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

The Current Transcript for October 8, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

COVID-19 is the perfect storm for our black and brown communities.

MATT GALLOWAY: Through the first wave of this pandemic, we have heard that not all communities across this country were being affected equally. Now, as cases continue to rise. That story is repeating itself. In 30 minutes, why some communities in Canada's biggest city are seeing COVID test positivity rates over 10 percent. And what is preventing true health equity? Also this morning, the federal government announced plans yesterday to ban six kinds of single use plastics by the end of next year. Why not just drop those plastics into the recycling bin. In an hour, why, despite the hype, recycling isn't working and keeping that plastic out of landfills. Plus.

SOUNDCLIP

There's been a huge toll already in civilian deaths and injuries. Canada has to react to that and say that this is not acceptable from a NATO ally.

MG: Untangling the growing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced. We begin, though, with truth flies and pointed exchanges of last night's vice presidential debate. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Harris and Pence face off in U.S. vice-presidential debate

Guests: Amanda Taub, Eugene Scott

MG: Almost from the start, he knew that last night's debate was going to be different than the one between the presidential candidates a week ago, Mike Pence complimented Kamala Harris, saying that it was an honour and a privilege to be on the stage with her. That cordial tone did not last. We also knew that President Donald Trump would figure out some way to squeeze into the story, and he did. We'll get to that in a little bit. But first, let's focus on the vice presidential debate, which attracted more attention than usual.

[[sc]

KAMALA HARRIS: The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. They still don't have a plan. Well, Joe Biden does. And our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy for contact tracing, for testing for administration of the vaccine and making sure that it will be free for all. Frankly, this administration has forfeited their ight to re-election.

MIKE PENCE: No, there's not a day gone by that I haven't thought of every American family that has lost a loved one. And I want all of you to know that you'll always be in our hearts and in our prayers. But when you say with the American people have done over these last eight months, hasn't worked. It's a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made.

Our U.S. election panel is back to talk about the impact of that exchange and other key moments from last night's debate. Amanda Taub is a news columnist with The New York Times. Eugene Scott, political reporter with The Washington Post. Good morning to you both.

AMANDA TAUB: Good morning.

EUGENE SCOTT: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me back.

MG: Thanks for coming back. Eugene Scott, the vice presidential debate isn't generally considered to be pivotal in American presidential campaigns. Political nerds watch it. But a lot of people focus on the president, not the vice presidential race. How much higher were the stakes last night?

EUGENE SCOTT: Significantly so. I mean, this was a historic debate. And almost immediately after Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his vice presidential pick, people started talking about the vice presidential debate. And so individuals really wanted to see Kamala Harris, who is the least known politician of before on the presidential slate, introduce herself to Americans who did not know her and also address some issues that those more familiar with her still had about her past and wondering what she would do in the future if given the chance to head to Washington outside of Congress.

MG: Amanda Taub, how much of this has to do with the fact that Joe Biden is 77? Donald Trump is 74 and was just diagnosed with COVID-19 as well?

AMANDA TAUB: I think that the nature of the job of vice president is probably much more front and central in voters minds in this particular election than it would otherwise have been. I mean, I think all of us have probably been contemplating mortality a little bit more than usual in these last few months because of the pandemic, but particularly when the president is, you know, right now struggling with the disease that has killed more than 200000 Americans. The importance of selecting the right vice president, I think, seems like an extra big deal.

MG: And so aside from the fly that landed on Mike Pence, his head and became a social media star. Who do you think had the better night, Amanda?

AMANDA TAUB: I would say that I think, you know, Camela Harris had the better night for any number of reasons. You know, the issues were probably more on her side. The New York Times does a fact cheque of every debate and far more of Mike Pence's statements were misleading or false than hers, which I think goes to show not just the approach that each of them was taking to facts and truth during the debate, but also just how much more she was able to have the discussion on political turf. That was good for her and Mr. Biden.

MG: Will walk through the issues in detail. Eugene, just broadly, who had the better night to think last night?

EUGENE SCOTT: You know, I would think it was Senator Harris. I think she had to get her message out there and, quite frankly, attack the Trump administration in a way that perhaps did come off as, quote, unlikeable and an attack in characteristic that the Trump campaign has really tried to land on her. But I'm not quite sure it's stuck. I think Mike Pence was on the defence. He had to answer for so many things that many Americans have already made clear that they are disappointed with. And I'm not sure that the answers he provided were sufficient to the voting public.

MG: Let's talk about being on the defence when it comes to the pandemic. We heard at the very beginning that clip of Kamala Harris going after Mike Pence on the administration's handling of this pandemic. He heads up the White House coronavirus task force. How effective, Eugene, was she in trying to hold that administration to account?

EUGENE SCOTT: I think she reminded Americans, many of them, that we are heading in to an election with the worst economy ever, you know, weeks ahead of an election. And that it was not just President Trump's fought in terms of how he responded to this virus, but also perhaps Mike Pitts's. And I think that gave many voters an idea of perhaps what a vice president could be responsible for in an administration, that it's not just, you know, a ceremonial role, but that one that comes with responsibility. And I think she really tried her best to make it clear that Mike Pence had not been up to the job.

MG: The president has been saying that a vaccine is going to arrive within days or weeks. Certainly, he hopes, before the election. Mike Pence said the Kamala Harris in some ways was undermining confidence in a vaccine. She said that if the president approved a vaccine, she wasn't sure whether she would take it. If the scientists approved it, then yes, of course she would take it. Amanda, what does that do in terms of, I guess, flipping the the spotlight around and putting it back onto how if they were elected and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would handle this pandemic?

AMANDA TAUB: I think that I was a little bit surprised that she bothered to go into whether she would take a vaccine if it had been recommended by the president, but not by the normal ordinary process of vaccine approval in the United States, because it's so likely, so unlikely that that's going to come up. I think it does speak to how shaky trust is right now in basically any aspect of the American government. And that is something that in some ways works in favour of Senator Biden. Well, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But I think it's also something that they have to be careful with because trust doesn't necessarily just come back. So I was surprised by that. I was surprised that she kind of went as far as she did in expressing scepticism. But I think she's probably trying to show empathy with people who right now are feeling insecure and untrust, distrust of their government.

MG: Well, I mean, and the other just finally, the last point on this is, is the context of the fact that the numbers keep going up in terms of people who have COVID-19 at the White House or who are isolating because they may have been exposed. The moderator, Susan Page, asked Mike Pence about that White House event in which people have called this a super spreader event. Amanda, how is that affecting the campaign? The fact that not just the president has this, but that a number of people in his inner circle seem to now have been infected?

AMANDA TAUB: I think it's a disaster. I mean, it's a disaster in really any way you look at it. I mean, for one thing, people are literally out of commission because they're sick. And also, you know, Americans are wondering if the president and his administration are able to keep people safe in their own homes, which is not something that inspires a lot of confidence. But I think also it has just put the issue of the pandemic and the degree to which it has kind of raged out of control in the United States, really back at the centre of the political discussion in the United States. And that's something that the Trump campaign was hoping to avoid.

MG: The Trump campaign, I think, prefer to speak about the economy. This was another major theme in the debate. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

MIKE PENCE: On day one, Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes. Joe Biden says democracy is on the ballot. Make no mistake about it, Susan. The American economy, the American comeback is on the ballot.

KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I mean, we saw enough of it in last week's debate. But I think this is supposed to be a debate based on fact and truth and the truth. And the fact is, Joe Biden has been very clear he will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than four hundred thousand a year.

MIKE PENCE: He said he's going to appeal the Trump tax cut.

KAMALA HARRIS: Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking.

MIKE PENCE: Well [laughs].

KAMALA HARRIS: I'm speaking.

MIKE PENCE: The important is you say the truth. Joe Biden said twice in the debate last week that he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. That was tax cuts that gave the average working family two thousand dollars in a tax break every single year, senator. That's a laugh.

KAMALA HARRIS: That is absolutely not true. If you don't mind letting me finish.

MIKE PENCE: Please.

KAMALA HARRIS: We can have a conversation. Okay?

MIKE PENCE: Please.

KAMALA HARRIS: Okay.

MG: Couple of interesting things to talk about. One is the economy. Eugene Scott does that idea. You know, and people have fact checked it whether Joe Biden is going to increase taxes or not. But when Mike Pence says that, what kind of difference could that make for the undecided voters such as they might be?

EUGENE SCOTT: It can make a significant difference when Mike Pence or anyone on the right says that Joe Biden is going to raise taxes for everyone. What people who are having a very difficult time making ends meet here is that they, too, could end up paying more taxes. And they aren't always clear on what it is exactly they could be paying taxes for. And so we saw the senator try to fact cheque that some folks I spoke with said that she did not respond more quickly or should I say quick enough. She did eventually get to the point that Joe Biden said he did not want to raise taxes on people working. I mean, making less than four hundred thousand dollars a year. But Mike Pence, I think, effectively was able to get his talking points out. And those who would be most concerned about it probably heard it. And I'm not sure that they were convinced or led in a different direction. But hers is just an attempt to correct it.

MG: Amanda Taub, what did you make of the tone of that exchange and Kamala Harris trying to get her point out as Mike Pence was trying to redirect the conversation?

AMANDA TAUB: Yes. Two things struck me about that. One was that the discussion of the economy immediately became a discussion of taxes and tax cuts, which I think is certainly something that will resonate with Americans who are feeling economically precarious, which has a lot of the country right now. But, of course, the the big pressing economic issue that is facing America is not tax cuts that would come in several months. It's whether there will be a stimulus now to deal with the effects of the coronavirus and whether that virus is going to be brought under control. So I think that that was a moment in the debate where it kind of strayed into territory that was not as good for the Biden campaign because it was a little bit more technocratic. But the other thing that I thought was really striking about that you mentioned tone, was how different it was from similar exchanges and interruptions during the presidential debate when, you know Donald Trump obviously had done a lot of interrupting. Things had gotten very heated. Joe Biden had asked him, you know, why don't you shut up, man? Whereas Kamala Harris had to be much more kind of restrained and measured and calm. And I think that part of that comes from the additional burdens that female candidates face and the additional limitations on the kinds of things that they can say in tones that they can use without alienating voters just because of some of the success stereotypes that women face.

MG: What do you mean by that? That she had to take that time?

AMANDA TAUB: I think that when women in politics show anger or frustration, it tends to be interpreted as incompetence or them being driven by emotion or them being impolite or unprofessional. Whereas when male candidates do it, there's a fair amount of research showing that voters are much more receptive to that sort of behaviour. They see it as showing leadership. They see it as, you know, dedication and passion. So I think that the range of tone, the range of kind of behaviour and things that a white male candidate can say is simply broader than the range that Kamala Harris was able to access without paying that sort of price.

MG: Eugene Scott, is that what you were getting at in your piece yesterday where you wrote that as the first black and South Asian woman on a major party ticket Kamala Harris faces builtin and unique pressures and challenges?

EUGENE SCOTT: Absolutely. I mean, almost immediately, those on the right were trying to portray her as angry and nasty and, you know, recite all of these talking points that President Trump has effectively, according to his base, used against many of his critics who are women and people of colour. And so I don't think, you know, unfortunately, for lack of a better word, Senator Harris had the privilege of telling Mike Pence to shut up, despite the fact that Mike Pence was interrupting her and arguably as rude as President Trump was. But just in a very different manner, because this was something that she had to keep in the back of her mind. And it really didn't matter how good of a job she did at managing the conversation and her temper and emotions, there would still be individuals who would call her unlikeable simply because she spoke up and asserted herself. And that's, in fact, what we did see on the right. But it's worth noting in our most recent Washington Post ABC poll of before candidate and Kamala Harris is actually the one with the highest favorability ratings.

MG: Let's talk about one more issue policy that was debated last night, and that was the issue of climate change. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: Joe understands that the west coast of our country is burning, including my home state of California. And so Joe believes in science. Do you know this administration took the words science off the Web site? We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science. Vice President Pence, do you believe that climate change poses an existential threat?

MIKE PENCE: As I said, Susan, the climate is changing. We'll follow the science. But once again, Senator Harris. Is denying the fact that they're going to raise taxes on every American.

MG: Amanda Taub, what do you make of that approach by Cannella Harris to paint the administration as anti science and then pense essentially just pivoting back to the issue of taxes?

AMANDA TAUB: I mean, I thought it was interesting that Vice President Pence tried to say that they actually are waiting for science to give them some sort of guidance that hasn't come. Or some sort of scientific scientific clarity that hasn't come. That's not a new strategy but I think that it's one that is more fraught now that the pandemic is also bringing the issue of science. So front and centre to the American people, I think that the idea that, you know, leaders can't do anything until there is absolutely clear scientific evidence or that you can trust them to follow it is something that is just not a particularly strong talking point in the United States right now. And I think the fact that he immediately pivoted to taxes away from climate change made it very clear that this is not a topic they're very comfortable discussing.

MG: Eugene Scott, briefly, how much of a factor is climate change in this election, do you think?

EUGENE SCOTT: You know, I don't I don't think it's as big of a factor as many people on the left would hope it would be. But I think what the Bida campaign will have to do to make it more of a factor is connected to the economy, connected to systemic racism, and connected to other issues that have been more of a priority for voters looking for leadership. And regarding the biggest issues at this moment.

MG: I have to ask you about something else that happened yesterday. This is before the debate. The focus was meant to be on the vice presidential nominees, but the president himself released this video talking about an experimental antibody cocktail that he took called Regeneron. Have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it. I heard about this drug. I said, let me take it. It was my suggestion. I said, let me take it. And it was incredible the way it worked. Incredible. And I think if I didn't catch it, we'd be looking at that like a number of other drugs. But it really did a fantastic job. I want to get for you what I got and I'm going to make it free. You're not going to pay for it. It wasn't your fault that this happened. It was China's fault.

MG: Eugene Scott, what was that about?

EUGENE SCOTT: It was about the president appearing to throw everything at the wall possible to get as much support as possible and to at least prevent people from walking away from his campaign. He promised to make a drug free to people, but that has not been yet approved by the government and promised that it cured coronavirus. There's just no evidence or no support for this. But he was hoping, he was hoping very much that people would hear that and perhaps to buy into it enough that they could perhaps give his campaign a second look.

MG: Amanda, the next debate between President Trump and Joe Biden, we're learning, will be held virtually from remote locations. The vote is under a month away. Just briefly, we have a minute or so left. What are you going to be watching for in these remaining days and weeks?

AMANDA TAUB: You know, I think that it would be absolutely foolish to think that I could predict what was going to happen next. We certainly couldn't have predicted the last couple of weeks. So I would say that I think we are going to continue to see all of the issues that we are currently seeing, including particularly the pandemic and President Trump's infection and the hot spot at the White House, the hot spot of infections. But you could convince me that almost anything was going to be an important issue in the next two weeks.

MG: I think that's wise to say that you can't predict anything because the script feels like it has not yet been finished. We will, I think, chat again. In the meantime, it's great to speak with you both again this morning.

AMANDA TAUB: You too.

EUGENE SCOTT: Indeed. Take care.

MG: Amanda Taub is a news columnist with The New York Times. Eugenie Scott, political reporter for The Washington Post. We've also just heard that President Trump says he will not do a virtual debate with Joe Biden and his campaign says he'll hold a rally instead. Joe Biden says he looks forward to speaking directly to Americans in the virtual debate. Stay tuned. You're CBC News is up next. And then COVID-19 disproportionate impact on communities of colour in Canada and what's being done to address it. This is happening in major cities across this country. We'll talk about where the spikes really are and what needs to be addressed systemically to make sure that health care is available in an equitable form to people across this country. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in six minutes. Don't go anywhere.

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on communities of colour in Canada

Guests: Naini Cloutier, Arjuman Siddiqi, Andre Picard

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, with Thanksgiving looming and questions swirling around who, if anyone, you should get together with for a meal this weekend, Globe and Mail health columnist Andre Picard gives us an update on the ever evolving response to Canada's second waves. But first, the inequality of virus.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

In a way, these communities are segregated. You know, their populations with high numbers of people of colour, high numbers of people living in poverty, a lot of newcomers, people who don't speak English as a first language. So what we have to do is really develop strategies that can reach these communities faster. You know, the messaging about COVID needs to be targeted to populations like this.

MG: That's Cheryl Prescod, the executive director of the Black Creek Community Health Centre. Cheryl and her team serve a part of Toronto where positive COVID test rates are higher than normal for prospective public health. Experts say that there is cause for concern when over three percent of COVID tests come back positive. The Toronto Star reports that's in some areas of that city, like the one where Cheryl Prescod works. Test rates are as high as 10 percent.

SOUNDCLIP

These rates are not a surprise. Health disparities were there prior to COVID. So when COVID emerged in the city, we knew that these communities would be hardest hit.

MG: Advocates in Toronto are the only ones coming up against these disparities. Naini Cloutier is executive director of the Somerset West to Community Health Centre and a member of the Ottawa Health Team. Good morning.

NAINI CLOUTIER: Good morning.

MG: When you hear those numbers coming out of Toronto, what goes through your mind?

NAINI CLOUTIER: I think very similar to Cheryl. I would say that it is not a surprise. Just to clarify that, as the Ottawa health team is a group of over 70 plus health care and social service services working closely to improve the health and well-being of people, and we are working with the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership that has been convening for the past 10 years to look at how they could be better integration. And we know that the root causes are structural inequities, that there is a lack of accountability, often in health care planning, that there is lack of racialized presence, presence around tables and how resources are allocated. And people often have bad experience in the health care system and there's a real inequity in access.

MG: And so based on that inequity, what are you seeing when it comes to test positivity rates in Ottawa?

NAINI CLOUTIER: So I think what we are seeing is that the numbers are very high in Ottawa. Preliminary results show that over 66 percent of those who have tested positive are from racialized communities. So there's a disproportionate burden of illness and impact on these communities. And we are very concerned and we are developing community strategies in terms of looking at how can we work with people where they work and where they live, how we can work around strategies that have been informed by the community. We know that testing is in itself not a solution, that we need to have a more holistic approach to look at what are the protective factors that these communities need to be supported with. We are looking at a community approach where we are going to be working with the local integration partnership to learn about the stories directly from these people, from our racialized communities, to see what have they experienced, what are they worried about, what are they suggesting? And wraparound resources and also work in the communities and neighbourhoods, just as Cheryl was saying, to develop some community based learning and intervention.

MG: Let me ask you about the solutions in a moment. But just briefly, Ali, what are the people that you work with, what are they telling you about how they experience this pandemic?

NAINI CLOUTIER: II think what we're hearing from people is that they are worried. They are certainly talking about access. And I think what I would like to emphasise is that there is going to be, I would say, a lot of discussions with communities in the next few months or at the end of this month around their own experiences. But they are talking about the lack of, for example, this overrepresentation of people in these, that is in front line jobs. We know that the communities are highly immunocompromised for many of them. We experience racism. There is risk of negative physical and mental health due to cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure and so on. So the [unintelligible] morbidities are high and and they're coming into contact with people on a regular basis. And many of them are hospital support staff and working in jobs that are in the front line. So there is worry, and I think we will shortly in a couple of weeks be talking more about their individual stories. We very much want the people who are impacted to tell their own story and kind of own their own data, because right now we are looking at how we can do a deeper dive on the race based data and look at what are some of the patterns that are coming out and be working with experts and working with the Ottawa Public Health to develop a community narrative and come up with community solutions.

MG: Briefly, what would some of those solutions look like to address that?

NAINI CLOUTIER: So right now. There's a big emphasis on testing. But what we are saying is it needs to be more targeted testing. And what we are saying is that it needs to be focussed on looking at where the communities are at. So building trust in the communities and using that community intelligence and data from the communities in terms of what works. So we are looking at going into neighbourhoods and working with the Ottawa public health, developing some wraparound supports that could be tailored messaging that speaks to community experiences. We are also trying to do more strategic priority testing, as I just said before, to look at the disproportionately impacted by COVID, make testing easier to access.

MG: Do you need to also start to create spaces where people I mean, you talked about the work situation, but also the living situation. If people are living in congregate settings, places where people can go so they actually can isolate if they find themselves testing positive.

NAINI CLOUTIER: Yes. So what we recognise is that there are many barriers. Certainly the living conditions. So we are working with the city of Ottawa looking at what kind of alternative could be in put in place for people who test positive initially, if you are living in multigenerational home families living in small dwellings. It can be quite difficult for them to self isolate. And there are so many other factors. If you have jobs which require you to be present at the jobs. So how do you deal with that? There are other challenges and barriers for individuals that again need to be responded to. So it's looking at the whole picture, not just the issue of testing.

MG: We're going to speak more about some of the solutions. In the meantime, I appreciate the work that you're doing and I appreciate you telling us about it. Naini, thank you.

NAINI CLOUTIER: Thank you.

MG: Naini Cloutier is the executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre in Ottawa. Arjumand Siddiqi Iniki is Canada Research Chair and Population Health Equity and associate professor at the Dalai Lama School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. And she's been listening. And good morning to you.

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: Good morning.

MG: What are you thinking as you hear what's going on in Toronto and Ottawa and perhaps other communities across this country with the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racialise communities?

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: Well, I very much agree with your previous caller in that it really isn't surprising at all. We've had health inequities by race and class. And by the intersection of race and class for nearly every health outcome of which we know, including all the major causes of death in in Canada and death itself and of illness. I really appreciate the work that the previous caller is engaged in and what many community based organisations are doing. I come from a population perspective. So when she mentioned that she's looking sort of at the broad pattern, that's where my work has been situated. And what we've learnt is that on the one hand, there are sort of coded specific issues, if you will. There are issues around, as she mentioned, the fact that frontline workers tend to be black working class people and often other brown working class people as well. And that that is a major source of risk. So what we're learning is that a large piece of the puzzle of why we're seeing these racial inequities is precisely because the people who are the most exposed and the least able to protect themselves by isolating are the ones that come from black working class communities because of how racialized our labour market, our education market, et cetera.

MG: She also raised the issue of what's known as co-morbidities, which many other extenuating circumstances that could exacerbate the impact of COVID-19. What's happening within those populations that would make them so vulnerable.

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: So the co morbidities issue is really upsetting, interesting, but upsetting. So you're quite right that she's quite right, that there will be a higher likelihood that there are other illnesses like diabetes, like cardiovascular disease, and so one operating in black and other racialized communities as well, in particular in working class communities. And the issue really is that in every way you can imagine, we disadvantage those groups in terms of being able to be healthy. So the very factors that are leading to higher risk of COVID also fundamentally lead to higher risk of not being able to eat well, not being able to exercise, having higher levels of stress in your life. And all of the sort of pass that that essentially lead to every illness we know are just higher risk in those groups. And so in part, the issue is dismantling the logic of the of the very fact that we put those groups at risk for all of these forms of ill health in the first place. When you tell the story.

MG: Well, when you take a look at the COVID issue, I mean, again, the perspective when it comes to the test, positivity rates we're seeing the public health experts say that when these rates are over three percent, this is, you know, the alarm bells should go off in Toronto. And some of these areas, they're as high as 10 percent. The premier was asked about this about these high COVID-19 test results in some neighbourhoods in Toronto. Here's what he said when it came to this test results.

SOUNDCLIP

That's where we have to focus on we go out there, we put the mobile testing units up. We get more advertising within those communities and efforts. And no matter if it's the mainstream media or if it's the ethnic media, we're still pumping millions and millions of dollars to educate the people.

MG: Before you get to the larger systemic issues, is testing and a targeted testing a way to help stop the spread of this virus?

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: Targeting testing may help in the sense that one of the things that I think we're finding is that the barriers for testing are high even in the best of times. So for people who face all of the issues like discrimination in the healthcare system, like a lack of availability of testing in their neighbourhood, like competing priorities, having to go to work or care for others, getting tested is is a very big deal. It allows you to know your status and to know the fact that you need to be careful. And so it absolutely would be helpful to put in more resources to help people get tested.

MG: Step back from that. And then in the last minute, a bit that we have to talk about, you talk about dismantling in some ways the systems that are there that would put people in the position that they would be vulnerable in the first place. So what are the larger changes that you need to see in place?

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: So, you know, I think the big issue is that even if we were to address these kinds of what we often called downstream risk factors for, it's like being able to get tested, being able to isolate and so on and so forth. The problem is that the fundamental source of those risk, which is not having opportunities to the kinds of jobs that allow you to protect yourself, not being able to access education and being discriminated against in the education system and in the labour market, those kinds of factors actually lead to risk in other illnesses, too. And so even, even if we were to do something about COVID, you're going to see racial health inequalities reassert themselves in the next element in the next pandemic. And in every illness, as I said, that we see. And so what you really want to do is try to address the upstream factors, try to address the systemic forms of racism and lack of access that fundamentally lead to this pattern of black working class people, brown working class people being overrepresented in, quote unquote, essential service jobs, not being able to sort of access the kinds of jobs that have allowed many people to stay at home or isolate during this time. And those are the same jobs that allow them to lead lives that, in general, leads to better health. So I think the issue is really addressing educational access it except it's addressing labour market discrimination and basically addressing all of the sort of root causes of how we end up with a pattern of a of an economy, of a society that is so racially segregated by job, by education level, by income, by wealth and so on.

MG: We just have a couple of seconds left. Are you confident that those, I mean, that's a big systemic conversation. But are you confident that that is possible, given that we are now actually talking about these numbers? There's been resistance to race based data for a long time now that we have it. Are you confident that that could lead to the larger conversation?

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: So I believe that race based data should exist because I believe that there should be a record of what the systemic patterns are. I'm less convinced that that data actually leads to the conversation and any predictable way. I think it can support movements like Black Lives Matter to make their case and to understand that they're dealing with. But I don't know that there is a systemic link between the data and change. I do think that change will come when we have more of what we've seen this summer, which is an active social protest against the prevailing norms arguments, I think.

MG: Arjumand, great to speak with you about this. And I have a feeling we'll talk again in the meantime. Thank you.

ARJUMAND SIDDIQI: Thank you.

MG: Arjumand Siddiqi is a Canada research chair and population health equity and associate professor at the Dalai Lama School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. These high numbers of COVID cases in racialized communities are happening as the overall case counts swell in many parts of this country. Yesterday, Dr. Teresa Tam announced the number of recorded infections increased 40 percent in Canada over the past seven days. Andre Picard is the Globe and Mail health columnist. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: How alarmed should we be by what we've just been talking about, the fact that specific communities seem to be hardest hit by this virus and it's a disproportionate effect if you take a look at population numbers.

ANDRE PICARD: Yes. So I think as many as Arjumand say it very eloquently. It points out that this pandemic is not a leveller of any sort. Diseases like coronavirus exploit and they exacerbate these inequities. So when we look at the numbers, the numbers are going up, but they're not going up equally, that these communities are being disproportionately hit so that we should pay a lot of attention to those.

MG: Speaks as well to the concerns that have been raised within First Nations communities that this so-called second wave could arrive on their doorstep sooner rather than later.

ANDRE PICARD: Absolutely. The indigenous communities have been stellar in protecting their communities, but you can only do it for so long and we're seeing some creeping into those remote communities of the virus. And that's really concerning because they're just start the resources to fight it.

MG: Are you encouraged that we're actually talking about this, that these numbers are starting to come. Arjumand, her point was you can have the numbers, but the numbers are only the framing of the conversation. At least we do have the numbers now in some ways. And we didn't have those numbers for a long time when it comes to race based data.

ANDRE PICARD: Yes, I did for many years been talking about the importance of this. It's one thing that the U.S. does much better than us has collected race based data. But like Arjumand, I'm not convinced that we're going to act on it. There's no reason. We've known this forever and we haven't acted on it. So we need more the numbers. We need a political commitment and we need to recognise that, you know, even in economic terms, fixing this is good for society as a whole, even if you don't believe in, you know, equality, etc., just from the pure economics of it, it makes sense to address these issues.

MG: The greater context here is that, as Theresa Tam has noted, the number of recorded infections going up across this country, in most parts of the country, the Atlantic bubble seems to be still holding, but elsewhere, not so good. How alarmed are you by that?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, the trend is really concerning everywhere. You know, we're averaging more than 2000 cases a day. Ontario and Quebec are still the bulk of that. But there are significant numbers. Alberta, B.C., 150, 100 case city, Manitoba, proportionally has a lot of cases. So this is spreading outside of the you know, for a long time, this was two big cities was in long term care homes. Now it's spreading really broadly and slowly. And that's really concerning even the Atlantic bubble. You know, we're seeing an outbreak in New Brunswick, the province that has been the least hit by this has 17 cases overnight tonight. That's a big deal.

MG: Have we lost control of this? Toronto, for example, through its public health offices, it's scaling back contact tracing in some ways to focus on high risk settings.

ANDRE PICARD: I don't think we've lost control. But I think we have to take a step back and change our approaches. So what Toronto health has done and I think is not- concerning a bit. But I think it's good in that they've recognised that there's just this widespread contact tracing, they just can't keep up anymore. So you have to be more targeted. You have to be a little smarter about the resources we have, especially as a community spread grows. So I think it's a good thing they're stepping back and wondering how to do this differently.

MG: You raise the issue of leadership. There's an editorial in your newspaper this morning saying that the premier needs to step away from being front and centre, the premier of Ontario, follow that lead, perhaps, of the premier British Columbia. John Horgan, who turns things over to Bonnie Henry in some ways. Also suggesting, and we talked about this last week, that he needs better advice. What would it mean for the premier of Ontario, somebody who has been accused of mixed messaging, but also of not doing what the city of Toronto has asked him to do when it comes to closing down indoor dining. What would it mean for him to step away from the front of this conversation?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think it might be a little blow to his ego, but I think overall it would be good for the fight against COVID. It would be good for the public to see a different face. There's no question where we look around Canada, around the world, that jurisdictions that have done the best have left it up to public health. The politicians have had have been smart enough to step back and say, leave this to the experts. The politicians should be dealing with the economy aspect of this, which is big enough in itself. Leave the health issues to the health people. And I think Ontario in that regard has to get a better leader and its public health message. Dr. Williams, I think, is someone for another day, from a different era. We see even Toronto Public Health, Kingston Public Health, Ottawa really questioning what's supposed to be the public health leadership. I think we have to have one of them. One of those good communicators step up and have a clear message. And Mr. Ford put a little water in his wine and step back and let other people run the show.

MG: Heading into Thanksgiving weekend and there are mixed messages in some ways about what Canadians should or shouldn't be doing. What message do you think should stick with Canadians?

ANDRE PICARD: Just need a simple message. Limit your number of contacts. You know, you can have Thanksgiving next year. Don't have the big family gathering. Have some intimate family gatherings, the people under your roof. I think it's a very simple message. Limit the number of contacts in any way you can.

MG: And yet when people hear 'you can have Thanksgiving next year', we talked about fatigue. Do you worry that that fatigue- we're getting into winter. It's going to get darker sooner, that that's really going to weigh on people?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, there's no question it's weighing on people now. It's depressing as there is anything but, you know, it's short term pain for long term gain. I think is how we have to look at it.

MG: What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

ANDRE PICARD: Very quiet Thanksgiving. No Turkey this year, because we're not going to have the 10 or 12 people going to be very, very quiet and look forward to, you know, we sacrifice Thanksgiving. We look forward to having the kids home from university at Christmas. That's going to be a payoff.

MG: Fingers crossed. Andre, great to talk to you as always. And we'll talk again. Thank you.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MG: Andre Picard, Global Mail's health columnist. He joined me from Montreal. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? You could let us know how you're kind of taking that mixed messaging. In some ways, it's been complicated, depending on where you happen to live in this country. Depending on how the virus is affecting you, you can let us know through the website. Go to cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. Maybe you're setting up a virtual turkey or Tofurky roasting. Your regional update is next. And then we will unpack the escalating conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current CBC Radio.

Growing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Guests: Thomas De Waal

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Protestors chanting]

MG: Sound of Armenian Canadians protesting this week outside of the Ontario legislature in Toronto. The escalating conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has many in that community worried.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We had a genocide in 1915 of a million and half Armenians that will never be forgotten by the people who still live in it today. And this is potentially going to be a second genocide.

VOICE 2: It's been very difficult to cope with being thousands of miles away. It puts a lot of my friends and family in a very, very vulnerable position. A lot of them have security bags that they've put together in case they need to move at a moment's notice. Really, really like for there to be peace as soon as possible. [Unintelligible] is Armenian land? And there's historically no doubt about that.

MG: The continued bombing and civilian casualties are also worrying to Canada's Azerbaijani community.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I feel a constant worry. I'm concerned about the safety of my family members back home and loved ones because there are deliberate attacks against civilians in several cities outside of the conflict zone and they have been already targeted by Armenian [unintelligible].

VOICE 2: It is sad that people who used to live there in Karabakh and the other seven provinces of Azerbaijan that has been occupied ever since by Armenian armed forces, backed up by Russian troops, that they have been living there for centuries in peace, that is subject to an occupation. And over 800,000 people from Azerbaijan, from back home. They have been displaced from their native land.

MG: Both countries are blaming each other for the military aggression and the escalation in violence. Thomas of All is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of Black Garden, Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. He is in London. Thomas De Waal, good morning.

THOMAS DE WAAL: Good morning.

MG: You had a chance there to hear both Armenian and Azerbaijani Canadians talking. How reflective are their views of this conflict that's taking place?

THOMAS DE WAAL: You know, those views on basically reflect two of the deepest societies, Armenians and Azerbaijan, is not just the leadership that are ordinary people. The tragedy of this conflict is that both sides have legitimate grievances. This has been going on since the late 1980s, early 1990s, and it hasn't been resolved. And so those grievances continue. They can only be solved together. But there's been no effective peace process and we can blame many people for the failure of that peace process. But what we've seen 10 days ago is almost certain an Azerbaijani attempt to recover the land it lost in the 1990s by military means and this terrible conflict that has ensued ever since.

MG: Tell us about the land that's in dispute in this region.

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, you have to bear in mind two, two areas of land. One is the disputed region of Nagorno Aqaba itself, which is traditionally an Armenian territory for many centuries. And this is where the dispute began back in 1988. The Armenians of Karabakh saying they wanted to leave Azerbaijan and join Armenia, a small Azerbaijani population as well, which complicated things. And as the war escalated in the early 1990s, the Armenian forces that was to protect Karabakh itself captured huge swathes of territory outside Karabakh, which was just normal Azerbaijani administrative region. This is the great trauma for Azerbaijan that this caused a huge humanitarian catastrophe. More than half a million as Azerbaijanis were displaced from their homes as a result of this. So on the one side, the fear of Armenians of Karabakh that was by John wants to destroy them and take over the homeland. On the other hand, the justified grievance announced by Azerbaijani [unintelligible] that more than two decades of this ordinary Azerbaijani land where more than half a million people used to live has been under Armenian military control.

MG: This has been simmering for decades. Why has it exploded now?

THOMAS DE WAAL: I think there was a ceasefire back in 1994. Both sides were exhausted from the previous conflict. And there's been mediation ever since. There's been through quite sophisticated plans to try and resolve this. Why have they not worked? For many reasons. It's a distant conflict. People got a bit fed up with it. No political will, really on the leaders on either side to make compromise. The Russians have always been at the centre of it and they've had their own agenda. And also, people like me who've tried to kind of know both sides in an advocate dialogue and support dialogue have been a very small bunch of people. There's a small kind of civil society component. But it really hasn't been enough to build a constituency for peace.

MG: You mentioned Russia. What is Russia's reaction to this conflict thus far? Me, both of these countries are former Soviet republics.

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, the big new factor is, in fact, not so much Russia this time as this is probably why Azerbaijan has tried to reshape things and restart things. Is the support of Turkey for Azerbaijan. Turkey, as always, politically supported Azerbaijan, but always been a kind of restraining factor on as by John using force I'm present at one's turkey suddenly seems to up the rhetoric and given direct military assistance, if not boots on the ground, at least military assistance to Azerbaijan and a lot of political support to kind of keep the conflict in Azerbaijan to favour Russia. It has been rather wrong footed by this. It's been mostly silent. Russia has come stakes on both sides. It's supposed to be a mediator. They're a bit more supportive of the Armenians, but they certainly don't want to lose the relationship with they have in Azerbaijan. So I think Russia has been struggling for response and the agenda so far has been set by Azerbaijan and Turkey.

MG: Turkish President Erdogan has described that country's support for Assad by John as part of Turkey's quest for its, in his words, deserve a place in the world order. What do you make of that?

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, bizarrely enough, it was exactly 100 years ago, 1920, that Turkey was lost in this region. The Bolsheviks arrived to Russia, arrived at Lenin and Ataturk basically did a deal to kind of carve up the region, took it's been out of that region ever since. But as Azerbaijan is a [unintelligible] country, the two countries, a place. President Erdogan obviously has regional ambitions. He wants to be a kind of champion of Muslims around the world. He also wants to compete with Russia's President Putin. And I think he saw an opportunity here to get glory at home and some wider glory in the Muslim world by supporting Azerbaijan. How far does he want to go? I think that's the question everyone is asking, because this is already a huge human cost to this conflict. How does how far does you want to get more fully involved in it?

MG: So when NATO leans on Turkey and says, use your influence to calm the tensions that are all around you right now, what's the likelihood of Turkey paying attention to that?

MG: Very little, I'm afraid. I think I'm afraid the outbreak of this conflict is yet another sign, the kind of breakdown of the kind of European multilateral security structures which we're trying to deal with these conflicts. Europeans struggling to respond. The US has responded. It is distracted by the election. Hopes to the supposedly mediator has done very little. So I guess the fear of everyone is that who watches this conflict is the Russia and Turkey, just as they did a century ago, will try to impose some kind of great power piece from above, over the heads of the ordinary people and the animal rights space, justice based approach of the Europeans will be ignored.

MG: The tentacles of this seem to reach far and wide. I mean, the Canadian government announced that it's suspending arms exports to Turkey. Turkey then accused Canada of failing to support a NATO member state. How deep do those tentacles go?

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, it's certainly this conflict is certainly setting off a lot of tensions between Turkey and Azerbaijan on the one hand and Western powers on the other. Huge round escalating. It already started over Cyprus in the Mediterranean between France and Turkey. And as you say, tensions between Turkey and Canada and other NATO members. So I think, you know, this is a big cleavage opening up here. And I guess the question is, one is, does Russia want to try and do its own separate deal with Turkey? Whether Russia want to appeal to the West with even the to of a terrible relationship at the moment to try and come in to try and maybe cool some kind of peace conference on this conflict. But I'm afraid it's, you know, yet another terrible conflict with the terrible moment in world geopolitics.

MG: There are hundreds who've been killed already and thousands who've been displaced. I mean, you've hinted at this, but as this continues to grow, with no diplomatic resolution in sight, what's at stake here do you think?

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, first of all, I think it's very important to focus on the humanitarian aspect. I've been reading reports particularly of the mass destruction in Karabakh itself, the Armenian city of the town, the Kurds, people sheltering in basements, people, thousands of people leaving cluster bombs, according to Amnesty International being used. A huge humanitarian impact also as we heard reports, maybe a bit less of them. But suddenly reports of Armenian rocket attacks hitting the Azerbaijani urban centres. So there was a huge civilian cost to that that's left. That's one thing to say. But I guess the question is, this is a conflict on the edge of Europe. It's one that the United States, France and other European nations are committed to mediating in. So it's a massive test to the credibility of these Western nations. If this is just allowed to continue as it seems to be at the moment.

MG: How do you find a peaceful solution to this? I mean, you mentioned the work that you've done in terms of trying to mediate and get people to talk to each other. Why is there the reluctance to figure out how to end a conflict like this in a long simmering debate about this in a peaceful manner?

THOMAS DE WAAL: Well, it's one of those almost intractable issues, the disputed territory at the heart of it, boats. It's a kind of Jerusalem. Both sides, believe that it's an essential part of their nation, that is the intractable problem and it would take a genius to sort it out. You know, that's a very sophisticated framework plan on the table, which gives both sides actually most of what they want. Obviously, neither side can get everything that they want. The trouble is that to enforce a plan like that, you need political will in Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is [unintelligible] and a massive commitment by outside powers, including this is crucial and also almost impossible to find a peacekeeping force, because the geography of this conflict, as we've been seeing over the last week, is so complicated that the two armies need to be separated. So there is a solution on paper. But how do you get there in reality is very difficult to say. In the 1990s, this conflict ended just because the two sides got exhausted. They lost too many young men. And I would hate to think that's why this conflict came comes to a halt again this time.

MG: Thomas De Waal, good to speak with you this morning. I appreciate it. Thank you.

THOMAS DE WAAL: Thank you.

MG: Thomas Dev Waal is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of Black Garden, Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War.

[Music]

Industry has known for decades that most plastic just can't be recycled, says investigative journalist

Guests: Laura Sullivan

MG: You're listening to the current on CBC Radio one. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Sound: Plastic bottle]

MG: That sound of plastic water bottle dropping into a blue recycling bin. Ease your sense of environmental guilt. Well, maybe it shouldn't. According to the Canadian government, only nine percent of the plastic we put into our blue bins is ever actually recycled. This week, the federal government said it wants to reach zero plastic waste by the year 2030, and it plans to ban many single use plastics by the end of 2021. Now, at the same time, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that he wants his province to become a major recycling hub for western Canada. Laura Sullivan is a three time Peabody Award winning investigative correspondent for NPR News. And her fascinating investigation into the recycling industry was broadcast on Planet Money and PBS Frontline earlier this year. Laura. Good morning.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Thanks so much for having me.

MG: Why did you want to look deeper into the recycling industry?

LAURA SULLIVAN: Well, we have a very similar statistic here in the United States. As you guys, about the very little amount of plastic that's actually getting recycled. And the question we had is, has that always been true? And if that has always been true, why did we not know that by now? And that really led us on this journey, trying to understand why didn't we all understand that? I mean, I think I grew up in a lot of other people grew up. And if its listeners are around back then in the 90s, you know, bombarded with ads and it's important to recycle and good people recycle and this is your duty and save the planet. And more importantly, it's recycled plastic. That plastic is valuable in this incredible material. You must recycle it. And the question that we had is why were we all told that if it was so difficult to recycle this product.

MG: And what you learn?

LAURA SULLIVAN: Then that's what we ended up sort of jumping into the industry documents from the oil and gas industry, as well as trying to understand what was going on.

MG: And those documents take you to the oil and the plastic industries. What did you learn when you when you describe how interconnected all of this is?

LAURA SULLIVAN: Yes. So we've started pulling through all of their old documents from 20, 30, 40 years ago. Some of their correspondence to each other back in the day. And what we found is that they have known this all along. They have known since the 1970s how difficult and almost impossible it is to recycle the vast majority of plastic. Surely you can tell you can melt some plastic down and turn it into something else. I think we've all done that in our microwave at some point. But you can't take the vast majority of plastic. And, you know, it's expensive to sort it out, send a truck to your house. And these documents say that they knew that in one speech, a former industry insider said that it was unlikely that the vast majority of plastic would ever be economically viable to recycle. And a lot of their documents were calling it infeasible. You know, sorting it is costly. And then most importantly, the plastic degrades every time you try to reuse it. And this is sort of stunning to find out that they understood this these problems with recycling that led us to try to figure out what did the industry insiders know at the same time that they were putting these ads on the air. And that's when we found some of the top people who were part of this at the time.

MG: What are those top people tell you? I mean, there's some of the quotations that are in this piece or are alarming. You mean sounds almost like a conspiracy theory in some ways about how if the public thinks that recycling works, then they're not going to care as much for the environment.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Yes. As the top industry lobbyists at the time. And he was very conflicted about the work that he was doing. This is Larry Thomas. And he really felt at this point that he, you know, wanted to talk about those years that he spent at the plant that's at the head. He was considered the bigwig is what a headline once called him of the plastic industry. And he and so many of his colleagues at that time, these are people who were in the trade association. They were paid by Big Oil, Chevron, Exxon Amoco, Dow, Dupont to, you know, handle this crisis that they were in. And that's what was going on. They said it's in the 1990s plastic was under fire, that people didn't like plastic. There was just too much trash and they needed to do something about it. And the obvious answer was to recycle it all. But as we know, they could. They knew they couldn't do that. And so it began this campaign to sort of suddenly suggest and imply and even outright say you can recycle plastic when they knew that wasn't true. And what you see and what I found in all of these interviews is that a lot of them, they were hopeful. They were sort of hoping that maybe if they launch these programmes or tried these different projects, that maybe, you know, the economics would work themself out or, you know, almost sort of like maybe it's all going to solve itself somehow. But that obviously never happened. And they were never able to get most of these projects off the ground. You know, NPR and Planet Money, we look at 12 of the most highly touted projects that people need money from recognise of recycling all the plastic in school lunches and all the plastic in natural parks. And all of these projects fell apart within, you know, half a dozen, you know, five, six, seven years after they were launched. And they were started with great fanfare. They got a ton of publicity out of it and then they die quietly. And that was sort of what happened throughout the 90s.

MG: You talk about how oil and plastic executives lobbied for states to put the recycling symbol. We all know what that symbol looks like, put that symbol on all products, even if there is no way to recycle them. What did creating those unrealistic expectations do?

LAURA SULLIVAN: So this is one of the most stunning things that you are putting your finger on right there, that when you flip over that container, it's the international recycling symbol for many, many years and it with a number inside. And that has led so many people to believe that this plastic could be recycled. What we found is that this was a quiet industry campaign in the early 1990s to put that symbol on all plastic, even if there was no way to economically recycle the vast majority of these items. And what you know, was even more shocking is that, you know, all of the recyclers at the time were saying the people who were collecting people's plastic and trying to do so, we're saying stop doing this. We don't want any of this. We can't sell it. And yet the everybody looked at, you know, what was on the bottom and their yoghurt container and said, oh, well, it's also on the bottom of the milk jug, which was one thing that you sort of could make a go at recycling and said, well, then they must both go into the bin. It can all be recycled. And in the early 1990s, we found a document that showed that, you know, that the top officials from the oil and gas companies, you know, got a memo, got a report saying, look, the symbol is being misused is greenwashing, all the plastic. It's suggesting things can be recycled when they can't. And we should stop using this. And the industry refused. And for decades, that symbol has remained on the bottom of plastic until only in recent years has it turned a change into a triangle rather than the international chasing arrows.

MG: Have a listen to Christina Sidel. She is the executive director of the Recycling Council of Alberta.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm always suspicious of conspiracy theories because they give way too much credit to the conspirators. Again, this almost borders on a conspiracy theory. It really just is a complex system that is hard to make work. So there is a number of things that we are doing moving forward that are hopefully going to get us through this. And, you know, for example, if we get the actual producers of the materials more involved in the whole system, they're the ones that actually understand how those plastics are made and how they can be remade.

MG: Laura Sullivan is the issue. That's the systems themselves haven't been fine tuned and that we're giving and you're giving too much credit perhaps to the conspirators in the conspiracy theory, as she calls it.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Yes, well, these aren't the conspiracy theorists. These are the people who actually ran the programme telling people to recycle in the 90s, saying that they knew that recycling was not going to work. So that's not a conspiracy theory so much as it is a plan that they had to get out of a crisis of trash. And at that point, China steps in, you know, takes a lot of the plastic trash. People don't really know where it's going. They've now closed their doors. And now the curtain has been pulled back. And that's why this has gone on for 30 years. The problem with her argument is that the economics don't work now any more than they did 30 years ago. It is still cheaper to use virgin oil, fresh out of the ground, to make plastic than it is to use plastic trash to make plastic. And no matter what the industry has done, no matter what they have funded, no matter what expensive recycling machines, that never made any economic sense or any sort of promotional things that they've done, they cannot get around this fundamental problem that it is cheaper to use virgin oil.

MG: And is that because, as you said earlier, I mean, the recycled plastic degrades, like you only have a couple of shots at it once you use it the first time.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Precisely. And so even when you take some of the actual plastic, like white soda bottle, you know, those soda bottles and milk jugs, the one things that people say, maybe you can make that work, it's expensive. You're still going to have to pay for. But we can probably turn these into other things. They can only be recycled once, once or twice before they end up in the landfill. And that has been something that has been hidden from the public for 30 years. And the problem is that there are so many well-meaning environmentalists and environmental groups that are saying, no, we can solve this, but maybe you can solve it. If you get all of the public to say, yes, we will buy the more expensive product because we really care. But what happens five years from now? What happens 20 years from now when nobody's talking about this anymore and they're three times as much plastic made as there is now? Right now, if you look around at all the plastic in your life. The industry is on track to triple plastic production by 2050. There is no recycling system and no amount of money that could handle the plastic that's being produced right now, let alone triple that amount by 2050. And I think that a lot of environmentalists told me that they felt that they maybe sort of got in cahoots with that there's a lot of funding coming from big oil to environmental groups that are promoting plastic because they have a shared mission. If you [unintelligible] plastic, you feel good about plastic. And they add a lot of them have taken in this money because they believe in recycling. You know, with with good hearts and open, you know, let's save the earth plants. But at the end of the day, it's actually what it's doing in the long run. All this talk about recycling is promoting the sale of plastic rather than promoting the reduction and reuse of plastic that already exist.

MG: Yesterday, Alberta's energy minister, Sonya Savage, says that plastics are the foundation of the modern world. Me, you talked about Annelise saying that plastic production would triple by 2050. She wants to see her government support what she's calling a full lifecycle economy for plastics. Now, Bernice's recycling as a lifeline for that province's economic troubles. Is that does that make economic sense? Can you create that circular economy?

LAURA SULLIVAN: I have had I had two people of top of the plastic industry tell me that that's a fantasy. The other problem with this and, you know, the industry itself is saying that they will they want to recycle all plastic by 2040. The head of sustainability, vice president sustainability for Chevron, Phillips, said that their plan is to recycle 100 percent of the plastic they make by 2014.

MG: Chevron was also building or has just built this six billion dollar plant. Right?

LAURA SULLIVAN: It's building our plan to make hundreds of these plants around the world that's been built. The oil and gas companies are in a lot of trouble because people are moving away from gas for transportation, their future profits. They're telling shareholders are coming from the making of plastic. The problem is that if you were cycle 100 percent of the plastic you make, why would anybody need to buy their new gas and oil? So it's difficult to understand or believe an industry that wants this, quote, unquote, circular economy because it would put them out of business. And they said in response, the oil industry said, no, no, that's you know, we're going to need more plastic. You know what? Recycle everything we make. And then people will also be using more plastic. So then we'll use that. We'll use our new oil for that. But then you still have to recycle 100 percent of that. It's an exit. You know, you can't possibly keep up that. The mathematics don't work. At some point there's the whole world is [unintelligible].

LAURA SULLIVAN: And at and I think for a lot of people that want to believe in the circular economy, there is nobody out there that the experts have told me that has been able to solve the problem of that. You can't we use it more than once or twice.

MG: This is an alarming investigation, but obviously timely given everything that we're talking about in this country and beyond. Laura, thank you.

LAURA SULLIVAN: Thanks so much for having me.

MG: Sullivan, NPR investigative correspondent. Her investigation into plastic recycling can be found at PBS Frontline and NPR's Planet Money. We did request interviews with Canadian oil and plastic industry groups. No one was available to talk with us this morning, but we did receive a statement from the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada. That's an industry group for plastic companies. It said the group is, in its words, concerned with the emphasis on banning certain products solely because they are widely used in society and improperly managed at end of use. It says it will help the government work toward a circular economy. Your thought welcome. You can reach us through email thecurrent@cbc. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or head to the Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. We will read your e-mails before we put them into the recycling bin. That's it for The Current for today. Comming up next, Jerry Seinfeld speaking with Tom Power. You can hear that's coming up in a few moments time. I Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Thursday October 8, 2020 Full Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode