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The Current Transcript for December 3, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: He wasn't very interested in banking. Banking was not very interested in him. In spying he finds something where it doesn't really matter who his father was. He's able to succeed because he's good at it.

LAURA LYNCH: Well, they say you've got to play to your strengths in life and for Eric Roberts, that just happened to be going undercover as the Gestapo's man in London. Stick around for the story of MI5's secret Nazi hunter who ended up in Canada, in about an hour. Before that, though.

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KENT BROCKMAN: Mr. Burns, people are calling this a meltdown.

MR. BURNS: Oh meltdown. It's one of those annoying buzz words. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

LL: That nuclear power plant on The Simpsons may be fictional, but it's part of the very real image problem for nuclear energy. After years of being perceived as risky, dangerous, even evil, efforts are underway to rebrand and redesign nuclear reactors as a solution in the fight against climate change. But first, our national affairs panel reviews the premiers and previews the new parliament. A double dose of politics to start your day. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

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What do Canada’s premiers want from Ottawa as new Parliament gets ready to begin its work?

Guests: J.P. Tasker, Susan Delacourt, Shachi Kurl

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VOICE: If you can't sustain health care and all the multitude of services, don't start with another program, get that right. Start by getting that right because there are too many people across this country waiting far too long to get care. And we as premiers have to address that issue head on, but without a relationship with Ottawa, that is of some sustenance, we're not going to achieve the goals that Canadians deserve us to achieve. So that's my point.

LL: Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister speaking yesterday about the Liberal government's pharmacare proposal. Canada's provincial premiers might have different opinions about that plan, but yesterday they agreed Ottawa should increase health care transfers. They issued several other demands for Justin Trudeau too when they met in Toronto. And with the prime minister handicapped by a minority government and concerns about a politically fractured country, they're banking on getting a captive audience. In fact, the premiers, many of them Conservative, are sounding a lot like the opposition these days, while Andrew Scheer, leader of the official opposition, faces ongoing questions about his future. Our national affairs panel is here to discuss all of this. J.P. Tasker is a reporter in the CBC's Parliamentary Bureau. We've reached him in Toronto. Susan Delacourt is a national columnist and Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star. She is in our Ottawa studio. And Shachi Kurl is executive director of the Angus Reid Institute and she is in our London, England studio today. Hello to all of you.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Good morning Laura.

J.P. TASKER: Good morning.

SHACHI KURL: Good day, good day. Hello.

LL: J.P., let's start with you. The premier has had a laundry list of key demands for Ottawa. But what stood out for you as the most important?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah, I mean, it's hard not to see this premier's meeting as anything, but a victory, an out and out victory for Alberta premier Jason Kenney. You know, I'm calling it the Kenney coup because he came to Toronto with a plan, a plan preparedness for Alberta, and he got all 13 provincial territorial leaders to sign on. And it really isn't small potatoes, but they've agreed to some big changes to the fiscal stabilization program, which sounds rather dull, but it really could be something to help deal with these national unity questions we've been facing over the last number of months. And really what they've all agreed to do is pressure Ottawa to boost the payments they give to provinces that are going through tough times. Provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Labrador, which have seen their budgets, have big holes blowing them because of the oil price crater. They've agreed to that, but premiers also agreed to pressure Ottawa to change Bill C-69, which we've hearing a lot about lately to the Environmental Assessment Act, the Liberal government introduced in the last parliament. They all said that there needs to be some change to that legislation to make it more palatable to the natural resources sector that it can get projects built. Kenney had both of those at the top of his list and the others went along. Even someone like B.C. Premier John Horgan, who's obviously been against pipeline development, he's agreed to sign on the dotted line with this one asking the government to kind of weaken or water down its environmental assessment bill. So that's not insignificant, to say the least. And I think the Liberal government has got its marching orders from the premiers and it's something, it carries more weight, I think, when they've all agreed to the same principle.

LL: Susan Delacourt, what stood out to you?

SUSAN DELACOURT: I think, yes, the call for unity and it should be said that premiers are never so united as when they're asking Ottawa for things. You and I have been covering this a long time, Laura, and we know that when it comes down to asking them to agree with what they should give to the federation rather than get from the federation, it becomes a more conflicted discussion. But I too, like J.P., was struck by the tone, the idea that they were all going to hang together. It's not insignificant to note, though, to that. Chrystia Freeland, the new deputy prime minister and minister of Intergovernmental Affairs was sounding pretty positive after. She's been having some rather upbeat meetings with some of the premiers and she was trying to keep that tone up when she responded yesterday to or her spokespeople responded to the premier saying Ottawa is listening, Ottawa is open and we'll see. That being said, I did ask the prime minister's office yesterday whether anything happening at the premiers conference yesterday we would see in the throne speech later this week. And they said probably not.

LL: OK. Shachi Kurl, what do you make of the way the premiers tried to present a united front?

SHACHI KURL: You know, it's like there's two Shachis on this. So the less cynical Shachi would say that, yes, these are areas where the premiers can move the ball because they know that they are priorities for government, because government knows that these are priorities for Canadians. So what were consistently the top issues in the federal election campaign? Health spending in a one in five Canadians has trouble accessing primary health care, whether that's finding a doctor or finding themselves on waiting lists for surgery or for other procedures. Pharmacare plan, huge win in terms of buy in across the political spectrum. Conservatives, many conservatives like it just as much as those on the left of centre. And you know, despite, you know, GP talks about the coup for Kenney, the idea that Alberta particularly and the western provinces, Albert and Saskatchewan, have been in need of relief, in need of recalibration on the equalization front, on the economic front is not a new message. So I'm not tremendously surprised to see movement on that. Now, cynical. Says that it's really easy for premiers to come together and present a so-called united front and put the onus on Ottawa and really put the ball back in their court. When you're dealing with low hanging fruit, you know, the the premiers did not come together to talk about inter provincial trade barriers or labour mobility or sharing delivery of health and education or indeed the carbon tax, because those would have been much more fractious conversations.

LL: Right. So they knew how to present the united front. J.P. I just wonder, it was Ford who called this meeting and he also chaired the meeting and tried to look like Captain Canada. I'm wondering how much you noticed sort of a transformation of his or attempt at transforming his role on the national stage since the election?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah, I mean it's been a rocky, what is it, it's been 18 months since he was first elected. His numbers have tanked in the polls here provincially. So I think he is trying to present himself as Captain Canada. He you know, the prime minister and Liberal Party slagged him for the better part of three months, basically trying to pin their re-election hopes on him, you know, making him the foil, if you will, to their plan. And, you know, he has been fairly gracious I'd say. I think he tried to avoid going after the prime minister, going after Liberal Party in those times. But let's not have any doubts here. He's still very much opposed to the Liberal plan and, you know, he was the co-host at that meeting yesterday. And none of the Liberal government's priorities were reflected in the communicator they produce at the end of that meeting. You know, he has definitely been a thorn in their side on things like infrastructure and other premiers have been a thorn in the side on things like handguns and all the Liberal agenda needs to be, they need to work with the provinces and territories to get some of their big election promises done. And it's looking like they just don't have a willing group right now. There's no way they can get pharmacare across the line if they have people like Brian Pallister yesterday pouring cold water on it thing, saying forget about a new social program, let's work with what we've got. So Doug Ford is definitely still very much part of the resistance, if you will. If you all remember that famous magazine cover of Macleans, when they had all the conservative minded premiers front and centre with that resistance banner along the bottom. He's still a ringleader in that, leading the charge against the Liberals' agenda. But he is taking a more conciliatory tone. He's definitely more cordial than he has been in the past.

LL: Alright, Susan, given all of that and what you told us about the PMO's reply to the premier's demands, how hard do you think it's going to be for the prime minister to smooth over regional divides during this second term in office?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Well, I think just as there's a Ford 2.0, a brand new Doug Ford, there is also a brand new Justin Trudeau. You know, I, too, have a cynical Susan and an optimistic one. But let's stay.

LL: I'm dealing with a bunch of split personalities here.

SUSAN DELACOURT: That's right, we're all Geminis. And speaking of split personalities, it will be interesting to see whether Justin Trudeau 2.0, the post election, humble, more low profile justin Trudeau, that idea sort of. Infuses the next few months. In 2015, when Justin, there are many differences between Justin Trudeau 2015 and 2019, but that Justin Trudeau held a first ministers meeting before he did a throne speech, two weeks before. This justin Trudeau is waiting almost two months afterward and he has been meeting with them and talking with them one on one. But I think you're seeing a slower, more deliberative federal government, a little more cautious. I think what you're going to see from them, too, is less identity stuff, less talking about who they are rather than what they're going to do. If you like more verbs, fewer nouns in the in the speech from the throne. I get the sense that and they've been telegraphing this, that the election for everybody was a humbling experience. And that demeanour is going to be taken to discussions. We'll see how long it lasts. Politics is not for the humble, as we know now, but that is the approach right now. Look, the word of the last month of this year is going to be collaboration.

LL: Shachi, what do you think Canadians want to see from this new parliament?

SHACHI KURL: Well, I think they do want to see something of that collaboration. If you live anywhere outside of Ontario in this country, you're quite of the view that Ottawa is not listening to your needs. Your priorities are reflecting what's important to you. So, you know, Susan talks about the reset or the new Trudeau in the new Ford. Look, these things have to go beyond tone. Certainly it helps to walk back the rhetoric. It helps to walk back some of the virtue signalling. But ultimately, this is a government that is going to have to walk its talk. And so that does mean squaring the circle on things such as Bill C 69. And that's going to get very thorny because they also have a pretty motivated, committed pro climate change base that brung them and elected them and will maybe not take kindly to seeing that watered down. You know, at the end of the day, Canadians usually have a pretty positive view or a pretty optimistic view of minority parliaments in so far as they look at it as an opportunity for their own needs and priorities to be met. And you see this with the outcome of this last election. Two thirds say that they're either pleased or neutral about the election outcome. No one's really in a mood to see another election anytime soon. So this can be a time where both the premiers and the parties and parliament can actually demonstrate that the political class isn't tuned out, isn't focussed on their their own gamesmanship, and does have an opportunity and a motivation to actually work on behalf of Canadians. Let's see again whether any of that comes to fruition. I think a lot of that has to do with how skilfully Trudeau and his government can manage a minority parliament. We saw in the first term that they didn't necessarily skilfully handle a majority parliament. So let's see.

LL: J.P. what are you expecting from the throne speech?

J.P. TASKER: Well, I think the 43rd Parliament will look a lot different than the 42nd parliament that we just finished. And I think there's a two pronged approach here for the Liberal government as they head into this minority government. There could be an election within 18 months, two years, who knows. But they have to be thinking, they have to be election ready as it is now. And I think they're going to be really going after Quebec. We saw in how they might make mention of that in the throne speech. We saw how Justin Trudeau structured his cabinet at time, many more people from Quebec in prominent positions in an effort to win back those seats that went Bloc the last time. They want to get that majority government back, they have to pick up the seats that went to the Bloc Qubecois. There's 32 Bloc Qubecois staring across them each and every day. So they put Pablo Rodriguez, the House leader, he was the heritage minister should say, now he's going to be the House leader. He's going to have to deal with, you know, a group, a contingent that is very much more Quebec centric. They didn't have that problem last time. They might have to throw Quebec a bone here in there to keep them on side and they do have to smooth over this Western alienation thing. The prime minister doesn't want to head into another election dealing with a flare up of something like Wexit in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Now, I don't think he's been a remarkably improved his standing among western Canadians and win a bunch of seats back, but even just to do something, throw them a bone. Maybe change Bill C-69, maybe look at alternatives to the oil tanker ban bill they put in British Columbia in the last time, just to show the rest of Canada that they're sensitive to Western Canadian alienation, that they are on it, that they're doing something. I think setting Chrystia Freeland up, you know, Trudeau's top lieutenant as the deputy prime minister and the lead on this file does send a message that this will be the focus. So if they deal with those two issues, I think in their minds they believe that they can perhaps waltz right back into a majority government. Of course, easier said than done.

LL: Now Susan, one of the first orders of business when parliament resumes is electing a new speaker and that's an important role in a minority government, right?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Yes, it is. The the last speaker, Geoff Regan, is running again, as is a former liberal caucus chair, Anthony Rhoda. And there are a number of other Carol Hughes from the NDP. The strange thing is we don't know who exactly is running until tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. because it's like negative option billing. You are considered a candidate until you pull your name off and some of these new rookies depend. Ninety eight of them may not know that they have to do that. So if if you aren't there listening MPC, we're still up the with knock your name off. But we're expecting about half a dozen people to run. I'm going to be watching the just the visuals of this are going to be interesting, but I think people have forgotten that the first of the last Trudeau government, Trudeau 1.0 unusually only had one throne speech. Usually governments have them every couple of years. And the last government, their explanation was, well, we had so much in the platform and the first throne speech, we didn't need to do another one. But a lot has changed since 2015, to put it mildly. And one of them is that centre block has been shut down now for a year. So this is going to be the first time we see that the speech from the throne being read by Julie Payette, who is not Governor-General in 2015 and in the new Senate building, which is the old government conference centre, which means that employees actually have to walk outdoors and down the street here in Ottawa to go and see the throne speech. So it's going to be different in in just the visual look of it. And it is going to be different. I think very, very different from 2015, as I was saying, I think in tone. I was struck in the liberal platform about how many of their promises hinged on help with others, including premiers. And I think you're going to hear that will be a strong theme is we'd like to get these things done, but we need help from others to do it, including the opposition party.

LL: Well, what I want to do with the time remaining is just go around the table with about the different leaders. J.P. let's start with you. Andrew Scheer facing calls from some Conservatives to step down. What will he have to do once the House is back in session to put those questions to rest?

J.P. TASKER: Yes, the stakes are so high for Andrew Scheer over the next five or so months before that leadership review in April. He has to really shore up support. And I think he has to prove he's a formidable opposition leader, someone who can take on Trudeau head on, if only to make it clear to the party membership that he is someone who can do it next time in the next election, that he's capable of toppling the prime minister. I think he was not a terrible opposition leader. I think he really was quite effective on things like SNC-Lavalin, he bloodied them up a bit on that day in and day out in the House of Commons. If he can have a repeat performance, he might be able to salvage his reputation among the party base, which you know from everyone I've been speaking to, there's been a huge turn off him a bit. They've kind of gone off after the October 21st election. So he has to come out in a very leaderly way and he has to be squarely focussed on taking on the prime minister. Not easy. And he's going to be pulled away from the House quite often over the next few months because he's on these listening tours, going out to meet with party members across the country to try and convince them to back him in this leadership review we're going to have April in Toronto. So it's going to be a very difficult task for him and if that's if he can hang on. I mean, the pressure might build to such a point that it's untenable for him to even stay on as the leader of the Conservative Party. We're seeing more and more voices come forward like we have in the last two weeks to call for his head. But I do not envy Andrew Scheer.

LL: Alright. I'm jumping in on you, because we've only got about a minute and a half left and we have two more leaders to go through. Shachi Kurl, what will NDP leader Jagmeet Singh need to do to advance his party's agenda in parliament?

SHACHI KURL: He has to look like he is effective in parliament, and he has to hope that the troubles of Andrew Scheer can continue. Although I would say that they're not really just about Andrew Scheer, the man or the leader. It is more of an existential angst that Conservatives going forward are facing. Do they want to be the social conservative protest party of Alberta and Saskatchewan? Do they want to be a more centrist party? Singh did not end up performing as well as he, as the NDP did in 2015. Yet he has enough personal credibility to probably ride him through, if he can look like he's making a difference. And then for Trudeau and for the Liberals, there's two things. They need to count on the fact that the opposition parties will be preoccupied with their own issues and more than just tone and showing humility, they actually need to show sincerity. Western Canada needs more than just a bone thrown to it. It actually needs to see that it's feeling respect.

LL: OK Susan, you only have about 30 seconds left. I'm not going to Elizabeth May because she's announced her resignation. But what about Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet?

SUSAN DELACOURT: Clearly the most intriguing and fascinating leader during the election campaign. Interested to see if that carries on and also interested to see if they're going to be like the Bloc Quebecois opposition was in 1993 or so. Very civil, very effective. But the difference between a national separatist party and a separatist separatist party, I'm going to be watching for too. How do you represent Quebec that way.

LL: Alright. Thank you very much to all three of you. Looking forward to the resumption of parliament. Thank you.

SUSAN DELACOURT: Thanks a lot.

SHACHI KURL: Thank you.

J.P. TASKER: Thank you.

LL: J.P. Tasker is a reporter in the CBC Parliamentary Bureau. He was in Toronto. Susan Delacourt is a national columnist and Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star. She was in our Ottawa studio. And Shachi Kurl is executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. Today, she was in our London, England studio. The CBC News is next. And then speaking of premiers.

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VOICE: This is bigger than just our provinces, this is a next phase of a modern technology that meets the needs of today.

LL: New Brunswick's Blaine Higgs is one of three premiers who wants Canada to go nuclear in the climate change fight. We'll talk about their plan to build smaller, smarter reactors and whether it will work. I'm Laura Lynch and you are listening to The Current.

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Why Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are betting big on Small Modular Reactors

Guests: Diane Cameron, Edwin Lyman

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

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LL: Still to come, the story of Agent Jack, an unlikely spy who exposed the secrets of Nazi sympathizers and quietly retired to B.C. But first, a bold reaction to nuclear reactors.

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VOICE: This is the early stages of this technology, but it's a very exciting technology. When I and I'll speak to Saskatchewan specifically and in what it can do for us in reducing our emissions profile in the province and our electrical generation sector, ultimately to the goal of 100 percent reduction by the year 2050.

LL: That's Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe on is hope to reduce the province's carbon emissions from electricity generation by 100 percent. Now, you don't need to be great with numbers to know that that is a big undertaking. But the way he plans to do it is with a smaller version of a familiar technology. It's called small modular reactor, SMR, as in nuclear reactors. The idea is to build many, many nuclear plants instead of a few big ones. Over the weekend, Scott Moe and the premiers of New Brunswick and Ontario signed an agreement to research and develop the technology, and that puts Canada in a global race to build SMRs. Diane Cameron is director of the Nuclear Energy Division with Natural Resources Canada and she joins us from Ottawa. Hello.

DIANE CAMERON: Good morning.

LL: Diane Cameron, what is a small modular reactor or SMR?

DIANE CAMERON: Well, it's exactly what the word says. So the first thing to know is that they are small and that means that they're small both in terms of their physical size, but also in terms of their power output. Today, we have full scale CANDU reactors operating in Ontario and New Brunswick. They generate, just to give you a sense of the scale, about a thousand megawatts of electricity per reactor and we've got about 19 reactors in Canada. Small modular reactors would be anything less than 300 megawatts electric. But some of them are as small as 1 to 5 megawatts electric. So you can really get a sense of the scale. They're much smaller and the very small units could even sit on the back of a container, shipping container. Like that you would put on the back of a truck or a trainer or ocean freight so you could transport them to where you need them. So they're small, modular and what we mean by modular is two things. One is they're meant to be factory produced. So sort of like cars, they would be manufactured at a central location and then shipped to site. And that's how they expect to bring the costs down and sort of what Henry Ford did for the car and then modular also in the sense that they're scalable. So when you have the very small units of the five megawatts electric units, if you're site if you're remote site needs just one great. Or if it needs two or three or sort of a battery pack of six, they can scale up and down that way also. And the last point is that they are reactors. So at the middle of the unit, there isn't an there is a nuclear reaction that creates heat. And that heat can be used either directly in industrial processes or it can be used to drive a turbine and create electricity.

LL: So you've mentioned the idea of transporting them scalability. What are the advantages of these over traditional plants?

DIANE CAMERON: Part of what has happened in and in the world of nuclear innovation and nuclear technology is that a lot of lessons have been learned over the course of 60 years of experience in Canada and also around the world. And based on those lessons learned and there have been significant improvements in our understanding of how we can design these things. And so what's really driving this wave of small modular reactors is a concept that we call enhanced safety or passive safety. And so you're really seeing improved safety and improved security and minimized waste streams from these units. So that's a big part of what the value proposition is also.

LL: Now, we heard these three premiers championing the idea a few days ago. Why is it important for Canada to invest in developing this technology?

DIANE CAMERON: Well, it's an opportunity on multiple fronts. It's an opportunity, first and foremost because this is non emitting technology, nuclear energy creates no carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. And as you know and we all know, climate change has reached a level that people are calling a crisis. We need to dramatically reduce our emissions and we need to do so very quickly. And so something to know is that nuclear energy today, our existing reactors displace approximately 50 million and tons of carbon dioxide every year. That's the equivalent of taking ten million cars off the road. And what we can do with SMRs is because they're smaller and they can reach into markets that don't need full scale CANDU reactors, and we can take an additional three million.

LL: Such as?

DIANE CAMERON: Pardon me?

LL: Such as what communities are you talking about?

DIANE CAMERON: Oh sure. So because they're smaller, they open up new opportunities. So what you're seeing with the three provinces that announced their MLUs is they're interested in what we're calling grid scale SMRS. Those are the larger units and around the scale of 300 megawatts electric. Now, Saskatchewan, a new. Still burn coal and they need to get off coal and take that off line before 2030. But they don't need a full scale CANDU. In those markets they need something smaller. And so a 300 megawatt electric SLR is what they're looking at. And that would displace, let's say, about three million more tons of carbon or the equivalent of over 600,000 cars of the year by 2030. And then it opens up an even further market with the very small units that are on the order of five megawatts electric being able to go off grid into remote sites in Canada. We have a lot of mining activities and we have a lot of remote communities that today are 100 percent reliant on diesel. And you're seeing some mining companies and resource extraction companies, you know, really taking seriously the objective to get off of diesel, which is also emitting and and costly. And so those estimates can sort of reach the small ones can reach into new markets where large units would not have been able to reach into. And that creates the potential for us to take an additional 12 million tonnes of carbon out of the system by 2040 and that's the equivalent of 2.5 million cars. So we're talking about taking a significant action towards climate change target.

LL: OK. Let's go through some of the concerns that are raised about this. What about safety concerns around nuclear technology?

DIANE CAMERON: Well, here I would say that, the first thing to know is that the government of Canada and with our nuclear regulator and I know that this is true with the provincial governments as well, the safety and health of Canadians is our first priority when it comes to nuclear energy. So that is paramount. And we are really proud and really fortunate to have one of the best nuclear regulators in the world. And that's our Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They were the first regulator to welcome a first regulator in the G7 to welcome a peer review of our emergency management system. They regularly welcome peer review and scrutiny by other countries and by the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and what we find time and again is that our record is very strong.

LL: But what if there's an accident? What if there's an accident with one of these small reactors in a remote area?

DIANE CAMERON: So here it's very important to know that, again, we have the strongest safety record in Canada. We've never had an accident and zero fatalities in Canada because.

LL: But what if there is one?

DIANE CAMERON: Yes. So there are, despite the fact that we've never had an accident and we hold ourselves to the highest standards of safety, we do have emergency management plans in place. And those have just been peer reviewed by the international community to ensure that Canada's practices with respect to emergency preparedness are to the absolute highest standards. And here, in fact, the report that will be coming out on Canada's nuclear emergency management preparedness, based on lessons learned from other incidences around the world, is actually the highest standards.

LL: I'm sorry to rush you, but there's a lot to get through here. What about waste? How would that be managed?

DIANE CAMERON: Right. So small modular reactors first and foremost create considerably less waste than large scale reactors. They are much smaller. And and we have a plan for waste in Canada. We have the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is funded by waste owners in Canada. We have a polluter pays principle before you can turn on your nuclear reactor that would begin generating any amount of radioactive waste. You must already be paying into a trust fund that will pay for the end of life cycle management. And so through so we have a pathway. We have a regulatory framework for the legislative framework for the management of radioactive waste. It is something that has to be managed carefully, but we do have a plan.

LL: OK Diana. I'm just going to get you to hang on there. Stay with us while I bring in another guest. Edwin Lyman is acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He also has some concerns about small modular reactors and he joins us from Washington, D.C.. What are your concerns about small modular reactors, Edwin Lyman?

EDWIN LYMAN: Good morning, Laura. The thing about small modular reactors, first of all, you have to realize that there is no one design for a small modular reactor. Right now the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is considering something like a dozen different designs. Many of them are unique. There's no operating experience. They're just on paper right now. And so that to come up with a blanket description of all those is is not appropriate because all of them have different safety and security aspects which raised unique concerns. But the overall concern about small reactors is that they produce more expensive electricity than large reactors. And that's because of the economies of scale principle over the decades. Nuclear reactors have grown in size to reduce the cost of electricity by taking advantage of economies of scale to go now to shrink those reactors. They're going to face a significant cost penalty. And the way the designers are trying to get around that cost penalty is by slashing the safety and security standards for these reactors and that's what I see in the United States.

LL: That's interesting because Diane Cameron seems confident that Canada can deal with safety concerns and waste issues.

EDWIN LYMAN: Well, it really does come down to money. And what's going on in the United States is that the small modular reactor vendors are proposing drastic reductions in safety standards, for instance. They're calling for an elimination of the emergency planning zones around nuclear reactors in the United States. There's a 16 kilometre emergency evacuation zone. These small modular reactor venders are saying the reactors are so safe you don't need any evacuation planning at all. And the fact is, these reactors are still only on paper. They have not demonstrated these met the safety and security advantages that would warrant anything like that. And so that's just one example of many. And that's why I feel that the cost pressure that these reactors are going to face from day one is going to put enormous strain on the operator to cut costs both through a maintenance and operating costs. And the regulator is going to have a hard time ensuring that those reactors can operate efficiently and profitably under those very strong constraints.

LL: Canada isn't the only jurisdiction that's looking at this technology and developing it. The U.S. energy secretary has been pushing it in Europe. China and Russia are also working on SMRs. What do you think is driving all of this interest in small modular reactors?

EDWIN LYMAN: Frankly, I think most of it is hype. The nuclear industry is desperately trying to rebrand itself because a large conventional reactors have proven too expensive to build except in economies where the government is essentially subsidizing it and paying for everything. So the industry is trying to show the public that there's something different that will give more hope to the technology and so they're claiming we can go small, we can go safer, and and that'll get around the obstacles facing large conventional plants. But nuclear is hard. It takes a long time to develop a new nuclear reactor design and to commercialize it successfully and to make sure it can operate reliably. And the the enthusiasm is simply not warranted. If if society wants to expand nuclear power in the future, it's going to require focus. It's going to require long development time. It's going to require a lot of money. And if you look at the menu that was signed by the three premiers, all it does is encourage the federal government to provide support. And there's going to require massive subsidy for quite some time to get any single design actually into commercialization.

LL: Diane Cameron, let's come back to you. What do you say about Edwin Lyman's concerns?

DIANE CAMERON: Well, I can't speak to what's taking place in the United States, but I can tell you that in the Canadian context, this is not a technology push story. Through Canada's SMR road map, the federal government convened stakeholders from across Canada because we had a lot of questions, a lot of questions about costs and economics. Are the technologies real? Are they viable? What are the timelines? Are the markets real? And so we spent about a year convening stakeholders from across Canada, including provincial governments, territorial governments, power utilities, industry, civil society to understand what the landscape is in Canada. And what we found is that the technologies are real and some of them are moving very fast. When we started the road map at the end of 2017, there were maybe over 100 technologies vying and selling their wares and some of them were just paper designs. By the end of the road map, we could clearly identify approximately 12 or so technologies that have kind of risen to the front of the field. That's mixing my metaphors here, but risen to the top of the list and we're being scrutinized and considered by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which is not going to give anybody a pass. It is, we again, as I mentioned, highest standards of safety and security are implemented and enforced by our Nuclear Safety Commission. And so what we learned on the road map though, was that the demand side is real, that the markets are real, but not at any cost. And certainly no one in Canada is willing to compromise on safety and security and environmental protection. So I think that's the scenario, what's playing out in Canada.

LL: OK. Edwin Lyman, some of the applications we're talking about are for remote First Nation communities that right now rely on diesel generators for electricity or for remote mining operations that are burning fossil fuels now. Isn't SMR a better solution than what's being used now?

EDWIN LYMAN: I think it's very unrealistic at this point to think that that mode of deployment, tiny nuclear reactors that can be shipped to remote locations that don't require the specialization, the infrastructure for emergency preparedness, for inspections and and also safeguards inspections because Canada is a non-nuclear weapon state under safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency. All these are labour intensive activities. And to think that you can just distribute tiny reactors all over the vast landscape of rural Canada and think that that infrastructure can be in place to make sure that those are operated safely and securely for a long period of time is a pipe dream. If nuclear power is going to succeed, I believe it needs to be consolidated, needs to be heavily protected, both against accidents and terrorist attacks, and it needs to have rigorous and frequent inspections and oversight. And I just don't see how that's going to happen with that kind of distributed generation all around the country.

LL: Diane Cameron?

EDWIN LYMAN: So what I would say here is that the two markets that are moving quickest in Canada are number one, the provinces that need to phase out coal, that are looking at the larger units that in many ways have a lot in common with the existing CANDU, in terms of it would be a centralized site and it would have all that expertise and you would be sort of in that kind of a scenario in which we have a lot of experience and we know how to manage.

LL: But what about these more remote areas?

DIANE CAMERON: Right. So the second market that's moving very fast in Canada is the area's SMRs for mining applications. The possibility of deploying units to remote communities across Canada is a more distant possibility. We have begun outreach through the federal government to some communities and to begin to have the conversation, because this is going to be really it has to be community driven at that point. It's not something that someone's going to impose on a community. Communities need to look at their specific circumstances in their specific geography, what are their options.

LL: But I think what Edwin Lyman is saying is that you can't possibly deploy everything you need in terms of keeping it secure and also dealing with safety in these remote areas. Do you think that that can be done?

DIANE CAMERON: Well, if that were true, then this would not be a viable market. Let's just put it that way. So we may still have questions about exactly how one would deploy into those communities, but that's not something that anyone is rushing towards at this moment in time. It is, however, an option that we are looking at seriously, because when we've looked at it, it looks like it has some potential and there are communities that are interested. Not every community is. And we certainly have been working with the regulator to see how would that work in Canada? How would the safety regime apply and how would emergency management function? And what we've done is we've we've looked at our legislative and regulatory frameworks and our practices and found that this is something that we could manage safely in Canada.

LL: And excuse me, we're going to have to leave it there. We've run out of time. Obviously much more to discuss, but we will have to leave it there. Thanks to both of you.

DIANE CAMERON: Thank you.

EDWIN LYMAN: Thank you.

LL: Diane Cameron is the director of Nuclear Energy Division with Natural Resources Canada. She was in Ottawa. Edwin Lyman is acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was in Washington, D.C. A note to clarify a point raised in the interview above Diane Cameron said, in a question about safety at nuclear plants, that "we've never had an accident and zero fatalities in Canada." Our research shows there were two accidents at the Chalk River site in the 1950’s. The first in 1952; the second in 1958. While she is correct that there were “zero fatalities”, it’s fair to say that both can be described as serious in that radioactive material was released and could have endangered the public.

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Radio Garden gives a look into the lives of people around the world by listening to their radio stations says writer

Guests: Rosa Lyster

LL: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

[Music]

LL: How's that for some wakeup music? The song you're hearing is on rotation at FM 88.1 in Yilan, Taiwan. That may not be a station you're familiar with, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can now listen to it anytime. A website called Radio Garden gives access to radio stations around the world. Rosa Lyster has been tuning in every day for a year. She's a writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So it's this website that you kind of click on it and you just get this map of the world. And it's not a political map. There's no kind of borders. And then there's just these green dots all over it and each little green dot represents a city or a country and then within that are these radio stations. You can click on a dot in like Belfast and go, OK well, here's 18 different radio stations to listen to. And you could just choose one and listen to it. That's what Radio Garden is. There's this radio station in Bermuda called Dr. Dick's Dub Shack. That just plays this kind of like hypnotic dub. I don't know how to explain it. It's just like it is hypnotizing. Like I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants just the best sort of background to work to that I've ever, ever, ever encountered. It's music that it's dub that I didn't even know existed on this planet. A station that I found that I really, really love is called Alpha Boys School Radio Station in Kingston. The structure of the station that they only play music that was kind of recorded by performer students of the school. I love the idea of that there's so many incredible musicians that came from one school in one city in Jamaica, that there's a whole station dedicated just to that. A station that I sort of tuned into the Faroe Islands, you know, I just kind of tuned in one day and they were playing the song called Rave in the Grave. I've never heard anything even remotely like it before in my entire life. If you imagine, like the soundtrack to every kind of Tim Burton movie that has ever been made. It's from the perspective I think of like a dead grandmother who comes alive because she wants to like party. It's a very unusual song. I mean that is one of the worst songs I've ever heard in my life, but that is also part of the pleasure of Radio Garden. So after I listened to Rave in the Grave, I sort of tuned to another station that I like a lot, which is in Ivory Coast. And they were playing this cover of Chimes of Freedom, which I only figured out later. Something that I really, really love about Radio Garden is that it feels like a sort of like an idealistic child's idea of what the Internet could be or should be. It feels like this utopian vision of an infinite, but never really ended up existence. You know, the internet was going to be this place and it was going to connect us to people in other places and we were going to understand more about how they lived and what they thought and what it was like to live there and wake up there and you know, listen to the radio when you're eating your breakfast. And that's just not what the internet ended up being at all. But that's what Radio Garden feels like to me and that's what I really love about it.

LL: Rosa Lyster is a writer in Cape Town, South Africa. Coming up in our next half hour.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: He's married with two sons and his life looks very happy, but he has a secret life.

LL: Meet the charming ex-bank clerk who went undercover for MI5. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

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This Nazi-hunting spy had a secret weapon: being a nice guy

Guests: Robert Hutton

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

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Remember, the enemy has highly trained agents. They may be in any walk of life. Procers, upkeepers, barbers, politicians, people who the enemies bribed or blackmailed, even people who admired Naziism so much that they're ready to betray their own country for it. Watch out for these people all the time.

LL: Some unsettling advice from a 1942 British propaganda film called The Next of Kin. The movie told the stories of German spies in the United Kingdom and their unsuspecting collaborators. And while moviegoers were watching the fictional spy thriller, Eric Roberts was busily trying to identify the men and women in the UK who were secretly rooting for and secretly trying to help Germany invade Britain. His incredible story is told by Robert Hutton in his new book, Agent Jack: The True Story of MI5's Secret Nazi Hunter. Robert Hutton is also Bloomberg's UK political correspondent and he's in our London studio. Hello.

ROBERT HUTTON: Hello there.

LL: Can you take us into the world of Eric Roberts during the beginning of World War 2? Talk about what was going on in England then.

ROBERT HUTTON: So Britain at the start of World War Two thinks it's going to be fighting one sort of war, thinks it's going to be defending France, thinks it's going to see another war rather like the first one, maybe in some ways and very rapidly, all of that collapses. The British Expeditionary Force, which has been sent to defend Belgium, finds that it's been outflanked in France and has to retreat hastily to Dunkirk on the coast. By the middle of 1940, Britain is finding itself entirely without allies with a huge hostile force just on the other side of the channel getting ready to invade.

LL: And in the midst of all this is a man named Eric Roberts. How did he get involved in political spying?

ROBERT HUTTON: Eric Roberts in 1940 has a sort of a public life and private life. And his public life is that he is a clerk at the Westminster Bank. He is married with two sons living in Epsom, a suburb just south of London. And his life looks very happy, very, very dull. But he has a secret life, which is that he is MI5, the British Security Services, MI5's man inside British fascism. And he has been a member of the BUF, the British Union of Fascists on behalf of MI5 since 1934.

LL: So he's involved in the spying movement after having this rather dull life working in the bank. What made him such a good spy?

ROBERT HUTTON: So he got into it actually because he had been a teenage fascist himself. And when he first moved to London as a teenager in the mid 1920s, he's he's drawn to to the sort of the predecessor movement called the British fascists and he joins that. And he's recruited as a spy for the British fascists and very rapidly loses interest in fascism, but becomes quite interested in spying. What makes him so good at it is he has this incredibly underrated quality, which is he's really likeable. And that doesn't sound like very much, but he's got a great deal of personal charm and because people like him, they trust him and they want to trust him. And as you start to go into his career, you can see again and again that people who shouldn't have trusted him do trust him and that they sell him to themselves, if that makes sense. So something or other will happen. And that should have been the clue that you can't trust Eric Roberts. And instead they will say, oh, well, it can't be Eric. It must have been something else. And so even as his war is breaking out and it's becoming quite a risky thing to be a fascist in Britain. Roberts is the one that people are taking aside within the fascist movement and saying, look old chap, you really ought to keep your head down here because the government is going to come for us.

LL: Is that how he gained the confidence of the would-be Nazi collaborators just with that sort of understated nice guy approach?

ROBERT HUTTON: Just by being likeable. I mean, we sort of we think about James Bond and all sorts of things like this. And actually there is a side to Eric Roberts. When you see pictures of him now, he is a sort of they tend to be of a slightly sort of chubby, balding man. But actually in his prime, in his early 30s when the war breaks out, he's a tall man. He is quite athletic. He's a karate black belt. So he did have that side to him, but actually, just being the kind of person that people wanted to like. And you could see in accounts of people who met him and didn't realize who he was and who were talking about him afterwards, they just say how much they liked him.

LL: How did he get the alias or the non de guerre of Agent Jack?

ROBERT HUTTON: So he joins MI5 formally in 1940 and first he's sort of being sent on, as it were, sort of little short term missions where he will go and try and penetrate a fascist cell that exists somewhere. But as the war goes on, MI5 has got this big problem, which is it believes sincerely that the reason that Germany was able to advance so fast was because of this network of fifth columnists, people behind the lines who were guiding the German paratroopers in, who were cutting supply lines. And that's again that's believed all the way up. You can see it in cabinet memos. It's not questioned that fifth columns existed and it's what you heard in that clip. And so MI5's job is to find the fifth column and by the end of 1941, it's concluded that, in fact, there was no fifth column in Britain. But what it keeps finding are and what Roberts keeps finding are people who would like to be fifth columnists. So British people who would dearly like to join this this underground network, but can't work out how to get in touch with it at the end of 1941. One of the men that Roberts is working for a man called Victor Rothschild, as in the Rothschild Rothschilds, has an idea. He says, well, look, if if the fifth column doesn't exist, but if lots of people still want to be in it, why don't we set it up? And his plan is and this is what they do to set up Eric as the Gestapo's man in London. And Eric, who is in contact with various sort of fringe fascist groups, will reveal to one of them that he is not, in fact, just another fascist fellow traveller. He is, in fact, the Gestapo's stay behind man in London. And it's his job to identify people who are willing to help the invasion.

LL: And how enthusiastic was he about taking this assignment on?

ROBERT HUTTON: Well he seems to have really enjoyed his work, actually. I mean, he didn't much like the people he came into contact with, but for him what mattered, he said, was success as an operator. He's a craftsman. And having been, frankly, a not very successful bank clerk, he wasn't very interested in banking. Banking was not very interested in him. And having been held back by the kind of snobbery that I mean, that we we still have a class system in Britain. But we really had one then. And I'd say it's impossible for a lad from Cornwall, which is where he came from without connections to advance beyond a certain level in banking, in spying. He finds something where it doesn't really matter who his father was. He's able to succeed because he's good at it. So I actually I get the impression he was quite enthusiastic about it.

LL: How much danger was he in though of being exposed?

ROBERT HUTTON: So all through the war, I mean he said at one point, he said afterwards I was near as dammit, to exposure at various points. It's he didn't write about it a huge amount in his reports. There are moments when he is doing this where somebody challenges him. So he said around a third of the time, the people in this in this fifth column he set up and they called it the fifth column because that was what it was, aound a third of the time, the fifth columnists were convinced he was an MI5 man. And then, I guess, as I say because of his charm, they tended to say, oh, no, no, no, he can't be. They had killers among them in the sense of people who were certainly willing to and capable of it, particularly the woman he was working with, a woman called Marie. He was in absolutely no doubt that that if she had become convinced that he was a spy, that she would have put poison in his coffee or cut his throat. All of these people, had they decided that he was a British agent, would have realized that he was the person who could give the evidence against them that would have killed them. And all of them had done more than enough to be hanged.

LL: Now some of them were really scary people. What was the most serious case that Roberts worked on?

ROBERT HUTTON: I think the most successful spy that he recruited was a man called Hans Kohout, who was Austrian born but a naturalized Briton. And Kohout at the start of the war, finds himself in a difficult position because he'd spent the summer in Austria, he'd one back to Austria with his wife and young child the summer of 1939. And then he comes back from the holiday early to go back to work and then war breaks out and his wife and son are in Austria and he's in Britain. And he decides that the loyal thing for him to do is to try to serve the Nazi cause. And he is an incredibly effective spy. He hands over to Eric, details of the mosquito bomber, pretty much as the most senior people in the government are getting these details. In a flat in north London, Kohout is handing them over to Eric Roberts.

LL: Thinking that he's handling it over to the Nazis.

ROBERT HUTTON: Thinking that they're going to Germany. There is a case to be made, I know there is a case I make in a book that Hans Kohout is the most effective spy that Germany had in Britain.

LL: What did happen to the other would be spies and saboteurs that Eric Roberts uncovered?

ROBERT HUTTON: So when Rothschild first conceived of this operation, it was a sort of trial balloon. And they thought, well we'll put Roberts out there and we'll see what he finds. And if they had thought that he might find a few fascist sympathizers and instead he finds a flood of them. And MI5 is panicked by the success of their own operation. And they sort of they, there's a feeling that, oh, my goodness, we turned over this stone to see what was underneath it and there were all sorts of things underneath it. And the last thing we want to do is turn over any more rocks because we sort of don't really want to know how many people there are with the fascist sympathies in Britain. And although that sounds slightly odd, what you've got to remember is that. MI5 is playing a bit of a double game internally here. It hasn't told the Home Office, which is its supervising department, what it is that it's doing. And it knows that if a home office finds out about what Eric is doing, the Home Office will tell it to stop. So they sort of reach a compromise with themselves where they keep Eric going, but they don't expand the operation. And that's fine during the war, but as you get to 1945, there's a problem. You've got tons of evidence and they've got transcripts. And the transcripts are still there in which people discuss where in their own towns the Nazis should bombe. There's a lot of talking about targets. People have drawn maps to show the routes that troops should follow through their towns around the defences. So you've got the evidence, as I say, to prosecute and hang or imprison dozens of British people, but you've got a problem, which is that in the first place, you haven't told the Home Office what you're doing and it'll be quite hard to prosecute without the Home Office finding out. And second, in a way, by the end of the war, fascism is a sort of wholly owned subsidiary of an MI5. There isn't a bit of it that Eric Roberts isn't reporting on. And in fact, one of the sort of the other departments where my phone, which is supposed to be in charge of monitoring fascism, which at the start of the war is very hostile to Roberts doing this at the end of the war is saying basically all of the intelligence we're getting, we're getting from him, please keep him going. So they decide to just slightly wing the operation down, but to keep it go and keep the fingers in the pie. You don't know in 1945 who your next enemy is going to be. And so Hans Kohout stay on the MI5 books continuing to report and it's not clear who they think they're reporting to in Germany in 1946 and 1947, but some form of continuity Nazi organization and Roberts carries on as their agent. And in the most bizarre moment I uncovered, there's this ceremony at the start of 1946 where Eric Roberts presents Morita and Hans Kohout out with German medals. And says obviously the war has not turned out the way that we had hoped, but the Third Reich, thanks you for your service. And here are medals and do please continue to report. Now, I am fairly certain that those are the final Nazi medals awarded in World War Two, and they were awarded to two British people that the Nazi government had never heard of by a British spy who was working for Victor Rothschild, who was Britain's leading Jew at that point.

LL: What stories. After the war, Eric Roberts sort of struggles a bit. He goes to Austria. There's a mission there that does not go to well, he's back in London trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually he moves to Canada. He moves to Salt Spring Island, the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. And you tell this incredible story of an MI5 officer travelling to Salt Spring to speak with Eric Roberts. What was that about?

ROBERT HUTTON: After the war, you got to remember, at the end of the war, MI5 is on a high. They have absolutely proved themselves. They've run this operation. They've run double cross. They dealt with the fascists at home. They deceived the Germans abroad. It's been brilliant. And then they start to realize that something is wrong. And over the next decade, they discover that, in fact, they too were compromised and that the Soviets had agents right at the heart of British intelligence in MI5 and in MI6. And that prompts this sort of process of investigation of going backwards and forwards in trying to find out what happened. And in the late 1960s, somebody comes to see Eric on Salt Spring because they want his recollections. And when they arrive, Eric knew they were coming, he hands the man an envelope and in it is a piece of paper with a name on it, which is the name of the man that he believes betrayed MI5. and the name on that piece paper was Anthony Blunt. Roberts had during the war become convinced that Blunt was a German spy. And the MI5 man who's come to see him is able to reveal what was then not known publicly, which is that Blunt had by that point already confessed to having been a Soviet spy during the war.

LL: That's testament to Eric Roberts perception and abilities. Now we know the real name of Agent Jack. For decades we didn't. I wonder what you think we should remember about Eric Roberts, the man?

ROBERT HUTTON: Well, I think what he wanted to be thought of as somebody who was good at his job. And he writes afterhe's had this late 60s interview, he writes that he has a little bit of a crisis. He falls very ill and he writes his long letter to his to a former colleague in which he talks all about his his career in spying. It's a fascinating document. And at the end of it, he says what mattered to him was what he called success in the cold. I think he wanted to be thought of as good at his job. And he was. I was personally enormously heartened that whereas a lot of people who worked for a long time undercover afterwards couldn't really cope with with real life and they became alcoholics or they had various crises, eric, who is undercover for as long as anyone, he has this amazingly happy home life, so far as I can tell. And talking to talking to the family members who knew him was just how fondly they remember him. So I think we should remember him as a happy man.

LL: Robert Hutton, I want to thank you.

ROBERT HUTTON: My absolute pleasure.

LL: Robert Hutton's new book is Agent Jack: The True Story of MI5's Secret Nazi Hunter. And he was in our London, England studio. Well, as you heard, Eric Roberts, a.k.a. Agent Jack, came to Canada to live during the Cold War. And while many families have members who kept secrets, the Roberts family had a doozy. And they're all here with me in our Toronto studio. Hello to you all.

GROUP: Hello.

LL: Just before we start, let's go around the table and have you all introduce yourselves. Max?

MAX: I'm Max. Yes.

LL: And you are?

MAX: I'm his son.

LL: And.

ROSEMARY: And I'm Rosemary, Max's wife.

LL: OK.

MARILYN: And I'm Marilyn. So Eric's youngest granddaughter.

ROSEANNE: And I'm Roseanne, his oldest granddaughter.

LL: We are so lucky to have all of you here. Marilyn, I want to start with you. What did you think about the book?

MARILYN: It was incredible to find out what Grandpa Eric had accomplished and yeah, so it was fantastic. I'm so thankful.

LL: How much did you learn from reading the book?

MARILYN: I'm still learning. I'm still still re-reading. I'm still trying to. It's a lot to take in. So a lot, yes. We did not know what he did during the war. So we were unaware of that, of what he did.

LL: Max, he was your dad. What do you remember about your father growing up?

MAX: Well, I remember so many things. One of the things I remember is that he would be gone for days and suddenly show up. And we'd, you know, he and mom would then go out every night, walk to the pub. And it was an interesting experience, but he was very good with us kids.

LL: When you saw him.

MAX: Yes. When we saw him. But he would be gone and I would have to tell people that he was a conscientious objector working on a farm.

LL: Well, what did you figure out that he actually was a spy for MI5?

MAX: Well, as I as I got into my teens or early teens, I realized that that's what he was. But before that, none of us knew. He wouldn't release. We weren't told. Now I knew my mom knew, but we weren't. We weren't. We would just have to say that he was a conscientious objector working on a farm.

LL: And what was your reaction when you found out that he was indeed a spy?

MAX: It just overwhelmed me. It really, it really, I can't explain it, but it just it turned my whole life around.

LL: Rosemary, I want to turn back to you. How did your family discuss the secret that your father in law had been an important spy in British intelligence?

ROSEMARY: Well, I, Max didn't tell me really until a few years after we were married.

LL: Oh, he's a good secret keeper too then.

ROSEMARY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know I could understand why. But we went out every summer for two weeks and spent with them and that even then it amazed me more than anything is the fact that of all the friends he had and all the people around him, he never you know, he never told anyone. No. The only thing he said to me one time when he was in one of his diabetic episodes was Rosie, because he used to call me Rosie, I told them that he was a spy and they wouldn't listen to me.

LL: Which is what Anthony Blunt, that's who he was talking about obviously.

ROSEMARY: Yes. Well, I don't mean, but that was the only thing. And even then, I thought and I sort of asked Max, you know. So he told me a little bit, you know, he said, don't you know, don't pass it around, don't tell anybody. I never did. I never told my parents or my sister or anyone.

LL: Or the kids?

ROSEMARY: Well, they were so little at the time. You know, Marilyn wasn't born yet. And Roseanne was like five. I guess.

LL: So roseanne, how much did you know?

ROSEANNE: How much did I know or.

LL: About your grandfather's story?

ROSEANNE: Well, I think we always knew he was a spy. But the stories that we'd heard was more the Cold War. But we would get together as cousins and whisper in the night different stories to each other. That's not a lie. We would I remember lined up in sleeping bags and well I heard this and I heard that and did you know this and you know that.

LL: Is this what grandpa did? He did this, he did that.

ROSEANNE: So we knew, but we also knew not to say anything. And I remember every now and then, even even now, I get a little shaky and clammy when I talk about it, because it's a secret. It's something we're not to tell.

LL: That story about this Nazi sympathizer falling in love with him. What did you think of that?

ROSEANNE: Well, so we all talked about this earlier and none of, it really didn't. We really didn't make much of it. In fact, Marilyn said she forgot. And I think it's because Robert came and stayed with mom and dad for a few days and he sat down with us and he told us the entire story. And one of the things he said is he kept looking for dirt. He wanted to find the scandal and he wanted to find something that had happened. And, of course, you know, he's writing a novel. Of course, he wants to find something, but he couldn't. So.

LL: Because I guess your grandfather was just too nice and decent.

ROSEANNE: Yes. So the fact that this woman was in love with him, it didn't surprise us because he really was charming and fun and handsome. And we didn't think anything came of it because there was no scandal.

MARILYN: And that was really my favourite part of the book, was the fact that out of all of this, he was a decent human being. He was a good guy, so much better than James Bond.

LL: So it didn't matter that he wasn't James Bond.

GROUP: Yes. No.

LL: Rosemary I'm wondering what the most surprising thing is that you learned from reading the book.

ROSEMARY: I don't, just that, you know, that he could do what he did. It's just unbelievable to me, especially.

LL: I'm wondering, does it answer questions that you had about the family of the man you married?

ROSEMARY: Well, Max is just so much like his father. Now, like, you know, I just notice it more and more all the time.

LL: In what sense?

ROSEMARY: Oh, just in his humour. And mostly, his humour.

LL: Not his secrecy, I hope.

ROSEANNE: Although I think we're all pretty good at keeping secrets.

MARILYN: Not me.

LL: Oh boy, I think there may be another book coming out here. Max, what about you? Is there anything in the book that you read that that you didn't know about before?

MAX: Not really. No, I knew virtually all the things that basically what I did and what I was told to do was wipe it out. In other words, don't know, you know. And it was very difficult because I had to tell it, as I told you earlier, I had to tell people that my dad was a conscientious objector. And you know, to this day, I find that I still think about how stressful it was because all the kids would say, your dad's not in the army, not in the navy. Your dad's a coward.

LL: That's what they said to you about him?

MAX: Yeah.

LL: And look now. You must be so proud of him.

MAX: Oh, I am. Yeah. I was proud of him then. I mean, I knew when I was in the teens that he was a spy. But I wouldn't want to say I knew, I didn't really. He didn't say that, but I knew exactly what he was. But I couldn't tell anybody.

LL: Were you ever able to tell him how proud you were?

MAX: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. And my mom, too.

LL: That's fantastic. I just have one more question for all of you. Who do you want to play him in the movie?

ROSEMARY: Oh yeah, we all say Gregory Peck.

ROSEANNE: Gregory Peck, 100%.

LL: Okay. That's the older one, but you know, who do you want to play the dashing young man?

ROSEANNE: I can't get over Gregory Peck.

MARILYN: I said to you in Ewan McGregor. Benedict Cumberbatch.

LL: Benedict Cumberbatch, OK.

ROSEANNE: See the thing is, Gregory Peck, wasn't I mean not immediately handsome, but when you took a second look, like oh boy, he is a handsome man, but he seemed humble and he was tall and dark.

LL: Moral rectitude.

ROSEANNE: Yes. And I feel like, so it's it's very hard to. I thought about this a lot and I just, it's hard.

LL: Well, now everybody knows his story. And I want to thank all of you for coming in and then sharing your memories.

GROUP: Thank you.

LL: Max Roberts is the son of the late MI5 spy Eric Roberts. Rosemary is Eric's daughter in law. And Roseanne, Marilyn are his granddaughters. And they joined me in our Toronto studio. If you missed our earlier interview about Eric Roberts, you can find it cbc.ca/thecurrent. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q with Tom Power. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Dec. 3, 2019 episode transcript

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