Arlene Is Alone with David Suzuki

David Suzuki joins Arlene the day before his 90th birthday for a profound conversation about the lessons his father taught him, how his grandchildren reignited his wonder, capitalism's impact on the environment, and what six decades of environmental advocacy has taught him about hope, resilience, and what really matters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I said, look, science is too important to leave to politicians or corporations. You, the public, have to understand science is impacting on our lives for good and for bad. But you better know what's going on. And now, when I look at the end of my life, some guy can wake up with a wart on his ass and say, ah, that proves climate change is baloney. And get on social media and get a following. Like, what the hell?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hi everyone, it's Arlene Dickinson. Welcome to this week's episode of Arlene is alone. David Suzuki is a scientific icon and one of the world's most influential voices on the environment. Scientist, broadcaster, author of over 50 books, founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, and a companion of the Order of Canada, his impact is immeasurable. Arlene sat down with David the day before his 90th birthday for one of the most meaningful conversations we've recorded. He shared stories about how his father made an impact on his life, how his grandchildren reignited his spark for wonder, and what he's learned about hope and resilience after a lifetime spent fighting for something bigger than himself. This conversation stayed with us. We think it'll stay with you too. This is David Suzuki.

SPEAKER_06 1:29

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Arlena's Alone. I am here today with David Suzuki. Can't even believe I'm saying that, Dave. Honestly, I'm who's, by the way, whose birthday is tomorrow. So happy early birthday.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:44

What's uh what birthday is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

It's my 90th. It's 90. Never thought I'd reach it, but here I am.

SPEAKER_06 1:50

It's your night. Did you never feel you were going to reach it?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Well, my dad died at uh 85, my mom at 74, and uh I figured that was maybe the the tops. And when I passed dad's age, I thought, wow, I'm I'm really fortunate to be alive. And every day I wake up and I go, whoa, I'm still here. So uh it's a gift.

SPEAKER_06 2:10

It is a gift, right? And I maybe as you get older you start to realize exactly that that it is a gift to be able to, and especially to do it while you're healthy and and have your exactly, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah. They say that getting old is uh is like unrolling uh a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. Like every year is just whipping by now.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

Like And then you then you run out and you go, I still need more paper.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

The end result is the same. You run out.

SPEAKER_06 2:41

I never thought of it that way. I actually like that analogy, although I think I I uh and there's nothing worse than being on the toilet paper. You're still living your life fully, and then suddenly it goes Trying.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I mean, you know what the hell? There isn't much time left and uh gotta use it.

SPEAKER_06 2:57

Yeah, that's true. You've been out on the West Coast for a long, for most of your life, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, I was born there, of course, and then during the war we were evacuated out, and then a lot of people don't know. At the end of the war, BC saw a chance to get rid of half of their yellow peril problem, the Japanese, and so they gave us a choice either you can sign up, renounce your citizenship, and we'll send you to Japan, or go east of the Rockies. And my mom and dad had never been to the never been to Japan, so it was a foreign country, and uh, so we ended up in London, Ontario.

SPEAKER_06 3:34

And you were you were in an internment cap for like four years of your life. Three and a half years. Three and a half years of your life. And very formative years of your life, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Yeah, but you know, I I am so grateful to my parents. Uh, you know, we were housed in the in this old rundown hotel that had been resurrected uh erected during the silver rush in the 1890s and then abandoned. To Japanese c uh cleanliness is like a religion. And we would wake up every morning covered in bed bug bites.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

And I can't imagine how my mother dealt with that. But she never made us feel, oh, we're in such bad shape and it's terrible and all that. Somehow she uh she kept us protected, and we were in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. So uh, you know, here I am, seven years old, ro roaming the forest filled with bears and wolves and deer, and it was uh it was like paradise for me.

SPEAKER_06 4:35

And now that's actually pretty fascinating to me that because you're just talking about the fact you guys were, you know, you were living in really difficult circumstances, but you said you just said you were lucky.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:47

Is that a cup half full of attitudes?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Well, it was uh well the the interesting thing is that you know we were all in the camp because of racism at that time of British Columbia. So dad always said, he didn't say, oh, those goddamn bureaucrats, he said, those goddamn English, you know. And um he always said to me, Well, this is years later when we were, I was growing up in London, but my dad says, David, I notice you're looking at girls all the time. So I gotta tell you, the only acceptable partner for you is a Japanese girl. I said, Dad, there are only 10 Japanese girls in London, and three of them are my sisters. So he says, Okay, okay, Chinese girls, okay. I go, What? There are only three Chinese families in London, and I don't know any of them. Okay, okay, a native girl. This is literally, he had this, and his whole thing was if you're going to go out with someone, she's got to understand what it is to be discriminated against. And the bottom, absolutely bottom. He says, You go out with an English girl, I will kick you out of this family.

SPEAKER_06 5:56

Really?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Unacceptable. Anyway, years later, when I'm uh 34, I meet Tara, and we start dating and go to my uh have dinner with my mom and dad, and my dad starts saying, Oh, your people did this, you know, the goddamn English did that. So, and then he finally said, When the English were eating with their bare hands, Japanese were eating off fine China with ivory chopsticks. So I took Tara and dropped her off at home, go back, and I roared into the house. I said, Listen, Dad, you're nothing but a goddamn bigot. You know, I said, just because you've been discriminated against yourself doesn't make give you the right to become a racist yourself. You know, when when you, when I, if we become racists, then racism wins. It's the only time I ever saw my father cry.

SPEAKER_06 6:53

Really?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah, for to have his son call him a racist. And I think he it just kind of screwed his head around and uh, you know, he had to look at the world in a different way. Um I understand the bitterness that he felt about being evacuated, and but to blame all English just because of a few bureaucrats there that were rounding us up. I think he he under anyway, and then he fell in love with my wife, of course. He loved her and uh but um important lessons, I think.

SPEAKER_06 7:25

Very important lesson. Do you do you think I mean I know you you do have a really deep connection with indigenous people in Canada? Do you think that you have uh a a deep connection because of the fact that the government really created that disassociation between what you went through as a Japanese Canadian and what they've gone through as Indigenous?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Interesting, no. That's not why uh, you know, I see now in in retrospect the terrible uh things that had happened to to the First Nations, of course. But back then I didn't know anything about First Nations. Right. We're not taught about them in school. And uh the first time I ever met uh seriously indigenous people was when I was doing filming for the nature of things, and that's in the late 1980s. And I interviewed this uh indigenous guy, Gujao. Now he was uh an artist, and and so I said, you know, your people have over 50% unemployment. A lot of the loggers are hida. So logging is giving your people in you know economic returns. Uh why are you against uh the logging? When the trees are gone, you'll still be here. You're an artist. And he said, Yeah, well when the trees are all gone, we'll still be here. But then we won't we'll be like everybody else. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about until we I was looking at the rushes back in Vancouver and I went, Oh my God, what he's saying is that we don't end at our skin or our fingertips, that in fact we're connected to those trees. That the trees and the fish and the air and the birds, and that's all what makes the people of that area who they are. And you lose part of that and you are no longer the same people. That was a profound uh insight to me, and it led to me totally reassessing the whole environmental movement and seeing that the problem with even with the environmental movement, which I've been involved with since 1962 because of a woman. I'll talk about that some other time. Oh, you do, you do actually, but um the uh environmental movement, you know, we kind of felt, oh, well, we gotta protect the environment, and so we need laws and and regulations, and we've got to enforce that. And but what he told me is there isn't an environment out there, and we're the environment is around us and in us. And then I began to reassess and I thought, oh my God, he's right. We don't even think about it, but when you take a breath of air, you're absorbing everything that's in that air from around the world. And uh, if you don't have air for three to four minutes, you're dead. Air isn't made by human factories or technology. Air is made constantly by nature. If there were no plants in the oceans and on land, we wouldn't be here because oxygen is a very reactive compound uh element, and when it's in the air, it immediately oxidizes things, rusts things. There is no air oxygen in the air without plants. You know, uh when Stephen Harper was the prime minister for nine and a half years, he never dealt with the issue of climate change. Canada is probably more vulnerable to climate change than any other developed countries. We're a northern country, warming is happening four times faster than uh more southern areas. We have the longest marine coastline of any country, so sea level rise, you know. We depend on agriculture, forestry, and all these climate-related things. And he just said, can't do anything about global warming. That's crazy economics. And so he doesn't deal with the issue, and he's saying the economy is more important than the air that we breathe, you know.

SPEAKER_06 11:33

That's kind of asked backwards, isn't it, isn't it? The other way around.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

That's the way that we're living now. And so um, anyway, that's Gujou opened that whole way of seeing it, that that we're so connected with nature, whatever you do to nature, we do to ourselves. So the idea that Kennedy is now the minister, uh the secretary of health, and he's blaming vaccines for causing autism is just it seems to me crazy.

SPEAKER_06 12:05

Or aspirin bean, like or aspirin, like all of it. It is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

So, you know, we were uh environmentalists were fighting against a group of insecticides called neonicotinoids. We call them neonics, and um, they're very powerful insecticides because the farmers soak the seeds in the neonics, and when the seed sprouts, then the roots, the stem, the leaves, everything has neonics in them. We're spraying insecticides that will be in the food that we eat, and they're neurotoxins, which means they're gonna affect us, and we're blaming things like autism on vaccines?

SPEAKER_06 12:46

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_06 12:48

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

Did you ever think that you would see, just just to that, did you ever think you would live to see this? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

No. It's a triumph, to me, it's a triumph of capitalism. Yeah. You ought to be very interested in this, knowing all about business and stuff. Uh but Trump, to me, represents the ultimate triumph of capitalism, which is growth is uh in the economy, money is at the the bottom of everything, and that comes before anything else. I began my television career in 1962. Uh were you born then? I was.

SPEAKER_06 13:29

I was born in 1956. Okay. So I was six years old back. I remember when you started on the city.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

I started you don't remember that show. It was it was a local, it was a local CBC in Edmonton.

SPEAKER_06 13:41

Well, I was at Calgary.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Okay. Well, the university that had a CBC uh program, just for Alberta, called Your University Speaks. And it was just professors who could talk, and and uh I did uh one show for them and they loved it, and I ended up doing eight on genetics. But uh I got I got into this because of a woman, never met her, but it was a woman named Rachel Carson who wrote a book called Silent Spring. In 1962, it was all about the effect of pesticides. And this was a groundbreaking uh book because everybody thought pesticides were the greatest invention when Paul Mueller discovered DDT kills insects. He won a Nobel Prize in 1948. So uh, but Rachel Carson was saying, no, uh, this is having an effect on the birds. The birds are disappearing because the shell glands of birds are fatty tissue like breasts of women concentrating DDT, and the eggs were breaking when they were laid. So, because of Rachel Carson, and I did this uh series on television, that kind of got me into television as an educational tool. I got into it in a big way because I said, look, science is too important to leave to politicians or corporations. You, the public, have to understand science is impacting on our lives for good and for bad. But you better know what's going on. And now, when I look at the end of my life, the social media has absolutely destroyed television and programs as the most credible source of information. Some guy can wake up with a wart on his ass and say, ah, that proves climate change is baloney, and get on social media and get a following. Like, what the hell? The president of the United States can say climate change is a hoax, fake news, it's a scam. And nobody says, wait a minute now, how do you know that? What's your evidence? You know, it's just Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:54

There's no fact-based anything anymore. That's what's a fact. A fact is what somebody says. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

That's very sad. Yeah, a very sad state.

SPEAKER_06 16:03

Yeah, it's it's it's almost, you know, it's back to your root cause, you know, the air and and and how what that it how it impacts us. It social media is actually to me the root cause of what's the destruction of the world right now, you know, like it because it is spreading racism, it is spreading hate, it is spreading divisiveness. And and it's it's and and I think about your grandchildren, my grandchildren, who don't know any different. They didn't live when times were the way that they used to be, when newspapers were the place we went for facts and journalists were actually journalists. And now they hear all this stuff and they go, well, this must be true. It's on social media. It's on TikTok. It's on TikTok. If TikTok says it and everybody says it, then it must be true.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

That's right. You know, the happiest six months of my life were during the COVID lockdown. It just happened that I was on at my cabin on Quadra Island off the coast of British Columbia, and I was there with my wife and my youngest daughter, her husband, and three young children. And uh we were locked down there for six months. And uh the all the adults except me were late risers. I'm an early guy. So uh I the taking care of the kids in the morning was my job. And every morning I'd get up at six. Kids come in at quarter to seven like clockwork, you know. So I got to clean them up and and dress them and feed them. And every day, rain or shine, we went out. And you know, at my age, and I'm I'm a crotchety old guy, and I'm going, look at that, they just cut that tree down over there. And look at the garbage on the on the ocean shore here. And but the kids don't see that.

SPEAKER_06 17:49

No, they're having the time of their life.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

It's a magical world out there. I mean, when I found a salamander and a rotting log, you would have thought I'd won a Nobel Prize. Like it was just, and I realized that looking at the world through their eyes, it's still an incredibly magical place. And I thank them for that because I've got so old and and crotchety that I I've forgotten what an amazing place this is. And I'm that just fueled my anger and my need to fight as hard as I can to protect what's left of it there for our grandchildren.

SPEAKER_06 18:26

When you think about our our our kids and you think about what's going on in the world, I get I I feel like I don't know how to explain it to them. Well you just said, I it's a lived experience. We lived it. We understand it. When we go back and say all these things happened, but to me what's missing today is this is creativity. This, you know, getting down on the floor and playing.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:50

You know, like they they don't do that anymore. They it's all done with a screen.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 18:55

There's nothing that actually allows, you know, when we had I mean, I know people might think this is crazy, but if we had a box and some crayons, we made something out of it. We became robots, we became, you know, we we we became whatever we wanted to, you know, like we did all sorts of games with very, very little. But today's kids, the creativity seems to have been lost.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Everything is there for them, and in it's better than anything they could ever do. But there's no place for imagination anymore. And the real world is uh the virtual world that they can immerse themselves is better than the real world. Right?

SPEAKER_06 19:31

Uh it's it's better in that it feels like it's so perfect, but it's not better in that it's it it actually makes you think. Yeah, it doesn't create curiosity, it creates this utopia that isn't real, and then you and you think everything else then is bad because you know, whether it's our our young, you know, kids looking at social media saying, I'm not perfect, I don't have the perfect, I have to put the filter on, I have to look a certain way, I have to be a certain way to be accepted, to, you know, to my home isn't as nice as somebody else's home, and so I'm not as good anymore. And this, and we're constantly comparing ourselves instead of being ourselves. I I feel like it's a constant comparison, you know, like very good.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Very good. I think this is one of the problems we face as a society today that uh is is the comparison. You know, I remember I had a a secretary, a longtime secretary, and she found out that someone else working in the office away from us, she said, she's not even doing as much as I am, and she's getting five dollars more a week than I am. It was a trivial amount, but she was enraged that that person was getting a decent salary and like her, but had five dollars more a week. And it it was that comparison, and then you start thinking about people like Musk and people who have amassed these huge fortunes, and ordinary people who have a decent living wage, but the contrast, they all want that. But anyway, well it's crazy.

SPEAKER_06 21:06

They all, I mean I've always said I'd never be a billionaire because I just I knew that I could never do the things you needed to do to be a billionaire. And and and right, and there's and that, and that there are certain things as you start to accumulate wealth, as you start to get success, you start to understand what has to happen in order for you to have more. And and having more means somebody else has less. I mean, I I just don't think that's there's any other better way to put it. Maybe there is, but in my mind, it always felt like it was taking too much, like it was like having a cake at the table and saying, I'm gonna eat all of that and you can have the crumbs. Like why do we need to do that? Exactly. We don't.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

This is what I asked Mark Carney before he became a politician. I said, Why does this system even allow anyone to be a billionaire? Right. Like when I was a kid, a millionaire was, oh my God, a million dollars. Like that was. Something that was way out of out of reach, but a billionaire, and now they're talking about a trillionaire. Like this is so obscene because you have to ask, why do you need all that money? They're using that money now to literally buy elections.

SPEAKER_06 22:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

It's uh so you know, uh it's mainly males who are up in that billionaire class, and you know it's got nothing to do with money anymore. No, it's about these males. So I'm trying to get an indigenous friend to make the biggest totem pole he can make in the shape of a penis, and we're gonna give it to Elon Musk and say, All right, Mr. Musk, we recognize you're the biggest dick on the planet. And but that's that's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_06 22:48

Can I sign the bottom of it or something? Can I put my name to that like somehow you know, like you get a bunch of uh bunch of us to just carve our initials on there? Tell them to tell them to skyrocket that into space.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Well, the reason I say this is if you go into these uh coastal First Nations, they have a tradition called a potlatch. And in a potlatch, you have to earn the right, you have to have enough standing in the community to throw a potlatch. And at a potlatch, you give away everything you own.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Now, it's not a surprise when Europeans came, they said, look at these savages, they have no sense of ownership or or property like that giving away all their money. Um, but what you get is standing in the community and the right to carve a a ring around the top part of your totem pole.

SPEAKER_06 23:39

Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

So it's yeah. And if you walk into the a new village and you see a totem pole with three rings, and go, oh my God, you know, that guy is really pretty important guy. And of course, you get it back in spades. Like I go fishing and I catch four salmon, the biggest salmon will always go to that guy that had the potlatch.

SPEAKER_06 24:04

Because it's, you know, because he's given up everything and now and and now it's it's the community's job.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

That wealth. I like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:12

Many prime ministers, I think, have always said you were a bit of a pain in the ass, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

That's what Justin Trudeau says in my book, and I'm so proud of that because it it's it's my job.

SPEAKER_03 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Now, with Mr. Harper, he didn't look at it that way. He tried to shut me down. And uh he uh came after the charitable status of my foundation, and we had two audits, uh, which are very expensive, really uh, you know, nerve-wracking experiences. So I resigned from the board of my foundation. I didn't want to threaten their charitable uh status, but um yeah, I mean that's that's my job.

SPEAKER_06 24:53

Where did you find that courage, David? Like to be able to stand up against that type of criticism and and and pushback, it takes a lot of courage.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Well, you know, two things about that. I asked Jane Fonda, who's been a longtime friend, I said, Jane, how did you do that? You know, when you were being portrayed as Hanoi Jane, you know, down in Vietnam, and you were saying you were a commie and and and a radical and all that, you were, you know, just treated in a terrible way by the media. I said, How did you stand up to that? She said, I never felt alone. I always felt I was a part of a movement. There were others there that and I thought that's that's amazing. Um, because it's true uh that that a movement cannot be based on just one or two people. It's got to be a lot of people and a lot of people being propped up. She may be the spokesperson, but there are a lot of people making her possible. For me, a very important lesson w was uh my father was a great mentor in my life. And um, you know, in in high school in London, Ontario, uh I was hanging out with a bunch of nerdy guys. And uh back then in 1950s, if you were a brain, that was anybody who got good grades, right? But being a braid was brain was terrible. Like you're ostracized because you called someone a brain, it was a pejorative word, you know. Anyway, one of my buddies says, Dave, you should run for student president. I said, Are you kidding? Forget it. There's no way I could win. And my dad, I was telling my dad that night, you know, Vicky's so crazy. He thought I should run for student president. Instead of laughing, my dad says, Yeah, well, are you? I said, No, there's no way I could win. Boy, did he ever get mad. He said, How are you gonna know? How are you gonna know anything? He says, There are always gonna be people bigger than you, smarter, stronger than you, better than you, but how will you know if you don't try? He said, There's no ha shame in trying and losing. It's a shame that you're not even trying. And boy, that was a real lesson for me. Great advice. Yeah, that was very important. Well, it turned out I did run and I did win. Um, and when I was a school uh student president, early on uh media came and I I can't even remember what the issue was. And uh I was interviewed and in the paper that the next day, my dad saw what I had said. He got so mad, he said, Why did you say that? That's not what you believe. What are you saying? I said, Well, I I knew that the parents would get mad at me, so I didn't want to get them upset. Holy cow, did my dad get mad? He said, It doesn't matter what you stand for, there are always gonna be people who disagree. If you want to stand up for anything, you gotta expect people to dump on you. So either you're gonna be liked by everyone and not stand for anything, or you're gonna tell the truth and and defend it and stand up for it. But you're never gonna be liked by everybody. And again, thank you, Dad, for uh for telling me that.

SPEAKER_06 28:20

My dad was a very big influence in my life too, and he was it was the same type of lesson, which was to have the courage to sometimes stand alone in order to help others, because it it requires and Jane's point is is such a good one to me, which is she she said she was never alone. That didn't mean that she didn't have opposition to what her view was, right? She had huge opposition, so have you had huge opposition. But by having the courage to stand up for what you know many other people like you and many other people like her believe in, you lead. And and and that's a that's a it's a concept many people fail to grasp because we we want we want to be where the majority of people are. We want to feel like we're not, you know, like going against the green, but you have to. If you're gonna if you're gonna make any difference, you have to.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Whatever you believe, you know, is what you is what you believe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:14

Do you think there's such a thing? I remember George Strabolopoulos um interviewing me many, many years ago when when um Dragon Zen was really just getting very, very popular. And uh, you know, we were talking about capitalism. And uh and he you know asked me about capitalism, and and I said, listen, I think you can be a capitalist with a heart. I think you can believe that you can strive to be successful, but you have to do it with attention and care to those around you, which is why, again, that billionaire comment or that trillionaire, like there that you don't need to have that kind of success. But I think having aspirations and ambition and wanting to do things with a care for your fellow human being is is okay. What do you think of that concept?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Well, here's where I I think probably you'll disagree with me a lot, but capitalism is the big problem.

SPEAKER_06 30:04

Aaron Powell, like you just don't think there can be such a thing as good capitalism.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

No. Interesting. Yeah, and it's all the global economy is already way too big. And the problem is that we haven't learned what people have known for 99% of our existence on earth, and that is we our our very uh existence and our well-being is possible because of nature. Nature is what gives us the air we need, nature cleanses the water through the hydrologic cycle so that we can drink it. Nature provides all of our food, every bit of our food was once alive, most of it ultimately grew in the soil. We create our bodies out of other plants and animals, and nature captures all of the energy in our bodies that we need to move and work and reproduce. That's all delivered by nature. And yet in our economic system, nature isn't there. So uh Partha Dasgupta, economist from the UK, published a huge paper two years ago that shows that in all of our economic transactions, nature is just a sidekick. It's there to be useful to the economy. But it's not built, the economy is not built on nature that makes an economy even possible. And Mark Carney in his book Values points this out. It blew my mind in the first chapter. He says, Jeff Bizos' Amazon is valued by the economy in the tens of billions of dollars. Brazil's Amazon, the greatest terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, has no economic value until it is logged, mined, dammed, or grows soybean, cattle, or houses. So that's the problem, then. It's all one way. We take from nature, it's about us. There's no reciprocity. In indigenous communities, their ceremonies and their rituals are always thanking their creator for nature's generosity and abundance. And always promise we will do our best to act in a good way to make sure that nature can continue. And it's that reciprocity that's missing.

SPEAKER_06 32:33

So you you can unlock, I mean, it's a it's a it fa it fascinates me because I think you can, you need to unlock those values in order to support our needs. Exactly. And so, I mean, I invest in the food and health space. I know you're friends with John Ruflow, who I know very well also. And and you know, we're both investors. We both but I when I invest, I invest in food and and health companies. I invest specifically because I believe that if you can invest in the things that are going to feed the world and help, you know, hydrate the world with water and and sources, then that's that investment is actually in its own way, I hate to use the word noble, but it it is it is it is helping unlock the value that we have in our land so that you can feed people and help them be better. And and without the capitalist um um system, you wouldn't be able to feed people the same way. Because how would you be able to do that?

SPEAKER_00 33:30

So, how did people do it for 99% of our existence before there was capitalization?

SPEAKER_06 33:34

I mean, I don't know. That's a very good question.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

They did it in a very different way. They grew their food or found their food.

SPEAKER_06 33:40

And they lived, I guess they lived that's true.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

That's how we lived as hunter-gatherers. The economic system itself is so fundamentally flawed because it's based on the creed of cancer. Endless growth. You know, you're investing in it, but your investment requires that whatever you're investing in has to keep growing. That's why you're investing in it. You're not investing in it because it it produces something that everybody needs. You're investing in it in order to see that it it makes money. Look, you know that the food industry you're investing in is not about nutrition. Go to any supermarket and look at the breakfast cereal section. And you'll find, whoa, look at the variety. You know, you got loops and and strings and different colors and all kinds of, it's got nothing to do with nutrition.

SPEAKER_06 34:33

But I think you can actually change the way you invest to make sure that what you're investing in is does have nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

No, but what you're investing in something that is doing good, you think good things, but what they're doing is not worried about nutrition. Yeah. They're competing for stomach space. Our stomachs are not infinitely large, there's only a limited amount. So all those serial people, they want to get a chunk of your your kids' stomach space. And that's what it's all about. It's not about nutrition. And it's look at clothing. You know, we clothing is now based on fashion. Uh this is when we the war was over, we were impoverished. I feel like I should I were fast. Okay. You know, I just heard on CBC uh radio last week that the fashion industry uh they throw away a truckload of fast fashion in particular. Every second.

SPEAKER_06 35:36

Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Every second.

SPEAKER_06 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

When we finished uh uh after the World War was over, World War II, we were impoverished. We had nothing. We moved to Ontario. My God, it's cold here. Clothing was a big expense item. And one of the things we bought, and I still wear to this day, is blue jeans.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Because denim wears like iron.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

And what do we do? Kids are walking around with brand new blue jeans already ripped.

unknown 36:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

What the what kind of an animal are we? But that's what capitalism does.

SPEAKER_06 36:12

I had jeans on before I changed it. With rips in it? No rips in it. Okay, we have no jeans, because I I agree with you. I tend to have all these clothes, but then I end up going back to my basic uniform, which is very simple, you know, very simple. But you know, today, I mean it's your 90th birthday. I wanted to dress up a little today. Don't hate me for it. Well, that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

I mean, I'm not against dresses and dresses that look well, but uh there's a group in England. There's a group in England that says, look, if we want to try to get in balance with what the nature nature can do, here's a list of things that you have to do as a one individual. And for me, my biggest sin has been flying, because we I had to fly all the time for the nature of things.

SPEAKER_06 36:57

Um but they say, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:59

If you as an individual want to have a low footprint from flying, then it means every short haul flight, say between Toronto and Montreal, one every three years. If you want to take a long haul flight, that's Vancouver to Toronto or Toronto to London, once every seven years.

SPEAKER_06 37:21

Really?

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Yeah. So, you know, uh, when COVID uh lockdown came, I said, I I can't fly anymore. This is an opportunity. And I I think I've flown in a jet now, maybe twice since the COVID lockdown. But I'm gonna have to keep flying in order to do the things that that I I want to do, which is to say, emergency, emergency, we can't go on supporting the systems that already exist. And in clothing, they say, buy three articles of clothing, new articles of clothing a year.

SPEAKER_06 37:57

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

And for me, I'm going, what the hell? That's not a target at all. I don't need any more clothing until I die.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 38:05

No, I'm a lot older, but uh, you know, what this whole rush to buy new clothes to be fashionable, not on the but the ability to do, like you just said, you know, to try you need to travel to be able to talk about something that's more important. Maybe you maybe I need to invest to help make sure good food gets in people's stomachs. So I I I you know I think we can, you know, maybe it's it's just a way to think about it, right? It's there's uh I think we have to also take advantage of the the system, is the system. So how do we use the system?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

But the system is driving us, the system needs to change.

SPEAKER_06 38:42

I don't disagree that you're not sure. Yeah, and that's the big question.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

I mean, there are a lot of people out. The guy that I'm infatuated with right now is a man named Jason Hickel. And I think he's an American originally, although he was born in Africa. His parents were doctors, but he's teaching right now at the University in Barcelona. Barcelona was the birthplace of the degrowth movement. And these are economists who are saying the global economy is too big, it's got to shrink. And uh growth is the the creed of cancer, which is endless growth, is what's what's really killing a future for our children. Yeah. So that's what we have to face up to. Uh we can't keep supporting the system that is driving us on the destructive path. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 39:29

Uh no, I don't I'm not offended by it at all. I think I think it's I think it's uh I think thinking about these things matters. What do you think is going to happen with Canada? What's your view on in what's our future ten years from now? Like let's then go too far out. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Ten years from now, I'll be dead. Uh and but I think that civilization as we know it, which is built around a global economy, will be uh destru being destructed, breaking down completely. The global uh it it can't work. First of all, I think where we're gonna be most vulnerable is in food. Uh you know, after Trump started talking about Canada as a 51st state, I said to Tara, we can't buy anything that isn't made in Canada.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

So we she goes shopping in the supermarket and she said, David, we can't live just on food grown in Canada. We're living on a in a food system in the winter where our food is coming uh, you know, 8,000 miles. Like that can't go on. And uh so we have a radical restructuring. And of course, you know, if the global economy has got to be shrunk, well, I mean that you you won't hear anybody ever say the uh saying that in Ottawa. Um or or any other uh politician will not say we we have to go into degrowth. Are we a sovereign country still in Tennessee? Well, that's the big question. I think Trump is hastening the breakdown in a a lot of things. I mean, obviously international law doesn't mean anything need anything. And now uh, you know, I what I hear on the news today, uh we're being, you know, with uh Iran now is sending missiles, what, over 2,000 miles away. So Trump is dragging the whole world into it and saying, you guys, uh, you know, you you gotta join me. You're in NATO, and we're gonna be dragged into this thing.

SPEAKER_06 41:26

Yeah, I I mean I my hope is that we have the courage not to be, but I I don't know how we can't be. But I think um, and I I wrote a post on LinkedIn just yesterday that what keeps me up at night when I think about the next 10 years and I think about the future is food and water.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:44

It is it literally is food and water. I think we've done a disservice to agriculture and water in our country. We are so blessed to have what we do have here in the ground and in the water. And um, we have ignored it at our peril. We we are not producing enough here, we are not manufacturing enough here, and we're not doing enough here to make sure we control it. And it is my biggest fear for our country.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

Yeah, and our whole agricultural system is geared for international trade. I mean, canola and all of that. So uh, you know, people say to me, Well, are are you giving up? Is there nothing we can do? And I say, look, these big forces now are set set loose. You know, I think that you're seeing the consequences of a a man who is literally insane is now running the most powerful country in the world. And I've been trying to work with agriculture uh departments in the universities and uh saying, look, farming is the foundation of our existence. Why is it every kid going to university, one of their highest goals is not to become a doctor, but to become a farmer. You know, we've got to raise farming up. The word to in in uh uh Japan, uh the word for farming is hyaksho. Uh hyaksho is a farmer. It's an insult. I'm going, this is nuts to call someone a hyaksho, you know, like oh, you're just a hyaksho. That's crazy. Farming should be something we have so much respect for. But you know, here we are, where we're getting people to come up and work on the farms because they get such a low wage. Uh, our Canadians don't want to do it. We should have kids all saying, Oh, the future, you know, maybe I won't be a owner farm, but I want to work on a farm. Like it's good work and I will get a decent salary. And we've got to elevate farming. It's the foundation of our culture.

SPEAKER_06 43:42

Well, I'm hoping that because I I believe Diane Carney is very much into agriculture, so I'm hoping she has an influence on on on what's going to happen at the government level, you know, uh, because I uh it we have to we have to look around. And I think this is where back to the First Nations people. Back to, you know, this is even in your own roots with uh Japanese people, the Japanese-Canadian people, or any any immigrant, I think, who comes to this land understands we are sitting on something that is incredibly valuable. And we have either lived without food, we have either been in places where we have been limited in the food we could get, and here we sit, and we're we're we're not paying attention to it. We're we're we're thinking of ourselves as a commodity nation instead of as a nation that can take our ingredients and create food for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Right on.

SPEAKER_06 44:34

Yeah, yeah. So we're not that far apart.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

We've got to get you on our board.

SPEAKER_06 44:37

You've uh we're not that far apart, David. We're very similar to the city. Very good. Yeah, like and I think I think what my father gave me was a voice too to say, um, you know, um uh to be courageous. I I actually am thinking a little bit about I I'm I'm I'm very conscious, just I'm gonna say to this to the camera, I'm very conscious that I'm sitting here wearing very nice jewelry and a nice dress, and I'm talking to David Suzuki, who's really not against who's against consumerism and is not against it, but who speaks to um the the changes and the challenges we have when we focus all on the economy. And I and I and I I thank you because you really taught me a lot today.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Oh, good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 45:16

Makes me emotional.

unknown 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:19

And what hasn't anyone ever asked you that you wish somebody had asked you? I mean, I usually I should as a good per you know, I mean, I I I'm not doing an interview, but I'm actually curious. You 90 years you've been interviewed, you've done 55 books. Like I can't even imagine uh how many dozens of honorary degrees you've had so much accomplishment. You've had millions of interviews probably, but what is it that you go, why didn't somebody ever ask me that?

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Well, the the question I am often asked is, what do you what do you hope people say about you when you're gone? And my answer to that is I don't give a shit. I'll be dead. I'll be dead. And how can you define success or, you know, my success as an animal is that I had children who have had children and endowed me with the greatest gift of all, which is grandchildren. I don't think that we uh I we measure our lives by what we achieved. You know, I got a Nobel Prize or or whatever. It's that we define ourselves by what we try.

SPEAKER_06 46:26

This is your dad's your dad's lesson.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Well, yeah, and I want my gr grandchildren, I hope when I'm dying I'll be like my father. My father didn't have any money. My wife and I were supporting my mom and dad uh in their last years, but I went to to take care of him in the last month of his life, and all he talked about, he kept saying, David, I die a rich man. And but he never talked about a big car or a house or clothing or anything. All he talked about were family, friends, and the things he did together. That's what really his whole life, when we talked as he was dying, it was all about what he had done with family and friends. And that was his wealth, you know. And I want to be able for my grandchildren to come around me as I'm dying to say, look, I'm just one person. I'm not gonna save the world, but I love you, and I have tried everything I can do for you. And that's all I can say. That's all I can say.

SPEAKER_04 47:37

That's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

Well and I hope every person can do that, you know?

SPEAKER_04 47:42

Uh I think you have. Sorry, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

That's your uh you're making me emotional because I think we thank you, because it's the emotion that we need in there.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

If we love each other and our children and our grandchildren, and love the earth. And that's why indigenous people are right. The earth is our mother.

SPEAKER_04 48:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

If we treated our biological mother the way we treat Mother Earth, oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 48:13

We'd be we'd be uh we'd be um uh what do you call it, um, in the corner, stuck in the corner for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Kids saying, more, more, mama. You're not giving me enough milk. Give me more, more, more.

SPEAKER_05 48:26

Yeah, yeah. At some point you can't give more.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:29

Um you got a lot of life left in you, D. You have a lot of life left in you.

SPEAKER_06 48:33

You you talk about, I think you, I think maybe in your mind you've hit this 90 number and said, okay, this is this is uh a life well lived. But I think you have a lot of life left to left to live, David.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

It's uh the years, that's just a number. I every day I wake up, I think, oh, I'm alive. That's great. It's a gift. You take good care of yourself. Well, no, not really. But I I I don't smoke, I don't drink. I smoke marijuana, but uh I and the most important thing I think for anybody our age is exercise. Gotta move. It doesn't have to be at a gym, but you know, I'm uh we're having a big birthday celebration in in uh May, and uh I invited the guy that owns the gym I go to because for over 30 years he said, David, you can come here anytime for nothing. Doesn't charge me. That was a big gift from him.

SPEAKER_06 49:24

Yeah, that was and you and you've been using it.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

And I try.

SPEAKER_06 49:28

And you're gonna have a big birth big party?

SPEAKER_00 49:30

We are. It's well, basically it's a fundraiser for my foundation, but uh George is gonna uh be the MC and uh Sarah McLaughlin will sing in Bruce Coburn. Um Neil Neil said he would come, uh Neil Young, but I think he's got health problems. I'm supposed to talk to him uh this week. Al Gore is gonna be there, Jane Fonda's gonna be there. Um it's just gonna be a celebration.

SPEAKER_06 49:54

That's gonna sound like that sounds like a great celebration. Come. Thank you. I I will. I will I will definitely come. I thank you for the invitation. Um anything you want to say, parting words to the audience?

SPEAKER_00 50:04

I'm gonna say the most serious thing. I'm a senior now, and I've got to go to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_06 50:11

All right, and on that note, I hope that um listening to David's story has helped you on your journey, wherever you are on it, and that you will think hard about the environment, about our world, about the earth, and about the value that it gives to us to keep us all alive and thriving, and how we can get back to it instead of just taking from it. Thanks very much, David.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Your greatest gift to me has been your tears.

SPEAKER_06 50:35

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Because it means you've listened and heard what I'm saying, and I thank you so much for that.

SPEAKER_04 50:42

All right, go to the bathroom. It's right there.