Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The Current Transcript for December 7, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's 5:30 am. I was able to sleep pretty much through I guess from about 1:30-1:45.

MATT GALLOWAY: Now I'm not a doctor, but 1:30 until 5:30 am does not sound like a full night's sleep. It does sound familiar to many people though. This pandemic has upset the sleep patterns of a lot of us and experts are warning that the long term consequences of those sleepless nights could be significant. In 30 minutes, techniques to put your mind at rest at a head spinning time. Also this morning, sleep isn't the only thing being disrupted this year. Amongst the holiday rituals being rethought, Christmas baking. Say it ain't. So more in an hour. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: He then started to act a little differently. At some point, he even said, look, we know we know where you live. We know where your wife is. We know what she's wearing today. And he made me think that this is really not what I want to do.

MG: The Fifth Estate's investigation into how the former head of intelligence for the RCMP was charged with leaking state secrets. We begin though, in the classroom, where concerns around COVID are growing, winter weather is here and the call to open the windows is being made. The kids are being told to bundle up. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: theme]

Focus on improving ventilation in schools a 'silver lining' of pandemic, says parent

Guests: Joe Ortona, Krista Wylie, Jeffrey Siegel

MG: Ever since the start of school this fall, there have been a lot of questions about how to keep students and staff safe from COVID-19. Many schools have had exposures or outbreaks and now with winter weather setting in, there is growing concern about air ventilation. Despite colder temperatures, some teachers are opening windows when they have windows that actually open. The Toronto District School Board has told parents to dress their kids warmly. In Quebec, a group of doctors and scientists were so concerned about air quality that they conducted an informal secret study in 25 classrooms and they found excessively high levels of carbon dioxide in three quarters of those classrooms. And they say poor ventilation increases the risk of spreading the virus. The provincial government is stepping up its testing of air quality in schools, but it's not convinced that improving air ventilation would actually make a difference. And in the midst of this debate, the English Montreal School Board voted last week to spend nearly two million dollars to buy and install 800 air purifiers for its schools. Joe Ortona is the chair of that board in Montreal. Joe, good morning.

JOE ORTONA: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. Why is your board buying these air purifiers for schools?

JOE ORTONA: Well, of course, it's about the safety and security of both students and staff in our schools. We know that here in Quebec, there's some people recommending that there be ventilation in the classrooms and some of our schools have a mechanical ventilation system. But some of the schools are older and they don't have it in parts of the building and some buildings don't have any mechanical ventilation at all. And in those cases, they recommended that we open the doors and the windows to allow the air to circulate, which is fine at the start of the school year, but it's obviously not ideal for Canadian winters. And so this is an alternative to that because we obviously can't open the windows when it's, you know, -15 and -20 and even colder with the windchill.

MG: I mentioned that secret study that was done, not scientific, but it found that 75 percent of classrooms that those scientists and academics studied and doctors. 75 percent of them didn't have adequate ventilation. What do you make of that?

JOE ORTONA: Well, I'm not sure what to make of that, because, as you said, it's not a scientific study, but it is worrisome. We want to make sure that, you know, the quality of the air is up to standards because we know that this this virus is airborne and it's transmitted by being enclosed spaces for prolonged periods of time. So it's important that we do everything we can to reduce as much as possible as they reduce, because there is nothing that is, you know, completely foolproof. But we have to do everything we can to reduce the risk of transmission. And what's even more worrisome is that if these studies, if these are the results of this study in the classrooms right now, over the last several weeks, it's only going to get colder. And in the classes where there's no mechanical ventilation, the windows are going to be closed and there's going to be less circulation of air. So it demonstrates, you know, the importance of purchasing these units.

MG: Your Premier Francois Legault has said that his advisers don't think the air purifiers make any significant difference in the transmission of COVID-19. So what do you say in light of that?

JOE ORTONA: I don't understand. I don't understand the logic. I don't know any study that supports Premier Legault saying that because simply, we know that it's going to be colder and we know that there's going to be less circulation of air. If we're talking about buildings that don't have mechanical ventilation, it's just simply not practical to open the windows during the winter months. So we don't have a study that demonstrates what the quality of the air is going to be in in January and February, so I don't know how he can say that it's not going to make a difference.

MG: If this is a priority for you, why is it that these air purifiers won't actually be in place until February of next year?

JOE ORTONA: Well, we only took office, we only took office a month ago. So when we immediately took office, we we asked for, you know, a full assessment of the situation and all of the buildings and to verify how many air purifiers would be needed, how many we would have to buy, you know, how much this would cost and we were able to do that in less than one month. And so we've now, the Council of Commissioners approved for the purchase and installation of these units. Of course, we're talking about in our case, 791 units.

MG: I guess the point, though, just before I let you go, I mean, I was in Montreal at the beginning of the school year speaking with a lot of parents and students, and they were concerned about what they were going into the environment that they were going into. If these air purifiers are so important, but they're not going to be installed until February, should parents be reassured by this?

JOE ORTONA: OK, so I just want to clarify something. It's going to be in February that all of the units are installed. We're not going to start installing them in February. We're going to start installing them immediately. It's just we're talking about, you know, 800 units and the installation of those units is going to take some time. But we were able to do this in less than a month. The the government had since the beginning of a pandemic to do this and they haven't done it . So we did our jobs and we did it, I think, diligently and efficiently.

MG: Joe, it's good to speak with you about this. We're going to hear from some parents in just a moment. So thank you for your time this morning.

JOE ORTONA: Thank you.

MG: Joe Ortona is the chair of the English Montreal School Board. Parents in Montreal concerned about air quality. Parents across the country are sharing that concern. Krista Wylie is a parent in Toronto. She's co-founder of an organization called Fix Our Schools. Krista, good morning to you.

KRISTA WYLIE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What did you think when you heard about these secret tests that were done in Montreal schools to figure out what the air quality is like and whether there's proper ventilation in those classrooms?

KRISTA WYLIE: It just highlighted for a parent that, as you mentioned, I live in Ontario, that likely the exact same results would be found here. And just what a shame it is that we don't have any standards in place for buildings where children spend their days, because certainly in Ontario, there are no there are no, you know, legitimate testing, testing endeavours being done here. So I suspect it's something covert went on similar to what you uncovered went on in Quebec, we would find the same thing here.

MG: I mean, in the grand scheme of things, air ventilation and mechanical ventilation is not top of mind for many people and yet we're in a pandemic where we know that this is transmitted in airborne ways. So how big of a concern is it for you, what's going on in the classroom and the fact that many classrooms in the Toronto board, for example, you can't open the windows at all?

KRISTA WYLIE: Right. So it's funny that you mention how it's not top of mind, ventilation. And certainly as someone who's been a parent advocate for school infrastructure since 2014, ventilation, you're exactly right, it's never been a particularly sexy or interesting topic.

MG: No.

KRISTA WYLIE: Up until March of 2020. And then all of a sudden, we've never had more interest in ventilation in schools than we've had in the last nine months. And we are certainly that perhaps is a silver lining to COVID is that it's increased everybody's awareness of the criticality of school buildings to the safety, the health, the well-being of our kids. And there are countless research, countless amount of research that's been done over the years that would suggest that pandemic or not proper ventilation in our kids classrooms, it helps improve academic performance, it decreases absenteeism, it reduces asthma. And then here we are in the midst of a pandemic and ventilation is a hot topic because it has been shown by science, scientific study after scientific study that certainly one thing we can all agree upon is proper ventilation in classrooms is critical to limiting the spread of this virus.

MG: The Toronto District School Board sent out a note to parents saying, bundle your kids up and the teachers who can are going to crank the windows open in the winter to try and get some fresh air in on a regular schedule. Is that the answer to this?

KRISTA WYLIE: think it's part of the answer, Matt. I think that a combination of mechanical ventilation and natural ventilation, which is a more scientific word for simply opening windows, is definitely going to give us the best, the best air quality that we can achieve in the short term.

MG: How do your kids feel about that, about being in a cold classroom?

KRISTA WYLIE: Do you know what? My kids have been in school classrooms for years, pandemic or not. So we've been actually, our Fix Our Schools has been looking across the globe to see what what are the best practises in other places. And we would look to a country like Germany where fairly recently the German Environment Agency has been recommending that teachers open their windows just for about five minutes every twenty minutes or so, which is a lot to integrate into one's already busy schedule. But they've been finding that intermittent opening of windows prevents the concern that your previous guest mentioned, that we're not going to be having our children learning in freezing cold classes because classroom temperatures will increase fairly rapidly once you close them. But by intermittently opening those windows, it does bring in a ton of fresh air. And in the instance in Germany, basically, if you're opening it for five minutes every 20 minutes or so, that air is completely swapped for fresh air from the outdoors three times every hour. I know that I am, I'm friends with a doctor who has been treating COVID since the very beginning and she also happens to be a parent at the local elementary school across the street from me and she would suggest her preference as a parent and a doctor is to have the windows open as much as possible to augment that mechanical ventilation that tJoe was mentioning just a few minutes ago, can be provided both by mechanical systems that are in many school buildings, but in older school buildings, in some classrooms there isn't mechanical ventilation. And so then we're looking at things like HEPA filters, but certainly in opening those windows is a great option.

MG: Of course, it's only, what, early December right now? We'll see whether it's a great option in February.

KRISTA WYLIE: Right. As I said Matt, my child, my younger son, he five years ago came home and was learning in a classroom that was identified by a fun science experiment that he shared with me that day and his classroom was clocking in at 12 degrees in in February, and it was freezing cold for weeks on end. So I think that's an important point to make as well, that going into this pandemic, Ontario schools were not in great shape to begin with. There was 16.3 billion dollars of disrepair and all of a sudden, as you pointed out, in the midst of a pandemic, everyone is is keenly aware of the state of these buildings because we're relying upon them in many ways to keep our kids safe. So I think as we move through this pandemic, it's really important to continue to realize and prioritize these buildings as the very critical infrastructure that they are. And I know that I know that you're asking some tough questions to Joe at the end of the interview. He represents a school board. And the dynamic, I think, is very similar in Ontario, school boards are held in the public eye as responsible and accountable for these buildings. And yet it's the province that doles out money. And especially when you come to things like repairs and improving ventilation that costs money. And then I would look to our provincial government to be providing the adequate, stable funding that school boards could rely upon to get rid of that 16.3 billion dollars of disrepair to ensure that ventilation was never an issue.School boards shouldn't have been having to scramble over the summer to improve school, school, classroom ventilation. That should have been something that was done a long time ago,.

MG: I was going to say, we'll see whether this is kind of that moment for change, to your point, and whether this will lead to a larger conversation. I'm going to leave it there because we're going to talk more about just getting the fresh air in and changing the air in the room. Krista, thank you.

KRISTA WYLIE: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Krista Wylie, parent in Toronto and the co-founder of a campaign called Fix Our Schools. Jeffrey Siegel has been talking and writing about the importance of air quality and ventilation since long before this pandemic. He's a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto and has been listening in. Jeff, good morning to you.

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: You take a look at the state of ventilation in schools in Canada. Again, to Krista's point, perhaps not the sexiest thing until a pandemic arrives and everybody's thinking about the air around them. What concerns you the most?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Yeah, so, I mean, we do several of the things she said. We do have kind of a systematic neglect and when I look around from the transmission point of view, I worry about three factors: poor ventilation, crowded classrooms, and the time that the students stand in the environment. Those are the three big risk factors. And unfortunately, in many schools we hit all three of.

MG: Krista Wylie initially called for more air testing. The Quebec government has announced that it's going to do it. And already, as we were saying, there was the secret testing that was done in those Quebec classrooms. What do you think of that idea of testing the air just to get a sense as to what what's going on and what kids are breathing?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: So I'm kind of of two minds about testing. On one hand, of course, it's great to have data. It's great to involve the students and the parents and the teachers in measuring that data and I think we learn something. The other side of it, though, is that it's really hard to collect good data and it's really hard to kind of collect actionable data. And so my other perspective is that why don't we just spend money on fixing a problem that we know is there and rather than spending money on measuring it.

MG: So how do we fix it then? The air purifiers like they're providing in Montreal, are they the answer?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly part of the answer. I mean, the way that everyone should be thinking about this problem is kind of a layered solution. We're going to have to do a lot of different things because not any one of them is perfect. And also, it's going to be different in every space in the school, in every classroom. So some classrooms might have mechanical ventilation, great, increase that. Other classrooms might have, no mechanical ventilation or a problem with the mechanical ventilation, so we have to have to think about other things. And so, you know, it really it's unfortunately a little bit of a messy process, kind of a classroom by classroom or space by space process, but it's certainly very doable and many school districts around the world have done it and done it successfully.

MG: What about opening the windows? Krista was talking about what's happening in Germany and their five minutes every 20 minutes kind of thing, but is opening the windows all winter long effective in terms of getting fresher air into the classroom?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: So I feel very mixed on windows on one hand, of course, opening the windows is a great thing and it increases ventilation. On the other hand, you know, as soon as you open the windows, someone like me loses any ability to say what's going on in the space. And what often happens is that, you know, you might ventilate part of the space very well. Kids sitting near the window might do quite well. Kids sitting further away might do poorly. You cause problems with comfort, which was mentioned and discussed already, but also humidity on a cold winter day. Maybe there's traffic noise or other noise from outside that disrupts learning. And so I want people to open windows, but I don't want that to be, we can do better than that. That shouldn't be our only, the only arrow in our quiver.

MG: What are the implications here for other indoor spaces? You said these are the two things that people are talking about, but they may not go far enough. So, I mean, we're talking about schools, but I'm speaking to you from, you know, like a hermetically sealed building where you can't open the windows. People are going to be getting back into offices at some point in time. What should we be thinking about when it comes to increasing air quality in all of these spaces?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Yeah, so certainly ventilation could be high on our list in a place like Toronto where outdoor air quality is not always but is generally pretty good, the more ventilation, the better. Once we've increased ventilation, we want to address things like filtration, and that might be an essential system or that might be the portable HEPA filters that were discussed already. And then, you know, there's another really important point here, and that is there's a whole bunch of things we should be doing before we even start talking about filtration and ventilation. You know, the mass wearing, the physical distancing, handwashing, making sure that surfaces are not a source of contamination. And so, again, it's this kind of layered strategy where we we have to address things systematically in every building. But, you know, there's some good news here, too, is we have a lot of strategies. People have developed a lot of expertise about reducing the transmission risk and I think we're at a place now where we can do things safely if we want to invest in our buildings.

MG: And will that just finally, before I let you go, will that carry on to the point after when we're done, whenever that is with this pandemic?

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Yeah, I mean, you know, there is a silver lining here. I hate to talk about it in the context of this pandemic, but that, you know, we get enormous benefits from improving indoor air quality. You know, cognitive function and benefits, economic benefits, reduced health care costs, improved well-being. I mean, it's this very long list. Let's take this moment where we're all focused on these systems and frankly, they've been neglected and let's invest in them.

MG: Jeff, good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

JEFFREY SIEGEL: Thank you.

MG: Jeffrey Sigel, professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, the CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics]

MG: You know, I'll tell you what, sweet dreams aren't made of: a global pandemic. That's what. In a moment, we will hear how insomnia is just one more thing on the rise these days. I'm Matt Galloway. The Current is back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Song: "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics]

Is the pandemic keeping you up at night? Experts say you’re not alone but there are ways to get back to better sleep

Guests: Veronica Antipolo, Rebecca Robillard, Judith Davidson

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

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, spies, drug cartels and biker gangs. No, it's not the new Guy Ritchie film. It is the latest investigation from The Fifth Estate, and that's coming up in 30 minutes. But first, is COVID-19 keeping you up at night? You're not the only one.

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So it's only 9:33 p.m. So I mean, it's still early-ish, but I actually already feel anxious about sleep.

MG: Veronica Antipolo is one of many Canadians dealing with insomnia. And for a lot of them, it's getting worse during the pandemic. We heard her getting anxious close to bedtime. Let's see how the rest of the night went.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's about 12:25. I started watching a movie about 45 minutes ago, and before that I fell asleep for I guess it was just about 20 minutes. It felt like I slept a long time, but was just 20 minutes, so. Now I'm wide awake and watch this movie.

[Song: "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright]

VOICE: 1:39 a.m. I just had a snack. I had like crackers and I am tired. I think maybe I'm ready to sleep right now.

[Song continued]

VOICE: I believe it's 5:30 a.m. and I was able to sleep pretty much through, I guess from about 1:30-1:45. I may try and get some more sleep. It's 6:00 am. I actually don't need to wake up until about 7:30 and this happens every morning. I end up just waking up. Today I guess it was, I don't really remember, at 5:30. And what it is, is that I actually feel the knot in the pit of my stomach first, and that's how I wake up. And then that feeling just grows and that's usually Ihow I wake up these days.

[Dream Weaver continued]

MG: Veronica Antipolo, good morning.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Good morning.

MG: What time did you wake up this morning?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: I woke up at 7:30.

MG: That's a good night's sleep.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Well, considering that I went to bed at five.

MG: That's not a good night's sleep.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: No, it's not.

MG: I'm sorry. And I really appreciate you kind of talking us through the night there with you. How common is and you've kind of just hinted at that, but how common is it for you to be up and then back to sleep and then up and back to sleep over the course of an evening?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: It's been every day. It's probably easier for me to count the days that I got a full night's sleep. That's how often it is.

MG: And did you suffer from insomnia before the pandemic arrived? I mean, it seems like that's another lifetime ago for so many people, but were you unable to sleep before March of this year?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: No, of and on I would have insomnia, but I was able to have periods or, you know, I'd be able to go months with normal sleep, like going to bed at 10 p.m. and waking up at six or seven, whatever time I have to get up at. And it's ridiculous.

MG: What do you think what do you think it is about these ridiculous times that has made it difficult for you to sleep?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: At first, it's definitely anxiety, because, like I said, I wake up not even to my alarm, I just wake up to a pit in my stomach. That's what wakes me up. So it's at the beginning of a pandemic I used to sleep longer and then somehow it switched around the end of spring, where it turned into insomnia, as if my body enjoyed that time where I had no schedule and now it's fighting for something. I don't know what.

MG: You talked to in the tape about, you know, getting a snack in the middle of the night and watching a movie. What are the things that you have done to try to help you fall asleep?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Oh, I listened to podcasts with meditation goals. I like, I have lavender oil burning. I have I'll do the milk and banana thing. I've tried everything. I'll listen to just some ambient music. Taking all my electronic devices away from me. It's I feel like I've tried a lot of things, including snacking and watching Netflix and just no luck at all these past months.

MG: How is this affecting you? I mean, in day to day, you have a young daughter and lots going on, I'm sure, in that universe. How does a lack of sleep impact you?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: I'm definitely a lot more irritable. And she tells me that.

MG: What does she say to you?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: She just says, here comes grumpy mommy. And it's actually almost every day that she says. So it's no, I definitely feel very irritable in the morning when I wake up, I'm OK when I first wake up and then I hit a wall two hours later and then I want to take a nap. And if I do, I'm working from home then it ends up, the cycle just repeats. I end up not being able to sleep again. But it's my mood is definitely I'm always on edge. I'm always the anxiety doesn't go away. That's just my baseline now.

MG: How worried are you that the baseline is going to continue after this pandemic is done? That this could have some sort of long term impact?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Yeah, I mean I always feel like even though I hate it, I've almost become accustomed to it because of COVID, because everything, all my tasks that I do are happening simultaneously now. There's no compartments. Ironically, that my insomnia that's actually my me time in a sense. I hate it, but it's that's what's left of me is that awake self, which is my insomnia. But I am worried that it will continue because I swear I feel like I'm aging rapidly now.

MG: And in those I mean, those sleepless hours, you say that that's what's left of you. I mean, are you thinking about sleep or are you thinking about other stuff?

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: I am, I have sleep in the back of my mind, the desire to sleep, that's there. At the same time, my mind is fully awake with every thought possible. I try to push the thoughts of COVID away. I don't even listen to statistics anymore, but it's all there. It's all it's like closes in on my mind during the night when I guess I have no more activities to keep me busy and so they're my companions while I'm unable to sleep.

MG: I think there are a lot of Canadians who are right there in that mindspace with you, suffering with a lack of sleep. And I hope that this passes and that you manage to get some sleep sooner rather than later. Veronica, thank you.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Thank you.

MG: Take care of yourself.

VERONICA ANTIPOLO: Thanks.

MG: Veronica Antipolo is sleepless in the city of Toronto. Rebecca Robillard knows stories like Veronica's well. Rebecca directs the clinical sleep research at the Royal Institute of Mental Health Research affiliated with the University of Ottawa. She's also an assistant professor at the University School of Psychology and co-directs its sleep laboratory and has been researching the pandemic's impact on the sleep of Canadians. Rebecca, good morning to you.

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Good morning.

MG: How does what you heard from Veronica compare to what you hear from other people that you're speaking with about insomnia in the midst of this pandemic?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Yeah, it certainly echoes a lot of reports that we've had. But interestingly enough, there's been quite a diversity of responses to the pandemic in terms of, the pandemic is not affecting everyone in the same way. And so that's part of what we wanted to study as well.

MG: Tell me a bit more about that. What did you learn about sleep during this pandemic?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: So, yeah, we were fortunate enough to have over 5000 Canadians who kind of shared their stories with us as to how their sleep was affected during the pandemic. And we focused more on the early phase of the pandemic. And overall, across our large sample, we saw one of the first things that we saw is that wake up times were significantly delayed and a lot of people relative to their sleep schedule before the outbreak, which probably is an after effect of the cmplyment measures and, you know, some people working from home not having to commute in the morning. And so some of the schedules are kind of lifting up and enabling people to actually catch up on sleep, which kind of echoes what Veronica was saying as well earlier on when the pandemic started. So there's also, you know, these kind of changes in our daily routine, which will affect our sleep, but overall, we're seeing that the occurrences of clinically meaningful sleep difficulties did increase and it's now affecting one out of two people and in whom we're seeing that the outbreak since the outbreak, that they're having serious sleep problems. So that's a pretty concerning figure, 50 percent of the population.

MG: Who is having the most trouble sleeping?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Well, we're seeing worse cases in females, and that certainly echoes some some other studies as well, and that's not too much of a surprise, because we know that women are more prone to insomnia. They're more prone to stress as well. So these are two strong interacting factors that are at play here. We're also seeing that sleep problems are worse and those with work and family responsibilities. So, again, probably going back to to females, perhaps having, you know, more reasons to wake up earlier in the morning. And even if they didn't have quite a good night of sleep, we're seeing more sleep in people with chronic illnesses and people with earlier wake up times, higher stress levels. Alcohol use seems to be coming up. So something that we can actively change as well and interestingly, television exposure as well. So I think that's an interesting one. Like people seem to be, of course, taking, spending more time at home and perhaps abusing of television a tiny bit. And so this is certainly something that we're seeing is associated with worse sleep problems.

MG: Is there anybody who's getting more sleep during this pandemic?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Yes. So I guess that's the good news. It's good to see some some positive aspects. So we are seeing basically three subgroups of people in our large database. We kind of focused on sleep behaviours or, you know, the things that people can actively control about their sleep, things like what time you go to bed, what time you wake up and how much time you spend in bed. And we saw that there's a subgroup of people who actually went to bed at about the same time as they did before the pandemic, but were able to sleep in a little bit longer. So they actually got more sleep. And these people, interestingly, are those with the best outcomes in terms of their general sleep profile and talso their psychological responses to the pandemic.

MG: Let's talk about the effects of this. I mean, Veronica is not getting enough sleep and we hear about the idea of being in a sleep deficit, having poor sleep hygiene, for example. What's at stake for someone's health in the long term if they continue to have poor sleep?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Yeah, that's a great question. We know that sleep is so important for a range of different functions, for the body and brain and mind as well. And so, you know that there's impacts to be had in terms of how our heart functions or in terms of cardiovascular health, our stress hormones, things like diabetes, even our immune system is very fragile to sleep loss. So it's quite pervasive across the body. And from the more of a brain perspective, we know as well that sleep loss will affect certain brain regions that are important for emotional regulation. And so that certainly takes a toll on how people are able to cope and adapt to new situations such as the one that we're going through right now.

MG: How much sleep and I ask this cautiously as somebody who wakes up early in the morning for work, how much sleep should we be getting each night?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Yeah, that's a big question. A lot of the information that you'll see circulating will say about seven to nine hours. That's globally speaking, across the big population. But I always want to emphasize that it is a very personal question. We know that some people are short sleepers. We know that some people are long sleepers. And, you know, this is partly genetically determined. And it is really important to kind of listen to our body and know and kind of give it what it needs in terms of our sleep. So, you know, people need to really take care to not compare themselves too much to the norms, but really focus on what their sleep needs are.

MG: Just before I let you go, are you concerned about this? I mean, again, anecdotally, you'll hear in part, that's why we're having this conversation, but you've been studying it as well. You'll hear from people who say in the midst of this pandemic that they feel like they're not getting enough sleep. Are you concerned about that?

REBECCA ROBILLARD: We are concerned. These figures are pretty high. And, of course, we've never been through something like this before. And I guess, again, like the fact that we're seeing some concrete behaviours that people are are changing because of the pandemic that has been taking a toll on their ability to sleep. Well, we know that unhelpful behaviours about sleep and helpful thoughts about sleep, Vernoica was also talking about, you know, being overly concerned about her sleep. And when sleep starts taking kind of all the place in our mind, this is where we're at risk for developing chronic insomnia over time. Another thing that we saw as well was an increase in the use of sleeping medications, which in the longer term can lead to, you know, increased causes to to be able to reach similar effects and the drugs not having any effect at some stage and then sleep worse. And so there's a lot of factors currently that are going on. And, of course, the stress and anxiety related to the pandemic, which is kind of dragging on. It's not, you know, some acute stressor that we're facing. It's something that's sustained over time. So how will some people will manage to get back to better sleep and I want to put that message as well, that it is kind of normal to some degree to have some sleep disturbances right now because everything's upside down and our sleep is a bit like a barometer about how we're kind of dealing in the daytime. And so it's you know, it's important not to be overly stressed about it, but it's important to also protect a normal sleep window and listen to our body to give it the sleep that we need and get some help in cases where it gets off track, like the story of Veronica, which I'm sure echoes many other people. There are other means of helping our sleep rather than taking sleep medication.

MG: We're going to talk about that right now. Rebecca, thank you.

REBECCA ROBILLARD: Thanks.

MG: Rebecca Robillard directs clinical sleep research at the Royal Institute of Mental Health Research, affiliated with the University of Ottawa. Dr. Judith Davidson is a sleep clinician and adjunct professor in psychology at Queen's University. She's also the author of Sink into Sleep, a self-help guide for people who have insomnia. Doctor, good morning to you.

JUDITH DAVIDSON: Good morning.

MG: Veronica talked about anxiety, the pit in her stomach at whatever, three, four or five o'clock in the morning. Just briefly, from your perspective, what's going on? Why can't we sleep now?

JUDITH DAVIDSON: Well, as Rebecca was saying, there's a lot of us not sleeping well because of a response to stress, and that's completely normal. There's another group of people like Veronica who have developed chronic insomnia, which is a sleep disorder, and that is maintained by factors other than the pandemic and general stress. So there's two distinct things. There's the normal reaction to stress, which is to have some sleeplessness and some difficulty and then once it turns into a longer term problem where we start thinking more about sleep and being afraid of the night ahead, and it's really affecting our functioning, that's when it's a real sleep disorder called chronic insomnia.

MG: What's the best way then to counter chronic insomnia? How do we go about getting a better night's sleep?

JUDITH DAVIDSON: Well, for for chronic insomnia, so that insomnia that's gone on for more than three months and it's happening most nights of the week and it's affecting our functioning, we know from decades of research that the best treatment is called cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia. And I shorten that to CBTI because it's easier to say, but it's a tried and true technique that does reverse chronic insomnia. And it's top of the list in terms of the medical recommendations for the treatment of chronic insomnia above and beyond medications. So all the medical guidelines in North America and in Europe recommend it. The problem is that it's seldom available to people.

MG: How does it work?

JUDITH DAVIDSON: How does it work? It's it's hard to describe in in a nutshell, but basically it's much more than sleep hygiene, which is all the things that Veronica's doing perfectly. Like she's following all the recommendations about, you know, when to go to bed and to to have some wind down time in the evening and not drink alcohol and to avoid caffeine and all that. That's sleep hygiene. It's above and beyond that. It is strategies that help uncover the biological sleep drive that we all have and and our circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefulness by scheduling our sleep at specific times and also looking very carefully at the worries related to sleep and finding less catastrophic thoughts to replace ones that might be a little bit blown up just because time has passed and we've had sleepless nights again and again. So it's kind of hard to describe, but there are two there. There's a cognitive component which is looking at the thoughts that keep us awake and then there's the behavioural component, which is a very structured sleep scheduling. So it involves some restriction of your time in bed and also getting up at the same time every day and and also linking your bed with sleep by only sleeping in bed and not spending too much time, getting out of bed when you're not sleeping.

MG: For people who can't access that therapy and they're in the midst of this. I mean, we've been in this for eight, nine months now and someone like Veronica is really struggling. Is there is there one simple technique that they might try that could help? They've done all the things. They're not drinking the caffeine. They're not drinking alcohol. They've put the phone in another room and they're not binging on Netflix. Is there something else that they could be doing?

JUDITH DAVIDSON: Yeah, there's something between the sleep hygiene and jumping to full multi component CBTI and that would be keeping your routines in place. So getting up at the same time every day, seven days a week. As we were seeing with both Veronica and Rebecca, sleep times tend to shift later when we don't have structure anymore. And so we want to get back to that same rise time, seven days a week. That will help our circadian, our 24 hour rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. And then going to bed at the same time is helpful as well and keeping our meals at the same time. So our body gets into a nice rhythm again. That's one very helpful step. If the sleep problem continues and you're concerned about it, I would recommend CBTI. And if your health team or your physician's office doesn't offer it, then you can go to a book or there's an online program called Sleepio that's very effective. And so you can seek it out in another way if it's not readily available to you.

MG: Are you sleeping well in the midst of this pandemic?

JUDITH DAVIDSON: I am actually, honestly. I'm sleeping very well, but I get up at exactly the same time every day or awake. So I think that really helps me.

MG: I appreciate speaking with you about this. This is something that so many people are are going through right now. Doctor, thank you.

JUDITH DAVIDSON: You're welcome.

MG: Dr. Judith Davidson, sleep clinician and adjunct professor in psychology at Queen's University, also the author of Sink into Sleep. It's a self-help guide for people with insomnia. How are you sleeping? We are nine months or so into this pandemic and the experiences of Judith perhaps mirror yours as well. Are there things that you've done to get a better night's sleep? Or are you still struggling as we've heard from others. You can let us know through the email: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Coming up after your regional update, a new investigation from the CBC's The Fifth Estate dives into the dark world where Canadian secrets were sold to cartels, gangs and other criminal elements. Bob McKeown of The Fifth is here in 90 seconds to unravel what is quite a tale. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music]

How a high-stakes gambler set authorities on the trail of accused Canadian spy Cameron Ortis

Guests: Bob McKeown, Angus Smith

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Our next story is a spy thriller combining the worst corners of the Internet, drug cartels and biker gangs. Bob McKeown and his colleagues at The Fifth Estate have unravelled the mystery behind the sale of Canadian secrets to criminal elements. Bob's full documentary airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. on CBC Television. He's here now though to talk about where their investigation took them and what they uncovered. Bob, good morning.

BOB MCKEOWN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: At the centre of this story, and it is a wild story, is a man whose name is Cameron Ortis. Who is Cameron Ortis?

BOB MCKEOWN: It's surprising we don't know more about Cameron Ortis because it was a year ago, September, September 2013, when he was arrested and charged with espionage. He being the senior intelligence official in the RCMP security apparatus. But I suppose because it's a secret world, there's a lot we are just definitively not going to know about him. He was born and raised in Abbotsford, B.C., in a Mennonite family, was always a stellar student, the smartest guy in the room, which is what we call this documentary, The Best and the Brightest, which is what a lot of other people have called him. He travelled during his studies and travelled widely, he learnt to speak Mandarin and his Ph.D, the topic was The Dark Web and Transnational Crime, which back in the early 2000s was just exploding as the topic confronting law enforcement.

MG: The secret part of the Internet where some of the worst things happened.

BOB MCKEOWN: Exactly. And he is said by those who know to have been 10 or 15 years ahead of his time in understanding this.

MG: And so what is the former director of the RCMP National Intelligence Coordination Centre accused of doing?

BOB MCKEOWN: He is accused of gathering, to distribute and of revealing confidential information and classified information. And what are considered to be official secrets. Now, what I don't want to get ahead of ourselves in this story, but this would not have been known if there weren't an investigation into a company called Phantom Secure, which is a Canadian or was a Canadian high tech company run and developed by a man named Vincent Ramos of Richmond, B.C. And basically they cornered the market on encrypted cell phones, secure cell phones. The company was called Phantom Secure and their phones were effectively BlackBerry smartphones that had been gutted. So the GPS is taken out and the Internet function, it may have been taken out the voice recorder and replaced with an encrypted messaging system. And this company also had offshore servers in in Panama, in Hong Kong. And all of the messages from these phones would be sent via those those servers.

MG: Who is this guy vincent Ramos who was involved in these phones?

BOB MCKEOWN: We're essentially talking about two guys, Ortis and Ramos, who are both brilliant high tech minds. In Ortis's case, it was transnational crime and the Dark Web, which was the subject of his PhD thesis. In Vincent Ramos's case, it was this encrypted cell phone technology which ostensibly was being marketed to respectable business international travellers who wanted to protect their business secrets while they were away.

MG: But you could imagine they would be wildly popular with crime organizations.

BOB MCKEOWN: Yes. And in fact, we know that Vincent Ramos had a deal with the Sinaloa cartel, El Chapo's organization in Mexico, with Australian biker gangs who are the main or a main drug distribution point in Australia. So, yes, and he was at some point, it was estimated that 20,000 of these phones were in circulation almost. And the Australian Federal Police had said they could not find a single one that was used for legitimate purposes.

MG: So the FBI, the Australian police and the RCMP investigate Phantom Secure. When you started digging into this, who or what did you discover was the catalyst behind that investigation that led to all of this?

BOB MCKEOWN: Arguably, if not for a guy named RJ Cipriani, Robert Cipriani, who is a professional high stakes. Blackjack player, if not for him, none of this would have happened. But RJ Cipriani heard from at some point a man named Owen Hanson. And Owen Hanson introduced himself as a businessman, a wealthy businessman, and he said, I want to help your charity. Now, RJ Cipriani is otherwise known as RobinHood702, 702 being the area code for Las Vegas and he runs a charity. It's sort of ad hoc, but whenever he has a big payday at the blackjack table, he gives money to a needy family in the Las Vegas area. And he's known for, he's known for doing this. Out of the blue, he gets a call from a guy in Australia who says, I want to fund your charity. I want to give you a million and a half dollars and you gamble with it, what you make, you can keep for the charity yourself or both, and you give me back my million and a half dollars. So RJ Cipriani thinks this is a pretty good deal, but he says, you know, I may not win, I might lose. And the guy says, no, I know enough about you to know you're probably going to win. But it doesn't really matter because I just want to contribute to a good cause. So that was the beginning of our RJ's interaction. The end of it was the arrest of Cameron Ortis in September 2019.

MG: And he takes the money?

BOB MCKEOWN: He takes the money. He's in Australia. He goes to Australia. He gambles at the Star Casino in Sydney. He takes the million and a half dollars and it works out the way it's supposed to work out. He makes 150 or 175,000 dollars, which he keeps and does with, as he will. And so he's got a million and a half back again and he wants to give it back to Owen Hanson. And that's where the problem began.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: But he wouldn't meet with me. I'm like, dude, I got your money. So I thought that was a little weird that he couldn't make time to meet with me to give him his million and a half dollars back. So then at one point, he says, listen, just I'll get the money back in the States. I go to the States a lot, I'll see you there. So I'm like, but I got your money here. He says I'll see you there.

BOB MCKEOWN: You can imagine how perplexed he was.

MG: Would you like your money back? I'll get it to you eventually.

BOB MCKEOWN: Exactly.

MG: There are a lot of different names here and we will connect them all, but we should figure who had actually given him the 1.5 million dollars to gamble. You mentioned this Owen Hanson. Who was Owen Hanson?

BOB MCKEOWN: Yeah, Owen Hanson is, that was his real name. He introduced himself to RJ as Junior DeLuca, and that's how he knew him for the first number of weeks here. But eventually he understood who he was. He wasn't a rich businessman, as he thought, because he was being given a million and a half dollars by him or even the son of a rich businessman, which was option number two. He was, in fact, a drug trafficker, a major drug trafficker in Central America, Canada and the U.S. Hundreds of kilograms of cocaine every year under his auspices. He formerly had been a member of the 2002 national championship football team from the University of Southern California, coached by Pete Carroll. And there's a notorious photograph of Owen Hanson, who was a very good athlete at the White House celebrating the national championship with George W. Bush. So that was his background. His drug trafficking and offshore gambling interests developed after his football career.

MG: And so Cipriani doesn't know any of this, gets his million and a half dollars. What happens then, is he ever offered any further money?

BOB MCKEOWN: Yeah. And in fact, almost immediately, Owen Hanson comes to him. But the tone's different this time. He says, I'm giving you two and a half million dollars this time. So an extra million. We're going to do the same thing. At this point, Cypriani admits that he was having second thoughts as to where the money was coming from and whether this was a legitimate enterprise or not. And he was having second thoughts about what he might do if he lost the money this time because he knew he wasn't going to win all the time. So he said that this was a different, he saw this as a different problem when he spoke to Hanson.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: He then started to act a little differently, really pushy. Said, look, you're going to do this. At some point he even said, look, we know where you live. We know where your wife is. We know what she's wearing today. And he made me think that, OK, this is really not what I want to do. And at some point I said to him, you know, I don't think I want to do this. And he said, no, I think you're going to do it.

MG: I think you're going to do it?

BOB MCKEOWN: Exactly.

MG: What Cipriani ended up doing?

BOB MCKEOWN: Well, he decided that the only thing to do, he realized that it was quite likely that Owen Hanson saw him as his money launderer and wanted to have a continuing relationship and to launder his ill gotten gains through RJ. And the change of tone led him to believe that that might not work out well for him. Now, this is what he says, and I take it at face value, he said, so he set out to lose the money. And he did. He lost two and a half million dollars. It didn't work out the way it did the last time, but he thought at least it would be a chance to get rid of Owen Hanson. But it didn't work that way either.

MG: So let's start to connect the dots. How is Owen Hanson connected to Vincent Ramos, the guy who was behind those encrypted phones?

BOB MCKEOWN: What happened was when he when he lost Owen Hanson's two and a half million dollars, Hanson got very angry and started hiring various enforcers to first threaten and then worse to RJ Cipriani, there were videos which showed up at his door of Mexican drug cartels beheading people who owed them money. Owen Hanson hired a guy who actually was a former backup singer for Grace Slick and Jefferson Aeroplane to go to the Cipriani family burial plot outside Philadelphia and desecrate the family tombstone by putting red paint, which I guess symbolized blood by photoshopping Owen Hanson in front of it with a Mexican wrestling match and doing other threatening things. But basically threatening the lives of of Cipriani and his wife. Ciprian then had had enough he said. The tombstone, he said, was the last straw because his mother was buried there. He went to a contact of his in the FBI in San Diego and told him about Owen Hanson threatening him. At this point, he also understood that Owen Hanson was a big time drug trafficker, hundreds of kilograms a year of cocaine to Australia and Canada. And the consequence was the FBI began an investigation into Owen Hanson. Because Owen Hanson and they found six Phantom Secure, Vincent Ramos's encrypted phones in his organization. They started an investigation into Phantom Secure because Phantom Secure was based in Canada. They contacted the RCMP and the RCMP began a collaborative investigation. At some point, they're going through Phantom Secure, Vincent Ramos's computers and they come across an anonymous e-mail to Ramos that apparently came from within the security apparatus of the RCMP, an anonymous email. One thing leads to another and it takes some time, but eventually they realize that email came from the office of the director general of the National Intelligence Communication Centre, who is none other at this point than Cameron Ortis.

MG: It's an incredible story to this point.

BOB MCKEOWN: So effectively, you have well, effectively, you have if this is all true and it hasn't been proven in court, of course, you have the Canada's ranking intelligence official. Sending an e-mail to somebody who's dealing with the Sinaloa cartel, the Australian bikers and all kinds of other criminal organizations to help them evade law enforcement and what he was offering was secrets for sale and specifically specifying secrets, including information from the active and ongoing RCMP investigation into Vincent Ramos. So we now know if what the charges say is true that Cameron Ortis, at the same time as he was running the RCMP intelligence system, was trying to sell secrets specifically about Ramos in an ongoing investigation to Vincent Ramos himself.

MG: That would have helped Ramos evade capture or.

BOB MCKEOWN: Or avoid prosecution or yes.

MG: Angus Smith is somebody who knows Cameron Ortis. I want to bring him into the conversation. Angus is a retired RCMP intelligence analyst, was one of Cameron Ortis's colleagues. He's been listening to our conversation. Angus, good morning to you.

ANGUS SMITH: Oh, good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. How would you describe Cameron Ortis?

ANGUS SMITH: Cameron was exceptionally intelligent. He was, you know, I mean, I think a lot of the stories about him being, you know, super bright and so on, I mean, there's certainly justice in that. He was very quiet and I think really very difficult to know. It was always, you always, I always felt with Cameron that I wasn't, except on a couple of very brief moments, I always felt as though I wasn't really kind of getting to know the real Cameron. There was always kind of a mask there.

MG: What went through your mind when you found out that he'd been arrested?

ANGUS SMITH: I was shocked. I mean, I'd known Cameron for many years, although, you know, by the time he was arrested, I'd already been retired for a couple of years. But, you know, however, I felt personally about Cameron, I really was quite shocked because, you know, to me, he'd always seem to be someone who who was completely dedicated to to the RCMP, completely dedicated to the Canadian intelligence community. So it was a strange moment.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, what effect did his arrest and he, as Bob has been saying, is the ranking officer on intelligence for the RCMP. What effect did that have on you and your former colleagues?

ANGUS SMITH: Well, I mean, it was I mean, the initial the initial reaction, of course, is is is shock and disbelief in. And for me, I think, you know, looking back ovee a career and looking back over the time that, you know, I had worked in in the same unit or in parallel units to chairman autists, it always it really it really made me wonder, you know, what else had been leaked and and you know, what effect that had had on on investigations and off and on on people's lives.

MG: Is there a sense of betrayal?

ANGUS SMITH: Very deep sense of betrayal. I've probably you know, I've certainly you know, we're all familiar with some of the great, you know, the stories of some of the really well known traitors in history. I mean, I think people like Kim Philby, I think of people like Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. But I think this was the first time that I'd actually confronted something of that magnitude in my own organization. It was a v very deep sense of betrayal.

MG: What did it mean for the organization?

ANGUS SMITH: Well, I think it means a lot for the organisation and I mean, the first the first problem, of course, is that is that, you know, this was a joint investigation involving a number of other countries. So, you know, there are obviously going to be some very serious questions from partner agencies about, you know, what had been leaked and and why wasn't why wasn't this information being better protected? Why weren't there standards in place to ensure that this kind of thing didn't happen? But, you know, organizations always recover from these kinds of things. But I think, you know, really for the for the RCMP, I would hope that it would really force the organization to take a very hard look at some of its personnel practises and some of its institutional culture.

MG: Just before I let you go, I mean, what's the question that you still have for the RCMP? It's been more than a year since Ortis's arrest.

ANGUS SMITH: Well, my question for the RCMP is, is why wasn't this picked up earlier? Because, you know, we do have security protocols in place and beyond that, you know, Cameron has been involved in in some he's the subject of a class action lawsuit by a number of his former employees who I have no reason to disbelieve. And, you know, he was clearly acting with impunity. He was harassing people. He was punishing people. He was persecuting people. And, you know, I mean, there are multiple red flags there just in terms of his behaviour as a manager. And I guess I just want to know why those weren't acted on and what the organization plans to do about that in the future. There are some very serious problems in the organization.

MG: It's good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

ANGUS SMITH: OK, thank you.

MG: Angus Smith, as a retired intelligence analyst with the RCMP, where he was colleagues with Cameron Ortis. Bob McKeown, Angus has hinted at this, what does this all mean for for the RCMP?

BOB MCKEOWN: Well, clearly, it's damaged the internal morale of the RCMP a great deal.

MG: That sense of betrayal that he talks about?

BOB MCKEOWN: Yes, it's damaged the reputation of the Canadian Intelligence Service with its Five Eyes partners. I mean, the whole point of the Five Eyes, US, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain and Canada is to share intelligence. People like Ortis at the top have access to everybody's intelligence and you can imagine the distrust that that grows out of this. One thing that came up in this is that a number of people thought that he was given the benefit of the doubt as far as security clearance was concerned. He was known as one of Bob's boys, Bob Paulson, the commissioner who appointed him. And and that in some way he had less scrutiny the faster he went ahead and the higher he got, which speaks to what Angus is talking about. Why wasn't this picked up sooner? We spoke to the chief psychologist for the CIA who said in the CIA, if you get ahead quickly and if you get far ahead, the more scrutiny you get, not the less. That appears to have been the opposite of what is.

MG: Just finally, what did the RCMP say when you reached out?

BOB MCKEOWN: They declined the opportunity to speak with us on the record. Brenda Lucki, the commissioner has, did way back at the beginning, give a news conference in which she admitted, which is an unusual thing, the damage that this had caused to many, many members. The key question in any espionage case is, why? Especially this one. However, one of the reasons the trial may not take place till next year or the year after is that there's so much classified information and official secrets in this.

MG: Because of what he had access to.

BOB MCKEOWN: Exactly. And that and that whatever happens in court, we may never get this information. It may be kept from us forever, which means we may never get the answer to that crucial question, which is why.

MG: It reads like a spy thriller. It really does.

BOB MCKEOWN: It does.

MG: We will watch your investigation this evening, Bob. Thank you.

BOB MCKEOWN: Thanks Matt.

MG: Bob McKeown, co-host of The Fifth Estate. His documentary airs tonight on CBC Television.

Holiday cookies still a time-tested tradition for many Canadian families

Guests: Margaret Prouse

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. In the midst of this pandemic, you know that so many of us won't be able to go home for the holidays this year. That has a lot of impacts. Some of them are pretty serious. Some of them are just a giant drag. Take, for example, the lack of holiday baking. It's a big part of many people's holiday traditions and how are you going to have that baking exchange if you can't be around friends and family to do that? No fear. It turns out that cookies can be mailed. How to do it safely is such a serious issue that the team at eater.com actually did some research and tested at different methods. Spoiler alert: a lot of padding is the secret to perfectly posted peppermint treats. We did not have to go to the researchers for more insight into this though. PEI food columnist Margaret Prouse has been bundling biscotti for years.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET PROUSE: Oh, gee, I don't think I'll tell how many years I've been doing Christmas baking cause it'll show you how old I am. But I've been doing Christmas baking since we first got married.

[Music]

MARGARET PROUSE: I think what I really like about Christmas baking is it's personal, it's something that I touch with my own hands and I'm thinking of the person who I'm baking them, trying to think of something that they would like and be able to use and appreciate. So I think it's a really personal gift. I like to make a variety of cookies. For example, instead of making all chocolate cookies, although chocolates wonderful, I would make some chocolate ones and then choose some plain recipes. I think it's nice to have cookies in different shapes like some that are sort of spherical balls that you make, flat rolled cookies cut in different shapes like stars or other Christmas shapes, Christmas trees maybe. And I like to mix up the flavours too, and not always have all sweet cookies. Last year I found a really interesting recipe for shortbread that's flavoured with Rosemary and that was really nice. It was a real change from the usual. In other years I've made things called cheddar loonies, which are sort of shortbread flavoured with sharp cheddar cheese.

[Music]

MARGARET PROUSE: You do need to have a strategy when you're shipping cookies because you don't want the recipient to end up with a pile of crumbs, one part of the strategy starts early and that's to choose the right one. Just choose something that's not too delicate. Like, for example, a nice, lacy, thin cookie might break down too easily or a whipped shortbread might crumble too much. So something that's a little more substantial. Biscotti are good, gingerbread are good or thicker shortbreads are good. I like to protect them by packing them in tins rather than in boxes and then package them in a plastic bag that goes inside the tins. Packing them separately really helps, too. If you have crisp cookies and soft cookies, you wouldn't want to pack them together because the soft ones would make the crisp ones lose all their Christmas. Also the flavours, it's good to keep strong flavoured cookies like ginger snaps away from other ones so that the others won't take up the flavour. And when you're packing a parcel to go in the mail, I think it's really good to keep the cookies in the middle of the parcel and surround it with other gifts or with bubble wrap just to be a little bit of a shock absorber.

[Music]

MARGARET PROUSE: This year, I have one more person that I'm baking for, because our daughter, who lives off island in another part of Canada, won't be able to come home this year because of travel restrictions due to COVID. So we're sending her some cookies. I think this year everybody's feeling pretty fragile. It's been a long year, it's been a tough year, and I think to receive a gift of something who made some cookies that come from a person's own hands in their own kitchen is going to mean a lot to people. It just shows how much you think about them and care about them and wish you could be with them. So it gives you a little taste of their own kitchen and their own love arriving in a parcel at your own doorstep.

MG: Margaret Prouse, food columnist for the Charlottetown Guardian in PEI. What are you baking this year? I mean, ginger snaps, obviously. But beyond that, what are you baking and perhaps who are you baking for? You can let us know. Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca Or tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. That is The Current for this Monday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Tom Power speaking with the head coach of the Toronto Raptors, Nick Nurse, who in addition to being a great coach, is also a big jazz fan, has a piano in his office and is obsessed with the music of the pianist Thelonious Monk. You'll hear about the influence that that has had on his winning career as a coach. That's coming up on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take good care and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: theme]

Dec. 7, 2020 episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode