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

The Current Transcript for September 23, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Her beautiful spirit and personality is working through all of us on the ground. So please continue to say her name. Breonna Taylor.

MATT GALLOWAY: Six months after Breonna Taylor was shot dead by police while in her Louisville, Kentucky, home. People across the United States and beyond have continued to say her name and to demand justice. And now with a decision expected on whether the officers involved in her death will face charges. That city is on edge. We head to Louisville in 30 minutes. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

I don't think it took the pandemic for us to appreciate these rituals, but it surely has a firm that this is something that is special and it sustains us. Now, the way to sustain people for hundreds of years.

MG: You were locked down. You planted a garden. Now, what are you supposed to do with all those cucumbers and tomatoes? It is canning season. And with the future uncertain, to say the very least, we have some tips on putting up the bounty of summer for those colder months ahead. That's in an hour. Plus, the best selling author, Carl Hiaasen. One giant Snakes, Tanning Beds, Florida and why the Trump presidency is good for a satirical novelist like himself. But with a throne speech coming within hours and with the prime minister set to speak to the nation this evening. We begin with some ideas on what candidate really needs right now. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

COVID-19 and a green recovery

Guests: Patricia Mohr, Merran Smith, Daniel Beland

MG: Today, the Governor-General is Julie Payette will deliver the speech from the throne. The Liberals have billed this as a chance to reset their government's agenda and build back better. What exactly does that mean? Well, already we're hearing it will include a strategy to create jobs, manufacturing, electric vehicle, batteries. But how far will that green agenda go? For a look at the policy challenges behind the catchy slogans, I'm joined by three guests. Daniel Beland is a political scientist and the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Merran Smith is the executive director of the Clean Energy Canada and an advisor for the Task Force for Resilience Recovery. And Patricia Mohr is an economist and commodity markets specialist formerly with Scotiabank. She served as adviser for the Task Force for Real Jobs, Real Recovery. Good morning to you all.

MERRAN SMITH: Good morning.

PATRICIA MOHR: Good morning.

DANIEL BELAND: Good morning.

MG: Daniel Beland, let's start with you. This is, as they say, an unprecedented time and the economy finds itself in the tank. The government is trying to figure out what the next few months will look like. How would you sum up the challenges the liberals face with this throne speech?

DANIEL BELAND: Well, the challenges are tremendous. So we have obviously an economic challenge. We lost a lot of jobs as a consequence of the shutdown and COVID-19 more generally. We have some of these jobs have been recovered in a way, unemployment is lower now than it was a few months ago. But still, we have tremendous economic challenges. We have fiscal challenges not only because, of course, deficits are growing not just at the federal level, but in the provinces when we have premiers asking for more health money. We saw that on Friday. And we have also, of course, a public health challenge with the pandemic. And we see that the numbers on the ground are not good right now in some large provinces like Quebec and Ontario. So I think that these would be the tree main challenges that we face on the top of the of the challenges that we normally face in this country, long term issues like climate change and an economy and regional disparities and all sorts of things that we generally have to address on top of it, that we have a tree, important challenges stemming from the pandemic.

MG: Just a few small issues there. Nothing really serious to take on. The liberals promised early on that this throne speech would include important green stimulus initiatives. And I'll start with you on this, Daniel. How important are those right now?

DANIEL BELAND: Well, they are very important, and especially because we are in the context of very acute uncertainty, where there is a lot of people who are nervous about their job, employers, small businesses, really nervous about their future. And we saw already many small businesses closing and people being furloughed or people losing their jobs. So we economic stimulus remains a key priority, especially because we you know, we expect a second wave. Some people say it's already happening. So we have tremendous obstacles to economic growth in front of us with this pandemic. And we need to compensate with bold economic measures. And we have already begun that work. But the more I think more is necessary. At the same time, we have to keep an eye on our books. The fiscal challenge, as I just mentioned.

MG: I want to get to that. We'll I get to that. But Merran Smith, the initiatives and the bold action that you're recommending, you're on this panel that recommended green initiatives to get this economy through COVID and beyond. What specifically are you asking of government?

MERRAN SMITH: Yes. So just a start. We're talking about, you know, a green recovery or a clean recovery, not just for green sake. But it's really about keeping Canada's economy, keeping up with the rest of the world economy. It's about making our economy more efficient, more competitive and cleaner. And if we look around the world, some of the world's leading economies like Germany, France, Korea, the U.K., the E.U., they've already announced billions of dollars is going to be invested into a clean green recovery. And why? Because this is really where the world is going. It's demanding cleaner energy, lower carbon products and and new technology. Like you just mentioned, the investment in electric vehicles in Ontario's auto sector. I mean, that's where the world's going. We're seeing countries putting bans on the sales of combustion vehicles, ICE vehicles. The U.K. just moved up their ban. They're talking about moving it up to 2030. So we don't want to be producing products that the world doesn't want to buy.

MG: So aside from the batteries, what else would that investment, that green investment, that clean investment look like?

MERRAN SMITH: Yes, look, we we've recommended five big, bold moves. One is in the area of building retrofits. Now, why? Because Canada's building stock is actually very inefficient and people are wasting money on energy that we could be saving more money. So let's get people back to work. And that's another key part about building retrofits, getting people back to work quickly. But a couple of the other areas are investing in our clean energy sector. No, we're no one as an energy leader. But Canada has huge potential in clean energy. Another area is around jumpstarting the production and consumption of electric vehicles. There's zero emission vehicles. And then around clean technologies and nature based solutions.

MG: Patricia Mohr of the recommendations that your group made are. I think it's fair to say, quite different than what Merran is talking about. What are the concerns that you have when it comes to the recommendations that Marion Smith was running through?

PATRICIA MOHR: Well, I think first and foremost, we need to do something to bolster up our economy and of course, our task force really had, as one of its key goals, is really just to recommend that we use the existing strength of Canada's natural resources to achieve a strong medium term economic recovery for Canada. But just to kind of build on one of the points that Merran made. I'm expecting the federal government to announce a strategy on developing a hydrogen fuel industry for Canada and specifically for western Canada today in the throne speech. Hydrogen made from natural gas would really build on an existing an existing resource industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan in B.C. and that is natural gas. And if you reform it, take out the carbon, you get a zero emissions carbon fuel. I don't recommend necessarily moving away from crude oil, but it would be a fuel that would diversify the energy mix for western Canada. And in a way, I'm very excited about it because I think it is a partial solution to the climate change challenge that the oil and gas industry has and western Canada. And, of course, this is really important because, as Merran mentioned, Canadians really are energy specialists. Then last year, our exports of crude oil alone were eighty one billion dollars.

MG: Let me ask you, when you said that you want to look at your building on the existing strengths. Why is that important right now given the state of the Canadian economy and the global economy?

PATRICIA MOHR: Well, I think it's something that we can do realistically and something that really matters. You know, Canada is a trading country. We owe our relatively high per company income to trade. And if you look at the merchandise trade numbers for Canada, even this year, you'll find that the top four export categories are all in the natural resource industries. So it's energy, it's metals, forest products and agriculture and agrifood. And so we can build on the strengths in those industries to really get our economy going again.

MG: If you hear that Merran Smith, I mean, given the state that we're in right now and getting that economy going again, what do you make of what Patricia saying that these are in some ways existing strengths, things that that, you know, can essentially be switched back on and the economy can kind of take flight almost immediately?

MERRAN SMITH: Yes, definitely some of our natural resources are our strengths, and I'll look at our metals and minerals as an example. You know, when the world's going to need a lot of metal and minerals as we transition to clean energy and lower carbon products. So electric vehicles say they need copper, cobalt. All of the metals and minerals are available here in Canada in order to build those EV batteries. So that's why that's a great opportunity for Canada and the cleaner energy that we have. You know, we know about our oil and gas resources. We also actually have a great clean energy strength. So right now in Canada, 80 percent of our electricity is already zero emission. You know, we have an abundance of solar and wind in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan and other hydro, other natural resources, geothermal and hydrogen that Patricia mentioned. You know, these are clean energy and low carbon or zero emission energy sources. And that's what the world is moving towards. Which is why we need to focus down and start bringing in these new types of energy sources to ensure that we maintain our role of leadership. When it comes to hydrogen, now, hydrogen been talked about before, as you know, is this going to be the energy of the future. It's looking, again, like this is going to be an opportunity. And again, many of the world's countries have just announced over the last year or so investments in hydrogen. Now, what can hydrogen do that electricity can't? Because we have all this electricity. So point number one is to start using our clean electricity to power our manufacturing to power, even our natural resource sector. We have Bordon mines in Ontario, which is an all electric goldmine. So that way we're producing low carbon products. That's what we need to do with our electricity. Tapping into that, it's producing the emissions in our manufacturing and producing our natural resources. The second thing is to develop some of these new energy sources. Hydrogen can be used for you know, we're looking at it being used to reduce the emissions in the toughest third of things, things like steel, concrete or long haul transportation. So this is an area, you know, Canada has both natural gas, which is how we're making hydrogen, now, where you capture the carbon and make sure that the hydrogen is therefore cleaner. But we can also make very clean hydrogen here in Canada because we have an abundance of water and abundant clean electricity. And that's how you make hydrogen. Investing in these is going to be a key part of maintaining jobs today, but also jobs in the future.

MG: Daniel Beland. If you take a look at the proposals to invest in green initiatives, are they enough to deal with the immediate economic crisis that we are in the midst of right now?

DANIEL BELAND: I don't think so. I think it's part of the it should be part of the plan. Absolutely. I think. And I think hydrogen - and then we can see that Merran and Patricia at least agree on one thing that, you know, and then probably on other things as well, that we could invest on that, too. There is a regional aspect to this that Patricia alluded to about, say, the prairies, especially Saskatchewan and Alberta. You know, I live in Saskatchewan for 10 years. And, you know, they still burn a lot of coal there to produce their electricity. And I think the federal government could make investments to help some of these provinces move away from that and could help the energy sector to, the traditional energy sector, to move towards hydro change, for example. So I think we have. When we talk about these issues, we have to think about the big picture of the economy certainly moving towards green sources of energy is essential for our future. It's not just about climate change, but also because the economy is going in that direction at the global level. At the same time, I think that we should do everything we can to stimulate the economy at this point and that we, you know, people want jobs and they are really afraid of losing what they absolutely have to be smart about the recovery that we are engineering. But at the same time, we should not put all our eggs in one basket, even if it's a green basket.

MG: What about, and just briefly, Daniel, on this, what about the idea that this is a crisis and you use this crisis as an opportunity, that this is the moment to pivot, to do a hard reset and to think big and think broadly? Is that what Canada needs right now?

MG: Well, I think yes, they say that you never let a crisis go to waste, and that's you have to use it. And I think what's happening is that people from different camps who have different visions of the future want to use this crisis to move Canada in this sort of direction. I do think that it's the [unintelligible], that it's an opportunity to actually make important changes that will affect Canada in the long run and move us in the more competitive effect. At the same time, there is an emergency that we have to deal on the ground. We should not forget the public health emergency. We should also forget that we need more money, more investments in the health care, in education, even if it's not directly related to the so-called green recovery. And this is also very important. So, yes, we should not put all our eggs in one basket when we talk about the recovery, but I do agree that, you know, moving in a greener direction, there is an opportunity right now to pivot in a way. But we have to do it, I think, in the manner that takes into account regional issues in this country. We are in a large, diverse federal country and not regions of the same, just access to the same natural resources. I am in Quebec now. I'm from Quebec. So we have a lot of hydroelectricity and electric cars here are quite popular and growing. So but I also live in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and I know that people have different anxieties about the future, or at least that they are concerned about their livelihood. And they might see some of these proposals that we are hearing today as a threat to their own way of life. So you have to reassure them and show that if we have a green recovery, it should be inclusive and that all the regions in the country will benefit from it. And I think that this is an important message to convey.

MG: Let me just we'll just have a couple of minutes left. So I just want to be very brief on this, Merran. How do you ensure that this recovery efforts it's you know, to Daniel's point, if it's targeted towards green recovery, doesn't leave people behind. Just briefly.

MERRAN SMITH: Yes, I absolutely agree with Daniel. We need to ensure that there's things that are being put in place to support those who are disproportionately affected, the service workers, women, people of colour, youth. We need to have specific programmes that are going to immediately support those. Second pieces, you know, around exclusivities is we need to be having a training programme and education as part of this to actually be building the workforce that we're going to need going forward. So getting people back to work, but also giving people the school skill so that they're going to have a job that's going to last over the next decade and two decades. So really, when you look at where the world's major economies are going, when you look at what the world's banks and investment funds are doing, we're seeing increasingly putting a climate lens on their investments or ESG requirements around environment and social and governance issues. You know, this is about Canada. It's not about getting out ahead. It's about us keeping up. It's about us not making risky bets, not diversifying our economic portfolio. Making Canada more competitive. And that's going to interact more international investment here and continue to make good, long lasting jobs for Canadian Patricia.

MG: Patricia, in the remaining seconds that we have, should we be concerned about how we're going to pay for this down the road?

PATRICIA MOHR: Yes, I think we should be. The deficit to GDP ratio this year is probably going to be approaching 20 percent. So little will compared to about one percent last year. And of course, it's going to be higher than in the United States. We provided a great deal of underlying support for people, not so much for business. And I'm concerned that, of course, most people still work for companies. So I would like to see a little bit more support, if only moral support for the business sector.

MG: Let's see what is announced later today in the speech from the throne. And then, of course, the prime minister will address the nation directly later on this evening. There are a lot of people who are asking for a lot of things in this unprecedented time that we're in. Thank you all for joining us this morning.

GUESTS: Thanks for having us.

MG: Daniel Beland is a political scientist and the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal. Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada and an adviser for the Task Force for Resilience Economies. She was in Victoria and in Vancouver. Patricia Mohr is an economist and commodity market specialist who served as an adviser for the Task Force for Real Jobs Real Recovery. Tune in 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time. CBC Radio. A special coverage of the throne speech begins. We'll also have special coverage of the prime minister's address to the nation. And that happens at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Your CBC News is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

Justice for Breonna Taylor is multi layered. We are not going to stop our calls to hold the officers responsible for Breonna's death accountable. We're going to continue to put pressure on the attorney general's office to present a fair case to the grand jury. Where were we noted that indictment is coming from the grand jury.

MG: A decision on whether to indict the officers who killed Breonna Taylor is imminent. We will head to Louisville for what that means for her city, for her family and for a movement. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio one. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

Email from officer in Breonna Taylor shooting shows some officers think 'nothing was done wrong,' scholar says

Guests: Ricky L. Jones

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, we head to Florida, where the satirist Carl Hiaasen has found paradise in Trump's America. But first, the name and the life at the centre of a movement.

SOUNDCLIP

[Protesters chanting]

Say her name. Say her name. Say her name.

MG: That name is Breonna Taylor. The 26 year old emergency medical technician was shot dead in her home by Louisville police back in March. Her name has become a rallying cry for those fighting police brutality in America. Six months later, the decision on whether to indict the three police officers involved is expected to be announced in the city of Louisville, Kentucky has declared a state of emergency in preparation. Joining me to discuss the decision and the potential fallout is Ricky L. Jones. He's the chair of Pan African Studies at the University of Louisville and the host of the Ricky Jones Show on I Heart Radio. He is in Louisville, Kentucky. Ricky, good morning.

RICKY L. JONES: Good morning, Matt. Good to talk with you.

MG: Great to have you back on the programme. What's the mood in your city like today?

RICKY L. JONES: Tense. I don't know if there's any other word to describe it other than tense. We had the local police declare a state of emergency here on Monday. The mayor followed up with a state of emergency on Tuesday. A square mile of the city downtown has been blocked off, barricaded. And so people are waiting. There are some people who feel like they felt for quite some time that the attorney general has kind of held the city and the state and even the country hostage. With the release of so little information about this case. So people simultaneously, I think people who are reasonable have been trying to be patient to allow him to legitimately do his work and work through the facts of the case. And at the same time, you know, hope there haven't been unnecessary delays so we can try to move to the next phase of this.

MG: What sort of message do you think the state of emergency in advance of this decision being made public — what message does that send?

RICKY L. JONES: I don't know if there's any way to avoid seeing that as a reaffirmation of a longstanding message that we see in places that tell citizens they should fear black people and fear black people and the people who are associated with them, the white people who have allied with them in many of their struggles. There is this idea, even though that state violence against black people has been something we've dealt with since the founding of the country, and we see it far too frequently. They're simultaneous with this idea that black people want to be violent. And if they don't get what they want, then they're going to engage in behaviour that is incredibly destructive and violent.

MG: You could imagine though, you can imagine, though, if if this decision comes down and those officers aren't indicted, there will be a lot of people out on the streets.

RICKY L. JONES: RJ: I think there'll be a lot of people out on the streets, most certainly. We've seen an unprecedented level of protests, of sustained protests that we haven't seen really with this duration since the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted almost a year. So people have been out much longer than folks thought. But that does not necessarily mean that they are going to be violent or destructive. If these officers aren't indicted, people certainly will be appointed on one level. On another level, many will not be surprised because we quite often see situations like this happen and officers are not punished. So. But to to feel that black folk will necessarily be violent, as it were. I think that's problematic. And beyond that, I want to put it characterizing the destruction of property as violent. I don't think it can be violent against property. So there are a lot of racial undertones at play here.

MG: It's been six months since Breonna Taylor was killed. Are you surprised at how the public has kept her name in the headlines? From people on the streets to professional athletes and to people in the media. The Emmy Awards on Sunday. Are you surprised that this story has continued in the way that it has?

RICKY L. JONES: Yes, I'm surprised as a person who studies social movements all of my career. You know, this is an ADD country. We don't pay attention to many things for very long. It's also a country that is obsessed with greed and entertainment. So we move on from things very, very quickly. As you see, we're attempting to move on from a pandemic that killed over 200,000 people in our country and then just move on from an opportunity that's not fair. We've done the same thing with race in the country in certain spheres. So the fact that folks have paid attention to it, one, for so long is surprising. And two, that it's bled into other areas, into athletics, into you know, entertainment is very, very surprising. And so what I'm wondering, even beyond this case, how long will that be sustained, one. And two, will there be a greater level of awakening where people will try to educate themselves on the ideas of race, politics, social structures, where they'll understand the difference between propaganda and progress. Because countries like this will use propaganda to say we're attempting to address racial justice when we really don't, where we're recalibrating to put ourselves in a position to handle it in a different way.

MG: Why do you think it's taken so long to decide whether or not to indict the officers that are involved? I was reading legal analysis of this, and part of this is about trying to figure out probable cause, and whether there was intent to kill. And there are very fine legal arguments that that are being sifted through here. From your perspective, why is this taking so long?

RICKY L. JONES: Well, that's the 64 million dollar question. You know, and there's a drama playing out here that, you know, on one hand would belong on HBO, you know, and on another hand would come out of a Jordan Peele horror movie with some of the personalities involved. You know, on one end, we have we have people who were former students of mine. I mean, we have Lonita Baker, who is one of the lead attorneys for what Breonna Taylor, who has argued that there are facts in this case that we still don't know about just yet, that she feels would solidify an indictment. And people have to understand this isn't about whether the officers are guilty or innocent. This is just the decision of whether or not they should go to trial. Then on the other hand, we have the first statewide black elected official in Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is the that Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is like a father figure to him, and he is the person who is going to pull the levers of power in this decision. So people don't know exactly why it's taking so long. Folks on the positive end say he's just being very meticulous about doing his work. Folks on the negative end are saying that, no, he's really trying to wait to figure out a way to do nothing and get away with it. So the truth is probably somewhere in between that. But I like everybody else, just don't know.

MG: MG: The officer that was wounded in the incident that led to the death of Breonna Taylor e-mailed a thousand of his fellow officers in the wee small hours saying that they had the legal moral and they'd done the legal, moral and ethical thing that night, and said that, you know, their civil rights aren't being respected and that the governor and the mayor had essentially sold them out. What's at stake in this in terms of the weight of this decision? You talked about your city being tense. What's at stake here, do you think?

RICKY L. JONES: Well, I think this is a revisitation on one level, Matt, of police culture and police ideology, not just in the city of Louisville, but something we see replicated across the country. What Sgt. Mattingly did, I think, was show a moment of honesty, a spasm of truth that happened to be revealed to the public.

MG: What do you mean?

RICKY L. JONES: He said exactly what many of us think that a good percentage of police officers feel — that nothing was done wrong. But the follow up question to that is, do police here or anywhere else ever feel they do anything wrong? I mean, we have a situation where an innocent woman was killed in her home by random police fire. And he said we did the legal, moral and ethical thing in killing her.

MG: You also have a situation where the City of Louisville agreed to a 12-million dollar civil settlement brought on by Breonna Taylor's family.

RICKY L. JONES: Right. Which is very, very odd because in these cases usually you will have the resolution of the criminal trial one way or another before you have a civil decision. In this, we have it inverted, where a civil decision of $12 million, which is the largest individual settlement in the history of Louisville, was rendered well before there is even a decision as to whether or not a criminal trial should move forward. So somebody somewhere felt that something went terribly wrong to pay out that amount of money in a civil trial where civil rights cases quite often take years to be litigated, litigated and decided. But so that gets inverted, which confuses this even more. But police officers who feel basically, if anybody does not completely support them from the alpha to the omega of their behaviour, that they are being betrayed. And that's the way they feel about the mayor right now. So what Sgt. Mattingly did, I think he displays a representation of this kind of group of narcissistic personality disorder, that we quite often see with law enforcement, where they simply don't seem to feel that they can do anything wrong. And then there's an idea that there are more good cops than bad ones, but we have yet to have any of the quote unquote good cops step up and say they disagree with that perspective or that e-mail. And so you're left to wonder exactly who the good cops are and how do they feel.

MG: Tense situations. We will watch and see what comes down. I mean, it's imminent in the days ahead. In the meantime, Rikki L. Jones, it's good to speak with you again. Thank you.

RICKY L. JONES: Always good to talk to you, my brother. Thank you.

MG: Ricky L. Jones, the chair of Pan African Studies at the University of Louisville, host of the Rickey Jones Show on I Heart Radio and a columnist for the Louisville Courier Church.

[Music]

Back To Top »

Carl Hiaasen on Florida, Trump and his new novel Squeeze Me

Guests: Carl Hiaasen

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I got his head.

VOICE 2: Good.

VOICE 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just stretch him out. All right. Let's start moving him up.

VOICE 2: Ready?

VOICE 1: Oh whoa! He's an animal.

[Laughter]

VOICE 1: It starts in a hiss. Beautiful animal, but you got to go. We love these Everglades, and it's just a shame. It's gotta go.

MG: That beautiful hissing animal is a Burmese python. A captured Burmese python featured in a vice news story about python hunters in Florida. A 15 foot snake, part of a large invasion of pythons that have been eating their way through the Everglades. These large reptiles have also managed a starring role in Squeeze Me, which is Carl Hiaasen satirical new novel about the crazy politics and strange characters that have made Florida such an interesting place to live and write about. Carl Hiaasen is with us from the Sunshine State. Carl, good morning.

CARL HIAASEN: Hey, Matt, how are you?

MG: I'm good. Are you a snake guy?

CARL HIAASEN: Yes, I would I've always had you know, when I was a kid, I had a bunch of snakes, pets, because I, I lived down. There wasn't much else to do but, you know, hang out in that those wetlands. And it was just, you know, I've always had snakes as pets. And now these pythons moved in and. You know, it just seemed inevitable that they would end up in one of the novel. It's a very bizarre, you know, it's it's just I always try to have some element of nature in the novels. And it always rears its head at an opportune time. So Python seemed like a good metaphor for everything else that's going on.

MG: You got to tell me more because, yes, they are. And squeeze me in the sort of the villains. But they have a greenlight. They have a greater role in the story as well.

CARL HIAASEN: Well, yes, I mean, I guess the way he would, you know, Florida's always been sort of a microcosm of maybe even a precursor of what happens in the rest of the United States now that, you know, our president has become a Florida resident, take advantage of the laws that tax laws that he himself pushed forward. It just, I just thought logically, but there's the pythons move out of the Everglades. Why wouldn't they end up on Palm Beach where he's got a house? It just seemed like a nice convergence of plotlines.

MG: The president in your book bears a striking resemblance in some ways to the actual president of the United States. And there are a number of things that people could draw a line between. Has the code name Mastodon. Tell me a little bit about Mastodon.

CARL HIAASEN: Well, I'm told he has some physical resemblance to the current occupant of the White House. Yes. So same the same dietary urges. And he has some spelling issues on his Twitter account. He badly needs the help of a grammarian to help him with that. And he has this fake huge vacation mansion in Palm Beach. And, you know, the Secret Service gives every president and his family all get nicknames. And so mine's Mastodon because partly because of his size. And then the first lady's nickname in the novel is Mockingbird. And that's the only way they're referred to throughout. And it sort of takes places in post pandemic Palm Beach. It would be, imagine, in the months following the worst of the pandemic.

MG: The tanning bed plays a key. I don't want to give too much away, but the tanning bed has a key plot role in this. Tell me a little bit about bringing a tanning bed into this store.

CARL HIAASEN: Well, again, when you're writing you try to stay ahead of the reality. Just enough, you know that you can make your point and make it funny. But the trouble is, the reality in this country right now in the United States is so extreme that it's very difficult. But when you when you watch Trump's press conferences every day, he has an unnatural some say it's a pumpkin colour. It's an apricot colour. This the hue of his skin is is quite supernatural. And so in the novel, my presidential character has used a tanning bed that has to be a specially tuned for him every day. It was custom made, obviously, for his carrot. And there's a character in the book whose only job is to take care of the tanning bed and test the tanning bed. And at some point there's a there's a malfunction. And I'm just- I can't say much more than that.

MG: I'll leave it at that. As a Florida resident, did you ever meet him? Have you ever met him?

CARL HIAASEN: I met him twice, neither which he would remember. I actually met him once at Mar a Lago at one of the f big charity balls that I opened the novel with. You know, that they have during the winter season, society season in Palm Beach. These huge galas that cost a fortune. And they're all for a good cause, usually some medical disorder or disease. And so I met him at one of those who was actually a benefit for the Everglades Foundation, which is a terrific cause, obviously, that I would support just being a Floridian, caring about it. But he was there. He wasn't really involved in it. He was at Mar a Lago, was sort of skulking in the back in the hallways, just kind of- I think he peaked out to see who the band was or something. And when I met him, I just I had to do an introduction on stage. When I got off, he was having a sort of chatting up my wife at the time. And we laughed about it later. But I mean, I'll remember any conversation. I remember that that the hair was just extraordinary. This was about 10 years ago. And then I'd met him many, many years ago at a movie premiere in New York City where he was at the after party had nothing to do with the movie, the film, the stars, nothing. But he was just one of those one of those characters that shows up and was showing up at any big event in New York at the time. And I met him briefly there. That was back in like 96. So the conversations were completely forgettable on both of our parts.

MG: What is it like to be in Florida as this election gets closer?

CARL HIAASEN: Well, would, of course, ever since the 2000, you know, the Gore Bush fiasco, all Floridians live in terror, that the fate of the republic is going to come down to the count of Florida's electoral votes. I mean, we pray that somebody, some other state screws it up. This year Georgia looks like it might be in play in North Carolina. There's a lot of places where it looks like the votes could be more screwed up and it's war.

MG: You just kind of keep saying not us, hopefully not us.

CARL HIAASEN: That's all we care about. Not us. Just leave us out of the equation. But unfortunately, it looks like we will be very much in the middle of it. And the worst part is that every other TV commercial on every single channel is an ad free to Biden or Trump. And so if you live here right now, the mute button is your friend on your TV. You just have the mute button ready because it's the same ads playing over and over again 50 times a day. And I'm sure the public goes numb to it. But it does give you a sense that this is almost like the Normandy Beach of where this election battle is going to be. And it's probably not going to be settled on November 3rd. It's probably going to be litigated and fought. And it's just going to be a torturous month. And I don't think any of us are looking forward to that.

MG: No.

CARL HIAASEN: I don't think anybody, whether Republican or Democrat, relishes being in the middle of another Florida vote scandal. We're just praying it doesn't happen.

MG: This is a very, very funny book. And it seems I mean, you know, all of the powers that you have accumulated in writing over the years kind of come to bear in this book. It's dedicated to your brother.

CARL HIAASEN: Yes.

MG: Tell me about Robert.

CARL HIAASEN: My brother was a editor and columnist, lifelong journalist. He was six years younger than I am. He was an editor at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis and he was one of five staff members who was killed in a mass shooting there in June 2018. And it was obviously a terrible event for the family, for journalism, for the whole country. But one of many, sadly, many mass shootings that we've become accustomed to. So I dedicated the book to Rob because after he was killed, I was the only time I really had gotten what you could even begin to call writer's block. And I just I mean, I written through a lot of difficult times, you know, in my career and as a journalist, you write anyway, which you do. But I had a couple of months, so I just shut down and then finally was able to start writing the column again. And I write to the Miami Herald and then sort of waded into this book with the idea that I was going to dedicate it to him because he would have been pissed off at me if he thought I had stopped writing for any reason, even something as tragic as that. And he had just the greatest sense of humour. And he was always a great fan of the other novels I wrote. So I thought, you know, it really kind of kept me going. Now, this one, I mean, I just thought, well, if I don't write another thing, at least I've got to write a book for Rob.

MG: Does writing give you - because people will turn to books of yours for, you know, a sense of not escapism, but in some ways a distraction from the terrible news of the day, even if that news seeps into the book, they'll look for something that makes them laugh in this moment. Is writing give you that?

CARL HIAASEN: You know what it gives me? Well, now, you know, not while I'm writing the words like, oh, when I was- I mean, there are parts of even this books that squeeze me that were hard to write. But the goal was I knew that if it made somebody laugh or if that was a funny bit and I knew it was funny. But it is therapeutic for me because I know how much people need to laugh right now. And I know from their actions I always get to the novels. How important is it to people. No matter what's going on in the world or your country or politics just to get to get some good laughs. So that was the therapy for me, thinking that, you know, if I can be funny in these dark and harrowing time, then that would be a useful thing people would appreciate and probably good for me just to keep me afloat during the tough times my family was going through and still is. So, yes. I mean, I do think it helps. I think one of the greatest throws it any writer could have and I've been lucky that I happened to be sitting in the airport, watch somebody reading one of your novels. You know, you're holding your breath going, oh my God, I hope they don't throw it in the trash.

MG: And then you see them laughing and shaking because they're laughing so hard.

CARL HIAASEN: Yes. And then it's just then that hits you and it's that. And you understand that's why I did this. That's what this is all about in those moments, I mean, they just carry you forward.

MG: Just before I let you go. The Washington Post said that the Trump presidency was a moment made for a satirist like you. Will you miss this moment if he loses in November?

CARL HIAASEN: I would trade everything.

MG: To be blunt.

CARL HIAASEN: Yes, for that. I mean, look, the country comes first. Humanity comes first. Clean air. Clean water comes first. Decency, honesty and compassion come way before book profits. But I do think as as a-- I mean. So yes. I mean. I do think the trade off is that when you're in this situation as a topical novelist or columnist or writer, you're compelled to work all this stuff into your work, into your writing. And it may be painful while it's happening to you. Let's just hope that did. Let's say a year from now, at some point, we can look back at that and say, holy crap. Well, we lived through it. We got through it.

MG: We can't fly anymore. So I'm not in airports, but I was the guy who is sitting on a bench in the summer sun reading this book and shaking with laughter as I'm reading it. It's wonderful. Carl, thank you.

CARL HIAASEN: Thanks, man. Thanks. Thanks for the talk to.

MG: Carl Hiaasen's new book is called Squeeze Me. Your regional update is next. And then coming up after that.

SOUNDCLIP

It was really ugly. I mean, they took basically healthy people and turned some of them into vegetables. They, they, they ruined piles of lives.

MG: From books to audio and another story ripped from the headlines, new CBC podcasts dives deep into a secret CIA programme that has a Canadian connection. Michelle Shephard hosts the podcast and she's here in 90 seconds to talk about a story that I think a lot of us will be shocked to learn about. Matt Galloway. This is The Current. On CBC Radio One. Stick around.

Back To Top »

New CBC podcast Brainwashed, Preserving your pandemic harvest? Start slow with something you love, say experts

Guests: Michelle Shephard, Ana Stoica-Constantin, Johwanna Allyene

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

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: During that I did wake up and give us a glass of bills.

VOICE 2: We all became very distorted and I thought my bones were all melting.

VOICE 3: Well, I was hallucinating and they kept telling me, you're getting smaller and smaller. And they kept bringing me back in time and asking me all kinds of questions. It was just an absolute nightmare. I was absolutely crying for hours and hours and hours, I mean, really from deep inside of me.

VOICE 4: So I was in a comatose state for 72 consecutive days. And in order to get me into that state, I had over 109 electroconvulsive shock treatments. Their objective was to wipe my- my memory.

[Music]

MG: Those are just some of the people featured in a new CBC podcast. It's called Brainwashed. The podcast is all about a secret programme carried out by the CIA, starting in the 1950s. The programme was called M.K. Ultra. It's the stuff of horror films involving mind control through drugs and electroshock therapy. And there is a Canadian connexion to all of this. The veteran journalist Michelle Shephard hosts the podcast, which is out this week, and she joins me now. Michelle, good morning.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What was M.K. Ultra?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, M. K. Ultra, as you mentioned, was this secret CIA programme that began just after World War Two and at the start of the Cold War. And this was a very paranoid time. And what was happening was that American prisoners of war were coming back from the Korean War, seemingly brainwashed. This is what the Americans believed. And so the CIA wanted to find out how they were brainwashed. So they started this covert experiment, which was a massive operation. They had scientists secretly working throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, Canada. And it was through 149 subprojects, 80 institutions, hospital and penitentiaries. And as we got a little sample of off the top, there were some incredible experiments that were done.

MG: How did it end up here in Canada?

Well, the CIA was interested in some of the work that was being done in Canada into sensory deprivation and what happened. And in particular, they were looking to Montreal and a doctor named Dr. Ewen Cameron, who is a Scottish born American doctor who was doing some of these really extreme experiments himself at the Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute. And what he would do was he would take psychiatric patients, put them in what was known as a sleep room, weeks on end in these sort of drug induced sleeps, giving them massive doses of drugs. LSD was one of them at the time. And round after round of electroshock therapy. And he would later develop a couple procedures known as deep patterning and psychic driving. And what he wanted to do with the patients was de-pattern them, which meant bring them back to this child like state, sort of wipe their mind clean. And then he would deliver messages, recorded messages, over and over and over again. And that was the psychic driving. So what the CIA, CIA did was they went to him through a front organisation and encouraged him to apply for a grant so he could carry on these experiments, which he did. And that's how he became part of the M.K. Ultra.

MG: I've heard the first couple of episodes of this podcast, and it's fascinating. And as we heard in the inevitable clip at the beginning, there are people who get wrapped up in this programme. Let's talk about some of those people that you feature in the podcast. We'll start with Allan Tanny.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Is this sort of a hospital?

ALLAN TANNY: Yeah, for mental patients.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: OK. OK.

[Footsteps]

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Hi, sorry. We're just taking a look in the lobby here. We just want to see the inside.

ALLAN TANNY: We wanted to see the inside, my father was an inmate here, many years ago.

VOICE: Really?

ALLAN TANNY: Yeah.

VOICE: But there's nothing really from old days.

ALLAN TANNY: I know. I just wanted to see if I'll remember anything.

Michelle, where you walking through?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So that's actually at the Allan Memorial Institute. And it was the first time that Allan Tanny had been back there. His father had been a patient. And you heard in the clip there, he said, you know, facetiously, my father was an inmate here. He had actually been admitted there as a psychiatric patient.

MG: Tell me a little bit more about that. What happened to Charles Tanny when he was there in that institute?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So what Charles Tanay went in because he had a pain in his face. It was a condition known as trigeminal neuralgia. And it's this excruciating pain that you get. And they determined at the time that it was psychiatric. So he wanted to go to the best hospital that money could buy. And that point, it was the Allan Memorial. But when he went in there - this would've been about the spring of 1956 - he was subjected without knowing, knowing that he was part of an experiment, subjected to Dr. Cameron's so-called treatment, which involved being in the sleep room, a drug induced sleep for four days and days and subjected to rounds of electroshock therapy. They had a machine at the time that was known as the Paige Russell, and it was named after its creators and it would deliver six times the normal machine. And he had this day after day. And the reason that Allan knows this and many of the people that we talked to for the podcast knows what happened to their relatives, is because they later got the medical records. And when you go through them, it's devastating to see what they were able to endure, frankly. And none of them came out the same people and Charles Tanny was one of those. His father, Allan, says just came out a completely different man.

MG: I was going say, what does Alan remember about who his father became after and having gone through this treatment?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yeah, I was pretty young when he went in, but he was old enough to remember a much more sort of playful father. And he was just basically not there. And I thought one of the most devastating things he told us was that he spent a lot of time with his own psychiatrist later in life dealing with this. And what his psychiatrist told him is that having a parent come back completely different but still right in front of you is almost worse than a death. It's worse than a child, dealing with a parent who has passed away because they don't even know that person anymore.

MG: Doctor Ewen Cameron died in 1967, but you have an interview that he did a decade or so before he died. Here he is speaking with the journalist Raymond Hasan.

SOUNDCLIP

RAYMOND HASAN: This type of recording, playing the recording back to the patient over and over again sounds something like the conditioning technique in the brave new world. Does it have any similarity at all to it or to communist brainwashing, for instance?

DR. EWEN CAMERON: No, it doesn't, because so what we are attempting to do is to bring into operation aspects of a patient's own personality. We are not trying to impose upon the individual things which are public might be quite foreign to him and which would be a mock variance, as in the case of brainwashing with the kind of person that he naturally is.

RAYMOND HASAN: Does it have any adverse effects on the patient's health or mental outlook after he's been treated with it?

DR. EWEN CAMERON: No. Otherwise we wouldn't use it.

MG: So that obviously isn't the case. I mean, as you say, it has huge impacts on who the person is. Did the doctor just not know what the effects would be?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: You know, that's hard to believe because, as you say, all the patients came out, you know, fundamentally altered. It's hard to know exactly what Dr. Cameron knew, whether he even knew he was being funded by the CIA. We did interview- his son, who's quite elderly now, and he doesn't believe his father realised that. But his father certainly knew, Dr. Cameron certainly knew that his patients didn't know they were part of a brainwashing experiment. So he had to know that that was ethically not allowed. And it's really devastating to think of some of these patients, many of them women, went in for ailments that today we know as postpartum depression or anxiety. And they were subjected to this.

MG: Most of the doctor's patients have died. But this is the kind of, as you're saying, the kind of trauma that gets passed down to their children. This is Harvey Weinstein. Not that Harvey Weinstein. His father was a patient of Dr. Cameron's in the 1950s.

SOUNDCLIP

HARVEY WEINSTEIN: When I finally got his records, it just corroborated what I had been reading about James Cameron's papers, but the actual wording, the nursing notes, the lack of empathy shown by Cameron was astounding. The pitiful pictures of my father that are painted in the notes are a little difficult to to read, frankly. And it's unbelievable to hear the aggressive attempts to break down my father and to basically turn him in to a two year old. I mean, he was soiling himself, urinating, just sort of an experimental animal, unfortunately. One day, my father went into the hospital, age 49. And that was the end of his life. And the end of my life. The end of my childhood as I knew it.

MG: What does he mean by that, Michelle, the end of his childhood?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I thought that was such a devastating line, really. And, you know, when he says it's the end of his father's life, he doesn't he doesn't mean that his father, Lou, had died. It just that he was completely wrecked, man, and never the same again. And so for Harvey, that really ended his childhood, too, because when you have a parent go through such trauma and and at the time, really unexplained trauma because they didn't know what had happened, it was, you know, years later that it came out. So it's really, you know, hard to deal with. And it's it influenced his life. I mean, so much so that Harvey Weinstein, because of, you know, what his father went through, he became a psychiatrist himself. And he actually wrote a book about his father's ordeal.

MG: Is there any accountability for these families? Was anyone ever held responsible for what happened?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: No. And that's, you know, the greatest pain and what they're fighting for now for a variety of reasons. But nobody has ever said they're sorry. There's never been anybody charged. Nine of the Canadian patients successfully sued the CIA. But it was an out-of-court settlement for not very much money. The Canadian government at one point did have a compensation package for the families. Again, it wasn't much money and it's the agreement with the settlement was that the Canadian government would not take any responsibility. And actually, that's one of the things we haven't mentioned, that this was a CIA driven programme. But in Montreal, at the Allen Memorial, the Canadian government also funded Dr. Cameron's work. So their hands are also dirty with what happened.

MG: Why do you think these stories, as powerful as they are, why are they important to here now?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I think it's particularly relevant today for two reasons. And one is that question of having no accountability. And, you know, my background coming as a national security reporter to this is I actually didn't know I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't know much about M.K. Ultra or the history, especially in Canada. But what I had been reporting on for years is what happened after 9/11 in Guantanamo and the CIA black sites and what we called at the time, enhanced interrogation techniques, which has now been denounced as torture. And what was so fascinating and I learnt through the podcast was that actually all originates back to M.K. Ultra. So we can draw and we try and draw this line through the podcast from, you know, the Cold War, right up to the so-called war on terror and how the CIA just sort of morphed these brainwashing experiments essentially to try and get people to do what they wanted. And many of the lessons learnt back then were then incorporated into the post 9/11 policies, even though there's never been any evidence that anything that worked. So I think without accountability and without people acknowledging what has happened, this will just keep happening. I mean, the cliche history keeps repeating itself. The other reason I think it's really important is that we're living this very bizarre sort of post truth, conspiracy fuelled world. And M.K. Ultra, if you - and I don't advise you do this, but if you want to go down a rabbit hole, it is the darling of conspiracy theorists online. And I think because there's never been a true reckoning with what happens and somebody owning up to it. It just actually fuels those conspiracy theories even more. So what we learnt M.K. Ultra Was and what happened since is is absolutely outlandish. But what you see online is even worse. So I think in a in a perverse way, it fuels that by not telling the truth about what happened.

MG: You can't tell people that without then sending down the rabbit hole, I think, which is imagine what they will end up doing after listening to this podcast. Michelle, thank you.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Thanks so much, Matt.

MG: Michelle Shephard is the host of a new CBC podcast. It's called Brainwashed. And you can download it wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

MARIO CARLUCCIO: This is Mario Carluccio. I'm at my mom's South Ottawa home. This is the home I was born in and the garden, the backyard garden is where we grow a lot of stuff tomatoes, beans, peppers, radicchio, lettuce, you name it. Today, I snipped all sorts of grapes from the vine that my dad planted here, probably close to the time that he built the house in the early 70s. And we're to make jam with the grapes. We're also making pickled egg plants. And so this is day two of a three day process. And it's a technique where you pickle and then preserve the acreage in oil. This is something I watched my family do growing up. At first you watch and, you know, you kind of internalise the processes and the ritual. Now, my mom, while she's still the leader, we look to her for guidance in a lot of these things.

FEMALE VOICE: [Foreign speech]

MARIO CARLUCCIO: It's pretty special to know that my mom and dad learnt from, you know, the people that came before them and I'm learning from them and now trying to pass down these practises to my kids and hoping that, you know, they internalise what we internalised. And I don't think it took the pandemic for us to appreciate these rituals. But it surely has a firm that this is something that is special and it sustains us now, the way to sustain people for hundreds of years.

MG: That CBC, Ottawa digital journalist Mario Carluccio, you can see more of his food adventures on his Instagram food blog @thisitaliankitchen. His family has been canning for decades. But for others, this is a new pandemic hobby. And because of that boom from Salmon Arm to Charlottetown, there have been reports of shortages of mason jars and lids, all essential, of course, to safeguard your summer bounty into the fall and winter months. Ana Stoica-Constantin is one of the Canadians who have embraced canning after she ditched Toronto and headed north at the peak of the pandemic. She's on the line from Parry Sound, Ontario. And Johwanna Alleyne has been canning for years. She teaches canning courses and is the owner of Mojo Jojo Pickles. We've reached her in Edmonton. Good morning to you both.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Good morning.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Morning.

MG: Johwanna, it's interesting listening to Mario. He's talking about how this is a family tradition that you grew up watching your family do this for decades and then you figure out how to do it yourself. Is that how you got into the canning world?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: No, I am a retired dark room techniques, and that's how I got into the science of canning.

MG: A dark room technician.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Darkroom technician. So [unintelligible], acid, timer. I'm really good with those things, but I've always been food led and I was on a board for Slow Food here in Evanston. And one of the process that Slow Food celebrates is canning, mainly slow, artisanal single making things. So I started doing the canning bees for Slow Food. And I loved it. I think at the end of my dark room career, we were doing everything digitally. And I really miss making real things that you can hand to a person and share.

MG: What about for you, Ana? How did this end up something that you end up doing in the midst of a pandemic?

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Actually, a little bit of both of the stories we've heard so far. You know, my family's originally from Romania. So when they immigrated to Canada in the 80s, they brought with them all of this pickling tradition and canning traditions. So I grew up watching my grandparents make barrel folds of pickled, whole pickled cabbages, so that we could make cabbage rolls every Christmas. And, you know, roasting eggplants and peppers and canning them every fall. So that's what I grew up with. But as I got older, it kind of shifted a little bit for me. You know, I have a background in the sciences. For me, it turned into a world of exploration and experimentation. And I started playing around with all of the flavours that I liked and flavours that I found in Ontario, things of like the peaches and the stone fruit and the apples that come out every year. And just discovering new things. I mean, even here in Parry Sound, I'm discovering flavours that I hadn't been exposed to before. And it's just this whole world that's opened up and there's so much potential in it. It's just super exciting to me.

MG: We've seen people we've been talking about your victory gardens and pandemic planting. Are you canning things, Ana, that you've grown yourself in the midst of? As we say, these unprecedented times.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: A little bit. Yes, actually, I'm very lucky here that when I moved up here, it was with my fiancée and he built me a bit of a garden up here. And I could plant tomatoes and peppers and beans and zucchini and things like that and could really play around with bigger finding out the fruit and the vegetables that I really liked. So we've been pretty lucky. The summer's been pretty good. So I have been able to can some of those things and play around with those. But I can't really grow enough of a bountiful harvest to really put up everything. But so I've been getting things from grocery stores and farmer's markets and things like that as well.

MG: Johwanna. You're the expert in this. Are you seeing that people are getting into canning and preserving, putting food up for the first time?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Oh, completely. I didn't know that pickles were an essential service, but it seems [unintelligible] Everybody needs a fresh food. I think we've all appreciated just going down a little bit. And fresh real food and good flavour and the comfort of good flavours become really important. So, yes, everybody's cooking.

MG: And that means that the supplies are really hard to come by. Right. I mean, there are these stories of mason jars being sold out on PEI, but this is spreading across the country now beyond that. Johwanna, what do you need to be able to do to start doing this? Because it's an art. But there's a science to it as well.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: There is truly a science to it. And I tell beginners to really get a good recipe. I can't stress that enough. People, they were saying, but you've watched people do it, but you've never done it yourself. Right. But starting spot and I think a really good recipe is a good spot. And with your canning jars, Bernardin is the Canadian manufacturers, the big Canadian manufacturer of catting drugs, they have a website that has really well tested recipes. So you can really count on. And a secret is that your mother's secret Jojo recipe is probably the Bernadin recipe anyway. So it is a great resource.

MG: What do you have to get right? I mean, if it's a science, there are things that can go wrong. So you need to make sure that there are certain elements that are included in what you're putting up, right?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Yes. With pickling, the amount of acid that the jar, the amount of water overall that's in the jar is really important. And how you fill your drawer and the processing time, which is really the backbone of a canning recipe.

MG: If you don't get this right and the acid, it can be measured in the P.H. levels, if you don't get this right, what can happen?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Well, the botulism is one of the big fears in a jar.

MG: That would be bad.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: That's not good. But one of the things is spoilage. Like on a jam jar just at the top of it, you'll see mold and fungus growing, black spots. Peaches and nectarines will get a little air bubbles if you don't pack the dry properly and then you'll see it spoil there quietly. Or if you're really a novice canner, you haven't submerged that jar in the water, sometimes you can see exactly where in the jar the water went to the line above it is spoilt.

MG: Have you had any disasters?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We make thousands and thousands of jobs a year. But there was a year where we ran into a process resistant bacteria in pickled carrots. And they would be absolutely fine. When I go into my car and when I take them to market, they would be cloudy. And when we opened it, orange foam.

MG: Oh.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Which just copiously spilt from every jar.

MG: Not what you want. Ana, what have you been making? Tell us what your other favourite recipes that you have.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Oh, definitely. You know, a couple years ago I was experimenting with hops off is not that I particularly love them, but I had just on a whim purchased some hot pepper plants and grew them and so I decided to turn into hot sauces. So I made a Ontario peach and habanero hot sause one year, which turned out really well. And this year I'm really playing around with some of the flavours that I'm finding up here in northern Ontario, you know, really new to me. But things like chokecherries and hawthorn berries and making jellies out of those. And so that's really new to me. But just something that I've been playing around with up here and, you know, pickling ramps in the spring foraged sustainably and appropriately, I might add. That's an important thing for us here in Ontario. But, yes, just playing around with those kinds of new flavours and definitely making mistakes along the way. I mean, there's definitely places where I've put in too much acid out of fear of botulism and just had jams that have been incredibly tart and sour or putting far too much salt in a brine for my pickles. But, you know, you kind of learn as you go and make those changes moving forward.

MG: Johanna, just before we let you go, if there's somebody who they have this enormous garden or a small garden, that they have too much stuff to eat right now. Maybe it's tomatoes, maybe it's cucumbers and they want to put some of this up. What's the first step if somebody is going to be getting into this world for the first time?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: I see that you don't have to take the whole weekend and you don't have to do all 100 pounds. Start with single jars. Make one or two jars. Something that you can be really proud of, a precious. Start there. You'll catch on pretty quick. That jar is going to disappear really fast.

MG: Ana, for you. What's your advice for getting into this in the first half?

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: You know, I say start with flavours. You like flavours you know you love and start, you know, as as Johwanna mentioned, start small. Just make a little bit. Get a little basket of peaches, a basket of cucumbers, something that you know you'll like. Something you know you'll eat, and start there.

MG: And when we're in the depths of winter and perhaps as the pandemic continues, you'll be thankful that you actually took those steps.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Absolutely.

MG: It's great to talk to you both. Good luck and thank you.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Thank you.

MG: Ana Stoica-Constantin is a beginner canner in Parry Sound, Ontario. Johwanna Alleyne is the owner of Mojo Jojo Pickles in Edmonton. Are you canning for the first time? Tell us what you're putting up this season. Maybe you are a prize winning pickle maker and you've been able to find mason jars. Let us know what you're putting in those mason jars. If you can't find them, let us know what you're doing to cope. This has been a great season for gardening in my part of the country. Perhaps it has been for you as well. Let us know what you're putting up for winter. You can reach us on email thecurrent@cbc.ca, tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, or head to the Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. That is it for The Current four today. Q is up next on CBC Radio one. In the spirit of a road trip and with canned goodies on the brain, we felt it fitting to go out on this. Peaches have been excellent this year. This is Peaches by the Presidents of the United States of America. I Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. Talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Wednesday September 23, 2020 Transcript

More Stories Like This