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The Current Transcript for December 14, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MALE VOICE: The coffee's a lot cheaper. You don't have to commute, you see all those jokes with people wearing sweatpants and wearing a nice shirt on top. Believe me, it happens.

MATT GALLOWAY: Millions of Canadians have turned the dining room table or bedroom into an office over the last 20 months, leaving the work attire in the closet or, yes, just in view of the laptop camera. How do those out of the office really feel about working from home, and what would it take to get them back in the office. In 30 minutes inside a new report on what work has become for many and what it might look like when we eventually get out of this. In many ways, when people head back to the office will depend on what Omicron means for Canada. Coming up: what we do and don't know about a rapidly spreading new variant and whether accelerating booster shots needs to happen sooner rather than later. Plus:

JOE DORGAN: We're helping the environment. They spent how many millions, they spent in the last weeks in... where were they? Scotland, at this conference or something like that. What did they accomplish? Nothing. We know what we're doing and we can do it.

MG: Joe Dorgan's efforts at tackling climate change include feeding his cattle seaweed to cut down on the methane they expel. How to make cattle burps better for the environment. In just over an hour, we start, though, with the value of an apology. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Changing the culture of the Canadian Armed Forces

Guests: Leah West and Donna Riguidel

ANITA ANAND: Countless lives have been harmed because of the inaction and systemic failure. This is a failure that our Canadian Armed Forces, our department and the government of Canada will always carry with us. These institutions failed you. And for that, we are sorry. I am sorry.

MG: I am sorry. Those words have been a long time coming for survivors of sexual assault, harassment and gender discrimination in Canada's military and Department of National Defence. And the words were spoken by Minister of Defence Anita Anand on Monday. She also repeated promises to make meaningful change in the military's culture. Well, joining me now are two survivors of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces. Leah West served as an armed... an armoured officer for a decade. She's now an assistant professor of international relations at Carleton University. And Major Donna Riguidel is the co-founder of the Survivor Perspectives Consulting Group, it works to educate members of the Canadian Armed Forces about military sexual trauma. Good morning to you, both!

BOTH: Good morning.

MG: Leah West, we'll start with you. What did you think of the apology that Anita Anand delivered yesterday on behalf of the Government of Canada?

LEAH WEST: Um, I thought it was genuine. Um, I've spoken with Minister Anand since she's been appointed and I believe that she genuinely is committed to change. So I thought that her apology reflected that. I was more disappointed that it was her who was only recently appointed to the job and not the prime minister who made that apology, given his responsibility over the last six years for not doing anything. And I was also really given the historic nature of this and the fact that we tend to hold our elected officials accountable in Parliament. I would have liked to see the government's apology come from the House of Commons, but the substance of what she said I found to be good, especially the element of talking about putting resources, time and money to the problem in the future.

MG: I want to talk about that in a moment. Could I just go back to what you said about who delivered the apology? The prime minister was asked about this yesterday and wouldn't say why he didn't deliver the apology, why it was the minister. What would it have meant to you and to other survivors of sexual assault and harassment had the prime minister been the one to deliver that apology?

LEAH WEST: Well, all of this is about taking responsibility and about accountability for past failure. And so having someone who was responsible and accountable, ultimately he's responsible for Canadian armed forces, the minister, previous to Minister Anand, obviously no longer in that position because he failed on this front. So I think for real accountability, for the government to really take responsibility, having the person who is ultimately responsible for the last six years, since we've had the Deschamps report and the failure to act. The failure to ensure Canadian forces leadership was taking meaningful action to address the crisis. I would have liked to see it from somebody who had that responsibility over the last six years.

MG: What about for you Major Donna Riguidel? Did the apology offered by Minister Anita Anand go far enough for you?

DONNA RIGUIDEL: I think that the apology, I agree that it was sincere and was genuine, and I understand the idea of wanting the prime minister to be the one to address it, because obviously, that's absolutely right. I mean, he was in power and there was a definite failure to really, you know, really try to tackle this issue. That said, though, I know within the survivor community there is an absolute total just distrust right now of, you know, the people that have been involved in this for the last six years. So I think that the MND with... So far with her choices that she's made since she's sort of gotten into the chair, she's shown to be really decisive and very direct. And I think that this will go a long way to showing that, you know what, that she is worthy of the trust and hopefully then can sort of help, you know, through her actions, rebuild the trust in everybody else. I know there's a lot of people angry out there, and I don't think that many of them would have listened to the apology all the way through had it come from the PM. I just don't.

MG: Let me ask you more about that distrust. I mean, we know that an apology can bring up strong emotions in people who have been affected, given that level of distrust. What is your sense and what have you been hearing from other survivors about what they were looking for in that apology?

DONNA RIGUIDEL: Well, I mean, there's a lot of angry... justifiably angry people out there that, you know, have been not only, you know, violated by the people that assaulted or harassed them, but then again betrayed by the very organisation that they, you know, put their trust in. We joined the CAF for a reason we wanted to serve, you know, our country, and saw this as a worthy way to move forward in our lives in Canada and then to be portrayed in that way, of course, would cause a huge sense of violation and destroy that faith. I mean, I said yesterday to somebody how difficult it is to go on and still trust and serve with somebody who, you know, just assaulted you. You know, within the last 12 hours and what that feels like. And you know, I don't think that any apology alone is going to be... Obviously, is going to be enough. But I do recognise that this was a really important step, and I know that sounds very strange when we've had Operation Honour and we sort of, you know, been at least somehow engaged in this fight for, you know, six or seven years now. But they missed this step the first time around. They really need to start with, you know, responsibility and accountability. You can't get to that restorative or reconciliation without that. So in my opinion, this is the first step towards kind of getting this, and it doesn't mean we have made any progress, but hopefully now we'll see, you know, more fulsome and sustained effort.

MG: Jody Thomas, the deputy minister of Defence, also offered an apology on behalf of her department, as well as she made reference to her own experience serving in the Canadian Navy. Take a listen to this.

JODY THOMAS: Speaking personally, during my career, I've witnessed misogyny, homophobia, hazing, exclusion, open contempt and abuse of authority of varying degrees. That was typically justified under the guise of feeding esprit of corps. When I reflect upon my own service in the Navy, I struggle. With my own decisions decades ago to simply ignore behaviour directed at me that was rooted in misapplied sense of power. I knew. That if I had complained, if I had made a fuss that I would not have been allowed to participate, that women would have been considered weak and that we couldn't take it.

MG: Major Donna Riguidel, that's a pretty powerful description of why it's been difficult for some people to come forward and report misconduct and abuse. Is that changing? Do you believe within the military?

DONNA RIGUIDEL: I hope it is. It's not at the same level of change across the board. I referenced that so many times that exact, you know, sentiments. Last week I did five classes back to back and we talked about that at length about feeling like, you know, not only is that sort of the price you have to pay, you know, for a seat at the table is to roll with the punches, but also what it feels like to, you know, be complicit in someone's behaviour. Like I myself have reached out, you know, through my channels to apologize to people in the past that I didn't support, that I didn't step forward and stand with for a couple of reasons. One, because you're so marginalized that you just don't feel like you have the ability to do so. But there's also, you know, there's so much more to that, that we get used to in the military working through discomfort. You have to, it's part of the job. Mission man myself, you know, you get used to working tired, wet, cold, hungry, whatever it might be. But mission success is the goal. So you press on and so many of us, you know, men, women, members of the LGBT+ community, you know, anybody who's sort of marginalized within the military just kind of assume that discomfort as one more thing that you have to put up with. And we just put our heads down and get the job done, no matter how awful it feels, no matter how much you're training on your own sense of self or even you know your own, your own realization that you don't have the courage in that moment to stand up. So you have to live with that and it's tough.

MG: In some ways, Leah, that speaks to what you spoke about when you were on this program in May, talking about the culture that's at the root of this problem. What is it going to take? And part of this, I guess, picks up on the idea of what follows the apology. What is it truly going to take to address the culture? And do you see steps being made already to get to the root of the issue?

LEAH WEST: I'm not personally a culture change expert, but I, you know, just from my own experience, I think a lot of it starts really at the foundational training level for those coming into the forces. And you know, it's at that level that you're taught what right looks like. And you know what behaviour should be modelled, what leadership looks like. And I think we really need to focus on ensuring that training at that level model's excellent behaviour, whether it be basic training or RMC? But then also efforts to ensure that those who are being advanced into leadership positions, promotions, etc. are not advancing people who behave badly, who don't espouse the values and culture that is necessary going forward. And I know that there has been efforts on both of these fronts, but I think something that more generally needs to happen is the stuff that Major Riguidel is involved in right now is changing the mindset of the people who are already in. Getting them to understand what is acceptable, what is not acceptable and how to respond and how to talk about these issues rather than dealing with them alone and having, you know, the capacity to engage in dialogue around these issues because people are going to make mistakes, right? Jokes are going to come out because people have been making the same kind of jokes for 20 years in their career. The changing culture requires having a conversation about why that joke is no longer acceptable and getting people onboard and because you can't just change things by changing the top or changing the bottom, you need to change people's understanding and perception of what is OK all the way through the rank structure to get real culture change.

MG: Well, then let me... I mean Major Riguidel, tell me a bit about the work that you do and the courses that you lead and how to, Leah West's point, that you address what's happening within the forces. Not just you know, new recruits, but the people who are already there.

DONNA RIGUIDEL: Right. So at our course, what we try to do is introduce, you know, that survivors perspective. So tell people what it's like, put a human face on the issue, but it goes a little bit more than that. Like all the way along, we sort of try to address sexual misconduct as a military issue, and that makes sense because we're military and we like to put military solutions on things. But this is not a military born problem. We recruit into the CAF and then within the CAF people that we find a life support or a culture that nurtures this kind of behaviour and allows it and in some ways promotes it. So it's important to not only, you know, address that. And again, you know, get in there and really engage, but also we teach people how to support survivors when they come forward because everybody always looks to the punitive disciplinary piece and says, Oh, you know, when you find one or throw the book at them, not realising that, first of all, the legal system is really woefully inadequate in kind of dealing with sexual predation and you're never really going to get, in most cases, what most would consider kind of a positive outcome on those, recognising that the single biggest place where we can have an impact is in supporting survivors so that what happened to them doesn't have to define them. They can, you know, again heal, process and then continue to achieve their dreams, whether that be in uniform or if they ultimately cycle out. They do so, you know, from a mentally healthy place. And yeah, they'll carry the scars because there's nothing that will undo what was done, but it won't be the be all, end all of their experience. They'll be able to still again achieve all of their dreams and reach their full potential. And that's the goal of what we're trying to do is introduce that survivor support piece that's been just missing the whole way along.

MG: And have you seen change within the armed forces?

DONNA RIGUIDEL: I've seen huge change within my... So we've gotten to about a little over a thousand people trained so far and even from when we first started in June, like the impacts of what we're doing is amazing even to me, like I'm meeting people, people are reaching and asking for the training. There's such a huge need. But along with that, like, I compare the apology that we heard yesterday to apologies that I've heard or been part of that have fallen out of our training. So I've had, you know, people within my own chain of command from the past who have taken my training now and then they'll approach me after and say, You know what, Donna, I am so sorry. Not because they were, you know, themselves necessarily an offender, but because they didn't notice, they didn't recognize, they didn't intervene. And having that apology at that point is so powerful. I hope all survivors get it. I hope that we get more of that.

MG: So, Leah, the apologies are made. And then you said that you were encouraged in some ways by what the minister said about what could follow those apologies. Tell me more about that and what you're hoping to see now?

LEAH WEST: Well, I mean, we're talking about culture change of Canada's largest institution. And it's not just the training that the Major is giving, as we talked about, it's reformatting training across the board, re-doing our promotion and advancement, you know, cycles. There's so much that needs to be done. The military justice reform, there's a lot of steps that need to be taken that require time and money and resources. And we're asking this of a Canadian armed forces that is already overstretched, especially in terms of manpower. So, you know, now you need extra money and extra resources, right? And so actually devoting the funds and not stripping the funds elsewhere from the Canadian armed forces missions, critical missions in order to accomplish all of these tasks, I think is going to be crucial moving forward. Another thing that I heard from the minister yesterday, excuse me, I don't remember if it was in the apology or some interviews afterwards was talking about putting in very clear kind of guidance and expectations on reporting to her and the public about what is taking place. So I think building back public trust is also another big thing. This apology was important for that. But I think having routine regularised reporting to the public and to members of the CAF about what is actually happening is going to be really important for building back that trust. Action is happening, right? We've heard so many times that it's not just about the apology, it also matters what happens next. So people need to see and hear what is happening next. And I think that'll be incredibly important for people to actually, you know, think back on this apology as something that was meaningful.

MG: Donna, you talked about why people go into the military, in the armed forces in the first place and what they believe they're signing up for. And I wonder how... How challenged that is now by what we're talking about and what is unfolded over the last many years and decades.

DONNA RIGUIDEL: Oh, I mean, nobody, nobody signs up to the CAF to become... I mean, we call ourselves unfortunate search matter experts in military sexual trauma. And of course, you know, also once you're in... nobody signed up originally to kind of, you know, go out on a medical release from PTSD, from being sexually assaulted. I think that we have a long way to go so we can rebuild that trust and again show people that we have such an exemplary organisation. I know over my career, you know, I've certainly had bad experiences, but the vast majority of people I've worked with are amazing. And the changes that I've seen in, you know, the ripple effect, in just the people that I've had the honour of, you know, educating and facilitating with the subject has just... I cannot, it cannot be overstated how incredible it is to be in the room when all of a sudden you have, you know, 30 people in front of you that now get it and they're going to go out and support people who are in pain and who are suffering so that, you know, they feel that they can now heal and continue to work and continue to achieve their goals. We will get there if we stay the course on the trauma informed survivors, centered approach. We really will. And you know, yeah, it's going to take money and resources and time. But as long as we keep pushing at this we'll get there, we'll make mistakes and we'll stumble because there is no blueprint to follow. Nobody, no other uniformed services tried this yet. And you know what? That's why it's going to work because this is the right approach, and I'm so happy that we finally found our way to it. So again, hopefully we just stay on it and push through this.

MG: Leah, the remaining minute to you. What will tell you that the armed forces are on the right track, given everything that's been said, the apology that's been made, the promises that have been made?

LEAH WEST: Oh, that's a good question. Um, well, I guess to me, it'll see real engagement with Justice Arbour's recommendations, real effort to institute those again, like I said, transparency about the steps that are being taken. And to me, um, it's not always going to be, you know, what I'm hearing out of Ottawa. It'll be my friends who are now commanding officers and who are fighting to implement these things and whether or not they feel heard, whether or not they feel empowered, whether or not the changes that have been ordered from on high are are being implemented genuinely and whether or not they're receiving support when they bring around suggestions for change, that will be a big thing for me. But one thing we didn't touch on that I just really want to say is that I thought General Eyre's apology was fantastic. We talked about [cross talk] and the ministers, but I felt like my experience was absolutely reflected in the words that he said, and he brought me to tears and to feel heard by a man of his rank. And to see that it was genuine to me, that was the most powerful moment yesterday.

MG: It's great to speak with you both. Thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for talking to us this morning.

BOTH: Thank you.

MG: Leah West served as an armoured officer for a decade. She's now an assistant professor of international affairs at Carleton University. Major Donna Riguidel is co-founder of the Survivor Perspectives Consulting Group. If you're a survivor of sexual assault in the Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence, you can access support services through the Sexual Misconduct Response Centre call toll free 1-844-750-1648 And if you'd like to access resources for other sexual assault survivors, visit endingviolencecanada.org. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Working remotely or working from home? No one-size-fits-all solution, study says

Guest: Linda Duxbury

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

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MG: Still to come, when you think seaweed you might think Japanese cuisine, but it's also on the menu for the cows at Joe Dorgan's Dairy Farm in P.E.I. In about 30 minutes, what a cow's diet has to do with climate change, we'll also take a look at booster vaccine strategies across this country. But first, if you thought there was a time that the office would get back to normal, think again.

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[SOUNDCLIP: Doug Ford: "This is not the time for half measures".

Reporter: "Starting midnight tomorrow, non-essential businesses in the province will be closed".

Different Reporter: "These are unusual times and this is an unusual location for tonight's program, it's my back deck. Like many of you, I'm working from home, not because I'm sick or in isolation".

Justin Trudeau: "All Canadians as much as possible should stay home".]

MG: Stay home, stop the spread. During this pandemic, we've been told to turn our kitchen tables into office space if we can. Millions of Canadians who can work from home made that transition, not knowing how long it would last. Nearly two years in, some companies are trying to call their employees back to the actual office. But a new variant is complicating things.

KIERAN MOORE: I'm also asking businesses and organisations to remain diligent and vigilant. We are asking that employers ask their employees to work from home whenever possible. Reducing mobility of people will help to reduce disease transmission.

MG: Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario's chief medical officer of health speaking last week. The Ontario government has also announced it will delay back to work plans for its public service. It seems like the only thing that's clear about the future of work is that not all Canadians want the same thing.

FEMALE VOICE: So I'm a lawyer and I'm currently working in the office. We have the option of working from home, but I don't partake. I don't like the isolation, I suppose. I like the guidance and the atmosphere at work.

MALE VOICE: I work from home. The coffee's a lot cheaper, so you don't have the commute. You see all those jokes with people wearing sweatpants and wearing a nice shirt on top. Believe me, it happens. I've worked that way, probably for over 20 years now. But I think with the pandemic, you feel a lot more isolated than you used to. I think my ideal work situation and probably a lot of people's ideal work situation would be having somewhere in the middle where we have a great deal of flexibility to work remotely. If you happen to have a kind of job that permits that and also having some time in the office and having some of that affiliation and teamwork face to face.

ANOTHER FEMALE VOICE: I'm a receptionist and sometimes I wish I could be working from home. But honestly, like when I was at home, I was more of like getting into a depressing kind of state. So being out makes me more happier and more able to move on with my life and not just stay at my house.

MG: Some people in Calgary talking about work and what that looks like for them in 2021. Businesses are having to navigate regulations, what their employees want and what's best for the bottom line. A new report from the Conference Board of Canada in partnership with Carleton University may offer those employers some guidance. Linda Duxbury is a professor at Carleton's Sprott School of Business. She's one of the co-authors of the report. Linda, good morning.

LINDA DUXBURY: Good morning.

MG: We just heard some workers there talking about their preferences and what they like and don't like and what they are looking for and hoping to keep, I suppose, when things get back to normal, whenever that is. You did a big survey about this, what did you talk to workers about and what did they tell you when it came to how they see work unfolding in the future?

LINDA DUXBURY: So my research deals with Work-Life Balance, stress, employee well-being, all of these kinds of things, managing change. And so we did a survey throughout... we did it at two points during the survey, during the pandemic, we have over twenty six thousand people who responded from right across Canada. One of the things our people are not doing very well, a lot of the rhetoric that we hear out there, you know, well, productivity, you know, it hasn't gone down. In fact, it's gone up. The data would suggest it's probably gone up because people are working harder. They're working evenings, they're working... they're getting up earlier, they're working later. People are struggling right now. And in terms of how they want to work, well, we can't... What we can say is it's kind of messy. One in four want to go back to the office full time. One in four want to stay at home full time and the rest want some combination in the middle. So you know it, it took a lot to get everybody home. Now it's going to take a lot to get everybody back.

MG: I was going to say and when they get back, it suggests that it's a real mountain for companies to try to assess and figure out how they're going to get over when it comes to figuring out how this is all going to balance out and how people are going to be able to get what they want.

LINDA DUXBURY: Well, what I'm telling companies quite clearly is, you know, it was a giant experiment to send everybody home, OK? We didn't know what we were doing. Many companies were doing it on the seat of their pants and now we're going to have exactly the same issue going back. There's so many things in play. And you know, when you're talking about hybrid work, what exactly does that mean? So I hear companies say while some days at work and some days at the office, well, the devil's in the details in terms of, what exactly do you mean by some? Are teams going to all be at the same time? Who decides, who decides so many of these things? Employees right now, because we're heading into some pretty significant labour force shortages at the high end of the, you know... They're talking about it in the United States, we're going to see it in Canada as well. So organisations who push too hard and say, well, this is how we're going to do it. They could lose people who have a choice, you know, so it's going to be challenging.

MG: We'll talk about those challenges. You said initially, one of the challenges is that many people are not doing well. Tell me more about that. Who is not thriving or even really, you know, keeping their heads above water when it comes to working from home?

LINDA DUXBURY: So what is interesting about this is some of the levels of stress... So I've been studying employee well-being for multiple decades. I've never seen job stress scores like I'm seeing now. I'm not seeing perceived stress scores, et cetera... work scores. A lot of people, it depends if you're struggling with schooling your children at home, if you are trying to do a job, you've got a boss who expects you to be on 24/7, you've got a work ethic where you feel responsible for your clients and you've got a husband or a wife who's also at home sharing bandwidth with you. You know, we do know that a lack of predictability and a lack of control really makes life a lot more difficult even without a pandemic. Well, people are in a situation right now where they can't control anything, even going to the grocery store. So most people, a lot of people are doing very poorly.

MG: Which leads to the suggestion that some people might want to get back into the office. But you found that at the managerial level, that might be the case. But clerical and administrative staff who might work for those managers did not want to go back to the office. Why do you think that is?

LINDA DUXBURY: Well, I think a lot of people are confusing a lot of things here. So people during the pandemic spent a lot more time with their families, and that's great. But many of them didn't have child care, day-care, they didn't have a commute. And so they don't want to put that back into their life. They don't want the expenses of nice clothing. You know, I'm sitting here talking to you in sweatpants, a sweatshirt. I didn't have to dress up. It's quite nice. A lot of people are like that. They don't want the expense of going into the office and they have this idea that it's better at home but they forget that the office also offers some real advantages. And, you know, going forward how we're going to balance those two. And the other thing I would really caution employers who are listening to this right now, almost all the rhetoric right now is around back to work, whether we're going hybrid, what does hybrid look like. I think we have to spend as much time on employee wellbeing and trying to re-engage people who've lost touch with the organisational culture, who've lost touch with their colleagues and many of whom have maintained their productivity out of great personal cost throughout the pandemic. We have to mend bridges, and we have focussed on mental health as much as we have to focus on return to work.

MG: There's two parts that are worth picking at there. One is around productivity. You'll hear stories because people are working from home. And there's not the separation of... if you are lucky enough to work from home, you know you're not leaving the office and then going home. Work is at home. And so the bedroom where you sleep is the office where you work. Is that truly extending the workday for many people?

LINDA DUXBURY: Oh, absolutely. It's extending the workday for almost 2/3 of the people that were in our survey. Most people get up earlier. They stay up later. They work on the weekend and they don't spend enough time on themselves. So, you know, they work as they can, so they try to combine everything together. The other thing I think is really important to mention when we're talking about this whole productivity because a lot of the discussion is around productivity and a lot of it... I hear organisations and I hear employees go, Well, we've got proof of concept, look it works, so we should continue with it. You don't have proof of nothing because what you just did for two years is actually... it wasn't really telework. It wasn't remote work. It was a jury rigged solution.

MG: It was working from home during a pandemic, not working from home.

LINDA DUXBURY: It was work from home... It was what we call enforced work from home. Hey, you have no choice. Go tomorrow. And good luck. So, you know all of what we would recommend be in place before somebody be sent home. None of it happened. So there should be discussions because not everybody wants to go home, who has the work ethic, who has the personal situation, who has a home office with the door? You know, in our survey, people who actually had an office with the door did way better than people who worked in the basement and the kitchen table. You know, a lot of people who work in the bathroom, they work wherever they can, but that's not healthy for us. You also have day-care in place for your kids. Hey, that sure didn't happen. You have an ergonomic setup. Hey, people worked on their bed. People... You know, look at the physiotherapy needs right now, which shows you what went on. So we have to... sorry, I get all frustrated.

MG: No, it's fine.

LINDA DUXBURY: We have to stop doing the following. We have to stop saying, Well, look at people who are more productive or as productive at home. We have to get behind what that productivity is. And if people maintain their productivity at huge cost to their mental health, is that a gain? The other thing we have to stop saying is we've got proof of concept. Don't sell your building just yet. And we have to recognize that there's also been a cost in terms of collegiality, in terms of organisational culture, creativity. People have just got their head down and they're delivering as best they can, but that's not what we want, I don't think any of us, going forward.

MG: Do you think this... What people have gone through? And again, not everybody is able to work from home. Many of us have been coming into work and many people, they don't have an office to go to because they're working in jobs that aren't in a physical office setting. But do you think this has changed in some ways how people view work and how they see what a job is?

LINDA DUXBURY: There's a lot of research showing that people's new attitude is called YOLO. Have you heard that? Which is you only live once. Nothing like going through a death, you know, death defying experience with the pandemic to actually make people think and re-evaluate what's important to them. So... But we've also got data, 60 percent of our twenty six thousand people are essential workers, and nobody would say they're doing well, either. They're just doing poorly from a different route set of causes and the people who are working from home. The pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of all workers, and I think those who can are evaluating what it is they want. So you're starting to see employees pushing back. If you look right now, restaurants can't hire, grocery stores can't hire. People are saying you, you call me essential. You call me important, but you treat me like dirt. So, you know, I don't really feel important. I'm not feeling the love here. So people are calling their organisation to task and saying, you know, there's certain things I want, and if I don't get them, maybe you and I don't have a relationship moving forward. So that is also complicating things.

MG: How important is culture at a workplace and what's been lost when it comes to the culture, when everybody's in the same physical space?

LINDA DUXBURY: So it was interesting because I was listening to the interview of the woman from the military, the military's got an incredibly strong organisational culture. So the culture is a very positive force. If it's good culture, if it's one that respects people, promotes balance, you know, empowers, has autonomy. A toxic culture is something to be avoided. So people who work for organisations where their... the organisational culture is not the strength of the organisation, actually liked working from home because they avoided the politics, they avoided the nonsense. Whereas people who work for organisations where the culture was family-like, their colleagues were incredibly important to them in terms of their relationships, their manager was important. Those people really missed work and they missed the culture. But what I would suggest is organisations with more toxic cultures. This is an opportunity for them to reset, isn't it, because people have been away. You have the opportunity to remake yourself. What our data does show, though, is that younger people... you know, how have we onboarded people during this thing, you know? People... You know, the only... I can only see you by looking at your avatar on my screen? Well, that's certainly not the way to connect to your boss and to your colleagues and to feel connected to your work. So there's just so many things that we have to do to re-engage people in the workforce when this is over. If it ever is over, I'm convinced it will be over. That in fact, it's hard for managers to know where to start. What I would really recommend is don't do what many of you always do, which is have 57 number one priorities. I would suggest you pick two or three things, focus on them and then focus on the next thing. The other thing I tell organisations is you have to become ambidextrous.

MG: What does that mean?

LINDA DUXBURY: What that means is, I teach change management. I study change management. It means that you're able to change the tires on your car, when you're driving along the 417 at one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. It means being able to do two things, two difficult things at once. It means that organisations have to focus on the survival of the firm in the long term, so they have to do the business of the firm. But they also have to make significant changes right now because in fact, we are going to be going back to work soon. This Omicron has bought us a little bit more time in order to do some of the heavy lifting and the heavy thinking. But we have to start actually putting changes in place. And I think organisations have to be honest with their people and say, you know, this is new for us too. We have no idea what we're doing, but we're going to try this first. It's our best guess after doing some research, after listening to you, and it might not work. So if it doesn't work, bear with us, we'll try something else again.

MG: You talked about the idea of a hybrid workplace, which is essentially some people split their time. They work from home sometimes, they are in the office sometimes. Is working from home, given what people have been through and what they've been put through... Do you think that employers need to look at working from home as a right or as a privilege?

LINDA DUXBURY: Well, there's the nub of the whole argument isn't it.The ideal work arrangement is it's a privilege, not a right. Many employees are now saying, Well, I just did it for two years. It's my right to continue, etc.

MG: I was going to say, is that horse out of the barn now? Because people, in some ways it goes back to the idea of thinking differently about work, that the balance is different now than it was before this pandemic.

LINDA DUXBURY: Well, the balance in the discussion certainly is. But some jobs that were done at home during the pandemic, nobody would have ever expected them to be done at home and quite often they weren't done well. All right. And some people actually don't have the personal discipline or the preference or the personality to work from home well. And some people don't have good work-life balance at all. People's preference to balance is that they're either what we call segmentors. They like to have their work time and their family time separated by location cues, time cues, whatever. And then there's these people called integrators that are really good at juggling two balls at once and flip back and forth.

MG: So how do the employers go about prioritising, you know, how you determine who can work from home and who can't and what the hybrid actually looks like? What are the things that they need to focus on?

LINDA DUXBURY: I think my own personal opinion is you have to start with the job and you have to look at how can this job be done? I would suggest looking at tasks, not entire jobs, because jobs can be broken down into tasks. Some of which can be done very well at home, some of which need to be done at the office. Once you have an idea of the tasks that can be done at home and at the office, then you start looking at the people who are currently holding those positions, and you might have to have a discussion with somebody saying, well, you really want to work from home, but you have this job of which only 20 percent of it can actually productively and effectively be done at home. So if you want to spend more than 20 percent of your time at home, then maybe we have to... Do we really value? Maybe we have to find you a different role in the company. So there's going to have to be discussions like that as well.

MG: I just wonder whether that changes the expectations of employers and employees?

LINDA DUXBURY: I think the problem is right now. Expectations have become incredibly blurred and people don't... The communication has been spotty at best. You know, everything on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, we don't have spontaneous conversations. We don't have social conversations. I think we have to do this major reset where we actually start having a discussion. In your ideal world, what would you like to do? What actually is your job? Then let's figure out what is possible together. But I think it's not going to serve anybody if the company goes under. It's not, you know, people need work because people need income, because people need to support themselves and their families.

MG: So based on that, I mean, and the research that you've done, what proportion of Canadian workplaces, do you think will really have changed the way that they work and where that work is done, when we get out of this?

LINDA DUXBURY: When we get out of it? Oh, I would say most workforces that have... the work will change for knowledge workers. It definitely will, because many of them could have done some of their tasks productively and effectively at home before the pandemic because the work was conducive to it. So when we come back, those people will still.... The people, knowledge workers and those kind of jobs who are able to do some or all of their work remotely, if they want to. They probably have the negotiating power to be able to get it from their employer. But you're going to see another kind of thing where people are going, well, I'm an essential worker and it's not fair because I'd like to work from home, too. So, you know, it's not going to be easy discussions moving forward, but because it's not easy doesn't mean we should avoid having these discussions and just hope that it works out for the best. We've got to start having these discussions.

MG: So just in the last minute or so that we have, if you're an employer listening to this, what do you want to take away from this conversation in the research that you've done? As you say, we're trying to change the tires on the highway as we're driving down the highway.

LINDA DUXBURY: I would think you have to start at least getting the jack out of the trunk, OK? I think you have to stop, you know, hoping and talking about some and you have to start putting some specificity. I would always start with looking at the work and look at the work objectively and say... And honestly say what percent of this can be done remotely and what percent of it needs really or would benefit from. Once you've got the work, then go to your people and layer the people on top of the work and wherever possible, try to come up with a collaborative solution where you know you meet somewhere in the middle with your employees. If you're a unionised workforce, you better bring your union in as quickly as possible to be involved in these discussions as well. You know, this is a marathon. It's been a marathon at home, we've gotta start somewhere. So let's actually start limbering up and start on our journey down the runway.

MG: Linda, we'll talk about this again in the new year. In the meantime, it's good to have you on the program this morning. Thank you.

LINDA DUXBURY: Thank you very much.

MG: Linda Duxbury, chancellor's professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. She'll be back with us in the new year to talk about more changes in terms of how we work. We have a special series that we'll bring you called "work in progress". We would love to hear from you. How has your own work situation changed? What's going well when it comes to working through the pandemic? What's been a nightmare? You can reach us on Twitter @thecurrentCBC or send us an email or a voice memo, at thecurrentCBC is how to email us, Thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update, how you get back to the office and when you get back to the office will depend in some ways on this new variant. We'll talk about booster shots coming up in just a few moments time. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

Growing calls for expanded access to COVID-19 booster shots; and how seaweed feed for cows can help fight climate change

Guests: Prabhat Jha and Karen Beauchemin

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Just in time for the holidays COVID cases are surging across this country. The newly discovered Omicron variant could become the dominant strain across Canada by the end of the month, and that trend could repeat right across the board.

THERESA TAM: So what we're seeing in Ontario, I expect to be seen in other areas of the country. For sure we are seeing community transmission, possibly in its early stages, but this can rapidly escalate in the days to come.

MG: That's Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, speaking yesterday. To stem this rising tide, some doctors are calling for wider access to booster shots. Some provinces and territories, including Manitoba and Yukon, have already expanded access to anyone 18 and up in other provinces like B.C., Ontario and Alberta. Only those over the age of 50 or 60 are currently eligible for the third shot. Dr. Prabhat Jha is a professor of global health at the University of Toronto and epidemiologist at Unity Health. Dr. Good morning.

PRABHAT JHA: Good morning.

MG: Many of your colleagues, doctors in Ontario and elsewhere across the country are saying there should be a greater urgency to getting third shots into people's arms. There is an editorial in the Globe and Mail this morning saying that Canada needs to stop jogging like we have all the time in the world and we need to begin running like Godzilla is chasing us. Do we need to ramp up dramatically access to booster shots?

PRABHAT JHA: I think we have no choice given the evidence that's emerging, particularly from the U.K. and Denmark, who I guess, are about a week ahead of Canada in terms of the Omicron variant being introduced, and they're showing very clear evidence that Omicron is now the dominant variant in terms of new cases. And importantly, they're showing that even people who've had two doses of the earlier vaccines can get infected. And it's unclear whether the Omicron also has a lower hospitalisation rate, which is the hope. But so far, the data is unclear and given all that we've observed. I think absolutely a two pronged attack is needed. One is to rapidly roll out the third dose, I don't call it the booster. I think we should be thinking about these vaccines as a three dose regime. So a third dose, particularly to the people above 50, because our goal remains to make sure our hospitals aren't flooded with patients that end up dying, our nursing homes are protected.

MG: Is that the priority that you need to look... because again, there's the suggestion to open up... I'll use your language the third dose to everyone over the age of 18. But you're suggesting that what we have right now given supply, we focus on those who are over the age of 50.

PRABHAT JHA: We did this, as you'd recall, Matt, early on, when vaccine supply was limited, the priority was to get needles into people who were at risk of being hospitalized or dying. So those are really above age 50, and that should be the priority for the third dose as well. But I think there's a complementary strategy, which is just remarkable how poorly the governments have done it across the country, which is to send people test kits. I know Alberta has done so, but Ontario certainly could is male people at home test kits and let people intelligently use kits to test themselves if they think they've been exposed or have some symptoms and isolate and report. I think we need to bring that tool in quickly. Many of us have been arguing for months that that should be introduced, but now we've given the Omicron surge. We have no choice but to really accelerate that.

MG: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, certainly ahead of the curve on that as well. You mentioned what's happening in the U.K. On Sunday, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there's a tidal wave of Omicron coming. Is that in some way predicting what we're likely to see here?

PRABHAT JHA: Well, the news is mostly quite bad of how infectious this variant is. It seems to be twice as infectious as the Delta variant, which is currently circulating at least twice the cases are doubling currently in the U.K. and Denmark about every three days. So if you just do the math and think well, if Ontario is running about 2000 cases right now or a little under in a matter of days will be up to 6000 or 4000 and then up to 8000. And that's a real worry. Now, it's not clear that it's going to be that trajectory. So this is where careful monitoring is needed. But it does suggest you act like it was going to be that scenario. And so I think doing some very sensible things, including some guidance on how large should be indoor gatherings over the Christmas break. I certainly will decrease the number of gatherings that... in which there's many people and I'm encouraging everyone to mask even in indoor gatherings, even amongst your friends, given what we know about the Omicron variant.

MG: What don't we know about the severity of the disease caused by Omicron?

PRABHAT JHA: What we don't know is does it lead to the same rate of hospitalisations and deaths as the earlier variants. The preliminary data out of South Africa suggest that it is less virulent or less severe. But that's not quite clear whether you can extrapolate those data in the younger South African population to our older population in Canada.

MG: And so given what we don't know, what should our goal be? Do you think?

PRABHAT JHA: Our goal should remain, protect the health care system from being deluged. We don't want all the ICU beds filled up in a way that shuts off every other service. We don't want to be importing ICU beds or sending patients out to other places. So that remains our priority. Now, even with a lower severity, if the absolute number of cases is very high, that you'll still end up with a big pressure on your health care system. So this is the key thing to prevent. And the two things, the three things I suppose we have in our toolbox is, get the vaccines out to the elderly population, the third dose very quickly, like urgently, like we mobilised quite well in the spring of this year. The second is to get those test kits there's millions purchased. Send them out to every home. This is what the U.K. government and Alberta government do. Just mail that to every Canadian home. And the third is, I think, guidance now on limiting the size of indoor gatherings, and we're making sure you're masked, particularly over the holiday season.

MG: Dr. Jha, good to speak with you. We'll talk more about this certainly in the days ahead. Thank you.

PRABHAT JHA: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Dr. Prabhat Jha is director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital and a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. P.E.I farmer Joe Dorgan did not set out to solve one of the world's big problems.

JOE DORGAN: This farm here is the old Dorgan farm from the lad's that landed here from Ireland. I'm the fifth generation on this farm and that... them buildings out there... the old home was out there, the old house of God. But that used to be my dairy farm. My brother has that there now.

MG: Joe Dorgan lives on the very western tip of the province. He says if you drive past his place, you'll fall off the island.

JOE DORGAN: Well, gee, drive on! You're pretty well at the end of her. To this ain't wind. This is not it.

MG: Years ago on his farm in Seacow Pond. Joe started feeding his dairy cattle seaweed gathered on the shore just across the road just like his grandfather had done.

JOE DORGAN: I had turned my dairy farm into organic, and we needed an organic source of minerals and vitamins. Can't get any more organic than this. Why not feed seaweed? We know it's all good. The old fellas always used that. So I started using it. My generation, they kind of knew about it from the old people, but we weren't interested in that. We got interested in spending money. It's the young generation today that are the people that's going to hold this place together because they've got a real interest in what they eat, where it comes from and what's been used to make all this here stuff.

MG: What came next, astonished scientists at Dalhousie University who performed tests on Joe's seaweed fed cattle. The cattle burped up to 20 percent less methane. Methane, of course, is a significant greenhouse gas, and that is when Joe's old idea took on new life.

[SOUNDCLIP: News Reporters talking about farmers feeding their cows seaweed]

MG: Scientists around the world are now studying how feeding cattle seaweed might help fight climate change. This fall, interest in this type of feed has only grown since world leaders signed a promise to reduce methane gas emissions by 30 percent. All of this makes Joe Dorgan chuckle.

JOE DORGAN: It's a simple process, but it takes time and it's a dirty job. It's dusty, this building here is an old building that was at the other end of the island. We took it apart, dragged it home, where I made 29 trips with an old truck and trailer. This rig in here, we had to make this, design it and figure it out on our own, because there was nowhere you could go buy it. That's the raw product.

FEMALE VOICE: Just a pile of seaweed?

JOE DORGAN: Yeah, it's just a pile of seaweed back there. That's that raw product. So that brought up here dumped in this hopper. It runs into this right here. It's a drum and that's turning. It knocks out sand, stones and everything that's in it. Here's our hammer. That's the rig that does the crushing. It's really just a hammer mill. Everything goes through this, goes up those pipes into the cyclone out that auger into another shaker to take out more sand or whatever. Take it out, put it into bags. There's the product in there. We don’t do nothing to it. We don't take nothing out of it. It's just the pure stuff, just 56 or 57 different minerals and vitamins and any of that stuff there. Well, where do you find that? Nowhere. Something so cheap. That stuff is on the beaches today, just rotting, it's not being used. So we brought it in and we made an industry out of it and we're helping the environment. We know what we're doing and we can do it. Like they spent how many millions, did they spend in the last two weeks in... Where were they? In Scotland at this conference or something like that? What did they accomplish? Nothing. Millions and millions of dollars spent and nobody accomplished anything. They're going home and they're saying they're going to do this and they are going to do that. They're not going to do nothing. I've been listening to that now for 50 years. Nothing happened yet. This is going to go places. I might not live long enough to see it go where I want it to go. But as recently as this morning, we had an offer to buy us out. Well, I'm not interested in that. We're getting calls from all over the world. We've had people come here from all over the world. A lot of times people wish that we'd shut up and just forget about it and go lay down somewhere. You can't quit. You never, ever quit.

MG: Joe Dorgan runs North Atlantic Organics in Seacow Pond, P.E.I. to help us digest all of this, I'm joined by Karen Beauchemin. She's a scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and an expert in methane emissions from livestock. She's been a researcher in the field for two decades and says that finally, people are paying attention to this work. Karen Beauchemin joins us now from Lethbridge. Karen, good morning.

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you think, listening to Joe Dorgan there?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Oh, I think he makes some really good points. I mean, there's a group really led by CSIRO and James Cook University in Australia. They've identified a tropical red seaweed that's been in the media a lot in the last little while, called asparagopsis taxiformis now that red tropical seaweed they have shown both in the laboratory and now, more recently in animal studies that, depending on the diet and the type of animal methane emission, can be reduced by 32 percent all the way to 98 percent, depending on the the dose and the type of animal and the type of diet. And so there's a lot of interest regarding seaweed, so it's really an interesting concept. Our group has been looking at seaweeds in recent years, but we're not really focussed on asparagopsis because that is a tropical seaweed. So it's only, you know, seen... it only grows in the coast of Australia, Hawaii and it's an invasive species in the Mediterranean. So we've been looking at seaweeds that grow in the Atlantic waters and the Pacific coast.

MG: Well, let me ask you about the problem first. We'll come back to the seaweed because the seaweed is really interesting. But let's talk about this issue of methane and the emissions, if I can put it that way, that might come from cows. How big... we heard the reporter there say that methane and cow burps are rough on the environment. How big of an environmental issue are cow burps?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: So when the cow eats feed, it digests that feed in its rumen, part of its stomach. And as a by-product of that digestion process, methane is formed and the cow then breathes out and belches out that methane into the atmosphere. So in Canada, the Environment and Climate Change Canada produces its national inventory report every year and calculates the methane emissions from ruminant livestock. And in Canada, it's about 3.3 Percent of our national greenhouse gas budget on a carbon dioxide equivalent basis.

MG: So what would that compare to? I mean, 3.3 percent maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a sizable amount.

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Transportation in Canada, for example, would be 20 percent of our national greenhouse gas budget. All of agriculture, if you include all the use of fossil fuels in agriculture and everything else growing crops, and that would be about 10 percent. But Matt, I just want to throw in here, enteric methane is a regional problem or a national problem, but it's a global problem. So if you look globally at enteric methane emissions from livestock, then it's about four or five percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions.

MG: Let me ask you a couple of other things just about the problem. And again, we're getting technical here talking about belches. We often hear about cow farts. How big of an issue is that from the other side of the... the other end of the body?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: So, there are no real cow farts, so methane that's produced in the cow stomach is released via the breath, now there is a very small amount that would be formed in the large intestine of the animal. So maybe two percent of all the methane would come from the back end of the animal. So when the media talks about cow farts it's really cow belching or cow breathing.

MG: I have learnt something new in this conversation already. Are we talking about both beef and dairy cattle?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Right. We're talking about ruminant animals in Canada, beef cattle, dairy animals, and then we have very small populations of sheep and goats. But in Canada, about 90 percent of the enteric methane emission is from beef, and that's just because of the numbers. So in Canada, we have about 12 million ruminant animals, about a million and a half dairy animals and the rest are mostly beef animals. So it's mostly from our beef herds.

MG: How do you go about measuring how much methane a cow would be giving off?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: That's a really good question. When we started this work about 20 years ago, that was absolutely our first question: How can we measure methane emissions from cattle? I mean, if we wanted to get a handle on this, we needed to figure out how to measure methane. So there's a number of different techniques that can be used, and it depends upon the scale. So in a research study when, for example, we're looking at a new feed additive or if we were working on seaweed, for example, we want to measure it on individual animals over the day. We want to look at that pattern of methane over a few days. So then the basic way we would do that is we have these large rooms, so we have an animal, we'll place that animal in a room. We call it the hotel suite and we measure the air coming into the room and the air coming out of the room. We look at the concentration of methane in the incoming air and outcoming air, and by difference, we know how much methane is produced by the animal.

MG: So let's go back to what Joe is up to then. I mean, if you feed the cattle seaweed, what does that do in terms of the methane that they would produce?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: So first of all, not all seaweeds would reduce methane. So I talked about this asparagopsis taxiformis, so that red tropical seaweed, it has a very high concentration of what is called bromoform. That's the chemically active component and that bromoform blocks, you could say, the biochemical pathway that is used in the rumen to form methane so it interferes with the biology. It interferes with that synthesis of methane in the rumen. So we call it an inhibitor. So not all seaweeds contain bromoform. And in fact, most seaweeds we would have in Atlantic waters and Pacific waters do not contain bromoform. So we're interested in other components. So we've identified phlorotannins. I don't want to get too technical here, but it's another component in seaweed that also can interfere with that biochemical synthesis of methane.

MG: Given the scale of the problem, is there enough seaweed out there that can be farmed at a sustainable level to address this issue, do you think?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: That is a very excellent point, and the answer to that is absolutely no. And so in terms of asparagopsis, which is that really potent seaweed, the idea would be not to harvest that directly from native waters, but rather to produce it in tanks locally near the source. There's a lot of issues before we see something like that on the market for farmers. We also want to know what other impacts bromoform has. Bromoform Has been identified by the U.S. EPA. It's a potentially carcinogenic compound, so we want to absolutely be sure there's no residues in meat and milk, for example. So that's a huge issue, right? It also has high iodine levels and really high levels. So when you put that in an animal's diet that increases the iodine concentration of meat and milk, not that it would be anywhere close to exceeding the maximum recommended amount, but that definitely needs to be checked out. And so, you know, you produce seaweed in tanks, you know, to ship that across the country, you'd need to dry it down. And so then there's emissions associated with transportation. So there's a lot of production issues that would need to be worked out before seaweed itself becomes a widespread mitigation tool.

MG: What about... I mean, Burger King got a lot of attention last year with this promise that the fast food chain had to serve beef from lemongrass fed cattle. Does that work?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Well, there are a number of phyto compounds. Lemongrass has what we call essential oils and there's a lot of different feeds that have essential oils and essential oils when they're present in high enough concentrations have been shown to reduce methane emissions, but a lot of that work is still very upstream. It's still laboratory based and small scale studies. And you know, we need to be able to scale up that work to find out, OK, we're reducing methane emission. But what happens to animal health? What happens to the product? What happens to animal productivity? Right. So Burger King jumped on some very early stage positive work. So that showed that lemongrass essential oils reduce methane emissions. But we need repeatability, right? You need to do multiple studies under different context, different production systems to make sure that reduction is sustained and that the productivity and the health of the animals is maintained.

MG: Is the issue not really just, we should be eating less beef? I mean, if we're talking about methane produced from the cattle that are raised to create the food that we're eating, are we not just dancing around the problem when the answer is just eat less meat?

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: That is a complicated question, and people have to make that decision for themselves. We're focussed on Canada, but the issue is globally. So in Canada, for example, the animal numbers have been constant. Ruminant livestock numbers have been basically holding constant since 2014. So we're not increasing our meat consumption. And as I mentioned, a lot of that is from beef cattle and beef cattle in Canada are very important because about a third of our agricultural land is either native grassland or forages that are put into rotation with crops. And those forages, either the native grassland or the forages in rotations, are very important for soil health and many others we call ecosystem services. So retaining soil carbon and providing habitat to wildlife in the natural grasslands, et cetera.

MG: But again, you'll hear from climate activists who say that the answer is that we need to change our diets, that there might be those extenuating circumstances and those are the factors. But really, if we want to tackle this issue, which produces, as we said, something like 3.3 Percent of Canada's greenhouse gases, the step that people have to take is to change their diet.

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: So there was a study in the U.S. that has about 10 times more ruminant livestock than we do that looked at what would be the impact to change agriculture to a complete non animal... So a vegetarian diet or a vegan diet. And what they found was that, that reduces their.... reduced their greenhouse gas inventory by about 2.6 percent. So in developed countries like Canada and the U.S., changing to a vegan diet doesn't have a large impact on the national budget because enteric methane emission is relatively small. The point is in developing countries where consumers are increasingly asking for meat in their diet because they're starting from a very low starting point. So as they gain wealth, they're increasing their meat consumption in developed countries like in the EU and Canada, and U.S. people are decreasing, slowly their meat consumption. So really, what the problem is in the developing world. And so there what we really need to do is develop technologies and information that can be used in the developing economies that can be implemented into their livestock system. So those animals reduce the amount of methane they produce.

MG: Karen, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: You're welcome. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

KAREN BEAUCHEMIN: Bye bye.

MG: Karen Beauchemin is a scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Mentioned Burger King and the chain's promise to use only lemongrass fed cows. Burger King released a song about it.

[SOUNDCLIP: Burger King - Cow's Menu ft. Mason Ramsey]

MG: Inadvertently may end up stuck in your head. Who knows? That's The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q, we'll talk about songs really getting stuck in your head. Jim Cuddy, Greg Keeler, two music legends friends for 50 years. Of course, the front of Blue Rodeo. They have a brand new album out. It's their 16th studio album. They'll talk to Tom Power about still making music and still getting along and entertaining fans coast to coast, to coast. That's coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

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