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The Current Transcript for July 31, 2020

Host: Mark Kelley

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Prologue

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VOICE: I also knew that my brother and mother had worked with WE Charity as well with other organizations. However I did not know how much work either of them had done with WE Charity or how much they’d been paid. These were things that I would only learn after the program launched publicly.

MARK KELLEY: Crisis? What crisis? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says yes – his family has ties to the WE Charity, but no, there was no conflict of interest when the government gave the charity a lucrative contract to run a student grant program. Our national affairs panel will be here in a moment to weigh in on yesterday’s testimony and the damage this controversy has done to the PM. Then.

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VOICE 1: Yeah. He requested to go back to Mexico. He didn’t feel safe on the farm after the pandemic had happened here on our farm and he had a sick family member back in Mexico and requested to go back to Mexico as soon as possible.

MK: That farm owner says his worker wanted to go home because of COVID-19. But his former employee, a migrant worker, says that he was unjustly let go for speaking out about what he feels were unsafe conditions on the farm. Conditions he feels got him sick, and killed his roommate. We hear from both sides later in the show. Plus, what we can learn from the Polio epidemic that can serve us today. But, we begin with the week of WE. Good morning. I’m Mark Kelley and this is The Current.

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National affairs panel discusses next steps for Trudeau in WE Charity controversy

Guests: Yudhvir Jaswal, Susan Delacourt, Paul Wells

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VOICE 1: My mother has.

VOICE 2: How much? It's just the dollar figure.

VOICE 1: Throughout her life.

VOICE 2: The dollar figure, prime minister.

VOICE 1: In various ways and is proud of work that she's done and I'm proud of her as well.

VOICE 2: How much? I'm looking for a dollar figure.

VOICE 1: We can get that number for you, if you like. It's been out in the media.

MK: How much? Come on. How much? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was grilled by opposition MPs about his role in the controversy over awarding a $900 million contract to the WE Charity. The connections between members of the Prime Minister's family and the finance minister's family to the organization headed up by the Kielburger brothers were laid bare before the committee. Our national affairs panel is here to weigh in and all of this. With me this week, Yudhvir Jaswal. He's the CEO of Y Media in Mississauga and the host of the popular radio program, South Asian Pulse. Susan Delacourt, national columnist for the Toronto Star. And Paul Wells. He covers politics for Maclean's magazine. Good morning to you all.

SUSAN DEALCOURT: Good morning, Mark.

MK: Susan, let me start with you. The, you know, the PM had a job to do. He had to douse this dumpster fire, which has become the controversy over WE Charity. How did he do yesterday?

SUSAN DEALCOURT: Well, I think he did what he had to do, which was show up reassure, I think Liberals mainly, who needed to be reassured that his instincts hadn't totally failed him in this, that this had been neither a rubber stamp nor a failure to appreciate all the things that seems so obvious to us. So he did. He did two things. Yesterday, he showed up, first of all, he showed up. That in itself, I think they would say something. He said he pushed back, that he was aware of that, that perceptions might be somewhat influenced by his family's connexions to we. And he said that they had in their minds a certain clearance from ethics, from the ethics commissioner because of his wife's work that they had they had spoken. So I think the general view out there and I think one of the ones saying this as well, is he went some of the way to reassuring people that that this wasn't just a total mess. But there's still enough, there's still enough questions in the details. You know, do people care about details at this point? I don't know.

MK: Yeah, well, that's something I want to get to as we talk. Yudhvir, what was your impression, Yudhvir, yesterday of the prime minister's performance? I think to Susan's point, he had to do something to be able to convince fellow Liberals that this wasn't a controversy. Did you think he did a good job?

YUDHVIR JASWAL: No, I don't think so. He could really convince his strong supporters because the questions still remain unanswered, because we're hearing a new date. This is what I heard the first time. May 8th and we still the Canadians would be asking that how come arrived at this state? Why this wasn't announced? Then the timeline that the prime minister is offering doesn't really match with the timeline that the Kielburgers said. And then if he called in first place that this could be a conflict of interest, now he's saying it's a perception. But then why he didn't really move himself? Why didn't he recuse himself in first place? So, these are questions, I don't think so the Canadians have any answers to that.

MK: Well, I want to play a bit of what Prime Minister Trudeau said yesterday, because this was really one of his central points.

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VOICE: The public service came forward with a recommendation to cabinet to move forward either with this specific third party provider that was WE Charity or else not move forward with the program at all. That was the binary choice we were posed. I did not influence the public service to choose this organization. And indeed, when the public service came forward with this organization, I said, you know what? Let's put the brakes on it. Let's make sure that it's done absolutely everything right because there are going to be questions because of the connections with my family on this.

MK: Paul Wells, this kind of reminded me of John Turner. I had no option. I had no option. Did he have an option here? I mean was I convincing to you that this thing, that he was sort of saddled with this issue?

PAUL WELLS: Well, I mean, he claimed he had an option. He, you know, he said tap the brakes and they went away for two weeks to redo their homework. But that seems to have been the extent of it. One of the things that struck out to me was the limited interaction that the prime minister or according to his claim and Katie Telford's, any political person had with this programme. He goes out on April 22nd and announces that approved a programme generally of this nature is going to happen at that point. They have no idea how it's going to be delivered on May 8th, the morning of the cabinet meeting. He finds out that they want to hand it off to we. And he says, look, this doesn't sound great. And then he says, let's do absolutely everything possible to ensure that this is on a straight and narrow. Two weeks later, the same people come back to him and say, cheque so far. And he says, OK, off we go. Like, that's, you know, his total interaction with the thing seems to have been about, you know, three and a half minutes. Over. Over. Over. Over three mornings. And, you know, the opposition had a kind of a frustrating day because they weren't able to establish any more than that, any kind of nefarious practise. But it does seem to be pretty minimalist leadership.

MK: Well, and I'm just wondering about minimalist due diligence, Susan. You know, the way you said, well, this doesn't really pass the smell test at the beginning, so go back and do your homework. From what we've heard, other charities were not contacted to see if they could actually take this job. Did the public service actually do its due diligence or did they just wait a couple of weeks and then resubmit the proposal?

SUSAN DEALCOURT: I, you know, the answer not to be give the journalists weaselly thing, but it's somewhere in between. It looks like, you know, my questions are about, you know, there was a lot of conversation yesterday between the opposition and Katie Telford, the chief of staff, more about how much contact and interaction do you have with the ethics commissioner, you know, yet. And she said a lot. And it just seems that. You know, one would think if you had a lot of contact with the ethics commissioner, if the prime minister had said on May 8th as he testified. Look, this isn't going to look good. Did they, why wouldn't they go to the ethics commissioner and say, are we okay about this? We meaning the small we, not the. So I, I think Paul is right that there is there was diligence, let's say, but I don't know, due diligence that. There were there were bits and pieces missing in the in the checking up on all of this, too. I will say and again, in the spirit of fairness, remember, we're not living in normal times right now, too. And there was mentioned yesterday of, you know, that they said at the outset there were gonna be lots of mistakes made, getting pushing money out the door. So this looks like it may be one of the big questions to not go on and on here. But the big questions, too, about why we started spending money and incurring expenses while the prime minister was still putting the brakes on this. And I think that's where this is headed next.

MK: Yudhvir, tell me about how this is playing. You're speaking to people on your radio show and I'm just warning how this is playing. The prime minister didn't have to appear yesterday. He chose to. He accepted the invitation to do that. Do you think just by showing up that that would help convince people that he is being open and transparent? Do you think he's controlling the damage on this one?

No, I don't think so, the damage is being controlled or we found any answers by the prime minister himself. Obviously, one of his strongest supporters is still, they will be supporting the Liberal party. This is what we are hearing on our radio talk shows. But earlier, the Liberal supporters, there were some who were defending him, but now they're saying, yes, he's accepted and apology himself. And what will we learn from this testimony? Things haven't been answered. You know, from my perspective, I'm looking at a combination of a combo game of boxing and chess. Here you are, your king, he's out in the open. He's being vulnerable to all the questions. The MPs are asking him tough portions. And I know there weren't any knockout punches, but still, the prime minister is defending, but the damage is done. Most of the people there saying the prime minister should have recused himself in the first place. Secondly, there's no clear evidence that he could present yesterday that, yes, he was doing his due diligence.

MK: Paul, you know yesterday the NDP MP Charlie Angus, who's been front and centre for this, he's pointed out to Trudeau's been found guilty of breaking the Conflict of Interest Act twice already. Now, this comes along. And as as Charlie Angus was saying, you know, he's giving the public the impression he doesn't believe the laws defining political behaviour apply to him. Do you, is there some truth to that? That this is the third time they've gone down this road trying to deal with these ethics issues and it's like he still doesn't seem to get it?

PAUL WELLS: Well, I mean, I will say that the tack that Charlie Angus took, look, you've done gone down this before. It's a failed government and everything. That's what you do when you're having trouble proving the case at hand.

MK: Right.

PAUL WELLS: Right. You say, well, but you were, it's all of us had teachers like this. I'm sure you've done something wrong. So you're gonna get the detention anyway. Right? But it is true that and also it's absolutely ordinary for the prime minister's office or any political office that frequent interactions with the ethics commissioner yet. The others minister is not there to judge you and extremist. They're also there to give you advice. So that's there's nothing out of the ordinary there. But there was one moment that really struck me where Trudeau has this. There's this jousting match with Pierre Polivere over over the details of the Conflict of Interest Act. And at one point, Trudeau triumphantly says, well, do you know what the definition of family is under the act? And he stuns Polivere. And then he and then he says, well, family is your spouse and your dependents. So my mother and my brother have nothing to do with it. Well, anyone who's read the act knows that the next paragraph defines relatives the way anyone would define relatives. And then the rest of the acts as your relatives can't do stuff. Right? So that was Trudeau, the McGill debating team star, instead of Trudeau, the prime minister who's supposed to know what the next paragraph of the act says.

MK: I just I can't believe, you know, what the next paragraph is.

PAUL WELLS: Well, I'll just say it's been a long month.

MK: Susan, you wrote about how the WE Controversy seems to follow a pattern for Team Trudeau. What's that pattern you're referring to?

SUSAN DEALCOURT: Well, I yeah, I do think it's a pattern. And some Mary Dawson talked about a blind spot. That's the former ethics commissioner who had to come to rule on some previous things. I like the way Erin Wary put it in a column on CBC today, just to give here a colleague a plug about a certain fearlessness. I'm not sure it's irecklessness, but certainly there is, I'm just going to go ahead and do this anyway. That that has characterised Trudeau and gets him into trouble. No one thought he was trying to line his pockets here or line the pockets of his family. I think what liberals needed to hear yesterday and did very is right there. The liberals are nervous. There are lots of serious liberals who have been very nervous about this because it doesn't seem to be a pattern. And not only is the pattern to get into trouble. It's a drip, drip, drip of getting out of trouble. You know that. You know, why didn't they know that Bill more known his involvement in all of this? That we seem to learn about things after the fact. And that has been a pattern as well. But the damage control is almost worse than the damage. I think. You know, we hope this isn't over yet. I think we're going to see a cabinet shuffle. I think I don't know about staffing changes around the prime minister yet. In the SNC Lavalin, we did see, you know, the prime minister's principal secretary leaves. I don't know. I can't see a mass departure. I can see that they made these things up. But I think you're going to see a cabinet shuffle after this in a way to reassure people that they've got this under control.

MK: Yudhvir, here we are, a bunch of journalists sitting around in the middle of the summer talking about, you know, a finance committee appearance, a WE Charity, a student grant program. I mean, we can go on and on and on. I'm just wondering, how much is this playing out in the public do you believe? Are people paying attention? We're paying attention, but are the voters paying attention to this?

YUDHVIR JASWAL: Absolutely, Mark, they are. Because it's the prime minister. How many times do you see the prime minister appearing in front of finance committee and answering to the MPs. Even I know these are COVID times, but still people who want to know what happened with this controversy. They have their opinion and there are many who are comparing it with, you know, India and Pakistan. And they're saying, we've heard stories there. They may not be even clear what's happening, but they really are interested to know this whole story. And just to Susan's point and I know I agree with her, the Liberal supporters are nervous. They're actually the speculations are already on. Some of them are saying the finance minister could be shown the door. There are others. Will she be shown the door or even Katie Telford? So even the strongest Liberal supporters, they're very interested, because this is far from over.

MK: Paul, one of the greatest pieces of advice I was ever given is the most important lesson in life is to learn the lesson. So has the prime minister learned a lesson from this?

PAUL WELLS: He seems to have learnt the lesson he always learns, which is he's sorry and he should do better. And what the details, what the mechanism of doing better should be is always left a little undefined. And, you know, the good news is he always gets another chance to be sorry and to promise to do better later. Right? Like, these things are seasonal. I'm starting to wonder what October's slightly eccentric mess will be. But, you know, does he think he did the wrong thing? Does he think he did a specific wrong thing that he can name? Not really. He'd like, you know, for form, he should have recused himself from a decision that he said was inevitable anyway. That barely counts I think.

MK: Susan, you're talking about the possibility of a cabinet shuffle. I'm just wondering, what are Liberals saying though inside caucus? Or is this, is it a question of shaking up the cabinet or are people starting to wonder if it's time for the prime minister to move on?

SUSAN DEALCOURT: I don't think you're seeing that it's time to move on. There is a different mood in caucus after the 20, or just the last election than there was before it. That was a rough election, if anybody can remember anything that happened before the pandemic. And I think a lot of Liberals are feeling they got elected despite Trudeau rather than because of him. Right. That, you know, like they ran in on his coattails in 2015, but there are a lot of people in that caucus now who believe that, you know, that they helped argue their case there too.

MK: Does he have any coattails left, Susan?

SUSAN DEALCOURT: Some. So I think that the caucus has a stronger voice with Trudeau now. I don't think they're pushing him out, but I think in his own words yesterday about pushback, I think you're seeing some pushback from caucus too. There will be some kind of shuffle. I think it was probably already envisioned. I think there will be a punitive aspect to the cabinet shuffle that maybe had not been made before. I, too, am hearing the stories that the finance minister has gone. That is on the lips of many people. It was kind of, the praise for him was rather faint yesterday. So the shoes haven't stopped dropping, but I don't see anybody pushing the prime minister out.

MK: Yudhvir, last word to you. What's the one, you said this thing's not over yet. What's the one thing the prime minister needs to say right now to help reassure his base?

YUDHVIR JASWAL: I think, first of all, he needs to make sure that he covers his blind spot as we've heard, regarding conflict of interest, because it's the third time that we are seeing this. Secondly, the most important thing is somebody has to be held accountable. He was asked this question, the testimony as well, but I don't think so the Canadians got a great answer. So he needs to make sure that, yes, somebody is held accountable, whether it's his cabinet minister or somebody in the staff and make Canadians assured that this will not happen again.

MK: Great chatting with you all this morning. Thank you so much. Yudhvir Jaswal is group publisher and CEO of Y Media in Mississauga, the host of the popular radio show South Asian Pulse, Susan Delacourt, national columnist for the Toronto Star. And Paul Wells covers politics for Maclean's magazine.

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Migrant worker says he was fired from Ontario farm, faced deportation after voicing COVID-19 fears

Guests: Luis Gabriel Flores-Flores, Scott Biddle, Sharaf Sultan

MK: Luis Gabriel Flores-Flores's bunkmate, Juan Lopez Chapparro, died in late June from COVID-19 while they were working on a farm in southwestern Ontario. Flores also contracted the disease like hundreds of other migrant workers, but he says that when he raised concerns about the conditions at Scotlyn Farms, he was fired and now faces deportation. He and advocates for migrant workers in Canada are calling on the federal government to give workers better protection. I spoke to Luis Gabriel Flores-Flores earlier with translation assistance from the Migrant Workers Alliance. Good morning.

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Hi.

MK: We've heard in the reports of some 200 migrant workers who were infected by the COVID virus and I understand you were one of them. I just wanted to know, how is your health now?

[In translation]

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Well, for now, I feel okay but I am afraid because they don't actually know the reactions of the sickness. And there's also rumours about a second outbreak.

MK: Gabriel, why did you come to Canada to work on a farm?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: I came here because I needed too. My family depends on me.

MK: How, is this your first time coming to Canada or have you been here working on a farm before?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: I have come four other times.

MK: Were you worried about coming to work here this year during the pandemic?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Yes, I was afraid, but my needs were so big that I had to come to work. I had my family. I have my family and my wife and my two kids. And I also live with my mother that she's sick. She has arthiritis and I have to help them all.

MK: Gabriel, how many of you are working or were working at Scotlyn Farms and tell me about the living conditions there.

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: So there are around 220 people and the living conditions are very small. The places where we live are very small. There were 13 people in my bunk house.

MK: When did you first notice people starting to get sick with the virus?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Between May 10th and 15th.

MK: And were you worried that you would get sick as well, too?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Yes, of course.

MK: So how did the owners react? The owners of Scotlyn Farms react when the workers started to get sick?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: They didn't realize that there were people getting sick because they don't even talk to us, but we have to tell foreman that we were getting sick and they just ignored us.

MK: Were any measures taken to to separate you or protect you? Were you given protective gear, gloves or masks, anything like that?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: No. Since we arrived in Canada, they never gave us anything, neither they gave it to us when we went to the farm.

MK: You knew Juan Lopez Chaparro. Tell me about him.

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: So he was someone who was quiet. He came the same as all of us, for the well-being of his family. He was a very good person.

MK: Tell me what happened to him, Gabriel.

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: When I spoke to him to ask him how he was feeling, he just said that he couldn't breath and that he had a fever.

MK: What was the feeling with the workers after you learned that Juan had died?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: We were very, very sad, but at the same, at some point, we were also very frustrated because they could have prevented this if they would have taken the measurements, the appropriate measures.

MK: Gabriel, you say you were fired from Scotlyn Farm because you spoke out about the working conditions there. The first thing I just want to know, did you actually speak to reporters about the working conditions?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Yes, I did. It was an anonymous interview when I was in a hotel in Brantford.

MK: So if it was anonymous, why were you blamed for speaking out and who was it who blamed you and who fired you?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: It was Robert Biddle union.

MK: So that's the father of the president of the farm, Scott Biddle?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Yes.

MK: We spoke briefly with Scott Biddle, the president of Scotlyn Farms. He says this story is simply not true. He calls it a false accusation. He says that Gabriel had to get home because someone in his family was sick, that he had packed up his bags, that he had bought his own plane ticket to go home to take care of his family. Is this the case?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: That's a lie.

MK: So if you insist that you were fired simply for speaking out, for telling the truth, what does this say about how workers like yourself are being treated on these farms?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: The system that is being used is not the appropriate one. We have been always complaining and they have always ignored us. We complain about the bad working conditions. And in my case, I don't think I did anything wrong, so that theny can, they feel like they can send me back home.

MK: Gabriel, what do you think Canadians need to know about your working conditions? The conditions that you and so many migrant workers are living right now in Canada?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: I just want to say that they have to pay more attention to us, but they're not in the same position as us. This is why we cannot defend our rights.

MK: Gabriel, will you ever come back to Canada to work on a farm again after what you've just lived through?

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: Yes, I would. I like my job. I am also a farmer back home.

MK: OK, well we'll continue to watch the case. Gabriel, thank you for speaking with us.

LUIS GABRIEL FLORES-FLORES: OK. Gracias.

MK: Luis Gabriel Flores-Flores is a migrant worker from Mexico. Scott Biddle is the owner of ScotLynn Group of Companies, the company that runs the farm where Gabriel Flores-Flores worked. We reached him after we spoke with Gabriel Flores-Flores.

SCOTT BIDDLE: Hey, how are you?

MK: Scott, we have just spoken with Luis Gabriel Flores-Flores. He says categorically that he was fired for speaking out to the media about the working conditions on your farm. What do you say to that?

SCOTT BIDDLE: He was definitely not fired for speaking to the media. We would never fire an employee for speaking to the media.

MK: So why would he be saying that then?

SCOTT BIDDLE: I have no idea why he would make such allegations.

MK: Now, we had heard and when we'd spoken to your earlier before this interview that you'd said that that he was the one, in fact, who wanted to go home. That he wanted to care for a sick member of the family. That he had packed up his stuff and he had bought the plane ticket. Do you stand by that?

SCOTT BIDDLE: Yeah. He requested to go back to Mexico. He didn't feel safe on the farm after the pandemic had happened here on our farm. And he had a sick family member back in Mexico and requested to go back to Mexico as soon as possible.

MK: Okay. So we put that to him and he said, "That's a lie."

SCOTT BIDDLE: That is exactly what happened.

MK: I guess what he said to Scott that that it's concerning is he said from the moment that they arrived, you know, with this looming pandemic, during the pandemic, that the workers were not given any PPE, any protective personal equipment like masks or gloves. There were no measures taken in when workers started to get sick to be separated, one from the other, and that that's what was concerning them the most. Can you respond to those allegations? Those are pretty serious allegations.

SCOTT BIDDLE: They're very serious. And every worker was had an interview individually for a period of time explaining all the precautionary measures that needed to be taken on the farm and during quarantine. And then each worker was individually taken to a motel to be quarantined individually for 14 days prior to coming to the farm. And each one of them had or were given PPE equipment.

MK: He made an allegation. He says it was, in fact, your dad that fired him. That your dad had yelled at several of the workers for speaking to the media. Did that happen?

SCOTT BIDDLE: My father doesn't even work for the company, so he's mistaken in that regard. He was, like I say again, he was never fired. He made a request to go back to Mexico. If he wanted to go work at a another farm and he didn't feel it was safe to work on this farm, he could have requested to go work on another farm. All workers are, you know, able to go work on other farms if they request it. They're not stuck to one farm, but this gentlemen here.

MK: I thought that was the terms of their visas here. That they were in fact, if you sponsored them, your farm sponsors them, that they have to stay at that one farm.

SCOTT BIDDLE: No, that's incorrect. You can make a transfer to another farm.

MK: OK. So in your opinion, he could have done that if he didn't feel safe working on your farm?

SCOTT BIDDLE: Absolutely.

MK: Did your father have any interaction then with the workers?

SCOTT BIDDLE: My father says he's never spoke to this gentleman or had any interaction with him.

MK: And did you have any concerns about any of those workers speaking to the media about their concerns?

SCOTT BIDDLE: Absolutely not. We've actually tried to get the media here to speak to some of our workers just to explain their experience here at Scotlyn. And, you know, we've got workers that have been coming, you know, to our farm for decades and for generations, you know, family members. So no one would ever be fired for those reasons.

MK: How did you react when you learned about the death of Juan Lopez Chapparo?

SCOTT BIDDLE: It's very sad to lose, you know, a member of the family here at Scotlyn. It's unfortunate. It's you know, it's a world pandemic that we're dealing with and it's, they're scary times.

MK: Yeah. I mean, I think there's one thing we know of much that this is a man that's passed away. I'm just puzzled now with the you know, the he said, he said side of this story, that's so diametrically opposed to one another. Why would this story be coming out? Why would these allegations being made against Scotlyn if you say that all these measures and precautions were taken?

SCOTT BIDDLE: I have no idea.

MK: Well, you must you must be wondering this because, I mean, obviously, this has got to be a hit to your reputation and that's why you're trying to, you know, in your words, set the record straight. So what would be behind him making these allegations if they're untrue?

SCOTT BIDDLE: Yeah. Anyone that knows Scotlyn or deals with Scotlyn, or you know customers in Scotlyn, you know, our reputation remains very strong. We have a strong reputation and a company that does things right. So anybody that knows of us or deals with us would understand something like this wouldn't happen.

MK: Was this some Gabriel's first year working with you at Scotlyn?

SCOTT BIDDLE: Yes, it was.

MK: And did you have any issues with with his performance?

SCOTT BIDDLE: No.

MK: They filed a legal claim now. What happens next from your vantage point? What what will you do at Scotlyn Farms.

SCOTT BIDDLE: I'm still not even familiar with the legal claim. So until that comes forward, we'll address it. You know, it's totally false. So it's, you know, not too much for us to worry about on our side.

MK: Okay, Scott, we'll continue to follow the story. We appreciate your time.

SCOTT BIDDLE: Thank you.

MK: Scott Biddle is the owner of the Scotlyn Group, the company that owns the farm where Gabriel Flores-Flores worked. Sharaf Sultan is the principal at Sultan Lawyers. He represents both employers and employees in employment and immigration issues. Sharaf, it's a he said, he said. What do you make of this situation?

SHARAF SULTAN: Yeah, it's a difficult situation. The difficulty here is you're basically dealing with two stories that, like you said, are diametrically opposed. And ultimately, if the matter is going to be resolved in a fair way, it has to, I think ultimately be reviewed by a panel. And in this case, it sounds like it's going to be reviewed likely by the Ministry of Labour.

MK: And so walk me through that process as we're trying to determine the truth, because I certainly was, somebody is not telling the truth in this story. I don't know who it is. How do we establish the facts in this case?

SHARAF SULTAN: Yeah, for sure. So it sounds to me like the matter has actually been brought to the Ministry of Labour under a complaint under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. So the Occupational Health and Safety Act essentially says that that employers are responsible to maintain a safe working environment. An employee can bring a complaint, which it sounds like has happened, and then it's really up to the Ministry of Labour to have a look at it. And that may very well involve interviews and may involve speaking with both sides and coming up to a conclusion basically as to what they feel happened on the balance of probabilities.

MK: Just how precarious are these jobs for these migrant workers when they come to this country? They're working for an employer, if they feel that their working conditions aren't good, you know, do they have, are they in such a precarious position that they they won't want to speak out because they could be sent home?

SHARAF SULTAN: Yeah, here's the issue. From a legal framework perspective, everything exists in theory to protect them. Just giving an example, there's workplace safety, an insurance board that provides insurance for those who are injured at work, for example. It's there. It exists. It's clear that it's provided for without delay for foreign workers, particularly in the agricultural sector. There's also the protection under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. There's also protection of employment standards. I think the issue is that foreign workers, particularly those working seasonal, seasonally, feel vulnerable. They have a sense that if they speak out, that they may actually, regardless of the legal framework, not be protected. And frankly, they may not know a lot about their legal protections.

MK: Yeah, well, that's why the Workers Alliance is advocating for groups like this saying that they needmore rights when they're working in this country. I should mention we asked to speak to the federal immigration minister, Marco Mendocino, and we received a statement. It said in part that, "workers can apply for open work permits if they're being mistreated, which allows them to look for new work." But how easy is that to do in practice for them?

SHARAF SULTAN: You know what? Actually, this is one of the programmes I was quite pleased that it came out from the. It is true, by the way, that agricultural workers can, in theory, go and work for other farms, and that's fine, but that does require a review by immigration. But what I believe the minister was discussing was the new vulnerable workers work permit, which is was intended to specifically address situations where people are subject to abuse. And the definition is quite broad that can physical abuse, unsafe workplace reprisal, financial abuse. And in theory, you if you make that application we have done so successfully, it should actually be granted within 5 to 10 days a short. So they do actually expedite it. I'm quite pleased with the program so far. I just don't know if enough people know about it.

MK: Well, the Migrant Workers Alliance and they are, they've taken up Gabriel's case, they want the federal government to give workers like Gabriel, permanent status under Canada's immigration laws. Do you see that happening?

SHARAF SULTAN: We I think it's fair to say that Canada has a history of tending to focus on high skilled workers, what we deem to be high skilled workers and and granting them permanent residency over lower skilled workers. That's been an issue for a long time. And I think it's a decision that we need to make as a country. Are we willing to expand the avenues for permanent residency for those who are not formally considered high skilled? It's particularly difficult for those who work in seasonal work because there just really are little to no avenues for what I call reaching the finish line. And I think that that's a point of frustration. I think the question we need to ask ourselves as a society is if you spend enough time here in Canada, commit yourself to coming back and forth at a certain point. Should you also benefit from the finish line? In other words, have the right to get permanent residency, not have to worry about these short term things and be able to bring your family.

MK: Yeah because some of these people say they're spending about, you know, eight months a year working here. One person I read his story said, look, I feel more Canadian than Mexican now because I spend so much time here. Is that, that's the reality?

SHARAF SULTAN: Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. I think for most categories of immigration, which you spend a reasonable period of time here and you manage to integrate yourself into the labour market under most categories, you can find yourself a permanent resident eventually. There's some category you can follow. There are gaps, though, and we and one of them is definitely the seasonal worker gap. There's just not a lot of opportunity to translate that into permanent residency. There is, to be fair, a new pilot project has opened up called the Agri Food Pilot. It is starting to open up for agricultural workers, but again, it's not totally open to two categories, two types of workers, such as seasonal workers.

MK: Sharaf, good to talk to you. Sharaf Sultan is the principal at Sultan Lawyers who specializes in immigration and employment law. He's in Toronto. We asked to speak to Monte McNaughton, Ontario's Minister of Labour Training and Skills Development and Ernie Hardeman, Ontario's Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Minister McNaughton's office said it was not appropriate to comment because the matter is being fought in front of an independent tribunal. And we did not hear back from Minister Hardeman's office.

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Polio vaccine set off wave of relief, and a wave of resistance. COVID-19 era may be similar, says Jill Lepore

Guests: Jill Lepore

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The news is on everyone's lips. Polio has been beaten, beaten by the genius of a modest man named Salk and the army of dedicated medical and scientific people, who's one and only ideal, is a world free from disease. In Toronto and the rest of Ontario, the reaction of the people was the same as though the announcement had meant the end of a terrible war.

VOICE 2: I would like to conclude only with a paraphrase of Sir Winston Churchill by saying that on the basis of these data, the future does not seem to be completely veiled in obscurity.

MATT GALLOWAY: It is the kind of outcome everyone is hoping for as COVID-19 rages on. A new vaccine to stop a deadly disease in its tracks. The development of the Salk vaccine in April of 1955 halted the spread of polio known as the Crippler, because it could cause paralysis amongst its mostly young victims. My next guest says that looking back on that terrifying epidemic and how it ended could shed some light on the pandemic we're all living through now. Jill Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard University and award-winning author and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She's also the host of a new podcast. It's called The Last Archive. Jill Lepore, good morning.

JILL LEPORE: Good morning.

MG: For people who might not remember, remind us what the 1950s polio epidemic looked like and the devastating impact that it had on people's lives.

JILL LEPORE: Sure, yeah. Polio was terrifying, especially to parents of young children. At first in the U.S., it first showed up really an epidemic proportions in 1916 in New York City and returned relentlessly every spring. It was really far worse in the summer than in any other time of year. And it affected children, especially children under 12. Most of all, children under five. Sometimes people called it the baby plague. You could certainly die of it. More often, you would be crippled by it. So polio hospitals opened up. There were really kind of physical therapy centres. Children were braces. If you lost the use of your lungs, you'd be put in a almost like an iron coffin called an iron lung that would breed for you. Miraculous invention, but a horrible way to live. Well, while hoping for some for some relief. And there was an incredible public health crusade to try to find a vaccine and as we hear all the time, finding vaccines for viruses generally, historically takes decades. One of the worst epidemic years in the history of the virus came in 1952, but that was also the year that there seemed to be a real breakthrough in terms of the vaccine.

MG: Cities like New York were hit really hard by this and were shuttered in a way that seems kind of similar to what's happening now with schools being closed and the swimming pools in the in the heat of the summer being closed. Are there echoes that you see of that time in our life now?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, it's actually so fascinating to me that these stay at home campaigns that were waged in the 1930s, 40s and early 50s for polio were a routine part of life in many parts of the world.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This is the season when polio is at its worst and every precaution is being taken to stop the disease from spreading. In the Halifax area, for example, officials have postponed the opening of school as a safeguard. Here's Graham Allen with the details.

VOICE 2: The school ban is one of a series of developments which come quickly in the last few days as it became more and more apparent that this is the most serious polio situation we've had since 1942. City health authorities proclaimed orders banning children under 16 from schools, theatres and churces. The town of Dartmouth across the harbour from Halifax adopted the same rules and suburban communities are following suit.

JILL LEPORE: The best thing to do, the only real way, you know, as with the coronavirus, the only real way to defend against a virus for which no one has any immunity is to just not be exposed to it. And it's really hard to keep kids inside, especially in the summer. And polio happened to be particularly easily transmittable by water. So all summer months, kids want to go down to the creek, they want to go to the lake and jump in a swimming pool and it was it was a real hardship to keep them in. There were all kinds of campaigns, radio campaigns, to keep kids indoors. You know, sort of a different phenomenon than than ours. In some ways, it's an upside down corona virus because it's kids who are the most vulnerable, whereas now it's kids who are best protected from this pandemic.

MG: How did kids and their parents respond to the fear of something that they couldn't see?

JILL LEPORE: You know, it's interesting. I was working on an episode about the polio virus this fall for the podcast and listen to a lot of public health programming, both on the radio and in like these little movies that I remember from, like health class kids to I would they were filmstrips when I was a kid, but there are also films. And they would try to explain to kids what what a virus was and how to avoid them and why you should wash your hands and why you should cover your nose when you sneeze. That's hard for kids. It's hard for grown ups to do that, but it's a lot harder for kids.

MG: How did the epidemic of polio change the way that people understood truth and scientific evidence? Because as you mentioned, there's this wild search to try and find a vaccine. We're seeing this now, but we're also seeing people questioning science, questioning truth. How did that shape what was going on during that time?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah it's this kind of crazy pattern with viruses and their successful defeat. The defeat of smallpox, say, through vaccination programmes, was both celebrated and also highly suspected. So at the beginning of the 20th century, when the first vaccination programs are becoming successful and widespread, a lot of governments require vaccination. State governments and national governments require vaccination, compulsory vaccination. And this leads to the forming of the first anti-vaccination societies. There's an American Anti-Vaccination League and the British Anti-Vaccination Society. And what they're opposed to in some ways, they question the science and the utility of vaccination, but they are also essentially libertarian. They questioned the state's authority to require parents to get their children vaccinated on the grounds that that is authoritarianism. Right? So in the US, the anti-vaccination movement in the early decades of the 20th century is really closely aligned with opposition to national health insurance, which libertarians decry as socialism. So there's this weird tangled up like this is like the 19 teens and, you know, the era of the Bolsheviks revolution like that. It's Bolshevism. That it's Bolshevism to require kids vaccinated. It's Bolshevism to require people to have health insurance. So there's this and that actually is kind of those things have been always tangled up together somehow. And so now where we have already winning a vaccine for coronavirus who are desperately waiting for the thing, but already anti vaccination forces are lining up to oppose it on the grounds that, you know, that it's socialism in the U.S. in particular, where there's such a strong libertarian strain. There's already already people are like ready to fight the battle to defeat compulsory coronavirus vaccination, which is shocking to me, but goes back well over a century.

MG: The vaccine for polio is announced. Its existence is announced on the 12th of April, 1955.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: A New York newspaper, The Royal Telegram and Sun said today in a copyrighted story that it had learned from an unimpeachable medical source that the Salk polio vaccine is 100 percent effective. This reporter has learned from an equally reputable source.

MG: People have compared laws that moment to the end of the Second World War. How big of a moment was it?

JILL LEPORE: Oh God, you know, it's shocking to me to listen to the television coverage of it. The radio coverage of it. Just look at the newspaper headlines. It's almost like commentators, their voices, they're cracking, reporting it. I mean, the Jonas Salk had developed a live virus, a very risky virus. He's sort of the tour to use the hair of the tortoise and the hare race. This guy, Savan, developed a killed virus that replaced the Salk virus pretty soon afterward. But Salk that you know, we can't wait for a safer vaccine. We're going to use a live virus and went into field trials, the biggest public health field trial ever conducted in 1954. So everybody was waiting to 18 months to test this very promising vaccine. And then there was going to be a big announcement at the University of Michigan. Hundreds of reporters show up. There's a, you know, big photocopied set of documents reporting the results of the field trial. There you can see photographs of the reporters just just cramming almost like a stampede of reporters trying to get hold of that press release. Well, a team of doctors, you know, stand on the stage and issue the report that the vaccine works. And then it's just like this cry that goes out across the land vaccine or their vaccine works. There is a vaccine and it's April, right. It's just before the star onset of summer, the warmer weather that's going to expose children and make them much more vulnerable to this virus. So there's this incredible, incredible swell of relief around the world. And Canada, France, Frances Ontario has set up in anticipation of compulsory vaccination programme. The U.S. has not. The new secretary of health, education and welfare in the Eisenhower administration is a highly conservative woman, a vehicle Pobby, and she believes the federal government in the United States should have no role in the distribution of the vaccine. So she has nothing set up through waiting 18 months to find out whether it works. There is plenty of time to set up a plan for the manufacturer and distribution of the vaccine, and she just isn't that socialism to her. So it becomes this huge mess in the United States. This whole problem of of the federal government's failure to act, it's chillingly like this moment.

MG: Eventually, the vaccine is distributed. You did a thing for The New Yorker podcast, The New Yorker Radio Hour, in which you talked about how each generation gets a timestamp. And you talk about the timestamp for those young people in particular, who, as you mentioned, it's April, they're waiting to get the polio vaccine.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: There's a generation of Americans whose most significant early memory is of waiting in line to get the Salk vaccine. I have a colleague who I once asked about this and he said, I can remember the taste of it in my mouth, it was like a sugar drop. It was almost like a lollipop. And my mother said, this will save your life. You will have a life. And I think about that. And I think about the generation of kids who we can only hope will remember the day that they go to get the coronavirus vaccine and it'll be their time stamp.

MG: When you were talking about this on The New Yorker podcast, you got really emotional when you describe this and it was enough the way that you described that moment, I was running and I stopped what I was doing and the hair, kind of stood up on my arm as you were describing this. Why did that moment hit you in the way that it did?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, it really knocked me down, I have to say. I mean, I had all fall been working on this episode for the podcast about the controversy in the U.S. over the vaccine. And I'd listen to all this radio footage. I'd listen to the announcement that the vaccine works. I'd listen to the stay at home campaigns. I listen to radio interviews from the 40s and 50s with kids who were in iron lungs. I'd been affected by it. I mean, the way that you are good, you know, good sound. But it seemed at such a remove to me like, oh, polio. Thank God that's in the past. And then when I was, you know, editing and working on a story and after the coronavirus came and I listened to that same set of tape every time I fell apart, I just I couldn't believe how much more immediate it was to me and how much more vulnerable, how much more raw, how emotionally exposed, what little emotional stamina I had to contend with the despair of these stories and the exaltation at the wonder of the news. And so when I tried telling that story to the New York radio, our producer, I just couldn't hold it in anymore. It's embarrassing to fall up on the radio on. But it also it's how I felt.

MG: But it speaks to the moment, right? And it speaks to like, what would the timestamp be for this generation under the coronavirus? Where there are different stakes and different things are happening, but people are being affected in incredibly dramatic ways. And the things we keep keep saying is the things that we took for granted six months ago are now on the shelf and nobody knows when they're going to get them back.

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, and the tragedy of it, too, is for something like polio, those generations who suffered through it, who were terrified by it, who had to watch where they went and who they talked to and what time of day they went out of the house and maybe had to stay home and listen to the radio all day. They remembered what that what that area was like, but their children had never heard of polio, didn't know what they you know, I I was born after the polio years. I remember my mother telling me about friends of hers who were felled by polio and it sort of removed from you and for my kids, I don't think they would get that at all. And in a way, that's what makes the resurgence of anti-vaccination possible. Like people haven't seen their children die of measles and so suddenly they're suspicious of the measles. That's crazy. But it is actually a kind of lived experience. It's in your bones. It's in your blood, you know, it's in your heart. You know what that feels like. And kids, now, you know, my kids watching my kids worry about, you know, their grandparents and know people who are really sick and certainly many people who have lost their jobs in the kinds of suffering. I mean, you know, my family is spared and blessed in so many ways, but we know so much about how dreadful this is. This is not a thing they will forget. And what we can hope for them and pray for them is that they will forget some of it. But what they will remember the importance of the public health crusade.

MG: Ida Pinckney is a woman who contracted polio when she was a baby in Brooklyn in 1944. Here she is talking to NPR about the perspective that she has that that experience has given her in terms of what we're in the midst of right now.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When my parents would take me out of the apartment building that we were in you could hear everybody get silent, you know, and kind of move away, which is very much what it feels like now. I live with hope. I live with the anticipation that we will be on the other side of this. I don't know what that looks like. It doesn't even matter as long as people are not getting sick and people are not dying.

MG: Do you share that hope that a vaccine will be developed quickly? There's been a lot of talk around timelines and things like that.

JILL LEPORE: I don't know how quickly it can be developed and of course, the mitigation and its safety against the speed. But I do very much believe that there will be a vaccine and this time is not a permanent new way of living and I hope that the lessons learnt will have force.

MG: Can I ask you both those lessons? There's a lot of talk now about who we'll be when we come out of this and what we might be and whether people who want to go back to the way things were because the way things were didn't work for a lot of people. How often in history has a crisis served as a catalyst for change?

JILL LEPORE: You know it's very difficult to predict how that would be. I think there's a lot of fantasising on the part of people who are involved in movement politics that this will accelerate reforms that had been stalled or we're going nowhere. And, you know, God bless. Like I have many hopes for a more equitable and just kinder, better world with a greater sense of common wheel. We all, I think, hope for that. But we already see the kind of political disarray, certainly in the United States where, you know, is being very closely observed day today, a kind of decay from a sense of shared purpose and shared suffering. It really it it does require. A great deal of leadership to transition from the crisis to the post crisis with the spirit of common cause intact. I mean, that's where the leadership of FDR during the Great Depression himself, of course, a person who had suffered from polio and had been crippled by it, really mattered during the 1930s. Whose economic dislocations are not unrelated to the long term consequences of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But, you know, it's really interesting when you listen just thinking about the power of the of the human voice. Eleanor Roosevelt always said that FDR's voice changed after he got polio. He was a grown man when he contracted polio. But he was an aristocrat. He'd never really been deprived of anything and he was deprived of his ability to walk. And that you could hear his voice changed and you could hear in his voice that he understood suffering.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This great nation will endure as it has endured. We'll revive and we'll prosper.

JILL LEPORE: And so in 1933, when he is inaugurated as president and the country's facing the worst economic crisis ever, and he goes on the radio and he tells people, look, I'm gonna have to shut the banks because it's the only thing we can really do. We're gonna have to shut the banks. Let me tell you why and I know you're scared. It's the right thing to do. I know it's the right thing to do because the right thing to do for all of us.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So, first of all, let me put my firm belief that the only thing we have fear is fear itself. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

JILL LEPORE: That when people heard his voice, they they trusted him because they knew that know they were suffering, but they they could hear in his voice that he was somebody who understood what it meant to lose something. What it meant to fear that you would lose everything. And it really mattered. It mattered every week that he was on the radio, every time that was on and he was on the radio every moment that he was on the radio. People talk about you could walk down the streets of New York and you could just hear an entire FDR speech without ever having your own radio, because every car had it on every storefront, had loudspeakers out front that had it on. You could walk for miles and you could hear the entirety of an FDR speech. And that is not just because of what he said, but it was because of how he said it. And that had just been slight huskiness in his voice. That slight kind of emotional crackle that spoke to you when you were running. I mean, not to sort of.

MG: Yeah.

JILL LEPORE: Say something about my own voice. But he wasn't faking it. Like he was really worried. And he you know, he knew some people don't like FDR, you know, think the New Deal went too far. All fine. But you cannot question what it meant and what it did for the nation's sense of purpose, that he communicated that in a crisis we stick together and we don't have that right now.

MG: It's hard in the midst of something to see beyond the moment that you're in. People are living through this moment now and they say it's unprecedented and they can't imagine what the next few weeks are going to look like, let alone the next few years. And they may not even be able to remember what the last six months were like as somebody whose job it is to see that sweep of history. What do you think the moment that we're in right now can tell us about the bigger picture or what the bigger picture can tell us about the moment that we're in right now?

JILL LEPORE: Oh, I love the clip that you began the segment with about that sort of vaccine ending an era cloaked in uncertainty or the mystery of uncertainty. And that's one of the lessons here is how our capacity to tolerate the unknown and the uncertain is, I think, quite a bit worse than it used to be. There's a we have a kind of false belief in the certainty because of how highly predictive our world is, like data is predicting everything. Like you look at the latest polls so that you can know exactly what's going to happen next.

MG: You don't get to choose what you're going to watch because Netflix tells you this is what you're going to like.

JILL LEPORE: Exactly. You know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. There's an app for that. You know what the best route is, because and where there's going to be a traffic problem because there's an app for that. You know what you should watch and what's going to be the right you know that the TV show that's going to be interesting to you because there's an app for that. What book you should read, you're told. I think we actually just have considerably less tolerance for the unpredictable, the unknown and the uncertain and that's why people are obsessed with the curve. I mean, not like the curve is, of course, the curve is an important piece of information. I don't mean to dispute that, it's not like I know nothing about the curve, but just that you open up your newspaper app and there's the curve and, you know, then there's the various projections. Like in scenario one, the curve will go like this and then in scenario two, will go like this. If we open today, it'll look like that. We don't really actually have that kind of control. We certainly need to take responsibility for our own actions, but just our utter impatience with the unknown is, is I think a real liability for having the stamina to deal with this extraordinarily difficult time. I mean, I don't begrudge anybody, their terror of the unknown. Just kind of remarking as a historian, I think there's a kind of shift. Like for most of human history, nobody has any idea what's going to happen next, you know, from the weather to anything else.

MG: When we get out of it then, how do you think we'll look back at it at this time?

JILL LEPORE: Boy, you know, that's a kind of trajectory question. Historians are terrible at making predictions. I I guess I would say that the patterns you see in the past is that there'll be a whole long period of trying to figure out who to blame. That's the nasty version of what will happen next. We're already kind of in that. We're not even over this and just so many people are making so much political hay and a lot of people are, frankly making money over blaming other people. So there's a lot of cause for despair about that. But I think that for most people, what they will carry forward are, you know, the tender moments of compassion that they shared with fellow human beings and where they found strength by being together. Even in this almost impossible situation in which thing you have to fear most is intimacy with other people.

MG: It's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JILL LEPORE: Thank you so much.

MG: Take care.

JILL LEPORE: Take care.

MG: Jill Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard University and the author of several books, including This America: The Case for the Nation. She's also the host of a new podcast. It's called The Lost Archive.

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July 31, 2020 episode transcript

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