Scientists around the world race to find a vaccine for coronavirus

Guests: Paul Hodgson, Maria Bottazzi, Steven Jones

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VOICE: Over the course of the patient's admission, he developed severe pneumonia. In his last few days, the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement. However, the condition of the patient deteriorated within the last 24 hours, resulting in his demise.

MG: The Philippines Department of Health, yesterday reporting the first death outside of China from the new coronavirus. The death toll in China has now jumped to more than 350, according to the Chinese government, while at least 17000 more are infected with the virus. And the World Health Organization is continuing to call this a global health emergency. As officials struggle to stop the spread of the coronavirus and care for the sick, scientists around the world are racing to create a vaccine. Some of the key people working on that vaccine are here in Canada. Paul Hodgson is associate director for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the International Vaccine Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. Paul, good morning.

PAUL HODGSON: Good morning, Matt. How are you today?

MG: I'm well. When did your lab begin to work on a vaccine for this coronavirus?

PAUL HODGSON: Basically, as soon as the virus sequence was made public, we were looking at trying to get that virus. So what we did is we ordered the sequence so we can reassemble that. In the meantime, we worked actively with the Public Health Agency of Canada to try and source clinical virus samples.

MG: And when you say the sequence is that that's essentially the genetic code of this virus?

PAUL HODGSON: Yes, absolutely. So it's the genetic code that Chinese published that relatively rapidly after they identified this to allow worldwide scientists to continue to work on this new virus.

MG: What happens then? Once you get that genetic code, what's the next step?

PAUL HODGSON: So what that allows us to do is look at sequence comparisons against other coronaviruses. So Vito has been working on coronaviruses for decades now. We developed the first coronavirus for cattle. We've developed a swine coronavirus. We worked on the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative. We have ongoing research in MERS. So what that allows us to do and if we focus on the human side, isn't do genetic comparisons or sequence comparisons between the other coronaviruses to see what similarities there are and what we've learned from these other coronaviruses that could be valuable. So what we know is that there is a protein called a spike protein that seems to be protective in the other ones, and that's where we focussed our efforts. So we are going to start now producing a an antigen so that so a vaccine would have two components, generally an antigen, which is a piece of the bug in an adjuvant to help your immune system fight the bug better. We have that in-house and we're amplifying that now to create antigen to see if it's protective against this new virus.

MG: You mentioned SARS as well as MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, the work that your lab has done with those is key to what you're doing now with coronavirus?

PAUL HODGSON: Absolutely. So I had a question earlier, well, if this bug goes away, we've wasted all our time, and that's absolutely false. What we've learned from each one of these and now remember that this is the third coronavirus outbreak in about 18 years. So one every six years and every time we advance a scientific understanding that ienables us to react more quickly to any new bugs.

MG: This is a global story. And so how much contact does your team have of scientists around the world who are doing similar work?

PAUL HODGSON: So right now, we are on regular teleconferences with the World Health Organization, with countries around the world. And just from a logistics perspective and time zones, you can imagine that's not the easiest thing to do to try and align all these things. So and part of that is people have asked about whether this is collaborative, competitive. To my view, this has been completely collaborative where people have been talking about how to share reagents and even Canada with Sunnybrook and we have the infrastructure at our labs, what's called a containment level three ag lab, probably the most advanced infectious disease research infrastructure in the world right now where we're trying to align scientists from around Canada to get in there and drive the science around this faster.

MG: Should we be surprised that this is collaborative and not competitive? Last night that the drug company GlaxoSmithKline is offering to help with technologies that they have. We know that there's probably a huge financial benefit to being the first company that creates a vaccine, but you're saying that this is more of a collaborative approach.

PAUL HODGSON: So there could be a financial benefit, but bringing a vaccine through the regulatory channels is not an inexpensive exercise. So with SARS, we had companies working on that and SARS died out. So that money is then has been lost to the company. But it's realistically at the same time it's companies that have the pocketbooks to bring these forward. And you know, when we get into human clinical trials for phase one, phase two, phase three, the government can alter how they the timelines and what they expect from that based on if this is 17000 cases now and next week it's 5000 cases. Not going to happen, but if this turns to 170,000 cases two weeks from now, that's really going to make the governments look at what they can do to try and expedite getting the vaccine through clinical trials and out into save people.

MG: What is it like in the lab right now as this story continues to grow, not just day by day, but hour by hour?

PAUL HODGSON: So I said in an interview previously, for it's for us, it's all hands on deck. It's we're doing everything in our power to make sure that the people are there, the equipment's there and even so, I'll give you a little bit of description of what happens in our level 3. So this is, there's four containment levels in infectious disease. Level 4 is the highest one. And the only Level 4 facility in Canada is a national micro lab in Winnipeg. So we are called a level three ag. So we are able to work with diseases that have been designated by the Public Health Agency of Canada or the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is level three. When these bugs go between animals and humans, we put a fancy term around it. We call it the zoonotic diseases. But the evidence suggests that this may have also originated in a bat. And so what we're doing is we're looking at animal models, but containment is all about airflow. And so our investigators in these level 3 labs and they would work in biocontainment hoods, would be double or triple gloved. They would be in Tyvek suits. They would have a positive pressure ventilators on them. So they would wear this on the hip. So it basically runs through something called a HEPA filter, high efficiency particulate air. And all it does is sterilize the air. So there's always positive air pressure blowing over your face, so you can't inadvertently suck in a bug. And all this work in the lab is done in like I said, in a containment hood also. So that's your first line of defence.

MG: And when you said that this is all hands on deck, given the time differences, I mean there are scientists in Australia that are working on this, Europe, you must be up in the middle of the night trying to be in contact with everybody.

PAUL HODGSON: So, yep, we have, the time zones make things interesting. And, you know, that could, you could view that as an advantage too, because what's going on for 12 hours in Australia before they hit the, go to bed is now starting up in Canada. So this is an incredible alignment of world efforts on this and I think it's absolutely fantastic.

MG: What's the timeline here? When do you think a vaccine would get to market?

PAUL HODGSON: So that's a very tough question. Under normal circumstances, people, you know, you could be looking at 10 years and they say 500 million to a billion dollars. This is gonna be expedited, obviously, based on what we've done. And we've suggested before that we could probably have one within a year if we fast tracked it. But again, I think it depends on where this goes. So we will have clinic, we will have animal model data. So once we have the antigen and once we create a prototypical vaccine, we would vaccinate animals and then see whether their immune response is able to protect them. And we could have that done in very, very short order, probably three months, two to three months for at least preliminary data. But it's all the steps after that. So manufactured, good manufacturing, GMP manufacturing and and safety. That's the biggest one, obviously, safety to make sure this is safe toxicology. And then we would start to enter clinical trials. But that's going to be up to the government.

MG: And just in the last few seconds that we have, is there the worry? You talked about SARS dying out before a vaccine was created. Is there a worry that that could repeat itself, that you won't need a vaccine in this case?

PAUL HODGSON: That's the best case scenario. Not a worry.

MG: Not a worry.

PAUL HODGSON: That's what we want to see.

MG: I guess the concern is that some people say that we could see this story over again and that's what we saw with SARS. So the vaccine wasn't created and that, as you mentioned, another coronavirus appears.

PAUL HODGSON: So ideally, based on the data we've learned from SARS and MERS and this new one, we are going to be able to mine genetic codes and look at new technologies where we might be able to develop a vaccine that protects against all of the all of the coronaviruses at once. And so that's they're talking about the flu too right. If we could create a vaccine that protects against all strains and everything we've done now is is very applicable to anything that might come in the future. And remember, this is, we've had one every six years, so we're expecting something else to come through. It might not be a coronavirus, but something will come out again.

MG: Great to talk to you, Paul. Thank you.

PAUL HODGSON: Thank you very much.

MG: Paul Hodgson, associate director for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, the International Vaccine Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. We mentioned the comparisons of this coronavirus to SARS. Maria Bottazzi is co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine. She's working and has worked on developing a vaccine for SARS. Maria, good morning to you.

MARIA BOTTAZZI: Good morning, Matt. Pleasure to be with your audience.

MG: Thank you for joining us. In Houston, I am told that there is a freezer that could hold the key to the coronavirus vaccine. What is in that freezer?

MARIA BOTTAZZI: Well, we think so. Indeed back in 2011, when the original SARS was, you know, certainly going around, we were funded by the National Institutes of Health to develop a subunit vaccine using not only proven technology as well as proven adjuvants, and through 2011 to 2016, we've actually manufactured such a vaccine candidate and it's been sitting in the freezer since then, certainly under formal evaluation and it's still quite stable and ideally suitable for immediate deployment.

MG: Why did that work end before the vaccine was finished?

MARIA BOTTAZZI: So multiple factors, right? You know, the shift, of course, of the priorities where, of course, has, you know, once one outbreak kind of ends, then we had the MERS coming up. So there was a shift to try to identify potential suitable candidates for the other coronavirus. Ultimately, I think this is where there's probably a little bit of a gap in how we react against these outbreaks. We should have been proactive and at minimum, you know, be able to evaluate a technology that has already advanced to the point where, of course, as you have the manufacturer, even for clinical use to confirm, you know, not only in toxicology studies, maybe then doing a first in human to evaluate immediate safety and then we would have been able to stockpile it and evaluate immediately, you know, during this case, a very similar outbreak.

MG: Paul had hinted at this. There is a very close relationship between, as we understand it right now, SARS and this new coronavirus. Right? People have said that in some ways it's almost 80 percent similar. Is that fair to say?

MARIA BOTTAZZI: That's correct. And there's three and maybe four important facts here. So one, we know that when you look at the genetic code, the actual sequence of the SARS virus compared to this new Wuhan virus, as you mentioned, we have around 80 percent homologous and 75 percent identity between not only the entire coronavirus protein that Dr. Hodgson also mentioned a spike protein, but more importantly, the peace within the spike protein, which is called their receptor binding domain, which is really what the spike protein in the virus uses to bind and enter the human cells. Second, we know that that receptor that this virus uses is the same receptor that the original SARS virus also used in. This is called the ACE2 receptor. And third, we even know now that when you evaluate convalescence sera from a patient that was infected with SARS back in the early 2000s, the fear of this individual can progneutralize this new Wuhan virus.

MG: So there are many, many similarities there. It's interesting because there are similarities to just in terms of process to other things as well. I want to bring in Steven Jones, who is the associate provost health at the University of Saskatchewan. He was working on an early vaccination for Ebola. Steven, good morning to you.

STEVEN JONES: Good morning, Matt.

MG: When you hear Maria talk about how far along she was when it came to the SARS vaccine and then things essentially grinding to a halt. What goes through your mind?

STEVEN JONES: It's a familiar story. We did some really good work in developing the V SV Ebola vaccine. And how to contract, have it commercially made. The scale up was certainly challenging, but finding a commercial partner to drive that vaccine through Phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials was impossible without the context of the 2014-15 West African Ebola outbreak. And it is really disappointing that 20,000 people have to become sick before we're able to do this. But that was the situation.

MG: You and I have spoken about this before. Just remind us about the issues that you faced in getting back vaccine to market and why it was that it didn't happen.

STEVEN JONES: So the the product we working on the DC vaccine was extremely effective and in animal models and the barrier to getting it done, there were lots of them. So getting enough money to develop the vaccines, we developed two vaccines, one for Marburg, one for Ebola virus. The Ebola is the the famous sister. Marburg is is not so infamous. And we were able to get some of the some of the money requested to develop the Ebola virus vaccine. And we did that. But the the cost of actually driving this through clinical trials, as as Paul said earlier, can be quite high. And the reality is that public health spending nationally and globally is focussed on the things which are most important at that time. And Ebola was not one of those. The previous outbreaks had been relatively small and reasonably remote locations with little indication that they would become public health emergencies. And so the money was just not available to do it. And vaccine companies are companies. They have a obligation, their legal obligation is to make money for their shareholders and these candidate vaccines are not seen as being very profitable, unfortunately. And I mean, the same is true for new novel antibiotics. Right? We're running out of antibiotics, which are effective in some cases and there's no financial incentive to develop new ones.

MG: Maria, you can hear the frustration in Steven's voice when he talks about the work that he did with the Ebola virus. How frustrated were you when it came to the SARS vaccine that you were working on?

MARIA BOTTAZZI: I of course, also we are frustrated equally. I think, you know, definitely Dr. Jones raises a big problem, right? It's this concept of a business model that these types of vaccines, especially vaccines for neglected infections, vaccines for these outbreaks, emerging infections. There is no model how to bring them all the way to the end. Right? So, you know, you can certainly have Institutes of Health such as our NIH that, you know, certainly fund the initial from, let's say that benched even up to maybe the first in human in the clinic, even though it's quite hard to find enough funding to do the big ticket items, right. You know, the manufacturing campaign, the scale up, you know, the toxicology, of course, the first in human. But then once you even if you prove first in human safety, you know, securing the funds to do the advanced clinical development, securing the funds to even do improved product development for large scale improvements of the manufacture. You know, it does require a big partner and it can be a partner, certainly our governmental partner. I mean, we, of course, have experience even working with big developing country vaccine manufacturing networks. But ultimately, it is a challenge.

MG: What would it take for you to take that thing out of the freezer and repurpose it for work on this current coronavirus?

MARIA BOTTAZZI: So it's you know, in my mind and certainly our team's mind is as simple as, you know, maybe even just a couple of million dollars, right. Take it out. Do a quick formulation evaluating to a GOP toxicity study, which usually you can do it in three or four months. You know, maybe with, you know, half a million dollars, then if you, of course, show that safety in the animal models toxicity very rapidly since the material is already at clinical grade and you can formulate, fill in, finish and do a first in human and in less than a year, you at least could have a safety signal in humans. While in parallel, of course, we agree that we have to confirm reactivity of this, of the SARS molecule and certainly confirm that you know it's going to cross protect. But you know, why do we have to wait for those experiments before we even advance this? I mean, again, it's sitting in the freezer, it's clinical grade, it's stable. It has a high likelihood. We need someone to help us move that along.

MG: Steven Jones, just in the remaining minute that we have, what do you think the larger lesson is from both of your work here when we talk about viruses like this?

STEVEN JONES: I think the lesson is that this will happen again. As Paul said there've been three emergencies of new coronaviruses in the last 18 years. I've been involved in the control of the first two outbreaks. It will happen again and again. And we do need better mechanisms, public health and government officials across the world, responsible for public health learn the same lessons again and again. Because this happens, it goes quiet for five years, priorities are shifted to other things and then it comes back and we have to do this again. And the sorts of teams which are required to control these outbreaks using traditional methods and the types of teams which are required to build vaccines and drugs to to stop them spreading are not easily assembled. And when the money disappears, so do the people to other projects. That's a problem.

PAUL HODGSON: When the money disappears seems to be the key phrase. It's good to speak with you both about the work that you're doing. Maria. Thank you.

MARIA BOTTAZZI: Thank you.

MG: And Steven, thank you so much.

STEVEN JONES: Thank you very much.

MG: Maria Bottazzi is the co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine. She was in Houston, Texas, Steven Jones, associate provost of health at the University of Saskatchewan. He was in Saskatoon. The CBC News is next. And then in half an hour, Susan Ormiston is live at the Iowa caucuses. Today's the first big test for the Democrats who want to take on Donald Trump. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about polarization and how America became so polarized and how comments like this one from Michael Moore became commonplace.

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VOICE: I am as civil as any Eagle Scout Catholic altar boy could be when confronted with the devil.

MG: Strong words. We'll talk about why we are so polarized. Coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stick around.

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Vox founder Ezra Klein on why deepening political polarization is leading in delegitimizing US democracy

Guests: Ezra Klein

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, why new immigrants are flocking to Winkler, Manitoba and staying. But first, how America became so polarized.

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: American momentum is now around winning. The winning that outsider candidate Donald Trump promised us, not the anarchy Democrats a.k.a. a demon rats want to impose on us. The tactics of these demon rats and Trump painting leftists are backfiring. Americans are now buying in to and choosing results over politically correct losing behaviour of other presidents.

MG: Well, that was Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections. It's that kind of vitriol that's become common in U.S. politics. In his new book, Why We're Polarized. Ezra Klein looks at the roots and the consequences of that approach to politics. News junkies would know Ezra Klein as the co-founder of the news and opinion website Vox. Ezra Klein, good morning.

EZRA KLEIN: Glad to be here.

MG: Demon rats?

EZRA KLEIN: Demon rats.

MG: When you hear that, what is it tell you about the state of America?

EZRA KLEIN: So that doesn't tell me as much as one might think, which is to say that you can go back into the earliest moments of American political history and find that kind of nonsense coming from nonsensical people like that. It's always been there, right. Heavy political rhetoric, attacking, demonizing the other side. What is different now is the sheer number of layered identities and conflicts and ideologies that split the two parties. So there's always been political enmity. There's always, even in this country, been political violence. What there has not always been is such a vast array of disagreements layered on top of each other. It's very hard for people to imagine being on the other side. And when I hear Jeanine Pirro making arguments like that, she is you know, she is what she is. She is a provocateur. But there are a lot of other people who are not. But what they see when they look at the other side is something more like what she's framing. And the problem for American politics is that unlike a lot of other political systems, including many ways the Canadian system, with this level of enmity, our political system ceases to function because it demands high levels of bipartisan compromise to move forward. And compromise is not something that most of the players in American politics and certainly not on the Republican side want right now.

MG: In some ways, like an obvious question, but when you look at it, how bad is it right now? How bad is the state of polarization? We might have an opinion from outside or people who are in it might say this is the worst that it's ever been. Truly, how bad is it?

EZRA KLEIN: So we had a civil war in this country. So it has been worse. The thing I would say here is that polarization itself is not a situation where the worse it gets, the more it is bad. Polarization is in many ways neutral. Too little polarization can also be bad in the mid century American political system. Political scientists felt that the big problem in American politics was we too little party polarization can be a problem because if the parties are not running on clear agendas or they're not honouring those agendas when they get elected, then the American people do not have the ability to have votes that count. There may be voting for a conservative Democrat in the South and a liberal Democrat in the north. And then the Democratic Party itself doesn't actually hew to either agenda. So polarization is what it is. It can be very bad. It can be good. Having disagreements that are clear and clearly constructed sometimes allows us to have them. Oftentimes the alternative to polarization, which is true for much of the mid 20th century in American politics, is not peace, but it is suppression, suppression of things like racial equality and some of the other issues that would divide the country and maybe need to divide the country for a resolution. The problem in our system is that the way polarization interacts with a presidential system with divided dimensions of democratic political power and I mean here small d Democratic political power, popular majority political power that has made it so that when you get this awful polarization, it's very bad for the political system. You can imagine a political system that works and even thrives among deep disagreements between the parties. But that is not what we have. And so you have someone like Barack Obama who have very different political style, obviously, than Donald Trump, have very different ideas. But he was very polarizing himself, despite all of his efforts to not be. He was the most polarizing president in the record of polling until Donald Trump.

MG: Give me an example of that because people might say, what? How would he be as polarizing as?

EZRA KLEIN: I mean, he says literally that in polling, Republican approval and disapproval of him was the highest gap from Democratic approval and disapproval of any president in history, since we had polling. Which to be fair, is only for 60 or 70 years at that point. But nevertheless, like we've had a lot of polarizing moments in that period. And by the way, before Obama, the record was set by George W. Bush and before George W. Bush, by Bill Clinton, and then after Obama, by Donald Trump. So the point I'm making here is that polar polarization is a trend in American politics. It absorbs different kinds of politicians with different approaches, even the ones who try to be non polarizing. And so what you're seeing there is something happening to the system, something happening to the structure of American politics and party dimensions, not something that is a direct result of just what a president says or even what they tried to do.

MG: Does the rhetoric of polarization exist on each side? You heard from Fox News there, but on the other side, on the left, do you still hear that rhetoric of polarization?

EZRA KLEIN: Yes, I would say that there is not an analogue to Fox News on the Democratic side, not to say there are not players and media publications that would like to be the Fox News of the Democratic side. But the Democratic side is much more woven into mainstream media institutions. So a Pew poll came out that asked Democrats and Republicans which publications and media outlets they trusted, and they gave them 30 different outlets ranging from left to right. Democrats trusted either. I'm trying to remember this for 20 or 22 of them. And they trusted outlets ranging from left to centre right, like the Wall Street Journal. Republicans trusted only seven of the 30 outlets, and primarily those were highly conservative outlets like Rush Limbaugh. Fox News even more telling the outlet Republicans trusted most had had double the trust of any other outlet in the country was Fox News with something like 60 percent. And there was also the outlet that they relied on the most, 65 percent. I think it was if Republicans had watched Fox News in the previous week. Among Democrats, the single most trusted and relied on CNN, which say what you will about CNN, it is an outlet that prides itself on having both sides. It fired a bunch of Republicans for not being sufficiently pro Trump and brought on more pro Trump Republicans. So Democrats are dealing with a media are media outlets that often discipline their polarization. Pull it back a little bit. Even as others do want to push it forward, whereas Republicans are caught much more in a polarizing informational universe. So these things are not symmetrical. But it is certainly the case that if you listen to Democrats talk about Donald Trump, I would say from my perspective, as somebody who is in my old ways polarized with with some good reason, it is simply not the case that both sides are completely equal. But you can find some very alarmist rhetoric on the Democratic side. The difference is that that rhetoric reaches to the very top of Republican Party politics and media and dominates it in ways the Democratic Party, both in its politics and media, is more mixed.

MG: We're seeing this play out now with the talk around impeachment. If you take a look at the impeachment story, how could that exacerbate polarization in America?

EZRA KLEIN: I would say that impeachment is showing great polarization has broken American politics. So the American political system is built to have branches of government competing and checking and overseeing each other. Impeachment itself is meant to have a congressional, an institution of Congress and the House and the Senate that acts as an institution to check an out-of-control executive. And you saw that now have we were not built to have political parties. Exactly. So in the 1970s, when Richard Nixon ends up resigning, he resigns because Republican members of the Senate go to him and say he will not survive the vote. He does not actually get impeached. He resigns because his own party will not support him. I think there's no doubt that if Richard Nixon's impeachment happened in this era of American politics, he would have survived. In fact, was a very telling moment on Fox News, where whole Harold Rivera said to Sean HANNITY that you are the difference between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon. And that was maybe a moment that was a little more telling than they had intended it to be. So impeachment, it is very polarizing. But the problem is that it doesn't really need to be there isn't a deep existential reason why Donald Trump having abused power with a potential remedy for that, being that Mike Pence, who is in every way more down the line Republican and more liked, at least by the establishment Republican Party, would then become president. It's not like if you impeach Donald Trump, a Democrat becomes president. There's not a real reason that has to be polarizing. But right now, everything in American politics is polarizing. It cuts on party lines. And as such, not only is impeachment polarizing, but as a mechanism for controlling an executive, it is broken by polarization.

MG: You have said that this polarization in many ways is driven in the United States by race. Tell me more about that and what you mean by that.

EZRA KLEIN: So I would say that what was more distinct was at our deep polarization was driven by race and not in a great way. So in the aftermath of the civil war, American politics looks like it is two parties, Republican Democratic parties. But what it really has is for parties, it is a Democratic Party more or less as we think. But today it has the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party, which are these Southern Democrats who have almost total control over the South. Remember, the Republican Party was a party that invaded and occupied the American South at that point in living memory. So the South hated Republicans. They hated them. Democrats occupied at certain points 95 percent of all political positions in the South. But the Democratic Party was like an authoritarian one party rule in the south. And then nationally, it acted in coalition with the National Democratic Party, where the basic agreement was. The Dixiecrats will help the Democrats hold power as long as the Democrats help the Dixiecrats protect racial segregation in the South. And so you had a wide range of opinion and Democrats and then similarly in the republic by liberal Republicans and Northeastern conservative Republicans elsewhere. And so what happens is that rupture begins around the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act is a very divisive issue in American politics, but it is not a party polarizing one. A higher proportion of Republicans vote Civil Rights Act in Congress than Democrats do, even though it is pushed and passed ultimately by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. But that begins this realignment of the parties. The Southern Dixiecrats become Republicans. Barry Goldwater runs against the Civil Rights Act, win some states of the old Confederacy for the very first time, and the Democratic Party becomes a Liberal Party, and after that, they get a lot of other kinds of polarization. You do get more racial polarization in the sense the Democratic Party is now fit about half an on white. The Republican Party is overwhelmingly white. We also begin to get a lot more religious polarization. The Democratic Party's single largest religious group is the unaffiliated, whereas Republican parties overwhelmingly Christian. You get more ideological polarization, as I mentioned, geographic polarization with a widening divide between cities and rural areas, psychological polarization, cultural polarization. It's sort of the whole thing begins to sort itself. And so it isn't that race is the only thing happening now, although it is one of the most combustible forms of polarization in American life when it connects to politics. But it is that race was the thing that had deformed American politics for a very long time. And once it began to sort itself by party, that created the conditions for the very high levels of polarization, not just on race. But really on everything that we see now.

MG: And is that reflected in how and who the various parties encompass and also reflect? If you take a look.

EZRA KLEIN: Absolutely.

MG: Who the Democratic Party brings in and who it listens to and who compared to how and who the Republican Party would listen to?

EZRA KLEIN: Absolutely. As I mentioned a minute ago, the coalitions or just very different. The Democratic Party is half non-white and in being half non-white, it's a coalition of a lot of different racial groups. It has obviously liberal whites, but it has African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, mixed race people. The Democratic Party's about 90 percent white. The Republic Party is about 90 percent white. Democratic Party. It is a coalition of a lot of different religious groups. I mentioned that its largest group is the religiously unaffiliated, but it has liberal white Christians. It has more traditional African-American Christians, it has Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Jews, et cetera. So these ways of constructing parties are very different in the sense the Democratic Party has to be much more coalition all. It's much less one type of person demographically than the Republican Party is. That's true. Ideologically, to 75 percent of Republicans identify as conservative. Only 50 percent of Democrats do. So when you're a Democrat trying to win power, you have to appeal to many different kinds of people. Republicans don't. That's then amplified by the way geography works in the American political system. I mentioned earlier, Republicans are very dominant in rural areas. That's quite dominant in cities. But American politics amplifies the power of rural areas. It does it through the Electoral College, through the Senate, small state bias and also through geography and gerrymandering in the House. So Republicans are able to win elections despite not winning a majority of the vote. Most of the time about Donald Trump being a very good example of this. The Democratic Party can't do that. It actually tends to have to win more than 51 percent of the vote to hold power at the presidential Senate or House levels and throughout the Supreme Court. So Democratic Party just has to follow very different incentives in the Republican Party does.

MG: You often hear politicians and you'll hear from both sides of the aisle talk about the idea of a big tent. We want a big tent. We want a diversity of opinions to exist in our big tent. Does the base of either party, the Republicans or the Democrats, actually do they want a big tent?

EZRA KLEIN: As far as I can tell, the Democratic Party does tend to act in a way to have a big tent. We'll see if that continues, right. The forces. We might just be in a world where the Democratic Party is lagging behind the poll. The Republican Party's response to polarization. But if you even look at how Barack Obama ran in 2008 and 2012, he was a big tent kind of candidate. And Donald Trump very much, was not he? Donald Trump was very much about breaking the party into two halves and hoping his half would win. The resulting fight now. The fact that neither that even though both candidates had such different strategies, they actually ended up with not that dissimilar political coalition speaks to the power of polarization. Whether parties want a big tent does not mean they can have one. But nevertheless, there are different approaches. And again, I think it's done because among other things, Democrats realize they can't win without a bigger tent right now in the Democratic Party. The electability debate for 2020 is all about how can you win over these somewhat older, more working class, more conservative whites in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? You do not hear a similar story happening in the Republican Party as you think about how to win over Hispanic or African-American voters in California. And so just that that need to cater to America's political geography as it exists just demands very different things, the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. And that shows up in their strategies.

MG: How much does a voter's identity play in to how she or he would invest himself in the political party that they support?

EZRA KLEIN: So the more what we call stacked identities you have versus cross cutting identities. So these are identities that link into politics. If you're a Southerner who's a union member and a Democrat, but you're an evangelical and so on, that's cross cutting identity of identity, some that would pull you a little bit towards Democrats and they pull you a little bit towards Republicans and you make the choice you make. The more people have stagnate enemies. Imagine that your liberal, atheist, gay Californian who lives in Los Angeles like you are gonna find just empirically the Republican Party much more threatening to you. And by the way, that might be because our polling party literally is more threatening to you. So the more identities you have to stack up with the generalized nature of the political party, you're part of the more hostility and fear and dislike you're likely to have of the other, of the out party, of the outgroup. Of course, these are averages. They do not speak to every single individual. But in general, that's what we see. We actually see that identity is a much better predictor of how you feel about the other group than policy is. So Democrats whose policy preferences should make them Republicans. They're more hostile to the Republican Party than Democrats whose identities put them more or less in the Republican camp. So identity tends to drive politics much more than policy does.

MG: What is the Whole Foods Cracker Barrel political divide?

EZRA KLEIN: So that just relates to the fact that America's political geography maps onto a lot of other preferences in American life. So after the 2010 election, the electoral analyst Dave Wasserman noted that House Democrats now represented I believe it's 78 percent of all Whole Foods and House Republicans now represented a similar number of cracker barrels. I think Democrats only have about 25 percent of cracker barrels. And that's not because Whole Foods and Cracker Barrel want to only serve one party or another. It's because our politics maps onto other things like our psychology and our geographic preferences. And Whole Foods is for people who like to try a lot of new things and, you know, those people tend to live in big cities.

MG: AndmMaybe have the disposable income to go and spend a lot of more money on food?

EZRA KLEIN: Maybe that's actually not, that might be true for Whole Foods and Cracker Barrel. I don't know. It actually is not the case, the Democratic Party and the Republic Party have huge income differentials to them. A lot of very wealthy people are Republicans. A lot of very wealthy people are Democrats. Donald Trump in general did I believe his electoral coalition had a higher than median income. So it isn't the case as a stereotype sometimes have it that richer people are all liberals or the richer people are all conservatives. Income does not cut politics as sharply as a lot of people who like to boil politics down to class would prefer that it did.

MG: It speaks to something that you said earlier though, which is that it's hard in some ways to imagine being on the other side.

EZRA KLEIN: I think the disagreements here are pretty deep. Human beings are very sensitively tuned to groups. We have been that way, going way, way, way back into our existence, way before politics as we think of it now. So the more of our groups collect into one mega group, the more we're gonna feel some outgroup, hostility and fear the other group. The argument I try to make again and again in the book is that polarization. And the way we respond to it is quite rational as a response to increasing levels of difference between the two parties. So as the other party becomes more different than you in its policy and in its demographics, of course you're going to feel more hostile towards it. I make the point in the book that in 1976, Republican Party's national convention platform talks about abortion and anything it says about abortion is in our party. There are some who believe abortion should be legal in all cases and other who believe it should be illegal in all cases. And we respect that difference in opinion that is very different than what the Republican Party looks like now and somewhat. And to use another issue, if you look at Bill Clinton's 1992 1996 platform on immigration, it sounds like Donald Trump does today. So the. Parties are just much more sorted on issues today, and as such. If people find the other party more concerning, that isn't crazy. It isn't them being unable to imperfectly imagine themselves in somebody else's shoes. It is a rational response to the other party being more different.

MG: What is social media done to that divide?

EZRA KLEIN: Nothing good. Social media is not the beginning of this divide. These trends well predate social media and in fact in other countries you see in some cases declining polarization in countries with the very highest levels of broadband penetration. So the effect of social media is complicated in American politics. I don't think as any doubt that social media is a polarization, accelerant and in particular, polarization, accelerant, because political elites are very woven in to highly politicized forms of social media and they respond to the politics they see there. It's a continuing refrain. The Democratic primary this year that Twitter is not real life, and that's because so many members of the Democratic Party are on Twitter. And in particular, candidates and their staffers and the media on Twitter seem these very highly polarizing fights and seeming to think that reflects the actual electorate when the elected primarily is not on Twitter, does not care, is not paying nearly as close attention. And so a political campaign that runs a Twitter strategy is missing how most people actually feel about politics. But the more that political elites are on Twitter and Facebook and so on and are responding to that very, very super polarized ecosystem they see there, they end up in many cases creating a political system they believe is in existence and that means that the rest of us have to make more polarized decisions because they're the ones structuring our choices.

MG: What are you most worried about when it comes to the level of polarization that exists right now?

EZRA KLEIN: I'm worried that American government will not be able to translate popular vote majorities into governing power, into effective policy, and then that the American public will not be able to make decisions about whether or not they'll like how they're being governed so that we can have a system that has clear lines of governing authority and governing accountability. I don't think polarization itself is a huge problem for a system, or at least it doesn't have to be. But I do think being unable to govern and solve problems and unable to have a clear way for the public to judge whether or not they like one party's agenda or the other. That is a kind of thing that breaks in American political system or breaks a political system.

MG: Is that system already broken? People talk about and I mean, again, it's not new now, but people will talk about how little collaboration, cooperation, shared vision there actually is. Is that already happening now? That breaking of the system?

EZRA KLEIN: Yes.

MG: That's not encouraging.

EZRA KLEIN: No, it's not. I always want to tell people that I don't think people like me are in the hope business. I'm trying to accurately describe the way the American political system works. And I don't think that if you accurately describe it, it should leave you feeling particularly optimistic. I think having a good understanding of how it works is the first step to fixing it. But I also don't think it means that you're going to be able to fix it. The one more hopeful thing I'll say is that the American medical system has often been terrible. I think we have a nostalgic view of our past. But you wouldn't prefer to be in the system of 40 years ago or 80 years ago or 120 years ago. And that should at least give us some confidence about where we are now. We might be at a bad moment in our trend, but we're not at a particular bad level or much more of a democracy than we were 60 years ago, for instance. So, look, politics is often bad. It's often frustrating. It's going to continue to be so. But yes, American politics at the moment is either broken or it is breaking and we should take that seriously and try to understand why that is.

MG: People will see this as an American story, but how have America's adversaries capitalized on the polarization you've been talking about?

EZRA KLEIN: When you look at the way Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, they tried to interfere by exacerbating these points of polarization and aggravation. So if you look at say, the social media campaign, it is very much about increasing racial polarization. They had these fake Black Lives Matter groups and then fake sort of white nationalist groups. And what they were doing with, I think, a very adroit understanding of how American politics worked was what they're trying to do was increase levels of polarization, just such that Americans are fighting with each other more. What Russia cares about above all else is discord and the decline of faith that Americans are having in their democracy and making American moxie look bad around the world. So the more they can pit us at each other and show that we have no way of resolving our problems in a decent way, the more they are achieving their goals.

MG: You're not in the business of hope and selling hope, but what is the answer in terms of trying to turn the polarization down?

EZRA KLEIN: I'm a believer in democratization, but I want to be very clear that I don't think there's an answer in terms of turning polarization down. I think there's an answer in terms of reforming the American political system to work amidst polarization and the set of ideas I have around that have to do with making it clear for popular majorities to be able to win powers, getting rid of things like the Electoral College and gerrymandering, and then making sure that power can actually express itself in terms of policy. So getting rid of things like the filibuster, reforming campaign finance, et cetera. But I think that people often want to solve polarization by reversing polarization and to my knowledge, there is no scalable solution for reliably doing that. So we're yeah, we're not going away from this anytime soon. There's not a magic answer.

MG: Ezra Klein, it's great to speak with you. Thank you.

EZRA KLEIN: Thank you.

MG: Ezra Klein's new book is called Why We're Polarized. We'd love to hear from you on this. Is politics as polarized as Ezra Klein suggests? What about here in Canada? You can tweet us @TheCurrent CBC. Send us an email, thecurrent@cbc.ca or go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up in 90 seconds, we will take you to the Iowa caucuses, the first leg of the 2020 presidential race. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stick around.

[Music]

Iowa caucuses will be the first time American citizens have chance to stand behind a candidate for the 2020 election, says Susan Ormiston

Guests: Susan Ormiston

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

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VOICE: Did you see they did a New York Times poll, I think, of Iowa. And they have me pitted against every one of the socialists. And we're winning by a lot, everyone, we're beating them all. We're beating them all.

MG: You know that Donald Trump will have his eyes on Iowa tonight, and so will anyone else who's interested in American politics. Despite the fact that it is a relatively small number of voters in a small state, the Iowa caucuses are seen as an important indicator of who will be Trump's opponent in the presidential election in November. The CBC's Susan Ormiston is tracking it all. Susan, good morning.

SUSAN ORMISTON: Good morning, Matt.

MG: You've been in Iowa for a few days. What is the mood like?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well, they're anxious. I mean, they feel the weight of this decision. You know, people from outside the state who are here campaigning for the various candidates are looking at Iowa and saying, hey, I hope you got this right. You got this right? Like, this is such an important decision seen as a critical election, perhaps more than we've seen in a generation or more. Democrats are desperate, of course, to change the political map here. But I think they're worried, Matt, that they don't know they have the secret sauce yet. They haven't figured out who to coalesce around.

MG: And so given that, what have the campaigns been like for the candidates who are scrambling for those votes?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well, frantic. I mean, you know, several of the top candidates, three of them were stuck in Washington in the impeachment trial for the last two weeks. So they've been sending surrogates out. Everything from their daughter, their husband, their dog with Elizabeth Warren. So now they were back in the state on the weekend running around, doing multiple events, large or small. This is an industry here. Iowa is the first state. We know that. They have a certain pride in that. So you see buses and campaign ads and small gatherings, large gatherings. What is critical, though, is people are engaged. I mean, you know, only about 16 percent of Democrats actually caucus on any given four years, but the mood here is everybody knows you're in town for the caucuses. It's a ritual here.

MG: And is that why it matters? I mean, again, no slight to our dear friends in Iowa. But is it the fact that this is first? Is that why this is so important?

SUSAN ORMISTON: First is important. Iowa isn't important, but being first is so it will give a signal of primarily who is viable, who will get momentum coming out of this. And it's not just how many delegates they'll get because they are few from a small state like this. But it's is this is a candidate going to have the confidence and therefore, will it be will that person be able to continue to raise money and go forward into the next states.

MG: You talked about the candidates being desperate. What about the people there who will be part of those caucuses? Are people excited about what they're going to go through today and tonight?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Yes, they are excited. But as I described, I asked one person about the general election, which is really the big vote, long game. And I said, you know, what about it? And he said, I'm I'm I'm hopeful, confident sort of ish.

MG: That doesn't sound hopeful or confident.

SUSAN ORMISTON: It didn't and he said, no. He said, it's tough and we're worried. So that's really, you know, the essence here. They know the stakes and they're not sure how it's all going to work out or even who is best poised to lead them.

MG: We heard in that clip at the beginning, the president talking about all the polling. Recent polling suggests that Bernie Sanders seems to have some momentum. Is that felt in Iowa? Do you see evidence of that there?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Absolutely. All weekend. I mean, I stood three feet from Bernie Sanders in a cafe on Saturday and heard him speak and thank his supporters. He's got a impressive ground game here and people are coming in from out of state to canvass for him. And they've been doing that for weeks. And it was almost evangelical in that room that, you know, he would say, you know, millions of Americans are going broke trying to pay for health care. And I heard a guy say, that ain't right. And he said, that ain't right. Very interactive, very close, very intimate. And I'll tell you, if Bernie Sanders is surging, it is really making the Democratic elite in the party nervous because they see Bernie as a candidate too far to the left to be able to attract a broader representation of Republicans or pardon me, Democrats, and even attract some moderate Republicans who are fed up with Trump. And they are very worried that out of Iowa, Bernie, may surge and what will they do then?

MG: We had a conversation last week with a former Republican strategist operative who is now offering tips to the Democrats. And his point was this is all about winning. To your point, how much of this caucus is about which candidate can beat Donald Trump as opposed to any of the other issues that might be at play over the course of this campaign?

SUSAN ORMISTON: That is the only question. I mean, Democrats in their hearts in Iowa know tonight they have to go in there and express a confidence for someone who will be able to do what, to beat Donald Trump, to drum him out of the White House. However, that's not such an easy solution. They're not sure which way is the best. Should they go for a trusted, experienced voice like Joe Biden or should they go for a bold new, you know, let's really shake things up, Bernie Sanders? And that's where they're struggling, which is the best solution to fight Donald Trump? But in the end, that is the only ballot question here. It's just how will they get there?

MG: How representative is what we will see tonight of the larger, you talked about that long game of the larger fight, not just for the presidency, but for the Democratic nomination, because as we mentioned, this is a small number of voters in a small state. So how serious, how seriously should we take what happens tonight?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Oh, I think we should take it very seriously. It is a signal, it's a signal of what's to come. It may be a signal there's going to be a fight within the party about which direction they go, progressive or more to the moderates. It may be a signal of who has the momentum to actually attract people to get out and vote, because that's critical. But in the in the representation here in Iowa, it's majority, 90 percent white, so that isn't America. So it's a very small fragment of the population, the demography of the country. And that's where people like Joe Biden say, look, they're already saying, I may not win here, but, hey, in South Carolina, I've got all the African-American votes or most of them, and I'm going to do very well. So it's an indicator, but it's not totally representative.

MG: We'll be watching and listening. Susan, thank you.

SUSAN ORMISTON: You're welcome.

MG: Susan Ormiston, CBC senior correspondent. She is in Des Moines, Iowa.

Winkler’s mayor has successfully recruited and kept immigrants in his small town

Guests: Martin Harder, Nina Pinlac-Manuguid, Hadji Hesso

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. If you are looking for a perfect dish of Filipino rice or noodles, you'll want to head about an hour and a half south of Winnipeg to the small city of Winkler, Manitoba. And it is there that she will find Nina Pinlac-Manuguid and her husband Randolph at their restaurant called Cucina Filipina.

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VOICE: The Canadians like our noodles, rice, noodles, egg noodles, our pork skewers and spring rolls. The Filipinos like our rice meals like because our rice meals are breakfast meals actually in the Philippines, but we usually serve them all day.

MG: Nina arrived in Winkler in 2009. She's one of many new immigrants who have moved to the city of 12,000 and stayed there. Our producer, Suzanne Dufresne visited the restaurant.

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[Sounds from visit at Cucina Filipina restaurant]

MG: Oh, my gosh, I'm starving listening to that. Nina is one of hundreds of immigrants who have made Winkler home since the mid 1990s. They're the exception though. More than three quarters of newcomers to Canada end up in big cities. Those who do go to the smaller centres often leave within a couple of years. And yet, many of Canada's towns and smaller cities are in desperate need of new people to fill jobs. Ottawa is trying to help fill that gap. The federal government announced plans for a new program that will allow municipalities to pick newcomers based on the local job market. A while back, Winkler took matters into its own hands. Martin Harder is the city's mayor. Mayor Harder, good morning.

MARTIN HARDER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Describe your city for us. For people who've never been to Winkler, what does it look like?

MARTIN HARDER: It's a vibrant community. Its industrial based. It's got a rich agricultural heritage and it has got a strong faith based community as well.

MG: And what do you love about it?

MARTIN HARDER: The city of Winkler, I've been mayor since 2006. And the objective all along is to create a community that actually is a community where you want to live in. Not just work, not just there to make money, but in order to raise a family, in order to create a community that meets the needs of a wide population base of people.

MG: Tell me what was happening in the mid-1990s. What was it that made you and the city of Winkler want to take on an active role in recruiting immigrants?

MARTIN HARDER: There were plenty of jobs available and there still are. However, at that particular time, it was pretty desperate. And so immigration was the way to go. We had a local entrepreneur who was a immigration consultant who started things going. During the 90s we had hundreds of families coming per year.

MG: What sort of jobs were you looking to fill at the time?

MARTIN HARDER: Well initially there was a lot of woodwork and a lot of metal work, so there'd be welders and carpenters. But the interesting thing is what we have is we've got a strong contingent of tradespeople and entrepreneurs, including the population base that's from the Philippines, that's here now. And Nina in particular. And they have an imagination. They have an entrepreneurial bent to them. And in reality, that is what has made Winkler successful.

MG: So tell me a bit of how this works. How do you go about looking for immigrants? Where do you find them and what do you say to them about coming to Winkler?

MARTIN HARDER: Well, we have tried to do a lot of different promotions, but I have personally gone on three immigration initiatives together with the province of Manitoba. Been to Germany, been to Austria, been to Ireland.

MG: And what's the pitch to them? What do you say about why they should come of all places, I mean, it's a lovely place, but why of all places to Winkler?

MARTIN HARDER: I have never spoken to one immigrant who hasn't said the first priority is lifestyle and the opportunity to raise a family and to provide better opportunities for their families than where they came from. Predominantly tat has been the drawing card and, you know, the acceptance of the immigrant community has been absolutely phenomenal. They're being integrated into community. They are not, they're not kept out of other programming. They're invited to programming. We have a central station is what is called to provide community meals. Every Monday night there's a free community meal and it's intended not just simply to feed people. It's not a soup kitchen. It is intended to create connections and fellowship and people to get to know each other and that has been a phenomenal success story.

MG: How many of the immigrants that came to Winkler have stayed?

MARTIN HARDER: I think our success rate is pretty good. I would say that our success rate is probably in the 80 percent percentile.

MG: 80 percent?

MARTIN HARDER: Yup.

MG: For that for the ones that left, the 20 percent that might have left. Do you have a sense as to why they decided that Winkler wasn't for them?

MARTIN HARDER: Well, some of it was other opportunities. Some of it was connections in other parts of the country. Some of them well hey, it's too cold in Winkler. We've got to go to B.C. or we've got to go to Toronto. I really don't know why anybody would want to live in Toronto. You might be able to explain that to me. But it's interesting. People have different needs okay and we're not saying that we can meet the needs of absolutely everybody because otherwise we'd be a booming metropolis that would be the rivaling the size of Winnipeg. But we're not.

MG: I'll leave the sales pitch for Toronto to the mayor. Listening to our conversation has been Nina Pinlac-Manuguid, who we heard off the top of this discussion. She's a nurse, arrived in Winkler in 2009 from the Philippines. Nina, how did you end up in Winkler?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Well, that's where they put us in. Like when they hire us from the Philippines. They put us in this different communities like a Winkler. Some went to Karma and Portis La Prairie area. Some went to Brandon like those far areas, and I was so lucky that I ended up in Winkler because I won't chose it anywhere. I love Winkler so much that I stayed there for 10 years.

MG: What do you remember about the day that you arrived and Winkler? Did you come in a car? Did you come on a bus? How did you get there?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Well, our director picked us up from the airport and then brought us in Winkler. I was kind of sad because it's like all fields. And I used to live in city of Manila for like nine years because that's where I went to university and work in there. So for me, that was like, kinda sad. Like there's nothing to see. But that part of my life, it was like when I left my son, who's only 2 months old, I started working and people are so supportive of me. They're very like empathetic of what I'm feeling and they are so accommodating. And I said, I think they placed me in the right place.

MG: Your son at the time was back in Manila?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Yes. And he was like a sick child. He was a preemie. And I have to leave him so I can work to Canada.

MG: That's really hard.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: It was really hard, but then the people in the community has been very supportive.

MG: Tell me about that. What were those early days like?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Those are really sad for me because, yeah, I have to leave my son and then I have to start a new job. But it made it all easy because of the people that I work with, the people in our community.

MG: In a situation like that, again, you're separated from your child. You are in a new country, you're in a new town, and it looks completely different. What did they do to make you feel welcome?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Well, yeah, I have some friends at work who come and pick me up and bring me out for groceries and also like they come and bring me to restaurants like those kinds. And also inviting me to go to parties. Those kinds yeah.

MG: When did your husband arrive?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: My husband and my son arrived in 2011 when I had my permanent residency. And so they came yeah, like almost two years after.

MG: And when he got there, I mean, that would be obviously a huge change for you and a welcome change. What did he do when he got to Winkler?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Well, it's so easy for him to find a job because I live in the basement for a while and then their son is running a business, a construction business where they build houses. And so my husband did that right away. And also he started building our house together with the guy yeah that he's working for. Yeah and everything just fall into place.

MG: What was it about Winkler that made you stay?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: The people. The people are so nice. I can say like not all of them, but the majority are. Like they're Christian and like they appreciate everything that you do.

MG: You arrived and you were working as a nurse.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Yes.

MG: You then end up with your husband deciding to open a restaurant. Tell me about that.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Me and my husband like to feed our friends at home. Like they always go to our house and then we always like to make food for them.

MG: You're the friends that people like to have.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Yes. Yea well, that's what our friends were saying like so why don't you make a restaurant. Like the people here, like Filipinos are growing and there's lots of immigrants and we need new variety. And so, yeah, like it's been a lot of work, but we finally did it.

MG: Martin Harder, what is it like for you to hear Nina talking about how the community to your, I'll use your phrase, wrapped its arms around her when she arrived?

MARTIN HARDER: Nina is actually the star candidate that we like to approach to come to Winkler, because this is really what we're all about. We are a community that cares. We are a community who integrates other people into what we do. And we are a community who has been so blessed by our immigrant population, who have brought so much from talent to to skills to culture to whatever it is into our community and it has broadened our base beyond what I could have ever imagined in 2006 when I came to be mayor.

MG: When communities change, that can be a gift in terms of broadening of the community. But it can also mean that change is difficult for people. And people may not recognize some of the other people that they meet on the streets, that there are different cultures, there are different customs. What sort of pushback did you get from members of your community as it changed?

MARTIN HARDER: Actually, the interesting thing, personally, I have not got any pushback. There's you know, there's the Facebook chatter, but quite frankly, I actually dropped Facebook back at the end of December. I said you know, this is enough. I need positive things in my life. I don't need Facebook.

MG: But the chatter, I mean, what was it that people were saying?

MARTIN HARDER: Well, the immigrants are coming to take over the jobs. But the interesting thing is that there are more jobs available. The immigrants have come in, they filled positions maybe that were difficult to fill and they filled positions that maybe some people didn't want to do. And we now have over 88 countries represented in the city of Winkler.

MG: That's amazing. Just finally, what's the one word of advice you would give other mayors who might want to employ this tactic that you have to meet their labour needs and also build up a bigger community?

MARTIN HARDER: Immigration opens up the minds of your community into other cultures that are there, brings the world to your doorstep. And yes, sometimes it brings some problems, but the majority of the times you can adjust what your community becomes.

MG: Nina, when I come to your restaurant, what do I need to eat? Is it the [dish]?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Well, for me, my personal favourite would be the [dish].

MG: What's that?

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: It's a minced pork belly. Like it's marinated and then fried and then you put like Phillipine lime in there, salt and pepper. And then it's served in a sizzling plate.

MG: I'll be there. Please, put a plate aside for me.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Yeah. Looking forward to that.

MG: It's great to talk to you both. Thank you very much.

MARTIN HARDER: Thank you very much.

NINA PINLAC-MANUGUID: Thank you so much.

MARTIN HARDER: Bye bye.

MG: Martin Harder is the mayor of Winkler, Manitoba. Nina Pinlac-Manuguid is a business owner and a nurse who immigrated to Winkler in 2009. Well, Winkler may be an immigration success story, but for many new Canadians, small town life just isn't for them. Vancouver immigration lawyer Zool Suleman says there are a number of possible reasons for that.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Part of it would be jobs. Another factor is the ability to have settlement services more readily available in terms of language and communities. Another major factor is the longing, whether it's faith communities or ethnic communities or second geographical communities. Those end up being very strong pull factors to cities rather than small towns.

MG: Just down the road from Winkler is Morden, Manitoba. Small city of 8000 people. Hadji Hesso arrived in the town in the year 2000 as a refugee from Iraq, but only ended up staying there for a couple of years. He now lives in Winnipeg, where he works as a bus driver and is also director of the Yazidi Association of Manitoba. Hadji, good morning to you.

HADJI HESSO: Good morning to you as well.

MG: Tell us why you decided to move to Canada in the first place.

HADJI HESSO: You know, it's been almost two decades now back in June, will mark 20 years for me in Canada. Now I'm citizenship. But for me, you just mentioned that a refugee from Iraq, that I was a 10 years in Syria prior coming to Canada. And we want a change. I wanted to do something for my younger brother, sister that have more opportunity with education.

MG: And how did you end up in Morden?

HADJI HESSO: Oh, you just mentioned immigration. We were picked by the Canadian government to come to Canada, but then when we arrived we found out that we've been sponsored by a church located in Morden, Manitoba.

MG: First moments when one arrives in a new country can be discombobulating and disorienting and overwhelming. What do you remember about when you arrived in Morden? What was your first impression?

HADJI HESSO: We saw, the moment that we arrived and we landed, that we knew because of where we came from and where we were been in a refugee camp, 14 years, we knew this is a safe place. This is we want to be, this want to be growing up. And this is we want to live and we want to be part of the community and not just part of it, we want to be contributors as well.

MG: What was your life like when you first arrived in Morden?

HADJI HESSO: Life was great in terms of weather, but by time we got engaged because we didn't have any other members of the community or the people that speak the language. It was difficult for us for a little bit slow on integration side.

MG: Tell me about that. There weren't other Yazidi or Iraqi families in Morden?

HADJI HESSO: No. Beside my uncle and my cousins, obviously.

MG: And so what was that like when you get there and there aren't people, as you say, that perhaps could even speak the language, let alone relate to the culture that you came from? What was that like?

HADJI HESSO: Well, it is difficult every time you switch a country or a community or and then the language barrier that you are facing or the challenges. It's very difficult, especially if you never had English before. It makes it more difficult for you to learn the language and to communicate with members of the community or the town.

MG: What was most difficult in those moments?

HADJI HESSO: Absolutely it was the communication. The language.

MG: Did you feel isolated?

HADJI HESSO: Not much, but we were into it. We want to be part of it. We want to learn. We'd not be shy. Me and my brother and sister. We want to learn.

MG: Did it feel like home to you?

HADJI HESSO: Absolutely.

MG: So if it did, why did you decide to leave Morden?

HADJI HESSO: We want to do something. So for my younger brother, sister, I wanted them to continue with education. We thought of moving to the city would be better deal for us instead of travelling and finding jobs.

MG: Was it a hard decision?

HADJI HESSO: It was a hard decision. It was, we'd never lived in a big city like Winnipeg.

MG: How did you explain that decision to your sponsors, the people who brought you to Morden?

HADJI HESSO: Do you know what they were very kind and they were wonderful people. And I want to mention the Christian Life Centre Church. I want to thank them, whatever they've done for the two years. They understood why we're moving and we still communicate with them and we thank them for that, what they've done for us and family.

MG: I mentioned in the introduction to this conversation that more than three quarters of newcomers to Canada end up in the big cities of this country. Why do you think that is, that most new Canadians would move to a big city rather than a small town?

HADJI HESSO: I believe job opportunities and the existing culture or the existing people, that's the language. That's my thought on that.

MG: That there's a community that you can almost slide right into.

HADJI HESSO: Exactly. So and also the job opportunities. That you want to do something.

MG: Part of this is about trying to figure out how to ensure that those jobs are filled because some towns and cities need those jobs filled, but also, it's making sure that we have immigrants that spread out across the country. What advice would you give to small towns who want to attract, but also retain immigrants? Make sure that people stick around.

HADJI HESSO: Integration. Welcome them to different programs. Most of them to different opportunities. Offer jobs. Let them learn, experience and absolutely the integration. It's very, very great.

MG: So this summer you'll have been in Canada for 20 years?

HADJI HESSO: June 19.

MG: Could you have ever imagined the life that you lead now based on where you are coming from?

HADJI HESSO: Well, you know, you just mentioned that I'm a director of the Yazidi Association of Manitoba. And you may know that the Yazidis are the most persecuted religious all over the world. And what happened to them back in 2014 and now that I'm director, Canada welcomed almost 1200 people across Canada.

MG: So you see yourself in the lives of those people that you're helping now?

HADJI HESSO: Absolutely. Because I've been through that situation, like I mentioned, 10 years in a refugee camp, in a small tent. It was difficult.

MG: Life is good.

HADJI HESSO: Life is good. Absolutely.

MG: Hadji, it's great to speak with you. Thank you.

HADJI HESSO: Thank you for having me.

MG: Hadji Hesso is a bus driver in Winnipeg and the director of the Yazidi Association of Manitoba. I would love to hear from new or recent immigrants who settled in small towns or small cities rather than in the big cities across this country. What was that like? How long did you stay? Why did you stay? Maybe you didn't stay. Why did you leave and move to one of those big cities? And what was the welcome like? Let us know what your experience was like in those small towns and cities if you are new or recent immigrants. You can email us at thecurrent@cbc.ca, tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. That will do it for our show for today. Q is up next. Tom Power speaking with the writer and director Kitty Green. Her new movie is called The Assistant tells the story of a junior staffer at a film production company whose push to cover up her boss's predatory behaviour as though ripped from the headlines on CBC's daily news podcast Front Burner. More on the Iowa caucuses. You can hear both of those through the CBC Listen app. Get it wherever you find your apps. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for February 3, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Scientists around the world race to find a vaccine for coronavirus

Vox founder Ezra Klein on why deepening political polarization is leading in delegitimizing US democracy

Iowa caucuses will be the first time American citizens have chance to stand behind a candidate for the 2020 election, says Susan Ormiston

Winkler’s mayor has successfully recruited and kept immigrants in his small town

The Current Transcript for February 3, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Scientists around the world race to find a vaccine for coronavirus​​​​​​​

Vox founder Ezra Klein on why deepening political polarization is leading in delegitimizing US democracy

Iowa caucuses will be the first time American citizens have chance to stand behind a candidate for the 2020 election, says Susan Ormiston

Winkler’s mayor has successfully recruited and kept immigrants in his small town

Scientists around the world race to find a vaccine for coronavirus

Feb. 3, 2020 episode transcript

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