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The Current Transcript for March 18, 2016

Host: Connie Walker

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Methadone maintenance is as beautiful to help people get off opiate addictions, but we get people on it 10 and 12 years, since we started. To me, I just don’t buy into that anymore I don’t like it.

CONNIE WALKER: From Newfoundland to BC and everywhere in between, the number of methadone patients has been going up and up. And now certain doctors and addiction experts are sounding the alarm, saying the cure may be getting worse than the disease. But there are arguments on both sides and we'll hear them both as well as from a former Oxycontin addict, who says that methadone treatment saved her life. That’s first up.. Then all of a sudden this week ketchup became the most hotly debated condiment in the country. But if you wanted to do a taste test between the two hotly contested brands, like this man did for YouTube, then you'd need to know where to look for the French's.

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So we've got Heinz. And we've got French’s. You're going to find it on the bottom shelf, right. They don't give this one the prime space up top.

CW: We're talking about the marketing of shelf space in the supermarket in half an hour from now. And finally, they're calling it the biggest political scandal in the history of Brazil which is saying a lot. No wonder millions are out in the street.

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[man shouting ]

[crowd cheers and chants]

CW: Victory for democracy or a political witch hunt? That's in an hour. I'm Connie Walker and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: theme]

Methadone treatment overused in Ontario, addiction experts warn

Guests: Kelly Lanktree, Benedikt Fischer, David Marsh

CONNIE WALKER: Methadone treatment was once quite rare in Canada, something reserved for helping heroin addicts. But today methadone is everywhere. In Ontario alone there were just 3,000 patients on methadone in 1996. The number today is north of 50,000. Its use has soared as the go-to treatment for those hooked on painkillers, such as oxycontin and fentanyl. Now some experts are warning that methadone treatment itself has gotten out of control. Kelly Lanktree, on the other hand, says it helped save her life. She's a former oxycontin addict who turned to methadone to get her life back on track and we've reached Kelly Lanktree at home in London, Ontario. Hello.

KELLY LANKTREE: Thanks for having me.

CW: Thanks so much for joining us. So, Kelly, let's start at the beginning. How did your painkiller addiction begin?

KELLY LANKTREE: Well, it started with an injury to my knee in about September 2009. I had some nerve damage in my knee and I was given a prescription for oxycodone from my family physician. The dosage slowly increased and I started noticing that it wasn't only very effective her physical pain, but it was also extremely effective for any sort of emotional or mental pain that I was dealing with. And that's where the problem sort of began.

CW: What were the problems? How did it impact your life?

KELLY LANKTREE: Immensely. Once I really started getting into heavier use, I lost everything - my belongings, my home, relationships with family and friends. I ended up homeless.

CW: Is that when you realized that you needed to seek help.

KELLY LANKTREE: I realized I needed help a while before then. I had tried going to rehab in the abstinence route, but I was always unsuccessful and generally ended up worse off when I was out. Ending up on the streets was a huge wakeup call that that wasn't how I wanted to continue my life and that if I was going to continue that way, I probably would end up dead. So at the urging of a fellow addict I decided to check out methadone.

CW: Well, in just a few minutes we're going to hear from a researcher who says that there's a growing problem of over-prescription of methadone, but what was your experience? How did you first come to methadone treatment?

KELLY LANKTREE: Like I said, I was first introduced to it through a friend and fellow addict. He was also on the streets and he saw both myself and my husband were struggling quite a lot. He mentioned several times over, you know, go see my doctor; he really might be able to help you guys. So I finally decided to go in and speak to the methadone prescribing physician and from there the changes were amazing. Within just a couple weeks of starting I had a mental clarity that I hadn't had in years. Within a few more weeks after that I was able to start decreasing my use to the point where I was able to stop completely within just a couple months.

CW: So some researchers want to see more emphasis on other forms of opiate treatment what alternatives did you try before going on methadone?

KELLY LANKTREE: Abstinence or going to detox. It’s extremely difficult for--

CW: Cold turkey.

KELLY LANKTREE: Yeah. Cold turkey. The withdrawals are horrible. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy. It's beyond painful. I couldn't make abstinence work. I continually returned to the drug. I--

CW: Did you try—

KELLY LANKTREE: Sorry, go ahead.

CW: --therapy, any cognitive therapy or behavioural therapy?

KELLY LANKTREE: No, I just sort of, like the AA-type program that was offered through the rehab facility.

CW: So, you've been using methadone for some time? What is life like for you now?

KELLY LANKTREE: Normal. It's wonderful. I'm actually able to function. I'm stable. I can go about my day as I normally would, whereas before it was consistently ups and downs. I was never at a stable point - either in withdrawal or high. Constantly chasing and searching for drugs. It was a terrible way to live. Now, I have my life back.

CW: But what about your treatments on methadone? Has that changed since you started?

KELLY LANKTREE: Well, I started at a lower dose and as you go into treatment your dose increases until you find your proper therapeutic dose where your withdrawals are relieved and you also find craving relief as well. So I've been at a stable dose for a couple of years now. In total, I've been on methadone for about three and a half years.

CW: And what is the plan for the recovery path ahead? How soon do you expect to be one hundred percent clean?

KELLY LANKTREE: To be one hundred percent off methadone, probably within the next few years. I’m not in any rush to quickly get off it. I want to just slowly taper down. I am very much still an addict. So I don't want to risk going back into that lifestyle. If methadone is able to keep me stable and happy, then I'm completely happy with that. It's given me my life and I’m happy trade those.

CW: Do you have plans to continue to decrease the amount that you're using or?

KELLY LANKTREE: Yes, I do in the next few months I’m actually looking to start slowly tapering down.

CW: Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us today, Kelly, and sharing your experience. We really appreciate it.

KELLY LANKTREE: Not a problem. Thank you so much for having me.

CW: Kelly Lanktree uses methadone to treat her former addiction to prescription opioids. She writes about this experience on her blog, Studio L. We reached her at home in London, Ontario. Now, Benedikt Fischer has been watching closely as the number of methadone patients has skyrocketed, especially in Ontario. He is a senior scientist at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Benedikt Fisher is with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Morning, Connie.

CW: Thanks so much for joining us. So, you were listening to Kelly Lanktree just now. What's your reaction to what you just heard?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Well, Kelly is clearly one of the many people in Canada who has been struggling with a prescription opioid addiction. This is a rampant problem across Canada and has been for some time. People need treatment. People need help. The concern that we have is that, especially in Ontario but also in other provinces across Canada, methadone maintenance treatment has become the default first line of treatment for people who present for treatment and who are seeking help. We’re using methadone treatment rather indiscriminately for most of these people and what we're advocating for is that we take a more differentiated treatment approach to this particular problem. Methadone treatment, methadone maintenance treatment in many ways is a hammer in the toolbox and what we need is more refined tools to deal with the emerging population of people who are seeking treatment. Among them are a lot of people who are young, who have not been exposed to opiates for too long a time and for whom other kinds of treatment may be viable, where we're tapering people off the drugs, behavioral therapies might work for them. Because in many ways, what we should be achieving is that as many people as possible get off these drugs because maintenance in itself can be problematic state.

CW: So, let's go back to-- I mean, why have the number of patients using methadone grown so much in Ontario?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Well, we've been flushing this country in prescription opioids over the last 10, 20 years and, basically, through over-prescribing and overly generous prescribing of these drugs have created a large population of addicts. That's basically what happened and now a lot of these people are dependent and are seeking treatment, just the way your guest just illustrated. And so we’ve created a demand for treatment. The issue has been that the primary treatment that is being offered when you go to the treatment system now is, basically, that most people are being put on opioid maintenance treatment, which, in many instances, can be infinite or lifelong or is with a lifelong approach, which is not the kind of differentiated treatment that we're advocating for. What we need is a step care approach, where we're beginning with the least invasive kinds of treatments that are available, see what works for people, and if necessary, step them up to more invasive treatments where, in essence, methadone maintenance treatment becomes the last resort treatment - the hammer that we're going to in the toolbox if the other tools are not working and that's not what's happening at the moment.

CW: Is it because, I mean, as methadone become the default because it's the most effective treatment?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Well, methadone is effective and has proven effective for a certain kind of addict, primarily, you know, highly marginalized heroin addicts with many co-morbidities. It is very effective for this kind of population, but the prescription opioid dependent population looks different. The treatment population has been evolving and so we need to adjust our treatment tools to the particular population that we're seeing now. We need to differentiate our treatment tools.

CW: How does methadone affect a patient's health?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Well, methadone is a strong opioid in itself and if someone is put on opioid maintenance, basically, the addictive properties of that opioid are extenuated. There's evidence that it affects the brain, it can affect mental health. So methadone is not a neutral or exclusively therapeutic substance. It basically extenuates the exposure of the person to the opioid and for a lot of people who dabbled in prescription opioids for a relatively short period of time. It basically then replaces the opioid but it continues with the exposure and the risks that come with it. Just to illustrate a little bit, in Ontario and some of the Ontario Health regions now, one in five patients are under 25 years of age. So we have a large population of young people, for example, on methadone maintenance treatment, where we should have an interest that, you know, these people get off the opioids if that's possible, in any possible way.

CW: Well, how long is the average methadone treatment? How long does it last?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Well, for many people, this can be life-long. It depends on how the treatment is designed, how it’s set up, and most the person patients are at the mercy of the treatment provider, whether they put a therapeutic plan in place to get them off this particular treatment, if at all feasible.

CW: So, we requested an interview with Ontario's health minister Dr. Eric Hoskins. He was unavailable, but he sent along a statement that reads in part, “In recent years we've seen some important research that has highlighted alternatives to methadone. Much of the evidence is pointing to an increased role for suboxone, which is a less addictive, less prone to abuse, less likely to cause a fatal overdose, and can be taken at home.@ Do you think switching from methadone to suboxone – suboxone, is that how you say it?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: Yeah, suboxone. I mean, the principle of suboxone is actually quite similar to methadone maintenance treatment and just uses a slightly different opioid agent. The principle behind suboxone maintenance is stil maintenance treatment. What we really need to go for is we need to build better evidence and apply evidence based treatments that are not aiming at an extended maintenance treatment, in other words, medication supported tapering approaches, detoxification can work for some people with behavioral supports, or cognitive behavioral interventions may actually work for some people. We need to differentiate the treatment toolbox where the most appropriate treatment is matched with whoever the patient is and where we're only going to the hammer of lifelong maintenance treatment as a last resort.

CW: So, Benedikt Fischer, please stay with us. We're going to come back to you for one last comment. Now Benedikt Fischer is a senior scientist at CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He's with me in our Toronto studio. For another perspective, we've reached Dr. David Marsh. He is the medical director of Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres -- a network of 57 clinics throughout Ontario, with one in Manitoba. He is also the Associate Dean of Community Engagement at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. And Dr. David Marsh joins me from Sudbury, Ontario. Hello.

DAVID MARSH: Good morning.

CW: So, Dr. Marsh, what’s your reaction to what you just heard from Benedikt Fischer?.Do you need to slow down the rate of methadone?

DAVID MARSH: I think a lot of what Benedikt says is true in that we need as many treatment options as possible, but I don't think now is the time to decrease the availability of the most effective evidence based treatment that we have. You know methadone maintenance started in Canada in 1959 and there's tens of thousands of studies to show that it is effective, not just for heroin users or marginalized drug users, but for people with opiate use in general. In fact, earlier studies that Benedikt himself have conducted have shown that people using hydromorphone and morphine can have just as bad or worse mental health and physical health problems as people injecting heroin. So the fact that somebody is using a prescription opioid doesn't imply that they have problems. In Benedikt's own paper that prompted this study, he says that there's 250 million dollars being spent in Ontario on methadone maintenance that's about 5,000 dollars a year per patient. More than twenty years ago, the Institute of Medicine in the US suggested 6,000 per patient per year is the minimum for a high quality methadone program.

CW: Well, it's obviously - a lot of people who are who are involved in the program - it's five out of every 1,000 adults in Ontario are being prescribed methadone. It's 34 times higher than in the US. It sounds quite high. What's your take on that?

DAVID MARSH: Well, if we want to know how much treatment is needed comparing our jurisdiction to another jurisdiction is not the best way, necessarily. If you go by that measure, then Canada's woefully underfunded treatment for malaria because Kenya has many more patients being treated for malaria. In 1997 when Benedikt was advocating for more methadone, he compared treatment availability in Ontario to Switzerland the Netherlands and Australia, countries that have had and continue to have many more patients than the US. And right now the National Institute of Drug Abuse director in the US is advocating for more maintenance treatment availability in the US. So I think we need to look at the scope of the problem. There's almost 700 people a year dying of opiate dependence, overdose in Ontario. We have a public health crisis here where overdose deaths continue to go up; the number of people with opiate dependence has exploded because of all the prescription opioids on the street; and we're seeing bootleg fentanyl coming in and people dying of that. Now's not the time to cut back on the most effective, most cost effective treatment that we have.

CW: Well, Benedikt said that people with even mild opiate addictions are being prescribed methadone, potentially resulting in years of treatment. Why aren't alternative treatments being offered in these cases?

DAVID MARSH: I think, first of all, I should question what evidence he has for that. You know, when a family doctor prescribes any other medication they don't have an expert coming in from the college every three years to review their charts like we have for methadone. There are standards that are applied and are regularly audited to make sure that patients are only being started on this treatment when they need it.

CW: After they've tried other treatments?

DAVID MARSH: Or at least they've been offered other treatments. They may refuse them. Other treatments are also woefully underfunded in Ontario so we definitely do need more of those. But as for the methadone being life-long, 60 percent of methadone patients in Ontario stop treatment in less than a year. So definitely there are some who need to be on it for years, like Kelly, but she also talked about gradually tapering off. Whether they're on medication or off medication is not the measure of success. The measure of success is whether they've stopped using other drugs and become socially integrated.

CW: What about the profit-driven nature of the methadone industry. Do you know how much money is made from prescribing methadone at the clinics where you work?

DAVID MARSH: Methadone maintenance is covered by OHIP, the same as any other physician service in Ontario. We don't say there's a 50 percent increase in kidney failure amongst seniors in Ontario over the last ten years, so we don’t say we should cut back on dialysis units because nephrologists are making more money because there’s more kidney failure.

CW: But, I mean, there's exponentially more people on methadone treatments now than then potentially getting kidney dialysis, right.

DAVID MARSH: There are definitely more people dying of opiate dependence in Ontario now than there are of kidney failure. It's the second leading cause of death. Amongst 18- to 35-year-olds, it's the leading cause of death.

CW: So, what should Canada's provincial health ministries be doing to help opiate addicts and to deal with this public health emergency?

DAVID MARSH: They should have an integrated evidence based approach. And any evidence based approach is going to recognise methadone maintenance as an important part. But there's no funding for counseling for methadone patients, there's no funding for connecting mental health services with people on methadone or suboxone. Suboxone should be much more widely available. Canada was the 45th country in the world to get suboxone introduced.

CW: All right. Thank you, Dr. David Marsh. I’m afraid we'll have to leave it there.

DAVID MARSH: Okay.

CW: Thank you very much for joining us. Dr. David Marsh's medical director of the Ontario Addiction Treatment Centres. We reached him in Sudbury, Ontario. Now back to Benedikt Fischer. Benedikt, we only have one quick minute, just a few seconds, actually. When all is said and done, what is the best way forward?

BENEDIKT FISCHER: We need, clearly as David says, we need treatment. The issue is that we need to differentiate the treatment. We need to extend the variety of treatment tools that we have in the toolbox so that we use the least invasive kinds of treatments for the people who benefit from it and we use the strong hammer kind of treatment for those people with the severe addiction. So it's not a question of more or less treatment, it's a question of developing the evidence for the right, and appropriate treatments and providing those the people who are in need. We clearly have a public health crisis and we've got to deal with that.

CW: All right. Wel,l thank you very much for joining me. Benedikt Fischer is a senior scientist at CAMH in Toronto. I'm Connie Walker and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

French's, Loblaws ketchup war reveals complex battle for shelf space

Guests: Elliott Penner, Sylvain Charlebois, Tandy Thomas

CONNIE WALKER: Hello I'm Connie Walker and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. Still to come frustrations are boiling over in Brazil. Millions of protesters took to the streets this week. We'll hear why they are demanding the president step down. That's later in the show but first, Canada's new favorite condiment.

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[Stompin’ Tom Conners singing The Ketchup Song]

CW: Ketchup has been Leamington Ontario's claim to fame since even before Stompin’ Tom Connors penned The Ketchup Song, nearly half a century ago, though it seemed like the tune could be forever changed after Heinz shuttered its ketchup plant there in 2014, costing more than 700 jobs. Then came French's, the company much better known for its mustard, became a local hero in January when it announced that Leamington area tomatoes would be used in its fledgling ketchup business. Most of the rest of the country only learned about that this week though after Loblaws grocery stores pulled French's ketchup from their shelves. Then social media took up the cause and sooner than you can shake the last drop out of a catch up bottle, Loblaws had vowed to put French’s back on its store shelves. It was short and sweet but the great ketchup caper was also a window into the murky marketing world that determines which products get the prime spots on supermarket shelves. Elliott Penner is the president of French's. He is in Chester, New Jersey. Hello.

ELLIOTT PENNER: Hi, how are you today?

CW: Fine. Thanks so much for joining us. So Elliott, what is your understanding of why your ketchup was taken off the shelves at Loblaws stores?

ELLIOTT PENNER: I really can't comment on why companies make decisions. There are a lot of reasons why companies carry products or don't carry products.

CW: What were you told about Loblaws decision?

ELLIOTT PENNER: Well we were told it was just a decision they had made that was strategic and they were going to move away from our ketchup. And I think the real story here is that the consumers voiced their concern with that decision, and since then Loblaws has decided to restock our product and we're delighted by that.

CW: So we contacted Loblaws and they said that they took your ketchup off the shelf because “French’s regular ketchup did not sell well in our stores for more than a year.” Was your ketchup struggling before it got all this attention?

ELLIOTT PENNER: No, I think it's fair to say that anytime that a challenger product enters into a category that's dominated by a player then you've got to say to yourself, it's a tough road. And no one expected it not to be, and people are going to fight back. What we've always asked for is just the fair chance to compete and that's what we're getting now. The real view that it will be taken off the shelf because consumers didn't want it, I don't think it is fair.

CW: It’s interesting that you say that because there are reports of a leaked internal memo from Loblaws that suggests that your ketchup was pulled actually because it was cutting in on the sales of their store brand President’s Choice ketchup. Loblaws has denied this and says that the memo was misinformed, but what do you make of this?

ELLIOTT PENNER: I'm not going to comment on what's going on over there. I think this is amazing to me, I mean this is ketchup, right? I think competition is good. You know if I look at the mustard category, there are many mustards for sale on the shelf. You have to ask the question why there's only a couple of ketchups, private label and Heinz? For me, to comment on leaked memos from retailers, I just don't think that’s a positive.

CW: So how important is it for French’s to have your ketchup sold in Loblaws, in Canada?

ELLIOTT PENNER: We don't prejudice any retailer. I sell condiments, right? Our business is to sell mustard and ketchup—

CW: But Loblaws is one of the biggest names in Canadian retail?

ELLIOTT PENNER: It is and that's why it's important to us. We want to be in every location there is and Loblaws has a 33/34 share of the Canadian marketplace, so certainly it's an important customer of ours. But, we treat all our customers fairly and we just ask to be treated fairly back and let the consumer decide.

CW: Were you surprised by the consumer outcry and then Loblaw’s swift reversal?

ELLIOTT PENNER: Well I think we always expected to be back in Loblaws. I was surprised that it was a day later. This is a consumer groundswell. It's nothing that I can do. It's nothing that a company can do. Consumers have a different kind of voice today because of social media. Here a few consumers got together and said I don't like that decision, and they got together and they forced a company to change their decision. I think that's important for all manufacturers and all companies to understand that the consumer really is the final decision maker and that's not always us.

CW: So you mentioned Heinz obviously has a huge market share when it comes to ketchup. Why did French’s start making ketchup in the first place?

ELLIOTT PENNER: We had been approached year after year on why we didn't make ketchup. Consumers asked us, some of our food service operators asked us, and we always wanted to make sure that we had a point of difference and. There's no point in launching me to products that don't add any value. So, for a long time we didn't know what that was until we really started to talk to our consumers and our consumers started telling us there was some things they wanted. They didn't want an ingredient statement that had a pile of chemicals on it. They wanted products that were sourced locally. In the US high-fructose corn syrup is the big issue and they didn't want products with high-fructose corn syrup. So we looked at our entire range, not just ketchup, we looked at everything and we actually cleaned every ingredient statement we could find. So we did that and then we started to look at locally sourced and we knew that worked because we'd bought mustard seed from Saskatchewan for decades and it's a great source. It's one of the best quality seeds in the world. And we thought why wouldn’t we do the same thing with tomatoes? But we challenged ourselves to say why can't we buy tomatoes from Ontario?

CW: So you're really selling this as a really-- good for Canadians and that these are Canadian tomatoes and the paste is made in Leamington. But it's really manufactured in Ohio, correct?

ELLIOTT PENNER: There are two places we manufacture ketchup. We manufacture all our food service ketchup in Ontario and we manufacture, bottle, our ketchup in Ohio for store shelves. And that's changing. This recent increase in sales has allowed us to increase our tomato purchases in Ontario by another 25 percent. As well as we're exploring bringing manufacturing, because the demands are so high, closer to the source which will be hopefully in Ontario.

CW: But even before the ketchup war began this week, what are the challenges in getting people to change their condiment buying habits?

ELLIOTT PENNER: I think companies need to be challenged in different ways to say, instead of trying to reinforce the old behaviors, how do you help to understand new behaviors. So we did things like Buffalo ketchup or garlic ketchup. It wasn't so much that it couldn't be used on french fries or on a burger, it can be. But the other things it can be used on actually help to extend that business and help to grow that category in ounces, so you can make a fantastic buffalo chicken wing with it. There are different things you can do that you might not normally do with ketchup and that's how you grow ounces in a category, not just dollars.

CW: How important is shelf placement in stores like Loblaws?

ELLIOTT PENNER: I mean it's really important. If you can't find it, it's difficult to buy it. So there's always a thing called a strike-zone where you try to get about four feet off the floor and right in the middle and that’s where you'd like to be. But you'll see our products sometimes put different places because they want you to look for that product and they want to sell something else. So it's a strategic war for space.

CW: How do you negotiate with retailers to do that, to get the best shelf space possible?

ELLIOTT PENNER: I think the thing that any company has to do, and this isn't just in the food industry, is you've got to show--if we can help that retailer to grow their business in a profitable way, we shouldn't be on the shelf.

CW: But what happens behind the scenes when it comes to that shelf placement? I mean outside of having a good product?

ELLIOTT PENNER: What happens is you need to show retailers why you justify the amount of shelf space you're asking for. And if your product doesn't sell, of course they’re not going to give you four feet. If it does, they're going to give you more space. Retailers don't want to be out of stock either. It doesn't look good when--you've gone to a grocery store I'm sure and seen a lot of out of stocks. And you're not very pleased with that because you miss your selection. So retailers, I think are influenced in a couple ways. They're influenced by the consumer but they're also influenced by turns and how the consumers purchase.

CW: Alright, well thank you very much Elliott. We really appreciate you joining us.

ELLIOTT PENNER: Thanks so much for taking interest. Take care.

CW: Elliott Penner is French’s company president. We reached him in Chester, New Jersey. As we've heard when it comes to getting a prized position on supermarket shelves there's more at play than just what consumers find tasty. Sylvain Charlebois is a professor in food distribution and policy at the University of Guelph. Food Institute. He joins us from Guelph, Ontario. Hello.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Good morning Connie.

CW: So we've just heard from one of the players in this so-called ketchup war. What do you make of this flap over these two condiments?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: It's fascinating. I think this is the first in Canadian history to see social media or consumers reverse the decision of Canada's largest private employer. So it's quite a coup I would say. And I would probably venture to say that Loblaws didn't see that coming.

CW: How much of that do you think is just about the bigger story of Leamington and this community that has been struggling since Heinz closed their ketchup production there?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I think it's at the epicenter of what we saw over the last week or so. I think the Leamington compelling story was really the one piece that galvanized I would say the troops, on social media.

CW: Loblaws has said that this decision was because French's ketchup was not selling well. But then there was a report of a leaked Loblaws memo about its own President’s Choice brand’s role in this. And Loblaws has denied that French's ketchup was eating into their sales of their President’s Choice ketchup. But how do store brands--like what role does their own branding play in all of this?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Retail, real estate in a grocery store is a precious thing. Of course, if you manage your own label, you control that real estate in your store. Over the years what we've seen is that grocers tend to favor their own private labels and that is not just with Loblaws, it's with other grocers as well. And as a result of all this, vendors like Kraft Heinz for example. They fight to get the proper real estate to push their brands—

CW: Get into the strike-zone as Elliott called it.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: That's exactly right. In order to get there you have to pay very high listing fees to basically just be considered for one and secondly, you have to pay for that real estate in the grocery store and that tends to be very expensive. We're talking about thousands of dollars, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars, so smaller processors have less of a chance of making some headway into a grocery store. But in recent years I would admit that grocers have shown some flexibility including Loblaws towards smaller outfits, just because their local movement is quite predominant and they have I think, all grocers including Loblaws recognize that there is some momentum there and so they have been trying to capture some of the really high quality local products out there.

CW: So you mentioned a lot of money is potentially involved in getting into the strike zone. Is this something that happens in all grocery stores not just Loblaws?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Oh absolutely. You see the grocery business is a complicated one. The average retail store would have to manage over 47,000 different products. That's a lot of products and of course when you look at ketchup, the normal consumer would probably buy one bottle, maybe two a year, maybe. And so it's not a high volume product. So I suspect that Loblaws decision last week was based on very sound data looking at the big picture, looking at shelf space and perhaps they felt it was in the better best interest to pull French's. But given what happened on social media on Tuesday of this week they felt it was important to reverse that decision. That was equally a sound decision as well.

CW: So what does a new product have to do to get on the shelves?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: You really have to convey to the grocer that you have a sound business case, a very strong business case. You will attract some traffic, that's one. And when you're thinking about ketchup, that product is at the center of the store. And most grocers will admit that they're desperate to find ways to increase that traffic at the center of the store, more and more so. We're talking about the death of the center of the store and so they want winners in that part of the store and that's very critical. But they also have to conjugate with competitive brands like Heinz for example. Heinz is a big seller in ketchup and so is PC ketchup as well, so that's really the environment in which French’s has to compete in.

CW: What about the suppliers? Are there are other benefits for them for working these relationships with the retailers?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Absolutely. So those are relationships are key, and of course they celebrate these relationships and they want products to be successful. Now I'm just not sure exactly what happened to the French’s case, on why they actually decided to pull the product. But there are different reasons why you would delist a product. And I would say that grocers really delist products every day. So it wasn’t really shocking for people who follow the history very closely. But it seems as though for consumers it was a shock.

CW: What kinds of information will a company like Loblaws share with suppliers, if they have a good relationship?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: All grocers have--they do deal and manage a lot of data and they actually accumulate data, actually in real time, and so they are willing to share some information with vendors to basically help them generate more innovative products, provide more innovated products. They need that data to know exactly what goes on in these stores. They celebrate very good vendors. They invite them to conferences and during those conferences they do share market data with vendors, so they know what goes on in stores.

CW: Can you give us an example of some information they would share?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: For example, if you buy say, ketchup, what else are you buying when you buy ketchup? That information can only be found through data generated by grocers. Combinations of products are very critical. Yes we often think about hamburgers and summertime, but people use ketchup for a variety of reasons. And so, vendors would want to know that kind of information.

CW: So Elliott Penner described getting into the strike-zone as a kind of strategic war. Is this a clean war or a dirty War? I mean are these just standard business practices that consumers usually just don't see?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I don't think we should consider this as a war. I just think it is business. It's regular business. You are looking at the grocery business which often generates profit margins of anywhere between one to two percent. Everything is tight in the grocery business. So a company like Loblaws is very careful when it decides to either list a product or delist another product. For French's, I actually just think they benefited from probably one of the most powerful marketing campaigns this year, without spending a cent. And now they need to deliver on what happened this week though. They need to make sure that the product actually gets to the store on time, is sold properly, so if consumers do buy the product then it's good news for French's but it's also good news for Loblaws as well.

CW: Are consumers becoming more aware of how grocery stores decide what they stock? Should consumers be more aware of it?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I'm not sure if aware is the right word. I think consumers are more engaged. But the concern that I have with what happened this week is that often consumers act based on imperfect information. If they actually take the time to really understand what is happening, then they may actually have a different opinion on what goes on either at Loblaws, Kraft Heinz or at French's, or even in Leamington—

CW: What should they understand about the story?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: What they need to understand is that groceries or the grocery business is a complicated business. All decisions can’t be analyzed in isolation. And so grocers when they make a decision or they make a commitment, it's based on an array of data and they do negotiate very well. And they're very concerned about of course, their business and they’re concerned about their customers as much as French’s is.

CW: Well thank you very much for joining us today.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Thank you for having me, Connie.

CW: Sylvain Charlebois is a professor in food distribution and policy at the University of Guelph Food Institute. He was in Guelph, Ontario. Moving from the battle over shelf placement, to a battle over Canadiana, because that's what this week's ketchup war quickly turned into. In its statement to us Loblaws pointed out that its house brand President's Choice ketchup is made in Canada with California tomatoes and French’s is made in America with Canadian tomatoes. “In that respect one is not more Canadian than the other.” Well Canadian pride is one sentiment brands are happy to tap into, even if it doesn't always work. Tandy Thomas is an assistant professor of marketing at the Smith School of Business at Queens University, specializing in how consumers connect socially with marketing. She joins us from Kingston, Ontario, hello.

TANDY THOMAS: Hi, good morning.

CW: Good morning. What has been going through your mind as you’ve watched this rising wave of Canadian ketchup pride?

TANDY THOMAS: So this is been an extraordinary story to watch over the past week. And it's been wonderful to see the reaction and how Canadians have become so supportive of this brand, that when it comes to ketchup, most people have never heard of last week. And they like it because it's really it's turned into a story about supporting Canadian, Canadians, Canadian communities and trying to do what's right for the little guy.

CW: In some respects then, I guess being pulled from Loblaws was kind of a really good thing to happen to French's ketchup?

TANDY THOMAS: So this has been an excellent marketing situation for them. They couldn't have asked for a better strategy, they couldn't have asked for a better brand building tool. Certainly French's didn't set out to become the Canadian brand of ketchup, but this week that is what they have become.

CW: How should they play this, to keep the momentum on its side?

TANDY THOMAS: So I think what they need to do, is make sure that they do it in a way that’s genuine and honest. And if you think about the comments Elliott was making earlier, and doing things like making sure you keep sourcing from Canadian farmers, move the manufacturing to Canada, if possible. Stay close to the consumer and then if they want a Canadian brand of ketchup, to design their business program in their business strategy in a way that really reflects that.

CW: So, I mean Loblaws on the other hand, has to deal with reports of this leaked memo with which in that narrative it makes French’s look even more like David fighting Goliath. What should Loblaws do at this point?

TANDY THOMAS: So the key thing for Loblaws is to be honest and genuine with customers and the public and it's hard when you have a sort of the little guy rising from the ashes, it’s always--consumers are always quick to want to find a villain. And it seems like they're trying to portray Loblaws that way, but it's important to remember that Loblaws is the same company that also reversed their decision very quickly. They're clearly listening to consumers, listening to what they want. It's unfortunate that there has been mixed messages coming from the company. The official people saying that it was just about sales and preferences, and then we have the leaked memo with the authenticity of that being called into question. So it’s that ambiguity that's making consumers a little uneasy and distrustful of what Loblaws is saying. So for them, that they really just need to be straightforward, be honest and be genuine and consumers are remarkably forgiving when companies are honest, even after they've made mistakes.

CW: So obviously what this whole story shows is that companies can use Canadian patriotism to help sell their brands. But what can make it a success or a flop?

TANDY THOMAS: Well, the success really lies in being able to tap into core values that are important to the group of consumers and communicate that in a way that really resonates in a genuine and authentic way. Where these kinds of tactics and these kinds of identity appeals fall apart, is if companies do a superficial job where they try and frame the message and say, well we think this is what it means to be Canadian when that isn't really what it means to Canadians, where they maybe tap into, sort of stereotypical images and messages. So it really becomes important to think about what is it that Canadians value and what came out today is that we see the Canadians value community, they value supporting the local community and that is at the heart of what's driving the success for French's this week.

CW: How important do you think that is? I mean the idea of being Canadian or being local is to Canadian consumers?

TANDY THOMAS: So Canadians are a remarkably patriotic group. And we tend to think about Canadians as being very subdued and quiet, but actually we are hugely patriotic. It's a very important value for us. And so, supporting Canada and supporting Canadian companies is something that is very important to Canadians and it's a great way to connect with consumers.

CW: So earlier Elliott was talking about the strategy at French's and how they're differentiating their ketchup, the clean ingredient list, the locally grown tomatoes and it seems to be trying to identify with consumer in a certain way or having consumers identify with his product. What does this--can you tell us a bit about this kind of strategy when it comes to consumer identity marketing?

TANDY THOMAS: So consumer identity marketing is really about building a connection between your brand and consumers and doing it based on a shared identity that's important to your customer. And that's an incredibly effective marketing tactic when it's done well. When consumers think about their identities, it's a core part of how they view themselves. And so if a company is able to tap into that and become connected to that identity, consumers really latch onto it. It becomes incorporated into their own sense of self and how they view them, they're willing to defend the company to others. And they build the sort of personal connection and take on almost a personal sense of ownership when you're able to build that connection with someone's identity. So when it's done well it's an incredibly effective and powerful way to build a brand.

CW: Interesting stuff. Well thank you very much for joining us Tandy.

TANDY THOMAS: Thank you.

CW: Tandy Thomas is an assistant professor of marketing at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University. We reached her in Kingston, Ontario. So what do you think of this flap over ketchup? How much does it matter to you, how Canadian your ketchup is? Tweet us @thecurrentcbc, find us on Facebook and comment on this story or send us an e-mail from our website at cbc.ca/the current and click on the Contact link.

Brazilians protest against 'corrupt' government

Guests: Dr. Eduarda Jardim, Stephanie Nolen, Alfredo Saad Filho

CONNIE WALKER: Hello, I'm Connie Walker and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Portuguese chanting]

[crowd responding]

CW: The chants and cheers are loud and clear: "Out with Dilma!" That would be Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's embattled president, who is facing the biggest challenge to her power yet. Police figures suggest a record million-plus people demonstrated in hundreds of cities across the country this past week, calling for the President's impeachment. And igniting this tinderbox: the worst recession in a century, coupled with the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil's history. For more on why so many Brazilians have taken to the streets, I'm joined now by one of the many who have been out protesting. Last Sunday, Dr. Eduarda Jardim joined the chorus of Brazilians saying enough to President Rousseff. She's in Sao Paolo, hello.

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: Hello.

CW: Eduarda, what made you decide to protest against President Rousseff?

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: I'm not a political person, and I'm not engaged to any party or specific cause. I know I was there to protest against corrupt government. We can’t take it anymore. We need to get rid of Dilma, The Workers' Party, the whole lot.

CW: So tell us what it was like at the protest.

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: There were whole families; babies, kids, grandmas, even dogs, people in wheelchairs. It was a varied crowd, of course, but extremely [unintelligible]. Everybody was wearing green and yellow shirts, the Brazilian flag’s colours, and carrying banners of messages like, out Dilma, out Worker’s Party, impeachment now. And even some funny ones making jokes and giving a black humor and using facts, to everything bad that’s happening.

CW: Have you ever protested before? I mean how did it feel to you to be in the middle of that?

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: I feel very passionate about it, because I'm Brazilian, I love my country, and [voice breaks with emotion] Sorry, I can get really emotional about it. I don't like to see my country in this position, right. It’s not a good thing to have to say bad things about your government. I don't like our situation. Nobody likes it. My right to protest, I like that I can do it. We are a democracy, I can do it, and I will do it as many times as I need to do it with all the people who want to change, make changes. We need to get rid of them. We need to get--

CW: You want the president to step down.

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: Yes. If she had some respect for all the Brazilians, she would resign.

CW: Do you have hope in any other politicians who you think would be doing a better job?

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: At this moment I can tell you I don't have one person that I can say, he's going to do it. At this moment, I don't, I think we don't have this person. But at some point, someone will show up.

CW: How are you feeling about Brazil's future right now? How hopeful are you?

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: I have hope. I have a lot of hope, in fact. Right now, we are in a bad situation. The worst ever. But I really think we will get through it at some point. It will be painful. We will get to it.

CW: Well, thank you very much for joining us, Eduarda.

DR. EDUARDA JARDIM: All right, thank you Connie.

CW: Eduarda Jardim joined the protests against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. She was in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Let's go now to Stephanie Nolen, the Globe and Mail’s Latin America Bureau Chief. She's based in Rio de Janeiro, and has been covering the corruption scandal as it's unfolded. Hello.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Good morning, Connie.

CW: So Stephanie, why do millions of people want the president to step down?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Well let me let me preface my response by saying that millions of people want the president to step down, and I would say at this point, millions possibly an equal number think that she should stay. So you mentioned that there were a couple of million people chanting “Fora Dilma,” Dilma get out, on the weekend. There have been also small demonstrations through this week, and also a huge one coming today of people who support the president. So as much as a movement against her, this is, at this point, a really, really, polarized country. Now to answer your question specifically of why people think she should go, you know, there isn't enough... [laughs] I could talk to you for the next week about reasons why people think she should go, but the short answer is, first of all, that people hold her responsible for the massive corruption scandal at the national oil company Petrobras. They believe that she must have known about the huge kickbacks for contract scheme there. And secondly, that they blame her for the policies, for failed economic policies that have caused this country to go into its sharpest economic recession in a hundred years. There is massive unemployment, really rising inflation numbers, the economy generally is a disaster, and they blame Dilma for that. They also blame her, at this point, for, additionally, just to round things out, for this polarization and for this political crisis which has prevented government from really doing anything else for months now, except focusing on this sort of party based showdown that may or may not culminate in her impeachment.

CW: What do her supporters say? I mean, are these accusations fair? It's a long list.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: It is a long list, and that was just the surface. Are these accusations fair? I mean, I think one of the things that you saw at the protests last Sunday that was interesting and that was a change was that up until now, it has been mostly upper middle class, quite well educated Brazilians, usually white, who have been protesting. And that the traditional support base of Ms. Rousseff’s Workers Party, particularly the people who moved out of poverty during the four terms that that government spent in power, those people up until now have not been supporting the protests nearly as much. But they did seem to be out in larger numbers last Sunday, and there does seem to be, across the political spectrum, a real frustration with her. However, the willingness of those people to see her gone kind of shifted back this last week, I would argue, because in this kind of crazy chain of dramatic events that's been unfolding hour by hour-- really, I guess, the last two weeks, certainly the last few days have been the craziest -- it has moved from being strictly a debate about the failures of her policy or what she knew about corruption, to now people are throwing the word soft coup around all the time. And--

CW: She herself has mentioned that.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: She brought it up yesterday. She accused the forces arrayed against her of trying to carry out a soft coup, or warned that they were on the path of a coup, I guess, is a more accurate way to characterize it. But certainly, her supporters would argue that people who never got over the fact that they lost the last election, the opposition, the main opposition party lost to her by just over one percent in the last election, that they've never accepted that result and ever since then that they've been trying to use different instruments such as an impeachment process, and--

CW: [interposing] They may be capitalizing on…

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Political and judicial instruments to try and push her out and reverse the results of that democratic election. So since that started to happen, I would say the traditional support base of Ms. Rousseff and also her predecessor, Lula da Silva, those people have become maybe more mobilized and more willing to support her in the course of the last week. I mean, things have literally been changing so quickly, within hours, that there isn't even any good polling information on this, because you can't do a poll before something momentous happens and changes everybody's mind again. [laughs]

CW: I've heard it being described as House of Cards in Brazil, the American T.V. show. You mentioned her criticism former President Lula da Silva, he's also being investigated. Can you tell us about him and what he says in his defense?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Yeah. So Lula has really emerged as a central figure in this drama in the last two weeks. He, of course, was president of Brazil for two terms, and the most popular one of the most popular leaders this country has ever had. And he is significant beyond Brazil, because he really became the godfather of the resurgent Latin American left, and he was, for a while, while he was in office, the most popular political leader in the world. And he left office still very popular, and credited for, I mean, he was the beneficiary of a period of huge economic growth, but he was credited for social policy that redistributed income in a way that really had an impact on how the poor in this country lived. So he was hugely popular, he hand chose Ms. Rousseff, who had never held political office, as his successor. He theoretically retired off to go play with his grandkids; although there have always been allegations, which I think were unfair until very recently, that he was pulling the strings from the shadows. But he, the Brazilians were completely astounded, I would say, across the political spectrum on the fourth of March when police raided his home and his office and took him in for questioning in relation with the Petrobras corruption scandal. Which, just to give you a sense of the scale of that scandal, prosecutors allege that more than two billion dollars in bribes were paid for contracts to the national oil company by big construction firms such as Odebrecht, and that a percentage of those bribes, usually they talk about between three and five percent, that a percentage of those bribes were paid to politicians.

CW: Including President da Silva?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Including, well, no. They don't allege that so far. The allegation is not that he received bribes. The charges he's being investigated for are money laundering and misrepresentation of assets, and I guess, one of the things, again, that has served to kind of polarized this conversation this week, is that the things that he is accused of, which is failing to declare ownership of an apartment and possibly a farmhouse, the technical charges are money laundering and misrepresentation of assets. But they are, most Brazilians would agree, pretty small charges in comparison with some of the things, the millions and millions of dollars that some other people in this scandal are alleged to have done, but of course, the larger concern is that because he was president at the time, he must have had knowledge of this system and must have been well aware of the money that was flowing around. So there are specific narrow charges, but a much bigger, kind of, idea of responsibility.

CW: So you mentioned how eventful the last week has been. What has happened in the last couple of days? I know that there was a wiretap that was released.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Right. So he was briefly questioned by police a couple weeks ago, let go. That seems like maybe it was going to die down for a bit, and then this week, the president, there began to be rumors that the president was going to bring him back into her government. Now, she can do that by appointing him to a position that is essentially her chief of staff. It's a cabinet position in Brazil, and under Brazilian law, a sort of whole chunk of senior political figures, including cabinet ministers, can be prosecuted or investigated only by the Supreme Court. So that's essentially like putting a little judicial force field over him. It doesn't mean he's completely protected, but that process would be so slow and so complex, that there's no, you know, he's not going to end up behind bars any time soon. So obviously, opposition supporters, critics, feel that this is President Rousseff acting directly to obstruct justice, and I would say exponentially increased their level of rage. So there were rumors she was going to do this, all of a sudden, she did do it on Wednesday. Within, maybe it was an hour, an hour and a half of the announcement that she was going to do that, another key figure in this drama who is a federal court judge named Sérgio Moro, and who is, was, not clear at this moment, [laughs] a cult hero for millions of Brazilians, because he was spearheading this anti-corruption investigation. Judge Moro allowed the release of tapped phone calls from former President da Silva's phone. So it turned out the Federal Police had been tapping all his calls, that included actual calls with the president. The judge made all of these public, and so suddenly the country was listening Mr. da Silva’s phone calls with the president, and they appeared to show, there is a chunk of audio that shows Ms. Rousseff offering to send former President da Silva the kind of order paper of his appointment that would kind of immediately enact this force field.

CW: I'm beginning to understand the House of Cards reference.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: You know, House of Cards ,like, House of Cards is Little House On The Prairie compared to this place at this point. [both laugh]

CW: So, I mean, help us understand how far this spreads. How many other politicians in Brazil are implicated in these kinds of corruption scandals?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: So this is one of the things about this that’s kind of amazing. When I was interviewing demonstrators last Sunday, and they were saying, you know, that Dilma’s got to go, Lula’s got to go, they should be in jail, and we just want them out. And I would say, okay, so who do you think should be in charge? What do you think should happen, like, who are you supporting? Yeah, I don't know, but they've got to go. [laughs] Because at this point, for example, there was this extraordinary plea bargain testimony that was released this week by a former Lula-Dilma confidant, and it means 74 of the most senior political figures in the country, including the first five people in the line of, I don't know, call it succession, or whatever, but the people who would be qualified, or who would be named to take over in the event of an impeachment, in alleged corrupt activities. So, you know, if Ms. Rousseff is impeached, which looks like an increasingly likely possibility, the next person would be the vice president. The vice president is also under investigation for allegedly using money connected with the Petrobras fraud. For his election campaign. The next person would be the president's political nemesis, who is orchestrating this impeachment. He's been charged with having more than five million dollars in bribe money in Swiss bank accounts. The next person would be the president of the Senate, he is under investigation for a whole series of allegations connected with the fraud. I mean, basically, at this point, the guy who sells newspapers on my corner is about the only person not under investigation in the country. Like, it is not at all clear who at this point.

CW: How does the country function when all of this is going on?

STEPHANIE NOLEN: Well, I don't think, certainly this week [laughs] that very much is getting done in government. It is, you know, the last I would say 48 hours have seen increasing sort of spontaneous gatherings of people in the street and demonstrations. And I think that there's probably going to be more of that in the coming days. There are, as I said earlier, huge demonstrations coming today. Well, I mean, reportedly, we’ll see.

CW: In support of President--

STEPHANIE NOLEN: [interposing] In support of the President this time. Although, I am not ruling out the against the government people also go back to the streets today, as they have the last two days. So that kind of stuff is beginning to disrupt life, I would say. But largely, you could certainly, you could wander around Rio and not really have any idea this was going on. Except that increasingly, I would say, the whole country is a bit transfixed by their T.V.s. But you know, it's not, I would say, it doesn't compare to situations like this that I've been in other places in other countries in my years as a correspondent where normal life is interrupted. That hasn't happened yet.

CW: How divided is Brazilian society over this? I mean, you mentioned that there's a difference in the people who are coming out to protest.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: I would say incredibly divided, and you certainly see that, you certainly see that on social media. I mean, I had a couple of different people said to me the last couple days, that they've just gone off Facebook because they can't stand it anymore. It does feel like collectively the entire nation is shouting at each other on Facebook. Brazilians are the second largest users of Facebook in the world, and it’s certainly played a key role in this whole thing. It’s I would say very sharply divided. And, you know, one of the things that has happened in the events of the last few days is that sort of legit, I would argue, legitimate frustration with the President, with the Rousseff government, for their handling of the economy has been sidelined, and similarly, the massive investigation into that into that corruption scandal, which up until now has been one of the silver linings, because you really saw the institutions working effectively, even if the level of graft they were uncovering was horrifying. That's also been, to some degree, lost this week. It emerged with the wiretapping that that investigation has actually been very political, and a lot of the people involved in it are now quite overt about being not, you know, a neutral independent judicial body, but a body very deliberately targeting government. That anti-corruption judge, Sérgio Moro, who’s worn this kind of superhero cape up until now, I would argue his cape has been, if it's not all the way off this week, it's certainly tattered. And so it's kind of regrettable that some of the brighter spots in this whole thing has been now lost, in what's become a deeply politicized fight.

CW: Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens next. Thank you so much for joining us, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE NOLEN: It's a pleasure, thanks for calling.

CW: Stephanie Nolen is the Globe and Mail’s Latin America Bureau Chief. We reached her in Rio de Janeiro. The protests in Brazil right now may be unlike anything the country's ever seen before, but the scandal that's helped spark them hasn't come out of nowhere. For a sense of whether the current anger on Brazilian streets may actually change the country's future, I'm joined now by Alfredo Saad Filho, a professor of political economy at the University of London

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: Hello.

CW: How would you characterize what's happening in Brazil?

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: I think the social divisions are very, very strong, and they are certainly at the root of the political events in Brazil. This is certainly a very, very important side of the political divide in the country. The masses of people that you see on the street, they are clearly not representative of Brazilian society as a whole. The opinion polls that have been completed so far indicate that in these more recent protests, but in the previous generations; also, in mid-2015 and in mid-2013, the protesters are by far middle class people with incomes that are much higher, several times higher than the Brazilian average, they’re much better educated than the Brazilian average, and they are not, absolutely not, a random sample of the population.

CW: Why is it mainly the middle class, the educated middle class, that’s so disenchanted right now?

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: It's more than disenchanted. They have now moved into a frenzy of protests, and as your correspondent indicated, there is very little political dialogue going on. It's more like a frenzy. All the insults flowing in the Brazilian media, and evidently on social media. But even the established mainstream media has degenerated into something that is not very nice to read. There are at least two problems, or two aspects, of this social issue: one is that the Brazilian upper middle class has been squeezed very badly during the past decades of governments led, federal administrations led by the Workers' Party. The traditional financial sector and the manufacturing sector have done very well out of the global commodity boom, and a period of All economic growth in the early 2000s in the country. The middle class did not. The first decade of the P.T. in power, middle class jobs, meaning jobs earning between five and ten minimum wages in Brazilian terms, those jobs declined by 4.5 million in number. At the same time, minimum wages increased by about 70 percent. So the middle class sees a squeeze coming from the bottom as the poor gain through higher minimum wages and through social benefits that were introduced by the administration. And the see the top of the social pyramid doing very well, while the middle class itself suffers and finds it very, very difficult to see children doing as well as their parents did. So there is an issue of social mobility. The middle class also feel very strongly the loss of exclusivity, as Brazil becomes a less poor and less unequal country, and this is unquestionable. During the past fifteen years, the middle class lost exclusivity, lost exclusive access to airports, to private health, lost exclusive access to shopping centres.

CW: I was just going to ask if this anger is directed solely at the current government, this kind of left wing party leadership.

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: Directed solely at this administration. And it is noticeable that if you go back through Brazilian history, you will find the endless succession of corruption scandals over time.

CW: What kind of impact do you think all of this political turmoil will have on the troubled economy?

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: It does not help at all. There is effectively an investment strike going on; with capital refusing to commit resources into a future that is unknown, but also using the rejection of investment as a tool to try and overthrow the government, or facilitate the overthrow of the current administration. So the economy is effectively in a free-fall. It contracted by 3.8 percent last year, it is likely to contract by an equivalent amount this year, which will essentially wipe out the gains of the past ten years.

CW: Is there a sense that if the president, the current president is overthrown, that that is going to help the economy in some way?

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: I think only in a very limited way. In the sense that the media will start reporting back to news, and perhaps, some of this investment strike will cease, too. However, the deeper problem with the Brazilian economy is that it is heavily dependent on commodity exports, and this has been a serious policy mistake, I would argue, by successive administrations in Brazil. And if you are heavily dependent on commodity exports, and if you’ve lost a significant chunk of the manufacturing base, you lose your engine of growth. Your engine of growth is no longer eternal to your economy, and you start depending on other countries. Now, China's not doing well, the European economies have stagnated, the U.S. economy is not pushing the world economy ahead. So where is Brazil going to find an engine of growth? This will be a problem for any future administration in the country. There is no easy way out of the current predicament for Brazil.

CW: Do you see an end to corruption in Brazil with the change of a new government, or in any instance?

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: There's absolutely no simple answer to this question. Corruption has been a structural feature of the function of the Brazilian state. You can easily go back about 500 years, but if you concentrate in the last 60, 70 years, there have been waves of corruption scandals, and they have very, very often been heavily politicized. And corruption is a very convenient tool, because it is simple: everyone, by definition, gets corruption. And it can be manipulated, in the sense of certain scandals we see in prominence, while others are not publicized at all. There is no solution to this, particularly in the case of Brazil, simply by chasing after one corrupt politician, and then another, and then another. There will be no end to this chase. The end to the chase has to be around a constitutional arrangement in which a transparent structure of the state is put in place, and in which the notion of citizenship encompasses respect for public property. So my brief answer is no. The corruption problem in Brazil is not going to be resolved with this scandal. But the government may well be overthrown.

CW: All right, we'll still have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me.

ALFREDO SAAD FILHO: Thank you, thanks very much.

CW: Alfredo Saad Filho is a professor of political economy at the University of London. We reached him in London, England. That's our program for today. Now, we heard a bit of Stompin’ Tom Connors' 1970 tune, The Ketchup Song, earlier in the show. Let's end things off with a bit more of that song, which Stompin' Tom wrote as an ode to Canada's ketchup capital: Leamington, in Southwestern Ontario. I'm Connie Walker. Thanks for listening to the Friday Edition of The Current.

[Music: The Ketchup Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors]

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Mar. 18, 2016 Episode Transcript

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