Conversations That Matter

Bruce Blair - The Nuclear Threat is once again on the Rise

Ep 213 Bruce Blair

The Nuclear Threat is once again on the Rise

 

Are we once again on the cusp of nuclear catastrophe? It’s a concern that hung over the entire world like the “Sword of Damocles” for half a century.  At the peak in 1980, there were more than 61,000 nuclear weapons in the world.

 

Former US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev recognized the threat two powerful nations on hair trigger alert posed. Between them they had enough stored energy to destroy the world. In October 1986, in Reykjavik, Iceland, they began talks that have led to a series of arms reduction agreements.

 

The latest, the “New Start” agreement, will expire in February of 2021. Despite the reduction in nuclear arms – the explosive potential – in the hands of eight nations that control just shy of 15,000 nukes, is deadly.

 

Bruce Blair, of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs says, “There are two elements that make the current situation so dangerous: 1. Almost no one is paying attention and 2. Russia and the USA maintain a rapid response protocol.”

 

During the Cold War, the launch protocol was never fully activated. Over the past 10 years, however, Blair says, “On multiple occasions, there have been ambiguous ballistic threats that rose to the level of presidential participation and under Presidents Bush and Obama, the launch protocol was activated.” In each case, cooler heads prevailed and what was believed to be imminent danger turned out to be a false alarm.

 

We invited Research Scholar Bruce Blair to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the rising risk nuclear weapons and response protocols pose.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

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Patrick Condon: LRT - Why is it taking so long?

Ep 212 Patrick Condon

Light Rail Transit - Why is it taking so long?

LRT is like deja vu all over again. Do we want it? Do we need it? Why would we want it and what are its benefits? Light rail transit is an idea whose time came and went, and is trying to make a comeback.

 

Vancouver used to have it: back then it was called the streetcar. As a transit system, it served the city well. Set out as a grid, it allowed riders to easily get from point A to point B – a grid that has helped shape the creation of many of the city’s favourite neighbourhoods.

 

Streetcars put people on the streets and along the way injected life into Kerrisdale, Dunbar, Kits, Cambie, Main, Granville, Kingsway and Hastings Streets. From 1890 to 1958, BC Electric built and operated interurban trains and streetcar lines throughout Metro Vancouver and into the Fraser Valley.

 

By the 1940s, the Lower Mainland followed the rails-to-rubber trend that was sweeping throughout North America. Buses – some were electric, most were diesel powered – replaced the streetcar.

 

Four decades later, SkyTrain was introduced and it has helped move people over long distances and quickly. However, for some urban planners, SkyTrain is not seen as a community builder. Rather, they see it as an expensive people mover.

 

Patrick Condon says LRT compliments a larger transit network, it saves taxpayers money and it puts people on the street, and has the potential to shape the communities it serves – all of which begs the question: why has it taken so long for us to get back to a good idea?

 

We invited one of LRT’s strongest local advocates,  urban designer, planner and professor Patrick Condon to join us for a Conversation That Matters about why it’s time to turn our attention away from SkyTrain and back to LRT.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

John Neate: Succeeding in the Complex World of Coffee

Ep 211 John Neate

The complex world of coffee

 

Here’s an idea: why not open a coffee shop? Heck, why not a chain of coffee shops? After all, how hard can it be? You buy coffee that’s cheap, you brew it; that’s easy and you watch the money roll in!

 

With so many designer coffee shops, you’d think it was easy. That is, until you look behind the counter and start to work your way through the myriad rules and regulations that stand in the way of simply brewing coffee and selling it.

 

Fair trade coffee: is that organic? Does it mean it’s better coffee? The answer is no, but it’s a designation you have to be aware of – a designation that has nothing to do with taste or organics.  And when it comes to organic coffee, where do you get that from and why does it cost so much?

 

Did you know Brazil is the number one coffee producing country in the world? Did you know the best coffee is grown above the 1,2oo-meter level on the warmer side of the mountain with three levels of canopy? Oh, and there has to be birds but not bugs. Birds are good, bugs are bad.

 

We invited John Neate of JJ Bean to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the amazingly complex world of owning, operating and succeeding in the competitive world of coffee.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Anne McMullin: In Search of Real Estate Solutions

Ep 210 Anne McMullin

In Search of Real Estate Solutions

 

The never ending saga of real estate woes continues unabated. Provincial and City governments at every turn continue to mess it up. Home ownership and home rental is getting harder to acquire. At last estimate, the vacancy rate on rental properties was between 0.3 - 0.9%, making it next to impossible to get affordable rental housing.

New homes are equally difficult to purchase especially in the mid-range. That’s homes with three bedrooms – and forget a new three-bedroom and den. This is forcing a paradigm shift in thinking about what is a mid-range home.

Density is another issue; we’ve built transit lines and, in many areas, we’ve restricted density around stations that are under-utilized because they are zoned for single-family homes.

There is a chorus of voices that cry out for more development. Properties developers say they’d happily build if only they could get through the stifling permit process – a permitting process that is slow and has fees that are an upward moving target. Fees that insure the building of  rental housing doesn’t make sense. Fees that are adding up to $200,000 to new homes and in doing driving up prices, the very thing governments say they want to decrease.

We invited Anne McMullin of the Urban Development Institute to join us for a Conversation That Matters about strategies she says could go a long way to relieve the pressure on the Greater Vancouver housing market.

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Joe Dion: Can Canada's First Nations Save the Resource Industry?

Ep 209 Joe Dion

Can First Nations Save Canada’s Resource Industries?

 

The Kinder Morgan pipeline, like 263 court decisions before it, went in favour of the First Nations that opposed the project. One court decision after another is shaping the way Canada can and does develop its resources. The failure of governments and corporations to embrace First Nations as full partners is putting the brakes on development and it is impacting Canada’s reputation as an investment environment.

 

Joe Dion, the CEO of the Frog Lake First Nation Energy Resource Corporation has a plan – a plan he shared with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a First Nations Energy Strategy framed as a treaty between the Government of Canada and indigenous peoples. A treaty that will reopen the door to resource development.

 

To do so, he says it’s time to create ownership opportunities that provide First Nations access to economic opportunities that will create ownership, employment, funds for education and clean water, and will combat poverty.

 

We invited Joe Dion, the CEO of the Frog Lake First Nation Energy Corporation, to join us for a Conversation That Matters about his plan to unlocking the log jam of court cases and open a path to reconciliation.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Lynn Mueller: Wastewater to the Rescue

Ep 208 Lynn Mueller

WasteWater to the Rescue

 

Imagine, if you will, a world in which waste water – yes, the stuff you drain out of your sink, shower, dishwasher and toilet – could provide you with the energy you need to power your home. It sounds like a line from The Twilight Zone, except for the fact that it’s real.

 

Enter SHARC, a Coquitlam-based company that is changing the way buildings around the world are utilizing what, until now, was considered wastewater. Reusing grey water, which is water from everywhere but the toilet, is one thing; repurposing all wastewater is another.

 

In North America, close to four hundred billion kilowatts-hours of energy a year goes down the drain. That works out to about $1,000 per household in just hot water. The average temperature of the collective wastewater from a home, around the world, is 23 degrees Celsius. The impediment to using all of the wastewater is solid waste: if only it could be cleaned, then the water would be usable as an energy source.

 

Now it can and, once clean, the water can be used in a series of heat exchangers, concentrated and then used to supply energy to heat houses. Once the cycle starts, the laws of thermodynamics kick in and the same energy gets used and reused.

 

We invited Lynn Mueller of SHARC Energy Systems to join us for a Conversation That Matters about how wastewater helps reduce our carbon footprint, reduces the massive volume of warm water that spills back into oceans and saves consumers money.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Abeer Yusuf: Vancouver Love me, Love me Not

Ep 207 Abeer Yusuf

Vancouver - Love You, Love You Not

 

Tom Davidoff described Vancouver as a beautiful city created by nature and ruined by man. He of course was talking about his pet project, the cost of housing. Our guest today says that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Abeer Yusuf, like so many before her, came to Vancouver, gasped at the natural beauty and determined this was going to be a great place to call home. That is, until she started living here. Soon she discovered what so many before her have found about Vancouver’s fickle nature.

 

You want to love the city and at the same time it does just about everything to make you scratch your head and wonder what you saw in the place when you fell in love with it. You want to stay, you want to leave – you’re torn in both directions.

 

Housing, yes, but so too transportation, the cost of food, clothing. Yes, there are jobs but career opportunities are hard to come by and so too are friends who can keep a date.  As Abeer Yusuf has experienced, “People are super flaky here,” on a dime and at the last minute they will cancel their date with you. A true Vancouver problem that pre-dates Abeer’s arrival by decades.

 

Are we truly multicultural or do we spend to much time congratulating ourselves about inclusivity and then come up short when it comes to creating integrated communities?

 

We invited Abeer Yusuf to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the myriad challenges of feeling truly at home in Vancouver.   

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Gordon McCauley: Putting Canada on the Drug Global Stage

Canadians invent many things that go on to be globally significant. Drugs or pharmaceuticals is an area of research that we do very well in, especially when it comes to developing cures and treatments for a wide range of health issues.

 

While we do a good job conceiving of treatments and doing the research, we don’t do a good job of bringing those products to the market. By the time the research has finished, ownership of the intellectual property frequently leaves Canada and moves to its new home in Europe or the United States.

 

It’s a shame because Canada makes up just point five per cent of the global population, yet we produce over 5% of the world’s research in drug development. We’ve figured out the idea and research part well; what we have trouble with is commercializing our discoveries once the human proof of concept stage has been reached.

 

Canada is the only advanced pharma market in the world that does not have a billion dollar company to anchor the pharmaceutical industry.  We’ve had them only to see them go away. At one time we had QLT in Vancouver, which is an example of our intellectual property being acquired by a larger global player that takes the company offshore.

 

The result is a loss to ongoing research and to the Canadian economy. How then do we change that? Enter the Centre for Drug Research and Development, a joint effort between Simon Fraser University, UBC and the BC Cancer Agency – an initiative that the Federal Government recognized as invaluable and provided funding to expand the reach of the CDRD across the country.

 

We invited Gordon McCauley of the CDRD to join us for a Conversation That Matters about nurturing, fostering, retaining and commercializing our world-class ideas, talent and research in Canada.    

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Kim Thompson: Corporate Social Responsibility

Ep 205 Kim Thompson

Corporate Social Responsibility

 

Is corporate social responsibility a public relations exercise? Is it a nice thing to ascribe to and at the same time easy to sluff off? The answer is a combination of yes and no. On the surface, it’s easy to say your company believes in supporting and contributing to the community as a whole.

 

The cost of a CSR program, however, challenges the keepers of the money who frequently question the value. Accountants and Financial Officers are asked to look at everything as a return on investment and, in doing so, may determine a responsibility program is beyond the company’s budget.

 

While that may have been the traditional line of thinking, it no longer applies. It alienates staff who are demanding that the work they do contribute to the whole of society rather than just the bottom line. According to an MIT Sloan Management Review, “Using Corporate Responsibility to Win the War for Talent,” employers with a CSR program enjoy greater employee satisfaction and retention.

 

Employees, customers and investors are all taking CSR programs into account when they sign on, when they purchase and when they invest.

 

We invited Kim Thompson of Aviso Wealth to join us for a Conversation That Matters about why Corporate Social Responsibility needs to be a part of every company’s mission statement and practices.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

 

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs

Dr Lee MacKay - Preparing for the Baby Boomer Tsunami

Ep 204 Dr Lee MacKay

Preparing for the Baby Boomer Tsunami

 

Over the past 20 years, the portion of the provincial budget dedicated to health care has gone from 30 per cent to more than 40 and rising.  Currently, it costs BC $19.5 Billion annually and that cost will go up another $2.6 billion when the Medical Services Plan premiums are eliminated.  At some point soon the cost of health care will undermine the provincial government’s ability to provide education, social services, transportation and everything else in its scope of responsibilities.

 

Universal Primary Care is designed to ensure everyone in British Columbia has a doctor. A doctor who knows them, their health history and in many cases the history of their immediate family. The challenge, however, is setting a timely appointment. On average patients wait three weeks to see their doctor.

 

That wait time is motivating an increasing number of people to utilize the emergency department of the nearest hospital as their walk-in clinic. In doing so, they are plugging up the system and driving up costs.

 

Interior Health sees the solution in a realignment of resources and personnel who are qualified to expand their scope of practice and speed up care to patients in their physician’s office or a walk-in clinic.

 

We invited Dr Lee Mackay, who practices medicine in Nelson, BC to join us for a Conversation That Matters about realigning resources and staff in the Grand Forks Boundary area in an attempt to get ahead of the impending Baby Boomer tsunami.

 

Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

Please become a Patreon subscriber and support the production of this program, with a $1 pledge https://goo.gl/ypXyDs