No cause for alarm after pause in COVID-19 trial, says co-chair of Canada's Vaccine Task Force

Guests: Dr. Joanne Langley, Mark Lievonen

MG: Back in April, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said that there would be no way we'd be able to get back to normal until there's a vaccine for COVID-19, in an international race to find one is going on in earnest. Canada and many other countries are ordering millions of doses of vaccine candidates even before the clinical trials are complete. With so many vaccine candidates and so much research going on, at an incredible speed, the government has appointed a COVID-19 vaccine task force to advise them. And I'm joined today by its two co-chairs. Dr. Joanne Langley is a paediatric infectious diseases expert and a physician based at the IWK Health Centre and the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University. And Mark Lievonen is the former president of Sanofi Pasteur Ltd., the Canadian vaccine division of the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. Good morning to you both.

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Good morning.

MARK LIEVONEN: Good morning.

MG: Dr. Langley, let me start by asking you the question. Do they think we're all asking these days? And that is when. When do you think Canadians will have access to a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Well, I think we'll have one as soon as we have the data to assure us that that vaccine that we would use in a case population has good safety and efficacy data. So, as you know, the phase three trials are being conducted right now and some of the vaccines. And that is the kind of information we need to be assured that the vaccine would actually be able to be used.

MATT GALLOWAY: So when you hear some people, whether they are elected leaders or people within the medical community, say we could have something as early as this fall, we could have something as early as next spring, are those realistic timelines to you?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: For some of the vaccines, it is possible the ones that are quite advanced in their clinical trials, that there might be a data out two, three months of use, for example, or three to six months for December or first quarter in 2021. So I think that is feasible for some of the vaccines that they could potentially have enough data to support being used.

MG: But then you have to do the production and distribution. And so that's ads on time at the end of that.

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Well, actually, part of the at risk approach that's been done around the world to accelerate vaccine production is that you start to manufacture vaccines before you actually know that it's going to work. And that's the only way we can accelerate this timeline. That's one of the measures that's being taken to enhance our capacity, has a vaccine as soon as possible. So some of the vaccines, for example, might be made and we won't end up using them. But that's that risk approach you have to take during these kind of stress.

MG: Well, and that's what I was just going to pick up on with Mark. Thus far, the federal government has signed deals to buy vaccines from four companies Pfizer, Canada, Maidana Therapeutics, Novavax and Johnson and Johnson. Amongst all of the vaccines that are in development, why are these the best ones, Mark Lievonen, to be buying?

MARK LIEVONEN: So the vaccine task force has provided advice to the government of Canada on a range of vaccines that we think are worth pursuing. You can imagine the challenge here. We're dealing with a number of vaccine in clinical trials, none of which have been licenced across six different technology platforms. And decisions have to be made about how to secure a safe and efficacious vaccine for Canada. And at the same time, Canada is not that large a country. So you put all that together. It is challenging to do it. The task forces provided advice to the government. And the current government is working on a number of candidate vaccines. And these are the first four that have come to fruition.

MG: And so just I mean, as simply as, you can't- how do you choose those four? I mean, what is the baseline to figure out that these are the ones that you want to bet on?

MARK LIEVONEN: Well, fortunately, the task force is comprised of a number of leading scientists and academics and industry people in the field and in looking at the data and having discussions amongst us. We've been able to arrive at consensus recommendations as to those that we think look the most promising.

MG: What's at stake here? There's this whole idea of vaccine nationalism where countries are locking in and buying up huge doses of potential vaccines. Is there a chance if we don't pick the right one, that we in Canada could be left behind?

MARK LIEVONEN: Vaccine nationalism, I think, is a real issue. We've seen it with PPE and other things, so one does have to take into consideration all the risk factors, including whether vaccines are manufactured, including how robust the supply chains are, how robust the procedures are for manufacturing, quality control and all those things. So all of that is taken into consideration when we arrive at our recommendations and give our advice.

MG: Dr. Langley, as you mentioned, the process here is moving very quickly. We learnt last night that this vaccine and development by AstraZeneca, developed by Oxford University, which was seen as a leading contender in many ways, they've had to pause their clinical trials because a participant got seriously ill. What does that pause mean?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: So not every clinical trial has built into it safety measures that will allow you to detect as soon as they occur in the earlier stages, any adverse events. So we consider any untoward event or after getting the vaccine, whether it's caused or not, as an adverse event following immunisation [unintelligible]. And so the patients are blinded as to which vaccine they got. The first step that will occur will be, of course, the immediate care of that participants. And then the something called a data safety review. Our management board or a scientific review committee will review all the data to try and determine is that in any way related to the product that the participant got. But that is very standard. And it's an international standard to have this very day stage review as this trial goes on of data every period of time and certainly after seven days after the vaccine was received. So it's not totally unexpected that there would be pauses. It's part of the safety net that's built around these clinical trials.

MG: When you hear people talk about moving at warp speed and people putting a lot of, I guess, faith in the idea of a vaccine being ahead of the curve, is something like this a cautionary tale in the race to get a vaccine to market?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: I don't think it's a cautionary tale because we would anticipate there could be things that would occur that we would have to investigate further. Someone could have, for example, a car accident and that was considered an adverse event following immunisation is because you don't want to miss any health events. So it's a very sensitive way to detect anything that think falls through the cells and you don't miss any adverse events. And I think all of the trials could potentially have pauses. It doesn't mean they wouldn't ultimately be safe vaccine. There could be other very good explanations for each of these adverse events. But we don't want anyone else exposed to the vaccine in the event that it is related to the vaccine.

MG: Do you worry about premature approval? I mean, there are billions of dollars at stake. But there's also the health of, you know, the global population health that's been put on hold in some ways because of this pandemic as people are working at warp speed to approve vaccines. Are you concerned, Doctor, about the concept of premature approval?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: So I am very concerned about the health of the world's population, as you referred to. And really, this is something we're going through as a planet. We have to think about the world's peoples as we deal with infectious diseases which are communicable and don't observe borders. The regulatory structure in each country will safeguard us against premature incisions. In Canada, we have a branch of Health Canada called the Regulator, which reviews all the data before they will decide that any vaccine that the government decides to procure can actually be authorised for use in Canada. I'm very happy about the security that we have in place in Canada, and governments have increasingly collaborated across regulators to set up the same standards. So we're very cognisant of what the WHL has set up, its efficacy criteria, for example, or the European Union. And it is concerning when, as I don't think this is a place for politics, as a place for science, and I think in Canada, science will be the relying principal for decision making.

MG: Mark, what aren't you concerned about politics coming into this?

MARK LIEVONEN: I agree with Joanne. I think in Canada, science will rule the day. We've taken that into consideration amongst the members of the task force. It really is science driven, science based. Our advice has been well received by the government and reacted to in a similar way. So I think we're in we're in good shape in Canada to make sure science is what is in place, and that we will have a safe and efficacious vaccine only when all the criteria have been met.

MG: a clinical trial at your university, Dr Langley, had to be cancelled because China wouldn't export the vaccine doses to this country. How much has that set Canada back?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: So that would have been a vaccine if the phase one trial happened in Canada, where we would potentially have a small portion of doses for Canadians. It would not have supplied the need during the pandemic for 37 million Canadians. It was a wonderful scientific collaboration and unfortunately, it didn't come to be. So I don't think it set us back at all. The capacity at the National Research Council to make vaccines is there, and will be, I'm sure, allotted to other products. And we have a mix and that our case referred to of domestic and international candidates. The international candidates are the ones that are farther along. But we can't forget the great science that there is in Canada and the importance of building up by manufacturing.

MG: There is, as we've talked about, so much at stake here. And there are critics who've raised concerns about the federal government's vaccine strategy to date and concerns around this task force as well. Amir Attaran is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Have a listen to his concerns around the world.

SOUNDCLIP

You have several companies in the third and final phase of clinical trials. They're very near the finish line. But instead of putting money towards those companies and getting them across the finish line, the vaccine task force seems to have recommended that the federal government put money towards upstart, new, inexperienced Canadian companies that are into the third phase or even the second phase. But they're just starting the first phase or hoping to start it in a few months.

MG: Mark Lievonen, is that funding for small upstart Canadian companies on your advice?

MARK LIEVONEN: So we are looking at a broad range of issues to ensure that we provide advice about getting a safe and efficacious vaccine for Canadians as soon as possible. That does include looking at Canadian prospects and [unintelligible] candidates and providing advice regarding those where it makes sense to move forward. And at the same time, looking at the broad portfolio of international candidates across six different platform technologies, and we provided advice across that as well. We are also considering the bio manufacturing sector in Canada and providing advice about how Canada to optimise the production capability we have now for COVID-19. And to be prepared for future pandemics.

MG: I guess there's concern, though, is that we're in some ways trying to support Canadian industry when really we should be trying to find the best vaccine candidate.

MARK LIEVONEN: We are trying to find the best vaccine candidate. And some of that effort includes supporting companies in Canada. And some of that includes making agreements, port purchase agreements with international companies and candidates that we have. And so it's a broad portfolio. It's risk balanced. And we provided advice on that basis. So we'll support some Canadian companies, Canadian Development Prospects for COVIE-19 vaccines, as well as has been announced to date for purchase agreements with the international companies.

MG: Dr. Langley, the professor, has also been critical around the work of the task force and the conflicts of interest that have been declared amongst its members. Conflicts that have not been made public. Have a listen to what he said about that.

SOUNDCLIP

You've got a group of Canadians who are making recommendations on billion dollar purchases of lifesaving vaccines. Get it wrong, and money will be wasted and people will lose their lives. And many of them are linked to the pharmaceutical industry. Some of them even take money to the present day from the pharmaceutical industry. But they're trying to keep that hidden. And the government is trying to keep it hidden.

MG: Dr. Langley, are members of your task force trying to keep your links with industry hidden?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Thank you for that question, Matt. We have a very robust conflict of interest, a process in place. The we are a volunteer board. So no one is being paid to work, to do this work on the task force. We're doing it because we love Canada and we are compelled to see this as the first priority in our lives right now. We fill out a declaration of every potential relationship we've ever had with a commercial interest, but also with provinces and territories who also have competing interests. And then at every single meeting, we declare again to all the members who are present and any new or changes to conflicts.

MG: Should those conflicts be made public because they're not being made public? Should they be displayed, for example, you know, on the task force Web site in a prominent way?

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Well, for a while, if you were receiving money for this service, that would be, as I understand it, the policy. But this is a volunteer board and it's not standard to require volunteers to declare their conflicts of interest publicly. I'm not privy to the kind of everyone's conflict. But for example, my potential conflict would be that we do vaccine research at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology. When we do a clinical trial, for example, with if we had done one with Cansino, the money to do the trial would go to Dalhousie University. It doesn't come to me or any of the researchers and it's used to fund our research nurses, our data management folks, publishing the database, all the work of this study. But I have to declare that because it is indeed a relationship with a company, and that's fine. So I think the process is quite remarkable.

MG: Mark Lievonen and three of the 12 members of the task force, yourself included, formerly worked for the same pharmaceutical company. Should there have been wider representation on the taskforce?

MARK LIEVONEN: Well, I think the government determined early on that they wanted expertise from academia, scientists and industry with knowledge to work on the task force. If you look at the Canadian vaccine landscape, the company [unintelligible] Laboratories, which became Sanofi Pasteur, is a fundamentally important company to the vaccine industry in Canada. And quite frankly, anybody who's worked in vaccine, the vaccine industry has probably worked there at some point in their career. And so we have that expertise that was brought to bear. And we all recused ourselves from any discussions and advice regarding anything to do with Sanofi and the candidate vaccine, if they have.

MG: Part of this, is about convincing the public that the decisions you're making in the vaccine, ultimately, if there is one, is safe and that decisions have been sound and unbiased. There is an issue around vaccine hesitancy, if I can put it that way, in this country. The education minister in Manitoba, for example, posted on social media the other day for those who refused to get a vaccine, that is absolutely you're right and it should be protected. Mark Lievonen, and how concerned are you, given the work that you're doing around vaccine hesitancy in Canada?

MARK LIEVONEN: We are very concerned, Matt. That's one of the issues that we're dealing with. So it's important not only to get a safe and efficacious vaccine for Canadians, but also to ensure that vaccination occurs and so that we get the benefit of it. And vaccine hesitancy is a real issue out there. So that is something that we're concerned about with. We have brought it into our mandate and we are hopeful that once we have a safe and efficacious vaccine, people will see the merit in getting it and that we'll have a significant uptake. But it's definitely an issue.

MG: And so, Dr. Langley, in the last minute or so that we have, a strange way to phrase this in some ways. But do you lose sleep over whether you're making the right decisions and giving the best advice, given everything that's at stake here and the moment that we're in right now? So much has been pinned to the development and the availability of a vaccine.

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: I think just like every big decision you make in life, you assemble all the evidence, you consult with people who you trust and you hear every you make a decision together, which you think is the best decision given all the available evidence. And you move forward. I think it's just like every life decision. You have to do your best and consult wisely and use every piece of information on the pro and the con side to move forward. And that's, I think, what the task force is doing.

MG: I hope we have the chance to talk again. This is such an important issue. And as I say, so many people are waiting for progress in getting closer to a vaccine. In the meantime, thank you both for joining us this morning.

DR. JOANNE LANGLEY: Thanks.

MARK LIEVONEN: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Dr. Joanne Langley is a paediatric infectious diseases expert and a physician based at the IWK Health Centre and the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University. Mark Lievonen is the former president of Sanofi Pasteur Ltd., the Canadian vaccine division of the pharmaceutical company Sanofi, and they are the co-chairs of Canada's covered 19 Vaccine Task Force. Your thoughts on what you've heard when it comes to the race for a vaccine and Canada's role in that. You can reach us at thecurrent@cbc.ca via email, tweet us at The Current CBC or go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. The CBC News is next.

SOUNDCLIP

And then this place looks as pristine as it gets. Lots of fish, lots of sharks. This is one of these rare places on earth, a time machine where we can see the ocean of the best. It was magnificent.

MG: The marine ecologist and Enric Sala is doing everything in his power to keep those magnificent ocean waters from disappearing. He is here in six minutes to share why we need the natural wonders of the wild and what he's doing to protect them. I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio one. Stay with us.

We must protect 30% of the Earth's land and seas to prevent environmental disaster, says conservationist

Guest: Enric Sala

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, changing public education to keep up with COVID-19. But first, protecting the wild places of this planet. Enric Sala has devoted his life to studying and saving some of the world's wildest places. He's a marine ecologist whose passion for the world's oceans began when he was a teenage scuba diver in Catalonia in Spain. In 2007, he quit academia to join National Geographic, where he is explorer in residence and the founder of the Pristine Seas Project, which engages world leaders to protect ocean habitat. Enric Salah is the author of a new book. It's called The Nature of Nature Why We Need the Wild. Enric Sala, good morning.

ENRIC SALA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: You grew up along the coast of Brava, outside of Barcelona in Spain. Tell me a little bit about living there and what it was that got you hooked on the sea.

ENRIC SALA: It was the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau which I swallowed every Sunday evening in front of the TV. And I was like that during the summers. I was in the course thereafter with my family and I was able to start to emulate my heroes. So that was it. Jacques Cousteau was the big inspiration. And I studied snorkelling and swimming probably faster than I could run on land.

MG: What did you see? You write about this in the book. What did you see on Jacques Cousteau that was so interesting in his shows?

ENRIC SALA: I saw everything that they couldn't see in real life. So he showed us this world of abundance, coral reefs, whales, dolphins, sharks, kelp forests. But when they went swimming in the Mediterranean in the early 70s, there was nothing. Sea urchins and barren grounds, no big animals. And the smallest the largest fish was as small as my little snorkelling mask. So I lived in this schizophrenic world where on TV I saw these richness and diversity. That was a dream. But then when I was confronted with reality, it was very, very different.

MG: What was it like? You go scuba diving for the first time and swimming in the ocean? Being near the ocean is one thing. Getting beneath the surface is another matter entirely. What was it like when you first went scuba diving?

ENRIC SALA: It was like I was reborn and I was very lucky because the first dive with scuba things ever was in a Marine reserve in the Meadows Islands Marine Reserve over the course. And I still remember that dive. I had a full tank. Now I can eat. I can spend with us that side of thing. I can spend an hour and a half on the water. It is less than me. Only 15 minutes. So. And, you know, I jumped in the water and I saw what Cousteau had shown us in his TV shows. The groupers, scorpion fish, the Seabreeze, the sea bass, all these abundance or all these fish, all these large fish. So then I realised that, you know, if we predict part of the ocean that police had been protecting us for a few years or not. When I did my first scuba dive and I realised, wow, this is what the Mediterranean used to be like everywhere, you know. And right now we only see these pockets of richness and health in areas that are protected. So to me, that was one of the Birley, the first epiphany of my life.

MG: This book is like a love letter to the ocean in some ways and will often say I mean, the cliche is that the forests of the world are the lungs of the planet. You say that the oceans are in some ways what the sweat glands of who we are?

ENRIC SALA: Yes, the forests are the sweat glands. The ocean actually has produced most of the oxygen that is in the atmosphere. And that's something that people know, that most of the oxygen has been produced for millions and millions of years by bacteria and microscopic algae in the ocean. And the bacterium that produces most of the oxygen, the species that produces it, most of the oxygen on the planet. We discovered that only 30 years ago. So there are still a lot that we don't know about their planet. But, you know, of course, we take it for granted. What happens when we take it for granted that we don't value it and we destroy it? We have been destroying our life support system for too long. A special interest made us believe that we had to choose between the environment and economic growth. The golden idol that everybody has been told to worship the growth of the gross domestic product. But that's a really horrible way to measure people's health, well-being, prosperity or happiness. And we even value it because we all know about it. This is why I wanted to write this book, and I hope that people will read the book and learn more about how nine million species of plants and animals and that if a trillion different, that's with my microbes interact into the pent and self assemble in these wonderful ecosystems, the forests, the wetlands, the grasslands, the coral reefs and the pit box and so on to make this planet inhabitable. And one thing that also we need to remember is that we cannot recreate what we take for granted and we can not recreate even the simplest ecosystem to keep humans alive. So Mars today is not an option. We better take care of the only life support system that we are connected to.

MG: What is it that's so fascinating to you about that ecosystem, the way that the ecosystem works together? Because often you'll have the scientists drawn to whether it's an individual part of that system or an animal within that system. But in the book, you talk about this remarkable system that works together with all of the different parts making something larger than those individual parts. What's so interesting to you about that?

ENRIC SALA: What I was fascinated about when I studied ecology and then doing my own research is that we have all this species then get together and self assemble and it's predictable. We know what's going to happen. It's like building a house. You started with making a hole in the ground. You fill it with concrete. That's your foundations. Then you start building the structure. Then you are the walls. Then you add doors that said that you don't install the pictures until everything else is done. Same thing happens in nature. And there are processes that occur along what we call ecological succession. There's a succession of things that happen. So you burn an oak forest and then the first thing you will see is grasses coming off of the ground. And these grasses can double their weight within weeks. And then you have little insects come in to eat on the grass. And then you have little birds coming to eat on those insects. And this and that grass and the insects and the ashes created by the fire will produce nutrients that will allow for seats that wear underground, waiting for an opportunity to grow. And then you will have taller grasses. And then you have bushes and you have different species of trees. And you give it enough time and you will have an oak forest again. And you burn the forest again and you will have an oak forest again in 50 or a hundred years. And these things have happened. The succession is predictable. It's one of the most amazing things that what we see in nature today is what works, what has what has survived three and a half billion years of evolution.

MG: You were doing your PhD thesis and you did something interesting. You removed predatory fish from a marine area off the coast of Spain. Why did you want to do that?

ENRIC SALA: Yeah, that's the epiphany I had when I. I spent all my childhood swimming this coast with a barren ground and very, very few fish and lots of sea urchins. And then I dive in that marine reserve, which had been protected for a few years. And so lots of fish, very few sea urchins and these beautiful algal forests with lots of animals. And within to wow, you know, what's causing these huge difference. And I thought, well, I bet it's the fish, the predators on top of the food web that control the structure that make the system diverse and healthy. So what I did was to I put some cages made of plastic governing fences inside and outside the reserve. And when I so outside the reserve is that if you put a fence so the urchins can not get in. You have an explosion of algae. The algae grow inside very, very quickly inside the reserve. You put the cages and there are really lots of algae. But the types of algae will change. And because they are going to be inside the cases, you have the algae that the fish loved to eat. Outside the cages you have algae that the fish cannot eat because they have chemical defences. So what happens is that you have the fish eating the urchins which eat the algae inside the reserve. You have lots of fish. Very few urchins and lots of algae, which in turn are the habitat for many, many species of worms and shrimp and craps, which in turn feed the fish. So that was the beauty. When you allow the predators to come back, the whole system comes back.

MG: If those predators are so important in keeping the system in balance, what is it that makes us as humans different because we're predators as well in some ways?

ENRIC SALA: Yes. No, I was thinking about the orcas the other day. Orcas have been seen eating white sharks and a large whales. They are the top predator, you know, below us in the ocean. But they don't drive their prey extinct. They don't destroy the habitat. [Unintelligible]. Neither do the wolves or the lions or the tigers. So what makes us different? What makes us different is our ability to use the energy from the past. Which means you have the plants growing and the plants can only grow depending on how many nutrients are in the soil and how much sunlight they receive every day. So all of these natural ecosystems are limited by the amount of energy that they can absorb from the sun through the plants, which are the base of the food chain. But we cheat because we are not limited by the energy produced by the sun. Today we are using fossil fuels, which is old plant and animal material, mostly plants that was buried on the ground and then turned into fossil fuels. So that's ancient energy that comes from the sun or other species can do that. We can do this to subsidise our overexploitation of the present. That's what makes us different from the rest of the biosphere.

MG: And having that subsidy, having that reserve, the savings account of the energy that stored beneath the surface allows us to act in a way that other species can't.

ENRIC SALA: Exactly. For example, a forest, again, a forest. You can only have so much wood, you know, forest. You can only have so much tons of plant material and animal material. You can have only so many animals on the top that we'll be able to survive, given an abundance of prey, given an abundance of plants at the top of the base of the food chain. So a forest can not consume more energy than it produces. But we can do this. Cities, for example, cities almost don't produce any food, almost don't produce any energy. Cities consume more energy than they produce. And the only way to do that is if we bring energy from outside. We import food and energy from our own, the cities. So basically, we have destroying nature all around to be able to maintain these artificial constructs that are unnatural.

MG: Figuring out how this works has been in many ways your life's work. And I said in the introduction that you had quit academia to join National Geographic. Why did you do that?

ENRIC SALA: Because I was frustrated. I was studying the impacts of humans in the ocean. The impacts of fishing and the global warming. And it was bad news. It was continuously bad. It was difficult to find something that would give us hope. So I felt that all I was doing was writing the obituary of ocean life, the obituary of ocean life. We were writing the obituary over and over with more data and more precision. And we were just confirming what we already knew. We are depleting ocean life all around the world. So I felt like the doctor who's telling you how you're doing today with excruciating detail, but not offering a cure. And I decided to quit academia and work on the cure full time.

MG: The cure is this National Geographic Pristine Seas project in which you work with world leaders to preserve more marine habitat. How do you do that? How do you convince people who have it within their power to stop that exploitation of the sea?

ENRIC SALA: To do that, we work with communities, too, and with country leaders. And the problem is that it is very easy to show that we are in deep trouble. 82 percent of the fish stocks that we catch in the wild are overexploited, meaning that we are taking them out of the water faster than they can produce. 90 percent of the large fish, sharks, groupers, tuna are gone. We kill them in the last hundred years alone. If we continue like this. By 2050, most fisheries will have collapsed. It is very clear that the people whose livelihoods depend on the ocean are suffering because that resource base is being depleted. So we offer a solution. One solution is not the panacea. It's not the only solution, but it works pretty quickly. So if you protect an area of the ocean, we set aside an area without fishing, without damaging activities, marine life has these extraordinary ability to bounce back. We've seen it with my own eyes. And there are so many fish inside these reserves. They produce so many more eggs that they help to replenish the areas around. So these reserves are like investment accounts that grow with compound interest and produce returns that people living around them can enjoy. So we have to use first the emotional component. We try to take leaders to these places and invariably they fall in love with them if they cannot come with us. Then we bring these places to them through our films. But then once they feel that they have to protect these places, once they have fallen in love with these places, then we come with a rational arguments, the scientific studies justifying why this place needs to be protected and the economic studies that show that the benefits of protection outweigh the costs of overexploitation.

MG: Tell me about taking those leaders to those places. You tell a story in the book about an expedition that you did with the president of Gabon.

ENRIC SALA: Yes, the last day of the expedition. The president came to visit us on board our expedition vessel. We were uncaught on top of seamount was about a 100 meters feet deep. It was sandy was not the most spectacular place. And we had our underwater robot tethered to the boat at 100 metres deep. And after showing the president whether we had seen around the country during the expedition, he looked at his watch. And I thought, oh, we're going to lose him. And then I asked him, Mr. President, would you like to pilot our underwater Robert. He said, Oh, yes. So his eyes sparkled. So we put him on the console. And like, he was playing video games. He started driving the robot. And we see these dark shape in the distance. So he drives the robot through that shape. And there was these big rock at the edge of the sea mount, full of fish, full of starfish and all of a sudden five huge grouper show up. And that was the epiphany. He said, wow, I didn't know we had these in our country. And so basically, that was a sign for him that he had to make sure that Gabon protected these underwater treasures.

MG: And did he?

ENRIC SALA: He did he put in the minister of the environment and my fellow explorer, Mike Faith, who was on board. He had been involved in the creation of national parks on the land. So he was put in charge of the development of marine reserves. And today, Gabon has 20 marine parks covering 28 percent of their exclusive economic zone.

MG: National Geographic is pushing to preserve something like 30 percent of the planet. That's land and sea. By the year 2030, is something like that possible, given the scale of the destruction that you detail in this book and just how, because we have that reserve of oil and natural gas and other means, we don't need the balance in some ways that other species do. Can you preserve 30 percent of the planet?

ENRIC SALA: I think we can, because some countries have already done it, but also we have an alternative if we are to prevent the extinction of one million suspicious globally. If we are to prevent the collapse of our life support system. If we want nature to continue helping us reduce the impacts of climate change through absorption, so absorbing sequestering much of the carbon pollution that we expel into the atmosphere, we need half of the planet in natural state. And the scientific studies are very clear about this. And 30 percent of the planet protected land and sea by 2030 is a I would say, absolutely necessary and a negotiable milestone. We are not talking about a luxury for rich countries or a romantic ideal. We're talking about our life support system. So we don't want to unplug our life support system. Now we want to make sure you continue working.

MG: There are people - you hinted at the you know, the economic argument - there are people whose livelihoods depend on the exploitation, if I can put it that way, of that resource. I mean, and people would say populations continue to grow. We need to use that resource to be able to feed people, to be able to ensure that people can make money so they can feed themselves. How do you answer that? And how do you how do you find a balance in that?

MG: Indeed, that is not the balance. The world is [unintelligible] towards irrational, inefficient exploitation. We produce enough food today to feed 10 billion people, only that we waste a third of it from the farm or the boat to the table. And we eat, we produce too much meat. Humans can get the proteins and the nutrients they need, mostly from plants. People say, oh, I want to be strong like a bull and eat meat. Well, what do bulls eat? They eat grass. Right? So a plant based diet would make sure that- eat more plants and less animals and you'd be in probably better health. Your body would be in better shape. And also, the production of livestock requires so much land in the United States. For example, 41 percent of the land is dedicated to raise livestock. 41 percent of the land. It's crazy. And so if we even eat so many animals, the amount of land that is required to produce our food would be much lower. So we could give some of the land back to nature, which then would produce many more benefits to many more people, but also agriculture and especially livestock production. He's one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, especially methane. So by doing that, we would also reduce the amount of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas that goes into the atmosphere helping to to mitigate climate change. So we already have enough. We just need to improve our ways instead of destroying more area to waste them and so on and so forth.

MG: Part of it's also about timelines. I mean, extraction provides an immediate benefit. You get paid to do that. Whereas if you are looking at conservation, if you're looking at protecting wild habitats or, you know, bringing them back from the edge of oblivion, that could take a long time. How do you convince people to play the long game in this?

ENRIC SALA: Yes, I think that the COVID pandemic has been a good proof that, you know, this is not- we're not talking about the luxury and the having to choose between economic development and nature is the wrong question. This pandemic has shown that not investing in the long term has global consequences. Investing in nature, investing in 30 percent of the planet would cost only a fraction than the cost of having to respond to a pandemic. The International Monetary Fund is talking about nine trillion dollars for the next two years. What it will cost to protect a third of the planet is less than what the world spends today on videogames.

MG: That's really interesting the way that you put that. I mean, it's about priorities in some ways.

ENRIC SALA: Yes. Investing in the prevention is always cheaper and smarter than having to pay for the cure for the treatment but we, humans, are very good at discounting the future.

MG: What do you hope comes out of this moment when it comes to the world that we live in?

ENRIC SALA: The realisation that we are all connected not just to each other humans, but also to all other creatures on the planet. And that if we tamper with nature on one side of the planet, everybody could suffer. So let's invest in preserving our life support system. That's the best thing we can do for the future of humanity.

MG: Do you have a favourite spot in the ocean?

ENRIC SALA: Yes, I have so many, but that is one. The first expedition we did with Pristine Seas in 2009 and that millennium [unintelligible], that belongs to the Republic of Kiribati in the South Pacific. Uninhabited that hole in the middle of nowhere. Unfished, you jump in the water and as soon as you your bubbles clear, you are surrounded by a dozen grey reef sharks. After a while, the shark get bored. You know, they go do their thing and then you look down and 90 percent of the bottom is covered by life, thriving coral, full of fish. Now it's like travelling 500 years back in time.

MG: And that's what you are fighting to preserve.

ENRIC SALA: That's what our team didn't say is fighting hard to preserve.

MG: Enric Sala, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. This is a powerful book. Thank you.

ENRIC SALA: Thank you so much, Matt.

MG: Enric Sala is a National Geographic explorer in residence and the founder of the Pristine Seas Project. His new book is called The Nature of Nature Why We Need the Wild. Coming up after your regional update, reluctant home schoolers in the time of COVID-19, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds. Stick around.

Home schooling and choices facing parents

Guests: Ruben Guztambide-Fernandez, Lynn Bosetti

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Last week, I spent some time with parents, students and teachers heading back to school at Bancroft Elementary in downtown Montreal. Our documentary about the people we met aired on the programme yesterday. If you missed it, you should check out our Web site or the podcast. Not everyone was packing school lunches or catching the bus that day, though.

[Sound: Footsteps]

Up a steep staircase off a downtown Montreal street is the home of Alisha and Apale.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Knocking]

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway.

ALISHA: I'm, Alisha.

How are you? Can I come in?

MG: It is a welcoming, modern loft style apartment. And when we get there, the three kids, Leila, Sequoia and Noémie, are getting their day started. Alisha's workday has already begun, as has her daily juggle.

SOUNDCLIP

ALISHA: I got a check in with my team.

LEILA: You got to check in in your head?

ALISHA: Not mey head, with my team at work. I left them hanging.

MG: She's working while trying to feed three very active kids.

SOUNDCLIP

ALISHA: Noemie, do you want some mango juice?

NOEMIE: Yes.

LEILA: Mommy, don't [unintelligible] it.

MG: This juggle. Isn't going to get any easier now that it's September, and that's because the kids aren't going back to public school. For now, they will be homeschooled, which will involve tutors, classes at home and at a homeschooling centre. It's not something that Alisha and Said ever imagined they'd be doing. But right now, they feel like it's the only option.

SOUNDCLIP

SAID: We're not home schoolers by conviction. Like we have to do something because ministry, the school board, nobody is really taking care of us in that sense.

MG: When you say you're not homeschoolers by conviction, I mean, before this, people call this the before times. If somebody said homeschooling like a book would do that mean to you?

SAID: For me, it's you know, it's so typical, but white, rich, conservative. Basically, there's some dissatisfaction with how the school system is going, the liberalism of the curriculum, and so, you know, that's what it stood for.

MG: What's different now about how you think about homeschooling?

SAID: I still believe the first two. It's predominantly white, predominantly upper middle class or with income to be able, because it's not cheap. The last aspect there's a-- and we're talking to the director of a homeschooling centre recently, and she said there's an influx of parents who she called COVID homeschoolers. In other words, they're homeschoolers because of this situation. Nobody's taking care of their kids. Nobody's being honest about it. They always hide behind whatever bureaucratic language they hide behind. So you feel you have to do that. So we're definitely part of that. I mean, we had concerns about the school system pre-COVID, but there were amplified to the max by COVID.

ALISHA: We had been looking for alternative school options for them since our oldest started school because of just dissatisfaction with the things Said had mentioned and just the lack of representation in the curriculum, in the student body and everything. But we didn't find anything in the alternative system that actually address those issues for us. And so here we still are in the mainstream system, not satisfied with it. And then exploring homeschool really as a response to the COVID situation.

MG: What was it? It's a big decision to not send the kids back, knowing what school means in terms of socialisation and the relationships that they have. If there's one thing that you could pin it to, in terms of how that the tipping point, what was that?

ALISHA: Oh, the lack of information and being forced to effectively make a decision for our kids in a vacuum. Like just no information. I had zero clarity in terms of what was being planned, what the options were. Nothing. And I didn't have a clear sense either of what the fallback plan was going to be for the school, aside from just pull the plug and send them home. And for kids of our age just sending them home and attending a couple of meetings on Zoom with teachers doesn't work. Leila could do it for a period of time. But there's the social aspect that's missing. And for Sequoia, he just doesn't engage that way. He's an in-person kind of person and he uses his hands and he learns on his feet so it wouldn't work for him. So there we were in this vacuum and we had to try to piece something together. We are still trying to piece something together. We don't know what it's going to look like.

MG: One of the things about public school is that it's part of the comments. Right. Like, you are part of a larger societal discussion where you have, in the best case scenario, people from all different strata who are there together learning together. And we're all in this together like it's a struggle for you, I can see. How do you wrap your head around taking your kids, at least even temporarily, out of that part of the comment?

SAID: It is one of the biggest downsides that I think in terms of homeschooling as it is today. And I have there is no answer. That is something we're just going to have to say weigh that versus all the risks that come in. And this is why I'm bitter at the school board, at the city, at the at the federal and at all levels of government, provincial and federal, because they just typical bureaucrats who look at numbers. They say if one percent, get sick or something happens. That's OK. You know, they're not concerned with that. For them is just pushing paper on a desk at the end of the day, for us being on the ground, it's our kids. It's how they're situated in a public context, preparing them for the future. It's not just about academics. For me, at this age, I'm not too concerned about the grades. I'm concerned about how do they interact with the larger public, you know, from different backgrounds. And so, yes, I'm pretty- I'm not happy with that. But I feel like I said, forced to take this road in the interim. It's kind of like when somebody is bleeding and you just have to stop the bleeding for a while you wait to go get help. So this is that kind of situation. I mean, it may turn out differently. Who knows? But at this moment in time, my feeling is I'm being dragged into this and I don't like it. But it's not good choice. Bad choice. No, it's bad choice, worse choice and we have to pick one.

MG: Alisha, how do you how do you reconcile and grapple with all of this?

ALISHA: I think that my focus is just really on, like, the nuts and bolts of it and really trying to make it work. And I'm like I've been really the one taking the lead on trying to figure out, OK, so what kind of resources and support could we have? Like which tutors could be line-up for which subjects, like all of the nuts and bolts and the nitty gritty of like a plan. But then when we like sort of go back to the to the root feelings and the root issues here, like it's - you can hear it in my voice. It's emotional for me because these are kids. And, you know, we can figure this out for them but there's a hell of a lot of kids for whom their parents can't. And that's messed up.

MG: Can I ask you. You hinted at this. I mean, practically, how's this going to work? You both work from home. Walk me through how this is going to work.

ALISHA: The current draught plan? The current draught plan looks like Sequoia has two and a half days of week of support. Our youngest, Noemie I think we're going to start sending her back to the garderie. She'll go three days a week, maybe four days a week. And Leila will have some individual tutoring support and then some after school clubs, hangouts with a very small group of kids who have sort of we've been interacting with all summer, some of whom are going back to school and some of whom aren't. And we'll do that twice a week. And then, you know, I typically work, I do a bit of a rush in the morning in terms of my workload, triaging, delegating, all of that kind of thing. And then I pick it up again in the evening after the kids go to bed. I work again after they're sleeping. And so that's sort of been the rhythm for the last few months and how we're sort of making it work. And then Said also has a lot of interruption in his days, but he'll take some more focussed time during the afternoon. And I'll try to, like, be out with the kids so we can each have that space where we're really immersed and focussed on the work that has to be done.

MG: So the supports and the tutoring, those are, I mean, you would you're hiring tutors...

ALISHA: We're hiring people and we're paying fees so that we can give our kids what they need and fill in the gaps for what we can't provide for them.

MG: The argument from government - and not certainly speaking for government, but the argument that they have said is this is unprecedented. We're trying to figure this out as we move along. No one's ever been through something like this before, and we're doing the best we can. When you hear that from government, you're shaking your head

ALISHA: A new side, soon

SAID: Sure, if this if were having this conversation in February and March, yes. This is an entire summer of this, five months into this is September. What wasn't known about reopenings? Sure, there's a lot of unknowns for sure, but there are also plenty that we've known for a while. So I don't evaluate on the unknowns because those are unknowns. I evaluated and given what you know or should have known, how have you handle that? And it's been abysmal, like scrambling at the last minute when you knew full well that schools are reopening. This is a situation. So my trust in the systems, not just this particular one, but in general, the different levels of government. It's pretty low.

MG: School is about a lot of different things and it's about learning. But it's also about socialisation. It's about - and we're talking with the idea of being part of the comments or what have you. What are you most concerned about in terms of your kids not being in that environment, the learning environment?

ALISHA: Their social interactions are really, really important to them. Spending time with other kids on a daily basis. It's really important for their sense of self, for their development, for their identity, for other kids that they interact with. So it's the social side of things. Yes.

MG: You mentioned, Alisha, a little bit of just how it's happening with work in terms of your working early in the morning and then, you know, after the kids go to bed, maybe you're able to get some more work. This is early days. It's only the beginning of September. What are you most concerned about in terms of being able to to make all of that all those pieces fit?

ALISHA: I mean, so I've been doing this since lockdown, so since mid-March. So it's not entirely new. But I mean, honestly speaking, is it easy? Of course it's not easy. No, I'm tired. Everybody's tired. All parents are exhausted at this point. And yet you still have to show up for your kids and you have to show up for your family and you have to show up for your community and for yourself. It's damn hard, but it's part of just that you just show up when especially when the system isn't showing up. That's what you do.

MG: How have you explained that to the kids?

ALISHA: Well, we started out by saying sometimes, well, we started out by talking about change in life and that life changes. And I mean, little by little, we're sharing little pieces of information with them, not to overwhelm them, to help them participate in the decision as much as they can. There's been moments where they're open to it and moments where it's like, hell, no, we are not doing that.

SAID: And Noemie definitely has been clear that she would rather go back to school and see her friends.

MG: Why would you? Is it because you'd like to see your friends?

NOEMIE: Yes. And because school is just so fun and I'm really used to it. It's been so hard adapting to doing home school.

MG: What do you hope happens this year?

NOEMIE: I want to try. I'll see if I can try the Homes Schooling Centre and depending on my opinion. See if I can talk to my parents about going back to school. I'm not going back.

SAID: Do you know what they said? They said we'll try the home school centre for maybe two or three days and then we'll see.

MG: [Unintelligible], what do you think?

LEILA: I don't want to go.

ALISHA: It's a whole new thing. After months of uncertainty and no prep, just one day everything changed. So we have to give them the space to have all of their feelings about that, I think. And that can include a flat out. I don't even want to try this. I'm tired. I want to go back to normal. And I think that that's really normal for a kid to express themselves that way.

MG: Alicia and Said Apale, live in Montreal. Whether it's homeschooling, learning pods or online courses, thanks to COVID, many families are turning to alternative education methods this year. What does that mean for public schooling in Canada? In normal times, over 90 percent of the Canadian population when it comes to kids, are enrolled in that public system. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez is a professor in the Curriculum and Pedagogy Programme, the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. Lynn Bosetti is a professor of education at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Good morning to you both.

LYNN BOSETTI: Good morning.

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Lynn, it's interesting in hearing Alisha and Said talk about how they feel almost forced into the situation that they're in now when it comes to home schooling. How do you see this pandemic changing the conversation about how we educate our kids?

LYNN BOSETTI: You know, this pandemic came at a confluence of a whole bunch of factors. And I think that the world changed as that tell me suggested almost in a day. So I think that the biggest impact that the pandemic has had is that parents understand that they have a big responsibility in the education of their children and that schooling has difference. So it's now part of the parents average consciousness about this kind of choice and responsibility that they have. So that's going to really affect- I think it's going to really affect what schooling looks like in the future. And so schooling, it's kind of have that, you know, we all went to school. So it has kind of a certainty and grounding in our lives. But just as these tests describe that routine and the everydayness can look really different for different families because they're going to have choices of whether they've got to go to that public school or how they're going to accommodate the child's need.

MG: Ruben, what do you make of that? The idea of choice? What changes have we seen this year in the way that we're approaching education? Because we're in a different environment?

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: Well, I think the other events that have unfolded at the same time as the epidemic that I think have really shaped the conversation that is taking place in Canada and in the U.S. in other places, is the fact that we're also seeing a resurgence of the importance of talking about inequality, particularly in the context of the rise of the Black Lives Matter, the responses to police brutality and police violence. And, of course, these are all linked. These are all because structural inequality and structural racism is expressed in the school system as well as through the police services. And I think where the conversation that we're having about how COVID is affecting schooling is happening and in a context where we're really being forced to contend with racial and structural racism and the impact of structural racism on schools. So I think I'm encouraged by that conversation because it means that we're talking about the choices that parents have in the context of a larger conversation about inequality.

MG: How does how is privilege play into this? There's a podcast that's been very popular in the United States, Nice White Parents, which is about parents who have the best of intentions. But in trying to create better education, public education for their kids, they end up in some ways destabilising the system. How does privilege play into the changes that we're seeing, Ruben?

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: Yes, well, it plays quite significantly. I mean, I think that's we heard from the earlier interview, some of the choices that become available for some parents are choices that require not just economic resources, but cultural resources, social resources. And so that means that we are in a situation where not everybody has access to all the choices that are become available. And that's been through all along. Right. I mean, this is something we know from the literature on school choice, is that not all choices are available to all parents equally. And if anything, COVID has underscored that fact and has sort of illustrated for us that in light of the situation and the choices that become available are equally distributed.

MG: I want to bring Lynn back in in a moment. But just to that point, Ruben, what does it mean then for those who can't make that choice? And what does it mean for public schools if families who can't afford are pulling their kids out and then there are kids were left behind?

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: Well, what it means is that we have starved of our resources. Right. And I think we can't just simply talk about what are all the choices that are available, but we have to talk about what other resources that schools need in order to support parents and families that don't have those choices. How do we ensure that schools to stay small. How do we ensure that teachers stay teaching the classes that they're trained to teach so that they can adjust better to this situation and, for example, to moving online? You know, so we can't just talk about alternatives and choices. We have to talk about resources and about how we continue to provide the schools with their resources in order to do that properly.

MG: Lynn, when you talk about choice, how concerned are you about some kids getting left behind with a shift towards more specialised schools? Because some parents can afford to make that choice.

LYNN BOSETTI: Well, I think that that's the nerve of the whole school choice movement. And what's happening right now. And so I think that there's a huge responsibility of the state, meaning government and public school boards, to ensure that there is equity and to meet those needs that those left behind, because we know that parents with resources, you know, can opt out. They have the money to do that. The other thing that concerns me as parents opt out of the public system, of course, is that kind of social cohesion, that socialising function that schools play. And so we see that in America, just as Ruben's talking about, with this kind of civil rights movement, that the new right is also rising up so that parents who don't want to have those conversations that feel that fear, that kind of white fragility that's happening can decide to have learning pause and not subject their children to that kind of discourse. But to your point, I think it's really talking about that school boards have the obligation to really meet the needs of those that have to go to school that have no other alternatives. So they have to have the resources allocated to those parents and family.

MG: How has this played out - I think what's happening in Alberta with charter schools, that's really, I guess, the only province where they're a publicly funded charter schools in this country. How is that playing out there?

LYNN BOSETTI: Well, you know, charter schools- So Alberta has the most choice. Alberta at Ontario, the most choice in a public system. And the thing about charter schools that I like about is that the government actually has some rules or boundaries around charter schools. So they're publicly funded independent schools, but they have rules about they can't discriminate on admissions for religious or any kind of reasons. And so it provides like minded parents and educators to create alternative programmes that meets the needs of particular groups. So it's a choice and they live and die by that charter. So they've got single gender schools. They've got a once for indigenous students, one for second language learners, fine schools. So but once game parents have to know how to navigate that system. They don't have to pay tuition, but they still have to get their kids to the school, often have to wear uniforms. But that actually. It's a good alternative for parents because there's enough safety measures to ensure that the needs of the children are met. And it also protects children because we don't want parents to socialise or educate children in ways that don't serve their needs or best interests.

MG: Well, Ruben, what do you make of that idea of greater choice, whether it's a a charter school or some of the alternative schools that exist, for example, in Ontario and elsewhere?

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: In Ontario we don't have charter schools, but we do have flexibility in the school system for creating what usually often called either alternative schools or specialised programmes. And oftentimes, you know, one of the biggest challenges with the schools and the ways in which they sort of contribute to inequality is through their selection of students. So in Ontario, specialised, arts programs can place admissions procedures. And as we know, these admissions procedures are really ultimately exclusionary practises. The majority of the time has the effect of creating highly homogeneous school environments, at least compared to the rest of the system. So that's one of the one of the problems that comes up when we have sort of choice games is the problem of selection, not just of how schools select, but also how parents self select. So this is a curricular matter. What kinds of parents self-select particular kinds of curriculum and how that process of both selection on the part of the school, as well as tough selection on the part of the parents, how it creates a system that separates. And this is important because it's the way in which soft power operates. So going back to your reference to the wonderful podcast that has been gaining popularity, Nice White Parents, affluent white parents use soft power and use their social and cultural capital to secure access to schooling environments that that separated children from the rest of the system. Oftentimes in under the veil of, oh, we're just finding places that are good for our kids. We're just trying to attend to the special needs of our children. But lo and behold, what it results in is in a segregated system where affluent white parents end up constructing these bases and putting practises in place that softly and gently end up producing a segregated system.

MG: So what does that what does that mean then, for the health of the system as a whole, if you have all these different alternatives, Rubén, just briefly, what does that mean to the health of the public system as a whole?

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: Well, it impacted negatively, right? Because if we believe that the reason why we have failed is cooling and B, it's because he's a common good on his part of building on democracy and portability and citizenship. We have to have a system that actually prepares students to participate in that, in that in civic society. And we don't accomplished that by having segregated spaces, by having spent squatting spaces that don't look like the rest of society. So it has a negative impact on that. And it may also exacerbate the inequality. Exacerbate inequality of access to higher education and equality of access to resources of certain kinds of opportunities. So in that sense, I think it has the deleterious effect.

MG: Lynn, we just have a few seconds left. We're in this extraordinary moment and everything seems to be on the table. And we're seeing parents exercise choice in ways that they haven't in past. Just very briefly, how likely do you think that what we're talking about will stick once this pandemic is over?

LYNN BOSETTI: I'm 90 percent sure that this will be the wave of the future, that parents now know that they have choice and they have a responsibility to provide for their children. And I think that, in fairness to Ruben saying, that parents that have the resources, they do want to kind of colonise their child's future to increase their chances. I think the bottom line for a system is that, yes, some children will be better off. But we want to share that by those kids leaving no one's worse off. So, again, public school boards have to really attend to those that are left behind.

MG: This is fascinating. And I can imagine we'll talk further about it as this unfolds in the school year, just at the very beginning. In the meantime, it's great to speak with you both this morning. Thank you. You as well. Have a wonderful day.

RUBEN GAZTAMBIDE-FERNANDEZ: You as well.

LYNN BOSETTI: Bye.

MG: Rubén Guztambide-Fernandez is a professor of curriculum and pedagogy at the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. Lynn Bosetti, professor of education at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. We turn it over to you parents. Your thoughts on this idea of choice a good thing, or are you concerned when it comes to education? You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Tweet @TheCurrentCBC or head to the Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. That's it for The Current for today. Q With Tom Power is next. We'll leave you with a message for those of you back at school. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

Hello, Canada hockey fans. It's Raffie calling from the West Coast. When I think about kids getting ready to go back to school, I think, my goodness, this is the most uncertain and challenging back to school ever. When you think of young kids going back to school, it may be the most difficult for them, actually, because you know how young kids are. They like to play with one another in close proximity there. They might find it the most challenging to keep a physical distance and to wear masks and that kind of thing. So my heart goes out to them. During the pandemic, we've all been practising a new way of togetherness, you might say, through our various zoom capabilities, you know, reaching out. Yo-Yo Ma reached out to me for a song with him up, a duet, in his Songs of Comfort series. And that was my Baby Beluga fortieth anniversary that I did with him. And that turned out so good that we did another song together, this time with Lindsay Monroe, singer in Massachusetts. Talk about physical distancing recording. Right. And this song is one that I just love. And I think it will bring some comfort to a lot of kids and parents and teachers. This called for All You Do, and it's a song of gratitude for essential workers who make our lives possible.

[Song]

The Current Transcript for September 9, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

No cause for alarm after pause in COVID-19 trial, says co-chair of Canada's Vaccine Task Force

We must protect 30% of the Earth's land and seas to prevent environmental disaster, says conservationist

Home schooling and choices facing parents

Wednesday September 9th, 2020 Full Transcript

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