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The Current Transcript for October 30, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: People are treating these like weddings and they're having them catered and they're having dance floors and having photo booths, and it is just amazing to see these people come together.

LAURA LYNCH: Amazing to some maybe, puzzling to others who struggled to understand the growing popularity and scale of gender reveal parties. Jon Reilly is capitalizing on the trend with his company, but the woman who pioneered it all now had second thoughts. That's in half an hour. After that, the election may be over, but our national affairs panel isn't done yet.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I am, yes, I am staying as leader of the party. We obviously are very happy with the many aspects of the campaign. We obviously wish we had better results.

LL: We'll talk about whether everyone in Conservative ranks is as happy as Andrew Scheer and what that may mean for his leadership of the party. But we start today in Washington, D.C. with an apology and a reckoning for Boeing. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

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Boeing’s CEO testifies before a US senate committee

Guests: Raymond Hall, Paul Njoroge

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Before we start today, I'd like to speak directly to the families of the victims who are here with us. On behalf of myself and the Boeing company, we are sorry, deeply and truly sorry.

LL: That's how Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing, opened his remarks before a congressional committee in Washington yesterday. It was a grim anniversary, one year after a 737 Max 8 airliner crashed off the coast of Indonesia, killing 189 people. Then in March, another Max 8 went down in Ethiopia, killing 157 people, including 18 Canadians. Now lawmakers in Washington are looking into what went wrong. An Indonesian investigation released last week found there were problems with the aircraft's automated flight control system, something Boeing knew about, as well as inadequate training of pilots. Here's Dennis Muilenburg in an exchange with Senator Jon Tester.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The whole thing about, you know, when it comes to safety, time and money are no object, the record certainly doesn't show that.

VOICE 2: Senator, I understand your points and criticism. And I think it's true that we operate in a very competitive world, but I can also tell you that never takes precedence over safety.

VOICE 1: But it did in this.

VOICE 2: Our business model safe airplanes.

VOICE 1: Look I think it absolutely could be argued that it did in this case and I've got to tell you, I would walk before I was to get on a 737 Max. I would walk. You shouldn't be cutting corners and I see corners being cut and this committee is going to have to do something to stop that from happening.

LL: But according to some observers, it's not only Boeing to blame. They say lax oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration led to decisions that allowed faulty planes to fly. Raymond Hall is an aviation lawyer and a former Air Canada pilot who has flown Boeing aircraft. He's in Vancouver. Hello.

RAYMOND HALL: Good morning, Laura.

LL: What did you think of Dennis Muilenburg's testimony yesterday?

RAYMOND HALL: It's inconsistent with the facts. I'm very concerned about it. It's obviously very difficult for Boeing to explain why things went wrong and to admit blame for it. And he's made a minor move in that direction, but I don't think it's sufficient. Where did you see inconsistencies immediately prior to the second crash? Point was still telling of the government, particularly President Trump in United States, that one 737, Max, was safe to fly. But one of the factors involved in the actual implementation of this management augmentation control system or aircraft system was that they consciously chose to not install any type of comparator system between the set, the sensors, the two sensors on the outside of the aircraft that allowed for the pilots to recognize if one of the sensors was faulty and they made it that available at a cost. It was an option for the airlines to do that, to purchase that comparator system. And therefore, Boeing certainly put a cost factor on top of the safety of the operation of the aircraft.

LL: OK. He also apparently acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he knew before the second crash that a top pilot had voiced concerns about the plane while it was still in development. What do you say to that?

RAYMOND HALL: It's always difficult looking back over the evidence there. I'm sure a man in that position with thousands and thousands of aircraft produced receives lots of conflicting evidence. And it's quite often very difficult for the management people to discern what's really important and what's not important. So I think it's evidence that he could have acted more quickly and more effectively, but it's just one of the things that happens in a big corporation like that.

LL: What do we know about what caused these two plane crashes?

RAYMOND HALL: Well, that's a long story.

LL: Try to summarize it, if you can, because I think people still get confused about what was at the heart of the crashes.

RAYMOND HALL: OK. What originally it started and I'll try and I've got some quick note here that I can go through to highlight the development process. Boeing was competing with Airbus in 2010. Airbus announced that they were going to have a very high efficiency single aisle aircraft that increase the capacity and ability to fly many people on short distances. They they were going to develop this aeroplane that had bigger engines, more fuel efficient engines. And therefore, it was a very significant cost competitive challenge to Boeing. So Boeing had to face a real critical question. Do we develop a whole new aeroplane to match this aircraft or do we continue to expand on the existing 737 model? And the major factor in that was whether or not the certification cost would really make the cost of building a new aircraft prohibitive. And so they elected to extend the fuselage and increase the capacity of the existing 737 that brought with it design problems, because the 737 was originally designed as a as an aircraft that operated in that small strips and was low to the ground. When you increase the capacity of an aircraft, when you extend the hall and increase the weight of it, you need more thrust, which required bigger engines. And the bigger engines that were required for this aircraft could not fit under the wings. So they had to come up with a new design that created aerodynamic problems. Big engines were moved forward and higher, and that affected the flight performance characteristics of the aircraft when they were doing the simulator testing and design testing of the aircraft. They found that there was a possibility that a high thrust input could cause the aircraft to pitch up very steeply. And so they decided to use a system that they originally used with the military freighters called the Management Control Augmentation System. They had designed that system in 2004 and they followed through implementing that in the computer model and put it on the aircraft without advising the pilots or the manufacturers about the integration of it because they never thought that it would be triggered. The problem with that was that they deviated from the original military design of the uncapped system to have the system operate on the basis of the input of only one of two outside sensors. So is that sensor failed then the man the emptiest system would automatically be triggered and cause of very serious vertical displacement of the aircraft and a very strong input into the flight control systems that would cause the aircraft to pitch down.

LL: And that's what led to the crashes.

RAYMOND HALL: They found that that was what led to both of these crashes. No, they knew after the Lion Air crash in October of last year that that system was partially to blame, at least partially to blame. They expected the pilots to be able to recognize that management control input system and be able to handle it, but pilots received no initial indication. They would received no knowledge. It was taken out of the operations manual because they didn't want to increase any pilot training costs to send pilots to simulators and take them off their job for several days to do the training on it. And Boeing management issued an edict to the designers of the aircraft that anything that would cause cause an increase in pilot training costs would be rejected as a design option. So, they went ahead with the system and designed it and implemented without telling anybody about it and expected the pilots to be able to recognize the problem and deal with it.

LL: OK. I'm going to stop you there because I want to bring someone else into the conversation. Midway through the hearing yesterday. Lawmakers acknowledge the victims' family members in attendance. Many were holding photos of their loved ones.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: If you could please stand, so we could thank you all. Thank you for being here. If you could just stand.

VOICE 2: Go ahead and hold up the photographs that you brought. You've been very kind too.

VOICE 1: I was going to ask that you hold up those photographs for this short period of time.

LL: Paul Njoroge was one of the family members in attendance. The Canadian lost five family members in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, his wife, three children and his mother-in-law. He is suing Boeing. Paul Njoroge joins me now from Washington, D.C.. Hello.

PAUL NJOROGE: Hello. How are you?

LL: I'm fine, thank you. You and the other victims relatives met with Muilenburg after the hearings yesterday. What did he say to you?

PAUL NJOROGE: Well, we wanted some questions answered. You know, he's very good in beating around the bush. In the hearing he could not answer questions and unequivocally and you know, there is one question that we wanted him to answer. And that is about MCAS. We wanted to know the essence of MCAS in the 737

LL: Boeing has said it actually is hoping to get those 737 Max 8 airplanes back in the air soon. What do you think of that?

PAUL NJOROGE: Well, I do believe that the other regulatory bodies, you know, as much as we don't trust the FAA, we want the other the international regulatory bodies to come in and make their own reviews. We are not, we're not technical experts. You know, I'm not a technical expert, so I cannot say whether they should fly again or whether it should not fly again. If I was asked, I would say that they should not fly again. But if they regulate, international regulatory bodies, do their own reviews, and certainly say that it can be approved to fly again then I think we can trust that. But we would want the public disclosure of what Boeing has done in order to improve safety of the 737 Max.

LL: You mentioned the Federal Aviation Administration. Who do you ultimately hold responsible for the loss of your family?

PAUL NJOROGE: Boeing. Both Boeing and the FAA. The FAA basically left Boeing to police itself. And Senator Senator Cruz yesterday talked about the e-mails that Faulkner, I think one of the chief testing pilots at Boeing, that was in 2016 when he was exchanging e-mails with an employee at Boeing. And he talked about the MCAS system running rampart. And, you know, that's what exactly, Sentaor Cruz said, that's what exactly happened in these two crashes. And at that point, I was engulfed by emotions, knowing that, you know, these people knew even before the crash of Lion Air that you know that MCAS was catastrophic and even after that, they did not make the decision to ground the planes. The FAA should have you know, at that point, the FAA should have known that MCAS is certainly hazardous. And they should have made that decision. They should have forced Boeing to ground the planes. Andyou know, even after the second crash, they still wanted the planes to continue flying. So I hold both Boeing and the FAA accountable for the losses of my family.

LL: Mr. Njoroge I know this has been difficult for you being there and as you say, feeling very strong emotions. I thank you for talking to us about it today.

PAUL NJOROGE: Thank you.

LL: Paul Njoroge lost his wife, his three children and his mother in law in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March. Aviation lawyer Raymond Hall is still with me. Mr. Hall what goes through your mind when you hear people like Paul Njoroge talk about how much they've lost and who they blame?

RAYMOND HALL: It's just unbelievable that the system could have been designed that way. It is really tragic. And it's not when when a corporation like Boeing makes a decision on designing an aircraft, it's not like investing in the stock market and making a bad decision. You're dealing with people's lives. And especially after the first accident, there was no reason for for him to lose his family. They should have engaged and intervened at that point of time. And history will show that they didn't do a proper analysis of the system. They made a whole series of assumptions that were an accurate. But there's a serious problem that he alerted to the FAA, a sub delegation. The 737 Max, was designed under a system where FAA had delegated to Boeing employees the certification of the aircraft, the major components of it with only small oversight 24 days prior to the Ethiopian air, 24 days prior to the Lion Air crash in the United States passed into law the FAA Reauthorization Act, which effectively took all ability of the FAA to issue oversight to the manufacturers away from them. They're precluded from law by now from intervening in the design certification of aircraft, and prior to any particular problem arising, they can only intervene afterwards. So it's ironic that immediately before the first crash that the FAA has not been given more authority for oversight, but they have had the oversight removed from them now. So there are some serious systemic problems in the United States regulatory system. And that regulatory system with the FAA is what every international authority uses for guidance.

LL: And let's just make it clear here that some of those same politicians who were grilling Boeing yesterday voted in favour of delegating the regulation to Boeing.

RAYMOND HALL: Exactly. And that's yesterday was the Senate hearings. The Senate is not the primary body that deals with this, it's the Transportation Committee of the House. And Mr. Muilenburg is going to appear before the House today, and he's going to face some serious grilling, because I anticipate that they're going to review this FAA reauthorization act and come up with different legislation that reinstalled the ability, independent non conflict of interest, oversight of the FAA over the manufacturers.

LL: Now, you heard Paul Njoroge say maybe he could accept the idea of the 737 Max, say it's flying again. What do you think?

RAYMOND HALL: I think that's going to work. I think that and the problem that we have, aviation safety is built on accidents. We constantly progress. Boeing has 46 hundred orders for that aircraft. There are only already over 100 aircraft delivered to the various carriers is sitting on the ground. There's a very good interest for everybody to have that aeroplane operational. I think that they've done enough there. Their proposals right now take away the ability of one sensor to control the aircraft. If they take away the ability of the uncapped system to operate more than one time and the ability of the pilots to not be able to take control of the aircraft. So it's it's a process there. Walk through it with a simulation and they'll do the testing. And I and I would feel confident once those problems are solved, they know what the problem is. They've got to solve it.

LL: You would fly in one of those planes then would you?

RAYMOND HALL: Once I was confident that the certification process had been followed through, that the cause of the accident was remedied. Yes, I would.

LL: How important is the 737 Max 8 for the Canadian carriers who have them, Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing.

RAYMOND HALL: It's going to be very important because it's going to Air Canada has 24 with 12 in order right now and going up to 50. Westjet I think has 60 orders or so. I don't know the number precisely, but the big advantage of that is the lower cost of operation because the the fuel efficient engines reduce the cost of the fuel and fuel accounts of major proportion of the operating cost of an airline. So I think it's going to be better for everybody. In addition, you've got the newer technology coming in that enables the aircraft to fly more efficiently with the navigation systems and that sort of thing as well. So I think it's going to be very important and you're going to see a major shift in the industry towards these higher capacity aircraft. But you've got a fundamental conflict there. The illusion of automation versus pilot input controls. I remember reading Tom Wolfe book The Right Stuff, and they talked about taking the control away from the astronauts, the ability to control the capsule. And the astronauts actually went on strike and refused to fly unless they got the control to fly the aircraft. We've got the same thing over again 50, 60 years later where the automated systems are taking control away from the pilots, and I think that's a very serious problem.

LL: And that is another thing yet to be addressed. And we will watch the hearings again today. I thank you very much for joining us.

RAYMOND HALL: My pleasure indeed.

LL: Raymond Hall is an aviation lawyer and a former Air Canada pilot who flew Boeing aircraft. And we reached him in Vancouver. The CBC News is coming up next. Then, why gender reveal parties are growing in popularity and why some say it is time to cool it with the pink and blue confetti cannons. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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Gender reveal parties trend is full of confetti cannons, cake and controversy

Guests: Jenna Karvunidis, Jon Reilly, Florence Pasche Guignard

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, Minority Report. Our national affairs panel looks at the threats to Justin Trudeau's government and Andrew Scheer's leadership. But first, a new breed of baby shower.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Hi, I'm Glenn Needham. I own and operate this market garden. We're going to do a gender reveal with my pumpkin cannon. I saw other gender reveals on TV and on YouTube and whatnot and I thought I can do better than that.

LL: Glenn Needham runs a farm at Arnprior, Ontario, but he saw an opportunity to diversify. So he polished up his pumpkin cannon and started looking for parents to be.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So it's an air cannon that fires a 15 pound pumpkin normally, but we're not firing a pumpkin today. We're going to fire a special charge in the cannon, which will be either blue or pink. Stay tuned to find out.

LL: So if you missed this craze, here are the basics. A gender reveal party is where expectant parents tell the world the sex of their unborn baby. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Sometimes they pop balloons. Sometimes they cut into a cake to see what the colour of the filling is. Sometimes they use confetti in a pumpkin cannon.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I'm very, very excited. Hi, my name is Kendra Holmes, and we're here tonight to find out the gender of our baby through the pumpkin modulator.

VOICE 2: My name's Brandon Holmes. I'm her husband.

VOICE 1: We were having a hard time picking names and then a lot of people were asking if we were going to find out. And whenever the idea came up that we could find out for the first time with all of our friends and family versus finding out just at the hospital, because it's always a challenge after as far as everybody wants to be called first. So now everybody can find out the exact same time.

[Countdown followed by cannon]

VOICE 2: She had a hunch it was a girl. I had a hunch it was a boy. So I guess mother's intuition she knew.

VOICE 1: I find it puts a lot or it takes a lot of stress off of planning for the baby. It will make picking names easier, choosing colours for nurseries and just everything in general. I find that so many things are either blue or pink now. There's not very many gender neutral things, so I think it'll take a lot of the stress off.

LL: The pumpkin cannon. It might sound dramatic, but gender reveal parties are gradually growing more outlandish and sometimes even dangerous. In 2017, explosives used at a gender reveal party in Arizona set off a massive wildfire that caused $8 million in damage. And then just last weekend, a woman died after an explosion at a gender reveal party in Iowa. But even before that accident, many people were concerned about gender reveal parties for reasons that have nothing to do with safety. Jenna Karvunidis was one of the first to throw one of these parties back in 2008 when she was pregnant with her first child. Spoiler alert: she's now the mother of three girls. And we've reached her in Los Angeles. Hello.

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Hello.

LL: Why did you decide to throw a gender reveal party for your first child?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Well, gender reveal parties didn't exist whenever I threw one. I was just trying to get my family together to have a barbecue. I was an early adapter to social media, I had a blog and a co-worker of mine had been pregnant and so we had thrown her a baby shower at work. And I had made a really cute cake and I decided the cake was so cute that I just wanted to replicate the cake. And I thought, well, I need to invent an in case, an occasion for that. And I was pregnant the time and my gender scan, my anatomy scan was that week. And I thought, you know what? I'll just combine all this together. We'll get the family together and then I'll make two cakes, one with pink filet, one flew on my sister and I'll bring it up and we'll all find out together. Everyone was really confused as to what are we doing, where are we going to your house at a Tuesday night to bring a gift. They're been kind of grumpy. But the minute we cut into the cake and they got it, they got what I was trying to accomplish. There was an emotional change in the room. So I should have known at that point that it might be something that would catch on.

LL: So how did that idea of the gender reveal take off from your party?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: I've been blogging since 2000 and I had written about what I was going to do for the party before it happened. And then after it happened, I posted pictures and a recap of the party. And someone from The Bump magazine contacted me and asked if they could do a two page spread about me and my party and my journey and everything. And I said, sure, they'd be great and it ended up being the publication of the OBGY and Midwives.

LL: Right because The Bmp is obviously a pregnancy magazine.

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Yes, it was. You know, you didn't scroll your phone 11 years ago in a doctor's office, you would actually pick up the magazines that were there. People were having their anatomy scan. They would pick up the magazine and it was the easiest idea in the world is something that really anybody could do. And it really took off from there.

LL: Yeah. What went through your mind when you realized that it had taken off?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: I didn't really think a whole lot of it. It's only when it started to reach, we're at a tipping point, which I think now it's like getting an engagement ring. I mean, people do this thing, but it really was kind of just getting to be more on the scene like six or eight year mark ago. At first I thought, why didn't I capitalize on it? It's like being happy birthday or something. But by the time I had my second child, I started to see them as problematic.

LL: We'll get into that in a minute. But I'm just wondering before we go there, why do you think gender reveal parties have had such a big appeal to people?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Well, first of all, it's very easy. And thinking about people are, you know, they're excited about the anatomy of their child. They're not thinking about it as I wasn't thinking about it in 2008. They're thinking, hey, it's a party. It's the celebrate. And life is long and it's hard. And I get it. Of turned on by not to have a party. But I think it's just caught on because it is something that's so accessible and it can be really fun.

LL: I'd like to bring someone else into the conversation. Jon Reilley runs the company, Poof There It Is! with his wife. It's an online business that makes and sells products for gender reveal parties. He's in Dahlonega, Georgia. Hello to you.

JON REILLY: Hi, how are you?

LL: Good. Tell me about your business. What kind of products are you selling?

JON REILLY: Yeah. So this actually started seven years after Jenna's reveal. And this was 2015 and my wife had our first gender reveal and it was butchered by big box, you know, party store. And we decided to open up our own company, providing an experience that's taiolored towards expecting parents.

LL: Well what was the problem with the one that you got from the big box store?

JON REILLY: Well, we went in and at that time, the popular things were cakes or balloons. So we did balloons that would come out of the box. So we went in with our blue balloons, had them blow them up and asked them to put them in a black bag. And they said that's against their corporate policy. They have to use these clear bags. And then my mother in law walked out with all these blue balloons in the clear bag and ruined it. So we're like, there has to be a better out there, and there really wasn't. No one was providing a tailored experience for all these expecting parents and trust me, during that time it is quite crazy. You just found out that you're pregnant and then you just found out the health of the baby. So you want to throw these parties. So one thing is, since back in 2015, when this sort of started to really take off, we wanted to focus on the entire family. So typically at that time, baby showers were the thing, mostly just the women would go to that. So we wanted to include the husbands and the kids in the celebration of the growth of their family. So the first 10 products that we invented were all sports themes, because how easy is it to get the husband involved, if he gets to hit a baseball that explodes pink or blue or a hockey puck and then we found that the kids were getting involved and then we sort of morphed into providing all these different gender reveal products that the whole family can partake in. One thing that I heard Jenna saying earlier was why people want to throw these gender reveals and what is the need for that. And back in 2008, when Jenna had her anatomy anatomy scan, I'm guessing that happened around week 20, is that right? Yes. So Brown 2015, the insurance company started developing this thing called the Harmony Test and a few others which would test the health of the baby for high risk pregnancies. With their anatomy scan, they're finding out the health of the baby at 10 weeks. That's pretty much coincides with the time of the announcement of even telling people that you're pregnant. And another added feature of this test was you were finding out the gender. So people were like, well, how do I tell everyone that I'm pregnant? Well, I just found out that gender and I think that development in that health industry sort of facilitated the real growth of gender reveals, because people were finding out right. When they were pregnant. They're almost pretty much finding out the gender hand-in-hand. So ten weeks is a lot different than 20 weeks. And you're still feeling like you want to be photographed and you want to throw a party and you want to announce that addition to the family. And I think the word gender reveal sort of took off because anatomy party just doesn't have the same ring.

LL: It doesn't. Jon tell us what are some of the most elaborate gender reveal parties you've heard of?

JON REILLY: Oh, my goodness. Well, we've done a lot of celebrities that sort of taken off. A real housewife of California and she shot off 50 cannons and erupted and had the whole thing catered. And one thing that we really found is people are treating these like weddings and they're having them catered and they having dance floors and they're having photo booths. And it is just amazing to see these people come together.

LL: But how much are people spending on this because I read about one, they actually had hippos chomping on watermelons dyed blue or pink.

JON REILLY: Oh, I think it's endless where people can spend. We had one client that purchased 100 canines and she goes, there's been two events in my life that I've dreamed of. And that was getting married and having kids and how much did I spend for my wedding? Well I assume I'm going to spend the same for when I'm announcing the birth of my children, the growth of my family. And I go, that's an interesting way of looking at.

LL: Tens of thousands of dollars in some cases?

JON REILLY: Yeah. Where we just do the actual reveal product, they're spending the money on all these services that are already currently offered and they're just changing the colour scheme a little bit and making it focus more on the gender reveal.

LL: Alright. I have one more person I want to bring into the conversation. Florence Pasche Guignard has done some research on the meaning behind the gender reveal party. She is an instructor at Ryerson University in the Department of Philosophy and she's here with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Hi. Thanks for having me.

LL: What concerns do you have about gender reveal parties?

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Well, I don't have any concerns in the sense that people nowadays engage in their own ritualizations around pregnancy, birth and other events. But what I was really interested in was the ritual dynamics behind it, as well as the material aspects that Jon also just mentioned in the mediatization of this part is. I don't think this would have become a trend without social media, blogs and YouTube.

LL: Right. OK. So why do you think they've become so popular? Is that because of that social media aspect?

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Exactly. I think that people don't just throw parties, but they filmed them and then they share them online and is very sharing is actually part of the ritual script. So they take ideas from what they see online, what they watch on YouTube and perhaps read on blogs. And then they add to this lack a high degree of customization because there is no firm template on gender reveals.

LL: Right. So one reinforces another reinforces another.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Exactly.

LL: And do you have concerns about the.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: No we'll see like what happens in terms of society as more and more people criticize these gender reveal parties, we'll see if the trend keeps up or if people gradually will shift to separating something else that is beautiful about pregnancy and becoming parents.

LL: Alright, Jenna let's come back to you then, because you were starting to talk about this. How do you feel about gender reveal parties now?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Well, they've become ever more aggressive and outlandish, and I think it's putting the focus somewhere. It doesn't necessarily need to be with a new baby. You've put a really aggressive energy towards something and made it a much bigger deal than it is. There's a lot of things you're going to learn about your child whenever they're born. You're going to learn what their preferences are as far as just the hobbies and talents and interests and what they can communicate and participate in in the world. And when you write out of the gate, they walk into a world that's been pink washed for them. They've walked into an expectation you're really limiting what and who they can be. And that's what this has to do with not binary people and transgender people. It really has to do with everyone. I have three daughters and I say the person who has been most impacted by a gender expectations, really, my brilliant girl. We opened up a Christmas present one morning and Santa had brought her a Lego set and she was crying. And I said, Well, why are you crying? And she said, Well, why would Santa Claus bring me a boy toy? And I said, What are you talking about? It's Legos. And she's like, Well, it's not pink. So the gender reveal party has been further emphasizing the pink is for girls and blue is for boys. And the message that these kids are getting is that, well, if it's not pink, it's not for me. Atleast the girls are getting the message.

LL: Jon Reilly I just wonder what you make of those kinds of concerns.

JON REILLY: Oh, yeah, definitely. And if anyone's having a gender reveal with aggressive energy, I definitely think that's a concern for anyone, but I think with our company at least, we do offer different colour options that allows people to have a gender neutral gender reveal. I think that's so important. So if you do want to throw a gender reveal and celebrate the family growth and the coming together and the pregnancy, but don't want to reinforce those stereotypes, we provide that power to the people hosting the party. And I think as Jenna gets out there and shares her story and I think she's impacted a lot of people that's going to take off where people are going to start changing the focus of these parties. But I think baby showers really focus on the baby. And one thing we're seeing with gender reveals is the gift etiquette is focussed on the one that's pregnant. I know we just had our gender reveal and the gifts that we received weren't necessarily baby clothes or bottles and stuff like that, but rather bath bombs and massages and chiropractic certificates and everything that's focused on my wife Tori, as she goes through this process. It was amazing seeing multiple generations coming together.

LL: I want to let Florence jump in here. She has something she wants to say.

JON REILLY: Yeah.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: So maybe one concern that I have is a lack in terms of theory is how do we call disparities gender reveal? What is really revealed through the ultrasound is fetal sex. So it's not the gender of a baby and these parties tend to conflate sex with gender. And as we know, gender is highly constructed and what this points out to right now is that this starts even before birth. It's not just the baby clothes, but while the fetus is still in the womb, it starts being gendered through these symbols that are maybe different in different cultures. Right.

LL: I want you all to take a listen now to a clip. It's fromNadege Reimer Laczko and she's from Langley, B.C. She actually used a soccer ball and a basketball stuffed with coloured powder to do the reveal. This is what she had to say about her decision to have a gender reveal party.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It doesn't really matter if we throw a gender reveal party or not. If our child is gonna identify as he or she, or if our child is going to identify as they, the child's the one that's going to decide in the end. Right now, it's just something fun for parents to do. And if people want to get all up in a huff and puff, it's kind of like blowing your horn before you know there's even anything to blow it for. I think everyone's entitled to doing what they want as long as they're not hurting other people in the process.

LL: Jenna, what do you make of what she's saying? Isn't everyone entitled to celebrate the baby in whatever way they want?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Everyone's entitled to live their lives however they want, but maybe if you have more information, people are going to think about things a little bit differently. As far as not harming anyone, that is absolutely not true. You know, early I was addressing my concerns for everyone and for people who identify as they're born, and that's great. But there are a whole segment of the population who are transgender and non-binary. It's not that they're offended. People hear this word offended and you think, oh, I'm up on my high horse, I'm mad. Give me props about something. No, people are wounded by this. What we're celebrating when we have a gender reveal party is the humanity that is on its way. Finally we have something we knew about the child, we know it's a boy or a girl, we have a human now. And that's what's so harmful to the transgender community. They're like, well, my humanity isn't stripped just because I don't fit in this box or that box. And as far as the parties focusing now on the mother, I don't have a problem with your business, sir. I think that it's great and I think it could go a lot of directions. You could have a name reveal, you can have this and that. But the problem with the parties now being focused on the baby and their biological sex, it actually erases the mom out of the equation. She is now a vessel, a vehicle for the personality that's been assigned to this biological sex that she's carrying. It's like instead of it just being a baby, it's born as a blank slate and we can let that person flourish. Now it's a human being who loves the ballet and has a pension for pearls. It's a whole personality in there and I feel like it's erasing women's autonomy over their own bodies in a certain way and also harming the transgender community.

LL: Jon, what do you say to that?

JON REILLY: It's amazing how Jenna is sort of spreading awareness. And I think that's something we have to take into consideration whenever we're given any kind of responsibility over other people's lives. And so our company does focus on gender reveals currently. And as more information comes out and people sort of help educate this view around how gender identity is really affect, it's not a victimless crime. It's something that has a lot of impact. I think what we've done is we've listened. And so our biggest seller are cannons right. These cannons that shoot out confetti, and we've actually taken he or she off the cannons and presented it just with a neutral colour to start that process of being less defined as a gender reveal.

LL: But I think Jenna was also talking about the way it treats the mother, which is to make her seen only as a vessel.

JON REILLY: I think that's one view. I know that my wife doesn't sort of see it that way, but it doesn't mean that others won't feel that. So everyone, I feel, is entitled to those feelings at the same time it's what do you want to focus on as you're going through this process and health. And I think the word you were using with humanity and the health of the growth of that family is very, very important to us since this is a rainbow baby for us.

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: I think that's wonderful. That's amazing news. I'm so glad to hear that, you know, you're offering a more gender neutral option and you can expand this whole business. You could be a name reveal. Maybe there's some way people can open up a cake and it says their name. I don't know, you go with it. That's your business. But, you know, I think there's a lot of directions and ways people can celebrate the moments in their lives that don't end up hurting people and putting out the wrong message. And people are always going to want to celebrate.

LL: Florence wants to get in here.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: I was just following up on gender reveals and also the backlash against them. I've become aware of a few people who do gender repeal.

LL: What does that mean?

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: So they will not disclose fetal sex or gender and they will indeed celebrate the birth of a baby of a human being. And they are actually quite many traditions that do have rituals of pregnancy that focus not on the foetus or on the woman as a sacred vessel, as a carrier, but actually on the transition from not having a baby to entering motherhood or parenthood.

LL: That sounds like a baby shower.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Yes, but perhaps the dimensions are maybe more spiritual in a sense. So it's more accompanying individual change and it's less focused on material display of wealth and affording parties that cost thousands of dollars.

LL: Jon?

JON REILLY: I think you're 100 percent accurate. You were talking about that reveal moment that's highly photographic. You can share it on social media and I think the focus right now of those eruption of colours is such amazing photographic moment. And it's sort of playing to their need for attention or their vanity or their wanting to share this with people that aren't able to be there locally. But I think if we can find that spiritual focus on the pregnancy and create something that's very sort of graphic that people will love to post on social media, I think that will really influence the intent behind these. And maybe it won't be as focused on that pink and blue colour.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Yeah. I agree with that, just like an aesthetic quality in this moment. But if you look at what some women have been doing for actually dozens of years, they do celebrate the mother to be and they and they also have us that eco rituals like, for instance, belly painting. So painting the belly of the woman with colours or with henna, decorating the hands and feet or perhaps sharing cakes as well, even though the cake may not be gendered. So I think there are many ways that is realisations could be going on without focussing just on the foetus and foetal sex and the mother just as a carrier. But. As someone who is transitioning into something very important and perhaps another element that we also need to mention here is that many women now in Canada, in North America, in most places in Europe will only have one or two children. So they are very much aware that this is the time of my pregnancy and maybe I will not have another one. In addition to so many couples struggling with infertility, women having miscarriages and so on, so really parents want to to give attention to this important transition.

LL: Why not just, you know, have a party? Why not just have a party? Don't have to do any of this stuff. Jenna?

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: You know what? Actually, I like this idea of having a different aesthetic to it. You know, put your personality into it. If you like vintage cars, it's about that. If you like the ocean, there you go. There's a lot of ways to go and celebrate yourself that has nothing to do with genderfying your child.

LL: Alright. I think that we are going to leave our discussion there. It's been really interesting. I thank all three of you.

JON REILLY: Awesome. It was great talking with you guys. Okay great.

JENNA KARVUNIDIS: Thank you so much for having me.

FLORENCE PASCHE GUIGNARD: Thank you very much.

LL: Jenna Karvunidis was an early adopter of the gender reveal party back in 2008, and she's now the mother of three girls. She joined us from Los Angeles. Jon Reilly runs the company, Poof There It Is, an online business catering to gender reveal parties. And he is a father of two, soon to be three sons. He was in Dahlonega, Georgia. Florence Pasche Guignard has studied the ritualization and role of social media in the gender reveal party. She teaches religious studies at Ryerson University in the Department of Philosophy, and she was with me in our Toronto studio.

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LL: Coming up in our next half hour, the national affairs panel considers discontent within Conservative ranks and Andrew Scheer's future. And the much awaited Cosmic Crisp is being billed as the apple of the future. We take you to an orchard in Nova Scotia where new breeds are born. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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Ever tried a Pink Pearl? It's just one variety in this orchard growing apples of the future

Guests: Sean Myles

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The Cosmic Crisp is the largest push for a new variety out into the marketplace. So they're really banking on this being a blockbuster apple. And there are so many trees in the ground right now that have been planted that there needs to be a huge market for this because there are a lot of Cosmic Crisp apples coming to your grocery store really soon. We'll see how it all plays out. But never before in the history of fruit breeding, I would say in general, has there ever been such a conversion to a single variety with such great hopes, as is the case for Cosmic Crisps right now.

LL: The Cosmic Crisp is the offspring of two varieties, the honey crisp, which is crunchy, sweet and tart, and the enterprise known to be juicy and disease resistant. The Cosmic Chris makes its debut in American supermarkets later this fall, and the Washington state breeders who came up with the new Apple promise it will stay delicious for months. And speaking of delicious, the new apple could seal the demise of another variety.

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VOICE: Red delicious is that apple that's beautiful on the outside and garbage on the inside. You know, widely recognized as an apple that's really not great for eating, but that looks really nice. You know, it's got the little feet on the bottom and it's got that beautiful red colour. And so when you put it in a fruit bowl and you want to paint a picture, a red delicious is a suitable apple to paint. But it's not a great apple to eat and it's widely recognized that it's not. It's achieved its great commercial status, largely because of his looks and now that we have varieties that tastes so much better, like the honey crisp apple, for example, we see that taste is starting to take over for looks. Which is great you know, now it matters what's on the inside instead of on the outside. As the red delicious is falling out of favour and it's primarily a Washington apple, you know, like the Washington symbol for Washington is a red, delicious apple, right? And now we see it being replaced with Cosmic Crisp. I think there's a lot of growers out there who are more than happy now to be ripping out the old red delicious, it's had its go and to replace those trees with Cosmic Crisp.

LL: That is scientist Sean Myles. He and his team created Canada's Apple Biodiversity Collection. It's an orchard in Kentville, Nova Scotia, with one of the widest varieties of apples in the world. It's used as a resource for breeders hoping to create the next Big Apple like the Cosmic Crisp. We caught up with Sean Myles as he and his students were harvesting the last of this season's crop.

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VOICE 1: Alright this one's a beauty. This looks good. Think of it as a kind of a United Nations of apples, right? So all the apples, different apples from all over the world, as many different varieties as we can get a hold of, all in one place, all sort of sitting silently here together in one orchard here in Kentville. So this is kind of a cool apple. This is essentially one of the ancestors of modern day apples. It's a wild apple that comes from the forests of Central Asia. This one's from Kazakhstan. Tiny little yellow apple that, you know, goes soft pretty quickly. Wouldn't be a big hit in the grocery store today, but this is essentially where apples started in Kazakhstan and this is belongs to the species that is the ancestor of the present day apple that you would be familiar with at the grocery store. We have an apple black oxford, something completely black. But it's as close to black as an apple is going to get very, very, very dark purple. And so as you're walking down the row and you see all these red apples and yellow apples and green apples, there's one that really sticks out as being the darkest of the entire collection. We often get asked why we maintain a collection with over a thousand apple varieties in it. It's sort of the it's all the diversity that you might want to tap into if you're breeding new apple varieties and essentially you want the biggest available set of parents that you can get your hands on and you want them characterized systematically for all the traits that you're interested in. And that is the main purpose of this block here. It's kind of like the mother block for the breeders here in Canada. The point of having this great big, diverse apple orchard and systematically characterizing it and sequencing all their genomes and all this kind of stuff is to try to accelerate the improvement of apples so that it takes less time and money and space to create new apple varieties that are tasty, that achieve commercial success so that people actually like them. I mean, we could make do with the apple varieties that we have at the grocery store today. We could make do with the cars that we drive today. We could make do with the types of toothbrushes we're using today, but somebody is going to go out there and try to figure out how to make a better toothbrush, a better car and a better apple. We're just focused on the apple, right? Well, you're getting an appreciation for how many apples around the tree when you really start having a picket. It's all those speed. You've got to get as many apples in the bin as you can. As fast as you possibly can go. When we buy an apple at the grocery store, often we don't really recognize how long it took for that apple to arrive there. A breeder needs to make a cross by taking the pollen from a flower and putting on the flower of another variety and then collecting the seed at the end of the year and taking that seed and planting it. And from the time they make that initial cross to the time that you'll see it in the grocery store, which takes about 25 years. Right. So we're talking about a quarter of a century to develop a new commercially successful Apple variety. So 25 years ago, people were making the cross that's responsible for cosmic crisp that we're seeing coming out today. So this is a long, long thing in the making. And so the crosses that we're making today, you won't see on the grocery store shelves for another 25 years. So when people ask, you know, what is what's the demand today? What kind of apple are people looking for today? That's not the question that breeders are asking. Breeders are asking what is the variety that needs to be on the grocery store shelf in 25 years from now. Red fleshed apple varieties are now a thing that several breeding programs are looking at because they figure, hey, if we can get a really commercially successful one, that store well, taste good has the crunch, all that kind of stuff. And that when you bite into it, the inside of it, instead of being white is red. You know, there's a winner for you. Maybe we can get one of those out on the shelf. And maybe in 20 years from now, you'll see all the ones, all the apples that we don't use for research purposes. They go to the juicer that the apples that we're sending off, of course, are like from a thousand different varieties. So it's going to make a very, very diverse apple juice. You know, you may know you're at the grocery store and you happen to get a batch that was made from the apples from this orchard. You may be drinking some of the most diverse apple juice that's ever been created in the world. Unfortunately, I'm not able to taste any of the apples, really, because I'm allergic to the apples. So, yeah, the grad students and postdocs, you know, take care of that kind of stuff. And a lot of the things we're trying to measure, you don't need to taste them for you can measure the acidity in the sweetness in this firmness and that kind of stuff without actually tasting them. I can take a little bite and chew a little bit, but then it starts to burn around my lips and on my tongue and stuff. And so one of the things we'd like to be able to do, actually, is breed a new apple that is slightly hypoallergenic apple. It would be nice if we had an apple that I wasn't allergic to. It's a good career goal.

VOICE 2: I've tasted almost 800 different types of apples from this orchard when I harvested it two years ago. This one's really cool. And it's called pink pearl. So when I take a bite into it, the flesh is bright pink once you bite inside. So this one's kind of tart. Someone earlier this morning who tasted it said it kind of tastes a bit like jolly ranchers and life savers. It's kind of a bit of a sweet candy taste. This one's also really crunchy too. It has a great texture.

VOICE 1: There's a special place in human culture for apples. Clearly. Apples are part of our culture, a deep part of many people's culture across the world, especially in the northern hemisphere, and is intimately tied with European history. If you look at the number of paintings that have apples in them. The settlers in America who made use of apple trees, planting apple trees as they went along in North America, creating all this new diversity of apples that we've been making use of as breeders for the last hundred or so years. This is, you know, the apple holds this really special place. And there are arguably, you know, how many varieties of apples can you name? You know, you can name a Macintosh in a Cortland and a red delicious. And, you know, you get a couple of those names in your head. And you know, how many varieties of carrots can you name? How many varieties of of cow? You know, they're very few agricultural organisms where you actually know the at the variety level. And our lives are sort of intimately tied with them for a very long time. And they have a vast amount of really fascinating diversity. You've got all these two apples that are the size range and the colour range is really absolutely incredible. Not to mention that they are you know, we. You call them dessert apples. They're sort of like dessert. Right. So they're super tasty and people love to eat them. They're really healthy. You know, we often ask ourselves, why is it that they are so popular? I think it's a lot of reasons. One of them is their central place in human culture. But the other is that, you know, they're really portable. You can throw them in your bag and they don't go mushy there. You can store them for a really long period of time. You can ferment them and turn them into cider. And so that's always a benefit. And you can turn your organism into alcohol. The apple holds a really unique place in our culture, and that makes it a particularly fascinating organism to study.

LL: I am so hungry right now. Sean Myles is an associate professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. He's in Kentville, Nova Scotia. You also heard Ph.D student Sophie Watts tasting an apple. And you can see some photos of some interesting apple varieties on our Twitter feed @TheCurrentCBC.

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National Affairs Panel

Guests: Salimah Shivji, Marie Vastel, Jason Markusoff

LL: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch. The reviews are in and not all of them are kind. Many Conservatives believe the 43rd federal election was Conservative Leader, Andrew Scheer's to lose, and he did. And with parliament preparing to reconvene, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has his work cut out for him, leading a minority government. Our weekly rotating national affairs panel is here to help us forecast what may lie ahead. Salimah Shivji is a senior reporter with the CBC's Parliamentary Bureau. Marie Vastel is parliamentary correspondent for Le Devoir. They're both in our Ottawa studio. And Jason Markusoff is with Maclean's magazine. He's based in Calgary. Hello to all of you.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Good morning.

MARIE VASTEL: Hello.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Good morning.

LL: Salimah, let's start with you. Andrew Scheer's stance on abortion, on gay marriage, on the environment caused him trouble during the campaign. Is the leader of the Conservative Party out of touch with the mainstream Canadian public opinion?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, it's interesting. Laura, I was actually on the conservative campaign when that really issue kind of burst forward. It was that week of his first appearance at the French language debate, that horrible appearance. And then the following day, he could feel his team sort of readjusting, really trying to get that issue off the table. You know, he finally said he was pro-life, but that he wasn't going to reopen the debate yet again. But you could you know, when you speak with some candidates after that moment, they they they will tell you that that hesitation was costly, that it that they were hearing that at the doors from voters. And it really hurt them, particularly in Quebec, on climate change as well. You hear some candidates, whether they were defeated or not, saying that they got those questions at the door and they really felt that they couldn't. Their party wasn't offering anything feasible to fight the effects of climate change properly. So we were hearing that it was a nothing plan from voters that didn't feel that they wanted to vote for the parties. And when you look at the cold, hard facts of what we saw in the election, the Liberals were reduced to a minority. But, you know, two thirds of Canadians really kind of were saying, we want action on climate change. They were voting for a carbon tax. So when you talk to some of the Tories, they were an outlier ala outliers on that front. And it really seemed to hurt them in areas where they really needed to gain outside of their base.

LL: Part of that is the platform then, but Marie Vastel do you think Andrew Scheer struggled to connect with voters on the campaign trail?

MARIE VASTEL: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with Salimah. I talked to a lot of Vnservatives, mostly from Quebec over the past week while as we all have and every single one of them mentioned the abortion issue. The first French language debate that Salimah mentioned and the fact that Mr. Scheer really took a few days because so it took him 24 hours between that debate where he couldn't answer Mr. Trudeau as to whether he supported a woman's right to choose or not. And the next day, to recognize that he's pro-life and those are hers, his personal values. But n the days before that, he had also been forced to defend candidates that were pro-life. And so it had been going on for a few days. And every single conservative I've talked to mentioned it and said that it was an issue because he's a social conservative. And essentially a lot of Quebec caucus members are saying they can never win in Quebec or in Ontario with a social conservative leader. It's not only in Quebec. I was reading there is there there are polls that say half of Quebeckers don't want any restrictions on abortion, but it's still 35 to 40 percent of Canadians west of Quebec and even in the Maritimes where it's tighter access to abortion. Peter Mackay said that when he was knocking on doors, he was also hearing it. And so I think that's what makes it difficult for Mr. Scheer to reassure caucus or members. He can say that the platform will be better next time, that he'll try and connect with voters better. But what people are saying anonymously, granted, but what people are saying to me on the phone and caucus members are saying his values aren't going to change between now and the next election. So that issue will still be there.

LL: Well, Jason, I'm wondering how social conservatives within the party are viewing Andrew Scheer now?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Well, they're going to be very I mean, some of them were, you know, upset on election night that even push, push farther. But I think deep down, they know that they're in the minority. That they know that that that the majority of Canada feels a certain way. And to even get in and start warming some of their issues into the system, they need to appeal to a broad mass of concrete. And people feel the same way about that. In the West, in some ways, they look in Alberta, Saskatchewan, he got 60 percent of the vote and throughout the province, some riding 70, 80 percent, which is great. They won the popular vote because of that. But that didn't get them the the election this year, but tried to sell these arguments about the popular vote, about more seats. But, you know, ultimately he won the silver medal in the silver medal, doesn't allow doesn't count for much in Canadian politics down here in the first past, the post system out West. People are not necessarily frustrated that he didn't, you know, because of the abortion issue on a personal level. They're just upset. He didn't win. He didn't pull it off. The deep hatred for Justin Trudeau out here, it's it's visceral in Alberta and Saskatchewan in many places. And there's a deep frustration that with all the scandals and everything that happened to him this year with that fancy label in blackface and beyond. He couldn't pull it off. And so whether he has to retool his message or somebody else has. People here are going to be very frustrated for very different reasons than a lot of ways than they were out east.

LL: And we will turn to Justin Trudeau in a few minutes. But I just want to continue this because because most immediately friends share the challenge is going to be in the Conservative Party and also that includes the caucus. And there have always been in the past tensions within the caucus between more conservative and less conservative factions within the caucus. And Salimah, a former Conservative MP and candidate Terence Young said in an interview with The Globe, not one voter ever said to me, gee, I really like your leader. So I'm wondering what the support among the rank and file look look like right now.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: It depends on who you speak with. Andrew Scheer still has his inner circle and we saw them there on the Hill. Actually yesterday they were in these meetings, in these postmortems, trying to talk about the election results. You know, Candace Bergen the opposition with Quebec Lieutenant as well. So that's his core circle. And they will say, you know, where it's a minority government, we reduce Justin Trudeau to a minority. We're focused on defeating him next time and we can do it. But of course, there are grumblings in people when people like Terence Youngputting their name to those to that criticism as well. We heard, you know, a former Tory minister under Stephen Harper in Quebec, basically saying that the abortion, his position on abortion felt like we were 15 years ago. So when you have some Conservative voices putting their names to those grumblings and obviously not a good look for Andrew Scheer. And like Jason said, you know, he they are pointing to the fact that they won the popular vote. But when you look at that popular vote, it's very concentrated in certain areas and provinces. As Jason said, you know, he didn't win in the places he needed to Quebec and Ontario when you need to move out of your base. So those grumblings, I imagine, will continue, obviously, when there's a larger caucus and in the lead up to next week's caucus meeting, where where all of that will have to Erin and Andrew Shears inner circle and team will have to sort of adjust and figure out how to actually talk to the caucus and the differing voices in in caucus. They're obviously working on that right now, whether, you know, you position it as a victory. You know, we have a stronger team coming to Ottawa, which you're hearing from him already, or whether, you know, you talk a little bit about what could have been done better and what should be done leading up.

MARIE VASTEL: But I think to follow up on that, I think that they are starting to recognize that those rumblings are not going away. You have now people saying it, not anonymously. You have Terence Young, an example. You have a senator who told me openly yesterday in the story with Le Devoir that he thinks that Mr. Scheer should go. That's an actual sitting member of caucus who thinks the leader should go. And then a lot of them are saying the same thing anonymously. So I think that Mr. Scheer's team is recognizing that the caucus meeting next week is going to be tense, that people are getting ready to go up to the mike and say what they think and air their frustrations. And they are expecting answers on what went wrong and promises for changes to fix things going forward. And I think if if the team doesn't show up next Wednesday with things to offer and an acknowledgement that something did not go as planned in Ontario and Quebec, those rumblings will not go away. You're already hearing people organizing for potential candidates to Mr. Scheer's succession. That is not a good scenario for Mr. Scheer. The only thing that he can seek comfort in is the fact that 50 of his 120 new employees are pro-life. That's 41 percent of his caucus. And that could, at least for now, in caucus, appease maybe with the frustrations or at least assure him that part of his caucus doesn't disagree. But he still has leadership vote in April and that's all members, not just his caucus.

LL: Jason, a large chunk of that caucus are going to be from Alberta and Saskatchewan. What message will they be delivering at the microphones in the caucus meeting?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Well, they're going to be looking for very different priorities. And some people in the in the east. They are, you know, hearing it from their constituents about the anger at the simmering anger and frustration with the results of this election, with the fact that Liberals are still power, with the fact that a more pro energy party hasn't that hasn't won, that they're going to be pushing Scheer to become embody this voice to help bring this anger forward. But that really puts it puts sheared his leadership group in a difficult position, because at the same time they're doing that, they're going to have to look forward to the next election and try to woo votes in the GTA, in Atlantic Canada, in Quebec. And those are very different priorities. So he's really been going to be pulled two ways by his Conservative caucus in the prairie provinces.

LL: OK, let shift to looking at the government now. Justin Trudeau's minority government. Jason I want to stay with you for a second. Two thirds of the House of Commons is now filled with MPs from so-called progressive parties. Does the government need to try to appease Premier Scott Mo of Saskatchewan, Premier Jason Kenney of Alberta when it comes to pipelines and the carbon tax?

JASON MARKUSOFF: Well, he's going to try to do both. I think he's going to try to triangulate the issues on which he has two thirds support in the country. He has two thirds support in the country based on who voted for whom on on the federal carbon tax. He's going to plough ahead with with that. And you're hearing some conciliatory voices, not necessarily from Scott, Mo or Jason Kenney in the West, but Blaine Higgs, the premier of New Brunswick, who is opposing the carbon tax, vigorously said the people have spoken after the election. The other two thirds issue that he has in his favour is on is on transit, on pipeline. Not only that, but between the Conservatives and Liberal caucus as you have enough support for it, but also poll after poll showed that the public, even in British Columbia broadly is behind this, that this pipeline he will plough through that. Certainly he is going to have to work towards making sure that progressive MPs broadly support him. But there will be some issues where if he has to, he will lead the Conservatives to plow his agenda through.

LL: Salimah we've been talking about how the Liberals work around their lack of MPs in Alberta and Saskatchewan. We've now heard that the prime minister has brought in a former federal cabinet minister Anne McLellan from from Edmonton to help a government deal with this sense of alienation in the prairie provinces. How is that going to play with the provinces to see Anne McLellan recruited?

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Well, it's an interesting choice actually, the transition team reaching out to her because she does have experience being that lone, you know, MP in foreign land of the western provinces now in Alberta. So she was talking about that. You know, she had 12 years in parliament under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. She knows Alberta. She's from there. So it's interesting term to lean on that voice in terms of advice as well as Isabelle Hudon, who is a Quebecer, you know, well known in business circles, the ambassador to France. So the Liberals clearly reaching out to get advice about this, because it is going to be a challenge. They're talking to mayors in the area, obviously liberal voices as well. But, you know, Nahid Nenshi of Calgary and other mayors of Saskatoon and Regina trying to figure out how to do this. One option that it looks like they're not going to go forward with is to appoint a senator, to be a representative from Alberta and Saskatchewan, because you know that which sort of fly in the face of Justin Trudeau wanting to make the upper chamber more independent and nonpartisan. But clearly, they're they're thinking very carefully on how to do this. You know, do they up their representation in, you know, from B.C. and Manitoba to sort of surround those provinces where they don't actually have a voice in and kind of try to reach out and speak to the frustrations in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And they're taking longer to form their cabinet, it's where in their cabin as well, because it's such a challenge to once represent those areas and not actually have representatives and MPs in those two provinces.

LL: And Marie, Salimah also mentioned the recruitment of of Isabelle Hudon. What does that say to you about what Trudeau wants to do vis-a-vis Quebec?

MARIE VASTEL: Hopefully it's a recognition that despite the fact that they did, you know, get the most number of seats in Quebec, they lost seats and and that they didn't make all the gains that they were hoping to make at the beginning of the campaign. They thought they could take a lot of the NDP seats, said the NDP lost in this election. That did not materialize. I think this that this the making or the picking of the cabinet, if I can say we'll really need to be strategically thought out to extend a hand to Quebec and a nationalist government in Quebec and not anger at that anymore, but also to recognize, as we were saying, that they do need a presence or at least a recognition, a recognition of the preoccupations in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Salimah is right. There are no elected employees in those two provinces. In Manitoba, the pickings are slim, especially since Jim Carr, the most experienced member of Manitoba probably will not be serving as a minister, at least in the short term, because he's battling cancer. One thing that could be done is at least try and pick cabinet ministers that do not anger Quebec or that understand preoccupations of Alberta or Saskatchewan. For example, someone was telling me, well, you could name a cabinet minister from Newfoundland who understands the oil sands industry, and at least you get a sort of echo to to what Alberta is feeling right now. For example, you could name an intergovernmental affairs minister that is not from Quebec or Ontario to avoid exacerbating those tensions and that feeling of alienation in the West. They could at least try to pick people that appease tensions and try and I guess respond to what people are feeling in those regions where they do not have as many representatives as they probably hoped they did.

LL: Jason those ideas of trying to pick people who may appease Albertans and Saskatchewan, what do you think about?

JASON MARKUSOFF: You know who I don't hear about this sort of thing from about who's going to represent Alberta and Saskatchewan and Trudeau's cabinet from Conservatives. This seems to be largely a preoccupation among Liberal minded people in the country. How Trudeau is going to act on that. The gestures are one thing, the preoccupation among conservative West is action is is going to be does he do something on equalization? How aggressively or how assertively does he move forward with the pipeline? What does he do on some of the oil regulation bills that he managed?

LL: We're going to have to leave it there. I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. Thanks, everybody.

SALIMAH SHIVJI: Thank you.

MARIE VASTEL: Thanks.

JASON MARKUSOFF: Thank you.

LL: Salimah Shivji is a senior reporter with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau. Marie Vastel is parliamentary correspondent for Le Devoir. Jason Markusoff is the Alberta correspondent for Macleans. I'm Laura Lynch. This is The Current. Thank you for listening.

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Oct. 30, 2019 episode transcript

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