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The Current Transcript for October 1, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Crossed through the rift valley of Africa, taking a ship across the Red Sea, walk through the Middle East, walked through Asia, crossed these enormous mountains and now I'm in the vast river plains in India. That's it, in a nut shell.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Ever wanted to get away from it all? In a world saturated in polarized politics and seeming indifference, Paul Salopek decided to go for a walk around the world. He's been at it for more than five years and oh, the places he's been and the people he's met. Sure, it's been gruelling and sometimes scary, but it has been tremendously rewarding and enlightening. He says walking the Earth makes him feel like a child again. Now I know there's a lot going on in the world and we'll hit on some of the bigger topics that cannot be ignored today, but stick around for our last half hour and let Paul Salopek inspire you and make you smile. Just before we get to the man who is embracing everyone in the world, we'll be on Quebec politics, where how to treat people is part of the debate.

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VOICE 1: So he wants to do expulsion tests. He fails the understanding tests.

VOICE 2: They have three years and we'll give them free lessons to learn French.

AMT: On this Quebec election day, our panel of pundits has lots to share. Hear them in half an hour. But we're starting with a new free trade deal under a new name. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

'Death by a thousand cuts': Canadian dairy farmer disappointed by USMCA deal

Guests: Evan Dyer, Julaine Treur, Peter MacKay

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VOICE: What we're probably going to do is call it the USMC like the United States Marine Corps, which I love. USMC, U.S., Mexico, Canada.

AMT: U.S. President, Donald Trump, at a press conference last week musing about the name for a new free trade agreement among Canada, the U.S . and Mexico, called the United States Mexico Canada agreement, USMCA. It was finally reached late last night after a 14-month roller coaster series of negotiations. CBC's senior reporter Evan Dyer is in Ottawa with the latest. Hi Evan.

EVAN DYER: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: Bring us up to speed. What do we know about the content of this deal?

ED: Well, it’s a multi-100 page document and we don't know all of the details, but in broad strokes, it appears that well let's start with suppose the most positive aspects of it, Canada appears to have saved Chapter 19, one of Canada's red lines, the dispute resolution mechanism that allows a Canadian company to ask for an independent adjudication panel rather than having to go to a U.S. court if it's accused of dumping or something like that kind of dispute that's embroiled the Canadian softwood industry. Chapter 20, which allows governments to bring those kinds of lawsuits on behalf of companies also remain. So, that would be presented I think as a win for Canada. There are of course giveaways as well. We knew that there was a lot of pressure to give up market access in dairy. That appears to have happened, but it doesn't seem to be that large. Perhaps, not as big a slice of the Canadian market as it might have been feared, more in keeping with what Canada gave away for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So for milk, it's about it seems to be under 4 percent of the market will be opened up to U.S. producers. There are other channels opened up. The removal of a certain class that the Canadian industry had created for itself, a kind of a class of the new milk product called diafiltered milk is being given up and that may open another back channel for Americans to get their milk into Canada. And actually there are other supply managed areas of farming, including chicken and eggs that are also affected and perhaps more than milk, but the dairy giveaway is significant, but perhaps a little bit less painful than it might have been and those are two of the main issues that were contentious in the closing days.

AMT: And we know that there's also an auto deal as part of this.

ED: Yes, this is very significant now. Now Mexico gave up quite a bit in its talks. It had to accept the creation of a new high wage zone where a significant part of every car and truck has to be made and of course Mexico is not a high wage zone typically. It also is accepting export caps after which American tariffs of 25 percent could kick in and those caps are real for Mexico because Mexico is on the way to grow its industry by about 40 percent in the next four years. If it does, then those tariffs could kick back in. Canada was able to get a deal where theoretically there's also some kind of an export cap floating above our heads, but we're in no danger of hitting it because the Canadian industry is not growing like the Mexican industry and so in practice there doesn't seem to be anything in here that would restrict or reduce the production and export of Canadian autos or auto parts.

AMT: Now I've got a Donald Trump tweet in front of me from this morning . "Late last night our deadline we reached a wonderful new trade deal with Canada to be added to the deal already reached with Mexico. The new name will be the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA. It's a great deal for all three countries. Solves the many deficiencies and mistakes in NAFTA." And it goes on. He's renamed it. Our prime minister has said just a little bit about it so far, has he?

ED: Yeah there hasn't been much. The Canadian government of course is going to roll out the written text and at that point the various stakeholders will want to pour over it. Of course the details in these kinds of arrangements are often very important, but I think you know Canada went into these talks talking about a win-win-win and really realistically, I think everybody in Canadian industry, the unions all understood that. This was a case where Donald Trump was explicitly seeking an arrangement that's more advantageous to the United States and less advantageous to Canada and Mexico. So I don't think that you could necessarily call this a win-win-win. You'd have to say that this is more operation save the furniture really. This was never going to be about polishing the furniture, if I can extend that analogy in. I think that you know what we're seeing is that the main pillars of NAFTA that Canada was most concerned in saving have been saved and the main fears such as Sunset clause and so on have been repelled.

AMT: And so of course the fine detail comes and then we'll hear more of those who feel left behind or feel that it's not good enough. We'll hear from them later this week I guess in the coming hours and days.

ED: That will certainly include people in Canada's agricultural sector, the producers of milk and dairy products as well as chicken, turkey and eggs. We will also probably hear from Canadian retailers because there is apparently an increase in the personal exemption for Canadians who for example want to go online shopping in the United States. The so-called de minimus payment is increasing, not as much as the United States would have liked, but it does appear to be increasing significantly enough that it will probably mean more online shopping by Canadians and that will in turn have an impact on both Canadian online retailers and bricks and mortar retailers in Canada and they will undoubtedly have something to say about that too. But I think that they have already factored in some kind of an increase, people knew this was coming, again it perhaps won't be seen as being quite as bad as their worst case scenario. So it's a case where adjustments are going to have to be made, but again the giveaway isn't as bad as feared.

AMT: OK. Evan Dyer, thanks for your insights.

ED: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: Evan Dyer senior reporter in Ottawa talking about this new deal. It will provide increased access to Canada's Dairy and Poultry markets, as you heard Evan say. Something dairy farmers have been nervously watching throughout these negotiations. Julaine Treur and her husband own Creekside Dairy, which is an organic farm in Agassiz, B.C. and that's where we've reached her today. Hi.

JULAINE TREUR: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you know, like what have you heard it and is there anything that makes you happy or makes you wary right now?

JT: I guess I could say I'm a bag of mixed feelings. I guess as an industry where we're relieved that supply management still stands, but we're disappointed. We're disappointed in Trudeau and our government and the negotiators. Justin Trudeau promised over and over again to defend supply management, but I don't feel like this is defending us. This is eroding the stability of our supply managed system. It feels like a death by a thousand cuts. To explain that, so in recent years we've seen significant erosion of our market to foreign imports such as CETA, TPP and now this new USMCA. The TPP was supposed to be the last deal. The government told us then, we had deals with all other major trading partners and that we could rest easy for a while. And then Trump came along. So yeah this access is frustrating for us because every time we're being asked to give and give and give and it's getting close to a fifth of our market now that's open to foreign imports. And each foreign dairy product on our story shelves displaces the dairy products produced here in Canada by Canadians for Canadians. So it affects our Canadian jobs and the livelihood of our farmers and their families.

AMT: So yeah, so it looks like Canada has agreed to about 3.5% of $16 billion annual domestic dairy market, which works out to more than $450 million. I guess it depends on what you're selling, that can really have a hit then.

JT: It definitely could. And the frustration really lies in that the US was part of the original TPP and they had been granted 3.5% along with the other trading partners in that deal. And I think the government would have had a good case to give the US less than that now seeing how they had access to a percentage of that with the TPP, pulled out and now wanted additional access. But yeah, I feel we've been let down with this.

AMT: It appears as if and again it's early hours, but in order to keep that Chapter 19 disputes settlement, disputes resolution system going, that they and under pressure from Mr. Trump, they had to give something on supply management. Do you feel that you've been traded?

JT: We definitely, we're expecting some gives. I just find this is a bit excessive.

AMT: And how is this going to affect you personally? You've got a dairy farm.

JT: Yes. So it's hard to know at this point, how it will affect us personally, but say it came into effect tomorrow and I know it's phasing gradually, so this doesn't really work in these terms, but if we had to give up an extra 3.5% of our market that would mean we would have to decrease our herd size by about five cows to produce that less milk. And our milk cheques would decrease of course and we would have to continue making the same thing as we do to the bank for our quota, for our land. For all of those big payments and yeah it's going to have to, it's going to cause us to tighten our belts and sometimes it feels like we don't know how much further we can tighten them.

AMT: Well thanks for speaking with me today and we'll be on the watch to see what this means as more detail comes out.

JT: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Julaine Treur. She owns Creekside Dairy with her husband. It's an organic farm in Agassiz, British Columbia. One of the deals of course has to do with the auto industry and Jerry Dias of UNIFOR is on the line with us now. Hello.

JERRY DIAS: Good morning.

AMT: Is this the deal you wanted to see?

JD: Well if I wrote it, it would look different from many, many different areas, but as it relates to the auto industry, manufacturing, working-class people, it's as good as it's going to get.

AMT: And how does this protect Canadian auto workers?

JD: Well we are in much better shape today than we have been in the last 25 years. It has many segments to it, starting with the fact that A, we have in place a mechanism that should raise the standard of living for Mexicans workers in a significant way. We increased the rules of origin to make sure there's more North American labour content in order to ensure that the vehicles are tariff-free. But ultimately we dealt with the elephant in the room, which was Donald Trump and his threat of a 25 percent tariff. That threat no longer exists.

AMT: Well one of the sticking points was a tariff related to steel and other tariffs. What's the deal, how does that work now?

JD: The tariffs are still in place, but there's obviously discussions about dealing with those issues very quickly through Chapter 19, which has been maintained. And really trying to find a resolution of those key pieces of the puzzle.

AMT: And how it is steel used for those autos affected by some of the protection that the U.S. wants to continue to have on steel?

JD: Well oddly enough, most of the steel that goes into a Canadian assembled vehicles comes from the United States. So the impact on Canada in that regard has been minimal, but my absolute preoccupation is with the Canadian steel workers who are negatively impacted. So there is a real demonstrated desire to get these issues behind us. I believe now that we have an agreement in principle on NAFTA that these pieces are going to fall into place. I'm very concerned about our members in softwood lumber industry about what these tariffs can mean in the long term. Short term we've been fine, but this is a fool's game to keep slapping tariffs on Canada and I think we're going to hopefully come to an end with this.

AMT: Do you know all of the details yet or is that something you still have to work through?

Well I don't know every detail of all the pieces, but I'm in Ottawa to work with the Canadian team for the last two days as we've been racing towards the deadline. We've had complete unfettered access, met several times with Minister Freeland, with Steve Verhuel, with the prime minister's office. So we've been in to the deep discussions and of course the last issue that really held things up was the auto industry of which our union and the Canadian team were deeply involved obviously.

AMT: And does this deal affect the growth of the Canadian industry? How will Canadians buying automobiles see the results of this?

JT: Well it's not going to change the price one iota, but what it does is it creates the economic landscape for more investment. Our sitting today was about a 77 cent dollar as it relates to the exchange rate with the United States. It makes building cars in Canada much cheaper. But what we did is we took away that threat. We took away you know the second guessing of the auto industry about where to make the investment. With the changes we made as it relates to Mexico, free collective bargaining, the labour laws, Canada is the place to do business. I don't see the mass exodus of jobs from Canada to Mexico anymore. I think we curbed one heck of a deal on behalf of Canadians and frankly if it wasn't protecting jobs in the auto industry, I wouldn't be saying this today.

AMT: Is it substantively different than what you had before?

JD: It Is 100 per cent better than the colossal disaster that was carved 24 years ago. The original NAFTA, we had a trade surplus in manufacturing. Today we have $120 billion deficit. We lost about 600,000 manufacturing jobs. You know people argue well jeeze, that had a lot to do with technology. No, no, people were still making the products, they were just making them in Mexico and not Canada. So I think this deal severely changes everything. It creates an economic environment in Mexico that will allow wages to rise in a significant way. It talks about legitimate union. But once again it really eliminates any of those threats of tariffs. So I'm feeling awfully comfortable today as it relates to the auto industry.

AMT: Jerry Dias, thanks for your time today.

JD: And you have a great day. Take care.

AMT: Jerry Dias, head of UNIFOR, speaking to us today from Toronto. For more on this, I'm joined by former Conservative Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter MacKay. He's in Toronto. Hi.

PETER MACKAY: Good Morning.

AMT: I know there's a lot of unknown details still, Peter McKay, but from what you know so far, what are you thinking?

PM: Well I'm thinking we can move on now. This has been described at various times throughout this 14 month rollercoaster, as you said, it's going to end up a win-win-win. Well all three wins appear to be for Donald Trump and the United States. You've had guests just now talk about concessions that Canada has made. We've held on to some of the most important aspects of NAFTA, including Chapter 19, but there have been some giveaways and there have been some areas which were going to affect the Canadian economy, most notably in the dairy sector, but other areas too where we've increased the personal exemption. There's been issues with respect to the phase out of the investor state dispute resolution mechanism, which is a little loan, but also important aspect of what happens when we get into a trade dispute with the United States in Chapter 11. And so the eliminations and the giveaways and all of this is a different narrative from the modernization that was talked of at the very beginning, which was you know I think some of the politics in the background to this is what has really played out and there's no getting away from the truth that the president here has been driving this process from start to finish and now he's able to gloat to the American electorate at a particular point now before these midterm elections in November and say I delivered. I got a better deal. I got Canada and Mexico to improve what we have described, we the Americans, as a very bad deal.

AMT: And so we knew this was done on the deadline of the US midterms, but are you surprised that you know Canada was saying just last week, if we can get a deal that's okay. So are you surprised that they did get a deal on the deadline?

PM: I was a little surprised and I think again politics played its hand. I believe that the concessions on dairy were held off till the very last minute. In large part because of the Quebec election today and this will no doubt and we'll see in the next 24 hours, whether it had any impact or not. But I think a lot of the negotiations started off on a positive note and you'll recall of course that this was really about Mexico. It wasn't about Canada at all. We were sort of along for the ride, but everything was going to be fine. We were not the ones that the president appeared to have in his sights and that switched quite quickly after the Malbaie G7 meeting where there was a well reported fallout between the prime minister and the president, where President Trump referred to Mr. Trudeau as weak and dishonest. And we'll never know perhaps what happened in that bilateral meeting, but the worry is that there were concessions on the part of the United States at that point about withdrawing the sunset demand for a sunset clause, perhaps Chapter 19. All of that was put on the table then. He was rebuffed. That is the president and then responded with this volcanic tweet as he has been prone to do. So it went off the rails then and we were sidelined for almost two months and then brought in after the Mexico deal, with a gun to her head essentially. So it was very hardball, brash elbows up tactics on the part of the president in particular. But Robert Lighthizer, the American negotiating team, power our own Foreign Affairs Minister I think was put in a very difficult position. Some of which she exacerbated with public statements and speeches and appearances at events that really rankled the president and the administration. So it has been a very sequiturs route to this point in time, but we're not coming away better. I mean if you were to put a win-loss column in place, Canada is definitely on the loss side in our assessment of this final resolution of NAFTA.

AMT: We're almost out of time. Just briefly then, given the fact that there was some give on dairy and some on supply management. Is this the start of a slippery slope.?

PM: It appears to be something that the egg sector in particular has to worry about, but I don't think we're going to see any immediate further concessions, unless it was to happen in something like TPP or any new agreement that was made potentially with I don't know, Great Britain or some other trade. But I know that this has enormous implications for the farming sector and you know overall there is still this ongoing discussion in Canada about whether supply management can survive in the coming years.

AMT: Okay. Well we'll have to leave it there, but Peter MacKay thank you for your time today and your insights.

PM: You're welcome. Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: Peter Mackay, served as Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, among other cabinet posts, in Stephen Harper's Conservative government. We reached him in Toronto. Stay with us. The news is next. It's Election Day in Quebec. We're looking at that next, including on how this new deal might affect the voters today. This is The Current.

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Quebec politics moving away from sovereignty debate, says pollster

Guests: Martin Patriquin, Mireille Paquet, Christian Bourque

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: The first thing you learn while out walking, whether it's in New Mexico or in Jerusalem or Turkey or here in the grassy belly of Asia, is that slowing down lets you think.

AMT: Paul Salopek has had a lot of time to think. He is more than five years into an epic journey, tracing the route of human migration out of Africa and around the globe and he's doing it all on foot. In our next half hour, I will check in once again with Paul Salopek, who is currently in India. But first a different kind of election in Quebec.

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VOICE: Sometime it could be Quebec, like the way they talk about the environment, but if we want to change then we're kind of stuck. If we vote Parti Qubecois, not necessarily I'm not necessarily for independence. I'm more hesitating between the Liberal and Parti la CAQ, but I'm not sure.

AMT: Well that is a Quebec voter, Julie Lariviere telling our CBC colleagues in Montreal last week why she was having a hard time deciding who to vote for. Quebecers are voting today to elect their next provincial government and it has been an election campaign where one hot button topic, sovereignty, was replaced by another.

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VOICE 1: I've never heard a political leader in Quebec ever recommend not only diminishing the number of immigrants we take in, but proposing expulsion tests for immigrants.

VOICE 2: Come on. Come on.

VOICE 1: They are very, very frightened today. They are frightened by what the CAQ is proposing. They will submit them to value testing, which nobody knows what it's about and a French test.

AMT: That is Quebec Liberal leader, the incumbent, Philippe Couillard, speaking during the province's first ever televised English language debate, two weeks ago. This is how Francois Legault, the leader of the Coalition Avenir Quebec or CAQ, responded during that heated exchange over immigration.

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VOICE 2: Already Mr. Couillard, the federal government has French and English tests and it's also a test of knowledge about values in Canada.

VOICE 1: So why do you need one? So why do you need one?

VOICE 2: So why are you against having those tests done by the Quebec government? Why do you agree that they do these tests and not our. Why is that?

VOICE 1: Please. This This is so nonsensical. Don't you know.

VOICE 2: It doesn't make sense. You're against those test.

VOICE 1: Don't you know that when they pass those tests to become citizen. If they fail the test they stay in Quebec, as landed immigrants forever if they wish. You would have the federal government deport them. That's your position. It is either appalling.

AMT: Well, this year's election is also different because the business as usual power play between the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois is complicated by two parties from outside the mainstream, which appear to be poised to make gains. The centre right populist CAQ and the left wing sovereigntist Quebec Solidaire. To talk about what it all means, I'm joined by three people. Martin Patriquin is a columnist for iPolitics, Mireille Pacquet is a political science professor and co-director of Concordia's Centre for Immigration Policy Evaluation and Christian Bourque is vice president and senior partner at the polling and marketing firm, Leger. All three are in our Montreal studio. Hello.

MARTIN PATRIQUIN: Hey.

CHRISTIAN BOURQUE: Good morning.

MIREILLE PAQUET: Hi.

AMT: You're all in there together. Are you? In the. Okay. Well I hope.

MAP: It's what we do here.

AMT: You're going to be collegial. OK. Martin Patriquin, let's begin with the fact that there's a new trade deal.

MAP: Yup.

AMT: And dairy we know there's been what is it, 3.5 per cent of a $16 billion dairy market. U.S. dairy farmers will get access to it. How's that going to play today, do you think?

MAP: The timing was auspicious I think for the Trudeau government in the sense that the election itself, the results are sort of like people have already made their decision. I think if this had come out about a week and a half ago or even four days ago, it would have been much, much, a much bigger deal. We have seen the party leaders specifically Jean-Francois Lisee from the Parti Quebecois come out and say and this is a bad deal for Quebec as to be expected and all that kind of thing. But I think either by accident or by design the fact that this is coming so late in the game, won't have a huge amount of influence over what's going to happen tomorrow.

AMT: We really just, we don't know what we don't know yet, right.

MAP: That's right.

AMT: OK. Christian Bourque past Quebec elections have been fought with sovereignty front and center. This time's different.

CB: Yeah, it's almost as if we don't have a sort of a ballot box question this time around. This is the first time in 50 odd years that we don't have Quebec politics being sort of mainly played on that axis of sovereignty versus federalism. And I think it's having a deep impact in the fact that probably tonight, half of Quebeckers will have voted for something else than the two traditional parties in the province. So I think it's quite historic what is happening now. And if you look at younger voters, when they talk about the election, this whole discourse of Ottawa versus Quebec, French versus English, federalist versus sovereign is basically just not part of the language.

AMT: So is it more or left versus right, what is it?

CB: Absolutely. If you look at the two parties that are growing, it's that center right alternative of the CAQ and the very left, very left, Quebec Solidaire.

AMT: OK. And is that a good thing that it's on that divide as opposed to the sovereignty?

MAP: It's amazing.

CB: Well yeah, the rest of the world is basically divided up between left and right.

MAP: Thank you. No seriously, it's something that there's a, when you want to elect a new government, if you're really really tired of a government, one of the things to do is to let them out and you elect their opposition. Obviously. In Quebec it's been different because what you have to do is not only do you vote for the other party, but you have to be a sovereigntist in order to endorse or a federalist to endorse, to actually vote for them. And the problem in Quebec is that people are so disgusted with the Liberals for so long, but can't bring themselves to vote for the Parti Quebecois because they're sovereigntist. And then you have a situation whereby they win election after election, based on the threat of sovereignty.

AMT: Mireille Paquet, where does the testy exchange we just heard, fit into this, the immigration question?

MIP: The Immigration issue didn't start big when at the beginning of the election. I was actually surprised. I was expecting a lot more of that following, the kind of populist rhetoric we have across the world, including in other provinces actually about the issue of immigration. But then all of a sudden, this really was brought to the agenda in large part because of a set of proposal by Francois Legault and the CAQ about forcing immigrants to take a value test after three years of temporary residence in Quebec. And also with ideas that, not only would they lower immigration levels in the province, but it would also potentially deport or limit residence rights for people who did not succeed at these tests. And this has become really a wedge issue quickly. It allowed the Liberals to kind of gain back a little bit of those voters that might have been interested in going to the CAQ, but then going back a little bit on this idea of you're always stuck at you know either voting for Parti Quebecois or voting for the Liberals, decided that the Liberals were the one that would actually protect minorities. That's really how they presented themselves and I think that was especially visible in the English debate and on the other end it allowed I think a lot of voters to see what PQ, under Lisee was proposing for immigration and what also Quebec Solidaire was proposing. So it really played a large role and I think one last thing to add is that Francois Legault and CAQ, they were really active in saying well Quebecers are tired of being given lessons by the Liberals. Quebecers are tired of being told they are intolerant. They want to gain some control over who comes in and this we know is something that is extremely popular in the outskirts of Montreal and in other parts of the province, as well. So I think this vote had the effect of pushing some voters away from CAQ, but also reinforcing a lot of voters that might not have been sure to vote for them at the beginning of the election.

AMT: Christian Bourque, how important would you say immigration is as an actual ballot question about voters, compared to other issues, healthcare, economy?

CB: Well I think it used to be a sort of a non-issue in past elections. It's the first time that it's actually playing a role. The problem for the CAQ, and we saw in the last two weeks of the campaign, they basically wanted to ignore the issue. The reason why it's sort of a tough issue for any political party, maybe except for the Liberals, is as soon as you are perceived to be remotely intolerant in any way, Quebecers tend to turn their back. If you remember at the time of the charter in the 2012, 2014 election, the PQ although they said that the charter was quite popular, it actually turned Quebecers away from them because of that same problem. So I think the CAQ wanted to play down that issue, when it actually hurt them midway through the election as Mireille was mentioning. And I think that support coming back to the CAQ, late in the campaign, what we're seeing now is when the CAQ sort of switched it back to integrity, good government and attacking the Liberals on their 15 year sort of record, more than anything else and try to gain some momentum back because it's sort of a non-winning issue for any party except for the Liberals.

MAP: There was two studies that were done that were interesting during the campaign. So a company called, the Influence Communication, did a study and said that immigration was as everybody is saying on this panel, that immigration was the most mediatized issue. La Presse did a similar thing exercise last week. It asked priorities of the voters, what they thought was the biggest priority. So the biggest one was environment and health, economy, like everywhere else in the world. Immigration was fifth with 7.8 per cent saying it's a decided thing. So it's a big, makes a big splash, but the actual value of it as a politician is to be very, very debatable.

AMT: Martin, you just used the word "mediatized." I like that. But Martin, you've also written that it sort of became a proxy for sovereignty.

MAP: Yeah, that was one of these. I mean it's an identity issue, like sovereignty, it's an identity issue. So the first, not the first, but I mean in 2014 as Christian was talking about, the PQ didn't want to talk about sovereignty nearly as much because they realized that it's not a popular issue amongst Quebecers. They don't want to go through the mechanics of another referendum. So the gambit in 2014 was to run the election on something called the Quebec Values Charter, which was to sort of take away any sort of religious accoutrements from the body of anybody that drew a government paycheck. And they pushed really really hard on it and it blew up in their face for the reasons that Christian outlined just now, but also because when you ask somebody if you know value in protection of French and all that kind of stuff, if that's important and do they believe in it? They say yes. If you put that in the list of priorities, it's very very low in the list.

AMT: So Martin, last year the Quebec economy grew at the fastest rate in nearly 20 years. The province is running surpluses. How much credits are Phillipe Couillard and the Liberals getting for that?

MAP: That's the quandary they're in. They have a huge issue with that. You know you could make the argument that things weren't going very well in Ontario for Kathleen Wynne and that's part of the reason that sort of fed into the narrative of why she had to go. You don't have that similar narrative here anymore. I think what we're seeing here is sort of personification almost of what I was talking about before, the fact that people can actually go out now and feel free to vote their conscience and they don't have to. They're not pegged the Liberals because if they vote for the PQ, there's going to be sovereignty. And so that's sort of I think that's sort of driving a lot of this vote.

AMT: Mireille, what do you think?

MIP: I absolutely agree and I think that interestingly, I mean you've seen that one of the way Couillard has been trying to deal with the campaign was to be very reactive and not to kind of push issues forward and try to just say well you know we did what we had to do. We had a lot of unpopular policies, but look we now have the means of our ambitions. This really is something that they've put forward, but it remains to be seen whether that was convincing because it was a very lacklustre campaign. Apart from what we were talking about, a lot of like media spark around immigration, which you know to be fair, yes wasn't a big issue for voters. The beginning of the campaign and the end actually, was very kind of small issues, small announcements and then yeah just the government kind of resting on its laurels. So whether this will convince voters to still support the Liberals remains to be seen.

AMT: Christian, why haven't the Liberals gotten more of a push from the positive economic news?

CB: Well I think there's sort of a legacy issues now at the Liberal Party. The brand was tarnished with the Charbonneau Commission and all of the accusations of corruption in the past. So I think Mr. Couillard is basically wearing Jean Charest's jacket and it's weighing him down in this election because if you look at it, all of the indicators would lead to the incumbent having sort of a fair chance in this one and that's not what's happening. In our latest polls, still 70 per cent of Quebecers say they want a change in government. If you ask a lot of Quebeckers exactly why, they probably could not come up with a spontaneous answer to that, but it's just time for something else and because Jean Francois Lisee when he said that a referendum or the issue of sovereignty would not be part of this election campaign, he freed everybody to vote according to whatever they want. He made this happen and probably tonight the Parti Quebecois will be the one paying the price.

AMT: OK. Well let's talk a little bit more about that Christian. So the CAQ and the Liberals are battling for first place? Quebec Solidaire and the Parti Quebecois, tell me more about that dynamic and a little more about Quebec Solidaire.

CB: Yeah the first thing is that a statistical tie between the frontrunners, the Liberals and the CAQ is actually bad news for the Liberals because their vote is to concentrate on the island of Montreal and in the anglophone community, for them to be able to challenge the CAQ in terms of seats. Now if you look at the race for third place, earlier in the campaign we had the Quebec Solidaire, 8 to 10 per cent, which is basically their result for 2014, now they've doubled that support over the course of the last two weeks. So there is momentum and we know that when momentum comes into a campaign, it actually the end result is usually better than what was anticipated. Look at the Orange Crush in 2011 in the province of Quebec for example. We're not suggesting that the QS could win this or anything, but there is that potential that as soon as they make gains in seats, it's actually a PQ incumbent that's losing that seat. And that's the reason why in terms of number of seats, Quebec Solidaire may deprive the Parti Quebecois of its official party status and QS, even though they may not have the potential to gain that official party status, can actually dramatically hurt the PQ.

AMT: Martin Patriquin, thr Quebec Solidaire seems to have a strong base among young people. They are not always the ones who turn out to vote.

MAP: Yeah that's one of the, I mean that's the classic conundrum amongst these parties. That's the precedent. The more recent precedent I would say though is that if you look at voters in the United States, certainly with Bernie Sanders, or even if you go back to her own election, federal election 2015 and Justin Trudeau, the idea that young people don't necessarily go out and vote isn't particularly, doesn't necessarily play out. Now whether or not Quebec Solidaire has the means and you know the mechanics basically to go out and harvest that vote is another issue, but I don't think you can that the blanket statement that young people are make a lot more noise than they do when they actually go out and vote, isn't necessarily true.

AMT: And this is a different party. They have to co-spokespersons. One of them Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was the spokesperson, the leader, the student leader, at the time of the real unrest over in 2012 right. And I was on YouTube on the weekend watching Manon Masse, the other co-spokesperson and a little thing where she was having a helium balloon and then she would give out policy platforms and I was really curious about that one. What's going on there?

MAP: You'd have to ask her. Maybe she was having a really bad day or very good day. Who knows. But that's part of the thing is sort of like being cheeky and not taking yourself quite nearly as seriously is the other politicians. The one thing that you do have to say though about Quebec Solidaire is they are a sovereigntist party. During the, I believe I think it was the first Francophone debate, French debate. She came out and said you know basically called Canada, she'd literally called Canada petrostated. In order for Quebec to succeed, you have to, you have to throw off the chains of Canada and all that dialogue. Quebec Solidaire in terms of in terms of you know this new socialist wave, is a very very modern party in that sense, but that lingo, that that old school like blame everything on Canada is very very much pulled from these sort of baby boomer aspect of the Parti Quebecois. It's an it's an anachronism.

AMT: She's also agreed that it is a revolutionary party. Mireille Paquet, is there room for Quebec Solidaire and the PQ?

MIP: Oh wow. Hard question. Remains to be seen what the result of this election will be. I think that we can all agree around this table, this is a partisan realignment election and we're going to see really what kind of make up of party support we have after tomorrow and whether we have a minority or not and how that actually plays out. I think that Martin was kind of pointing to something important. If Quebec Solidaire was able to tone down a little bit the sovereignty issue, that would really allow for maybe both parties to exist, though with the PQ having a lot less support, obviously. Now in the current configuration it really remains to be seen. I think that Quebec Solidaire is eating some of the voters of the Parti Quebecois, especially the younger ones and the ones that were really really turned down or turned off by the whole charter of value debate in this whole discussion. So we still have to see whether they are going to go vote and whether that support is long term or if we're just basically seeing another typical protest vote in which people want some change. They don't know who to support and so they're going to look at a nice new shiny option and just go for that.

AMT: And Christian Bourque, we've seen this shift lately in other governments where non-mainstream parties make new gains and have a real effect. The Greens and the People's Alliance in New Brunswick, the election of Emmanuel Macron in France. What went on in BC. What are you seeing in a wider picture, in terms of what voters, what messages voters are sending?

CB: Well sort of a crisis in political leadership. Having people to look up to is something. You can also look at the Ontario election, this sort of anti-establishment type candidate and we're not even talking about south of the border. So these types of leadership alternatives or alternatives to traditional political leadership is what people are seeking, whether it's on the left or on the right. And we saw in France for example, voters that would move from the extreme left to the extreme right, but basically we're just looking away or turning their heads away from traditional parties. And there is a little bit of that in the Quebec election tonight. And the thing is because public finances are doing quite well in Quebec and the economy is doing well, all three main parties if you exclude Quebec Solidaire, were all sort of in spending mode. And if you look at their economic and spending platforms on education and healthcare, it's three shades of beige and after 38 days of the campaign, you're kind of what's the reason why somebody would support the PQ for example. Have they given them a reason to vote for them and the center right alternative of the CAQ has moved towards the center and basically would spend a lot of money. So they're not moving in the same direction as the Conservatives, say in Ontario, so in all of this it's becoming Quebecers deciding on what type of political leadership they seek and not being that sort of thrilled about the alternatives they currently have.

AMT: So Martin what are you seeing? Any commonalities between what's happening with this election and what you've seen in Ontario or elsewhere?

MAP: Just what Christian just said, is to the extent to which where we've been throwing around terms here, like right and center right. Just to what extent that is relative when it comes to Quebec. If you look at the CAQ. The CAQ came out. This is you know an ostensibly conservative party and said that they are for $8 a day daycare. This is a party that has absolutely no questions about the issue of having a carbon tax within Quebec. These are sort of hash marks that you wouldn't have elsewhere, beyond Quebec. All this to say is that if the CAQ was running in Ontario or even Alberta, they'd be, I hate to say it, but screaming liberals basically.

AMT: Mireille Paquet, what's at stake in today's vote then?

MIP: Well I think really that the partisan realignment is the major issue that's at stake. What's going to happen? How is the PQ going to finish this race and whether they will remain an official party status? And then what will the Legislative Assembly look like tomorrow? Do we have a minority government who holds the balance of power and are these people able to work together? There is a. People are making faces in the studio. It is it would be surprising if we had a minority CAQ and a generally strong Quebec Solidaire to see them work together and be able to generate alliances. So how long will our government last after tomorrow? How long are we going to have to wait until we go back into election? And then if we go back soon into an election, what will happen for parties that might have less resources? And here I'm thinking again of the PQ and Quebec Solidaire that might have less money in the bank and that might have a lot of trouble going back into an election, a year, even like two years after tomorrow.

MAP: We have to do this in two years from now? Oh man.

AMT: And just before I let you go, we're almost out of time. Martin, there's a federal election coming up as well. What do you think Prime Minister Trudeau is watching for today?

MAP: The interesting thing is, if it is a CAQ government, you're going to have a situation where Francois Legault is really going to want to flex his muscles and show that he has the ability to do what he can do. The interesting thing is that for the first time again, you have a party that isn't the Liberals party in power in Quebec. That isn't, you know it doesn't have sovereignty as a cudgel to go like you do this or we're going to have a referendum. He doesn't have that power anymore and that is a huge precedent in Quebec. That hasn't, that's something that's like we've had that for 40 years and we no longer have. If the CAQ wins

AMT: Lots to watch for. Thank you all three of you for weighing in on this one.

MAP: Thanks.

AMT: That is Martin Patriquin. He's a columnist for iPolitics. Mireille Paquet is a political science professor, co-director of Concordia University's Center for the Evaluation of Immigration Policy. Christian Bourque is vice president and senior partner at the polling and marketing firm, Leger. They joined us from our Montreal studio. Let us know what you think. Tweet us@TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. In our next half hour, we're on slow form journalism and Paul Salopek's walk around the world. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

After going through 7 pairs of shoes, Paul Salopek continues his walk around the world

Guests: Paul Salopek

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: "If You Ever Change Your Mind" by Ella Fitzgerald].

AMT: Well of all things journalist Paul Salopek has stumbled across over the past five plus years, hearing Ella Fitzgerald's heavenly voice calling out to him in the wilds of northern Pakistan, was among the most unexpected. But when you're trekking the world by foot in pursuit of so-called slow journalism, you're bound to come across some unexpected moments. We've been checking in with Paul Salopek periodically since he began his Out of Eden Walk in Ethiopia in January of 2013. That was more than five years ago and his daunting project continues. Paul Salopek is attempting to retrace the journey of our ancestors out of Africa, through the Middle East and Asia and then across the Pacific to North America. And then he'll walk down to the southernmost tip of South America, a Journey of some 34,000 kilometres. Paul Salopek is the founder of the Out of Eden Walk. He's a fellow with National Geographic. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent and he's a little more of a third of the way along that global walk. And we've reached him in Chennai, India. Hello.

PAUL SALOPEK: Hi Anna Maria. Good to hear your voice again.

AMT: It's great to hear your voice. I have to ask you, Ella Fitzgerald and northern Pakistan don't sound like an obvious match. Tell us about the day that you came across that sound and you made the recording we just heard.

PS: Yeah, that's one of the things about walking across the world are these unusual encounters in juxtapositions. I had just come over the border from an even remoter place in Western Himalayas and that would be the walk on corridor of Afghanistan. And I was joined by a local walking partner, who met me in these glacial valleys. I mean if you could imagine the most rugged high alpine wilderness of the mountains of western Canada, but probably higher. And then this came wafting out of the shepherd's hut that we were sleeping in that day and it was my guide, Naveed Khan, a Pakistani, playing music on one of his mobile devices and again as you noted, heavenly music for a heavenly landscape.

AMT: And just underlines I guess the universality of beautiful music as well.

PS: Yes it took me to a different universe altogether, in that context.

AMT: Paul, we've spoken to you a couple of times since you started this remarkable trek and I just touched on briefly where it began, but can you remind us a little more of where you started and where you've been?

PS: Yeah. So I'm retracing the ancient pathways of the first modern human beings who migrated out of Africa, back in the stone age. And they left Africa sometime between 60 and 100,000 years ago and began radiating out from the mother continent and spread across the world in about 2500 generations, finally reaching the very tippity tip of the last continents about 7000 years ago and that happens to be Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America. So I decided more than five years ago to go ahead and attempt to recreate that epic journey. The first discovery of the world on foot, also on foot in the original way and I'm about more than five years in, about five and a half years in. After having crossed through the Rift Valley of Africa, taking a ship across the Red Sea, walked through the Middle East, walked through Asia, Central Asia and then crossed these enormous mountains. These wild mountains of the western Himalayas and now I'm in South Asia, walking across the vast river plains of India. That's it in a nutshell.

AMT: And how many kilometres have you walked so far then?

PS: Well the total journey according to my GPS track is about 18 or 19 thousand kilometers from the starting line in a place called Herto Bouri, Ethiopia. Now about a third of that has been by cargo ship because when I hit big bodies of water, I have no other way to kind of get across or around them. So it's about I think, about 12000 kilometers on foot so far.

AMT: Wow. Well let's go back to where you were at the time of the Ella Fitzgerald recording because that was rural northern Pakistan. Most of us imagine it as tribal and rife with religious fundamentalism, but that talk to me about your experience in that area.

PS: Yeah you know, you mention that you're going to walk across Pakistan, in this case northern Pakistan. And most people who are not from Pakistan, would question your sanity. But people forget how big Pakistan is. It's almost 2000 kilometers from north to south, is extraordinarily diverse. The people in the extreme north, among whom I walked, are very different from the people who live down on the south on the Arabian Sea. Their Alpine cultures, their pastoral nomads. Many of them are not Sunni Muslims. They're Shia. They're Ismailis, followers of the Aga Khan, a relatively moderate and open-minded and worldly community and basically like walking through you know parts of Central Asia that would be more familiar to Westerners as tourist destinations, such as Nepal. Really jagged peaks. You know the northern Pakistan has the densest concentration of peaks above 8000 metres, anywhere in the world. It used to be a world renowned climbing centre for extreme Alpine climbs, until Pakistan began getting this reputation for instability and extremism. And last year, when I walked through it, I basically had that region to myself. The Pakistan's reputation had scared off much of its international tourism, so I had this extraordinary experience of walking through this fantastically beautiful luminous landscape and I was the only person like me there. It was really quite a privilege and it was a bit surreal, to be honest.

AMT: What do the Pakistanis you met think about how they're perceived by the rest of the world?

PS: That's a really, a really interesting question and again it goes back to being able to slow down enough, as a journalist, to be able to have these kind of conversations at a human level, right. Because if you and I, let's say you and I would go to Afghanistan or Pakistan, the northern part of Pakistan has many cultural affinity with neighbouring Afghanistan, as traditional kind of fast journalists. You arrive in a village in a Rent-A-Car. You know you've got a translator you've hired from a city, whose culturally as alien as you are, from these tiny villages of nomads. And you've got all these barriers that you're going to have to get through, economic, cultural. There are these huge power differentials, between you and the local people. But if you walk through these communities, it lessens those barriers, those obstacles to true communication. You arrive on foot, literally at eye level with the people that you're meeting. You're kind of on the level with them literally. Your boots are planted on the same earth. You're dirty, you're sweaty, you stink. You're you're burned by the same sun. You've got the same dust on your shoulders and there's a much easier access into their lives and what they say to you when you slow down and have a chai with them, a tea is that you know Paul, we really are regretful that our country is perceived in the outside world by its worst traits only. Because look at, here we are we're having some tea underneath the tree in my yard. And am I here threatening to cut off your head? No. I think the biggest danger of walking through northern Pakistan is that I would die of tea intoxication right. I was being invited in constantly to have tea all the time. And if I took up every offer of having tea, I would still be in Pakistan, right. So you know the way I put it to my readers, Anna Maria is that it would be like an outsider coming to say the United States and judging that extraordinarily complex country, the very regionally diverse country, with different ethnic groups and different languages, by its gun violence only, right. And that's the way the Pakistanis feel about being judged by their by their association with extremist terrorism. They feel it's unfair. And so I had a lot of talking to do to kind of you know, I had to along with their pride and their hospitality, absorb some prickly sort of resentment that they were viewed this way by the outside world.

AMT: Now it's important to hear all of the different sides, but of course there are parts of Pakistan that can be dangerous for foreigners and at one point police intervened in your walk. What happened there?

PS: Oh absolutely. I mean there are sections of Pakistan that I wouldn't set my my boot toe in. It's just way too dangerous, especially in the tribal areas near the Afghan frontier that are further south from the areas and west from the areas that I walked through. I thought I had planned my route through northern Pakistan through very safe areas, but when I came out to a mountain valley near a town Chilas, the Pakistani police stopped me and my walking partner, Naveed Khan and said, guys we're not going to let you go through this area on foot. We're going to force you to get in a car. And I argued vehemently against it. I said you know here I have these permissions from your government to walk through, my visa is valid. I'm on this you know storytelling project and I cannot not walk. My whole project is premised on keeping my feet, you know in contact with the earth. And the local Pakistani police chief looked at all my bona fides, all my documents and still shook his head said, I don't care what your documents say. I don't care if you're invited here by our you know prime minister. If something happens to you, it's my head on a platter. I'm going to lose my job and it comes back to me. So he forced us to get in the car and I had to you know mark that spot with a GPS mark, as I mark all of my route, and drive about 130 kilometers around a mountain, a wild mountain. And the danger in this case was twofold. One, back in 2012, a bus load of pilgrims of Shia pilgrims had been attacked by Muslim extremists by Sunnis and killed. Many people, I think about a dozen people were killed. And so there was this after effect of communal violence around Chilas that had local people had authorities still anxious. The second reason was that there were some banditry going on up on the mountain that I was hoping to walk over and some carjackings. And the bandits were stopping people and robbing them. And the local police just said, you know an America,n really walking through, really? You know totally exposed and you know forget it, we're not going to let you do it. So this was one of those rare cases on a transcontinental foot journey, where I had to alert readers and say look I don't want to martyr myself for this project. So it would be foolish under only those circumstances to not heed the advice of the local police. So I did in fact get into a car and drove 130 kilometers and then we started the walk again. And these kind of lacunae, if you will, these kind of interruptions of the journey, we mark on our map too. To be honest with reader, this has happened. It's happened once before in Turkey when I was ambushed in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict.

AMT: So getting into northern Pakistan from Afghanistan was difficult as well. You were initially deported, weren't you Paul?

PS: Yeah I mean officially not deported. Requested to leave with some enthusiasm, let's put it that way. You know crossing the borders, between countries in this part of the world is often difficult right. There's they've got political histories. Pakistan and Afghanistan have a very bad recent history. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of interfering with its internal affairs. Pakistan denies that, but of course you know there is evidence of course that they do. And so that border has been sealed since 2015 because Pakistan also accuses Afghanistan of sending militants over to carry out attacks on its territory. So it's become and in recent years, a really tense border. And further to the south it's quite militarized. So getting permission to come you know on foot from Afghanistan into Pakistan was quite an undertaking. It took months and months of diplomacy with National Geographic and the Pakistani government and with the help of Pakistani friends, we finally got the visa to do it, but something happened. When I made it over that that frontier, that border. Now imagine it's a mountain pass, up almost around 16000 feet, it's covered with snow. There's no border checkpoint. There in fact, there was no sign of human civilization within eye shot for hundreds of square kilometers around. Just just these amazing mountains, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush. Peak after sarod peak, pyramids of snow as far as the eye can see. That's the border. And I knew it was the border because I had a GPS, but if you were just standing there, you'd never know. But I had alerted the Pakistani authorities weeks in advance that I was coming over that border. I told them what day I was planning to come over the border and I was sort of expecting to be received you know maybe with an official delegation down on the other side of the mountain pass, if not with an open hug, then at least with a strong handshake. But instead we were greeted with a military, a group of security officers and they took me and the French photojournalist I was traveling with the Mathieu Paley into custody and we were driven and flown to the capital of Islamabad. And within two days, I was on a plane leaving the country and I had to go to the nearest international air hub that would take me without a visa and that turned out to be Abu Dhabi. So here I am in snow pants, in heavy kind of winter gear, still smeared with the mud of a mountain pass in the Karakoram, arriving at this hot desert city, where it's like almost it was probably close to 40 degrees. It was quite a shock and it was the first time this had happened on my project. Now officially, that was not deportation because the Pakistani officials, the security officials who took us into custody, told me that you know you're welcome back. But there was some mistake where the word didn't trickle down apparently to some local commander up in the mountain area that we were coming into Pakistan. And by the time like you know, once the wheels of security organs start grinding, they don't go back again. You know the guys who had us in custody just told me kind of off, you know in a whisper, look come on back. You'll be welcomed back. So within a few days, I was back in Pakistan and I motored back up to the place where I was detained and restarted the walk again.

AMT: And this is the Wakhan corridor where you kept walking then?

PS: Yes.

AMT: We are posting some photos from that region and your walk on our website. The pictures are just breathtaking.

PS: Yeah. The Wakhan tcorridor, which I crossed for entering Pakistan and I entered the Wakhan of Pakistan from Tajikistan. And let me just lay some names on you and just these names are redolent of wild raw mountains. The Palm Ears, the Hindu Kush, the Karakorum. These are three of the four mountain chains that I walked through from Central Asia, South into South Asia and that route took me through a finger of Afghanistan that almost no outsiders ever go to. It's extremely remote. It has one dirt road. It has no mobile phone service. No Internet. No electricity. People who live there are farmers or nomadic pastoralists, who live a pre-industrial way of life and there are only about 15000 of them. And this finger of land is a giant alpine valley that goes for about 150 or so kilometers pointing towards China. And walking up this alpine valley hemmed on both sides by mountain peaks that were 7000 metres tall was for me one of the most exhilarating parts of this five year journey because it seemed as if the mountains radiated this pale Alpine light in cupped light in cupped time in the same river valley. And it was a river valley of apricot orchards. It was a river valley of farmers using oxen driving them in circles to thresh wheat in the old biblical way. Thousand year old technology. It was a river valley of water mills, pushed by glacial melt, grinding out wheat into flour. Using stone, millstones that weighed 300 kilos carved by hand. It was a river valley of villages where everything visible in those villages was handmade from the door knobs to the door jams to the hand tools. Everything was made by hand, including the iron forged by hand. It was just intoxicating in its beauty. It had a hallucinatory sort of clarity to the light and the people were both extraordinarily tough and heartbreakingly generous.

AMT: Paul Salopek you're such a poet. The picture you paint is so beautiful. I know that you speak regularly to students around the world. I want to ask you about some one experience in particular. Tell us about Catherine Lal.

Yeah I met Cathy in March of this year, up in a small town in northern India, right smack next to the Nepal border called Mombasa. And Cathy is an orphan. She when she was quite young, was taken to this orphanage, which is run by a very warm generous fabulous family and grew up there. And I was asked to go there under the auspices of a National Geographic photo camp. And that's basically giving kids cameras so that they can document their own lives in the process kind of take control over the narrative of their own lives and claim back their power, right. It's a tool of using storytelling to really help focus yourself on who you are and the strengths that you have and give you, it's not me giving them their voice. They have their voice. They just have an instrument now to help record it, which is which is a camera. And I was asked to go help teach writing alongside Matthieu Paley, my French friend who walked with me across the Afghan Wakhan corridor and I met Kathy and Kathy was this natural born writer. She had the light. She had the fire. And I remember working with her. This workshop went for about five days. I remember working with her on her story at least you know through as many drafts that I would go through on my own work. You know three, four times. She was up at all hours working, polishing her story. That was the story of her life and I still stay in touch with her. We still communicate. So the ability to mentor kids both in person and digitally has become a really strong thread of meaning through this journey and I think it's just going to get stronger and stronger.

AMT: Well you know you brought new meaning to the whole concept of road trip and being on assignment. But I'm wondering how you juggle all this. You're married. You have a family. How do you connect one world with the other?

PS: Well I remind my readers, you know and I've got to be honest, my family asked to stay out of the spotlight of this project and I've got to respect their privacy. But I would I will tell you is that everybody I love in my life, knows who I am. So they sort of knew who they grew up with in the case of my siblings and my immediate family, my relatives and everybody else knows who they're involved with, right. And so it might seem crazy to some people that I could maintain you know family relationships, even deep friendships, when I'm inching across the world for five years, but this is not a departure for me. I've been doing this my whole life. I've sort of been a nomad since I was 6-years-old and my family moved from Southern California to a small village outside of a city in Mexico. I think that border crossing changed my life and turned me into a kind of a global nomad and taught me that well, whereas I may never be truly at home anywhere, I'll be, I'll feel at home everywhere to some degree. And that home is where my boots are. And so my family and friends, the people I love, come and walk with me as often as I can. I have to remind readers that I don't go back to the United States. I have not been back for five and a half years. The idea of this project is to kind of get into the ancient mindset of migrants who spent entire lives moving across the world. And that's been okay. It's been actually alright because as I get older, I think it's a factor of aging too, I carry my the people I love and the places I love with me, no matter where I am. I could be in New York City. I could be you know sitting in a town up in the tundra in Canada. I could be down in the tropics of Mexico. Home truly is where you are, where you are when you're alive. When you're alert. And so my ecosystem, my emotional ecosystem is mobile and it's portable so it's not as hard as it seems. I would argue in fact that you know moving around like this, moving with people who you are connected with emotionally is actually the norm. It's been the way we've been relating to each other for 90 per cent of our history when we were hunter gatherers.

AMT: Do you always have someone who's from the relative area like from nearby, walking with you to sort of approach these places as you go?

PS: Yes, unless I have somebody from the region who can walk with me. I would be walking mute and blind through most of these landscapes. I wouldn't know the folklore. I wouldn't know when to turn left or right. To stop it someplace that might have an interesting story. Never mind the translation because they also help serve as literal, as literally as interpreters, but it's more as cultural interpreters, as as prisms through which to view the landscape of their own home. And what the great joy of this is that these local or regional walking partners, as I call them, because they're more than guides, they're coequal with me, end up discovering their own homes for the first time on foot. Because most of them come from the modern motorized society that most of us live in and watching them rediscover their own home is one of the great joys and gifts of this project that was unexpected. I sort of never, I've never thought about it. And I hope at the end of this long, long journey to gather them all. And by then, there will be hundreds of them, right. Gather them at the finish line, down at the tip of South America and walk to the Antarctic sea together, the last kilometer or two and we're going to have a big party. This project belongs to all of them, as much as it does to me.

AMT: That's a beautiful image to end this conversation on Paul Salopek. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. It's always wonderful to listen to what you're thinking as you continue this walk. Take care of yourself.

PS: Thank you so much. Good to hear your voice again, Anna Maria. Let's check in again from somewhere down the trail.

AMT: For sure we will. Thanks Paul.

PS: Bye bye.

AMT: Paul Salopek, the founder of Out of Eden Walk and a fellow with National Geographic. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, who was a foreign correspondent with The Chicago Tribune. We reached him in Chennai, India and we will post a link to his Out of Eden Project. Some really breathtaking photos on that site and we'll put it on our website. We'll link to it, cbca.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today stay with Radio One for Q. Now Paul talked about the surreal moment when he heard the voice of Ella Fitzgerald in a Pakistani mountain range area. We're going to leave you with a bit more of that song. Here is "If You Ever Change Your Mind." I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Song: "If You Ever Change Your Mind" by Ella Fitzgerald]

Oct. 1, 2018 episode transcript

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