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The Current Transcript for March 24, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

So we were thinking that the Russians want to invade the city, but from the earliest days we understood that the Russians want to destroy the city.

MATT GALLOWAY: That city is Mariupol. For weeks it's been under siege, cut off from vital supplies and bombed relentlessly. This morning, why this city in particular, remains so strategically important to Russian troops trying to take it into Ukrainian forces, trying to protect what's left. That's coming up in an hour. Also this morning, officials in Canadian cities are worrying about a new invasive species. No, it's not a plant. Coming up the fight to keep out the wild boar. Plus,

SOUNDCLIP

I don't think it's getting through to users of the road just how easy it is to to be distracted, to lose control and for someone to die.

MG: In the heart of the pandemic when towns and cities were locked down. Traffic was reduced on many roads. Now cars and trucks are back and road deaths are on the rise in 30 minutes. How the size of our vehicles, the design of our streets and the frustrations of living through two years of COVID are contributing to the carnage on our roads. We start, though, with the promise of a cure for sickle cell disease. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Advances in gene therapy bring new hope to people with sickle cell disease

Guests: Revee Agyepong, Dhuruv Khullar

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MG: A diagnosis of sickle cell disease means living with debilitating pain. Regular hospital visits and constant medication. The genetically inherited blood disorder affects about 6000 Canadians. The majority are of African descent. There is no universal cure for it yet, but a new experimental gene therapy is offering some hope. Five years ago, another rare treatment was offered to Revee Agyepong. She received a stem cell transplant and became one of the first adults in Canada to be cured of sickle cell disease. We've reached Ravi Agyepong in Edmonton. Good morning.

REVEE AGYEPONG: Hi, good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. What was it like for you growing up with sickle cell disease?

REVEE AGYEPONG: Oh, honestly, life with sickle cells was tough. I vividly remember being young and in elementary and running around with my friends during recess and then coming back in and having, you know, pounding headache, having trouble, catching my breath and just body pains. But I never really said anything because I figure that everyone else was experiencing the exact same symptoms. I honestly, when I was young, I had no idea how sick I really was. It wasn't until I got a little bit older where my family and my sister especially had just encouraged me to look up sickle cell disease and kind of learn a little bit more about my condition. And I was devastated because I initially read that the or at least I thought that the life expectancy was 14 years old, and at the time I was 12, so it was pretty devastating.

MG: 14. So you had look this up online, and that's the information that came to you. What did it feel like? You talked about the pain. What did that pain feel like?

REVEE AGYEPONG: The pain it's very intense, it's a very deep bone pain that almost feels like someone is hitting you with a hammer because you can feel the impact, the initial spot, maybe where the pain starts, that's very intense, but you can almost feel this pain vibrate through your entire body. Just this very, very deep, deep pain. Sometimes it's really sharp. But it's a very deep bone pain. They kind of say sometimes that it's equivalent or similar to that of a bone cancer pain.

MG: And what was the impact of that on your life?

REVEE AGYEPONG: It made things really tough, it was hard to stay hopeful, it was hard to dream like everyone else. It was kind of hard to make plans because you kind of had to ensure that your entire life was catered to your sickle cell disease, whether that was travel, you know, making sure that you have your treatments or transfusions, whatever it might be, around the time that you have to travel. So you'd be leaving, you know, in the most optimal state. You know, it meant that you were carrying pain medications and a water bottle with you everywhere you went, just to ensure that in case you run into problems, you had something with you. So it's quite limiting.

MG: I mentioned the stem cell transplant that you got before you got that. What sort of treatment were you getting?

REVEE AGYEPONG: So before stem cell transplant, I was taking hydroxyurea, which is a oral medication, a lot of patients take this one and it is it is pretty good. It did help me for quite some time how to reduce my pain crises and hospitalisations as it should. But I think after a while it wasn't quite doing that for me anymore. So I was escalated to something called red cell exchange transfusion. Or I would be getting about eight bags of donor blood. And then they would be exchanging the same volume out of my body, which was honestly a life-changing treatment. It was really, really helpful. I was on that for about seven years and it it gave me the opportunity to live more of a normal life. I was able to kind of go out with my friends and family without as much worry. I could go to the gym. I could exercise. It was great.

MG: What led you to the stem cell transplant

REVEE AGYEPONG: and stem cell transplant came about because I was taking hydroxyurea, as well as doing this Red Cell change treatment. And after a while, it just wasn't working for me. I was still in and out of the hospital emergency with constant body pains, regardless of how well I tried to care for myself. It just seemed that I had maxed out the treatments that were available for sickle cell disease at the time, and so my family just searched and searched for something. And what kind of was new out there? And we had read about stem cell transplant being done around the world. And so we had really advocated very hard to my haematologist and with some persistence and advocacy, he eventually decided to send in a referral to the Calgary bone marrow transplant team.

MG: And this was advocacy that you and your family did yourself.

REVEE AGYEPONG: Yes, this was all I saw as my sister was really the driving force behind all this. She did all the research she found out, you know, what was available and what could be done. And then she really pushed our family to make it happen because I, you know, after a while when you are constantly getting let down, you're tired and you're sick, you kind of give up. And so it's so important to have an advocate, someone to really be there for you and stand up for you when you're not able to speak for yourself.

MG: She was more than your advocate, she was your match, right?

REVEE AGYEPONG: Yes, exactly. She also ended up being my 10 out of 10 perfect match, which is just amazing and such a blessing.

MG: How did you react when they told you after this transplant that you had been cured of sickle cell disease? Given everything that you'd gone through?

REVEE AGYEPONG: Oh man. When I vividly remember the day, it was January 25th, 2018, when they had told my mom and I we they handed me the paper that showed my Sickle [unintelligible] every single week or every few months. They would print something out and they would show me my blood work, and I watched my haemoglobin s reduced from 55 to 35, 18 eight and then eventually four percent. And I was like, Oh, our percent sickle. So that's better than I've ever had. And eventually they handed me a paper that actually said they had done a sickle cell screen and it said, not detected. And I I was in tears. Both my mom and I were just in tears. We were in shock. I'm I was in shock for about two days because I just felt it was so surreal. I couldn't really believe it. I am still now when I think back. I mean, my goodness, I'm so blessed and so fortunate. I just am so thankful that God has blessed me this way.

MG: How has your life changed after that?

REVEE AGYEPONG: Since then, my life has been so different, I have been able to kind of accomplish so many things I didn't think I would ever be able to, and I post-transplant. I landed my dream job working in paediatric haematology, where I actually get to use my own experience and my nursing knowledge to really help other children with sickle cell disease. And so it really feels like a full circle moment. And since transplant, I've done a lot of advocacy and a lot of work, just kind of increasing awareness for sickle cell disease as well as for stem cell transplant. Because, you know, I wish that there was more people out here talking about these type of treatments and things that are available. So I try my best to advocate and get the word out there for other people. I recently wrote a book about my health journey called My Sickle Cells. You can find that revenge upon dot com[unintelligible] been through and how I've gotten to where I am.

MG: I mean, that's an amazing thing that you are now a sickle cell disease nurse. Given everything that you went through in your own health crisis, what do you tell young people who are going through what you went through?

REVEE AGYEPONG: I often just, you know, let them know all my patients with sickle cells or anyone with sickle cell that there's really no shame in sickle cells. You didn't do anything wrong to get it. It is a tough disease. It is a hard disease. But there's no shame in sharing your story because we truly have strength in numbers. We need more people to talk about their stories so that we can kind of get sickle cell disease and in stem cell transplant in the forefront of people's minds so we can make those changes. I try my best to let them know that there is hope in their situation and that things change. Modern medicine Modern medicine has been developing and progressing so quickly that there's always new developments and there's always something kind of on the horizon.

MG: How are you doing now?

REVEE AGYEPONG: Oh, no, I'm doing great. Yeah, I've been well, I've been healthy. It's honestly life has been amazing. I can't complain at all.

MG: Very. I'm really glad to hear about your health and I'm glad to hear your story. Thank you very much.

REVEE AGYEPONG: Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate you guys for having me.

MG: Revee Agyepong was cured of sickle cell disease by stem cell transplant in 2017. She is now, as she said, a sickle cell disease nurse at the Staller Children's Hospital in Edmonton. The treatment that Révélé received a few years back is just one of several new approaches to treat and cure sickle cell disease. Dr. Dhruv Khullar recently wrote about clinical trials underway in the New Yorker magazine. He is a physician and researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College. He's treated patients with sickle cell disease. Dr. Khullar, good morning to you.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Thanks so much for having me. Just briefly,

MG: I mean, how does what you heard just now from Square with what you've seen in your patients and what you have learnt over the course of not just writing this article for The New Yorker, but your career?

DHURUV KHULLAR: Yeah, I mean, this is an incredible story, and it's one that, you know, I'm so happy to hear how well she's doing, and I think my concern is that a lot of people don't have that opportunity and not and I'm so glad that she's speaking out about it. You know, most patients with sickle cell haven't had a stem cell transplant. They're taking a handful of drugs that that may be available. But many, many of them still struggle with excruciating pain, with strokes, with damage to their joints, with all sorts of problems. And those are the patients that I often see in the hospital and they require blood transfusions and pain medications. And so it really is a devastating disease. You know, the stem cell transplant that Ruby underwent is one option. It's a it's a rare option because not many people have a match donor. And so they're not able to get a transplant. And then a lot of people who do get the transplant do suffer with issues with rejection. Obviously, this is someone else's cells that are going into your body. And so sometimes your own body may reject those cells. So, you know, I can talk a little bit about these new therapies that are on the way that I hope are helpful for a lot more people.

MG: Before you do that, just talk about how common sickle cell disease is around the world,

DHURUV KHULLAR: Sure. And so the estimates are there probably four or five million people around the world with sickle cell disease. About 80 percent of those people are in sub-Saharan Africa. And there's a reason for that is that the sickle cell gene itself, if you have one copy, it protects against malaria. And so as the sickle cell gene kind of evolved in areas with high prevalence of malaria. But if you have two genes, you get sickle cell disease, which is obviously the devastating condition we're talking about in the United States. That's probably around 100000 people with sickle cell disease. It sounds like there's around 6000 people in Canada. In the US, at least, it's estimated that about one in every three hundred and sixty five black baby is born with sickle cell disease, and so it's a very prevalent genetic condition.

MG: Given that prevalence, why is it that there is a funding gap? This is something that you illustrated in this article. There's a funding gap compared to other diseases.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Yeah, absolutely. So sickle cell is one of the first diseases in 1949 that had identified molecular cause. We found the exact cause this this protein called haemoglobin in our red blood cells. So it the first disease to to kind of be called the molecular disease. But funding for it over the decades has been much lower than for other genetic conditions. And most people believe that's because it affects people predominantly of African ancestry, and there's been racism and discrimination over the decades. There's been much less interest and funding available for it. And so the first medication wasn't even approved until about 50 years later in 1998. And until recently, that was the only medication that was available now in the last few years, there's a few more medications that have come along, and I'm really happy and excited about this new potential or for gene therapies to provide an even more definitive treatment for the disease.

MG: So how did the gene therapies work and how would they be different than the treatment that we've received?

DHURUV KHULLAR: Absolutely. So gene therapies are kind of a twist on a stem cell transplants on a traditional stem cell transplant. You get a matched donor and then the you have to have chemotherapy yourself that you're in the hospital, you get chemotherapy to wipe out your own blood cells. Then the matched donor cells, which are healthy cells that provide the produce that normal types of red blood cells, they're infused into your body. The hope is that it takes up residence in your bone marrow and it starts churning out the right, the right types of red blood cells. And there's obviously risks of rejection in that case. But for many people, that is a. Now in the new gene therapies, you is your own blood cells that are taken out so your own blood cells are taken out. They're edited in a lab, so the DNA itself is edited and then it's infused in your body. You still have to take the chemotherapy to kind of wipe out the old blood cells that that are producing the sickle type of haemoglobin. But these new blood cells, their own blood cells that are just been edited. And the idea is everyone is their own donor, so you don't have to find a donor. And the other idea is that there's very low risk of rejection because they're your own cells and so your body kind of recognises them, even though they have this list perk to them that produces the normal blood cells. So now there's been a few dozen patients in the U.S. that have received these types of gene therapies. Many of them have had complete resolution, as Ruby has had of their sickle cell crises. They have normal blood counts. They're living normal lives. The treatments haven't been approved by the FDA. The companies that I spoke with sound like they're going to try to give the data to the FDA by the end of the year or early next year. And it could be that a year from now, we have the first gene therapies approved for sickle cell disease.

MG: That gene editing is done through CRISPR technology.

DHURUV KHULLAR: So. Become within different flavours, CRISPR therapy is one of the very promising ones. There's another set of therapies that that kind of use a harmless viral vectors, what they call it. There's a harmless virus that you kind of put the normal gene on as a piggyback onto that virus. And it kind of goes into the cell and it inserts the gene into your DNA. And so that's another way that you can get the right gene kind of in the right place for these patients. So there's a few different flavours, but CRISPR is probably the one that people are most familiar with. A number of these, I think, will end up being being effective.

MG: Treatments is right at the bleeding edge of technology. Are there risks that are associated with these sorts of treatments?

DHURUV KHULLAR: You know, for the most part, these have been very safe. There are, of course, risks of the chemotherapy. And when you get that chemotherapy, you are at high risk for infection because it's wiping out all your blood cells, including your red blood cells, but also your white blood cells, you know, in one of the trials. There were two patients who developed cancer after getting one of the gene therapies. You know, the investigators looked at this really hard look at it in every way they could. It seems like those two cancer cases were not related to the gene therapy itself. And so it wasn't the gene therapies fault per se, but that it was more likely the case of the chemotherapy that you need for the gene therapies that may have caused it or patients with sickle cell because their bone marrow are already so stressed. There's so much cycling going on. There's a low oxygen environment. They may be at higher risk for blood cancers to begin with, and so that the leading thought is that the gene therapies are very safe and these two cancer cases were actually not related to the therapy itself.

MG: Just in the last few minutes that we have. There's a couple of things that you point out in terms of obstacles to get this out into the broader population that would be affected by sickle cell disease. One is the cost of this treatment. Again, this is early days, but this is incredibly expensive just now.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Absolutely. And so these therapies, you know, they're on the market yet. But when they are on the market, they're expected to cost somewhere between one and $2 million per patient. And so that is not even including the hospital stay. That's not including other medications that you might need around the therapy. So it's an incredibly expensive therapy or will be an incredibly expensive therapy. You know, it's important to note that sickle cell is incredibly debilitating condition, and it requires a lot of care at the present and so many patients with sickle cell disease over the course of their lifetime, their medical costs do exceed one or $2 million. And so it's not clear that this therapy would be more expensive than a kind of lifetime costs of treating sickle cell disease. And at the same time, there's tremendous obviously human benefits potentially of these therapies. And so to avert all the suffering that goes along with that $2 million of lifetime costs, that's a that's potentially a real a real win as well. And so our costs will be an issue. But but hopefully it's not an obstacle that we can overcome.

MG: Just finally and briefly, the other part of this is that you talk about the technology is just the beginning of this, that there are barriers in place to get the treatment to the people who need it the most, including the systemic barriers that have prevented research into this disease in the first place.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Right. And so, you know, one of the points of the article is that that technology existing or a wonderful treatment existing is not enough to make sure that people actually benefit from that therapy. And so there are other barriers in terms of access to care and in terms of trust in the medical system, in terms of just having the infrastructure in place. A lot of people with sickle cell disease right now don't even have a regular haematologist. They're not getting the current standard of care. Things like vaccines and penicillin really easy. And so we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we get them incorporated in the system. We have kind of a pathway for them to get this therapy. We gain the trust of people who have been marginalised, sometimes for decades. And so having the therapy itself is not the same as a therapy that that goes to the people and is able to actually help them. And that's something that I really want us all to be thinking about in the years ahead.

MG: But in the face of that, you see real promise here. I mean, this is the real potential of a cure.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Absolutely. It's an incredibly exciting time for patients who have struggled for, for many, many years with this devastating illness.

MG: Dr. Khullar, it's good to hear a bit of good news and good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

DHURUV KHULLAR: Thanks so much.

MG: Dr. Dhruv Khullar is a physician researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College. His article about new treatments for sickle cell disease appeared in the New Yorker magazine, and you can find it online. You're CBC News is up next. And then.

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We simply have to see drivers slow down on streets where the numbers show us that speed has put people's lives at risk, and the data is clear that we can make people safer.

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That was Toronto Mayor John Tory back in 2019. Since then, road fatality numbers have continued to rise. The pandemic has added to that in interesting ways, as have the designs of our roads and the designs of our vehicles. In six minutes, how to create safer streets. Across this country, I Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Tackling injury and fatality on Canada’s roads; the strategic and symbolic importance of Mariupol

Guests: Bella Dinh-Zarr, Jess Spieker

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

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MG: Still to come, the city of Mariupol has been reduced to rubble by shelling in 30 minutes. Why the Russians are so desperate to gain control and why Ukrainians are fighting back. But first convincing Canadians to slow down.

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MG: Speed is killing Canadians across this country. In 2020, there were more than 7500 motor vehicle fatalities that includes drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists. Yesterday, Ontario Provincial Police announced that road fatalities last year in that province were the highest in a decade. 315 people died on the road in Ontario. Speed was a factor in 81 of those deaths. Road safety is a problem as old as the road itself, and getting politicians do something about it can be an uphill battle. Jess Spieker is trying to fix that. She's a victim of road violence, who is now a road safety advocate and spokesperson for friends and family for safe streets. She's in Toronto. Jess, good morning.

JESS SPIEKER: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. Are you surprised? I mean, anecdotally, I think we all have stories and have seen things. But are you surprised with the latest numbers that show an increase in deaths in Ontario roads the highest in a decade in that province?

JESS SPIEKER: I'm sadly not. It's a trend that's mirrored around the world and in particular in the United States. There's been a significant rash of preventable deaths on our roads since the pandemic has. The measures have been lifting.

MG: This is something that is personal to you because of what happened to you in 2015. Do you mind just briefly telling that story?

JESS SPIEKER: For sure. In 2015, I was riding my bike to work on Bathurst Street here in Toronto, a little bit north of Eglinton, and an SUV driver made a left turn without looking, and she slammed her SUV into my left side, and when she did that, she broke my spine. She gave me a brain injury and she inflicted very extensive damage to my soft tissue. So I developed an enormous blood clot in my left leg, and a piece of that clot broke off, later chewed through my heart and it landed across both lobes of my lungs. It's called a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism, so I nearly died twice not only because of one reckless driver, but because of the way that our streets and vehicles are designed. What happened to me and what happens on our streets is not an accident. It's a result and we can change the system and we can change the result.

MG: What's the recovery process been like for you?

JESS SPIEKER: Well, I'm still suffering from clinically severe depression and anxiety, daily chronic pain. My activities are limited. I'm not the person that I used to be. I was 31 when this happened to me, kind of starting out in a new career. I'm still working in the same job, but in a limited way, and my life has been on hold essentially since it happened. I haven't had any kids yet. I haven't started a family. It's been really hard. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me

MG: was the driver that hit you, was that driver ever charged.

JESS SPIEKER: She was charged with a charge called Turned Out in Safety, which is a minor infraction of the Highway Traffic Act. However, she successfully pled down to a lesser charge called improper use of a turn signal. So in the end, she was convicted of something that carries no demerit points and she was fined $300.

MG: $300.

JESS SPIEKER: That's right.

MG: Before you were hit. How much thought had you given to the way the streets are designed?

JESS SPIEKER: Finally enough, not very much. I just rode my bike everywhere and I had fun doing it. There were, of course, close calls that would make me angry, but I didn't. Before this happened, I didn't put in the time to research why our roads are the way they are and why vehicles are designed the way that they are. What are the forces that have shaped the system into this result? And it took somebody slamming an SUV into me to do that, and that's why I'm trying to speak up. Nobody else should have to go through what I did and what so many of their families have when they've lost a loved one on our roads. I want to spread this information because things need to change.

MG: And when you talk about close calls, I mean, many of us have had close calls and perhaps will put the bike away for a while. Or we will be much more aware of where we are when we are out on those roads has changed. How has that changed your experience? Has that changed how you feel travelling on the streets of your city?

JESS SPIEKER: Absolutely. I no longer feel any sense of safety or any sense of belonging. If I ever ride my bike, I will only do it in dedicated infrastructure and only on days when I have the courage to fight for my life. And that is not every day. That is not most days, actually. So most days I feel robbed of my choices and robbed of my preferred mobility, and I end up driving my car and every time I drive my car instead of taking my bike. It makes the city worse. It wears out our roads faster. I contribute the pollution. I contribute to my own sedentary lifestyle. Health care costs. Childhood asthma contributing to climate disaster. I just want to ride a bike and I do not feel safe doing it most of the time. What are the

MG: things that you think could be done? The easy wins to make streets in Canadian towns and cities safer?

JESS SPIEKER: It's so easy to do, and I'm so glad you asked. It's all about building complete streets and vision zero design changes.

MG: What are those things? So what are those things mean, complete streets?

JESS SPIEKER: I say these words all the time and are very vague. It means things like dedicated protected cycle tracks on the sides of roads with a robust barrier like we have on Adelaide and Richmond. Those stop not only drivers from ploughing into cyclists, but also from people walking on the sidewalk. We need narrower car lanes everywhere because when car lanes are wide and straight as they are everywhere and especially on our arterial roads, that encourages drivers to speed at speeds that will kill somebody if they happen to hit somebody. Narrower lanes make it feel less safe for drivers to speed, and they sort of automatically, without thinking about it, slow down to speeds that are survivable. We need protected intersection designs if we have streets that intersect, which each have protected bike lanes and we can put in protected corner islands. Those islands force drivers to make sharp turns so that they make turns carefully and attentively and are less likely to hit somebody while they turn. We need raised crosswalks, so when you're crossing the street, there's usually a gentle slope down to the level of the roadway. You walk across the same level as the cars and then you walk up a gentle slope by the other side. Instead, raised crosswalks flip that and it remains elevated, so it functions as a speed hump for drivers, and it reminds drivers that that's pedestrian territory. There's a guest in the crosswalk, and they must ride slowly and carefully. We need wider spread work called leading pedestrian intervals, but that's where the pedestrian signal activates before the green light for drivers that allows pedestrians to reach more of the middle of the intersection before drivers are allowed to move. And that makes them more visible to drivers. That makes a massive reduction in collisions at intersections.

MG: These are the sort of systemic changes, and I want to ask you about why those systemic changes are important, but one of them that you haven't mentioned is just around speeding. There used to be a day when they were called speed traps, and there would be perhaps police officers who would be there with a little radar gun. And if you're going over the speed limit, you got a ticket. There have now been an increase in automated speed enforcement cameras. Toronto introduced some of these in 2020, specifically around school zones. Are those effective?

JESS SPIEKER: Absolutely. And in fact, we would prefer to see all speeding enforcement done by automated means because it's if you distribute the speed cameras equitably all across different neighbourhoods, then it's a really excellent way to slow down drivers in a way that does not introduce an element of racism the way that human policing forces can. So it's a way to equitably slow down drivers. We know that from what our own automated speed deployment in Toronto, these cameras have incredible rates of success. There's very low rates of recidivism. Mostly, drivers get one ticket and never speed through that area again, and they generate a little bit of revenue. So it's a self-sustaining system, although the idea is for nobody to speed and ultimately to lose money on these cameras. Toronto has installed 50. We've seen incredible success with them and in response to that success, instead of doing this whole hog and going all in to save lives, instead of doing that, we have committed to a mere 25 extra cameras and that's because the political will is not there

MG: to get this done. We're going to talk more about the political will in a moment, but just finally with you, I mean, one of the things as I said that you're focussing on are those larger infrastructure changes. Why is that important to look at changing that compared to targeting the behaviour of individual drivers?

JESS SPIEKER: At any attempt to address the behaviour of individuals has failed, and we've had 100 years to get it right. We've had cars for about 100 hundred years. Education of individuals has failed. Enforcement like by individuals against individual drivers that have failed. We still have road violence. Even though we've done a lot of those things. The only thing we haven't tried extensively is design overhaul. We've seen design changes work, especially in European cities. Some cities have successfully eliminated deaths and severe injuries from their roadways by changing the way that their roadways are designed. Some of those things that I mentioned complete streets design, for example, downforce in Toronto is an excellent example of a complete street. We could have that on every arterial road. Arterial roadways are the ones where pedestrians are most likely to be violently killed while walking along the sidewalk or crossing in a marked crosswalk on a green light. We could change those. There's only one thousand one hundred and seventy five kilometres of arterial roads for a tiny fraction of what we're spending on a Gardiner Expressway. We could transform those into complete streets, but again, we do not have the political will to do that in Toronto.

MG: Are you confident just very briefly that that political will will arrive? I mean, again, given these record numbers that we're coming around to hearing about this more.

JESS SPIEKER: I don't know how to feel about that, and frankly, I think an even larger system we're going to need to look at to get anywhere with this is electoral reform our first past. The post system delivers us the status quo over and over and over, and the status quo is failing everybody. It's failing people on bikes, people who are walking and it's failing people who drive as well. We really need to change how many of societal systems function in order to make the significant effective changes that would save lives and address the climate crisis as well.

MG: Jessica, to speak with you. Thank you very much.

JESS SPIEKER: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Appreciate it. JEss Spieker is a spokesperson for Friends and Families for Safe Streets. She was in Toronto. Of course, Toronto isn't the only place dealing with dangerous road. She talked about what was happening in the United States. We mentioned those numbers across the province of Ontario and elsewhere. This is a global issue. Both the United Nations and the World Health Organisation have made addressing road safety a goal for the next decade. Governments around the world are starting to look for ways to keep people safe. Bella Dinh-Zarr is a senior advisor in public health and transportation at the Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Ottawa. Good morning to you!

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Good morning, Matt, and thank you for focussing on such an important and life saving but often neglected issue.

MG: Well, thanks for being here. When you take a look at at at the, you know, the global picture, how safe are the roads in this country compared to other nations?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Well, every year we know that more than a million 1.2 million people are killed on roadways around the world, so that's more than 3000 people a day. So Canada, we have a good infrastructure here. In some ways we're doing much better than many countries. But you know, there's always room for improvement. I think as your previous guest mentioned, just there are countries that have almost completely eliminated road traffic deaths, and those are countries like Sweden, which came up with the concept of Vision Zero. Australia is doing well. The United Kingdom, these are all countries that we can learn from. And there are some things that they can learn from us. You know, the I think the advocacy that Jess is talking about, I mean, she was it was a perfect example showing that, you know, the sense of safety. We should allow everyone in this country to experience that how people shouldn't be afraid to go out.

MG: has the pandemic affected the safety of our roads?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: The pandemic, unfortunately, has increased some risky driving behaviours things like speeding. There's more distracted driving. There's just more risk taking by drivers, unfortunately.

MG: Do we know why that's the case?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: You know, there's a lot of theories about that. It might be that people are just more in a hurry to get places there might be distracted because there's a lot of economic and other worries there going on in the world. And there's also that on the good side, I think there's more active transportation. There's more, you know, people are trying to get out. So more walking and cycling and, you know, people going out in active forms of transportation, going out in a wheelchair. But that also means that we need to pay more attention and we need to invest in making streets safer. And when I say investment, I really mean that it's really an investment, especially in a country like Canada with Medicare, a single payer system. When we put money into our transportation infrastructure and our environment, we're actually saving money and not to mention grief and terrible emotional strain. And, you know, and just reducing happiness as your previous speaker spoke about by reducing people's ability or desire to ride their bike or walk on the streets.

MG: Jess gave a number of solutions that she sees as ways to make sea streets safer from your perspective, and again, through the work that you've done with the U.N. and the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States and now here in Canada. What to you is the most effective strategy?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Yeah. So I actually came to Canada just last year to work for the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, and it was an agreement with an international FIA foundation. And that's because we could see that there is just so much going on around the world that can be implemented in many different countries from lower or higher income countries. And all of that is centred around a safe system approach. It's really a system that's really an ethical imperative that everything's connected and we have to make the system protective for everyone, especially the most vulnerable. So that's the road environment, that's vehicle design. That's good policies to make it the safest choice, really the easiest choice. And those are all the things that you just mentioned, you know, the environment, but it's also good policies. It's making sure that we allow people to choose the safest and perhaps the most enjoyable choice of active transportation. Or, you know, you know, being able to navigate the streets of any size town or city in the safest way possible without injuring another person.

MG: And again, just talked about the importance of systemic changes. From your perspective, why is that focus on the system more important than a focus on individual behaviour?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Now, I think that we're moving away from in the old days, there was a lot about the blame game about, you know, who was at fault. But really, we know now that it's a system. It's, you know, it's the whole roadway system and it's a breakdown really of the system when someone dies on the road, when a pedestrian or a cyclist like Jess is hit. It's a whole number of factors. There was no separated bike lane for her. Perhaps there was no the perhaps the person was speeding, perhaps the person was distracted. Perhaps the car didn't have automated emergency braking to stop that. So I think that that's why, you know, we're focussing on this really more of a public health approach. I actually come from a public health background and it's more about prevention so that you take two or three or five steps back so that you can make sure that you know, you assess what's going on in a certain community and personalise it and find out what people want. And then, you know, choose the most evidence based interventions that fit that community and that fit their needs, but that are also evidence based.

MG: The part of this is about the vehicles that we drive in addition to the vehicles or the roads that were driving those vehicles on. There was a study that was done from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the United States, and it points to SUVs, trucks and vans as the most deadly vehicles on the road, saying the pedestrians are more likely to be hit by trucks and SUVs than they are cars, in part because what you don't see from those vehicles. Can you tell me more about that?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Yeah, that's right. That's actually some folks that I was just talking to you at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and they just released this the study. And it did show that things like, you know, larger vehicles like SUVs, vans, minivans and pickups, they're more likely to hit and kill pedestrians. And part of that is the visibility, you know, there the A-pillars that connect the the parts of the vehicle, and sometimes that unfortunately also causes a blind spot. But also, it's just general vehicle design. There are things that we can do to vehicles relatively low cost. It wouldn't really impact the vehicle so much like lowering the bumpers, having a sloped hood, as I mentioned, increasing that visibility, having emergency automated automatic emergency braking. So all of that is part of the safer, the safe system approach. It's the vehicle making sure the vehicle is, you know, the best possible, but also ensuring that the intersections and the infrastructure makes it easy for you to navigate your vehicle and make the pedestrians or wheelchair users or bicyclists much more visible with all of these infrastructure changes.

MG: What's the role of law enforcement in this?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Oh, that's a good question, Matt, I think, you know now because there is so much, you know, discussion about ensuring that law enforcement, any type of enforcement and traffic enforcement is not racist. I think that, you know, we have to talk about that, that situation. But so but despite, you know, some of the really devastating racial issues that have come up, enforcement still is an important tool in saving lives. I mean, I'm I'm originally I'm from the U.S. and you know, the reason that us drunk driving deaths decreased is because of the frequency of enforcement. And part of that really is just the visibility of enforcement. So there is another some good studies coming out of Columbia University in New York by a doctor, Pressly, showing that, you know, having just the visibility of having law enforcement seen, actually, even if it's for something else like it's for, you know, the for seatbelt enforcement, it actually reduces risky driving as well. So it reduces the fatal crashes related to other types of risky driving, like speeding or impairment. So just having the visibility of having enforcement there is important. Camera enforcement is important that reduced some of the burden on law enforcement. And really, I think that law enforcement can play the White Hat role. They they can prevent crashes and save lives. And by doing things like I'm actually doing a crash investigation scan of all the different approaches across the world because that's what I used to do as disaster investigation. We should really look at traffic crashes. It's a disaster. I mean, it was a disaster for Jess when this happened. And I think that and I don't know her, but I certainly sympathise because I ride and walk to work myself, and I could see that happening to me. I think that we need to look at it as a disaster when we investigate road crashes. We need to look at how we can prevent that from happening to anyone in the future, especially the most vulnerable.

MG: So the last point on this is that you've said that the goal should be zero zero fatalities on the roads. Just said that this is about political will, that the ideas are there. You just need the political will to implement them. So what is stopping politicians and the public from getting on board here with us?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Oh, that's sort of the million dollar question. I think that, you know, we can generate public and political will, and part of that is. I mean, the reason I came to Canada was to work for turf and turf has great tools like action to zero. So divisions grow isn't just about a concept or a framework, it's about action and tools like, you know, our non-profit charitable foundation. What it does is it provides communities with specific assessments of what they want, what they need, what they're able to do, and then it gives them the information that they can take to policymakers and others and even other members of their communities to show that this is what they need. Whatever it is, and nobody knows the community better than the community members themselves. And I think that with that with the assessment and then using really science based, evidence based interventions that we've discussed and that have been proven in many places, I think that that's where it's going to start. It's going to start with, you know, communities really speaking up and and saying that this is what we want. We want a, you know, a safe place that we can walk and bike and where everyone including the most vulnerable can be, you know, have an enjoyable commute or, you know, transportation.

MG: We're almost out of time. But is it possible to get to zero fatalities on the roads of this country?

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Athat, you know, a lot of people would say that it's impossible to do that. And when you ask someone, you know, how many fatalities should you accept in a year in a country or in a province or territory, they may say 100. But when you ask them how many are willing to accept in your town or your neighbourhood or your school or in your family? I think the answer is always zero. And that's what we can move towards. And that's really what some countries have almost achieved in places like Sweden. So I think it's a doable goal and and Canada has everything it needs to drive down pedestrian and bicycle deaths and really all motor vehicle deaths. It's a great communitarian spirit.

MG: It's great to speak with you about this, and we're going to, I'm sure, hear from listeners. In the meantime, it's great to hear from you. Thank you very much.

BELLA DINH-ZARR: Thank you for having me.

MG: Bella Dinh-Zarr is a senior advisor in public health and transportation at the Traffic Injury Research Foundation. Yes, indeed, we'd love to hear from you. You're seeing empty your streets. You're seeing an increase in speed. Have you perhaps been impacted by that? And what do you think it would take to make streets safer in this country? Email us The Current at CBC.ca. You can reach us on Twitter as well @TheCurrentCBC or go to the website. cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up after your regional update, the strategic importance of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and then.

SOUNDCLIP

They are the worst invasive large mammal on the planet. Their growth is so high that you just can't barbecue your way out of a wild pig problem.

MG: A wild pig problem moving closer to cities like Edmonton, we'll find out what's being done and not done to keep them out. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current back in a minute. Stay with us.

The strategic and symbolic importance of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city besieged by Russia

Guests: Aurel Braun, Jurgen Preugschas, Ryan Brook

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

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds: Street fighting noises]

MG: That's the sound of street fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the besieged city has been without basic necessities now for more than three weeks. Yesterday, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, blamed Russia for not allowing civilians to evacuate.

SOUNDCLIP

For more than a week. Now, we've been trying to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, and almost all our attempts and force may have disrupted by the Russian occupiers by shelling or deliberate terror.

MG: On Monday, Russia demanded Ukrainian surrender in exchange for safe passage out of Mariupol. Ukraine rejected that offer. The European Union's foreign policy chief has declared the siege of Mariupol a war crime. Around 100000 people are trapped there with no water, no food and very little hope. Artur Shevchenko is a resident of Mariupol. He spoke with The Current on Monday about the conditions.

SOUNDCLIP

It was terrible, it was it was siege without any water, heat, electricity, almost all of the city is destroyed. Source the all. We were thinking that Russians want to like to invade the city, but we understood that Russians want to destroy the city, just to destroy it and to push all the people from it by shelling or by siege.

MG: Although much of it has been reduced to rubble, the port city hold strategic and symbolic significance for both Russia and Ukraine. Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto and associate at the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Aurel, good Morning!

AUREL BRAUN: Good morning.

MG: Good to have you back on the programme. Mariupol is a small city in northeastern Ukraine, on the coastline of the Black Sea. Why is that important, that detail?

AUREL BRAUN: It is important both to Ukraine and to Russia for, as you mentioned, strategic reasons. There's great symbolism as well. And if you look at the reasons for each country, in the case of Ukraine, they are looking at a kind of epic resistance. Today, it's one month since the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and the city's holding. The demands for surrender that Vladimir Putin made have been rejected. The fighting goes on even though, as one human rights organisation described Mariupol: as "a freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings." So in a sense, this is a test. This is where the Ukrainian government and the Ukraine people may look upon Mariupol as a kind of Stalingrad, where they made the stand against the overwhelming odds, against naked aggression. And even if the city's eventually occupied, that resistance would be viewed as something that is truly epic. And there's a kind of irony in here that it was Vladimir Putin who has denied the right of Ukraine to exist, he said. The Ukraine is an artificial construct. He denied that there is something called the Ukrainian people, and yet he is ironically and unintentionally greatly strengthening Ukrainian national identity.

MG: What about for the Russians? Strategically, we'll talk about that first, what significance does the city hold for Russia?

AUREL BRAUN: The Russians would like to have a land bridge. They have made progress in the south of Ukraine. They have come in through Crimea, and they're trying to link up with the separatist regions, which are controlled by Russia, the eastern Donbass, Luhansk and Donetsk. And Mariupol is surrounded, and it is a kind of obstacle to having that kind of contiguity. It is also a kind of test of will. Vladimir Putin wants to show that there is no brutality that he's not going to use. In fact, Boris Johnson of Britain said that Vladimir Putin has crossed into barbarism. And if you look at what's happening on the ground in Mariupol, that's what it is. It is trying to send a message to the rest of Ukraine. This is what's going to happen to you. We, Russia, the Kremlin, are not restrained by international law or by any sense of morality. Surrender is the only way you can save yourself. That is the message. And also, they are looking at the fact that some of the defenders belong to the Azov Battalion or sometimes called the Azov Regiment. And some of those people have been associated, there have been individuals with really sordid connections, neo-Nazis. And if the Russians can capture some of those, they can put them on exhibit and say, 'You see, this is the fight against neo-Nazism.' And let's not forget that from the very beginning, Vladimir Putin claimed that this is a fight, that for Russia, is one over an existential threat. In a sense, it's a replay of the Great Patriotic War. The fight against Nazism, that the government of Ukraine is made up of a group of drug-addicted neo-Nazis, and if you can find examples of that, you can smear all of Ukraine with that label.

MG: So there's a propaganda piece to that as well.

AUREL BRAUN: Absolutely.

MG: You mentioned that in some ways, Mariupol was was an obstacle in the 2014 invasion by Russia into Crimea. This was a city that fought back the Russians in that invasion.

AUREL BRAUN: Yes. This is a fairly substantial city. It's not a huge city, but over 400,000 people. It has very large industries, metal and chemical industries, a rather polluted city. But it was economically important to Ukraine. And in terms of connections over contiguity, it is a kind of obstacle to Russian military plans. And it's almost as if the Russians cannot admit that they have been failing, because in many ways the Russian invasion has been failing. This was not the expectation that Russia had. Vladimir Putin and his supporters in the military, and the secret services expected that by now, Vladimir Putin would be holding a parade in Kyiv. A victory parade that they would be welcomed by the local population, or they could cow the local population into accepting Russian rule. So this act of defiance is this kind of combination of strategic concern, of symbolism, of history in the making.

MG: And so if Ukraine were to hold back Russia again in Mariupol, I mean that also would be a symbolic, as you say, victory for Ukraine, for the Ukrainian forces. Not even just in this war, but in time to come.

AUREL BRAUN: Absolutely, it sends a message. And it's interesting that Russia wanted the formal surrender because that would have been this combination of symbolism, of humiliation, of sending the message to the rest of Ukraine that you are helpless, and you are hopeless and there's no point in fighting on. This issue. What we've done in Grozny, this is what we've done in Aleppo. This is what we're doing in Mariupol. And if you don't surrender, this is what we're going to do elsewhere because we are not restrained. We know that there was a ruling by the International Court of Justice that demanded that Russia stop its military action. Russia absolutely ignored that. So this was a brazen disregard of international law because Russia knew that the only thing that could be done would be to appeal for a resolution in the Security Council and they have a veto.

MG: I was going to ask you this do you see similar tactics in terms if you take a look at the aerial footage that's been released in the last day or two of Mariupol and the destruction, the shocking destruction of that city with 100000 people still trapped in? Do you see comparisons with that and what the Russians unleashed in Aleppo and in Grozny?

AUREL BRAUN: Absolutely. And this is what the entire world is seeing. This is why the UK Foreign Office called this clearly a war crime.

MG: And what's behind those tactics? I mean, what is what is the goal of reducing a city to ash?

AUREL BRAUN: It's difficult for us to understand in the West that kind of mentality. But this was the methodology that the Kremlin has used the sheer brutality of not giving up until enough civilians have been have been killed and there's nothing that restraints. The Russian military, we saw that they attack that theatre where people hiding in the basement with a clear sign that children were present. They have fired on the destroyed schools and hospitals, maternity wards, and there's a kind of message that we don't play by the rules of the world. And you better submit this is what Russia is using other things as well, such as the attempt to use nuclear blackmail with the rest of the world where they put their forces nuclear forces on high alert and tried to send the message, Well, if you tried to help Ukraine, you could be in a nuclear war.

MG: We're a month into this, four weeks into the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. What will you be watching for? And you could talk specifically about the city or more broadly, but what are you going to be watching for as things continue to escalate?

AUREL BRAUN: There is also, as you know, a needle summit, and there are very important decisions to be made there. Mariupol is just a small part of Ukraine, but it is, as we discussed, symbolic. Is the U.S. going to help the people of Ukraine further? We have provided help, but they need a great deal more. They need to be resupplied with armaments. They need more anti-aircraft anti-tank weapons, perhaps empty ship missiles. There are economic measures that are yet to be implemented to pressure Russia to have this kind of combination of economic pressure and military help to Ukraine. There are Russian banks that still are able to use Swift. There are large French companies that still operate in Russia. There are countries disturbed by Russian oil, so there is more that can be done. It depends a good deal on the willpower of the West, and this is why President Zelensky is constantly appealing to the West. And even though he's asking for a no fly zone, he realises I suspect that that is not going to happen. But he is telling the world that this is not just about one city is not just about one country, but that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is presenting a threat to all of Europe and eventually to the entire international system.

MG: And I guess just finally, do you see that response mean to your point, it's about more than one city. But do you see the response from Naito to be measured in some ways by what's happening to that one city, by the devastation that's happening in that one city?

AUREL BRAUN: There is prudence, clearly, and one can understand that we want to help without provoking. But there are those who are very frustrated by kind of timidity, especially in the camp, in the part of the by the regime, which had had a kind of defeatist attitude at the beginning. We can recall that the advice about the administration had given to the government and to the president of Ukraine was to evacuate. And it's not hard to do a thought experiment that had President Zelensky fled. It's highly unlikely that the Ukrainian army would have held with the president fleeing, and Russia may have may have prevailed. So they don't need to push, push more. The Ukrainians have demonstrated remarkable resilience, astonishing morale. They have fought against all kinds of odds, and it is possible that they could push many of the Russian forces out and may be able to force a kind of settlement that will allow for a free and independent Ukraine, even if they may lose some parts of it, at least the core of it, to remain and try to build and rebuild a devastated country.

MG: Aurel Braun, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

AUREL BRAUN: Thank you.

MG: Aurel Braun, professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto, associate at the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He was in Toronto. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Music]

SOUNDCLIP

[Boar sounds]

MG: That is the sound of one of the most successful invasive species on the planet: wild boars. And they are becoming a major problem in some parts of Canada, even coming close to some cities. Jurgen Preugschas is a pork farmer based in Marathwada Alberta, just northwest of Edmonton. Juergen, good morning.

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What are you seeing around your farm when it comes to wild boars?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, we see quite a number of of bores invading the area. More and more damage to crops sightings, sometimes on people's front yards in their stockyards with the cattle and yeah, they're there around the block, which we never used to see 40 years ago.

MG: I was going to say, is this a new issue? How long has this been a problem?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, I think the first boars were escaping from from farms in in the 80s.

MG: What sort of damage do they cause?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, you know, it's it's a multitude of damages, they they're nocturnal animals and they come out and and they dig for the food that they they like and they'll come into crops and they can destroy whole fields. And you don't even notice that because they go into the middle. And then when you're harvesting, you'll you'll find fields that have been ploughed up pretty well because of their strong noses. And they dug in and eat, you know, wheat fields and corn fields and old fields. And you know, that's the some of the bigger damage that they do.

MG: How many wild boars would it take to destroy a whole field?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, you usually you've got their their pods of pigs, their families of pigs, and you know, there might be 30 or 40 in a family and they would make a tremendous amount of damage in a short period of time.

MG: All right. Stay on the line. We're going to talk more about this with you in a moment. But Ryan Brooke is an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He spent the last 12 years researching the wild pig population in Canada. Ryan, good morning to you. Hey, Matt. How big is that wild pig population in this country?

RYAN BROOK: Well, I can put in context our is across all of Canada occupy one million square kilometres, so it is very widespread. We're not seeing huge numbers like, you know, Texas has over three million. We're not there yet, but we're certainly well on track and heading in that direction pretty rapidly.

MG: Why are the wild boar populations increasing so much?

RYAN BROOK: Well, that's what they do. They have, you know, they are truly the worst invasive large mammal on the planet. And part of that is the reproductive rate. They're having six young per later, on average multiple litters per year, and they eat almost anything they can inhabit almost any habitat. They can live in cities, they can live in remote rural areas. They are just incredibly well adapted, and they survive Canadian winters exceedingly well as well, which some people thought was going to be a limiting factor. But it's not even close.

MG: This may sound like a dumb question, but where did they come from? I mean, if you're going to saying that 40 years ago, this wasn't an issue, why is this now suddenly an issue?

RYAN BROOK: I agree entirely with Juergen, and that's consistent with our data as well. So there are no native pigs in Canada, to be clear. So anything that you see running around outside of a fence, if it looks like a pig and walks like a pig, that it is an invasive animal and these are brought over in the 1980s from Europe to stalk farms to be for meat production. And that was supposed to be a big market and diversified agriculture, and it really worked reasonably well. Until 2001, the whole market peaked and then just collapsed. After that, there was no big international sale market. And so the value just plummeted. And so unfortunately, there's been leakage from many farms, but quite a number have cut the fence and just let them all go in one hundred two hundred in one case, over 300 animals in one shot.

MG: OK, hold on. There are a couple of things there. One is leakage. What? What does that mean? It's over the fence or something?

RYAN BROOK: Yes, escape. Exactly. So they're getting under over the fence. And, you know, on the prairies, here we get these big winter storms and and the snow builds up and they can just literally walk right over the fence.

MG: But the other part of that was, you were saying somebody who cut the fence to let these things out.

RYAN BROOK: These are the owners getting just fed up with the they're not making money, either. You know, these things can be a real challenge to raise. I know a number of people that have raised some that are missing a finger or two it can get a little bit frustrating if it's stop making dollars. And so unfortunately, rather than just give them away or sell them, they just let them all go. And that has happened numerous times across Canada.

MG: You've said that this problem is an ecological train wreck. What, from an ecological perspective, is so concerning to you about an increase in a wild pig population?

RYAN BROOK: Well, there are impacts across agriculture and across natural ecosystems are really severe, and as Juergen said, there are ruder and so they get their nose in the ground and just tear the ground apart to get at roots and insect larva. And so our sister ecosystems are not adapted to that, that deer outcomes and feeds on some grass, the grass grows back and you don't see widespread impacts pigs come through in the areas just destroyed. They don't have sweat glands like humans, so they wallow in mud and water and they contaminated with E. coli, sallmonella and the water gets churned up. And so you have this beautiful wetland or stream nice clear water. Pigs move in and the water is disgusting and unusable, and they'll eat almost anything so they'll eat frogs and salamanders and ground nesting birds get gobbled up. And so ducklings and goslings and all of these birds and everything up to and including an adult white tailed deer can be taken down as predators. So huge impacts on the ecosystem. And you know, in the U.S., they talk about $2.5 billion per year in agricultural losses. So it's absolutely catastrophic impacts you're going to.

MG: How concerned are you about these animals affecting a pork operation like yours?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, I think that is the the most devastating possibility. I mean, we've seen it in Europe, where African swine fever has been spread by wild boars. Now our country, we export 70 percent of the production of our hogs, $45 billion industry. And overnight, if we had a case of African swine fever, our industry would shut down and 70 percent of our farmers would be in bankruptcy.

MG: And you think that that's something like that could leap from these wild animals?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, of course, I mean, what happens in Europe and we've seen it in Belgium is, you know, you have, say, a trucker, anybody who has smuggled in maybe some sausage from an African swine fever or foot and mouth disease country and brings in a sausage and that's uninspected and then doesn't eat the whole sandwich, leaves it in their garbage or throws that out to the side of the road. A wild pig eats that and then they contact, you know, the African swine fever, or even foot and mouth disease that would affect the cattle industry as well. And as an exporting country, it's we're done for. It's it's an overnight disaster.

MG: Ryan, there have also been reports in the last few months about wild pigs being seen closer and closer to cities like Edmonton and in the Greater Toronto area. What would that mean in terms of a population establishing itself around a major city?

RYAN BROOK: Well, that certainly has happened across Europe, like Berlin has very well established populations, you've got a southern U.S. states and they have major urban pig issues. And it does create a whole new situation of pigs getting into garbage cans, pigs encountering, you know, school kids walking to school. And so there are important risks and concerns that are unique to cities that just so much more risk of that, you know, a direct interaction and they can be dangerous.

MG: Are they dangerous to people?

RYAN BROOK: They can be, you know, a woman in Texas two years ago was killed just outside her between her house and her car, taken down by a group and badly chewed up and killed by these pigs. It's not common, but attacks and bites. These things are huge. The biggest one we've handled was six hundred and thirty eight pounds. And so these animals can be absolutely massive and they have razor sharp teeth and they can be very aggressive if provoked.

MG: We asked the Alberta government for an interview about this. They didn't make anyone available, but they sent a statement that reads in part, We're working with our partners in municipalities, academia and other jurisdictions to examine best practises and determine how to address the issue of wild boar in Alberta. We're trapping, conducting, surveillance and monitoring in several counties. What has been done, Ryan, to control this population and has that been successful?

RYAN BROOK: Well, I would say that it's a lot of this has come in quite late in the game, but unfortunately we've been calling for action for well over 12 years now and and so we're only seeing really more significant action now. By my estimate, I would say there are probably been by all government programmes in Canada in 2021, probably south, less than 200 animals removed. And you know, there's no question we're well into the thousands here. So I would say we're about one percent being done of what needs to be done to start to see this move forward. And and, you know, given the broad distribution and the huge densities we're starting to encounter in Saskatchewan, for example, I believe we've missed the window for complete eradication, but there is still a lot more to be done. And one thing I have said regularly is, you know, meetings do not eradicate wild pigs, and we've been doing a lot of meetings for a long time and not as much actual action of finding and removing those paid. So we need we need more action and we need it now.

MG: Yergin, we're just about out of time. How worried are you that to Ryan's point, you know, the pig may be outside the fence already?

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Well, I started in the 80s complaining about it, and I was pooh poohed at that time. But that's history. But I think in the future and and Ryan, I I believe that maybe gene editing may be one way of doing this. And so I've been working with our Alberta pork to push the idea and fund the idea of gene editing, the pigs in which we could maybe prevent them from multiplying. So I think there are other tools we just need to find them and be willing to have government join with us to be serious about eradicating them.

MG: But Ryan, just in a word or two, to your point, I mean, it may already be too late.

RYAN BROOK: It is too late in some areas to eradicate, but there are huge areas of Canada where, you know, relatively small actions will have big impacts in terms of getting on top of this and getting trying to get in front. Now at this late date,

MG: it's good to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much.

JURGEN PREUGSCHAS: Thanks. You're very welcome.

MG: Ryan Brook, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Jurgen Preugschas. is a pork farmer in Mayor Thorpe, Alberta, that is The Current for this Thursday. Coming up next on CBC Radio and its q, they've been doing Oscar week in advance of the Academy Awards this weekend. And you will hear this morning from Kristen Stewart, who is up for an Academy Award for her performance as Lady Di in the biopic Spencer. This is a fascinating interview if you didn't hear it the first time around. Tom Power talking about fame and the pressures of playing a royal family member. That's coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Thursday 24 March , 2022

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