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The Current Transcript for March 02, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

WOMAN#2: If we don't have the wood burning all the time, it will get cold in there pretty quick because there's only one plywood for the floor.

MATT GALLOWAY: Spring is coming, but not soon enough for residents in a northern Ontario First Nation forced to camp outside in minus-40 degree weather. We'll hear why. We begin, though, with the Globe and Mail's Andre Picard, and his new book on Canada's continued failings to protect our elders in long-term care. Will this time be any different? Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is "The Current".

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André Picard on need for philosophical change in elder care

Guest: Andre Picard

MATT GALLOWAY: Last spring, at the start of this pandemic, a disturbing and shocking picture emerged, elderly Canadians living in long-term care were dying in alarming numbers, but it was more than the numbers. The conditions in the homes were often abysmal as well. When the military was sent in to facilities in Quebec and Ontario, they documented filth, force feeding, cockroaches, abuse and patients left in soiled diapers for hours. Here's Ontario's Premier Doug Ford in May of last year.

DOUG FORD: I think it's appalling. I think it's disgusting what has happened. Just the dignity of these patients in long-term care not being cleaned. It's so disturbing. When I read this, it was hard to get through. It was the worst report, most heart-wrenching report I have ever read in my entire life.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andre Picard knows that suffering all too well. As the Globe and Mail's health columnist, he has covered the crisis in long-term care during this pandemic and long before. And like millions across Canada, he's also felt it personally. Andre Picard's new book is "Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic". Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: I want to talk about the book in just a moment, but we are just coming up on a year of this pandemic. Where do you think we're at in the course of our journey, if I can put it that way, through COVID-19?

ANDRE PICARD: We're at a really important point where there's a lot of hope on the horizon, but there's also these potential dark clouds. You know, there's the variants. There's the people slacking off once they see people getting vaccinated. So we're at this point where we really have a chance to finally get control of the pandemic, but where we also have the risk of losing control again and seeing another wave, which I think would be even more devastating. We know that each subsequent wave is worse for a whole bunch of reasons.

MATT GALLOWAY: There has been so much angst and hand-wringing about the rollout when it comes to vaccines not coming fast enough. Are the systems in place to ensure that people can get the vaccines? It opens up in Alberta, and the website crashes. People can't get through. What do you make of how the vaccines have been rolled out now that they are starting to arrive?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, it's been painful. Let's be honest, it's been difficult. But the fact that the websites are crashing, it's kind of a good sign. It shows that people understand the importance of vaccination, and they want it. And those are good things. But we have to have a little bit of patience. We have to recognize that the whole world wants these vaccines that Canadians want, too. And it's going to come slowly. We're going to have to take our turn, and we're going to have to be patient. And none of those things are easy after a year being locked up.

MATT GALLOWAY: We've been talking on the program about how to prioritize who gets the vaccinations first, who's at the top of that queue? And obviously, age is a huge concern. But there are many other groups who are saying that you need to look at those who are on the front line if I can put it that way. Restaurant workers, people working in grocery stores, obviously those working in hospitals with patients, but also teachers, for example. How should that be worked out? How do we go about figuring out who should be at the front of the queue?

ANDRE PICARD: It's never going to be done right. Let's be honest. We can't please everyone. I think you have to do the simplest way. And I think that's going by age. And the other solution, of course, is the more vaccines we have, the fewer of these discussions we have to have. But I think practically, we have to look at who has been harmed the most, who's most at risk? And that's almost strictly age-based.

MATT GALLOWAY: As we start to stand back and look at what we have learned over the course of the last year, one of the real reckonings that we have had, obviously, is what unfolded in long-term care, how surprised were you to find out what was going on in long-term care homes over the course of this pandemic?

ANDRE PICARD: Sadly, I wasn't particularly surprised. I was appalled. I was shocked, but I wasn't surprised. You know, we had created this perfect storm of conditions for the spread of the coronavirus, a respiratory virus. You know, the most shocking thing is how we didn't raise the ramparts immediately back in January, February. Because anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge about infectious disease or nursing homes would know that these are sitting ducks.

MATT GALLOWAY: Some of the reckoning is already happening. In Ontario, there's a commission in that province looking at what unfolded in long-term care. Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer of health, says in many ways he was caught unawares by this.

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, sort of a story that gets played over and over again. You know, we had these wonderful reports about SARS in 2003. You could literally take those reports and change the dates and change the numbers, and we could republish them. We have learned virtually nothing. So why was he shocked? Well, I guess he didn't read his SARS reports. I just can't explain it.

MATT GALLOWAY: In Quebec, the coroner has postponed an inquiry into a long-term care home where more than 40 residents died of COVID-19. There's the consideration perhaps of laying charges against the owners once that inquiry is back. What do you think will be revealed there?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think we'll just have the same revelations that we always get that these homes were unprepared. They're understaffed. The infrastructure is poor. The ownership was totally out of their depth. So all the things we know over and over again just get repeated in inquiries. I, for one, am sick of reading these reports because they all say the same thing, they all have the same conclusions, and we don't really act on them. So at some point,, we have to stop studying, and we have to start acting.

MATT GALLOWAY: You say in the book that COVID didn't break the long-term care system. It exposed a system that was already broken. What did COVID reveal about the state of long-term care in this country?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I think COVID revealed decades and decades of neglect. It revealed ageism. It revealed that we don't really take older people seriously. We do see them as disposable. And then this virus just got in there and just showed how disposable they were.

André Picard on need for philosophical change in elder care That's a really bracing statement to make that... that in some ways, our society sees older people as disposable. I mean, again, in this... in the book, you say the real villain is society's profound and longstanding neglect of our elders. What's going on there? I mean, why and how could we possibly think that?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it's... it boggles the mind. Sometimes when I was working on this, I was like, how did we ever get to this, you know? I think there's some historical reasons. We have to understand these homes have their origins in the penal system, in the jail system. These were workhouses. Until the 1960s, people had to work for their keep. I think some of it is just our society revolves around money, around the economy. Once you stop working, you become a burden. You become a cost. And that's how we treat older people. We tend to forget that they've paid in for half a century of work, and their long-term care should be essentially cashing in on your insurance. Now, the other aspect is that long-term care is not part of our health system. It's something just sort of sitting off on the side, making us uncomfortable. And ultimately, you know, we talked about neglect. We talk about ageism. I call it in the book "Elder Apartheid". Once people get old and rickety, we put them off in these homes, out of sight, out of mind, go there to die. We don't want to know anything about you.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the face of what was unfolding in the long-term care homes in this pandemic. You made a suggestion on this program and elsewhere that I think a lot of people perhaps thought was controversial at the time, saying that Canadian families, if they have a loved one in long-term care, that they should get that loved one out of the long term care home if they could, at least during this pandemic. Do you still stand by that?

ANDRE PICARD: Absolutely. I think the only regret I have is not having said it a few weeks earlier, to be honest. All the writing was on the wall in January, February about what was coming. And I could see that nothing was being done. And that... that was the reality. The reality is you should have tried to get your loved one out if you could. Now, the reality is most people couldn't. That's why they're there in the first place. But I think it had to be stated in those stark terms just to underscore just how bad things were at that point.

MATT GALLOWAY: What did you hear from family members in the wake of that comment?

ANDRE PICARD: It got a mixed reaction, like many things I write. A lot of people were very, very angry. How dare you guilt me! Nobody wants their loved one to be there in the first place. They feel guilty. I've lived this, but there is also this recognition that, yeah, you're right, I recognize how bad it is, but I don't know what to do? I'm powerless. I don't have the ability to care at home for my loved one. And that's a fundamental problem of the system, is people end up there by default because we don't have adequate home care, we don't have supportive housing, we don't have affordable housing. There's all these policy reasons that people end up in the wrong place, and family members live this, and they feel the guilt of it every single day.

MATT GALLOWAY: You write about this, but this is also personal for you. And I don't know how comfortable you are in talking about your own situation, but your father-in-law was in a nursing home. What happened last year?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, so I'm an old-school journalist. I don't tend to write first-person pieces, [chuckle] but yeah, I did talk about my father-in-law on Twitter. Very healthy man, 88-year-old, living in not in a long-term care home, but in a residence for seniors. So very independent, played tennis three times a week, played bridge, went to church every day. Then the lockdown came, lockdown in March. In July, he died. We kind of in the family say he died of a broken heart. He died of loneliness, of being inactive. You know, we forget that collateral damage that happened to a lot of people, that locking out of families was really, really devastating.

MATT GALLOWAY: I'm sorry for what your family has gone through. What was it like for you to see... to see that unfold?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it was horrible, you know, and I... my family didn't suffer any more than others. Many suffered much, much more. We take some comfort in knowing that he died quickly. He had his lunch and went and sat down and died of a heart attack. If you're going to go, maybe that's the way to go. But many people just could see their family members only by Skype, or you didn't do it at all. That's way, way worse. You know, the horrors that people injured during this, I don't think we'll ever fully understand. Hundreds of thousands of people went through this.

MATT GALLOWAY: We are learning more. And I mean, again, it's to our detriment that perhaps we didn't know enough about them before a crisis like this struck. But we're learning more about the individuals who are engaged in long-term care. And one of them that you introduce us to in the book is Josephine Marquez, personal support worker. Why did you want to talk about Josephine's role?

ANDRE PICARD: The personal support workers are so essential. They help people with all the activities of daily living and all the hands-on stuff, and they're taken for granted. They're underpaid. They're overworked. This is really demanding work. Ninety per cent of that work is done by women. Almost three-quarters are immigrants or refugees - so very racialized populations. And Josephine is an example of, you know, in long-term care, there's a lot of turnover. A lot of workers come and go because it's horrible work. But she's one of the lifers. So about a third of the personal support workers are there for decades. So she has been doing this forever. And I want to tell her story as an example of how the.... the profession has unravelled over time. So she gets paid less today than she did 25 years ago because wages have come down. Her workload has doubled. The patients she cares for are very different. And yet, she's still very, very dedicated. So I want to tell the story of the mistreatment of workers through the the eyes of one worker who still loves what she does, but, you know, just is frustrated by how she's treated.

MATT GALLOWAY: How does that happen? I mean, again, it goes back to the idea of value and what we value in our society? How does it happen that the salaries of PSW have declined?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, it's what we value. It's who we value. You know, this pandemic in nursing homes has been this intersection of of racism, of sexism and ageism. It's been this perfect storm of all of those things. And, you know, it's racialized women caring for older people. Well, a triple ability to neglect and ignore. That... that's what we see.

MATT GALLOWAY: Eldercare is not cheap in this country. It's often very expensive if you're looking at housing a loved one in in a long-term care facility. So how do we square that? That... that... that it's expensive, but that the people who are there on the front lines doing that incredibly important work aren't making enough to make ends meet. And so they have to move from home to home, which then ends up, as we know, spreading COVID around.

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, the money part of the equation is really difficult for people to understand. You can pay $2,000... up to 15,000 dollars a month. Most of that is for accommodation. And then the... the care portion is provided largely by government. And they're cheap. That's the reality. You get 180 dollars a day to care for a person in a home. That's the allocation to a home. And it's enough to pay a couple of hours of hands on-care, and people need a lot more. So I think we confuse that... that cost as thinking that we're paying for more care, but we're actually paying landlords for a pretty crappy accommodation in many instances.

MATT GALLOWAY: Would this change if you were to eliminate the for-profit care? This has been a lively debate. Would that change that equation, do you think?

ANDRE PICARD: You know, this is a complicated debate. We could spend an hour talking about this one. But I think the short answer is it's a simplistic solution to a complicated problem. I don't think we need for-profit care. It doesn't make things better. But I also don't think we could eliminate it overnight. It's there for a reason. It's there because governments refuse to invest in infrastructure. It's there because we don't care about the sector. And it's really dominant. So, you know, two-thirds of homes almost in Ontario are for-profit. You can't get rid of them overnight, but you can regulate better. You can improve the budgets. You know, a for-profit care and a not-for-profit home get the exact same allocation from government. The focus should be more on getting rid of what are essentially some slum landlords. There's a lot of landlords in this business who they don't really care about the care portion. They care about making money. Those are the ones we have to get rid of.

MATT GALLOWAY: So then how do you go about, as you say, fixing the system? At the beginning of the book, you say, let's fix the damn system. So given what you have seen and the fact that history keeps repeating itself again and again and again, what do we start to do to try to address the systemic issues that are in place?

ANDRE PICARD: To me, the starting point has to be philosophical. You have to have a philosophy that elders matter. Living in the community matters. And after that, once you have a political philosophy, then everything else is pretty, just, well, just doing it. It's putting into action those policies on a practical level. So don't make long-term care the default setting. Make a living at home the default setting. And then you address the practical reason. So I think where you start is you start where the biggest problems exist, and that's staffing. So we need standards of care. So you ensure that people who are in homes and people who get home care get a minimum of four hours of care every day. You know, we know that the conditions of work are the conditions of care. If workers are not treated well, they will never be able to deliver good care. So start with the workers. Then on the home side, fix the infrastructure, stop building prison-like facilities with 200, 300 beds, and put people in home-like settings. It's not much more expensive, and it's much more humane.

MATT GALLOWAY: And again, it goes back to that issue of value. Do you have to inject enormous amounts of money into the system to try to right the ship?

ANDRE PICARD: I think the answer to that is twofold. One is, yes, we have to spend more money after decades and decades of neglect, especially on staffing, to ensure that the hands-on care is there. But the other part of the equation is that we spend a lot of money now on mediocre care. If we spend that money differently, if we ensure that we get value, we can do a lot more with the money we have now. So I don't think we need countless money pouring in to fix this. We could do a lot with the budgets we have now if we spend them differently. So this argument that, oh, we can't have home care, it's too expensive, we can't expand care, you know, we can't have subsidized housing. It's expensive. Those things aren't true. We spend so much now on things that people don't want and don't need. If we spend differently, that would be a big, big start.

MATT GALLOWAY: One of the things people don't want is to go into long-term care at all. Generally, people want to age in place, as the phrase says. People point to Denmark as an example. What's happening abroad that would give us some degree of inspiration about how we could do this better?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah. So Denmark is kind of the gold standard that everyone points to. And what do they do? They just had this philosophy, in the 1980s, they just... they saw the ageing coming. You know, this is no surprise that boomers were going to age. We kind of sat on our hands, but they said, oh, we're going to deal with this and we're going to have a philosophy that people are going to stay at home no matter what until it's absolutely unable to do so. So that's what they do. So investments in homecare, building care, homes that are very homelike, et cetera, what they've proven is it's... it's doable, it's affordable and it's more humane. The money argument goes out the window if you look at Denmark. Their system is cheaper overall than ours, and the care is superb.

MATT GALLOWAY: How is it cheaper overall?

ANDRE PICARD: Just look at the per capita spending. Canada spends more on... on health care than Denmark. And Denmark has a much wider array of services that it provides. Homecare, long-term care, a part of their public system. There's a continuity to it. You know, in Canada, you get your free hospital, you get your free doctor. Once you need to be in a home, you fall off a cliff, suddenly, you have to pay your 2,000 or 5,000 dollars a month. There's no logic in what we fund and what we don't fund in medicare.

MATT GALLOWAY: Knowing that there are 150 different reports that have laid out a lot of the steps that we need to take, is your sense that the will is there to do this?

ANDRE PICARD: I think the will is there. I think the question is, can we make it a priority? There's a will to do lots of things. And in Canada, we have difficulty making choices. We have very short memories. So I guess my biggest fear is we'll just forget what happened in lon-term care. You know, our older people are already cast aside. They're in these homes. They're forgettable, and... and we'll forget them. But I think, you know, ultimately we have to we have to give life to our values. That's what politics and social policy should be all about.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just two final things. One is, in writing a book like this, but in doing this work, personally, how does... how does something that this affect you?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you know, I'm no spring chicken, so I know what's coming. And I want the care to be better for me. I don't want to have the same mediocre care that my parents had. I don't want my children to have to give up their lives and their careers to care for me because the system's inadequate. So all of this should be very personal for all of us. All of us are going to benefit from this. None of us can afford to ignore this because we're all going there.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andre, great pleasure to talk to you, as always. Thank you very much.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: André Picard is the Global Mail's health columnist, and the author of "Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic". You're welcome to comment on what Andre said. You can reach us through email: thecurrent@cbc.ca. The CBC News is next. And then,.

WOMAN: I could pick up an onion and take a bite of it, and it could have been an apple.

MATT GALLOWAY: It is a common COVID-19 symptom, losing your sense of smell or taste. We'll talk about what that means if your livelihood requires both of those senses. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". We're back in about six minutes time. Stay with us.

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Chefs and food writers lose taste and smell from COVID-19

Guests: Jenni Lessard, Suriya Bala, Justin Burke, Barry Smith

MATT GALLOWAY: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And you're listening to "The Current".

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MATT GALLOWAY: Still to come, with housing in short supply, people in a remote northern Ontario First Nation have been living in tents all winter long. We'll talk about what it'll take to get the housing they need built. But first, imagine you're a chef, but you can't smell or taste anything you're cooking.

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MATT GALLOWAY: Picture this, you spend hours making a delicious meal. The steam is wafting up from your plate, but it smells like [pause] nothing at all. You take a bite, there's no taste either. This is what it's like for some people with COVID-19. And those symptoms, it turns out, can last a long time. It's bad news for anyone who makes a living working with food. Jenni Lassard is a chef and culinary consultant. Suriya Bala is a food and wine writer and a sommelier. And Justin Burke is a pastry chef, food writer and recipe developer. Good morning to you all.

ALL: Good morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: Suriya, how did you first notice that you could not taste anything?

SURIYA BALA: It took a while. I know that sounds kind of silly, but when you get COVID, and you're in the midst of it, and you have those intense headaches and the nausea and the constant body fatigue, you lose your scent and your taste. But it's the last thing you sort of think about because your body's in such physical distress. I think it was as I started to recover, probably like three or four weeks in, that I started to think, hold on, these other symptoms are starting to fade away. But the scent and the taste that was lost was still there.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about for you, Jenni? I mean, was there one moment when you realized I can't taste anything?

JENNI LASSARD: The day before we went to get tested. But I was having my morning coffee and it was just black, hot, bitter water. Then I went round to the fridge and started [laughing] doing a smell test on blue cheese versus brie. And I could always taste the five basic senses salty, bitter, sweet, umami. But I couldn't taste any of the nuances at all. And then I thought, OK, the test is going to come back positive.

MATT GALLOWAY: Justin, what about for you?

JUSTIN BURKE: Oh, gosh! I mean, I got COVID pretty badly. So the first week, I was pretty much unconscious, so I wasn't aware [chuckling] that I couldn't taste or smell. Yeah. And then slowly, when I started to recover, I just didn't really think much about it. But it wasn't until probably two or three weeks in, my boyfriend cooked dinner for me because I was ready to eat something other than broth or buttered noodles and rice. And so he like made steak and roasted squash and garlic rice, and everything just tasted so not like food. The steak tasted very metallic like I had just licked the side of a car. The cooked squash tasted... and it's so gross, but the only way I can describe it is like rotting flesh. And then I picked up nothing from the rice, no garlic, no nothing. I, at that point, was so mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted from the case of COVID I had that I just broke down and started crying. And I was like, I... [chuckling] I don't understand. Like, I'm... I'm negative for COVID. And, at this point, no one was really talking about folks having, like, long-hauler symptoms.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

JUSTIN BURKE: Or lingering symptoms. So I was just so very confused. And I pretty much just thought my career, the life that I know, was completely over. It was really tough.

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, and you've all... you all have the perspective saying that, you know, in the grand scheme of things, and, I mean, Justin was unconscious, as he said at the beginning of this. In the grand scheme of things, maybe, you know, your sense of smell or sense of taste is not the biggest concern, but it's a huge part of who we are, but also, what you do for a living. Suriya, how concerned were you that this would drag on for a long time?

SURIYA BALA: Wow! I mean, the impact of it was overwhelming on both a personal and professional level. Personally, losing your scent, it can be life-changing, and especially if you don't know if it's going to come back or when it's going to come back. I think very few people really understand the dire impact unless they suffer it themselves. It's kind of like listening to one of your favourite songs, but like with the volume turned right down, you just miss the small details or the nuances of your favourite food or a life in general. I think it sounds trivial, but smell and taste, it creates connection and memories, right? Professionally, to be honest, I don't know if I'd be speaking with you today if I wasn't 90 per cent better. I think it could be a complete hiller for people whose career depends upon smell and taste and all of that sort of stuff. People don't necessarily want to hear from a sommelier or a writer who can't actually taste. So, yeah, I had a huge, huge fear that this could not just impact me personally, but professionally.

MATT GALLOWAY: And Justin, you thought your career was toast after this? Like, you thought when this was happening that... that your job was done?

JUSTIN BURKE: Yeah, when the pandemic started, I was working the most that I've had in the past two years. So many publications were looking for simple at-home recipes, budget-friendly, being resourceful because no one really understood where we were going in the pandemic. So I was producing five, eight recipes a week for local and national publication. And then I got COVID and lost my sense of taste and smell among all the other symptoms. And I just thought. Where do I go from here? Like, what... what do I do? This has been my career for 10-plus years. I don't know what would make me happy. And I was falling into the darkest, deepest level of depression I had ever experienced in my life. And I was lost, completely just lost of what to do.

MATT GALLOWAY: Jenni, does that sound familiar? I mean, part of this is professional, but it's also just going into a kitchen and making food for yourself or for somebody else. And if you can't smell and you can't taste, presumably that affects, you know, the domestic production of food.

JENNI LASSARD: Oh, it does. And I had just transitioned from being an executive chef to doing recipe development at home just because of the pandemic and some personal reasons. And I was so excited. I was about to get started on a recipe project for a health care organization specializing in children's food. And I had to call them the beginning of January and say I can't. Like, I was also way too ill to be up and around, but also, I can't taste. And just how are they going to react to that? Are they going to wait and trust and hope that you get better, which they did. And I remember at one point, the only time I cried starting in the shower, washing my hair, couldn't know anything, couldn't sell my shampoo, and I just broke down in tears. It's hard to describe just making a meal, biting in, and there's nothing. Like a beat is just like a little red block of nothing.

MATT GALLOWAY: I was going to say, like, what were you eating? When you couldn't smell or taste things, like what were you eating?

JENNI LASSARD: Well, at first you're not trying to eat anything kind of that had flavour because you're so sick. So we were eating ramen noodles and buttered plain noodles and oatmeal, which doesn't have a whole lot of flavour and taste. But for the first five days, I could taste fine. And then it's just like a light went out. My smelllevator didn't go further than the... well, it wouldn't even start. It wasn't even on the first floor. And now, I feel it's about maybe on the third from the top.

MATT GALLOWAY: Smellevator, I love that. Suriya, when you couldn't taste anything, what would you focus on in a meal?

SURIYA BALA: I think it comes down to texture then. [laughing] It sounds so silly, but I said, when you lose your scent, I mean, I think like Jenni, I still had my taste. So, you know, I had so sweet, sour, salty, umami, but flavour, that's really what you're missing. So that's when taste and scent combine at the back of your throat. And that's those nuances that make food delicious. And so when that's gone, you're just left with something that you want to taste really salty so you can taste it, or really sweet. And then I'd be looking at texture, so like really melty sweet chocolates or, I don't know, crunchy, salty popcorn just so I could feel that I was engaged in food again. And you're trying to, like, scramble to get some of that joy that, you know, filled your life beforehand. And I know it sounds really again extreme because I'm so cognizant of people who are losing their lives and all of that sort of stuff. But I guess in a real primal, selfish level, as a human, as an animal, as we are, you want to be able to also have that enjoyment and that passion in life. And it's a... it's a tough thing.

MATT GALLOWAY: I've heard people, I mean, in similar situations, describe having kind of like phantom smells. Did that happen, Suriya?

JENNI LASSARD: Oh yes! Yes!

MATT GALLOWAY: Oh, Jenni, you've had those, too?

SURIYA BALA: Yeah.

JENNI LASSARD: Yeah. It's actually... I'm on a help board called COVID-19 Smell and Taste Loss, and it's actually a good sign --

SURIYA BALA: That's amazing!

JENNI LASSARD: That your taste might be coming back or your smell, but mine is are you ready for this? It's dirt, moulding leather and cigar smoke and it just kind of resides in the top back of my nose all the time.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do you know where that comes from? Like, is that some specific memory?

JENNI LASSARD: No. [laughing].

MATT GALLOWAY: Or that's just... that's the thing that's just hanging around?

JENNI LASSARD: It's just hanging around. [laughing].

MATT GALLOWAY: Justin, for you? Like, is there some sort of phantom smell that you have?

JUSTIN BURKE: So I always smell like wet I guess some garden dirt. To me, when I smell it, it... it smells rich in nutrients and it smells like a garden. And I don't know if that's just my brain saying like that's related to food. So it should make you happy. And you like being out in the yard and gardening, [chuckle] But yeah, like, I'll walk into Target and I'm like, wow, it smells like a garden in here. But I know that's not true.

MATT GALLOWAY: And for you, Suriya?

SURIYA BALA: It's really hard to describe it because I've never smelt anything that putrid or foul before. it was sort of farmyard and metallic and musty. It was really a repulsive smell. But it's... it's so bizarre because there's so little data on this sort of stuff, right? When it's happening to you and you haven't done research and you haven't... you don't understand that other people are sort of experiencing this phenomena, it's scary. And it's it's also pretty disgusting to have to deal with. [chuckle].

MATT GALLOWAY: Yeah. Do you remember what you were eating when you can suddenly taste it again, Suriya?

SURIYA BALA: Gosh! [laughing] I wish I had.... I wish I had an amazing moment to tell you about. You know, and I lifted up this block of cheese! [Matt laughs] Sadly, it's it's nothing like that. It's kind of gradual. Like, I'm probably around 90 per cent now.

MATT GALLOWAY: Justin, has it been like that for you, or have there been moments where suddenly scent or taste suddenly re-emerges after being dormant for some time?

JUSTIN BURKE: It wasn't until, you know, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, you know, we ordered Chinese takeout because ordering Chinese takeout makes me happy. I wasn't really interested in what we were going to eat. And I was eating sesame chicken, And normally that's a little bit sweeter, you know? But I was like, wow, this is really spicy! I don't understand what's happening. But it was one I ate the egg roll that I was just like, this thing is so spicy. This is... like, my mouth is on fire. This is not a normal egg roll. I asked my boyfriend. I was like, will you taste it? And he was like, no, this is just a plain normal egg roll. And it was that moment that I realized I was tasting everything all at once.

MATT GALLOWAY: Wow!

JUSTIN BURKE: My palate and my brain, everything was on overdrive, like sensory overload. It's been very interesting because, you know, I tell people I'm tasting for the first time a second time. I had an old-fashioned the other day, and I just, you know, went for like a big drink, like I normally would. But when I did that, bourbon hit me so hard. It was like I was an 18-year-old drinking for the first time. It's been very jarring to the system.

MATT GALLOWAY: Jenni, you mentioned the smell of water is on which floor now.

JENNI LASSARD: Well, if it was a 20-story building, I think I'd be on about 18.

MATT GALLOWAY: Eighteen. I want you to take a listen to Joke Boon, who is in Amsterdam. She has anosmia, hasn't been able to smell or taste since she was four years old and is also, it turns out, the author of a cookbook.

JOKE BOON: When you can't smell, what makes a meal very delicious is the colour, the structure, the temperature, different spices. Food can also have a sound if you listen to it. Chewing on a nut like a chestnut or a walnut sounds different in your head than a carrot. And if you listen to it, it makes the food interesting. You have to develop a new way of experience your foods.

MATT GALLOWAY: Suriya, have you had to learn, as Joke Boon says, I mean, in some ways a different way to appreciate food now?

SURIYA BALA: I mean, first of all, what she said was really beautiful. I'm... I reckon I'm around 90 per cent. I... how to appreciate it in a different way? I guess I'm just still hoping to get that 10 per cent back [chuckle]. I want to be able to smell fresh strawberries, really fresh. I want to be able to smell and taste butter on hot bread. I want to smell my partner's hair, those sort of things. I think one of the things that I'm really worried about is will I even forget what it's like to have pure smell and pure taste? Because when you've kind of stagnated for so long, I think it's incredible what the body will get used to and endure, you know, when it's under pressure. And I think to myself, will I even recognize it? Will I recognize it when it comes, or is this it? Was this it? But, hopefully, when it comes, like it did for Justin, I'll also be floored by an old-fashioned.

MATT GALLOWAY: Aside from the old-fashioned, Justin, I mean, is there something else that you hope, you know, shows that... that this is behind you and that you can experience... again, we think of... we almost take it for granted, in some ways, the ability to smell and taste until it disappears.

JUSTIN BURKE: Yeah. Right now, when I'm eating food, it's as if my brain, because I have a trained palate in my mind, in my chef brain. It dissects the entire meal. I don't even enjoy the full bite, the composed dish. My brain is breaking down everything that's in it. To me, I would just love to get to a point where I take one bite, and I'm like, wow, this is amazing chicken and dumplings. But for right now, I'm like, oh, I'm eating the ingredients, not the meal.

MATT GALLOWAY: Does it feel like that, Jenni? I mean, are you feeling as though you have a new appreciation for something that maybe you took for granted in the past?

JENNI LASSARD: I think I'm way more focused on what the food can bring to my body than how it tastes. But the first thing that I could fully taste again, I think, was a bisson the meatball. And bisson doesn't have an overly strong flavour. But I'd put some dried saskatoons in it that I had harvested this summer and had little hint of garlic. And I just remember absorbing that all and thinking that animal is going to nourish me whether I can taste it or not. And as a Metis person, and someone whose ancestors forage from the land and hunted on the land, that was a really humbling moment to me. That, Jenni, it doesn't matter how many tiny dots you put on a plate or whether the essence of pear wafts from your cranberry pear applesauce in the fall. Like, you're eating food that's on this land to nourish you. Enjoy it and be thankful.

MATT GALLOWAY: I'm glad that you're all on the road to recovery. It's been a long, really difficult year for so many people. And what you've gone through has been tough. But your perspective on this and the way that you think about this is really, really quite something. Thank you all for speaking to us this morning.

ALL: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Jenni Lassard is a chef and culinary consultant in Lumsden, Saskatchewan. Justin Burke, pastry chef and food writer in Columbia, South Carolina. And Suriya Bala is a food and wine writer currently in Australia. There is a lot we don't know about how COVID-19 affects our sense of smell, but experts are on the case. Barry Smith is the U.K. lead of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research. It's a group of researchers, patients and doctors from 40 different countries studying COVID-19's impacts on smell and taste. He's also professor of philosophy and the founding director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. Barry, hello to you.

BARRY SMITH: Hello.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do you make... what do you make of what you've just heard from from our three guests there? What's going on that they would lose their sense of taste and smell so dramatically after being diagnosed with COVID?

BARRY SMITH: Well, I thought they were really great advocates of exactly how profound the experience is of losing your taste and smell, particularly losing your sense of smell. They're food and wine professionals. But the fact is that people don't notice their sense of smell. They don't pay much attention to it. And it's one of those senses that you don't know what it's... what it is until it's gone. And people then realize not only can't they taste their food, they can't smell their partner. When they go out for a walk, they don't get fresh... freshly cut grass. They don't get the smell of the woods. They don't get woodsmoke. But... but also, they realize that almost every dimension of their experience smell was sewn into it, but it wasn't noticed. We smell because we breathe. It's constantly on, and it's giving us information about our surroundings, people, places and things that we know. And I think a lot of people, when they lost their sense of smell so suddenly with COVID, they often use the very same descriptions. They say I feel cut off from my surroundings. It's as if I'm behind glass. So I think that gives you a sense of how profound it is.

MATT GALLOWAY: What does the science tell us about what's happening? I mean, the connection between COVID and and the loss of smell and taste?

BARRY SMITH: So we know that one of the major infection sites is the nose. This is a good reason for us still wearing masks if we're around potential sources of infection. The coronavirus binds to ACE-2 cells. Now they're in the nose, but they're not in your olfactory receptors. They're in these supporting cells called sustentacular cells. And they they house the little hairs in the moist mucus membrane that... that recruit the odour molecules and attract them into the receptors to bind them. Now, when they are damaged, it's as if you just can't get the molecules into the receptors. So we lose our sense of smell. Now, two things were really striking to me about this particular form of anosmia. One, it was very sudden. There were an awful lot of doctors who are dealing with COVID patients who suddenly reported they they had lost the sense of smell. And the second thing is that it often comes without any nasal blockage. So that tells you it's not like flu or cold. You seem to be able to breathe in. It's all OK. And yet, nothing is... Nothing is happening. Now, some people are very lucky. After two weeks or so, two to three weeks, their sense of smell returns, not all at once, bit by bit, some smells, some odours first, and then others. But the people we've just been listening to, they were profoundly affected. It meant that they can't taste their food. Now, we say taste, but as most of them mentioned, it was really the loss of smell that was taking away flavour. Most of them could still get salt, sweet, sour, bitter, savoury from the tongue. But that's all you can get, you know, mango, melon, strawberry chicken, all of those things. You don't have, you know, mango receptors on your tongue. That's all coming from your sense of smell. So take that away, and the food will be very, very bland.

MATT GALLOWAY: What about those phantom smells that they were talking about? I mean, Suriya talked about, you know, smelling these awful, putrid scents. And that that wasn't there in real life, but it just kept wafting through her nose. What's going on there?

BARRY SMITH: The answer is we don't really know, but we're still we're still on the case. And there's a tremendous amount of an upsurge, as you can imagine, of scientific research. But if you... if the brain doesn't get input signals from its remote sensors, it sometimes sends messages back and stimulates that activity and they get stuck as if on a single frequency, and they're unable to shift. Now, Justin was describing. And I think Suriya had some, too, this was the case of parosmia. Now, parosmia is really interesting because an awful lot of the people who've had a loss of smell, they seem to get their sense of smell back, then there's a gap and then they they start to develop this distorted sense of smell. So what's going on there is interesting because it is a good sign. And I would just try to reassure Justin a little. When you have parosmia, it is a sign of regeneration of the olfactory neurones. Now, they're starting to... to be active again, but it's almost as if they're rewired in the wrong way. You're putting them... connecting them to the wrong ports. So... so things are not smelling as they should. But the puzzle for us is why is it so many of these smells are unpleasant? It made us wonder. And it led to my collaborator and colleague, Dr Jane Parker from University of Reading, who's a food chemist. She found by bringing people into the lab between lockdowns, she was able to put their nose in a port, used gas chromatography to pull off different parts of the orders of coffee and of roasted meat and so on, bit by bit. And she found out there's a group of sulphur compounds, there's a group of pyroxenes. There's a there's certain things that are triggering it. So we know this is not a random reconnection problem. So this is where patients and sensory scientists are starting to give us some clues that might lead us to the mechanism for parosmia.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just before I let you go, two final things. One is how long can these things last? And is there anything in terms of treatments that would be available for people who are experiencing a long-term loss of smell?

BARRY SMITH: So when people lose the smell and nothing is happening during the phase of anosmia, we know that they should try smell training. So smell training is where you get for essential oils. The classic ones are lemon, clove, eucalyptus and rose. And you smell them first thing in the morning, last thing at night. You smell them as often as you can. Quite often, people will say, I'm not getting anything, but they should keep going because this helps to regenerate the pathways, the connections between the the regenerated receptors in the brain. And we know that people recover more and the numbers are good that people recover more quickly by doing smell training. And we have noticed in the literature and in our patient groups that as people no longer just have one nasty parosmia smell, chemical smell or burn smell, but they start to break it down into a number of different smells. Those discriminations are where they're starting to get back into regular, a normal smell. And one thing I'll just tell you before I leave, since none of the the guests mentioned it, is that while many food items smell disgusting, we have found out from nearly all our patients that the smell of faeces is actually surprisingly pleasant. So, you know, nobody's going to want to eat things that... that smell rotten or disgusting. But equally, why should it be that these usually unpleasant smells have flipped over and become pleasant? We still need to figure that out.

MATT GALLOWAY: This is fascinating. Barry, a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

BARRY SMITH: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Barry Smith is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. We have learned a lot about COVID in the last year. Next week, we mark one year since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. And we'll take an in-depth look at how COVID has hit Canadians and transformed so many aspects of life in this country. That's coming up next week on the program. Well, coming up after your regional update, how temporary summer housing in a remote First Nation became permanent shelter through the dead of winter. And also, why Saudi dissidents in Canada have cause for concern. We'll talk about what's going on in this country, connections back with Saudi Arabia and what people are looking for governments here and in the United States to do in light of that. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to "The Current". Back in 90 seconds.

[Music:Theme]

What a report into journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder means for Saudi Crown Prince MBS; And First Nation housing

Guests: Sarah Dddouch, Ben Hubbard, Sol Mamakwa

MATT GALLOWAY: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to "The Current".

OMAR ABDULAZIZ: They tortured my brothers, my friends, and they were blackmailing me using my own private messages, photos, information.

MATT GALLOWAY: Omar Abdulaziz is familiar with the tactics, he says, the Saudi Arabian regime used to silence him, as he tells The Washington Post.

OMAR ABDULAZIZ: Honestly, it's... it hurts me waking up every morning knowing that not only two of my brothers and a large group of my friends are arrested because of me. But knowing the situation back there in Saudi Arabia about so many thousands of political prisoners, it hurts us, every single day, every single night. It shouldn't be like that.

MATT GALLOWAY: Omar Abdulaziz is a Saudi political activist and dissident now living in Montreal. He was also friends with Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and journalist killed in 2018. The U.S. government released a report last week that found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was at the centre of that plot. And now there's more, a Saudi dissident living in Canada. Ahmed Abdullah al-Harbi has gone back to Saudi Arabia, leaving many questions for activists like Omar Abdulaziz. Sarah Dddouch is a reporter with The Washington Post covering this story. Sarah, hello.

SARAH DDDOUCH: Hi.

MATT GALLOWAY: What do we know about what happened with this Saudi dissident, Ahmed Abdullah al-Harbi?

SARAH DDDOUCH: So, so far, all we know is what his friends have said and what little we can glean from his Twitter accounts. His friends say that he was a student in the States, and he moved to Canada in 2009, where he applied for asylum. And then, he started working with Ahmed and other colleagues and friends. He became part of their, you know, close friends and workgroup. He worked on Ahmed's TV show, which is a YouTube show named after a sentence that Jamal Khashoggi used to say. He also started working as one of his bees, which is a project that involves volunteers who try to combat the flies, the electronics flies that the government has created, which is just groups of trolls that attack anyone who who takes any stance that doesn't... doesn't align with the Saudi government's policies. So Ahmed worked on both of these and in other capacities, stopped working with them recently for... for personal reasons. And then, you know, kept in touch with the group, is very much a part of the front group. And then disappeared for a while, called a few of the friends after he said he went to the embassy. I spoke to two of the people who who spoke to him after the embassy. And we listened to... The Post obtained a recording of one of the conversations with Ahmed and Ahmed, in which he says, I went to the embassy. There has been pressure on my family. There were some implicit threats made about my family. And he said, you know, I've given... I've given names that they've asked me to kind of glean over that. What we know that is that Ahmad disappeared. You know, his friends couldn't.... he left all their groups, their messaging groups. No one could hear from him.

MATT GALLOWAY: Right.

SARAH DDDOUCH: Ahmed raised the alarm on his Twitter in mid-February. And then a couple of days later, a new Twitter account appeared for Ahmed, even though he has one already that was pretty anti-Saudi establishment, the new one has MBS' photo as the cover photo, and it praises the kingdom and... and all the stuff that... that's been happening.

MATT GALLOWAY: Wow! You mentioned the embassy. I mean, this is the embassy in Ottawa that he went to?

SARAH DDDOUCH: Yes.

MATT GALLOWAY: And so do we know... I mean, how or why he ended up going back to Saudi Arabia after visiting the embassy?

SARAH DDDOUCH: What he said after he visited the embassy, he said that his handlers or different people from the embassy tried to convince him to return to Saudi, that they issued him a travel documents. He didn't clarify why. And they issued him a plane ticket, and that they took him to the airport. And then, at the last minute, he said he changed his mind, and he didn't want to go back to Saudi Arabia. And he escaped them and called his friends. And then his friends say he went to the embassy a second time, or it seems that he went to the embassy a second time, after which he disappeared.

MATT GALLOWAY: And then you mentioned this new Twitter handle. I mean, initially, his Twitter page had been very critical of the Saudi regime. And now he has a Twitter page that has the Crown Prince as its cover photo. What did his friends make of that?

SARAH DDDOUCH: They're not sure. It's... I mean, this is all speculation. But I spoke to a lot of his friends, and a lot of them have had people... have had the Saudi government in the past year or so or even before that come to different members of their families and talk to them while they're in Saudi, telling them you need to be, you know, more careful about what your relative says abroad. His friends think that this may be because, you know, the Saudi government may have placed pressure on Ahmed's family, who's back in Saudi. He had some financial problems. So some think that he may have gone to the embassy in order to ask for money because, you know, some Saudi students get different grants while abroad. He knew the danger, and he knew... He knew the profile that Ahmed had. And Ahmed was close in his circle of friends. So it's strange that he would go for... for financial reasons. But they all say he's very close to his family, and he may have gone just because he wanted to see if he could go back to Saudi or, you know, see if there is anything against him.

MATT GALLOWAY: You had suggested that he had perhaps given names. There is concern that maybe he has identified some of the anonymous activists who have been speaking out against Saudi Arabia. What do we know about what he may have said?

SARAH DDDOUCH: In the one recording we heard, we know he definitely spoke about Ahmed. And when Ahmed tried to push to see who else he may have spoken about, he glazed over it. He doesn't name any people. And then the other conversation he had, I've spoke with two other people who spoke to him. And in both those conversations, they pushed to see who he spoke about. And they said that he said, you know, I just... I just spoke about everyone.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's so... I mean, it sounds obvious in some ways, but what is so alarming about that to the dissidents who are here in Canada?

SARAH DDDOUCH: Well, for Ahmed, it's not a major deal. For other people, especially one of the people I spoke to who are anonymous and they never use their names, this is a very big danger for them. They've, you know, made sure that they kind of disappear off of social media. They've made sure their names aren't attached to anything. I mean, one of the people I spoke to is one of, you know Ahmed, who's a very famous dissident, he's one of his closest friends, but he's scrubbed his name clean of everything. And now, he's very, very afraid that they're going to be able to to track him and know what he's been doing now that Ahmed possibly said his name. So that's... that's the fear for a lot of the Saudis in Canada. A lot of them are not very well known, and most of them are not wanted by the Saudi government that they know of. And now they're worried that they have been added to the blacklist.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just finally, I mean, Canadian officials presumably would be asked for comment on this because the story implicates Canada. I mean, if he went to the embassy in Ottawa, what have you heard from Canadian officials?

SARAH DDDOUCH: My colleague spoke to Public Safety Canada, which referred questions about whether Canada would be looking into how Harabi we ended up in Saudi to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which declined to comment. And then we... we tried to figure out if he had sought asylum in Canada. But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said that they couldn't confirm nor deny it for... for privacy reasons.

MATT GALLOWAY: How do you think Canadian officials should respond to this?

SARAH DDDOUCH: It's not... it's not my place to say necessarily. And a lot of this stuff is, you know, the Canadian... Canadian officials, I think, will only respond as much as they can. But they're definitely aware of it, not just the... not just the Canadian authorities in Canada, but also in Saudi Arabia. They were aware of it before I brought up the issue. They, you know, can't comment for... for a lot of different reasons. But Canada has had a rocky, somewhat rocky relationship with Saudi Arabia since 2018. So I think this is this is a topic that they're definitely looking into.

MATT GALLOWAY: Sarah, it's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

SARAH DDDOUCH: Thank you so much for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Sarah Dddouch is a reporter with The Washington Post. It's not just Canada, of course. The United States and Saudi Arabia have had a strained relationship as well. But the release of the U.S. intelligence report on the Khashoggi murder could make matters worse, particularly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Ben Hubbard has written about the young, ambitious and ruthless heir to the Saudi throne. Ben is the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times, and the author of MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman. Ben Hubbard is in Beirut. Ben, hello to you.

BEN HUBBARD: Hello.

MATT GALLOWAY: You have written about how Mohammed bin Salman has gone after opponents outside of the Saudi kingdom as well as inside. Given that, what do you make of the story of the dissidents in Canada?

BEN HUBBARD: Well, I don't have any... any more details about this case than... than what Sarah mentioned. It is fair to say that this appears to be in the context of a wider policy by the government of Saudi Arabia to try to get dissidents back to the country. Saudi officials have spoken about this, said that it is a project of the intelligence service to track down dissidents who were abroad, and to try to bring them back to the kingdom. And there's kind of a whole range of ways that they've gone about doing this. Some of them would probably range from the quite benign up to the quite aggressive. So sort of on the lighter end of things, you would have many Saudis who were abroad or students who receive government funding. They have scholarships and living stipends. And so, you know, if they're getting out of line and criticising things on Twitter, it's pretty easy for a Saudi diplomat to call them in and say, well, if you keep this up, we're going to cut off your scholarship. You've got, you know, they'll reach out to them in different ways and remind them of their family back in the kingdom, things like that. And, you know, and then it sort of goes up in there in terms of aggressiveness. You know, we definitely have cases of phone hacking, social media hacking, things like that, going all the way up to, of course, the most shocking of the examples, which was the operation against Jamal Khashoggi that caused this new whole blow-up with the United States last week.

MATT GALLOWAY: Given that, and I want to talk about, as you say, the new blow-up, but how concerned should Saudis who are living in Canada, who oppose the regime, how concerned should they be?

BEN HUBBARD: Well, it's hard to say how far the Saudi government would actually go. Most cases, cases that I know about, at least, you know, you have Saudi diplomats meeting with them and trying to either convince them to be quiet, promising them if you come back to the kingdom, we're going to, you know, give you a job somewhere and do different things for you. And whatever. I don't... I don't know if that's particularly threatening. You know, there's obviously this famous case of former Saudi intelligence officer who is now based in Canada, who has sued the Saudi government and sued Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince himself, alleging that there was a team that was sent to track him down in Canada and either extradite or kill him. The details have not been confirmed. The case is still being litigated. And, you know, I'm sure that it's not comfortable if you're a Saudi dissident and you're there and you know that people from your old country are getting in touch with you and following your movements and trying to track you, it's just it's very unclear exactly how far they would go.

MATT GALLOWAY: What did this new U.S. intelligence report conclude about the role that MBS, the Crown Prince, played in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

BEN HUBBARD: What was released on Friday was a summary of an assessment done by U.S. intelligence that concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had approved the operation to kill or capture Jamal Khashoggi. You know, I think what was interesting about it is there was very little new information in this report. It was quite short. It was only a few pages. Most of this information had been leaked to the media quite soon after Jamal was killed in late 2018. So, you know, I think everybody had a pretty good idea of what U.S. intelligence thought about this issue. What was unique this time is the fact that it was not a leak to the media. It was an official government document that was released, and now stands as the official U.S. government position on this issue. So that really escalated kind of the stakes of this whole thing between the United States and Saudi Arabia and just caused a lot... a lot of new tensions in the relationship.

MATT GALLOWAY: What's your sense as to how the Crown Prince would have reacted to, as you say, this official document that puts him in many ways at the centre of the conspiracy to kill Jamal Khashoggi?

BEN HUBBARD: I have not been able to talk to anybody who has talked to him about how he felt about all this. So I don't want to speculate on that. Plenty of other Saudis that I've been talking to, some of whom are quite plugged-in, I would say, you know, there's kind of a range I think people are kind of angry. I think they feel that, you know, we've had this long and productive relationship with the United States. Why are they doing this to us now? I think some people, you know, they sort of think it's kind of a conspiracy, or they blame it on U.S. Domestic politics. And they say the only reason this is happening is because Biden wants to differentiate himself from Donald Trump. People who are still loyal to the government, you hear a lot of that kind of reasoning. In the Saudi dissident community, obviously, you hear the exact opposite. I think people are quite disappointed that the U.S. Government didn't go farther. The administration chose very clearly not to directly punish Mohammed bin Salman, saying that they feared that that would indeed cause a breach in the relationship with Saudi Arabia. So, you know, they've been very disappointed with the decision by the administration.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's not just those in the dissident community that have been disappointed by this. Agnes Callamard is the U.N. special rapporteur on summary killings, and had this to say about the U.S. response to the naming of Mohammed bin Salman as the architect, in many ways, of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Take a listen.

AGNES CALLAMARD: That, to me, is an extremely dangerous move on the part of the U.S.A. If what they want to do, you know, what President Biden has announced during this campaign to protect freedom of the press and to really announce a new era in terms of human rights-based policy, then to refuse to held to account to sanction the man who is ultimately responsible for killing Jamal Khashoggi, that, to me, it is extremely worrisome.

MATT GALLOWAY: Joe Biden, when he was running for president, said he was going to treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah. Explain a bit more in detail as to why the United States would not take stronger action against Mohammed bin Salman, especially after this report comes out that places the responsibility in many ways for Khashoggi death at the feet of the Crown Prince.

BEN HUBBARD: Joe Biden was certainly not a politician to not quite live up to his campaign rhetoric. I mean, that's a pretty common phenomenon. I do think it's a dilemma. I mean, I know that there are plenty of people who would like to see Mohammed bin Salman punished for this, especially when the U.S. Government believes so strongly that he was that involved in this crime and that he basically ordered it up. I mean, I think that the dilemma for policymakers is that Saudi Arabia does remain an important partner for the United States in the Middle East. And this is on a lot of levels that I think a lot of people don't realize. I mean, you've got military cooperation. There's a lot of security and intelligence cooperation that happens, that, you know, everybody is quite quiet about coordination on oil markets, things like that. I mean, there's there's a lot that happens below the surface in this relationship that's not just the relationship of the King and the Crown Prince with the president of the United States. So I think that for policymakers, they worry that, OK, well, if we really sanction this guy, that could open up a breach in the relationship and it could endanger a lot of these other things that we have going on. The counterargument is, well, if you let him get away with stuff like this, that sends a message to other autocrats around the world, whether U.S. allies or non-U.S. allies, that you can get away with stuff like this, that if you are important enough to us as a partner, that will kind of look the other way when you do things like this. So, you know, it's quite clear that so far at least, the Biden administration with the first interpretation. There's plenty of other people inside the U.S. Government, including many members of Congress, who are pushing for new kinds of punishment. And so we'll just kind of have to see where that goes in the future.

MATT GALLOWAY: I guess just in the last minute or so that we have, if you end with where we started, how likely is it that the Crown Prince is going to ease up on the dissidents abroad after this report? And the White House's, you now, fairly muted response to it. Is is he likely to change his tactics if he isn't going to be punished substantially for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

BEN HUBBARD: I don't want to sort of get into the fortune telling business. I think that the release of this report and the sanctions that came along with it, I think were a resounding slap to the Crown Prince. He is an autocrat. He very much does want to be able to do what he wants to do. But he also treasures the relationship with the United States. And I think that we have seen some indications since Biden came into the White House that the Saudis are trying to make some concessions on human rights issues. People have been let out of prison that the US had been advocating for. There's two dual American-Saudi citizens and, you know, a famous women's rights activist who was in prison. And all of this kind of happened in the early days of the Biden administration, appeared to be kind of gestures saying, you know, we're going to we're going to work with you on these kind of things. So what exact lesson, you know, Mohammed bin Salman takes from this? We'll just have to wait and see. You know, does he decide, OK, I can get away with this kind of thing, we're going to go full-speed ahead? Or does he say, wow, this is really damaged my relationship with the White House and I'm going to pull back on these kinds of activities?

MATT GALLOWAY: Ben, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

BEN HUBBARD: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: Ben Hubbard is the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times, and the author of "MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman". He's in Beirut. We did contact the embassy of Saudi Arabia in Ottawa for comment on this story. They did not respond. You can hear more about this story on today's edition of the CBC daily news podcast, "Front Burner".

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MATT GALLOWAY: You're listening to "The Current" on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. It's been a long, cold winter for the Eabametoong First Nation, about 350 kilometres north of Thunder Bay in Ontario. With housing in short supply, some people are living in makeshift homes, uninsulated and exposed. Irene Boyce is 24 years old. She and her two children live in a tent structure outside her mother's house.

IRENE BOYCE: My mum's house is too overcrowded, so I pretty much have nowhere else to go. We moved in the tent, and we have beds in there. I have my entertainment system in there. I have a dresser in there. There was supposed to be a kitchen area, but we don't use that area. It's being used for a porch because that's where the cold breeze comes from. So it gets very cold because if we don't have the wood burning all the time, we... it will get cold in there pretty quick because the floor is not that very good. There's only one plywood for the floor. So the coldness usually comes from the floor. We have no running water whatsoever. So if we need to use the washroom, wash our hands or anything else, we would have to go inside the house.

MATT GALLOWAY: Most of the tents were built over the summer to make space for people to quarantine during COVID. But with limited housing, people like Irene and her family are using the structures as homes.

IRENE BOYCE: It doesn't feel good at all because I have two children that I do worry about. In our community, we need... we need the help to get the housing for people. With the restrictions, like you're not supposed to have like what? Over 10 people in your household. So I would say it's kind of worrisome for certain people that do have overcrowded house, that the virus does come into the community and that overcrowded house, that's it for the whole household.

MATT GALLOWAY: Sol Mamakwa is one of the people working to help. He is the member of provincial parliament for the Kiiwetinoong riding in Ontario representing the new Democratic Party. He has written an open letter calling on the province to take emergency steps to help 14 families living in tents in minus-40 degree weather in Eabametoong. Sol, good morning.

SOL MAMAKWA: Good morning, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: How desperate is the housing situation in Eabametoong?

SOL MAMAKWA: the situation of homes, housing in Eabametoong is very desperate. And I've spoken to about four individuals that are living in those... those... those tents and those shacks. And, you know, when we talk about Canada, when we talk about Ontario, you know, these are supposed to be great places to live, but for Eabametoong, it's not. So I think we need to provide some emergency resources and emergency measures in place to make sure that the residents of Eabametoong have access to a warm place, it's very, very desperate.

MATT GALLOWAY: In addition to this, there's been a boil water advisory in place in the community for something like 20 years now. How long... I mean, if you take a look at the whole situation, how long has all of this been going on, this problem of housing?

SOL MAMAKWA: The chronic underfunding of infrastructure on reserve has been happening covertly for decades. When we talk about oppression, when we talk about racism, when we talk about racism, COIVD-19 has exposed that. And I think that's like even if they wanted to build 25 homes, you know, this winter, this summer, that would not be possible because of the infrastructure issues when we talk about energy, when we talk about water and sewer issues. So... nd that's that's the issue that it's... It's a completely, you know, when we say... because I'm a provincial member, you know, I am asking for government to be part of the solution, not just to try to access the, you know, the resources that surround Eabametoong.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell me more about the responsibility that the province has because you sent this open letter to the province. We got a statement from Ontario's Ministry of Indigenous Affairs saying, and this is a quotation, "It would be best to reach out to Indigenous Services Canada." So what responsibility does the province have?

SOL MAMAKWA: So that responsibility, that jurisdictional ping-pong... to play that jurisdictional ping-pong on the lives and the health of the children in Eabametoong and the individuals that live there is basically saying no, that's a no. And we have to understand, like, you know, I come from a treaty perspective, Treaty Number Nine. Eabametoong is part of Treaty Number Nine. One of the things that the province has a responsibility of is their signature as Ontario as part of the treaty, and we're supposed to share the benefits of the lands, the resources. But that's not happening. And... and I think that's very critical when we talk about infrastructure on reserve. They've got to be part of the solution. They've going to be part of, you know, making things happen. They cannot just try to take away the land and the resources that surround Eabametoong, example, the Ring of Fire, they have to be part of the solution. You cannot just take, take, take. You've got to give something back as well.

MATT GALLOWAY: And the Ring of Fire, that's the mining development that would be happening in that community. The statement that we got from the federal government reads, in part, "We have provided over 920,000 dollars to support Eabametoong First Nation with its COVID-19 response measures. With regard to community housing need, since 2016, we've provided approximately five-and-a-half-million dollars to the First Nation. You describe this as ping-pong. Is that what it feels like, that... that you're being bounced back and forth between various government jurisdictions?

SOL MAMAKWA: Yes, and that's exactly what they do. Like, even though I'ma provicial member, and that's what they do, like every time I ask a question, that's what they do. I'm talking to the federal government, and we cannot continue to have, you know, the province, the feds say that, you know, play with people's lives.

MATT GALLOWAY: If if the government says it's given five-and-a-half-million dollars, why... you talked about the infrastructure needs, why hasn't that built the housing that's necessary?

SOL MAMAKWA: You know, they have a backlog of homes right now to catch up to the needs is 93 homes right now, but they cannot build those without the infrastructure, the water and sewer system, and also... and also, you know, the energy, the power, because it's a diesel generator. They would not have the capacity to be able to do that. So it's a bigger... bigger issue. It's... it's a infrastructure crisis, and it's a continued chronic underfunding.

MATT GALLOWAY: In the meantime, you have people who are sleeping in tents outside when it's minus-40. And I think of what happened in Sioux Lookout, in northern Ontario a few years ago, 13 people who live outside died in Sioux Lookout. How concerned are you that another tragedy like that is unfolding in front of our eyes?

SOL MAMAKWA:People without homes continue today northern Ontario and First Mation communities. What happens... what happens on the First Nation communities filters down to the urban centres such as Thunder Bay, such as Sioux Lookout. And, you know, we need to be able to provide that voice for people without homes because sometimes we forget about them. We have to... there are... we have to give them that voice. Because right now, their voices... they are as human as every one of us. And we need to treat them as human beings. So we need to be able to deal with that issue. And so I think the housing issue is a big issue that certainly need to be addressed at all levels.

MATT GALLOWAY: Is your sense that people are listening? Just before I let you go, I mean, you say raising a voice and making sure that their voice is heard, but is your sense that people are listening?

SOL MAMAKWA: You know, when we talk about Indigenous approaches or Indigenous policy, you know, it's just seems sometimes, governments just do not care. And you know, but I think it's, you know, as an Ontarian, as ever Ontarian, as a canadian, people should be raising voices to be allies with the Indigenous peoples in Northern Ontario, First Nations in Ontario. We need to be allies and we need to work together and to build a better Ontario, better Canada and a better society.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's important to hear your voice on this. And I appreciate you speaking with us this morning, Sol. Thank you very much.

SOL MAMAKWA: OK, thank you for having me.

MATT GALLOWAY: Sol Mamakwa is the NDP MP for the Kiiwetinoong riding in northern Ontario. That's it for "The Current" for this morning. Coming up next on CBC Radio One its "q". Star power on that show, Jodie Foster on the program. As well, a look ahead to Canada Reads. "q" is featuring each panellist on Canada Reads in the lead-up to the big book brawl. And today, the singer songwriter Scott Helman, who's championing a book that we talked about on this very program, "Two Trees Make a Forest" by Jessica J. Lee. You'll hear that coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to "The Current". Take care. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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March 2, 2021 Episode Transcript

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