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 2021

The Current Transcript for November 30, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I wish the rain would stop, but we don't have control over that, it's just we're getting ready and we are as ready as we can be. Now we have to wait to see what happens.

MATT GALLOWAY: Abbotsford, British Columbia has seen more than its share of rain, and it just keeps coming in an hour how residents are coping with being evacuated for a second time and how those displacements are affecting migrant workers brought into Canada specifically to work at farms that are now under water. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

No democracy can survive or certainly not thrive with some glaring weakness as the systemic inequality that we see in the United States.

MG: Jelani Cobb is a journalist, historian and staff writer at The New Yorker. He's co-edited a vast new collection of writing from the magazine titled The Matter of Black Lives in 30 Minutes. He joins us to talk about James Baldwin, Ahmaud Arbery and what Black Lives Matter means today. We begin, though, with a renewed push to vaccinate the world in the face of a new COVID variant. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Omicron variant drives calls for vaccine equity, waiving of patents

Guests: Pauline Worsfold, Githinji Gitahi, Wafaa El-Sadr

SOUNDCLIP

The emergence of the Omicron variant should be a wake up call to the world that vaccine inequality cannot be allowed to continue until everyone is vaccinated, everyone will continue to be at risk. Instead of prohibiting travel, the rich countries of the world need to support the efforts of developing countries to access and to manufacture enough vaccine doses for their people without delay.

MG: That's South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa. Governments, including candidates, are trying to keep the Omicron variant out by banning travellers from southern Africa. But the variant is already popping up all around the world, and now some are calling for steps to be taken to try to make sure this Omicron variant is the final variant. Nursing unions in 28 countries are calling on the United Nations to temporarily waive the multinational trade related aspects of intellectual property rights agreement. They say that waiving patents will help ramp up vaccine production. Pauline Worsfold is a registered nurse and the secretary treasurer of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. It's one of the union's demanding the waiver. She joins us from Edmonton. Pauline, good morning.

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Why have you joined other nursing unions and filing a formal appeal to waive vaccine patents now?

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Well, the answer is simple no one is safe until we're all safe. And it's really a sin that companies would withhold vaccines because of patent patent medicines rules.

MG: And so when you say it's simple, what do you think waiving the patents would do to address the situation that we're seeing right now?

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Well, right now there's governments around the world that are withholding vaccines from the COVAX programme due to pressure from national pharmaceutical companies around intellectual properties. So if we harken back to the polio epidemic that just didn't exist at that time, pharmaceutical companies didn't have the power over countries that they do now, and the world was vaccinated against polio and polio was eradicated. The same premise should be able to apply to the coronavirus worldwide.

MG: When you hear from those vaccine manufacturing companies who say that they are not philanthropic organisations, they're profit generating companies, that that profit allows them to create other vaccines and that in the midst of of this, even the situation we're in right now, where they may need to retool the vaccines that we have to fight this variant or other variants that they need those profits to help fund that innovation. What do you say back?

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Well, they have opportunities to make money off other drugs, and they do. They make millions and millions of dollars of other drugs that people are essential for their well-being. At this point in time, the one benevolent thing they could do. And frankly, if I was a pharmaceutical company, I would spin it that way and that it would be a positive PR move rather than this negative PR move. And it would basically save human life.

MG: You're vaccinated and as a health care worker, a registered nurse, presumably you've had a booster shot as well.

PAULINE WORSFOLD: That's correct. Just November 10th.

MG: How does that feel, given the fact that many of your colleagues in other parts of the world are not? We know that there are a lot of we've spoken with frontline health care workers around the world who have yet to even to have their first shot. How do you square some of that, particularly around the issue of booster shots? This has been a contentious issue.

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Indeed, it has. And as I sat there waiting, I did feel guilty, I felt guilty that I was able to readily access the boosters when it was, you know, we received the email into our work email, said, Book your booster as soon as you can because it's available. I did sit there and I thought, Well, here I am in such a privileged country in Canada, receiving a booster shot when one in four health care workers in Africa haven't even received their first shot? It just seems. Wrong, unfair. It doesn't seem right.

MG: And your perspective, again comes from somebody who has been working right on the front lines over the course of this pandemic. What do you want given that perspective, what you have seen in the last 20 months? What do you want governments to understand about the consequences of not making this move of not, as they say, freeing the patents?

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Well, the governments and the pharmaceutical companies to me, just need to get out of the way and and make sure that people around the world are able to access vaccine as soon as possible as soon as it comes into the country. They should have plans in place that when it arrives, it's distributed to those that are, first of all, the health care workers, the frontline workers and then to the rest of their society, their citizens and let the vaccine do its work. It's proven that it keeps the COVID vaccine at bay. And yeah, they just need to get out of the way because no one is safe until everyone is safe.

MG: Pauline, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

PAULINE WORSFOLD: Thank you.

MG: Pauline Worsfold is a registered nurse and the secretary, treasurer of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Health leaders and politicians are also trying to drive home this message that this pandemic will not end until people everywhere have access to vaccines. Dr. Githinji Gitahi is the global CEO of AMREF Health Africa. It's a humanitarian organisation. The doctor is also a board member of the African CDC and a commissioner on the African Union's COVID 19 commission. He is in Nairobi. Dr. Guitars. Hello to you.

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: Hello. Hello, Matt.

MG: What do you make of how the world has handled the news of this on the Crown variant?

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: Stigmatisation and discrimination, which is not surprising, but extremely embarrassing, and actually not the right way to go in an age of responsibility and solidarity. We have a pandemic. This pandemic is caused by a virus. The virus has no nationality. It doesn't hold any particular passports. So when countries under the International Health Regulations are required to report any variant or any new microorganism so that the world can be safe and then they are punished for it by rich countries and in an extremely selective manner because you have this virus across 15 countries, but only African countries have been selected for travel ban. But it is actually it is immoral and ethical and must end.

MG: What's the cost in those countries of these sorts of travel bans because you're seeing them being implemented by many nations around the world when it's focussed, as you say, specifically on southern African countries? So in those countries themselves, what's the cost of those travel bans?

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: The cost is immense. The first thing is that those countries, their economies are going to start regress. Number two is jobs are going to be lost. Hospitality has suffered. I have been to South Africa myself. Many hotels are closed since May last year. Those hotels are going to start recovering, but now they cannot. Because of these travel bans and this stigmatisation and actually diverting the attention from where, you know, their vaccination agenda that needs to be on the table. The other thing is that these hospitality industry is mostly employing women. They represent gender balance too, right? But most importantly, it also means that countries that may find another variant in the near future will not be ready to do for disclosure. It is counterproductive.

MG: Because they might be punished themselves.

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: Exactly. And targeted and discriminated, especially if they are in Africa. Or I would imagine some parts of Asia and maybe South America because, you know, we are the global south. So we don't matter economically. And therefore you can easily say this country let them not come here. But when it is your neighbour, when you have the UK would be like, No, no, no, we have diplomatic ties. Therefore, we can deal with the virus. Deal with the virus as a global virus, without nationality, without a passport. Deal with it with science, there is no science that supports travel bans that we are going to keep viruses outside.

MG: Do you see this the emergence of this variant as a direct result of unequal vaccine distribution around the world?

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: Let me put it this way that the more we leave people and the longer we look upon vaccinated, the more we allow the virus to survive, multiply easily and therefore develop. Variant mutations occur during copy and multiplication of the virus. But vaccination lowers the ability of the virus to multiply and therefore reduces the chance of the mutation. So definitely there is a link. If we can vaccinate the world, then the chances of getting new variants will drastically reduce and the world will be safe. Now you brought vaccines together and then you broke ethical to enter the world. You know what? The long term game it is discrimination. It is racism. Actually, that's what I see.

MG: What responsibility do you think the vaccine manufacturing companies have for what's happening right now?

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: They are two people who carry responsibility for this happening now. It's the high income countries and the vaccine manufacturers triumphed on the day and we got a vaccine and we all celebrated and we very, very happy. But what happened soon after is that through profiteering agenda, the pharmaceutical companies then got into deals with countries through opaque prices that we do not know about. The pharmaceutical company did not disclose the pricing and have also continued to actually just focus on supplying the income countries. And number two, they have refused to share licences so that we can ramp up vaccination. I'm up against a petition right now demanding later to be shared voluntarily for stockpiles by income countries to end and also for the vaccine to be shared accurately. This petition is demanding from both pharmaceutical companies and high-income countries. Both of them take the blame for what is going on now.

MG: You mentioned the demand that an RAF has, that there's also a series of actions that that you've laid out that you want to see. There are five things. Just briefly walk us through what those actions are that would help address not just this situation, but future crises.

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: So there are five things we are asking for. Number one is that we know that we are more than nine billion doses. 17 billion doses have been booked by the world. Almost 38 billion have been given, but out of those eight billion, only $273 million have been given in Africa. Why? It's not absence of money The COVID vaccine facility has actually managed to patch it, but they're stockpiling by rich countries. So no. one we are asking, end the stockpiles. Secondly, stop boosters because a primary vaccine mission is more important, cost effective than a booster vaccination. So we are asking to limit boosters to only those who must get them because of their age or the immunity. No. three is that we are asking for doing things that are held by high income countries to be shared and shared urgently because the vaccine delayed, the vaccine denied to poor diet and nutrition [unintelligible]. And we are asking that the pharmaceutical companies voluntarily share their licences not only by coming and promising small acts of mass in Africa. We are going to build a vaccine [unintelligible]. Share the latest phase with the large scale manufacturers globally, whether in Asia, wherever they are, so that we have adequate volumes in the world to serve everyone. But finally, we are also saying that Africa must get together. We must accelerate the Africa Continental Free Trade Area so that we create a common market that allows us to [unintelligible] manufacturing not only for this vaccine, future vaccines and other health commodities that are needed for Africa's health security. So we must work on our health system as well.

MG: Do you see just finally, do you see this moment as a moment for action on those requests? I mean, some of them are not new requests. People have been talking about sharing those vaccines, ensuring that there's not stockpiling or hoarding. Since the beginning of this pandemic. But is this a different moment, do you think?

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: This is a different moment and the world must realise that we have been with this pandemic for very long, and the only way we are going to make the world safe is by making everybody safe, and that's a global effort. We are a global village. Nobody can hide under the dome of their boundaries that must be the basis for the Future Pandemic Treaty, which is being discussed by WHO.

MG: Dr Gitahi, it's good to speak with you again. Thank you very much.

DR. GITHINJI GITAHI: Thank you. Thank you very much.

MG: Dr Githinji Gitahi is the global CEO of AMREF Health Africa. It's a humanitarian organisation. He's also a board member of the African CDC, a commissioner as well on the African Union's COVID 19 commission. He was in Nairobi. Dr. Wafaa Al-Sadr works on expanding access to HIV treatments and medications around the world. She's an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist and the director of ICAP, a global health centre at Columbia University. Doctor, good morning to you.

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: Good morning.

MG: How badly are we doing when it comes to distributing the vaccines to the people who need them the most?

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: We are unfortunately making big mistakes now in terms of confronting the COVID 19 pandemic. This is just another misstep along a long line of missteps that we have experienced in addressing COVID 19. And I think at this point in time, the inability for all of us to come together to actually appreciate the importance of global solidarity and the importance of bringing vaccines to all populations around the world is a huge mistake that I think will be reflected in terms of ongoing transmission of this virus and the evolution of new variants, as we're seeing now with this new variant.

MG: And so you just heard Dr. Kotahi forcefully calling for an increase in vaccine production. Do we know whether waiving the vaccine patents would help in that regard?

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: When I think about the problem now, I think we have to have a multi-pronged approach for dealing with the immediate crisis and the immediate crisis is that we need new doses, much, many more new doses of vaccines now. And in order to do so, we have to increase production at the facilities that are able to produce vaccines right now. And this means that the resources needs to be need to be provided to such manufacturers so they can ramp up their production. This is the most immediate way in which we will get more vaccines out to the people who need them. At the same time, we also need to work on other strategies, and another strategy is, of course, dealing with issues around the sharing of licences and the issues on patent release, as well as the issue of technology transfer and supporting the establishment of regional production of vaccine centres and so on. So we have to think of this as a multi-pronged approach, but we need to act now and embark on what will get more vaccine doses produced

MG: as soon as possible. The commentary around this suggests that none of this happens without the United States acting, and there has been incredible pressure on the U.S. not just to be forceful in perhaps working behind the scenes to help release those vaccines from the patents, but also to donate doses to countries that need them the most. Yesterday, the press secretary for the White House, Jen Psaki, said that South Africa had turned down an offer by the U.S. to provide it with additional COVID 19 vaccines. What did you make of that comment?

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: Well, I think it's, you know, I think it's that the comment is that what South Africa is really asking for is a delay. Potentially. I don't know this for a fact that a delay of shipment of another batch of these vaccines, and this may be due to the fact that there, of course, these vaccines have an expiration date and you have to be very cautious about delivering the vaccines before they expire. This does not mean that there isn't the need, the urgent need for more vaccines in the continent, and I am afraid that is misconstrued by many that this statement means that African countries are turning back vaccine doses. That is not the case. I work in several African countries and all of them are desperately seeking many more doses of vaccines for their own population. So it is important that we recognise that we have to increase production of vaccine doses so we can get them to the people who need them. And of course, we have to make sure that the pace at which we are delivering these vaccines is such that it would allow for proper use of these vaccines within their exploration period.

MG: You mentioned the work that you've done. I mean, you've worked and you've actually worked with Dr. Tedros, the head of the W.H.O., on access to HIV treatments. What is it that we could learn in terms of managing HIV and getting medications and treatments to people who need them the most that could be applied to this crisis?

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: I think there are enormous lessons to be learnt from the HIV response and particularly the scale up of treatment. And I recall vividly many people, many naysayers who thought it could not be done, that there wasn't enough supply of medications, that there is now no capacity in-country to distribute the medications, no capacity to deliver that the health systems were fragile, that individuals would not come for the treatments because of stigma, discrimination and many, many, many other issues that were raised as challenges to scaling up of treatment. Nonetheless, with the determination of the global community, as well as with the commitment of the countries themselves, this was accomplished and I think the accomplishment is due to, first of all, engaging the countries themselves, engaging communities themselves so that they gain confidence in terms of these medications, engaging community leadership so that they can actually talk about the importance of getting tested for HIV, the importance of treatment, as well as putting in place their health system structures, training of health care workers, enabling them to be able to deliver the services that they want to deliver. All of these are lessons that we've learnt from the HIV response, and that can come in very handy now as we trying to scale up vaccination globally.

MG: And just in the remaining few seconds that we have, does that then give you optimism and people are exhausted. It's 20 months and then they hear of this other new variants that nobody really knows a lot about. Does that give you optimism that we will find an end to this pandemic?

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: I am optimistic that if we can. Come together as a global community, and we act together collectively rather than individually, country by country and so on, that we can actually make important strides in bringing an end to this pandemic. It means that we have to think differently and act differently.

MG: Dr. Wafaa Al-Sadr, it's great to speak with you this morning. Thank you very much.

DR. WAFAA AL-SADR: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Wafaa Al-Sadr, epidemiologist, infectious diseases specialist and the director of ICAP. It's a global health centre at Columbia University. You're CBC News is next. And then the American author, journalist historian Jelani Cobb on why Black Lives Matter. He'll be here in six minutes to talk about critical race theory, Trayvon Martin and James Baldwin. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

Back To Top »

Guilty verdicts in Arbery, Floyd cases are 'asterisks' in U.S. racial justice history: journalist

Guests: Jelani Cobb

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come as if British Columbians haven't been through enough, more heavy weather is on the way. We'll hear from Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun on how his town is bracing for more rain. And we'll hear about the migrant workers in the area who are watching their livelihoods drown in floodwaters. But first to a Georgia courtroom.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Verdict is as follows. In Superior Court in Glynn County, state of Georgia, the state of Georgia vs. Travis McMichael Case number CR000433. Jury verdict four. Count one. Malice murder. We, the jury, find the defendant, Travis McMichael, guilty.

MG: That verdict was read in an emotionally charged Georgia courtroom last week. Three white men were found guilty of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man shot while out for a jog. The case will go down as one in a long list of trials that have served as weather vanes for race relations in the United States. A new anthology tries to make sense of that history. It's called The Matter of Black Lives. Writing from The New Yorker, it looks back at race and American society through the writing of some of America's most iconic authors. Jelani Cobb is one of the editors of the book. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Jelani Cobb, thanks for joining us.

JELANI COBB: Thank you.

MG: So lots to talk about. I want to start with the news of last week. It has been a pretty fraught past few years around race and racial justice in the United States. What stood out to you most when it came to that verdict?

JELANI COBB: Well, I mean, the thing that was notable to me was that in any other circumstance, any reasonable circumstances would have been open and shut case. You know, a group of people who were armed, pursued and in fact hunted a man through the streets of a suburban community for five full minutes before confronting and fatally shooting him. But because of the way that self-defence is construed as actual offence in United States and because of the dynamics of race, it's not at all a given that this would be a conviction or that people would consider this to be murder. You know, in fact, one of the most defining aspects of the early opening of this case of the situation really was that the district attorney, the First District Attorney, felt that there was no need to bring charges so that nothing that they did was illegal. And so that has been, I think, the most striking part. There was a conviction here, but by no means are there were three convictions, I should say here, but by no means could this have been assumed.

MG: You wrote in The New Yorker, these are your words, "The point is not whether justice was achieved in this case, it's the overwhelming uncommon circumstances under which it occurred and the scale of the effort that was required to bring it". I mean, in some ways, people have been trying to figure out what this verdict means and what this verdict means, particularly in relation to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, but also the larger conversation. People say that guilty verdicts mean that there has been perhaps some progress when it comes to racial justice in the United States. Do you see it as that?

JELANI COBB: I mean, I think that these cases, I mean this case and the George Floyd case are really like asterisks. You know, we can't presume that they make a bigger point about American jurisprudence. And, you know, the Kyle Rittenhouse case is consistent with how these kind of self-defence laws have been applied. I don't really want to call themselves defence lawyers because that's not what we're actually talking about here. We're talking about proactive self-defence or being the aggressor in a situation still allows you to claim self-defence. And so in the preponderance of these cases, they will turn up more like Kyle Rittenhouse than they did in these circumstances, where video was key to it and also the fact that there was an extraordinary amount of public pressure. And so if in fact you have to have more than a year of protests and people in the street and you have to have video evidence of what happened and you have to have international outrage in order to ensure that charges are brought in, some semblance of justice is arrived at. That in itself is an indicator that your system is badly flawed and failing.

MG: Let me ask you about video, then the psychological weight of video. Tell me about the Trayvon generation, which is something you write about. There's the essay in this book and that you've written about as well.

JELANI COBB: Sure. That's Elizabeth A. Vendors, I say. And so in this collection, we pull together in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, as we were kind of thinking about the words that might be insightful or instructive or even provocative for people. And we were going through all these collections and this this past writing from The New Yorker and Elizabeth Alexander's essay stood out because she was talking about the shared frame of reference. When we think about generations, we think about experiences that shaped them. You know, they have as a common point. And Trayvon Martin's death was one for this group of young people and that people have forgotten. You know that that was. Nearly 10 years ago, in a few months, it will be 10 years since Trayvon Martin died. And so this a generation has come of age. You know, the people who were in elementary school at that point are of voting age, very many of them. And so that essay looks at what has meant, you know, for these young people and for people who raised them. You know this with Alexander as the parent of two young black boys or rather two young men now. And you know what it meant to witness these kinds of events as they were coming of age as well.

MG: What do you think that generation has gone through? I mean, 10 years is a long time, and it's not a long time.

JELANI COBB: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, collectively, there are a ton of things we could talk about. You know, just in the context of criminal justice, you know, there's been Trayvon Martin, there's been Renisha McBride, there's been Ferguson, there's been Breonna Taylor. You know, Eric Garner in the whole litany of names in the past decade since cell phone video has become much more common. We've seen these incidents take place in a way they were always taking place, but the public did not have direct awareness of it. And so I think this generation has really witnessed a society having to grapple or as the term was used last year, reckoned with. You know what? The implications of its criminal justice policies are, how they're connected to the tortured history of race in this country and what the implications are for people who are going to be the inheritors of this society.

MG: Let me use your words there the tortured history of race in your country when you went to pull together this collection and you went back over those decades of articles. Mm hmm. What struck you most about about the real time reports when it came to race in America because these were published as as things were, as events were happening, right?

JELANI COBB: So what's interesting about this is that, you know, the New Yorker, which was founded in 1925. Did not do a great deal of work around race or coverage of matters relating to African-Americans in its early history, and the most overt grappling with the implications of race in this country came in 1962. And that's the lead essay that we have in there with James Baldwin's letter from a region in my mind. And you know, that's just an incandescent, amazing piece of work. And so from there, we have a kind of bounty of material that tumbles forth. You know, after that and you know, from the work of Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who did excellent reportage around a whole array of matters relating to race, you know, at the magazine to Henry Louis Gates, obviously the great Toni Morrison, there's you know, Jarvis Anderson, who did a huge amount of in-depth reporting for the magazine in the 1960s and 70s. And so there was a whole array of things that had this connective thread of people trying to grapple with. This complicated enigma of race in American society, the one thing that I thought was most connected, though, was the essay that came and was published in 1947. It's actually reportage published in 1947, called The Opera and Greenville, and it was covering the it the last recognised lynching in South Carolina and the trial that took place. No one was convicted for it, but I covered the trial of Dylann Roof. And so this article Rebecca West's article came out in 1947, and I covered the trial of Dylann Roof in 2017. And so there we were across 70 years of history, covering the same theme. You know, Dylann Roof was, of course, the the gunman who murdered nine African-Americans in a church in South Carolina in 2015. And so across the span of seven decades, there were two New Yorker writers, almost in dialogue about a strikingly similar event in the same state in the same, nearly the same place.

MG: You went back to Baldwin's essay after the murder of George Floyd. Mm hmm. What did you see in that when you reread that in that moment? What? What struck you?

JELANI COBB: So I think the obvious point is the familiarity, you know, the dynamics that Baldwin was talking about, you know, the ways in which people are collated into various tiers of society and the mechanisms that that are responsible for that. You know, we're really familiar. You know, a lot of people would read that essay in the United States right now and see parallels between what Baldwin was writing about in 1961, 1962 and what we're seeing in American society in 2021. And so there's that. The other thing, though, I think, is that he wrote it. At the outset of what would have been considered a reckoning at that point, you know that the anger that was typified by Malcolm X and the rise of the Nation of Islam, which was inscrutable to lots of white people that seemed to have come out of nowhere with no context for lots of white people. What Baldwin does in this piece, which is just off the top of my head about three quarters of this essay is about himself, and only in the last fourth does he get to the subject he's putatively taking up, which is Elijah Muhammad and the dinner that he had with him one night in Chicago and what it reflected on with American race relations. And so but it's his act of witness of testifying and saying, this is the frame. By which I can understand, Elijah Muhammad, this is the person who was sitting down at the table across from Elijah Muhammad. And this is the set of life experiences that have made this movement legible to me in particular ways. And it's a brilliant thing, a very difficult thing. You have to be a virtuoso writer to pull this off, which is James Baldwin was. And you know, that I think is really the point of it when we're looking at the anger in the streets we're looking at, you know, the sustained protests that we saw in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. You know, that kind of fiery reckoning that was on everyone's mind that that essay really summarises and typifies what was happening. And so when he writes this really brutally honest concussive piece of literature and The New Yorker publishes it, you know, there's nothing in the frame of experience that would prepare, you know, a kind of well-intentioned New Yorker reader to go to their mailbox that day in 1962 in an open, you know, this treatise, but that Baldwin had issued. And you know, it was really kind of stating of the terms, you know, we're at the outset a really kind of approaching the pinnacle of the civil rights movement. And Baldwin placed the anger. And the frustration and the aspiration that was the engine of that movement into context. And so, you know, for him, just as a kind of prophetic witness and the person who spoke about the collective experience of black people in America and had the audience and had the ear of large swaths of white America, he became this kind of interlocutor. He became a person who was, you know, the necessary channel through which certain ideas to get expressed and to the extent that people were receptive, you know, Baldwin was key to them gaining a new understanding of race and how it was operating in America.

MG: And he did that through his writing. He also did that through television appearances. Take a listen to this. This is James Baldwin from 1968, speaking on The Dick Cavett Show.

SOUNDCLIP

I don't know what those white people in this country feel, but I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institution. I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know that we have a Christian church, which is white and a Christian church, which is black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is High Noon on Sunday. That's it's a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means I can't afford to trust most white Christians and certainly can't trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labour unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn't matter. But I know I'm not in their union. I don't know if the real estate lobby is anymore against black people, but I know the real estate lobbies keep me in the ghetto. I don't know if the Board of Education hates black people, but I know the textbooks I give my children to read and the schools that we have to go to. Now this is the evidence you want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my life, my woman, my sister, my children and some idealism, which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.

MG: Jelani Cobb is the evidence that James Baldwin presented what 53 years ago about White America is still true today, do you think?

JELANI COBB: It is a disturbing degree. You know, I'm a person that believes in making a proper accounting of progress. And so I don't think that these circumstances are identical. But the fact that what Baldwin said is familiar, but he's not speaking archival in any sense, except for the passage of time. It's not like when we read, you know, letters from, you know, mediaeval times or, you know, even kind of colonial times. And the use of language is so archaic. But we don't really understand, you know, here with and so on, they've built just the language itself, dates it, you know, something from a bygone era. Baldwin's words are still current. He's familiar in a way. And even if it's not exactly, you know, the same circumstance there, very many more African-Americans, for instance, very many more people of colour admitted to labour unions than they were in his time. But fundamentally, if we talked about education, if we talk about housing, if we talked about health care, if we talk about access to quality, then yes, we understand exactly what Baldwin is saying because he's still indicting, to a large degree, the circumstances we see ourselves in right now.

MG: He wrote that he did not believe there would ever be a Black American president. What do you think? What do you think he would have made of the election of Barack Obama?

JELANI COBB: You know, it's interesting. Because it ties in a kind of a group of things that I've been thinking about. We can't know what Baldwin would have said, but I had this conversation about what Baldwin would have made of Barack Obama with Derrick Bell, the late legal scholar and the mind behind of what came to be known as critical race theory. And he felt that Baldwin would be very critical of Barack Obama, a feeling that he had. Been to evenhanded on matters of race and that he had not he'd been too tentative in his actions, attempting to kind of govern for the broader public without making the moral claim that there was a significant part of that public that had never really been included and as you had to do things differently because of that. And so I think Baldwin might have said that also. I mean, the point of a writer is not really to talk about the things that are politically palatable. And so, you know, a politician and a writer approach the world under most circumstances in a fundamentally distinct way. You know, and so the constraints that Barack Obama. Based in the course of the presidency, which is which were many which we could talk about are really less material. Someone like James Baldwin. So I think that he would have been harshly critical.

MG: In 2016, you wrote the matter of Black Lives and you wondered in that piece whether that year was the high point of the movement. What do you think now?

JELANI COBB: No, I don't think it was. But one of the reasons that I thought Black Lives Matter was particularly notable was the fact that they were operating within the context of a black presidency. That the the irony was that you could have this unprecedented level of representation in politics and still need to be in the street. It was that frustration that Obama's inability to bring immediate change and sweeping change to the lives of people in these communities, was a kind of recruiting effort for Black Lives Matter, a recruiting poster for Black Lives Matter. I thought that might change in the context of a white presidency. What I had not anticipated, as many people, was that the kind of incendiary, racist, proto fascist, misogynistic presidency that would follow Barack Obama's. And I think that that was a dynamic that really went into maintaining the kinds of of fervour and energy and excitement and power that Black Lives Matter initially harnessed in 2014-2015.

MG: You mentioned earlier just in reference to critical race theory. Mm-Hmm. What is this about the the push against this Republican politicians, activists, people fighting against something that they then can't define when they're asked specifically about it? From your perspective, what is this about?

JELANI COBB: Oh yeah, they don't have to define it. You basically have to make people afraid of it. And I think that most kind of fear mongering works best in that way. You leave it open to interpretation. You know, both the masters of horror understand that if you show a person the monster, you know, kind of going about its monstrous activity, that's one thing. But if you have the monster just off camera, we don't know what's happening. We can hear it or get a glimpse of it, but we don't know what is its contours in its entirety are. And that's much more frightening. And I think that's what's happened with this amorphous definition of critical race theory. You know, now now by definition. Critical race theory is a body of legal scholarship that emerged in the 1970s 80s to address questions of how the legal system had failed to achieve the objectives of the civil rights movement. And in fact, some of the the kind of counter points of the civil rights movement were being enfranchised through law itself. And so, you know, that was it was trying to kind of review of a legal strategies of social change and how they had fallen short. Now there's a highly particular, highly specific body of literature that is not what anyone is going to teach to a fifth grader, you know, or high school or, you know, for that matter. But it was necessary to say that there were all these kinds of hateful things that are making white children feel bad about themselves in itself, an inversion of what the critical race theory is they've been talking about. Because Brown vs. Board of Education was brought, desegregation in American schools was driven, in fact, in part by in large part. But the idea that black children were being psychologically damaged by segregation, and so the flip side of this is the argument now that white children are being psychologically damaged by learning that black children were once in segregation. Now this is entirely cynical in terms of its. Educational or pedagogical importance? But politically speaking. It's enormously potent and powerful. I think that's why we've seen this debate take place and, you know, legislation that says anything that you don't like is critical race theory, and it's the kind of impulse that we think in American history. We look back in the Cold War and the McCarthy era where, you know, the definition of communism was simply had nothing to do with Marx or Lenin. It was simply anything you don't like. If you don't like it, it must be communistic. And so this is the definition of communism was so malleable and useful to people. We now see the kind of same sort of hysteria about critical race theory.

MG: Are you surprised that it's taken on such that that the fire is so hot around it?

JELANI COBB: No know. One of the things that that is most ironic and least noted is that the hysteria over critical race theory literally validates critical race theory. One of the things that could happen race theory looks at is the way that the backlash against black progress uses the language of colourblindness to, in fact, reintroducing racial hierarchy in the United States. And that is exactly what is happening now. And so if you are really kind of paying attention to any of the scholarship, then it will be difficult to be surprised. Disturbed, outraged, maybe. But surprised. Probably not.

MG: Jelani Cobb, it's a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JELANI COBB: Likewise, thank you.

MG: Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a co-editor of The Matter of Black Lives writing from The New Yorker. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Yeah, it's hard not knowing what's going to come, but you just kind of have to take it one day at a time.

VOICE 2: It's nerve wracking as you watch the water rise again and frustrating. Frustratingly, you can't do anything about it.

MG: Evacuated not once, but twice. Some residents in British Columbia are out of their homes a second time as another storm hits. We'll hear from them and the mayor of Abbotsford, in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

Back To Top »

Checking in on Abbotsford, B.C., as rain continues to force residents from their homes

Guests: Amanda Meyer, Henry Braun, Ingrid Mendez de Cruz, Byron Cruz

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

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Warning sirens]

MG: People in Abbotsford, British Columbia, are getting used to hearing that sound, that's an air raid siren coming from across the U.S. border, warning Americans of rising floodwaters. But some people in Abbotsford are also using the siren to gauge their own safety. Evacuation orders were issued for parts of the city close to the U.S. border this weekend. People in the Huntington Village neighbourhood were told to leave their homes for the second time this month because the Nooksack River was rising once again. Amanda Meyer is one of those people. Amanda, good morning. Good morning. How are you doing?

AMANDA MEYER: I'm doing good considering considering.

MG: Tell me about being told you had to leave your home once again. How did you find out?

AMANDA MEYER: Um, stressful. I have two small children and, you know, getting it a wake up call really early in the morning is never kind of what you want to have happen. Thankfully, this time this week we were we were very prepared to to leave our home.

MG: And is that what you got? You got a call in the middle of the night. We heard that there were people who are knocking on doors as well in the wee small hours.

AMANDA MEYER: Um, well, having a small child, I was actually already awake. Um, and I found out, Yeah, ah, we have a residential page for our neighbourhood on Facebook. Um, that we get a lot of great information from real time information. And through that, I noticed that. They had put out an evacuation alert at 3:30 in the morning. Sorry, not alert order. And so I kind of. And they had commented saying that people were going fire was going door to door. So I kind of waited to to get my knock on my door. And it arrived about two hours after that.

MG: And this is the second time that you've been out and you can hear the baby in the background. I mean, what is it like for your family is that's a lot of disruption in a pretty disruptive time.

AMANDA MEYER: Thankfully, we have great family that is in a safe area in our in our city that we are able to go to at any point. Like I said, we were very prepared this time around with going through this, you know, in 2020 when there was the flooding in February. We kind of knew the timeline of how close they could get to our home and with two weeks ago. Obviously, it came much closer. And so we kind of were prepared to to go when we felt that the water was getting a little bit too close to our home.

MG: What does the water look like around your home now?

AMANDA MEYER: We are good right now. Thankfully, we had the Canadian Armed Forces come and sandbag. I'm on Second Avenue, so there's one avenue before us, First Avenue, and then it's the border. So they sandbag the entire railroad tracks across like our neighbourhood, along with a lot of residents, came out to help my husband included. He spent five hours sandbagging along with them, so we were very comfortable this time around, knowing that we had that little bit of extra protection this this week.

MG: And can you hear that that siren, that howling air raid siren?

AMANDA MEYER: Definitely. Yeah, it's very loud.

MG: What is that like when that thing goes off?

AMANDA MEYER: Startling, of course, but it is also very reassuring. You know, having that little extra time, that warning system is very appreciated. Like, we don't have anything like that, and I really wish that, you know, we had something going forward to plan for, you know, future strategy for protecting our neighbourhoods and having that warning system. Although we do rely on the United States for it, it would be nice to have something here.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, how much information are you getting from the U.S. side when it comes to this emergency?

AMANDA MEYER: A lot, I will say. The city of Dumas, their Facebook has been putting out a lot of great information. Social media is very, very crucial in keeping up with real time information. Like I said, our neighbourhood has a a private page that residents can, you know, posts information to, and I get a lot of my information from our neighbourhood who have found it elsewhere, not as much information coming from the city of Abbotsford. We have had a little bit from the police department, Facebook, but it would be nice to have a little bit more coming from them. You know, we weren't really told why we had to evacuate at 4:30 in the morning on, I guess it would be Sunday, Sunday morning.

MG: The days all blur together.

AMANDA MEYER: They do, yes. And it would have kind of been nice to know because we knew watching the gauges from Whatcom County that the flood has it like it hadn't reached the mass yet. So we were a little bit confused as to why we were asked to leave so soon. And I guess that's where the communication for us, for our neighbourhood has kind of been lacking.

MG: There's more rain coming. How are you feeling about that? I mean, how worried are you but about what the next couple of days could bring?

AMANDA MEYER: Um, I think I'm kind of having the same feeling as last time where we're prepared. I mean, the sandbags kind of make us feel a little bit better. We're prepared with our family and friends and the neighbourhoods. You know, I am worried about my neighbours a little bit more south than us. My our house is the very first house that didn't have flood damage. It came about an inch from being inside of our home. So we're very thankful. And I think having the water or sorry the rain come, that sounds like it's going to be less than it had been two weeks ago. I feel confident that we should be OK, butnever a hundred percent.

MG: Well, never 100 percent. But just before I let you go, I mean, do you think differently about living where you're living now, given what you've been through?

AMANDA MEYER: Definitely. Yeah. Um, we have kind of jokingly talked about moving, but we do love our neighbourhood and I do love, you know, our our school district. I mean, our school was flooded, so I'm not sure if we'll be able to go back to it this school year. They have alternate plans for for my daughter, but you know, things like that really make you kind of think that maybe we should go to higher ground.

MG: I wish you the best take care of yourself, imagine you. Thanks for speaking with us.

AMANDA MEYER: Yeah, no problem. Have a great day and you.

MG: Amanda Meyer lives in Abbotsford, B.C., one of the many people in Abbotsford, once again under an evacuation order. The mayor of Abbotsford, Henry Braun, has been listening in. Mayor Brian, good morning to you.

HENRY BRAUN: Good morning, Matt. Thank you for the invite.

MG: Thank you for joining us. You have a lot going on, so I appreciate you grabbing some time for us. When you hear from Amanda Myer, what goes through your mind? Again, she's she's under her second evacuation order now.

HENRY BRAUN: Yes. Well, first of all, that is a great close knit community going back a century. So and I was glad that Amanda said where she lived on Second Avenue because she's a little bit higher. But I gather that came from an inch away. But yeah, my heart goes out to all to the community of Huntington, but all the other communities as well that have been affected and and there will be some things that we will do different the next time around the sirens on Zoom as our own sirens. I think that's a great idea.

MG: I was going to say what they mean. Tell me more about that. You heard from her that she's getting a lot of information from private Facebook groups, but also from the other side of the border. What what could be done better to ensure that the residents of your town get the information that they need to get when they need to get it?

HENRY BRAUN: Well, that's that's going to be a good discussion to have once we get through this. We have been doing as much as we can with our daily briefings. Actually, there was a time when I was doing three per day or I think on one day it was three per day. But we've been driving everybody to half hour to our city website and to our own social media channels. We are giving out the information as it comes in, but sometimes and you know, at three o'clock in the morning when we get a call from our contacts we have in [unintelligible] County telling us that the dyke overtopped and the water is going to come to some arse and then into Abbotsford much quicker. The initial reports were four to five hours. We don't have a lot of time. We got the police and fire out right of ways to knock on doors and tell people they had to evacuate the entire Huntington area until we got some more intel. A couple of hours later, we backed that off to just first and Second Avenue, as opposed to all the way up to 7th Avenue because we had better intel.

MG: And now more rain is coming.

HENRY BRAUN: And now more rain is coming, but, you know, I am encouraged that it appears I just looked at some weather reports before I came on. And it appears we're going to get somewhere between 50 and 100 millimetres at the top end. Hundred, though, it's going to get dicey. But if it's 50 or 60, I think we have done as much as we can to prepare and we will be OK.

MG: How much more rain can can the pumps in Abbotsford handle?

HENRY BRAUN: Well, the pumps are working. There's two parts to this drainage system the some at the upper, where Amanda lives in Huntington by the border. All of that water and going east. I don't even know. Maybe 10 kilometres. That is all. All of the rainfall that comes here and the overtopping of the Nook's comes into the Soumis River, which then goes out to our flood gates at Barrow Town, which is 10 12 kilometres away. The pumps, all they do, they aren't affected by the Soumis River. Well, they are if it over tops the dyke over tops and breaks. But the Sonmez pumps pump day and night to keep our what was once a lake dry and the system. When it worked, the system probably could have handled maybe the event that we had to the rain event by itself. What we couldn't handle is when 25 percent roughly of the Nook's river all breached the dyke and poured into some prairie on this U.S. side, and then some city and then into Abbotsford at the West End of our prairie.

MG: So do you start? I mean, you're still in an emergency crisis situation? Do you start to think now about what can be done to rebuild or reinforce its infrastructure so that if these sorts of storms happen again, that the town would be better protected?

HENRY BRAUN: Well, as you correctly pointed out, we are still in a flood event in an emergency, but we will come out of this probably by the weekend or for sure next week. I have already turned my mind and so has council to the recovery process, which is going to be depending on what kind of farming you are in it between two and five years. But we know what needs to be done. The city has invested significant money over the last two years, so we came up with a report in 2020. We know exactly what needs to be done, that some dyke needs to be rebuilt, and the Barrow Town pump station needs to be upgraded to today's modelling because it is nowhere near adequate. We have been advocating for for that, for going back to probably shortly after the 1990 flood, when George Ferguson was the mayor. And so we don't have to study this. This, this, this whole system has been studied over and over again. What we need to do is have the political will to do what has to be done, which is a big bill. We estimated in 2010 and the December 2020 report that just the rebuilding of the Zuma stake would be in the $400 million range. And you can add inflation to that from then to now. But the city, and just to give some context, that would be the equivalent of three years of tax requisition for the total tax requisition. And half of our requisition goes to police and fire to protect our citizens or residents because that's our number one priority.

MG: So you heard Amanda talking about, I mean, she's musing about it, but that idea of moving to higher ground as well, and this is something that we've been talking about in the wake of these floods, in the wake of climate change, whether we need to have a hard conversation about where we're living. Does that need to be factored into this as well, whether living and running those agricultural operations at the base of a drained lake makes sense with climate change?

HENRY BRAUN: Well, that is. I'm pretty confident that that will be a very large discussion that we're going to have with all three levels of government going forward. If we can't fix this because of this disaster that has hit our reach, our city, our region, our province is affected and even across Canada because our transportation corridors are underwater and the effect that it's had on the economy in Metro Vancouver, other parts of Canada is enormous. But for sure, we need to have that conversation as to prevent this from happening again. And and it is preventable, but it's those that some state needs to be built higher and stronger to protect it because the climate has changed. We're we're getting, Amanda said. We had a flood the February 20. We've had other floods of flooding, not to this degree in prior years, and of course, the 1990 flood overtopped the freeway as well and cut off the rest of the province. So there's a lot of work to be done, but there's no point in recovery. The recovery phase, we have bridges that will need attention, culverts, all sorts of things. The farmers have to rebuild their infrastructure. But if we do all of that and leave that dyke alone and Barrow Town alone, the way it is status quo we could be facing this next year or maybe even three weeks from now. I have no idea what kind of weather is coming at us, but so this is this is imperative that we fix this once and for all.

MG: Just before I let you go, how are you holding up? I was out there last week and met with a lot of people who are exhausted like you are, I'm sure and frustrated, but also they said they're resilient and that they will get through this. How are you holding up?

HENRY BRAUN: I'm doing pretty good. I feel I got probably four or five hours of sleep, which is longer than what I have had, and we have a great team in the emergency ops centre and the support from the rest of the organisation. I am really encouraged and proud of what I how I have seen our community come together, neighbour helping neighbour, farmer helping neighbour, people coming from other parts of Metro Vancouver to help. And it's just it's just heartwarming.

MG: Long days ahead. Still, Mayor Braun is good to speak with you. I appreciate it.

HENRY BRAUN: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, we're not through this yet, but I'm hoping that next week we'll see bright sky blue skies and sunshine.

MG: All the best.

HENRY BRAUN: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Henry Brauns, the mayor of Abbotsford and as the mayor said, Abbotsford is in farm country. Many of those farms are now underwater. It's devastating for the people who own them, but there are hundreds of others whose livelihoods are also on the line. Migrant workers from countries like Mexico and Guatemala are the main employees in the fields and greenhouses, and they may not have jobs to return to when those floodwaters recede and the bright skies come back. Ingrid Mendez de Cruz is executive director of the Attari Counselling and Support Services Society. Byron Cruz is with Sanctuary Health and Vancouver. Both have been helping the displaced migrant workers, and they both join us now. Good morning.

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: Good morning.

MG: Ingrid, the minister of agriculture was suggesting that 150 workers have been forced to evacuate, do we know where those displaced workers are living now?

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: Well, we visited some of the shelters and I was four in Chilliwack, and we also have this that houses where they are staying as well. So they are not in the farms or the usual housing where they were before, but they have been sent to other houses where they are staying. I will say that it's more than 150, probably more than that. But yes, some of them are also going back to Mexico and Guatemala. But the shelters is where they are, most of them are staying right now.

MG: Byron, what have you been hearing from workers about how they're doing there? Who was, you know, the extraordinary heat in this part of the country, then the fires and now the flooding? So how are they coping?

BYRON CRUZ: Yeah, definitely has been very stressful for the migrant workers coming into the beginning of this year, with hundreds of workers infected with COVID. Then the heat wave and now with these new crises, definitely the workers are feeling invincible that they haven't been taking into account orders that the ultimate question that had been made without being provided in different languages and also that all people being confused because they do they know where to go to find the shelter. And at the same time, I would say that the their spirit when they went at the shelter finally safe was high. But now they are feeling down because that is normal. Future and not us is not easy access to employment insurance. And that means that there is a need to change the employment insurance system to allow the workers to apply without barriers in case of natural disasters. At the same time, it is the frustration that not knowing if they are coming back for the next season or for the next five season, and then it is important that the bandaid solution that the provincial and federal governments have been putting in place are not enough, like they have been saying that they will do extensions of work and permits. They are saying that they will also allow us to transfer to other farms. Those are Band-Aids that are not enough. There are means for change that is on means for open work permits for the agricultural migrant workers and the recent move for permanent residence upon arrival.

MG: Let me ask you first about those permits. The work permits that they're under right now are specific to the work that they're doing. So if the work doesn't exist, what does that mean for an already precarious status that they might have fired?

BYRON CRUZ: Yes, and thank you for this question, definitely. Both are close working family means that they can only work for the employer, but they are coming to work in Canada. And right now it's it's impossible for them, but also means to put them in vulnerable situation because having not accessing multimedia matches for employment insurance made the possibility to bother employers and recruiters, those who come and try to get in touch with them, trying to offering jobs and knowing the situation right, but they have to support their families back back home. And then it's like the system has to make some changes in order to avoid this.

MG: Ingrid, do we know whether these workers will be paid while there is no work for them to do?

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: Well, that's that's the question that we have been asking is how are these workers going to get some income? We they don't know, and there is, like Byron said, there's a lot of unknown. There's a lot of frustration in some of the IED. Workers are very, very anxious. What's going to happen? Some of them were saying to us when we visited them, if we are staying in the shelter, we prefer to go home because we can stay with our families rather than staying. Yeah. Uh, because their families are also worried. You know, the thing is that they are so far away from each other that, you know, families are like, What's happening? How are you doing? They say there is a lot of anxiety on both sides and back in their countries and here as well.

MG: And again,, the reason they're here doing that work is to help those families back home to help send money back home.

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: That's right. And they have invested all their life in this. They put all of their savings to come to Canada. They put all of their lives in that in those plants that they take care of in the work that they do. We happy hear stories from them that they are saying, you know how sad they were when they saw that those plants that they work for and with underwater or floating in water. Their work, that's their life. So they're also very, very sad for what's going on. So there's multiple emotions going on for them right now.

MG: Byron, you mentioned unemployment insurance. If the workers are not working and perhaps they're not being paid, are they eligible to apply for unemployment insurance for EI?

BYRON CRUZ: It is very hard to wait to answer that one, because currently it's difficult to do because employment standards to apply for employment standards, usually they but you have to be actively looking for a job. But if you have a close working permit, that's impossible to show and then you need a minimum of hours. And sometimes we have migrant workers that came two or three months ago that made it impossible to have the enough hours. Then what we are doing right now with the different organisations supporting, it's helping workers who wish to apply for employment insurance to apply, and we will see how many applications are accepted and how many place their applications are not accepted, but changes in policy are necessarily right away.

MG: Is that affected in part because we're hearing stories of many of them, they've lost employment, but they've also in the floods, lost things like passports and other documents that that could help them move through that process. What are you hearing about that, Byron?

BYRON CRUZ: Oh, yeah, definitely. This important why we insist on the on having open work permits, we insist on having permanent, device for permanent residence. We have seen workers who lost- there was no time to get their passports or they're were able to get their passports but the passports are damaged. We are making a call to the consulate to speed up this process to support the workers.

MG: Ingrid, what do you want to hear from federal officials about the status of these workers going forward?

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: Well, with Byron said, you know, we we need open work permits. We need these temporary foreign worker programme to change. We cannot have these workers be practically slaves in in there. So they they are the ones who produce our- so they are the ones who, they are responsible to produce the food that we eat. If he wasn't for them, we wouldn't have food on our table. They are so important in our economy. We need to recognise that and we need to make sure that they know that, but they won't know it until this programme changes. These temporary foreign worker programme needs to change so that workers have the possibility of going somewhere else to work if this happens to them again. And this is going to continue to happen, Matt. This is going to this is going to, you know, this is going to the the climate change is a reality. We have it here. This is going to happen again. Next year will be again, heat waves, fires. We're doing a lot of work to to educate workers into the fire season. And now we need to do the flight season. So it's a it shouldn't be up to us to be up to the government to make the changes that they need so that they don't. They are not in these situations anymore.

MG: Byron, we just have it, which is we just have a few seconds left. Byron, are you confident that the government is listening? This is a story that's getting attention around the world. The prime minister was in Abbotsford on the weekend. Are you confident that government officials are listening?

BYRON CRUZ: We are confident that they are listening to the demands of the Migrant Rights Network, but also to the provincial government needs to step down because workers compensation needs to check those funds where there are still workers working right now. And based on these conditions. And also, do you see the families me is to check all those precarious situation in terms of housing? We have these visits and so many farms on these houses are horrible.

MG: It's an important part of the story that we have been talking about, certainly for the last week and a bit, and we'll come back to this in the meantime. Thank you both.

INGRID MENDEZ DE CRUZ: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Ingrid Mendez de Cruz is executive director of the Watari Counselling and Support Services Society. Byron Cruz is with Sanctuary Health. He was in Vancouver, and that is The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q, one of the big films out right now. House of Gucci. Tom Power speaking with Sarah Gay Forden, who wrote House of Gucci more than 20 years ago and helped the great director Ridley Scott turn it into a new film. The origin story behind a film that a lot of people are talking about coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio one, I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Tuesday November 30, 2021 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This