she can sort of focus less on that Canada U.S. relationship and now focus on making sure that the concerns of the prairies and the concerns of parts of Canada that, you know, ended up, you know, the Liberals didn't win any seats in Alberta, Saskatchewan. And a big concern about that is the economic climate. And that's a big part of what is going on with the political result. We saw the 20 19 election. So now that Chrystia Freeland has finished dealing with this abroad, Justin Trudeau can lean on her. And we know that she's already started as sort of an impromptu listening tour, speaking with premiers, speaking with other leaders to try and find out ways that they can hear the concerns of the people that lives in those in those parts of the country. And a big concern there is investment in the economic climate.

Speaking of premiers Kelly Kelly, the Jason Kennedy was in Ottawa yesterday. I met with the prime minister. What was he hoping to win from his meeting with Justin Trudeau?

You know, I think most of all, he was hoping to win attention for the economic issues and the political issues that he's bringing up at a time where there is national focus on Alberta and Saskatchewan issues because of the election results, because the liberals were completely shut out of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is attention on this. And and, you know, while while the federal government sees this as a pressing issue rather than, you know, international trade disputes, I think Mr. Kenney is going to work that for all it's worth. And, you know, the things that he's asking for, the headline items, of course, are, you know, a guaranteed timeline for the completion of the transmission, Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, a lift on the cap on the fiscal stabilization fund, which Jason Kenney very politically has called a rebate on equalization, even though it's not any he he is looking for some kind of wiggle room from the federal government on Alberta's issues, given the economic circumstances, given that Alberta's economy has diverged so much from the national economy in the last five years. He is looking for some kind of. He is looking for some kind of reset in the relationship. As you know, Chrystia Freeland takes over the the inter provincial file. And I think, you know, while he's not going to get any kind of result this week, there is going to be a push from Alberta for some kind of movement from Ottawa in the weeks and months ahead, and that will be watched very closely.

OK, Heather, do you think anything resulted from that meeting yesterday that would allow Canada to claim progress, if not victories?

Well, he didn't leave with any money in his pocket. But I don't think he came with that in mind. I think he very successfully framed the conversation around Alberta's demands. But he is so. So he's he said, set out what the conversation will be about over the next few months. And he knows and set the stakes out very clearly to to the population of Alberta. But it's also interesting that he he stood down actually on on his demand to change C40 1869, which he calls the new pipeline bills. No more pipeline bills. Those are those are the bills that were passed towards the end of the last parliament that that changed the way that the government oversees and approves natural resource development. So so Jason Kenney has has conceded publicly that, OK. The federal government is not going to change those. And he's he's he's changed how he's framed that conversation around approval of natural resource development. So that's pretty important. And also, you know, by by focussing on the fiscal stabilization aspect of the of of transfer payments, he's moved away from that equalization conversation as well, which was a I mean, that was just a non-starter for for everybody involved. So, you know, there's been a bit a bit of give and take. And I think he he's trying to convey a sense that he's leaving Ottawa with a bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling about the future conversations with Ottawa with with the federal government. But there has been a lot of movement, I think, on both sides here so far.

Katie, I want to touch on another development. Yesterday, China hinted that the two Canadians who have been detained for a year, Michael Corrigan, Michael's five, are detained in China. They could face trial. What could this mean for the fate of the.

Well, it's certainly it's it's a it's a significant development in this whole process, remember these two men, these two Canadians have been held in a detention centre and with little information about what's going on, no access to a lawyer and and really no certainty or no clarity about what's going on. Now, there are a couple of scenarios here in some cases in China when things go to trial. There have been situations where, OK. You know, they can move through the legal process. And perhaps this China's justice system isn't like the Canadian justice system. And things can sort of be dropped here and there as they go. Or you can you can sort of look at it in another way and then it is another serious step moving forward. Any sort of development involving the two, Michaels is a massive concern for the government. But China has made it abundantly clear nothing is going to change in the Canada China relationship. It is going to be difficult until the Canadians unless the Canadians release among Wong Joe the Wall Wei executive, she was arrested by Canadian authorities, all at the request of the Americans on an extradition request. And and the Chinese have made it directly, abundantly clear until she is let go, trying to pressure, pressure, pressure Ottawa to make that happen. The Canada China relationship is going to be difficult. They, of course, in retaliation, it's widely seen as retaliation. They arrested the two Michaels Michael covering the former diplomat and Michael Sarver, the former, or he is a an entrepreneur in China. Of course, the canola dispute, China stopping purchasing large swaths of Canadian canola. And then there was the meat dispute. And the only reason that China had to relent on that is because China had I believe it was a swine flu epidemic and they were running out of pork and they just badly needed pork for their do it for Chinese people, for the Chinese people. So they had to relent on that, not because anything's actually changed in the relationship, but because they really had no choice. So this situation is going to remain bad until there is some sort of development on the Mung Wong Joe front. And really, Canada has dug in its ground saying we are rule of law country. We are not going to just release this person because you are pressuring us. We are going to go through the legal channels. We are going to continue with this process. And so whatever is happening over in China with the two Michaels, it's always going to relate back to what's going on in Canada.

All right. We have about a minute left. And that actually leads me, Heather, in to my next question, which is that the government suffered its first defeat, if you will, in parliament yesterday when the opposition parties passed a motion to set up a special committee to review all aspects of the candidates China relationship.

What's at stake there, whether there are two things going on there. One was, you know, minority government politics. I think the opposition parties have found something they landed on, something that they could agree on and wanted to flex their muscle and remind the government right away that in a non-threatening way and that, you know, this doesn't trigger an election or anything. But by setting up this committee, that they have the power to to, you know, to to at least express themselves in this in this new configuration. But I think it's also reflective of the broader public that there's a restlessness, Anna, and a grave frustration in dealing with China. There's a, you know, a pressure to to find a solution. And if there is, there is no obvious solution. It's so complicated. But, you know, the conservatives have been pushing for it to be tougher on China. The business community has been over having meetings and in China. There's a restlessness of like, please, can we just get beyond this, find a way to get out of this so that we can increase our trade, the trade, the trade volumes back and forth with Canada and China are down quite a bit this year compared to last year. And I think, you know, people are really starting to get you know, they want to see some progress on that.

LL: Alright. We will leave it there. Katie Simpson is a senior reporter with CBC News. And in the New Year, she's taking up a new post in Washington, D.C. So we'll try to get you on with our global affairs panel. Katie, thank you.

KATIE SIMPSON: Thanks.

LL: Heather Scoffield is an economics columnist for The Toronto Star. She's in Ottawa. And Kelly Cryderman is a Calgary-based reporter for The Globe and Mail. Thanks to all of you.

HEATHER SCOFFIELD: Thanks.

KELLY CRYDERMAN: Thank you.

LL: The CBC News is next. Then in our next half hour, Canada spent 12 years, billions of dollars and lost 165 soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan. Now, a trove of documents published by The Washington Post reveals the war effort was doomed and top U.S. officials knew it.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: These people who are in charge of the war, military commanders, ambassadors, people at the White House, they were very plain and blunt spoken about this to say we didn't have a strategy. We didn't even know who the enemy was. Who were we there to fight?

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Afghans will not be surprised by documents alleging U.S. failures in war, says activist

Guests: Murray Brewster, Pat Stogran, Orzala Nemat

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, how an island in Nunavut is helping NASA plan a mission to Mars. But first, a Washington Post investigation reveals troubling details about the war in Afghanistan.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sirens]

VOICE 1: On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes.

VOICE 2: We've been at war for 18 years now. We're not winning. We're not losing. Presidents come and go, but nothing really seems to change.

VOICE 3: Vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

VOICE 4: Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win.

LL: U.S. Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump have all tried to win the war in Afghanistan. But the words of those presidents are in stark contrast to a trove of documents published by The Washington Post. It's being compared to the Pentagon Papers that reveal the failures of the war in Vietnam. The documents show top officials warned there was no clear plan in Afghanistan. Some even believe the war was already lost. The documents also include revelations about Canada's role in the country. The CBC's senior defence writer Murray Brewster has been looking into this. He joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hello.

MURRAY BREWSTER: Good morning.

LL: Murray, what did you make of what you saw in the documents?

MURRAY BREWSTER: For anyone that's covered Afghanistan as a journalist or someone who has been intimately involved from the military development capacity or even politics? A lot of what we're reading here, the individual details. It doesn't surprise many people who have been closely associated with the war. What I believe is significant is to see it laid out in a huge compendium in just in all this detail. I think what's significant about what we're seeing is that for the first time, I think there is now a stirring of conscience in the United States where they have begun to ask themselves very serious questions about why they have been at war for 18 years.

LL: These were the results of interviews that were compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction with the odd name of SIGAR. Who did they speak to?

MURRAY BREWSTER: They spoke to a vast array of United States officials, officials with NATO, both military and civilian political staffers. And there's it's a mixture of interviews, but also material that they've gleaned notes from conferences. Among the documents you're going to see, some of the names are blanked out. There are redactions, et cetera, where SIGAR was attempting to get these people to go on the record to talk about it. One of the things that I found incredibly fascinating were some of the lessons learned, interviews that were conducted, particularly with the the senior military officials. And as someone who sat and interviewed many of these senior military officials, it's interesting to hear how pessimistic and unguarded they were in those interviews in comparison to some of the times that I've spoken with them.

LL: I'm sure that's true. How prominently did Canada figure in the interviews?

MURRAY BREWSTER: Well, there were a number of documents, I'd say about three dozen documents that referenced Canada. The documents are divided in two. There's about 2000 documents there divided into bins. And they're looking at corruption, looking at the overall war strategy, but looking at NATO as well, NATO's involvement. And that's where you find most of the references to Canada is in NATO and in the timeframe roughly of 2006, 2007, where there seems to have been a lot of talk either by U.S. officials who were watching the deteriorating situation in 2006 in southern Afghanistan very closely or by military officials, notably General Sir Sir David Richard, who was the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan at that time. He did an interview with cigars representatives.

LL: He's British. I remember interviewing him myself and thinking of him as a fairly plain talking man. But he revealed things in his interviews with this reconstruction report that we hadn't heard before. What did he reveal about the situation in Kandahar and Helmand during his command?

MURRAY BREWSTER: He was very blunt and very plain spoken, and he talked about how there were not enough troops on the ground. And one of the things that I found incredible was that he recounted a conversation that he had with. The then U.S. defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, where he said directly to the U.S. defence secretary. There are not enough troops on the ground because Donald Rumsfeld was gobsmacked at the increase in violence in 2006. And essentially, Richard said that we don't have enough resources and we don't have enough troops on the ground. And Rumsfeld blew him off, basically dismissed him and said that I don't agree with you. Let's move on. General, and that's significant for Canada, because at that point in the war, Canadian troops were under daily assault by a resurgent Taliban and there were casualties. We were suffering at that time as a nation, our first major casualties in terms of killed and wounded almost on a daily basis. And it led up to in the fall of 2006, the Operation Medusa, where because the Taliban had dug in west of Kandahar City and they had to be removed. And it was just a spiral of violence. And it shocked not only the Canadian public, but the Canadian government. The Canadian government was looking for reinforcements, was looking for NATO to send help to southern Afghanistan. And here with Donald Rumsfeld was essentially blowing that off.

LL: Why?

MURRAY BREWSTER: He was blowing it off. I think for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Americans were fully engaged in Iraq at that point. Iraq had completely spiralled out of control. And the U.S. pouring more of its or most of its attention and money and its troops into Iraq to stabilize the situation there. That's the first thing. But also to the Bush administration was subscribed to a notion that wars could be fought with lightly light forces. Not a lot of like heavy I guess big army is the best way to describe it, forces where you have a large amount of troops going into an area to suppress it. And it took several years for not only the Bush administration, but for commanders, including Canadian commanders, to come around to the idea that they needed an incredible amount of of reinforcements to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan.

LL: Now, on Monday, our defence minister Harjeet Sajjan, who served in Afghanistan, was asked about these revelations. He had this to say.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: As you know, conflicts like that, it is very, very complex. Once we had a good understanding of what was going on, that's when we start figuring out, this is not just a military solution. You need to start looking at how you do development. How do you look at capacity building? It's a lot of lessons were learned very early on. The one thing that I can probably say that Canadian Armed Forces and the resources that was put in by Canada had a substantial impact.

LL: Murray, what do you make of that response?

MURRAY BREWSTER: Well, let me just put it this way: I think it took the Canadian military a while to make that logic leap. The minister's talking about how, you know, once they had figured it out, well, it took them an incredible amount of time to figure it out. It took them a couple of years to do that. But also to what the documents show is that Canada knew that it did not have not only enough troops on the ground, but enough financial resources to help stabilize the situation. It's one of the things that sir that Gen. Richards mentions in his debrief to SIGAR is that Canada and Britain did not have enough financial resources. Because you see, when you go into a conflict and when you try to stabilize an area during a counterinsurgency war, you have troops that go in to clear the area. But then they're followed up by development projects, reconstruction to be able to win hearts and minds if we have to use that well-worn phrase. And there was an acknowledgement by Richards in these documents that Canada and Britain, which was in Helmand Province adjacent to Kandahar, did not have enough resources to be able to do that. And that contributed to the deterioration of the situation and the the extension of the war. And it Richards noted that it was only the United States that had the resources and the ability to be able to go into a certain area and be able to put enough troops on the ground. And then then stabilized with by putting by rebuilding roads, rebuilding bridges, by getting the power stations working again.

LL: Alright, Murray, much more to talk about, but we're going to have to leave it there for now. People can see more reading your stories online today at cbc.ca. Thanks so much, Murray.

MURRAY BREWSTER: You're welcome.

LL: Murray Brewster is the CBC's senior defence writer. He was in our Ottawa studio. Retired Colonel Pat Stogran can relate to the revelations in the Afghan papers. He was a key commander during Canada's move into the volatile Kandahar province in 2006, and he later became Canada's first Veterans Ombudsman. Pat Stogran joins me from Ottawa. Hello.

PAT STOGRAN: Good morning.

LL: What was your reaction to what these papers have revealed about the U.S. led war in Afghanistan?

PAT STOGRAN: I hesitate to say a bit of jubilation because it really validated the bad feelings I had when I left the Canadian Forces to become the Veterans Ombudsman. Really, what they're reporting is the feeling that I had about the way the Canadian operation had gone. And I had been a key planner in the move from Kabul and the start up of operations in Kandahar. So, you know, it basically confirms the situation, as I remember it all those many years ago.

LL: Well, you were there. What was Canada's strategy for winning the war in Afghanistan?

PAT STOGRAN: Yeah. To suggest, as the minister did, that we learned about capacity building during the operation. I was my staff down in Kingston. I was demanding an organization known as the Job that had it later became Expeditionary Force Command headquarters. So I had a lot of planning staff there and I had been there myself and as a commander with all the Apollo. And I saw the profound impact that our troops had by building schools, by that's what we were doing in our spare time. By drilling wells, by building the capacity of the locals to sustain themselves. We were one with the community.

LL: The papers also reveal a major gap between what U.S. leaders were saying about the war amongst themselves and what they were telling the public. So how truthful was the Canadian leadership about successes and failures?

PAT STOGRAN: Oh, it was smoke and mirrors. In fact, I was quoted in an article saying just that. The level of frustration amongst some of the officers at national defence headquarters was palpable. But really, it was it started off. They rolled their shirt sleeves up and we're showing off, you know, how good our soldiers are at combat operations, right. For Mountain Thrust, Operation Mountain Thrust was shortly after we touched down there and it was built by the Americans. The biggest search and destroy operation since operation started in Afghanistan. And that was really setting the wrong tone for what we should have been doing in that country.

LL: Do you think then that Canada accomplished anything in Afghanistan?

PAT STOGRAN: No, I don't think we accomplished anything in Afghanistan. But when I went back in 2010 after my ombudsman's tour, I just wanted to be able to compare where we were at to what I had seen in 2002. And they didn't even remember the Canadians that I went to the villages, that we were one with the community and they'd forgotten about us because we were just another force in NATO. So all of the goodwill that our troops had, you know, with the drilling of the wells, the integrating with the community around. I think there were seven or eight villages and part of the city of Kandahar. I recognize things were different in 2006, but the minister hit the nail on the head. We should have been focussed on capacity building. It shouldn't have been there as the troops referred to it, like a Taliban kind of operations. They even had a Canadian term mowing the grass. It was ridiculous.

LL: I wonder then you when you see this trove of documents released and the frankness of the exchanges and this attempt to sort of record and learn from the past, should Canada be doing this as well?

PAT STOGRAN: Or, ma'am, we should have a public inquiry into this just to make sure that Canadians understand the current security situation in the world and they don't get hoodwinked by the government into sending our sons and daughters into harm's way without a plan. You know, we talk about exit strategies on operations like this. The exit strategy is when it becomes politically distasteful. We down tools and run. So we should define success from the outset. What are we exactly? Are we sending our troops in there to accomplish and not only troops. Remember, it was a whole of government operation.

LL: Pat Stogran, thank you for your time.

PAT STOGRAN: Well, thank you for your interest in the story.

LL: Pat Stogran is a retired colonel in the Canadian military and Canada's first Veterans Ombudsman. He was in Ottawa. If Canada paid a heavy price in Afghanistan, the toll on the Afghan people has been immense. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded by the war. Even today, a powerful bomb exploded near the U.S. Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, wounding a number of Afghan civilians. My next guest has experienced life under Taliban rule and the U.S. led war. Orzala Nemat is the director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, and that's an independent research institute in Kabul. And that's where we've reached her today. Hello.

ORZALA NEMAT: Hello Laura.

LL: What were your thoughts when you first heard that the U.S. had been misleading the public about the war in Afghanistan?

ORZALA NEMAT: To be honest, I was not very surprised because I didn't need them to say that. I could see and witness the failure part of this intervention and also the success part of it. So in a way, it's not surprising, but probably it is more shocking and surprising for the families of the troops who served in Afghanistan as more shocking and surprising for people who are basically the taxpayers with whose money is being kind of channelled to Afghanistan for different purposes. So for me as an Afghan, as someone who experienced the Taliban ruling and also the post Taliban domination or the post 2001 context, as we call it, it is not entirely surprising because we are witnessing and we've raised our voices, as you know, civil society, as women's rights activists about how parts of this intervention are extremely problematic and are not serving the purpose.

LL: Do you have any sense of how people in Afghanistan are reacting to all of the revelations in the papers?

ORZALA NEMAT: People in Afghanistan are not really like it's not like catching the media. So far, probably this probably wouldn't be the reaction of people that, OK, like we anyway knew that the war is a failure of the war side of it. The violence side, that side of it. If I can list the following to your other persons that were interviewed earlier. I mean, this program, the coin of strategy, in my opinion, was an absolute failure. War on terror, a complete failure. Winning hearts and minds, as it was mentioned. I can say it was extremely problematic because when I say that as a development practitioner at the time, I find it extremely problematic that the military will use development as a tool to win hearts and minds. So these were things that we hope will not be repeated in any other future experiences like Afghanistan or the lessons that needs to be learned.

LL: And just just for listeners who may not know that the term coin means counterinsurgency. A whole generation grew up under the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan. What are you hearing from young people these days?

ORZALA NEMAT: Well, the young people say, look, we remember everything from this period, but we also have a good knowledge thanks to this, thanks to the interventions and development sector in this period of past 18 years. We've been educated enough to read the history, to know also what was the situation before 18 years. So people, the younger generation have a very good knowledge of historical context. Thanks to the educational support that they have received over the past 18 years. And that turned them into very conscious citizens in comparison to the past. And what happens now is increasingly is to see more accountability and to see more courage from the younger generation, to stand against corruption for women's rights and human rights or justice. And for, you know, better forms of governance and examples are evident in the parliament, in the Afghan civil society and even in the government and in government, despite the challenges that we have with the government in Afghanistan and challenges are there can be a long list of it that I can say, but we can see that it is mostly led by a younger generation and average age is somewhere between 35 to 40 for the people serving as key leadership of the government.

LL: Right. And you are the director of Afghanistan's largest think tank. That wouldn't have been possible under Taliban rule. So what you just said and your presence in this job, does that suggest that there have been improvements as a result of the US led presence in Afghanistan?

ORZALA NEMAT: Well, yes, but I tell you this, we cannot conclude an 18 years of intervention with a complete failure or complete success story. This story has both side. One side of it, as I mentioned and I mention this now, I was mentioning as an activist from the grassroots movements of home based literacy classes back in and the time of the war, I'm talking about, you know, October, November, 2001. I was saying then that military solution was not a solution to this conflict, and I'm saying it now. 18 years on that what I was claiming them as a young Afghan from the grassroots was right. It is proved right because this war is not a war to be fought by bombs, by aeroplanes, by dismantling or eliminating some forces. It's a war that requires development, that requires interventions and poverty reduction requires intervention and building infrastructures, education, providing more opportunity for a country that is deprived because of the war prior to US led war that started here. So miniaturization is an absolute failure side, but this intervention of the past 18 years has lots of advantages that thanks to which I am able to today live and work in this country, thanks to which we have thousands of women working and serving in government. We have hundreds and thousands of girls going to school. The schools infrastructures are there and it's unprecedented in comparison to any other time in the history of Afghanistan. The number of schools in the country, across the country, particularly in rural areas, is unprecedented. However, when it comes to quantity, when it comes to train teachers, we have a long, long way to go. So there are positive elements. There are some signs of success that you can see in this past 18 years. But of course, there are also failures.

LL: So for people in Canada who are reading about these new papers and who may be asking themselves whether this war was in vain, what's your response?

ORZALA NEMAT: My response is that parts of this should have not happened. The military parts should have not happened. No Canadian deserves to be killed here just because they've attacked some people on this side. The sources of terrorism in Afghanistan was not hidden here. The sources were elsewhere, which was not sought at. And so for that reason. That's part of it. Sending your sons and daughters for military services in Afghanistan was not maybe worth it, but then sending your money to rebuild this war ravaged country. Thank you for your money and think tanks to your financial assistance and the development sectors. Now we are much better placed than any other time before.

LL: I'm sure that some Canadians are listening to you now, but they also still worry about the spectre of corruption in Afghanistan and whether their money actually goes where it's supposed to go. What do you say to that one?

ORZALA NEMAT: Unfortunately, corruption is a phenomenon that is the result of massive level of financial intervention without any accountability. The sources of corruption are not only national. It is national as well as international. I would mechanisms for accountability are so weak internationally that opens a space for corruption. So my message to Canadians is that at least the Afghan people are taking more strong steps toward keeping their governments, their non-governmental organizations more and more accountable. More community-based system of accountability is a solution to tackle the massive issue of corruption. And that requires some level of conditionality in the funding and support that Canadians and other international partners are providing to Afghanistan, whether they are private sector, NGOs or government.

LL: Alright. We will leave it there. Thank you.

ORZALA NEMAT: Thank you.

LL: Orzala Nemat is the director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research institute based in Kabul. She is in Kabul, Afghanistan.

[Music]

LL: Coming up in our next half hour, what explorers of the past have to teach the new generation aiming for Mars. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

Back To Top »

The most successful civilizations have always been the most open-minded: author

Guests: Andrew Rader, Pascal Lee

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I'm Karen Samonds and I am an explorer. It's a funny time actually to be an explorer because there's this idea that, you know, there's really nothing left to learn, right? So part of the mystery of Madagascar is that we know that the animals that live there today are really interesting and diverse, but we actually know very little about where they come from. So the time period we think most of these animals arrived or their ancestors came is actually missing in the fossil record. One of the main sites I work is actually it's beautiful. It's an island off of Madagascar, the northwest coast. It almost looks like a tropical paradise, but it's extremely challenging. It's hard. It's rugged. We don't have a lot of the luxuries of home, right? But at the same time, there's a certain piece in the simplicity of just being able to focus on one thing. You know, we focus on finding fossils. There is always this feeling of discovery, of excitement because even though this is a site that we've been to for the last 15 years, every year we go, something new is there, because, you know, with palaeontology, we're looking for fossils that have eroded out of these clips. Fossils that might not have been visible the year before. So there's always going to be something new to find and there's always a little bit of serendipity I think to the whole process. I find that really exciting. You know, being able to discover things that no one has seen or no one has documented. The world is not fully explored.

LL: So it may seem that humans know every corner of the earth, but explorers like Northern Illinois University palaeontologist Karen Samonds are showing us there's still a lot to learn. And even as the planet's unexplored regions around us narrow our possibilities for exploring in space become more vast, Andrew Rader, a missing manager at SpaceX, Elon Musk's private space company, is looking outward himself, as he says humanity has always done throughout our history. And he says now isn't the time to stop pushing our limits. Andrew Rader is the author of Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take US to the Stars. He joins us from Los Angeles. Hello.

ANDREW RADAR: Hello.

LL: How are modern day explorers like Karen Sammons following in the footsteps of explorers in the past?

ANDREW RADAR: Exploration is one of the things that makes humans unique. It's what enables us to occupy all parts of the planet. We evolved in Africa, in a small region to one particular climate. But by exploring and pushing our limits, we developed the tools that enabled us to discover our entire planet.

LL: Who were the earliest explorers then?

ANDREW RADAR: I think humans have always been explorers, I think. So we humans first left Africa, modern humans first left Africa around one hundred thousand years ago and set out to reach all parts of our planet. You know, when Europeans set out to so-called Discover the world around 500 years ago, they encountered people everywhere on our planet with the exception of Antarctica and few islands out at sea. And a lot of this was done, obviously, before the invention of writing. But Madagascar, for example, was settled from Indonesia. It was seafarers who came across the Indian Ocean. And people have always done this. You know, indigenous people of the Americas came probably from Asia, probably by sea, I think actually through Alaska, which is very close to Siberia.

LL: It's interesting that because you talk about the technology and sort of being on the field, the feed loop of explore exploration and better technology and exploration. How did those earliest explorers travel so far afield without advanced technology?

ANDREW RADAR: It seems remarkable, right? Actually, that's another thing, is that in order to drive progress, we need to do what we can with what we have. And those early explorers developed really sophisticated seafaring technologies often, which, you know, don't require modern means of construction. They built boats, they built rafts, and some rafts are actually rather seaworthy. In fact, thought hired all the explorer, the Norwegian adventure sailed across the Pacific on a very basic raft. And there actually were, for example, indigenous people of the Americas who built rafts. The Incas sailed rafts along the coast and may have reached the Galapagos. But people can do remarkable things with relatively simple technology. The Polynesian canoes were an excellent example of this, a seafaring technology built basically by canoes that were strung together for additional stability.

LL: So do you know how long it took human beings to make their way around the world?

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah. So humans left Africa around 100,000 years ago, and the last major place to be settled was the Americas actually, around 14,000 years ago we think. There's some disputed evidence. The main finding is based on spear points and archeological digs. So we think that humans reached the Americas around 14000 years ago. Humans reach Australia around 40,000 years ago, 40. But Europe and Asia really, really quickly after they left Africa.

LL: Now, you talked about Europe. I'm wondering what misconceptions there are about the European age of exploration, which was half a millennium ago.

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah. So people often sort of think of the modern world as resulting from the conquest of the world, basically by Europeans. And they often think that Europeans had superior technology and set out to kind of conquer and colonize the world. But if you look at Europe at the time, relative to Asia, particularly China, China was actually far more advanced than Europe at the time in the 14 hundreds in Asia was as well, and far wealthier, in fact. I think there's a strong argument to be made that the centre of the world was actually the Indian Ocean. And we often think of the Mediterranean as sort of the centre of the world. That's literally what the word means, actually, Mediterranean. But I think a true centre of the world is actually India, which because it was. Position between China and Europe. And for thousands of years, India was sort of the market of the world, the place of commerce where Chinese would come and Indonesians would come and Europeans would come. The Romans actually went to India 2000 years ago. In fact, 20, 300 years ago, the Greeks had a travel guide of the Indian Ocean. And the world is a lot more connected the way than we usually think about. But I think that what actually happened is Europe was excluded from the spice market. We obviously know that Europeans went out to find spices and also lacquer where and Chinese porcelain. And what happened was Europe went out to expose itself to ideas and developed a commanding position. And through the exploration actually drove the incentives that drove their technology. And it went hand in hand with the scientific revolution. And so Europe kind of turned a disadvantage of being in an economically weaker position and technologically weaker position. And through the challenges that it embarked upon, created the incentives that caused a massive increase in technology and eventually that was the world that we arrived with.

LL: But at the same time, we're dealing with many of the negative effects of that age in colonialism and slavery and the repercussions of that. How should that be seen within the history of exploration?

ANDREW RADAR: Absolutely. You know, there is significant negative externalities, as you say, slavery, colonialism, all these things. Absolutely. So I think that exploration has both positive message of increasing technological progress and sort of giving humans this this intrinsic drive. But it also absolutely has these negative consequences throughout history. So I don't know how you wrestle with the morality of that. And I'm not saying in the book that exploration was all a good thing, I just think that it created the world that we live in for good and ill.

LL: Now, let's talk a little more about China, because the China, you say, played a big role, but then it seemed to sort of stop exploring what happened.

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah, China in the 1400s is really interesting. In fact, for most of human history, China has been the leading power in the world by landmass, by size. And Canada just passed it a couple hundred years ago. Russia as well just passed it a couple hundred years ago. But for most of history, China's been the largest country in the world and the most economically powerful country in the world. So this idea that China's, you know, this rising China today is not a new thing. It's always it's actually an accident that China is still not today the leading power in the world. And what happened is China had these extremely impressive voyages of discovery in the 1400s and was travelling regularly to East Africa, to India, to the Middle East, Indonesia. And it's kind of an accident that we didn't have Chinese explorers crossing the Pacific and settling the coast of California and Bank and British Columbia, Vancouver. So what happened was China was an empire with kind of a single ruler and an elite ruling class. And they decided that they didn't want to pursue exploration because they were concerned about foreign ideas coming in and just change that might undermine the power of the elite. So this is why competition in Europe was so important and you had different states competing with each other, which gave opportunity. Competition means opportunity because explorers could go to a different country to seek support if they didn't get support from the first country. And many explorers went to four or five countries before they actually received support for their endeavours. So this kind of competition is a really important factor. And I think it was one of the main factors why Europe became the continent that went out to explore the world rather than China trying to turn inward. And basically by eighteen hundred was that the same technological level that it was in the 1400s.

LL: Sort of frozen in time.

ANDREW RADAR: Frozen in time. Absolutely. Yeah.

LL: And parts of exploration actually became illegal in China. Is that true?

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah. They banned building large ships with more than two masses I think and basically they completely shut down overseas trade because they were worried about foreign influences.

LL: So let's talk about explorers then because some of them really surprised you. Mongols and Vikings, for example, seen as violent plundering forces, but they did some good things.

ANDREW RADAR: Well, yeah. So, I mean, everything in life is kind of a trade off and everything's kind of nuanced, right? We think about the Vikings as barbarians, kind of and the Mongols as well, conquering the largest land empire of all time. But both of them were really open minded. The most successful people, the most successful civilizations throughout history have always been those who were really open minded. The Romans, for example, copied the. Allergies of others, so if they found useful technologies or useful forms of government or useful languages or even their guides were copied from the Greeks, so they just copied everyone. It was really successful. And the Vikings had a really the largest middle class, basically because they had different segments of society. And even, for example, women had the right to own property and take up legal claims and all this kind of stuff. And the Mongols were open minded to all kinds of new ideas and new religions. And these people were basically sharing ideas. And the most successful civilizations in history have always been those who have been outward looking and willing to adopt other ideas and share ideas and take the best ideas. Basically, it's kind of looking around the world who had the best ideas, let's use those.

LL: And Amelia Earhart.

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the explorers who I found super fascinating was Amelia Earhart, who I didn't actually know that much about. But she was a pioneer in lots of ways, both in the social sphere and the scientific. She was an engineering professor and designed aeroplanes, founded the first major airline, TWX really was instrumental in aerospace engineering and the field of aviation as well. I mean, she said all kinds of speed records. And of course, she's known for her famous flight around the world and being lost probably at sea. Unclear she ended up on an island.

LL: They sort of tried to glamorize her, but she was hard core explorer.

ANDREW RADAR: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely one of the great heroes of exploration.

LL: Who and just finally, who was Sacagawea?

ANDREW RADAR: Sacagawea, so one of the interesting things, the most famous American explorers are Lewis and Clark, who travelled across the continent around 200 years ago, 1805 and along the way, they met this indigenous woman, Sacagawea, who really was kind of the hero of the expedition because she was their communicator and she was their interpreter. And actually she, I think, saved their bacon on lots of occasions because she had a baby with her and this was a signal to other people that this was a peaceful expedition. It wasn't a threat, basically.

LL: So clearly, it takes a woman based on the last two examples of yours.

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah, well, actually, so there's others, too. So people love travelling today. People go across the world. They're globetrotters and enjoy immersing themselves in different cultures. And the person who actually started this was Ida Pfeiffer in the 1800s, who is the first travel writer, you might say. And she explored the world on her own. She developed her own explorer outfit basically and travelled the jungles of Indonesia, travelled the entire world, and she was invited by governments to come into their country and kind of popularize their country and write about it. And she wrote travel books, and she's the one who made the idea of travel popular I think.

LL: So Andrew, looking back at the world's great explorers and wanderers, what character traits do they have in common?

ANDREW RADAR: Curiosity. I think one of the most important human characteristics is curiosity. We want to know what's out there. And at least for me, I think this is what brings meaning to life. I can see this with children. They're so curious and ask questions.

LL: Do you think that they also have a heightened sense of tolerance for risk?

ANDREW RADAR: They do. Yeah, actually this is something I guess I'm sort of concerned about possibly is the explorations of the past usually assumed great risks that we would consider foolhardy today. And but but these risks have been super important for driving our technology. So I think it's important to maintain our dynamism and our outlook that life is worth living. And sometimes it takes risks to drive us forward. Yeah.

LL: Andrew Rader, I just want you to stand by for a bit. We're going to bring someone else into the conversation to move from the past of exploration to future frontiers. Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist at the City Institute and the director of the Houghton Mars Project. And that's a NASA project on Devon Island in the far north of Canada that uses a Mars like landscape to help prepare for missions to the moon and to other planets. Pascal Lee is with us from Mountain View, California. Hello.

PASCAL LEE: Hi there. How are you?

LL: Fine, thanks. So how close are we to being ready to explore Mars?

PASCAL LEE: Well, we're working our way towards that and interestingly, where we go every summer, Devon Island in your beautiful Canada in Nunavut is an incredible corner of our planet, which is so bleak, desolate and barren that we are using it as a stand in for Mars to get ready for the journey. Going to Mars is just beyond the horizon for us right now. It's about to happen. I believe it's going to happen within the next generation or so and many people are working towards making that goal happen. And even on Devon Island, we're actually working on some very specific key technologies that will enable humans to get there, such as the space suit.

LL: So what are NASA's plans for space travel in the immediate future?

PASCAL LEE: Space travel continues in this space station until about 2024, maybe extending that a bit further then a space station in orbit, a smaller space station in orbit around the moon, while astronauts are also reaching the lunar surface again by 2024. So we should have the next man and the first woman on the moon. That's NASA's goal. And then beyond that, my hope and I think that's more or less in NASA's plans is by the early 2030s we're in Mars orbit with humans. And hopefully by the late 2030s, early 2040s, we'll have humans at the surface of Mars. That's the current wishful thinking, but also plan that we're aiming for.

LL: We were first on the moon 50 years ago. Why should we go back to the moon and on to Mars?

PASCAL LEE: Well, going to the moon and this is actually true, throughout the history of exploration, we, the explorers themselves are engaged in the exploration activity because they are, they're curious people, but the people who backed these expeditions, who fund them often have ulterior motives. And when you look at the reason why we went to the moon in the 60s, it wasn't because we were curious scientifically about the moon. We went there because the United States had to beat the Soviet Union. So the Apollo program and our first voyages to the moon were really motivated by not science or even curiosity, but by sheer spirit of competition and survival against the perceived opponent or enemy. And what is different between the moon and Mars in that regard is that Mars really has a chance of shedding some light on the origins of life and whether or not we are alone as a form of life here on the earth. We actually hope to not only find signs of life on Mars, but possibly signs of extent life, life that's still living today. Of course, not little green men, but microbes. And there is even the incredible possibility that the life that we would find on Mars could be alien, genetically unrelated to life on Earth, the result of a separate genesis of life, life that is not of the earth.

LL: The holy grail of space travel.

PASCAL LEE: Yes, but possibly a source of a number of issues down the road. Yes. But I do hope to see humans reach Mars within my lifetime and I think this will be a great thing. Going to Mars is so challenging that, first of all, it's likely to be beyond the reach of any single nation. It's going to have to be a global effort. And it in some sense, it's something that will have to be earned by humanity, first of all, coming together and pulling together to to make happen. So there's something good about going to Mars, which is the fact that it's going to be difficult, but achieving it will be rewarding.

LL: You know, when I was a kid, I got a telescope so I could look up at the moon because that's back when man was landing on the moon and I thought about adventure. And I'm just wondering these days, what should adventurous kids who love those stories of Chinese exploration or of Amelia Earhart or of astronauts going to the moon, what should they do now to become the explorers of tomorrow?

PASCAL LEE: You know, kids actually have this innate boldness in them that probably makes them and makes each of us an explorer at some stage of our lives, at least in exploration. As always, this does gamble. It's a gamble between taking a risk and also the rewards of it. You sort of think back at the first person ever tried an oyster, nobody in their right mind would actually venture to put that in an oyster entry into his or her mouth, but yet, if you've done that, you are rewarded by this incredible delight. And so kids can find adventure without going very far. They can find adventure and become explorers by exploring the seashore. I don't recommend that they put everything in their mouth that they see, but you get my point.

LL: Good plan. I get the idea. Just get out there and start looking around past. Pascal Lee, thank you.

PASCAL LEE: Thank you.

LL: Pascal Lee is the director of the Houghton Mars Project, a massive project that uses the Mars like landscape of Devon Island in northern Canada to prepare for missions to Mars. Andrew Rader, let's come back to you. What what are you working on at SpaceX that pushes the boundaries of human exploration?

ANDREW RADAR: I work on a couple of missions. One is a space telescope which looks at distant galaxies. It's an x-ray telescope and they're both NASA missions. We launch missions for NASA and other customers to it, super exciting x-ray telescope and the other mission is called DART and it's Double Asteroid Redirect Test. And it is to actually crash a spacecraft into an asteroid. And it's the moon of an asteroid, which means it's a small asteroid orbiting a larger asteroid. And by hitting the moon of the asteroid, you can precisely measure how far the orbit is changing when you hit that. And it's a test to see if we could potentially redirect an asteroid, which is obviously critically important for our future. If the dinosaurs had a space program, they'd probably still be here.

LL: When is that happening?

ANDREW RADAR: 2021.

LL: Oh, that sounds cool.

ANDREW RADAR: Ideally there'll be video or something. Yeah, because there's another little spacecraft. Obviously, the spacecraft itself crashes in the asteroids. No video.

LL: But obviously there's no humans on board that. That's just remote controlled.

ANDREW RADAR: Yeah, definitely. These are both robotic.

LL: Got it. OK. So getting to space is expensive, let alone back to the moon and to Mars. Why do you think we should go?

ANDREW RADAR: Well, I think the key is reducing the costs through reusability. That's the key to reducing the cost of access to space. But I think that one of the primary reasons to go is because throughout history, exploration has always been this technology driver, because putting ourselves at the leading edge of technology by definition pushes our limits and it causes us to fill in the gaps basically and figure out how to do things. We always kind of set the goal first and then figure out how to do it. And just that that process of solving problems in trying to achieve a goal is what has always driven our technology. And I think it's the reason why we are the way we are today and that we have this technology.

LL: So there are some who would look at all this and say, but aren't there bigger problems on earth that we should be spending this kind of money on?

ANDREW RADAR: So one thing is, NASA's budget is incredibly small. So we as a species, we spend more on pet food, laundry detergent, chewing gum, all kinds of other so-called trivial expenses. So space travel, we don't actually devote a tremendous amount of resources to as a civilization. But reducing the cost of space travel is is a really important factor. And I also find the argument that we should focus on problems here before going into space kind of funny from a historical perspective, because life on earth today is better than it's ever been. And if we had said that in the past, there's I mean, we just wouldn't be here today and we wouldn't have developed all the technologies. So if there's ever been a time in history where we've been in a place where we can devote resources to exploration, it is today.

LL: So will humanity ever reach the far edges of the galaxy?

ANDREW RADAR: Travelling to other stars is extremely difficult. I think I'm sort of actually negative on interstellar travel. I have a whole chapter on that in my book of sort of why this method isn't suitable and why this one might work, but it'd still take 100 years. That kind of thing. So travel to other stars is really difficult, but I think that's one of the reasons why travelling into our own solar system first. There's hundreds of moons. Our solar system is a huge and fascinating and really varied place, and that creates the incentives that drive our technology to make us better at being spacefaring, so we could actually someday contemplate a voyage to another star.

LL: Andrew Rader, interesting conversation. Thank you.

ANDREW RADAR: Thank you.

LL: Andrew Rader is a mission manager at the private space company Space X and the author of Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. He was in Los Angeles. That is our program for today. Stay tuned over to Radio One for Q. We're going to leave you today with words from Canada's top athlete of 2019. Tennis star Bianca Andreescu was awarded the Lou Marshall Trophy. The decision, no surprise, was unanimous. And there's no question she had an incredible year winning the U.S. Open. Here she is talking about what 2019 has taught her. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

BIANCA ANDREESCU: It definitely wasn't easy, I remember before the Rogers Cup. There were so many things going through my mind because it was my hometown and I played on the on that tennis court ever since I was 10-years-old and I was facing Serena Williams, a person I looked up to my whole life. And I remember talking to my coach about the game plan, and I just started bawling because so many emotions were going through my head, but I think that definitely helped release some stress. And then going into the U.S. Open, I kind of had a feeling of how I would feel before the match. So I was better able to control my emotions. I think that's number one for me, is to be able to control my emotions because I'm a pretty emotional person. I like to wear my emotions on my sleeve. But I just want to be myself out there, so I try my best to control it as much as possible, especially when I'm on the court. It's also taught me patience, because when I'm on the court, I want everything right away. So if I miss a shot or if I lose the game, I get pretty down on myself. So I just have to bounce back and realize that not everything is going to go my way. So I just try to stay in the present moment as much as possible.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Dec. 11, 2019 episode transcript

More Stories Like This