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 2021

The Current Transcript for April 27, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MALCOLM GLADWELL: When those cities were on fire it looked like you're looking into the mouth of hell.I mean, you cannot imagine a fire that big.

MATT GALLOWAY: It was one of the most single destructive nights of the Second World War, the firebombing of Tokyo. That mission and the decisions leading up to it are the subject of Malcolm Gladwell's new book, The Bomber Mafia. In 30 minutes, he's here to talk about war, morality and the sometimes unexpected consequences of technology that is meant to help, not hurt us. Also this morning:

VERONICA IVY: As far as the sports world is concerned, as far as the U.S. and Canadian governments are concerned, I am female.

MG: Veronica Ivy is a champion cyclist, a human rights advocate, and a Canadian trans woman who has had to fight for the right to compete against other women. As a number of U.S. states move to ban trans women and girls from participating on the sports teams of the gender they identify with. She is here to talk about fair competition and why that matters beyond sport. We start, though, with a doctor back in the E.R. in the midst of a crisis. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

JM: Well, you know, I'll get to, I think, how the sentiment has changed since I left. But just personally, for me, I've always felt lucky to get paid to help people and have no moral conflict about what I do when I walk into the E.R. It's kind of meeting people where they're at and trying to be as generous as possible with what resources we have on hand. And that's the thing that we puzzle around all day in the E.R. Now, I think what we're feeling as an acute stress is the greater amount of uncertainty about how things are going to go with the increasing number of cases and kind of the difficulty surrounding that meaning are we going to have to have hard conversations about ventilators with people? When do we get to take off these face shields and masks so we can actually see each other's faces? You know, those types of things, I think are probably just like an attrition of morale on top of an already kind of stressful and difficult place. So people are resolved, we're committed. We still love what we do. But I think that we're very mindful that this is a very tenuous time. And we're just like everybody. We're just human beings. We want to be on the other side of it and we want to return to if, not normalcy, at least being in the company of people we love more often. So, you know, that's what I noticed on my return is an attrition of morale.

MG: I want to come back to that in a moment. You mentioned the idea of resources. And I know that you have been pushing this idea that might help with the situation that the province of Ontario finds itself in. What are you and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians advocating for when it comes to trying to figure out how to get people here?

JM: I think that's what inspired this was the kind of the motivation that comes with what I've seen when people have been asked to deploy in their own hospital, you know, for instance, we're being asked to take shifts in the ICU, spell off some of the doctors there because they're just, you know, not just overwhelmed by case numbers. Yes. But also in desperate need of a break after such a long time and that wellspring of goodwill as something we can really rely on and really trust. And I think that extends to all of Canada. And I think that's a sentiment that certainly healthcare providers hold throughout the country. So if we're able to give, you know, get away from the boundaries, at least during this time of crisis of interprovincial regulations that prevent me from going to respond to an outbreak in Newfoundland or them coming here, I think we'd be surprised at how not only does that help us plan for or meet these needs, but it also it rejuvenates us at a time when we're asking ever more than ever before, what does it mean to be Canadian? And I think that's you know, it would allow us that freedom to not just address the inequalities that's happening with human resources during these outbreaks, but perhaps beyond in some of our rural and remote First Nations communities. And I think you'd be surprised how many people would be very interested in participating and helping, even if it was far away.

MG: How difficult is it to pull that off? I mean, Ontario is getting these nine healthcare professionals from Newfoundland and Labrador, because the government has fast tracked the paperwork that allows them to move around, so in the absence of that fast tracking, how difficult is it to to move doctors and nurses to where they need to be?

JM: Yeah, it's you know, probably a couple of months, that's my experience in terms of going through this, it's the same process in most provinces [inaudible] to harmonise it. So, you know, it would be an easy thing to say if we had this reciprocal arrangement where we were allowed to... Us nurses were allowed to work anywhere in the country. Without it, it's a lot of paperwork. It's expensive. And just the act, the deliberate act necessary to do it the day or so it takes to gather all your paperwork together is a bit wasted. So I think less people are taking advantage of it? But yeah, I think it would in one fell swoop, especially now that so much of us are kind of extending into this virtual space. It would just be like an exponential increase in equity for people. That's the idea. And as it lands...

MG: This is about licencing, right? Like you have to be licenced in the province where you want to work. And if you're living in Newfoundland and Labrador, you're living in British Columbia, your licenced there, not to work in Ontario or not to work in Saskatchewan.

JM: Exactly. And even as a resident, even as a learner, you would have to... If you wanted to go learn from someone in Alberta, you would have to get a separate licence, even though you're trained in the same way. The human body obviously is the same. You know, the systems are pretty much resourced similarly, at least in cities. And so we're wondering how we can kind of spread these like tendrils of health even to more and more places for our country by giving this kind of redistribution. An opportunity for redistribution and trusting people to go when they're called and where they're needed, which I think we're seeing right now.

MG: How urgent is that need? I mean, you talked about the idea of what it means to be Canadian and the idea that in this moment, perhaps you can draw on that national sentiment. But from where you're sitting in your perch in the E.R., how desperate is that need?

JM: You know, I would say that places like Toronto need to worry the least. We have the greatest numbers of doctors and nurses and people we can draw on, you know, near retirement or people who are just working here already. But I think it's the places that even had crisis preceding the covid-19 pandemic, meaning where people who never really had access to healthcare. Those places... or depended on one doctor and sometimes none. Those places have always been the growth area for us who, you know, as a health system and our country. So when you look at this, it ends up being something like a rolling kind of epidemic or with time to get these little pockets of outbreaks, I think that we need to be really careful to allow the flexibility in our system to respond to places that are actually far away from these urban centres. Right now, you know, I know the Red Cross is arriving here, going to start a vaccination campaign. We have 40 doctors. So at my downtown hospital and we're happy to work... no one really wants to work anymore right now. But we're happy to share a load if necessary, even greater than the one we are now. But I'm really thinking about the places outside of Toronto and places like it who may need ongoing support.

MG: Do you see the opportunity to rethink broadly how we look at healthcare in this country from a national perspective? I mean, there are these different vaccination rollouts. There are different approaches to testing. There are different public health measures across the various provinces and territories and even within those provinces and territories in the midst of a national crisis. I mean, it's an international crisis. But if you take a look at the national crisis, is there an opportunity to think differently about something that we value as much as a national health care system?

JM: Yeah, I think you're seeing some of these differences happening from the way we have administered our health care at the provincial level. And, you know, but there's an integrity to certain conversations about how to protect the vulnerable, the elderly, the people who are typically experiencing the worst of this pandemic. There are these common conversations. So I think that we're experiencing this levelling up as a [inaudible] really we're growing in this way where we're understanding our interconnection and that we're as healthy as the vulnerable, the most vulnerable parts of our community, even as a human body, we would be as healthy as its weakest part. So those types of things, I think, are happening all over. Would you love to see, you know, a one healthcare record, one vaccine registration system? Of course, that would be delightful. And I think that as we kind of mobilise our health care resources across the country, I think that could be the start of something that would meet the needs of Canadians. So you and I could travel anywhere in the country. And if we got appendicitis in PEI, they would have access to our record and know we were allergic to penicillin without us having to remember if we were sick. So that makes sense. And I think that's going to emerge on its own. But that growing kind of like idea of Canada as a country that has deliberately made it a priority to deliver health care to every single person is just. The most magnificent, you know, ethos I can imagine and, you know, I think that that conversation is happening.

MG: I want you to take a listen to a nurse in British Columbia named Kendall Scooter, who described how she was feeling after a shift last week. There was a covid patient who died at the age of 60. Staff had spent 35 minutes trying to resuscitate him.

KENDALL: Worn out, broken down, just. Just done. I keep fighting and we go every day and, you know, everybody always says you don't take your work home with you and try to leave your work at the office. But unfortunately, as health care workers, we can't do that. We are so... we feel it all. And, yeah, we just, we bring it all home with us.

MG: James Maskalyk, you were talking about the difference in terms of how the E.R. and how people in the E.R. were doing compared to when you left and now you're back there. How are people... I mean, what do you think keeps people going in the midst of this, in the midst of feeling broken down and feeling, as Kendall was saying, just kind of reduced to the bare elements?

JM: Yeah. You know, first, I just want to say that I have a lot of empathy for what she's going through. And I have certainly felt it on a regular basis, like so many even before this, you know, the things that you see in the E.R. are shocking. And the ephemerality of life grows more clear. But I also feel like that view you get to see a picture clearly. You get to know that we are born once and life is tender as an individual. It's tender and it's fragile. But as nature it is effervescent. It is abiding. You know, so you get this... you're right up next to this crucible of living and dying, and especially when it feels like you're not even... you don't have the same things that kept you well. I guess the camaraderie or the ability to be irreverent, you know, all the things that everyone is missing, it just feels more acute. Everything just feels more like a bummer because you don't have these mitigating factors. So, you know, I, I worry for, you know, I'm kind of rejuvenated because I'm back and I feel fresh. But the people who I think are still sitting there and going home, particularly the people who are single and don't have the healing kind of nature of being in family, it is taking this emotional toll. But we are there with each other. And I just would encourage people who are feeling that way to really talk about it at the time that they're feeling that way. Because what happens is if you don't, then you do carry it with you and you wrestle this existential thing within you and it makes it feel, you know, there's a certain dissonance that occurs. But as you share it in the moment or before you leave your shift, you realise so many other people feel the same way. And in that kind of like sharing comes a certain type of not just resolve, but almost deliverance. And it can increase your well-being.

MG: There's also a lot of anger and I think there's a lot of anger. Learning yesterday about the death of a 13 year old child who died of covid in Ontario. And there is anger at leaders and how leaders perhaps have handled or mishandled this pandemic. And we see that within the medical profession. We hear some of your colleagues who have been on this program speaking out, expressing that anger. You hear it outside the medical profession as well. I mean, how do you process that? Do you feel that anger? Do you feel the frustration that a lot of people feel a year plus into this?

JM: Yeah. You know, I guess what is anger, the second stage of grief after denial, you know? And so, you know, I think what's happening is there is this sentiment coming up because there's a lot of... people are hurt. And when you're hurt you get sad or you get angry and you know there's a really commonly held sense of there's a loss of control, which really kind of maps on to what life really is. Really nobody was ever really in control. The only person who is yourself. And you have to take responsibility for that. But so there is this kind of like difficult emotion that is a lot like sadness that I think is coming up in this way, that we are able to kind of feel comfortable of being angry, but we're not very comfortable being vulnerable and saying that we're sad and I really appreciated that that clip you shared because that's exactly what that person was doing. So public anger is acceptable. Public kind of sadness is maybe not so acceptable. So, you know, I think there.... It would be hard to say that someone's making mistakes on something that no one's ever done before. So this is new for everybody. So I think my anger, which I have, you know, comes from avery old place, you know, Sudan ish kind of for me about watching people, you know, kids die of diarrhoea on a daily basis and coming back and trying to tell people and then just getting blank faces and then realising that once this pandemic kind of blows over, there's still going to be that great work to do. And as we know what a human being is, we'll be able to understand it because of what we've gone through and extend that notion of caring for each other, I hope to places that are dealing with these epidemics long before this thing arrived. So I'm not trying to downplay the difficulty that we're all going through, but I think that some of these feelings of anger are part of this greater sadness of not being able to... feeling that our future is being taken away from us.

MG: So, I mean, I remember we talked, it's like a year ago about how you use things like meditation to process what was going on. And that would turn out to be very helpful tool for a lot of people in terms of helping, just finding space within this moment. What would you want people to be able to do with those emotions and that anger that they have? I mean, where could that lead?

JM: Yeah, I think... I mean, there are... I think that it is, you know, kind of can be a catalyst as long as it's something that you're able to transform into an action that gives you... that turns towards peace. Meaning that it gives you a courage to stand up and it gives you a courage to act in a way that you feel is consonant with the deeper, kind of deeply held beliefs in yourself. So that's why meditation or acts like it that encourage reflection and reflecting on that deeper wisdom that's held in our body and has been passed down to us from generations of our ancestors and sitting with it and sitting in ceremony and then just knowing for certain that the answer that will come may not be even in words, but it will lead to a general type of... for me when I know the answer is the right one. For me, the words that come up are things like generosity, kindness, you know, those sweet sounding soft words. And so that loving activity that extends what you have to help other people seems like the right output. So anger is an input, you know, for sure. And as it leads to those actions, then I think that it can even be healthy. But, you know, just being angry and finger pointing at people who are actually doing stuff because it takes off the weight of responsibility feels like an easy way out. So, yeah, that's how I would pass those things.

MG: In the meantime, I mean, the armed forces is going to set up medical assistance teams in Ontario. There are cases that are rising across this country. You're right there on the front lines of this. How close to the end of this does this feel to you right now?

JM: I feel pretty... I mean, there's two ends, right? It's like your death and the existential death. Right. Whether your death that happens when your life's gone and then the existential one that when people stop talking about you and thinking about you. Right. So the end of this pandemic, I mean, I think that we're at the end of the worst of it and now there's the matter of integrating it into our lives, you know, and actually continuing to commit to. We're not going to change what we love. We're not going to change that we need to be around each other and have dance parties and all those things. So now we've got to... given the opportunity to integrate it and get on with the rest of living and the great work ahead. So, you know, I think the worst of the emotional trauma is over. And I just hope that the same is true of us, the humans. It is a human body, because when a kid gets a viral infection and parents will tell you that after they recover from it, they go through a growth spurt, a growth period or they get taller and bigger and smarter and faster and all that stuff. And I hope the same is true of this. I hope the same is.... our attention to the lack of oxygen in India or how to distribute vaccines leads to a greater redistribution of the most important thing, which is health care resources.

MG: It's great to talk to you again, and I'm really glad to hear you back in the E.R. That's where you belong. And we'll talk again in the meantime. James, thanks.

JM: OK, thank you.

MG: Dr. James Maskalyk is an emergency room physician in Toronto. He has a forthcoming book called Doctor Heal Thyself. The CBC News is next. And then Malcolm Gladwell will be here. He has a brand new book out. It's out today. It's called The Bomber Mafia. It is about a group of pilots and their obsession with rethinking how war was waged and how they failed. Malcolm Gladwell is here in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Theme]

Malcolm Gladwell on the firebombing of Tokyo and his new book

Guest: Malcolm Gladwell

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come right now, there are close to 100 bills working their way through legislatures across the United States about trans people, many of those bills aim to limit the rights of trans athletes from playing sports with the gender they identify with. In 30 minutes, we hear from trans athletes with the impact these bills are having. But first, the bomber mafia.

[Music: Theme]

MALCOLM GLADWELL: As a little boy lying in his bed, my father would hear the planes overhead on their way in, then in the small hours of the morning, heading back to Germany.

MG: Malcolm Gladwell, whose father was five when the Second World War began, he lived in Kent, England, in what was known as Bomb Alley. It was long the Germans flight path to bomb London. And when a plane had bombs left over, they would drop them anywhere on their return flight.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: One day, a stray bomb landed in my grandparents back garden. It didn't explode. It just sat there, half buried in the ground. And I think it's fair to say that if you were a five year old boy with an interest in things mechanical, a German bomb sitting unexploded in your backyard would have been just about the most extraordinary experience imaginable.

MG: Malcolm Gladwell heard this story from his dad when he was five, and it sparked a fascination with war and bombs. But in the many best selling books that he has written, he's never written one on that subject until now. What we have just heard is the opening of his new audio book and book, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, A Temptation and The Longest Night of the Second World War. It is a compelling part of history that looks at war and morality. And as he says, it is a story worthy of his obsession.

MG: Malcolm Gladwell, good morning.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Just briefly, what do you remember about those conversations with your dad about Bomb Alley? And I mean, what did those conversations do for you?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, just the image of an unexploded bomb in your backyard is just so extraordinary. I mean, you know, I spent my childhood in southwestern Ontario. There were no unexploded bombs in the backyard of Ontario. So, I mean, this is such a kind of I mean, it's just incredible, like something out of a science fiction novel, you know? So it just seems so fantastic.

MG: What is it that makes this story worthy of your obsession?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, the story of The Bomber Mafia is about many of the things I've been interested in my entire life as a writer. It's about technology, it's about morality, it's about eccentric geniuses. It's about men. In this case, all men who are trying to bring morality and technology into some kind of harmony and that, you know, that kind of task is the kind of thing that I think I've returned to again and again. It's not just that they were a group of brilliant engineers. They were a group of brilliant engineers who had a moral vision. And that's fascinating to me.

MG: Who were the bomber mafia?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: The bomber mafia were a group of pilots in central Alabama in the 1930s who became obsessed with the idea that bombers, which were... bombers, were a new thing. You know, the aeroplane was brand new, but the idea that you could build an enormous aeroplane that could carry bombs was a, you know, a brand new idea in the 1930s. They got it in their minds that this thing called the bomber could revolutionize warfare, could make every other part of fighting a war obsolete. And not only that it could make war better, that you could wage a war without having to destroy your entire enemy's country, without having to kill civilians by the hundreds of thousands, without having the bloody carnage of the First World War. They thought they had solved the problem of war. And they bring that vision into the Second World War. And my book is about the story of what happens when that incredibly idealistic vision meets the realities of conflict.

MG: They were able to to have that vision in part because of one invention, the Norden bombsight. And I mean, I remember you did a TED talk about this years ago, but what is this thing? Briefly describe what this thing is.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: The Norden bombsight is one of the most bizarre and fascinating. It's an analogue computer designed and engineered by a man named Carl Norden, who was this eccentric Dutch genius who convinced the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force that his analogue computer could solve the problem of how to drop a bomb with precision. So think about it. Dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet when your plane is going 150 miles an hour and there's wind and the temperature's rising and falling and the enemy planes are attacking you, dropping a bomb with any kind of accuracy, is an insanely difficult physics problem. He thinks he's solved the physics problem with this contraption that he's built. And the U.S. military spends almost as much on Norden's contraption as they do on the Manhattan Project. So they spend billions of dollars developing this contraption because they think, wait a minute, if we can drop a bomb with absolute accuracy. And Norden said you could, he said you could put a bomb inside of a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet. You think then you can win a war, right? You don't have to... you can go fly over your enemy city and you can take out the power plant. You can take out the aqueduct. In fact, that bomber mafia did a famous scenario where they imagined, could Canada defeat the United States with a single attack on New York City using the Norden bombsight. And their answer was they thought they could just take out the bridges around Manhattan, take out the power plants, take out the aqueducts, and there would be no electricity, no water and no way to get off the island. And America would cry uncle, that was the Bomber Mafia's notion. So they think that this device solves this problem and makes air power the only thing that matters.

MG: How successful was the bomber mafia equipped with its Norden bombsight during combat in Europe?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, they tried really, really hard. The story of the first few years of the Second World War is the story of the bomber mafia ascends to positions of great importance in the U.S. Air Force. They're running the show in Europe and then later running the show in the Pacific Theatre. And they try over and over and over again to pursue this more humane form of bombing while the British, in great contrast, look at the Americans and roll their eyes and say,no, no, no, the only way to defeat the enemy is to bomb everything in sight. You know, what are you playing this game of trying to be accurate for? It's crazy. It doesn't work in the beginning. But the bomber mafia doesn't give up and it is that perseverance that drew me to the story,

MG: Can you qualify the phrase that you just used a more humane form of bombing? I think a lot of people would hear that and think, hold on, you can't have a humane, a more humane form of bombing.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, think about the Blitz. The Blitz is the German Air Force. The Luftwaffe attack on London in 1940 is an example of the conventional strategy of what's called area bombing or carpet bombing. You send as many planes and bombers as you can over an enemy city. You drop as many bombs as you can and you're not really even aiming. You're just dropping bombs on everything in sight because you can't hit them. You can't say I want to hit St. Paul's Cathedral. There's no way you can be sure that your bomb will find its target. So what you do is you just drop thousands of bombs and just say, I'll just destroy whatever I can in this kind of like I say, I'm going to carpet the city with bombs. That's why it was called carpet bombing. The Bomber mafia said, well, let's send one bomber over London. And if we think that we would like to destroy 10 Downing Street and leave everything else intact, let's just aim for 10 Downing Street. We don't need to kill 40,000 civilians. We can kill just everyone who's in 10 Downing Street. Right. So that was their... notion was we're still going to kill people, but we'll kill six people instead of 40,000.

MG: And even if you kill 40,000 people. I mean, with the Blitz, the blitz didn't break Britain, right? I mean, it did not break the spirit. Of those who were there.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yeah, this gets into this whole other argument the bomber mafia had with the British, the British lived through the blitz when a full scale German air power assault on London did not break the will of the British people. And the British then turned around and tried exactly the same failed strategy on the Germans and the Bomber mafia would say to them, what are you doing? You know, from personal example that just wantonly bombing the enemy doesn't work. So why are you trying the same crazy, incredibly immoral strategy on your enemy? And the British would have none of that argument.

MG: One of the godfathers of the bomber mafia is someone named Haywood Hensell, who is sent from Europe to the Pacific and gets the order to firebomb Japan. Who is he and what does he do when he gets that order?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Haywood Hansell was one of the leaders of the bomber mafia. So this group of idealistic young men who come out of Alabama in the 30s and he is... comes from a long Southern military family. And you can imagine he's one of those kind of... his favourite book is Don Quixote. Which tells you, by the way, everything you need to know about him. He once said he was gone from home so often on various missions that once he was at home and he heard a noise and he turned to his wife and he said, what's that? And she said, That's your son. That was it. They had a baby boy who he'd never heard cry before. He is this kind of extraordinarily romantic figure who would sing to his men Broadway tunes over the bomber intercom on the way back from missions over Germany. He was the most passionate believer in this extraordinarily quixotic notion that you could reform warfare. And he managed to convince the higher ups in the US military to believe in this vision. And he serves first over Europe, where he fails really to kind of enact this humane bombing. But then he gets assigned to the Pacific Theatre and he's the one who begins the bombing attacks on Japan in 1944. And he says he is told by his superiors, give up on this humane form bombing. We want you to take napalm, because napalm was developed in Harvard University for the purposes of bombing Japan because it was the most powerful incendiary device ever developed. They said take the napalm and burn down Tokyo and he won't do it. And he says, no, no, no, I'm doing it my way. I'm going to do this precision bombing and just take out the factories that are crucial to the Japanese war effort. He tries and it fails. He tries and it fails and he tries and fails. And finally, they have enough back in Washington. And that triggers one of the most consequential moments in the Second World War.

MG: Which is the replacement of...

MALCOLM GLADWELL: The replacement of Haywood Hansell with a man named Curtis LeMay who had no such qualms about burning down the cities of his enemy.

MG: This is a little bit of Haywood... of Curtis LeMay, pardon me from your audio book. It's archival tape.

CURTIS LEMAY: Look, the idea was they found the ball bearing plants over there are some of these swivel chair target analysts back in the Pentagon, and the idea was if we knock out that plant, which supposedly had the bulk of the ball bearing production in the country. The war would grind to a halt because there were no bearings. The plan was OK. Well, basically, OK, but here we are trying to find something to win the war the easy way around there ain't no such animal.

MG: He's talking about swivel chair analysts, which is a great turn of phrase. How does he view the bomber mafia and what does he think in terms of how war should be waged if it's not through this kind of precision bombing?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yeah. So playing that tape, this is a good reminder about why we spent so much time. We spent months on the audio book because in order to understand Curtis LeMay, you have to hear his voice. So imagine a bulldog of a man with a cigar in his mouth at all times and that kind of no nonsense, blunt, unsentimental approach. LeMay was this brilliant general who was one of the most ruthless military leaders of the entire Second World War. And he listened to this dream coming from the Haywood Hansell's of the world. And he thought it was nonsense.

MG: He's not singing show tunes to his...

MALCOLM GLADWELL: He doesn't know what a show tune is. He was famous. LeMay goes on to have this glittering career through the Cold War. He's famous for saying almost nothing. He once attended a three hour military briefing before the Bay of Pigs invasion. When he was running the Air Force. He said nothing for three hours, got up at the end, looked at the people who had briefed him and said it won't work, put his cigar back in his mouth and left the room. That's who we're talking about here. Right. So LeMay is someone who thinks the best way to fight a war is to be as brutal and as ferocious and as unrestrained as possible. So the keys get handed from the romantic Haywood Hansell to this warrior in Curtis LeMay. And LeMay goes to Japan and he says, I had this weapon, Napalm, which is the most incredible incendiary device ever, ever developed. And I have a country which is built entirely of cities made out of wood, which is what Japan was in the 1940s, little houses built very close together, all made out of wood and tar paper. And he says they will go up like a tinderbox if I dropped napalm on them. And he proceeds over the summer of 1945 to burn 66 Japanese cities to the ground. It's a part of the war that gets far too little attention. It's what happens when a man without any kind of notion of moral restraint takes over. And he does this that summer of 45, it's I mean, it's this I don't even know how to make sense of it. In fact, I struggle in the book to make sense of it. He's off by himself thousands of miles from Washington. No one's really looking over his shoulder or telling him what to do. And he has it in his head that the only way that Japan will ever surrender is if he burns the entire country to the ground and he sets out to do that.

MG: How did he justify that? I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of civilians who are killed in these bombing raids, in the firebombing of Tokyo. How did he justify that?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: He probably kills close to a million people in the summer of 45. He justifies it by saying the best outcome for all involved is for the war to end as soon as possible. And the best way for me to end the war with Japan as soon as possible is to burn every building they have to the ground, incinerate everyone I can. Just to give you a sense... the details of this, this is the end of the book when I discuss this murderous rampage through Japan in 45. After the initial napalm attack on Tokyo in 1945, when the American bombers landed back in Guam, which was their lunch spot, the smell of burning bodies was so overwhelming they had to fumigate the aeroplanes. Right. This is what we're... they burned 16 square miles of Tokyo to the ground in the space of five hours, killed probably 40 to 50,000 people. He did this every night, not every night, but, you know. Throughout the summer of 45, again and again and again and again, sending these hundreds of planes. Thousand miles over the ocean, from Guam to Japan to do the same thing, to burn people alive. You know, it's. That's you know, that's where you end up when idealism fails.

MG: Why hasn't that received the kind of historical attention that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki received?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I don't know. I think we have this notion that dropping the nuclear bomb on those two cities was somehow worse than what they did. And it's not. What LeMay did is, at the very least, just as bad. And I would argue in some ways worse. You know, the atom bombs destroyed two cities, LeMay destroyed 66. So he was ahead by 64. And the atom bombs at least had a kind of clear military rationale, which was it was a bomb so horrifying and so overwhelming that we felt it really would push the Japanese to surrender. What LeMay was doing didn't push the Japanese to surrender. He kept doing it and they kept fighting. So I have some real difficulty with... much as I understand his rationale, I have difficulty with him as I think anyone ought to.

MG: There are two questions that come out of this book. One is, and you've hinted at this, what does it mean to be moral in a modern world? That's something that you ask in the book. What does it mean?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: It means to ask the question, so the reason I think Haywood, Hansell and the bomber mafia are so important is that they are the people who bring about a technological revolution. They introduce a whole concept of fighting a war, of using air power and this kind of strategic way. But they're not content with being military innovators. They also ask a parallel moral question, which is, can we use this new technology in a way that benefits mankind? That is to say, can we turn the most brutal thing that human beings do to each other, which is kill each other in wars and can we make it a little better. And that idea that technological innovators must also carry a moral responsibility with them is something that is second nature to the bomber mafia and which strikes me as being virtually unknown today. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, I don't think... I don't know, but I don't get the sense that he is losing sleep at night over the moral implications of Facebook. The bomber mafia did lose sleep over the moral implications of what they were doing. They put their careers on there, on the line. And in fact, many of them Haywood Hansell, his career in the military was over because he kept pushing this dream of a better war and failed. He sacrificed his career for this dream. That's such a rare. Today's version of the bomber mafia would just say we found a way to kill people more efficiently and leave it at that. I don't think they would have asked that question. And that's why I think this story is important to tell, because it's a reminder of the responsibility of innovating.

MG: Well,[inaudible] their part. I mean, you mentioned Zuckerberg. It feels like a parable around again how technology, as you say, slips away from its intended path.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yes, that's very much what... I felt like there was a reason to do this story book and write this book now.

MG: Do you feel... I mean, I find it hard to believe in some ways that you don't know Mark Zuckerberg, but you really think that he doesn't lose any sleep over what he created ostensibly with the best of intentions, has unleashed on the world?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I mean, I don't know the man I know people in that world, I don't they lose sleep over that. I mean, I think I don't mean to say that he doesn't want to do good in the world because he does give away, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars to worthy causes. But I don't think... I think you would have difficulty convincing him that Facebook was, on balance, a bad thing. I think he would say, no, the good outweighs the bad. And maybe he's right. But that's a very different approach, weighing that kind of cost benefit calculus than the bomber mafia, who I believe were explicitly motivated by the idea that they could reform warfare. That's what got them started in the first place. They approach this with this moral intent. Whereas in Silicon Valley, I think you start by asking the question, can I make a lot of money? Which is a different question, right?

MG: Let me end where we started in the last couple of minutes. This is a book that you say that comes out of an obsession that you had. What are you obsessed with these days?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: What am I? Well, in my upcoming season of revisionist history, I have not one, not two, but three episodes on the Disney movie The Little Mermaid.

MG: Excuse me?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I am absolutely telling you the truth.[Laughter] I have become convinced the worst movie of all time. And so what I did is I put together a whole team of people and we fixed The Little Mermaid. It is perhaps the most bananas thing I've ever done on revisionist history, but we are enormously proud of it. And at the end, we perform our version of The Little Mermaid in the final episode. And I will tell you that if you listen to our version, you will never look at the original again, in the same way.

MG: There's an origin story there that you probably can't tell in 90 seconds of how one becomes obsessed with The Little Mermaid. But can you hint at that?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, I never saw it as a child. I was spared by my parents never having to watch television. So I watched it for the first time as an adult like three months ago. And I was like, are you kidding me, this movie? And then I started calling up all these people who shared my.... it's like the worst movie in the world. I was like, I can't believe we're letting little children watch this thing. So then I became determined to fix it. And we do. We fix it on revisionist history. So watch out for that.

MG: The worst movie in the world. Malcolm, it's great pleasure to talk to you as always. Thank you very much.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Malcolm Gladwell's podcast is, as you heard, called Revisionist History. His new book is called The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, A Temptation and the Longest Night of the Second World War. His company, Pushkin Industries, is also releasing an audio book of The Bomber Mafia today. It sounds, with the archival tape that we played, as much like a podcast as an audio book. And you can find that wherever you purchase your audio books. Well, coming up after your regional update, trans athletes, many of them children, are the targets of dozens of bills making their way through U.S. government houses right now. The proposals happening across the country would stop trans women and girls from playing sports on female teams. In 90 seconds, what limiting rights in sport means for life outside of sport? I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Theme]

U.S. lawmakers try to block transgender women and girls from female sports teams

Guest: Veronica Ivy, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Alphonso David

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

TATE REEVES: Today, I will be signing Senate Bill 25/36, the Mississippi Fairness Act. This important piece of legislation will ensure that young girls in Mississippi have a fair level playing field. That the Mississippi Fairness Act would bar biological men from competing in women's sports. It sends a clear message to my daughters and all of Mississippi's daughters that their rights are worth fighting for.

MG: The Mississippi Fairness Act is scheduled to take effect on the 1st of July, and it is just one of more than 100 pieces of legislation about trans people being considered in the United States right now, many of which are facing court challenges. Dozens of these bills want to ban trans women and girls from participating on the sports teams of the gender that they identify with. Veronica Ivy is a Canadian trans woman athlete in the United States. Two time masters track cycling world champion. She is also an associate professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.

MG: Veronica, good morning.

VERONICA IVY: Good morning.

MG: Governor Tate Reeves said he is fighting for the rights of women and girls. What do you make of that?

VI: Well, what they're really doing is fighting for what one might call the nonexistent rights of cis women and girls while treating trans girls and trans women as not real girls or women. So if they were really fighting for the rights of girls and women, they would have to include trans girls and trans women. So it's fundamentally a bill aimed at excluding some types of girls and women while including other types of girls and women. So it's fundamentally unfair. Also, it's likely unconstitutional. So likely these bills will fail immediately. Under challenge for Title nine,

MG: You were the world's first trans woman world champion. What did it mean in the context of what you've just said to be able to compete with other women?

VI: So one important thing to note is it's not just that identifies the women. It's that I am. I'm also legally female.

MG: Yeah.

VI: So my birth certificate, my passport, my South Carolina driver's licence, my U.S. green card, they all say female on them. All of my medical records say female, all my sport licences. So USA Cycling and the UCI. So the International Cycling Union, all my sports licences say female. As far as the sports world is concerned, as far as the U.S. and Canadian governments are concerned, I am female. So it means a lot in terms of representation to be the first trans woman to win a Masters Track Cycling World Championship. But we also have to put it in context that it was an age group world championship, not an elite world championship. My highest world ranking ever has been 85th. So it's not like I'm taking over women's track cycling.

MG: Most of these bills are aimed at kids in schools and colleges, what would it have meant for you to be able to play on the team that you identified with when you were a kid?

VI: Yeah, I've really got to say that these bills are just reprehensible. They are attacking children and their right to play with their peers and play for children is fundamental to their social and emotional and mental well-being. So it is unconscionable to me that they would attack children in these ways with these bills, especially when pre puberty there are no physiological performance based differences between boys and girls.

MG: Let me ask you about those physiological performance based differences. When you won the First World Masters champion title for track cycling, there were some critics who accused you of cheating. Why did they do that?

VI: Well, it was an irrational fear of trans women, which is the dictionary definition of transphobia. And we need to call it what it is. No reasonable person could think that I had an unfair advantage in that competition. So let's talk about the facts for a second. I competed in two events, the 500 metres time trial and then the Sprint event. In the time trial I came 4th and a woman from the U.S. named Sarah Fater, came first. In qualifying for the sprint, I came second and Sarah Fater again came first. But then Sarah withdrew from the Sprint competition, claiming in protest that it was unfair for me to compete. But we have to remember, I've only raced her two times in my career and she just beat me both times. So I don't see how it's even coherent to beat someone two out of two times and then withdraw in protest saying it's unfair.

MG: It wasn't just the athletes that you're competing against. I mean, some of the people who came after you were, like Martina Navratilova and Donald Trump Jr. What was that like?

VI: Well, I'll be perfectly honest, the Donald Trump Jr. tweet I found hilarious, I actually printed it out and put it on my office door because I'm pretty sure I'm the only person at my college that has been hate tweeted by a son of a president. Trump Jr. was saying that the inclusion of transwoman is going to lead to the end of women's sport. But we have to remember, again, the facts. The International Olympic Committee has included trans athletes since 2003, and that means since the 2004 Athens Olympics, there have been over 54.4 thousand Olympians after the first trans policy and not a single trans athlete has ever qualified. In 2015, the policy was relaxed to make it easier for trans people to qualify. And we've had over 14,000 Olympians since that new policy. And again, not a single trans athlete is ever qualified, nor has there been a single case of gender fraud. So this idea that trans women are going to suddenly take over sport has not happened in the past 17 years and it's unlikely to ever happen.

MG: The argument that's made is that trans women have an advantage because of testosterone levels. Do you feel you have an advantage over other women?

VI: Well, again, like what does it mean to have an advantage? If we go by result, the answer is clearly no. Again, my world ranking, my high world ranking is 85th. I don't win every race. In fact, I lose most of my races. Again at the 2019 World Championships, I came second and first and the person who beat me in the first event came first and second. So we both walked away with a silver and a gold. And yet people say that I have an unfair advantage. Like, again, it's just incoherent based on the facts. But here's the thing. We didn't know this until 2013 to about 2017. There is absolutely no relationship between natural internal endogenous testosterone and performance in men or women. And that is a shock because we've never studied it until then. We know that when you add testosterone to your body, that performance tends to go up, which is why it's banned for doping. But your natural levels don't have an impact on your performance. And in one study, 0.5 Percent of elite world championship track and field men are naturally below the women's average for testosterone, and they are performing at no disadvantage to other men with 40 times as much testosterone. Testosterone does not have the impact that people think it does.

MG: So then what is this about?

VI: It's about not treating trans girls and trans women as real girls and real women and as really female. That's all it's about.

MG: Veronica, it's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

VI: Thank you so much. Veronica Ivy is a Canadian trans woman athlete in the United States and two time masters track cycling world champion. Nancy Hogshead-Makar is part of the Women's Sports Policy Working Groups Leadership Team. She's also a civil rights lawyer, a four time Olympic medallist herself.

MG: Nancy, good morning to you.

NANCY HOGSHEAD-MAKAR: Good morning. Thank you for having me on.

MG: Thanks for being here. What do you make of what you've just heard from Veronica?

NH: Well, a couple of things. Number one is, I don't know what her medical status is, but the Women's Sports Policy Working Group is about finding ways for trans transgender women athletes to be able to compete in the girls and women's category. But we do need to respect the science. The last thing she said about testosterone levels is just not true.

MG: What do you mean?

NH: I mean, she was saying how that some men have testosterone in the women's category. Men and women's testosterone levels are on two different bell shaped curves. They don't overlap at all. There's not a single female that has testosterone levels in the male range. And unless a man is sick, he will not have testosterone in the female range. I mean, women go from basically 0.6 to 1.7 nanomoles of testosterone and men start around 8. And the difference that some amazing athletes like Michael Phelps will have over his competitors is about 0.1 Percent. That's the advantage that he has over his competitors. 0.1 Percent. The advantage that men have over women is between eight and 20 percent. And unless somebody can unwind that sex linked advantage, then we say it's not fair to compete in the girls and women's category.

MG: So I was gonna say, what do you make then? I'll come back to this in a moment. But what do you make of the polls in the United States that seem to be working to exclude trans women from women's sports? Is that the appropriate answer?

NH: What we are trying to do is create a safe and respectful environment within women's sports while still ensuring a fair competition. So we want to include transgender athletes as much as possible. We want things like the NCAA rule and the International Olympic Committee rule, which does require mitigation. So, Veronica Ivy, one of the things that she was saying was we haven't seen transgender athletes competing at this world stage. And the reason is that they have to mitigate their sex linked advantage that eight to twenty two percent advantage.

MG: So, again, what evidence is there that trans women would be at an athletic advantage?

NH: What evidence is there? I mean, if you look at every single world record, again, it's the Gulf. Even if you take two world class athletes who have the same height and weight and wingspan and lung capacity, et cetera, men are still eight to 22 percent faster, higher, can jump higher, can go longer than women. So that is the proof right there.

MG: And has there been? Well, you're laughing at that. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, you see it as very obvious.

NH: Yeah, I see that the sex-linked advantage is very obvious. And again, we're for inclusion. We're for finding ways of including girls and women, including trans girls and women, into the girls and women's sports category, so long as, number one, maybe they've never gone through male puberty. There's some medical conditions where people don't go through male puberty or alternatively, they went on gender affirming hormones before puberty. Then there's no reason not to include. When Veronica Ivy said that it could be possible that they might be unconstitutional to have these categorical outright bans. She might be right in that they're overinclusive, that we don't want sport to become the place where people express their hatred of transgender people. And that's what these categorical bans are about, because there's just no reason not to include if they can mitigate that sex-linked advantage, that eight to twenty two percent advantage.

MG: You're a civil rights lawyer in addition to being an Olympian yourself. I mean, how do you square that idea of restricting trans women athletes from competing against other women? Is that not a violation of their rights?

NH: So not all trans girls and women are the same. So it depends on... there are sort of three categories if you think about it. One category has never been through male puberty. That should be full inclusion. They may be a little taller than the average woman, but there's no reason not to include them into the girls and women's category. Then there are trans athletes who have mitigated their sex linked advantage. So they've been on gender affirming hormones for a certain amount of time and they have lowered their testosterone and done what they need to do according to the NCAA rules or according to the International Olympic Committee rules. And then we say that they can compete. And then there's another category of transgender athletes who have, for whatever reason, they don't want to go on gender affirming hormones and they don't want surgery. And so that category, we can find ways for them to be in the women's category, but no head to head competition. So. Right. So we have different remedies and different levels of participation depending on whether or not they do or don't have a sex-linked advantage.

MG: You've been accused of being transphobic in making this argument. What do you say in the face of those accusations?

NH: I'm not. I'm not. I mean, again, our policies are consistent with the NCAA policies and the International Olympic Committee policies. So I have transgender people in my life who I love and I'm trying to make sure that... We worked really hard to make sure that sport was a welcoming place for gays and lesbians. And I think we've done a great job. I think that all that work has been phenomenal. What's hard for people to kind of wrap their heads around is that you do have sex segregation in sport, right? So no place else in the rest of all society. You don't have it in employment or banking or all these other areas, public accommodations. But we do have sex segregation in sport. And the reason that Title nine and Title seven, and all of the laws allow for sex segregation only in sport is because of the differences between men and women.

MG: Nancy, it's good to speak with you about this. I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

NH: Thank you.

MG: Nancy Hogshead-Makar is a leadership member of the Women's Sports Policy Working Group. She was in Jacksonville, Florida.

ASA HUTCHINSON: I have on my desk another bill passed by the General Assembly that is a product of the cultural war in America. The most recent action of the General Assembly, while well intended, is off course. And I must veto House Bill 15/70.

MG: That's Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoing a bill that would deny gender affirming care for trans kids, calling it an overreach of government. Arkansas state legislature quickly overrode the veto, making Arkansas the first state in the United States to prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment for trans people under the age of 18. Alphonso David is president of Human Rights Campaign, America's largest organisation, fighting for LGBTQ equality.

MG: Alphonso, good morning to you.

AD: Good morning.

MG: I want to get to the sports debate in just a moment, but we just heard the Arkansas governor say that this is part of a culture war going on in America. What's going on there?

AD: There is a culture war that's self created. We have anti equality forces in the United States who have decided that it is politically expedient to attack transgender people for political gain. It is not a secret. They made this public in The New York Times in 2019, indicating that the bathroom bills were no longer successful. So they had to attack transgender youth and they found that attacking transgender youth was going to mobilize their base. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about anti equality forces that are using disinformation to attack transgender people for political gain.

MG: How many bills regarding trans people are in the United States right now?

AD: We have more than a hundred, more than a hundred bills that attack transgender people, both bills that seek to deny medical care, as well as bills that seek to deny transgender people from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

MG: What do you make of the debate around sports in particular and the way that this has turned toward transgender women and girls in sport?

AD: It's absurd. It's absurd for several reasons. Since the 1970s, the United States has had non-discrimination laws in the books in certain municipalities and states. Trans athletes have been competing in sports since the 1970s and there has been no problem. So ask yourself, why is it a problem in 2021? Where is the problem? Where are the cases where there is a competitive advantage being taken by transgender athletes? There is none. And it's absurd because the same arguments we heard in the 1960s after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed are the same arguments we're hearing today.

MG: What do you mean?

AD: In the 1960s, the argument was black men and black women couldn't participate in sports because they were too fast and too strong. Those were the same arguments that we're hearing now. You cannot justify trans exclusion based on a segregation theory. Segregation has been used to justify discrimination in the military, based on race and gender, has been used to justify discrimination in marriage, has been used to justify discrimination in relationship recognition. Transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as the general population enjoys. And the myths that transgender women are dominant competitors and women's sports is simply untrue.

MG: What about the idea that they have an advantage? That's what Nancy Hogshead-Makar was saying, that there is an advantage, particularly around testosterone, that other women perhaps may not have, and that if you want to create, as she says, fair competition, you need to not exclude them. She's not talking about excluding them, but she says you need to acknowledge that and figure out how to create the venue for fair competition.

AD: I appreciate the argument, but that's all it is, is an argument is not supported by the facts. The myth that transgender women are dominant competitors in women's sports is pure disinformation that has been debunked by every serious medical expert. And it's important to also recognize that this disinformation is dangerous for the health and the safety and the very lives of transgender youth and adults alike. So I would appreciate the argument being supported by facts, but we don't have those facts because they don't exist. And we need to make sure that our policies are driven by facts, not by fear.

MG: Many of the people who are drafting these legislation say that they are following the science. They're not transphobia, that this is about science. What do you say back to them?

AD: I say look at every serious medical institution and association in the United States that has come out against all of these bills. Ask them. We've had press conferences, they've issued op-eds, they've issued public statements denouncing these bills, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, all of these organisations that provide medical care for the population here in the United States that are responsible for really regulating medical care, have come out in opposition to these bills.

MG: You mentioned the bathroom bills. These are pieces of legislation around trans people in the use of bathrooms. What happened to those pieces of legislation?

AD: Most of those bills failed. Anti-equality forces are still trying to introduce new bills, but most of them failed. And the argument was, if you allow transgender people to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity, there will be transgender women who will attack other women in the bathrooms, that there will be fraud, that there will be attacks and rapes. All of that was fraught with false information. And it didn't work. It didn't work in part because, as I said before, we've had anti-discrimination laws on the books since the 1970s and in some cases in states and municipalities, transgender people could use the restrooms consistent with their gender identity. And all of those fears were not supported.

MG: And so is your sense, just finally that the current legislation that's being passed now will have the same fate as what were known as the bathroom bills?

AD: I think most of them will. I think once elected officials understand that these bills are not supported by the facts, they should fail. But even if they don't, because we understand that we have very, very well-funded opponents, we will fight these bills using every resource we have in including litigation. You know, Republican legislators who are advancing these bills are not really interested in women's sports. They're not interested in women's rights. If they were, they should be supporting funding for women's sports programmes in states. They should be championing pay equity for women. They should be speaking up and legislating against sexual harassment and abuse and assault and misconduct in women's sports, but they're not. So that tells you what they're really interested in is dehumanising transgender people. What they're interested in is denying transgender people the rights that they deserve under law.

MG: Alfonso David, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

AD: Thank you.

MG: Alfonso David is president of the Human Rights Campaign. He is in Washington, D.C.

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Yesterday on this program, we took a closer look at the issue of paid sick leave. Governments across this country are being called upon to come up with a plan so that employees don't feel that they need to go to work sick or they don't get penalised for falling ill at work. Rechev Browne knows this issue very well. He's a grocery store worker with no paid sick leave.

RECHEV BROWNE: The job that we do like we're already so low and the wage scale that we can't even afford that. Like for me personally, it's rent and food. I take care of myself. So it's scary. Like the scenarios that played in my head, like I'm hoping I don't contract this virus.

MG: We got a lot of mail about this story. And so The Current senior producer Karin Marley is here with me now to read some of it. Karen, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning. Let's start with Tom Miller writing from Calgary. He wrote to us about a personal experience. "I'm a grocery delivery driver for a large chain in Alberta. When I started this job after losing my employment to the pandemic, the company was paying employees a two dollar an hour danger pay bonus that ended in the summer last year. I have no paid sick leave and calling in sick unless you somehow give the employer 12 hours notice counts against you on your employment record. I honestly think this speaks to a much deeper problem in the valuation of jobs in our society. Having worked as a contract college instructor as well, I'm flummoxed that there are jobs and employers that value their employees so little despite their important role".

MG: Another personal story came from Kathryn Stemler, who wrote "I am a kitchen manager with currently a small staff. The consideration for us is not money, but really who would do our job if we were not there? Obviously, I don't discourage people from calling in sick and accommodate them when they do. But I'm sure that they, like myself, have pushed through on some days when they are not feeling well, not because they need the money, but because there is no one else to do their job if they aren't there and everyone else has to work harder. If I were to have enough staff on the payroll to easily accommodate people being sick, then people wouldn't get enough hours. When we are all well, I just find it frustrating that through this pandemic, the labour experts talking about this issue have never talked about who's actually going to do the work when people are taking sick leave",

KM: Tola Ajao wrote from Toronto, responding to the news over the weekend of the death of Emily Victoria Viegas in Brampton, Ontario. "Does it take the death of a 13 year old girl for us to finally take notice? This is shameful and enraging. It's Dickensian to live in a province where the third wave of a pandemic rages and more than half the population risks their lives to earn a meagre living, while the other half shelters at home in relative safety. It's a tragic irony that this is happening in a province with a world renowned public health care system administered by a government that has had access to top medical advice and has had over a year to plan their response to covid. As a high school teacher in a priority post code, I am sickened to see what's happening to my students and their families. Doug Ford needs to legislate seven permanent employer paid sick days and 14 in a pandemic. If he doesn't, he should resign".

MG: A listener named Judy had this to say. "I am not willing as a taxpayer to fund paid sick leave for companies who are making any kind of profit during this pandemic. If they're making a profit, they need to step up, even if it's in the short term. Those businesses that are just struggling to keep people employed should have government help so that everyone is treated the same. You should not be penalised for the type of business you are in during a pandemic". Just a selection of the letters that you wrote to us on the matter of paid sick leave. You can write to us on anything you hear on this program. We read everything that you send us and some of your letters end up on the radio. You can reach us by email thecurrent@cbc.ca Or find us on Facebook or Twitter @ thecurrentCBC. Karin Marley, thank you very much.

KM: You're welcome.

MG: And that's it for The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q Tom Power speaking with the Canadian country star Tenille Townes about making it big in Nashville and getting a Juno nomination for her new album. It's called The Lemonade Stand. You'll hear that conversation coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio One. In the meantime, I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

Tuesday April 27, 2021 Full Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode