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The Current Transcript for December 3, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I cannot afford to get hurt because if I get hurt, I know that I have no protection. If I'm not able to work tomorrow, I know that there is no Social Security waiting for me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Have you, like many Canadians, been ordering dinner in more during this pandemic? Have you given much thought to the person who delivers that food usage of apps like Uber Eats and Skip the dishes has exploded over the last 20 months. In 30 minutes, what it's like to work in the so-called gig economy and whether steps by governments to address this new form of work actually offer what workers need. Also this morning,

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My feeling is that when we got the masks back, the spirits of our own people also came back.

MG: How museums in British Columbia and elsewhere are thinking differently about the treasures in their collections and returning stolen artefacts to the First Nations they belong to. We begin, though, with a fight for legalised abortion, a fight that the world is watching closely. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Mudic: Theme]

As U.S. Supreme Court considers abortion case, one Mississippi woman shares how the procedure saved her life

Guests: Amy Nobles, Shannon Brewer, Alejandra Cardenas

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[Protestors chanting]

MG: Our bodies, our choice. That is the rallying cry for abortion activists across the United States as the Supreme Court deliberates on what could be a pivotal moment for Roe v. Wade. Justices are deciding whether to uphold or strike down a Mississippi abortion law that made it illegal for anyone past 15 weeks in their pregnancy to receive the service. And there is no exception for rape or incest. Amy Nobles is a Mississippi native and has written a letter to the Supreme Court explaining how an abortion saved her life. A warning this conversation deals with sexual violence and abuse. Amy, good morning.

AMY NOBLES: Good morning.

MG: I know that this is difficult, so only say what you're comfortable with. But as I say, you wrote a letter saying that abortion saved your life. How did it save your life?

AMY NOBLES: Yes, absolutely. Well, back in 2013, I was I had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl by caesarian section. And in the weeks that followed, unfortunately, I was raped by my then husband while I was still healing from surgery and became pregnant. I was then hospitalised for three days and told that my gallbladder was at risk of rupturing, but they could not do any sort of surgery because I had become pregnant again. I ended up fleeing my abuser with my two children, and we moved back to Mississippi to stay in a battered women's shelter for about three months. In that time, I realised I had to make a difficult decision, and that decision was to have an abortion. So I called up the Jackson Women's Health Organisation, the last standing abortion clinic in Mississippi, and made an appointment.

MG: I'm sorry for what you went through.

AMY NOBLES: Thank you. Thank you.

MG: What did you face when you walked into that clinic? Because I know that there there are protests that are outside every day. So what was it like walking into the clinic?

AMY NOBLES: Well, I actually had to go to the clinic twice because of laws that were already in place at that time, or at least in 2013. Whenever I pulled up, there were gates that opened for me. But in that time, while driving up, there were primarily angry white men that seemed to be white right wing extremist screaming at me, telling me that I was a murderer, a baby killer. They had cameras. And when I pulled up into the parking lot, I had a woman came to me in a vest that said 'Escort' holding a boombox over her head playing classic rock. I'll never forget it. Her name's Dorinda Hancock. And she said, Come with me, everything's going to be okay. And she then escorted me into a clinic both times.

MG: What did that mean to be escorted in and with a boombox playing classic rock, as you say?

AMY NOBLES: I believe what she was trying to do was protect me from from all of the noise that was surrounding the clinic. As someone that had just been through trauma, I was still in a state of shock, I believe, after everything I'd been through. And for me, to this day, I still can't go back to that clinic just because of the the noise of the people yelling. You know, they have pictures of partially aborted foetuses. And now there's, you know, the film, folks. It's just very violating.

MG: Why is it important for you to get involved at this juncture? I mean, I mentioned you wrote a letter to the Supreme Court about what you went through. Why is that important for you?

AMY NOBLES: It's important to me because I care. I have a daughter of my own shoes. She's eight now and I feel that it's important to tell my story. I've had about eight years of therapy since my experience, and I feel as though I went from a victim to a survivor, and that process can take time. And so once I heard that it was Mississippi trying to overturn or overthrow Roe v. Wade, I felt compelled to tell my story and let folks know like, Look, this happened to me. I experienced this in this very state, and I know that there are women and pregnant folks, not only in my state, but all over the country that experience the same situations that I went through.

MG: And so before I let you go, what would you say to those people who were outside protesting?

AMY NOBLES: I would say- So it's such a good question. I don't think I would say anything to them because just just the thought of hearing them yelling and screaming that took time for me to process and go through a grieving process when you have folks that are harassing you outside of a health clinic. I would have absolutely nothing to say to them.

MG: I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you, and I appreciate you being willing to speak with us. Amy, thank you very much.

AMY NOBLES: Yes, thank you.

MG: Amy Nobles lives in Mississippi. As you heard, the clinic that she credits with saving her life is the Jackson Women's Health Organisation. It is the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, and it is behind the Supreme Court challenge to dismiss the ban. Shannon Brewer is the director at Jackson Women's Health Organisation. Shannon, good morning to you.

SHANNON BREWER: Good morning.

MG: What do you think when you hear from a woman like Amy who says that her life was saved because of the work at your clinic?

SHANNON BREWER: I was listening to Amy, and it makes me happy actually to know that, you know, we're that we're helping women and it makes a difference in their lives. Um, I just I appreciate Amy so much for. Speaking up, it literally just made me smile as I was listening because so many women don't speak up and they don't realise how important that part of this whole fight is so important, and Amy, has I give her all the credit for having enough good to speak up and not be ashamed or afraid, all worried about what someone may think of her or say to her. She did what was best for her. And, you know, I just really appreciate her saying those things.

MG: How did the Jackson Women's Health Organisation become, in many ways, the epicentre of the Supreme Court challenge?

SHANNON BREWER: Well, they tried to- they put in abeyance, passed to stop abortions at 15 weeks. How, why they chose why the Supreme Court chose to use this particular one. I'm not sure, but they just, they decided to take this. You know, we were, everybody was utterly shocked the Supreme Court would have taken this case.

MG: This is a clinic that is under a lot of pressure, as I mentioned to the last abortion clinic in Mississippi. Tell me about that pressure and what what it is, what it means to be the only clinic left in that state.

SHANNON BREWER: What it means to be that it means we're a constant target. We are a constant target for anti-US and people trying to overthrow Roe v. Wade. It is every day where we're, of course we're seeing patients. But at the same time, barely a year goes by before this is a big case, but barely a year goes by before we are dealing- we're in the courts with pertaining to cases, if their laws, they're trying to get passed and stuff. So we're dealing with this right now, but we deal with it almost every year about something this is probably the biggest one, but we've had several over the years that have threatened to have us close.

MG: And if you were to be closed, I mean, there is a sense that that this court, through its five justice majority, could uphold the ban on all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. What would that mean for for the clinic, but also for those who rely on this clinic?

SHANNON BREWER: Well, it's going to mean that women, you're going to limit what women can do. You're basically telling them what they can and can't do with their own bodies. People, everybody saying that 15 weeks, where you guys stop is six weeks. So what's the big deal? I feel like any day that you take from any one woman as far as making her decision, I think that's a big deal, regardless. And people aren't understanding that they have the option whether to just to go with the 15 week ban or they have to turn it back over to the choice is back over to the states. You have a lot of states that are they already have these trigger bans in place. These six week trigger bans, just like Texas turn heads, and once they if they do that, that stops abortion in so many states. People don't realise that it's not just Mississippi. This is going to stop abortion in a lot of states you're not going to be able to just travel from one state to one state over to get an abortion if you want to.

MG: You have said that this is absolutely - these are your words - This is absolutely a racial and economic justice issue. What do you mean by that?

SHANNON BREWER: Meaning the majority of the patients that we're seeing are lower income, African-American women who don't have access to be able to travel and jump on a flight and go anywhere to have an abortion. These women are barely making it to our facility and they live here in the state. Financially, these women, we're helping these women with different funding places just to come there. They're not going to be able to afford to go to these different states. And if they turn back over to the states and we can't do abortions, then you have these women who are already struggling to make ends meet. Now they're going to, now you want them to have more children and not give them the option of what to do, which puts them in a a worse situation.

MG: What would happen, what would happen with those women, do you think?

SHANNON BREWER: Those women were either- what you're going to get is you're going to get a women who are either going to be carrying pregnancy this pregnancy to term and you're going to get women being rushed to the hospital for, you know, doing drastic things that they're not supposed to. You're going to get going to have babies dropped off at these different safe places, these hospitals and stuff like that. You're going to get- It's not going to be better by doing this. It's not going to stop abortion, it's just going to stop legal abortion.

MG: You went to D.C. to be there while this hearing was taking place, what did you do that?

SHANNON BREWER: Why wouldn't I do that is the question is I've been in the fight for 20 years now and I feel like these women need someone there to speak up for them, even if they're not ready to speak up for themselves. And I've spoken up all this time, so I think it was very important for me to be there and show them that we're going to continue to fight no matter what.

MG: And what do you do between now and June when this decision is expected?

SHANNON BREWER: We'll continue to see patients, we continue to have discussions on the what if this happens, what if that happens, and we try to make arrangements and prepare for the what ifs in the meantime.

MG: What do you think is going to happen?

SHANNON BREWER: I have no idea. I would hope that the Supreme Court would hold precedent and do what they know they're supposed to do, which I don't have a lot of confidence in them right now because if that was the case, then they wouldn't have taken the case in the first place.

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

SHANNON BREWER: You're welcome.

MG: Shannon Brewer is the clinical director of the Jackson Women's Health Organisation. She was in Jackson, Mississippi. What happens in the United States in the coming months could impact pro-choice movements right around the world. Alejandra Cardenas is the Senior Director, Global Legal Strategies at the Centre for Reproductive Rights. Alejandra, good morning to you.

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: Good morning.

MG: How closely are other countries watching what happens in the United States when it comes to this case that is now being assessed and decided by the Supreme Court?

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: This case is being watched by the entire world. It's already, you know, a human rights expert, a from different a international. Human rights bodies at the U.N. level have expressed concern for the U.S. and going back to a time in which our nation would be criminalised in all over the world. And there's a that, you know, the grassroots movement to support reproductive health and rights is growing and is watching this with concern because the U.S. has been to some extent an example on on respecting women's autonomy and reproductive health and honouring their lives. And this would definitely be be a shock in that sense.

MG: Well, tell me more about that. How do you think that if there were a win for American anti abortion movements, how would that impact similar movements around the world?

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: It's important that, you know, for the people who are listening, that everybody knows that the anti-choice movement is financially back and tactically trained in the US, for the most part. We know that a, you know, the big players, the people who are really organising and orchestrating this around the world are mainly based in the US. We have the World Congress of Families, for example, which is the main gathering of anti-choice and anti LGBT movements around the world that its aim is based basically in congregated in Rockford, Illinois. We have Heartbeat International boys who have been responsible for a financing and backing anti-choice clinics that mislead women in at least 18 countries around the world that's based in Ohio. And we have seen man who is based in New York, and they have been spending a lot of money in the past decade just trying to influence and lobbying at the U.N., at the organisation of American states and other regional bodies to backtrack and erode protections for women's rights.

MG: But there's also the issue of foreign aid. I mean, we saw under the administration of George W. Bush that that foreign aid was blocked from funding organisations that supported family planning and abortion overseas that was reversed by the Democrats. But it suggests that the Roe v. Wade could impact things like foreign aid as well.

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: Well, for me, that's being impacted for a long time, regrettably, and every time we have Republican administration, we see going back to an amendment that forbids a USA from providing financial aid to any group that is doing activities related to abortion. And every time we get a Democratic administration, we see that a ban being overturned. So this is a game that has been political and it has been played for a long time, unfortunately. So in that sense, it would not be necessarily new and we would need to see what the terms of the decision are to really know if there would be a permanent impact on on what the U.S. government can do in terms of foreign policy.

MG: Where is momentum globally on this issue? Because you'll see countries like Argentina and Mexico and a few years ago, Ireland legalising abortion. So how uneven is that momentum?

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: It's absolutely true. So in the past decades have been of tremendous progress in terms of a country's liberalising their abortion laws in new and completely fully decriminalising our and removing our nation from the penal code. So to and regulating as a health issue and in the US would be one of those rare countries that instead would be taking a step back. So it would be completely contrary to to a world that it's acknowledging the need for protecting and respecting reproductive health and rights.

MG: What about El Salvador? This is a country that the Centre for Reproductive Rights has been working on in a case there. Tell me about Manuela and what her case has meant for women in El Salvador.

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: Absolutely. So it's although it's one of the very, very few countries in the world that has a complete ban, a complete criminalisation of abortion, they have made no exceptions. And this has created a climate in which women are persecuted and suspected of committing abortions, even when what they have are miscarriages or obstetric emergencies. This is what happened to Manuela, a woman, a poor woman, a rural woman, an illiterate woman who was pregnant for the third time and had an obstetric emergency. She had a, you know, gave birth unassisted and had this tremendous haemorrhage and became unconscious when she was finally rushed through to the nearest hospital. He was accused of having procured herself an abortion, but she was ultimately convicted for homicide and sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. And this is not an uncommon story in El Salvador. So for us, litigating this case was very important to show a pattern of what's happening with the complete ban on abortion in the country, and we took the case all the way to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which issues binding decisions for most countries in the Americas, including El Salvador. And the court acknowledged that the context in which this has happened had been battlespace the complete criminalisation of abortion, and it acknowledged that women are sentenced for for having very a natural obstetric events and for a criminalise when what they actually need as healthcare services. And it ultimately ordered the state to teach its patient doctor patient confidentiality laws to forbid a a doctors from a reporting patient when they get into a health care service.

MG: Which speaks to the stakes that clearly are at play in this case, right around the world. Alejandra, it's good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

ALEJANDRA CARDENAS: Thank you.

MG: Alejandra Cardenas, senior director for Global Legal Strategies at the Centre for Reproductive Rights. You're CBC News is up next and then:

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You're getting 3.49 to drive like 15 kilometres outside of the city and then 15 kilometres back, so you wasted gas for nothing. So I think the big, frustrating thing is definitely the lack of tips and the lack of pay.

MG: For people like Megan Foster. It's a regular and impossible choice. You lose money in gas by doing a food delivery that barely pays a thing, or you decline the delivery and you lose your rating for the app that you work for. The perils of gig work coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

Delivery-app drivers speak out about working conditions

Guests: Megan Foster, Saurabh Sharma

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

[Music: Theme]

Still to come, almost every major museum in the western world has a collection of indigenous belongings. They're beautiful, but there is great controversy as to why they're held there in the first place. In just under 30 minutes, the fight to repatriate sacred art and decolonise Canadian museums. But first, where the gig economy is going wrong.

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[Sounds: Footsteps and door bell]

MG: Forget your oven, timers and sizzling oil for plenty of Canadians, this is now the sound of dinnertime. Anything could be in that bag that was just dropped off; lasagne, chicken katsu, a meal from a five star restaurant down the road. All that delicious food at your fingertips, and apparently we're all ordering it. The food delivery business has exploded during the pandemic. Most of us are focussed on what's inside that bag rather than the person who's carrying the bag. But the person who just dropped off dinner has a tough gig. Someone doing delivery for apps like Skip the Dishes or Uber does not have the same benefits or rights that most other workers have. But now that their numbers are growing, they're hoping that will change. Megan Foster is a gig worker in Fredericton. Saurabh Sharma is in Toronto. Good morning to you both.

SAURABH SHARMA: Good morning.

MEGAN FOSTER: Morning, Matt.

MG: Megan, we'll start with you. What platforms are you working for?

MEGAN FOSTER: I work for a Skip the Dishes and DoorDash.

MG: And how did how did you get into that kind of work delivering food?

MEGAN FOSTER: What started in 2019? So before the pandemic started, I originally started it to work towards saving money for school. And it was it was a nice change from working health care because I worked health care during the day, so it was a nice change in the evening to deliver food.

MG: Saurabh, what about for you? Who are you working for?

SAURABH SHARMA: I currently work only for UberEats.

MG: How did you end up in this line of work?

SAURABH SHARMA: So I arrived in Canada last year during the pandemic. It was hard for me to find a jobs and this was a job which had low threshold and it was easy to enter.

MG: When you say low threshold, what was that like? I mean, how did you go about applying and how easy was it to land this job?

SAURABH SHARMA: When I say low threshold, what I mean, as most of the workplaces in Canada ask for Canadian work experience are Canadian education credentials. Those job did not need those things, but I just needed to show them that I'm eligible to work in Canada. They did a background check on me through an agency. Once my background check was cleared, I was ready to go on the app.

MG: Megan, you said that in some ways this was a nice change from the work that you were doing in health care. What do you like about about this job?

MEGAN FOSTER: I like the way that you get to meet other people. There's no hassle. There's no like to say a lot of rules to it. You just you pick up the food delivered on time person Typekit. So it's quick and simple. Things like that make it easier.

MG: So what does a day like for you? I mean, walk me through what a shift would be like delivering for the company that you're working for.

MEGAN FOSTER: So when we start, we have to sign into the app and for skip the dishes, I can do it from my home. But for DoorDash, I actually have to go down the street because it considers me out of zone. And so I sign in if I have a shift that day, if I don't have a shift, I see if there's one available and if it isn't well, then you're not working. But if I do have a shift, I just sign on and I wait for my first order. I go pick up the order. I have to give a number at the restaurant and then you deliver it to the customer and then you swipe on your account like every, every step of the way. So the customer literally knows when you're picking up, when you're on your way and when you're dropping it off and then you swipe when you're finished and you wait for your next order and you just do that all day.

MG: And you're driving those orders around.

MEGAN FOSTER: Yes.

MG: And so your car is kind of like your office. I mean, once you leave the home, that's where you're located. Yes. What about for you, Saurabh? I mean, you're on an e-bike. You're not driving. What is the shift like for you?

SAURABH SHARMA: Yeah. A shift for me is the same as Megan said. It's about like delivering food as soon as I sign into the app. But it's my shift is also about like ensuring that I make as many deliveries possible in as much less time as I can, because that's what it's flexible as in the sense that if I made a certain amount of money yesterday, I would want to make that same day today. But since the pay is not fixed and the deliveries I'm getting is not fixed, it can vary from one amount to the other. So it's like, I'm keeping it in my mind, okay, I made that much and this is what I want to make, and I don't know how many deliveries I have to do today or in how much time ever delivered today to ensure that I have that money. So in my head, all that is going on. So it's kind of like I am delivering food, but in my mind, a lot of calculations are happening.

MG: And what kind of pressure? I mean, Megan was saying that, you know, essentially and we know this if if anybody's use the app, you can see when the delivery person picks up the food, when they're on the way, where they are on the way to your house, when they're about to get to your house. What sort of pressure are you under from the customer to make sure that you're getting? The food to them as soon as possible

SAURABH SHARMA: Uber gives me an estimated time in which I have to deliver. Uber gives me an estimated route that I would take and the customer gets the same details. And now they are, my customer can watch every step. Like if I go for a bathroom break, customer is watching that. So it's like, why is the lady stop there? So I did not want to stop and I'm doing the delivery. I want to reach the customer as soon as possible and probably within the time which Uber has given me so. Because if I don't do that, I risk getting a lower rating. And once my ratings become lower, I am at a risk of losing my job. So that is the stress which I'm operating with.

MG: You mentioned a bathroom break. I mean, where can you go?

SAURABH SHARMA: I mean, for a long period of time, it was like we were not allowed to use the washroom anywhere because of the pandemic. Most the restaurant did not allow anyone other than their own staff to use the washroom. Most of the public washrooms were closed. For me, it was coming back to my house.

MG: But in doing that, you take yourself out of the loop, as you say, of delivery.

SAURABH SHARMA: Exactly.

MG: What about when it gets cold? I mean, Megan's in her car, and so in between orders, she can kind of stay warm. What about for you on the e-bike as winter really sets in?

SAURABH SHARMA: When it snows like it has no the previous day, the risks increase for me, in the sense that I know that I'm always on the side of the road and side of the road. It's where most of the snow is there, and I have to be very careful when I'm riding on the street an. I have to keep those safety aspects of the job in my mind as well that I cannot afford to get hurt because if I get hurt, I have. I know that I have no protection. If I'm not able to work tomorrow, I know that there is no Social Security waiting for me, so I have to keep that in mind as well. So in winter, the job becomes twice as hard because now I have to keep keeping all these things in mind. I'm delivering flour, so I'm not meeting those estimated times again. And and that's because I have the safety. I would give that safety of prime importance to myself.

MG: Megan, do you mind me asking how you get paid for this? Are you paid by order or are you paid by shift? Or are you paid for the distance that you drive? How does that work?

MEGAN FOSTER: You're you're paid by order, but skip and skip goes by km like to get to an address, whereas DoorDash goes by time. And either way, it's not a big payout. And once you like, you can bank it or on skip, you can take the money out after half an hour on shifts. So when you're done, your shift your weight half an hour and you can take out your money from the day. Or you can leave and they pay you into your bank account on Tuesdays and then DoorDash pays you on. You can't take DoorDash out early the fast cash, but you get it paid on in your bank account on Monday.

MG: Do you mind me asking how much money you would make from this kind of work

MEGAN FOSTER: when the pandemic was at its highest? And when I started, I could bring in a 1000 dollars a week now that we're flooded with drivers and we're flooded with less and we have less customers and other issues. We're lucky to bring in to $200-300 a week, some weeks.

MG: Two or three hundred dollars a week.

MEGAN FOSTER: Yeah, because we're getting way less tips and less customer support now than we did before.

MG: Saurabh, tell me about tips and how important tips are to being able to make a living in this.

SAURABH SHARMA: I would say tips are the reason like I think I make minimum wage here. Like, if there are no tips, I don't make wage. And that is something which I feel is unfair that customers and not my employer is left to take care, that I receive minimum wage. That's what I think about tips.

MG: What is the most challenging thing? I mean, you've both hinted at some challenges, but for you, Sara, what's the most challenging thing about this work for you?

SAURABH SHARMA: You know, just not having the security, that's the most challenging thing. Just not having having to know what I'm going out there to work, not knowing what I'm going to come back with. I don't know what I will get at the end of the day.

MG: What about for you, Megan?

MEGAN FOSTER: I think the biggest challenge, especially in Fredericton, is we have a lot of rural communities like outside of our community, so we get a lot of orders that are going like 10-15 kilometres outside of our zone and we still get paid the same as in zone. So in zone, we get 3.49 in order unless there's a tip or unless we get topped up. But you only get topped up if you have a high enough rating. And so if we don't get that, you're getting 3.49 to drive like 15 kilometres outside of the city and then 15 kilometres back. So you wasted gas for nothing.

MG: Just because you get three dollars and forty nine cents an order?

MEGAN FOSTER: That is the starting rate for an order. If you have an acceptance rating over 80 percent, then you get it topped up to five fifty.

MG: And do they pay you for the gas when you have to drive 15 kilometres out and back?

MEGAN FOSTER: No.

MG: Saurabh, what happens if you complain to an app about the working conditions that you have?

SAURABH SHARMA: I get a reply saying thank you for your feedback. And that's it. And this has happened to me, like in wintertime, when, as Megan said, like you would receive a lot of orders which are which are long distance and you know, it's not profitable or don't want to do that either. But you are forced to do it to just maintain the rating or just own that money because every decline, you're not making that money. When you complain to the app, you have some customer support and you call them and you'll be like, I am on a bike and it's snowing here. All the orders which I'm getting are four kilometres, five kilometres plus, and I cannot do this, and they would just say we can't do anything about that. It's alghorithm. So basically, it feels like I'm working like it's like I'm working for this algorithm and this algorithm doesn't know what condition I'm in right now that it's going outside and I cannot ride my bike for five hours.

MG: And you complain. You complained to DoorDash. You used to work for DoorDash and you complain to them what happened there?

SAURABH SHARMA: DoorDash deactivated me. So DoorDash deactivated me because I declined orders or like I exercised them, come out of control over my job. Why I did that was when I accepted the order on DoorDash or any of these apps. My expectation when I accepted that I'm accepting to deliver this food is that the food is ready at the restaurant. I just had to reach the restaurant, pick up the food and deliver it. And my pay, which I'm getting out of that order is calculated on that basis. But sometimes when I reach the restaurant, the restaurant tell me that it's going to take 10 to 15 minutes for that order to get five, but prepared for me. Since I don't have a minimum wage guarantee, I don't get paid for that waiting time. So that time I'm waiting there. I'm losing on the time in which I could have delivered and made money so I would cancel that order and go on the next delivery. For DoorDash, this was not acceptable, and they deactivated me for this reason. I've tried to contact them and explain them. This is not fair. You said I have control over my job. Like I declined for a very fairly good reason. Like I, I could not wait for 15 minutes because you're not paying me for that time. And they just said your appeal process is over. Our decision is final and you are deactivated. And then when I read my contract with them, I realised the only thing I can do about this is go for arbitration to San Francisco, California, which I clearly can't afford. And that is something which has changed now because some of the workers fought before the courts and recently the Supreme Court has held that kind of practise to be unconscionable. But it took it took the workers to the Supreme Court to get to something like that. And now and now, now these contracts have changed. So if that was to happen to me now, today, then I could go for arbitration in Ontario.

MG: I want you both to stay on the line. We're going to bring another voice into this conversation. Wendy Cukier is a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy founder of the Diversity Institute at Ryerson University. She's the academic research lead for the Future Skills Centre and has studied the changing nature of gig work. Wendy, good morning to you. Good morning. What do you make of what you've heard from Megan and Sarah?

WENDY CUKIER: Well, I think there are a number of issues. I mean, it's very clear that gig work has the potential to really exploit people. And certainly we've seen a number of cases, well-publicised cases where the courts have found that gig work has being used to bypass labour standards. And I think you've heard some examples of that. What I think is also really important. Is that gig work is a term that is used to apply to a lot of different situations, so you know, you have about 30 percent of gig workers who earn around $100000 or more as professional contractors, they're in a very different situation than those who are forced into gig work because they can't secure full time employment. Certainly, platform work has its own set of challenges and problems.

MG: What is the place of I'll use your phrase platform work in the economy that we have? I mean, Megan talked about how this was something that she liked because it was different than the job she was doing during the day. Scarabs got into this, in part because he didn't have the quote unquote Canadian experience that so many employers demand. And this allowed him to make some money a lot clearly, but some what is the place of of platform work in our economy?

WENDY CUKIER: Some, like Megan, do it to supplement their income. Racialized people, newcomers and so on are often forced into these kinds of survival jobs. We saw it with cab drivers for decades, and they're often the ones that are at the most vulnerable because they don't have the labour protections. They're not developing access to things like pensions and unemployment insurance and other supports that regular workers would come to expect. So I think it's it's something that's been in the economy for a long time. It's growing. Technology has expanded it to a certain extent. We see some employers taking advantage of this as a way to bypass labour standards. And I think the discussions that governments are now having about new approaches to regulation, things like portable benefits have a lot of promise in terms of allowing companies to take advantage of gig work when they have spikes in their demand for labour, but not exploiting it as a way of bypassing labour standards, which I think is the biggest concern.

MG: Just briefly explain what portable benefits might be.

WENDY CUKIER: Well, portable benefits are benefits that are not associated with a specific employer. Now there are some companies like Uber that are saying, Oh, we'll create this pool for people who work for us. And you know, that would solve the problem when I think of portable benefits. I prefer the model that basically have an arm's length organisation, a public institution, collect funds from employers as well as employees and and allow individuals to basically access that pool of funds and benefits regardless of who they work for. Because we do see more and more mobility in the workforce where the old model of working for one employer for, you know, 30 years, that's sort of gone by the wayside. And there are some jurisdictions that are experimenting with with this new model, which I think are very promising.

MG: If we as consumers are alarmed and hearing that Megan is making $3 and change for each delivery, what's our responsibility?

WENDY CUKIER: I think that's a really good question. Consumers, unfortunately, often don't put their money where their mouth is, so they will espouse commitments to the greening of the economy, their own sales commitments to diversity and inclusion. They will claim that they're committed to human rights, that they will continue to purchase goods and services from organisations that pollute, violate their contractors, right? So, you know, I do think that at the end of the day, if people are concerned about this, they need to make their views known by where they're spending their money. Delete the apps. Well, delete the apps or purchase from the organisations that have ethical work practises.

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

WENDY CUKIER: Thanks for including me.

MG: Wendy Sucre, professor of entrepreneurship and strategy, founder of the Diversity Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto. Gig workers Megan Foster and SSAB Sharma are still with us. Sara, what do you make of that? I mean, are there benefits that you would want to see if you continue doing this work?

SAURABH SHARMA: Yes. For me, I would like to be seen as a worker like any other Canadian worker and the benefits which every other worker gets. I want to be very clear here that. What gig workers want is what I want is the end to this misclassification where I am classified as an independent contractor and I don't want the portable benefits because whatever is already existing for every other worker is what I want. The federally regulated EIA and TPP, which every worker in Canada, including you and the listeners have that is portable as well. They move with employers. Most of the people I know in Toronto work more than one job and still get the benefit of the federally regulated EIA and CPB. So that is the benefit I want. That is the basic labour right, which every worker in Canada is guaranteed. And I just want that. I don't want anything less than that. I don't I don't want to become a second class worker where where there's a separate category for me and I deserve less rights than other workers.

MG: Before you came to Canada, what work were you doing?

SAURABH SHARMA: I'm a lawyer, so I was working as a lawyer in India.

MG: And you've studied for the bar here in Canada?

SAURABH SHARMA: Yeah. I recently wrote my bar exam just two weeks back. Yeah, I'm in the process of getting licence. It's a long road. There are a lot of requirements. So I've been in this process for about a year and a half now. And gig work is what I do to pay my rent and food.

MG: Do you ever try to wrap your head around the fact that you were a lawyer in India and now you're doing this and fighting for not just the ability to to, as you say, you know, pay for rent and food, but also fighting for the ability to be paid properly.

SAURABH SHARMA: Yes, I just I just feel that this this I feel that the exploitation which is happening right now with gig workers needs to stop. And I see that most of the people, like I can say, around 80 percent of the people who are my co-workers doing deliveries in Toronto are recent migrants and they are being exploited. And I just want this to end. And the only way to end this is by ending this misclassification. I'd like to say that the gig work like whatever the said, it is not me. It has been there for a while. And this misclassification, it's not. It's not new. Many, many workers had to fight this misclassification who were classified previously and companies finding new ways to make money by pulling workers into believing that they are independent contractors. Also not new and full worker rights have existed for a long period of time, and workers have fought for these rights and got them. And this is what the gig workers are demanding and and this is what I believe.

MG: And Megan, just finally to you, what do you want the customers who order the food that you deliver? What do you want them to know about the person who is delivering that food?

MEGAN FOSTER: There were there were people, too, that we come home every night to our families or we have bills as well, and as making 349 an order is crazy and wrong. I know she mentioned maybe deleting the app and supporting local, but some people need these apps, and it's not a matter of deleting the app. It's a matter of supporting your drivers. Actually tip accordingly. If you're going to order $100 worth of food, don't tip us a loony like, actually give us a tip.

MG: I'm really glad to speak with you both. Good luck and thank you very much. You're welcome. Take care of yourselves. Bye bye. Bye bye. Megan Foster is in Fredericton. Saurabh Sharma is in Toronto. Would love to hear from you on this. Do you work in the so-called gig economy? If so, what do you like about that work? What do you dislike about it or what are the biggest issues that you face? And if you use the services that we've been talking about that are part of that gig economy, are you thinking differently about those services? Are you thinking differently, perhaps about the people who deliver your food based on what you've just heard? You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or head to the website cbc.ca/The Current. Click on the contact link. In many ways, this is about the future of work. And so if you have thoughts on the future of work, something we'll be discussing coming up in weeks ahead. Get in touch again, The Current at CBC.ca. Coming up after your regional update,

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We've got these strings attached to our relatives and to our belongings, and it's it's beyond physical or logical understanding. It is. It's an entire.

MG: That invisible string has led some First Nati ons to their stolen belongings in 90 seconds. The fight to bring back the sacred artefacts remains and artworks that ended up in the world's museums. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio one.

'These pieces are part of us': Repatriating belongings and remains stolen from Indigenous peoples

Guests: Chief Bill Cramner, Jisgang Nika Collison, Jordan Coble

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Chances are, the last time you walked through a Canadian museum, there was an indigenous section Haida carvings, maybe, or a set of beaded Blackfoot regalia. There are hundreds of these items in museums around the world, with little white cards next to them explaining what they are and where they came from. What is not written on those cards is how those items ended up in those museum collections. Many of the items were stolen. Now, some First Nations are working to get those sacred items, as well as ancestral remains back. Alert Bay is a small community in Kwakwaka'wakw territory at the northern end of Vancouver Island 100 years ago this month. Chief Dan Cranmer held a fateful potlatch that led to dozens of arrests and the seizure of a huge number of important cultural items. Bill Cranmer is Dan's son. He is one of the hereditary chiefs of the 'Namgis First Nation, and he is the board chair of the U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay. Chief Cranmer, good morning.

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about what happened 100 years ago this month and why that potlatch that your father was holding was so significant?

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Well, our our people were quite successful in fighting the charges from having Potlatch. As you know, Potlatch was illegal under the Indian Act, and our success in courts frustrated the agent here in Alert Bay Holiday. He was successful in convincing his superiors in our work to amend the Indian Act in 1918 to allow Indian agents to serve judges in these type of court cases. In 1921, as you say, my father held a potlatch in a village [unintelligible] Bay. Indian agent Halliday charged, arrested and tried our people for participating in the Potlatch. 26 people were sent to prison in 1922, and more would have been sent to prison if our judge didn't give up their ceremony masks and other things used at our ceremonies, and signed an agreement not to Potlatch until the law was changed. These masks were photographed, packed and shipped off to Ottawa. Some were sold to private collectors like museums, the American Indian in New York. When the Indian Act was amended in 1953 and the anti Potlatch Law removed, our people started the process of repatriation, and that's where we're at today.

MG: What did it mean for the community to lose those masks, to see them, as you say, packed off and sent away?

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Well, it meant that our people couldn't gather anymore, as they did before the parliament was the very structure of our society. Every time there was an important event, the chief would have a potlatch. They couldn't do that anymore. And as a result, in in the years that the potlatch was prohibited by law, a lot of our history was lost.

MG: And so do you know, does the community know where those mask, where all of that regalia ended up?

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Yes, pictures were taken before they were put in shipping cases and shipped off to Ottawa. So we knew what was being shipped and where they were going, and it made our work easier to find the masks. And as of today, we have most of the masks back. There is yard one that was bought by private collectors.

MG: What sort of then that's one form of resistance that you would have faced is that it disappears into private hands. But when you went to those collectors and perhaps to those museums, what sort of resistance have you encountered in terms of trying to repatriate those artefacts?

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Most, most people, once they knew the history of those masks were quite willing to to return to masks. Even the British Museum returned about to us under a long term loan, even though they're not supposed to return anything to anyone because it's against British law. Another another person returned a mask that belonged to her father, who was one of the Surrealists that came to North America during the war. And when he died, she inherited all of his possessions, including her collection of of masks, and she brought the masks back herself, plus $40000 donation to the U'mista.

MG: What did it mean for the community to repatriate these masks? Repatriation is such a powerful word and bringing it, bringing them home. What did that mean to the community?

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: Well, it means different things to different people. My feeling is that when we got the masks back, the spirits of our own people also came back, and that's that's how I look at it. Of course, a lot of the people my age are the last speakers of our language, and we're slowly, slowly passing on. And the young people, fortunately, are are gaining strength from these masks. The history of these masks and learning ring or ceremonies, songs and dances.

MG: They must be deeply moving for you, given your father's history and your work as well.

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: It is. It is. When I go into the U'mista Cultural Centre, it's just a different, different feeling for me. It's it's hard to describe. Of course, I started thinking about the old people because then I'm 83 now and I can still remember the old people that were that were part of that potlatch. And it's always given me strength and continuing to believe that our people really had a good way to live in in in in our territories. Everything that we did in the Potlatch was connected to all of the living things in the forests and the oceans. And so it's very, very special feeling.

MG: Chief Cranmer, I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you. Thank you very much.

CHIEF BILL CRAMNER: You're welcome.

MG: Bill Cranmer is one of the hereditary chiefs of the 'Namgis First Nation and board chair of the. Mr. Cultural Centre in Alert Bay. Chief Grandmas Nation is just one of many that have been working to bring home their cultural treasures, and museums are not only facing pressures to return items within their collections, they're also re-examining the way they tell indigenous stories. This is part of a push to decolonised museums, and that includes the Royal BC Museum, which recently announced a major overhaul of its central exhibits. Jisgang Nika Collison is executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum in British Columbia. She's also co-chair of the Haida Repatriation Committee. Jordan Coble is board member of the B.C. Museums Association and chair of their Indigenous Advisory Committee. He's also a councillor for the West Bank First Nation in the Okanagan. Good morning to you, both.

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Good morning. [Indigenous speech].

MG: What does that word repatriation in the context of this conversation mean to you?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: For our nation? Repatriation. We call this work Yahgudangang, which means to pay respect. And it is certainly the end goal is to bring home our ancestors remains from museums, universities and private homes around the world and to bring home our belongings. But the act of Yahgudangang is more than that. We are mandated by our hide a nation, by our hereditary leaders, matriarchs and elected leaders to approach this work with the goal of mutual respect, cooperation and trust. And we're tasked with building relationships with these institutions we work with around the world.

MG: How has that played out? How have you and what have you been able to bring home?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Well, when we focus on our relatives, our ancestors, that work started in the mid 90s under the vision and leadership of Lucy Bell, my dear friend and colleague. Since that time, our Haida repatriation committee, along with our great nation and allies, have brought home the remains of over 500 relatives from 10 global institutions and five private homes. That's taken over 20 years and over a million dollars to do so.

MG: What happens in the community when, when, when that process unfolds?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: It's an incredible process and it is. It takes everyone's community fundraising grant writing huge community engagement. Each ancestor is brought home and placed in their own Brentwood box, the children paint the boxes or make the blankets our ancestors are wrapped in. I could go on and on, but we essentially have created a traditional, quote-unquote, practise due to modern circumstances.

MG: One of the things we heard from Chief Cranmer was also about the importance of those masks coming back and what the artefacts meant to the community. What has your community learnt from, from the physical pieces that have been stolen and passed, or perhaps parked elsewhere in in out of the community? What does the community learn from those physical pieces being brought back?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Well, we learnt an awful lot and I might be going on a political route here instead of the incredible connexion we have to our pieces. But through this type of work, you're forced to learn and understand the past and what I think is important for people to understand around colonial museums today, particularly nation state museums or government museums, is that they were actually part of the whole genocidal system back in the 1800s of the formation of the colonial state of Canada and the relationship with indigenous peoples, which you know, really still isn't taught in school, but on a on a personal and spiritual note, these pieces they are part of us in in the Hied world, the artistic expression contained within these belongings represent lineage and thousands and thousands and thousands of years of history and incredible geographic events and relationships to our mainland relatives. And to find, you know, out in the world and a drum with a magic eye on it, which is a dragonfly and to know that that is our clans belonging we have is what we call a lease or a string, an invisible string that connects us through the generations. So we've got these strings attached to our relatives and to our belongings. And it's beyond physical or logical understanding. It's an entire being of experience.

MG: Jordan, how are museums thinking differently now about this idea of repatriation?

JORDAN COBLE: Oh, that's a that's a really interesting question, but I think it all starts with listening to folks like me and the true stories, the true histories being open minded to understanding that the way we understand how Canada or North America came to be is only part of the complete story. And there's, you know, for for many years, when I started in the museum world, a lot of the work that I was trying to push forward was to interconnect our work together between indigenous museums, non-indigenous museums or indigenous communities and museums. But now, as we kind of started to gain momentum with the push for repatriation and respect for First Nation communities, it's more about upholding indigenous law, upholding indigenous ways of being upholding the people that are the rightful storytellers of of our histories. You know, those those essence of of respect of of, I don't know, responsibility to the land is something that really needs to be, I guess, not just interconnected within our museum and our storytelling ways, but upheld it and lift it up so that our laws can be put forward as as the truth understandings.

MG: That relationship is one thing. Are you finding that museums and cultural institutions are more willing now to return items that are in their collections that they're willing to to relinquish something that they've held on to for some time?

JORDAN COBLE: Today, I'd say there's more of encouragement for folks to participate and support the repatriation process. It's not 100 percent consensus across the board. I can say that easily, but there's way more interest, there's way more support. And there's way more understanding that this isn't a burden for First Nation communities to undergo the repatriation process. This is an opportunity for museums to participate in community healing and be part of that healing and then become part of that community by sharing the work that's been done over the years. But now it's returning it back so that we can interpret those stories for ourselves and interpret that history and our place in this world for ourselves.

MG: And again, it's not just items, but as Nika has been saying, and this can also include the remains of ancestors in collections.

JORDAN COBLE: Absolutely. And I always hesitate to use the term artefacts in our community here. We try to use the term belongings. It's just something that's it's artefacts that put us in the past. I always question like, Well, you know, why are they telling about my people about indigenous peoples as if we're dead and gone? We're still here. We still learn and utilise a lot of the teachings from the past, and we still want to uphold those. But if we are raised to believe that we're people of the past and we don't belong here today. And so the work of repatriation is bringing back that sense of belonging in society, but also just within our own community so that we can feel good about being indigenous.

MG: Nikka In the introduction to our conversation, I talked about that concept of decolonising museums. You co-wrote the Indigenous Repatriation Handbook. It was a collaboration between your museum and the Royal B.C. Museum. What does that mean to you decolonising the museum?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Well, decolonising a museum. So I really appreciate so much what Jordan was saying earlier about indigenous laws and values. So, you know, for probably the first 15 years of this work, the dominant museums are the mainstream museums could apply their laws and their policies and say, Well, we don't have this or our policy doesn't allow this and and we would be like, how are we going to problem solve this? And her elders say, Well, we have laws and values too. So you go to the table and you are firm but diplomatic and you make sure that those laws are part of this process. And so, you know, as Jordan's talking about, this is really important. This law is stuff we have repatriated our relatives. We've brought relatives home from the United States. Despite Nagpur, which is the Native American Graves Repatriation Protection Act, which is a useful tool in the states but is prohibitive for nations living on the other side of that border. Instead of saying, OK, your law won't work for us, we said, Well, your law won't work for you, but we have a law that can work for both of us, and we found ways around it when we went to this major institution in New York, the American Museum of Natural History in 2002 to repatriate 48 of our relatives. We'd worked a couple of years to get to that point, and we send we always send a few members of our committee to the museum ahead of time before the rest of our delegation arrives to do the work of bringing our ancestors home. So a few of us went ahead of time, and we're sitting with their repeat with the New York Museum's repatriation committee and the chair of their committee at the time and myself didn't see eye to eye, and it was much more difficult back then to just even get through the door. So we're sitting across the table from each other and I'm feeling highly irritated and so is the other chair. And they are saying things like, I don't know why you all had to come here. We could have just sent them home. They're just bones. And meanwhile, we're saying, OK, well, we need to have a food burning to feed our ancestors and we need a hall to feast in. And, you know, yada yada. And to be fair, way, maybe we didn't give them that much time about the food burning. We didn't think about big challenges in the city around permits and stuff. So, you know, that was the first thing is they're like, Well, you can't have a burning. We'd have to conduct, you know, the mayor, the blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah. And we had to do that. We had to just maintain that we have to have that fire. We have to feed our ancestors. We must find a way around it. Surely there is a solution. And at the end of the day, we wound up having a fire right beside Central Park, where they said there's never been a fire, which is certainly money in its own right. But we had our food. Burning and we fed her ancestors, there was a way around it. By the end of that week, we worked with the people at the museum, like Jordan saying, that so there's a reciprocity in all of this and we are and we work with people and they can share in our experiences are joy, our grief, our pain, our wonder. And by the end of the process, they said, you know, the day before we were leaving, Get your group to smuggle food into the museum. We're gonna have a secret feast in the back halls of the anthropology room. So they did that and we went there and volunteers decorated this formaldehyde smelling room with lights and volunteers that made us oregami butterflies because that's our symbol of our work. And we had this feast and we were all together and it was great and gift giving and doing our business. In the next morning, at about 5:30 in the morning, this big bus went to pick up our ancestors, who were all ready to go in their totes and came to pick about 30 of us up from the hotel in the morning to go to the airport. And this person who I just gritted my teeth at a week earlier and she to me came out of that bus and I said, What are you doing - We'd already become friends by then - and said, What are you doing here? And we said goodbye last night. It's 5:30 in the morning. And they said, I couldn't let the ancestors come over by themselves. So it went from, "these are just bones. Why couldn't we just mail them back to you" to her visceral shift in understanding of the world in that she knew she needed to travel with her ancestors so they could continue the journey with us.

MG: That's really, that's really powerful.

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Yeah, that's decolonising. But let me tell you, that whole institution isn't de-colonised, individuals can be colonised. Systemic racism, which is systemic in all of these institutions. That's a whole other ball of wax.

MG: A story like that, Is that what keeps you going through the difficulty of this work?

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: That story I go back to over and over when I'm hitting walls or dealing with harmful words or acts? Yes.

MG: What about for you, Jordan? This is not easy work. It's heavy lifting and it's you're trying to change systems. And Monica has said individuals in those systems and there's history that's at play and a lot of different ways. Why is this important to you personally?

JORDAN COBLE: It's important to me for many of the reasons why of the same reasons as Nika that there's ability to transform people's ways of seeing the world and seeing themselves within the world just as definitely that inspiration that keeps them going. But originally it started because I didn't feel connected to my own community. I was always in West Bank here. We have separate reserves and so I attend Indian Reserve, Reservation Number 10 is where I grew up, an Indian reservation Number Nine over, you know, 10 minutes up the highways where everyone else grew up. And so I always felt like I was never a part of our community. My grandparents passed away, my grandma, who was my last fluent speaker, and our family passed away when I was only two. So I didn't have access to the knowledge, to culture, to songs too much at all. But as I started to grow, we started to weave our community, established our community school, and so we had elders coming in and they were teaching us, you know, little basics here, and their language was definitely the foundation of it. And so that started to really plant that seed of connectedness to my community, in my heart at an early age. But as I grew, when I started to reinvest in my language that I started to really feel the power of what our ancestors knew. And when I was asked to start developing our museum here, what I wanted to to begin with was just to make sure that there was no other children that grew up feeling the same way that I did of feeling disconnected from their community. I wanted our children, our future generations, to understand our history as open again people, not just as indigenous people in Canada, but specifically Okanagan people, because we're we're very special here when you can be part of those transformative experiences, when you know that you've spoken to someone's soul and their heart and they they reciprocate that with that generosity that may not have been there in the very beginning. And you see that in your children, it's the most amazing feeling in the world. I think they really understood the value of storytelling in our community, and that's the essence of who we are as indigenous people, as Okanagan people, as storytellers of how we know how we came to be.

MG: It's great to talk to you both about the work that you're doing, it's fascinating and really powerful as well. Thank you both very much.

JISGANG NIKA COLLISON: Thank you.

MG: Jisgang Nika Collison is executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum and co-chair of the Haida Repatriation Committee. Jordan Coble is chair of the BC Museum Association's Indigenous Advisory Committee. He's also a councillor for the West Bank First Nation. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. We want to let you know about something coming next week on the programme. The move away from oil and fossil fuels toward other forms of renewable energy is playing itself out in many parts of this world. But the building of a 103 wind turbine farm in the Shetland Islands north of the Scottish mainland is dividing what was once a tight knit community and casting some doubts on what it means to go green.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's hugely divisive. I mean, it's even caused like fallout within families of people who are maybe for and against that. It's it's really like just torn the heart out of the community.

VOICE 2: A lot of destruction of a way of life has been here for thousands of years, at least. Utter destruction, an environment that's been here for thousands of years destroyed and in less than a decade. And you can't take it back. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's destroyed. It's very sad, very, very sad.

VOICE 3: Oh my, Shetland are born and bred, I'm very proud of this project. Very proud of the employment that's created and the long term prospects for economic diversification. And this will be the UK's most productive onshore wind farm.

VOICE 4: What we don't want to be doing is carrying the energy burden for the whole of the UK. Why should we carry the energy burden from the Central Belt, a Scotland. Like what the central thought to Scotland ever do for us?

VOICE 3: the transition from oil and gas to renewables and just the transition to net zero isn't without its ups and downs, but ultimately oil and gas will slowly phase down and that is a pressing need to transition the economy here, away from that.

MG: That's a bit of our documentary Winds of Change. You'll hear that Monday on The Current. That is The Current for this Friday. Coming up next on CBC Radio one, it's Q Radiohead, a band known for its extraordinary and inventive music, but also the artwork that accompanies that music. Thom Yorke of Radiohead and the visual artist Stanley Downward will join Tom Power on cue to speak about a long history of audio and visual collaboration documented in a new book called Kid Amnesia. That's coming up in just a moment on CBC Radio. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday.

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