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 2022

The Current Transcript for October 19, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

This is the first time in the history of our feminist movement globally that women are causing and bringing about a revolution.

MATT GALLOWAY: Demonstrators continue to take to the streets of Iran, calling for change in an uprising that has been led by young women as the country's former minister of women's affairs before the revolution. These scenes are something that Mahnaz Afkhami could have never imagined in 30 minutes. Afkhami is here to talk about the Iran that she grew up in and why she believes this protest is different and what she thinks the regime is afraid of. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

In the case of cancer, what you can actually do is get specific proteins on a patient's own cancer, take it into your body and then educate your immune system and flag it to your immune system so that your body's own immune system can target the cancer.

MG: When mRNA technology was harnessed to fight COVID 19, scientists said this could be just the beginning for these breakthrough shots. Now, some of those same scientists have another disease in their sights. Coming up, the winding race to produce a cancer vaccine, perhaps by the end of the decade. We start, though, in Ottawa and the question of who knew what when as an occupation took hold in the nation's capital. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Emergencies Act Inquiry prompts questions about government action, knowledge

Guests: Marieke Walsh, Michael Kempa

SOUNDCLIP

My understanding from the discussions that I saw taking place in the media was that the prised pig was Wellington Street. They wanted to have Wellington Street with a flatbed truck and a podium and sound system to denounce the federal government. I think their intention was to go in and have them with these vulgar flags and swastikas and Confederate flags and so on, swirling all over the place with the backdrop of Parliament Hill like they've taken over the country.

MG: That's Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson testifying yesterday at the Emergency Act enquiry. The public hearing is examining the Federal Government's use of the special powers granted by that law to help end the protests that clogged downtown Ottawa for three weeks in February.

SOUNDCLIP

The challenge we all faced was that this thing came. We didn't think it was going to be as big as it did. And I've had conversations with other mayors who said, You know what, we learnt lessons from you. We were the guinea pig of these protests and it allowed them to get their act together at the start of the issue. And if it had happened in another jurisdiction, I think we would have acted differently and quickly to secure Wellington Street.

MG: Not everyone, though, agrees with what the mayor and other officials are saying. Tim Abray lives in downtown Ottawa. He spoke with CBC News after Mayor Watson's testimony.

SOUNDCLIP

There is this ongoing attempt to avoid accountability for this issue. Anyone living in the downtown of Ottawa at the time knew that this was going to happen, and it was clear for days, if not weeks, before the arrival of this convoy that this was a different creature. And so it's deeply infuriating to see the mayor minimising awareness.

MG: Marieke Walsh is a political reporter with the Globe and Mail. She is in Ottawa. Marica, good morning.

MARIEKE WALSH: Good morning. That heard a little.

MG: Bit of Jim Watson's testimony yesterday. Walk us through, from your perspective, the highlights, what really stood out in terms of what he said.

MARIEKE WALSH: What stood out was this overarching feeling that you could see building between the documents, the evidence that was presented, and the testimony from the mayor of a tension and frustration between the different levels of government about why Ottawa wasn't getting the resources it was requesting. On the flip side, it appears that the other levels of government weren't fully clear on what Ottawa's plan was and may have been hesitant to send resources faster. But the mayor says that, you know, not sending them faster meant that this protest dragged on for three weeks instead of one week, for example. However, at the same time, there were some interesting apparent contradictions from the mayor that were a bit highlighted in your clips just now from the Ottawa resident. For example, the mayor said there was no indication that they would stay longer than a weekend. Meantime, they had fundraised millions of dollars to sustain the protests and the Ottawa Hotel Association had been warned they would be there for at least a month. On the Emergencies Act, he said when it was invoked that he supported it, that the government needed it. But a week earlier he voted against a council motion that would have looked at exploring using the act. So I think more questions still about what happened in Ottawa, in particular what was known by who and when and what really prevented action sooner.

MG: Let's go back to the issue of the tensions between the various levels of government. How did that play out in the testimony and what we learnt through some of the documents that were unveiled, in particular tensions between the city of Ottawa and the provincial government led by Doug Ford.

MARIEKE WALSH: Mm hmm. So what's happening at the commission, Matt, is that at the same time as witnesses are testifying for hours on end, the commission counsel and people who are cross-examining the witnesses are also tabling documents at the same time. And when you put those puzzle pieces together, you see documents showing that the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau and Jim Watson discussed quite early on in the protests about the at the end of the first week or beginning of the second week, that they were frustrated with Doug Ford, that the prime minister accused Doug Ford of hiding because of political reasons and they discussed putting pressure on him or shaming him into acting. And so, you know, that really shows some daylight or discrepancies between these sort of public 11 that we've seen between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford certainly in the last year or two. And what Doug Ford has said about his support for the police's support for Trudeau and Mayor Jim Watson and standing shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau. We also know, for example, now that the number that the province said of police that they were sending to Ottawa 1500 is what at one point the solicitor general's office said was a vast overstatement of what was actually on the ground. The mayor said yesterday in his testimony that there were about 55 OPP officers available each day in Ottawa.

MG: Not 1500.

MARIEKE WALSH: Not quite 1500.

MG: Why is Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, not testifying as part of this enquiry that's happened in his province?

MARIEKE WALSH: That's a great question. It's not quite clear, I think, to the reporters covering it. If politicians had to offer to to testify, we know that Justin Trudeau, for example, offered to testify. Doug Ford and his office have said he was not invited to testify by the commission. And instead there will be some senior civil servants from Ontario who we already know from evidence that's been presented. We're on those planning calls and coordinating calls during the protests and who will appear at this commission. It's a six week, six weeks of public hearings. So it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I think it's going to take a while for us to really see the shape of what was happening, because right now we're seeing the city of Ottawa's perspective. And only later will we hear the police perspective, then the province perspective, and then the federal perspective.

MG: I guess just finally on that point, if there is, as you say, daylight between what the province is saying and what the city was looking for and the federal government as well. And there are accusations from the Prime Minister that the Premier was in hiding because of political concerns. Is there the possibility now that that Premier Ford could be called to testify?

MARIEKE WALSH: I'm not sure. The Toronto Star Robert Benzie was looking into that in an article he published yesterday. And and according to his report, the Premier's office wouldn't answer whether he would offer to testify or whether he would be willing to testify. We do know, though, from the commission that the witness list of 65 witnesses is on a preliminary list. It can change. They can add new witnesses, they can remove witnesses. And so it is all a bit fluid. But I think it's clear from the fact that we are seeing these documents that also information is coming from many different avenues. And maybe the commission doesn't need to hear from the premier to get at the issue of whether or not the Emergencies Act was needed to be invoked. And that's really at the heart of of this commission. And through that question, we're getting a lot of background information and behind the scenes information about what really was going on.

MG: Jim Watson said, 'Show me the Mounties', mayor of Ottawa making that comment. Do we know whether he called for the Emergencies Act to be invoked? As you say, at the heart of this enquiry is whether there was a need for that act to be invoked. Is that something that he asked for?

MARIEKE WALSH: He did not ask for it. And I think that there are more questions for the mayor now about what was needed and and sort of the timeline around this. What happened in the middle of the protests, Matt, is that the city council that he is that he leads actually had a vote on a motion on whether to pursue discussions with the federal government on triggering the emergency that he voted against that motion and it was defeated at council. And then a week later, the federal government brought in the emergency that and Jim Watson said it was needed. He told the commission yesterday that he never asked for the Emergencies Act to be brought in because at the time he did not know what was contained in the act, but he didn't answer reporters questions after. And his office also declined to sort of explain what changed over those seven days to go from voting against using the Emergencies Act or even looking at it to a wholehearted endorsement of it.

MG: As you say, there will be some questions to come about policing. So just finally, what do we know about what that. Might look like and who we could be hearing from in days ahead around the policing tactics, tactics that were being questioned by by Bill Blair, the minister who used to be a chief of police himself.

MARIEKE WALSH: Certainly, I think the Civil Liberties Association seemed to really put a frame around that question yesterday. They released a statement at the end of Jim Watson's testimony saying, So far we've seen that Ottawa citizens and residents suffered, but we have not seen the need for the Emergency Use Act. Instead, we see questions of enforcement. The police had the power to take it. They had the power to arrest. They had the power to contain this protest. But there were questions around enforcement. And so that is really what we need to address. And what the commission is looking at is what were the police not able to do before the Emergencies Act that they could do with the Emergencies Act, or was it simply a question of organisational confusion, communications challenges and a lack of resources?

MG: And is your sense that that we will be able to get at those answers? I mean, who's going to be talking to answer those questions?

MARIEKE WALSH: I think certainly the people who appear to be the ones that we need to hear from are are on on the list coming up, it's we're hearing from the OPP, we are hearing from the RCMP and we are hearing from the Ottawa Police Service, including Peter Slowly, who resigned midway through that chaotic protest in Ottawa. And so we will hear from them. We're also hearing from CSIS, for example. So we'll get a better sense of what information was available to them, what threats they assessed as being present in Canada. Because, of course, security threats are a key requirement for the threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act. And we are already seeing that a lot of information is coming out from the hundreds of documents that they are tabling at the same time. So the commissioner said at the very beginning his goal is to answer the question of was the Emergencies Act needed? And it appears so far we are learning a lot and it will just take some time, I think, to see the full shape of it.

MG: It is a marathon, not a sprint. We'll talk again. Marieke, thank you.

MARIEKE WALSH: Thank you.

MG: Marieke Walsh, political reporter for The Globe and Mail, she was in Ottawa. Michael Kempa is an associate professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. Michael, good morning to you.

MICHAEL KEMPA: Good morning.

MG: We were hearing about some of the specifics coming out yesterday. You've been following this closely. Big picture, what do you make of what you've heard so far?

MICHAEL KEMPA: The biggest thing is it's very when you listen to people's testimony, Rekha asked the question, who knew what and when? And what is clear is a lot of people had a lot of forewarning and had a lot of valuable information at early stages. They simply weren't sharing it across their basically silos. This reflects very much an old security paradigm. Everybody was doing their right job. They didn't want to overstep their parameters. They were being very cautious. When faced with an extreme emergency, they became almost very timid, either in the sense that they didn't want to make a legal error or they didn't want to make an error in sharing information that might make a problem worse.

MG: In some of the transcripts that have been released in terms of communication between the various jurisdictions, we saw the Prime Minister calling it what he saw as a disconnect between the then chief of police for the city of Ottawa, Peter Slowly, and the mayor, Jim Watson. How does that contribute to what you're talking about, a systemic breakdown in some ways?

MICHAEL KEMPA: Well, that's a perfect example. We also heard similar America saying that there was concern that there was a delay in the province and feds sending support police officers to the Ottawa Police Service because they had concerns, they said, about the adequacy of plans on the ground here in Ottawa. That Chief Peter Slowly and his team had not come up with adequate plans. Okay. We've actually learnt in the testimony that the Mayor and the city planner, Steve Clarke, us or Steve Kay, as he goes by in this town, knew about this. But when asked who did you share that information with? They didn't go to the Police Services Board. They didn't go to the chief with that information. If for no other reason than to clear it up. We might have found, for example, that Peter so would have said, Well, that's not true. We've got it right here. Let's relay that information critically to those players so we get the officer as quickly as possible. And when they ask, Steve, Hey, why did you not go to the Police Services Board? He said, Oh my goodness, the city manager never goes to the Police Services Board. We're completely legislated to be separate. We don't do that. There's nothing illegal about doing that. It's just not the norm. In the new circumstances, it would be entirely appropriate. I don't blame Steve Kaye or the mayor for that, but it's learning for next time.

MG: The mayor said, well, I want to ask you about next time. The mayor said that in some ways they had lost control of the, you know, the core of where this demonstration was happening. He says, Show me the Mounties. He was questioned as to why he didn't call the RCMP directly, and he says that he does not. And we heard this from the prime minister as well. He does not direct the police. What should we take from that response?

MICHAEL KEMPA: No politician, no civilian oversight body ever directs the police in the exercise of their powers of investigation, arrest and laying charges. That's actually what operational independence means. Most of us, most politicians have way too wide an understanding of what the operational independence of the police means. They think it means they're never allowed to speak to the police about operations, ask questions. This is actually not true. And actually, Police Services Board, this is one of their essential jobs. So we're going to be looking into in this enquiry, did the board verify with their chief that he had an adequate plan in place? And if they didn't, that would have been a huge misunderstanding.

MG: What coordination should there have been in the best case scenario? Between the municipality, between the federal government, between the provinces, but also those various police services.

MICHAEL KEMPA: Well, the simple answer is all of this is laid out in legislation, but we're very rusty in using it. We haven't had protests like this in Canada, and that's why it fell apart. Very simply, mayors have got to be on their police services boards. That is the case in Toronto, not the case in Ottawa. That board has to push their chief and police executive asking questions about operational plans. They don't direct the police, but they do ask questions. And that board is the primary point of contact for every other policing actor. So with the mayor on there, obviously the mayor can coordinate with the city. The city goes to the province. The province is the key link in the chain, the first line of response to help any city that is in an emergency situation. If the province can't help, then you go to the feds. Now it's a little different in Ottawa because we are the national capital and there is federal property here in parliament and so forth. But without knowing what the province did and didn't do and what was helpful, but not quite enough in the provincial declaration of emergency, we won't be able to answer the question of whether it was appropriate for the feds to declare an emergency. We need to know how what the province tried fell short.

MG: So when you hear the Prime Minister accuse the Premier of Ontario of hiding from his responsibility for political reasons and the suggestion that meetings weren't held because people at the provincial government felt that it would be a waste of time, what does that tell you?

MICHAEL KEMPA: Well, the less generous interpretation seems what the prime minister is implying is Doug Ford. But I would add all politicians never want to touch policing and security issues because it's dynamite. If you get it wrong and you make the problem worse, you're finished electorally. A more charitable interpretation is the politician doesn't fully understand. So we heard that the province thought this was purely a policing issue. Just all Ottawa needs is maybe some more police officers, but they're not pulling any other levers of government. We're not touching the regulation of truck licences. We're not touching any kind of special police action other than ordinary enforcement of the law. It's that they misunderstand the nature of the problem. So less charitable political calculation, more charitable lack of understanding.

MG: In the last couple of minutes, you talked about this, you know, trying to get this right for the next time. Has anything changed, do you think, in the months since when it comes to that need for better coordination and communication?

MICHAEL KEMPA: I am hopeful, but a little bit nervous about that. And the reason I'm nervous is Peter slowly, in his testimony to the special joint committee of the House and Senate, said that this problem has not gone away. Political polarisation. We are going to face much protest, mass protest. We have not reformed our institutions or yet learnt our lessons. I hate to say it, but the Police Services Board in Ottawa is currently showing that they haven't learnt much. They're planning on appointing a new chief. Weeks before an election. Weeks before a new mayor. Weeks before a reconstituted board. Before we've learnt the lessons of this enquiry and their city audit of policing here. So this is not encouraging, but we are learning through this public order emergency commission where the chains of communication broke down, where we had weaknesses in our legislation. And on the question of invoking the emergency. Many people are arguing, but all the powers were there on paper. It was completely unnecessary to escalate all the way to the Emergencies Act. It was just an issue of enforcement and execution. Well, precisely. If the agencies were not able to enforce, if they were unable to execute well, the Emergencies Act would have had to have been invoked this time to bring control to the situation. But then what we must make sure is that we're prepared to enforce and execute on all those existing statutes next time. And I would suggest to you, the critical ones are at the provincial level. Many levers could have been pulled, especially around the licencing of trucks, without having had to get to the national emergency.

MG: And it word though, there will be a next time you believe.

MICHAEL KEMPA: There's absolutely no doubt, given the nature of polarisation in our society, that we are now in a new era of mass protest.

MG: Michael, good to talk to you. We'll talk again, I'm sure. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL KEMPA: Thank you.

MG: Michael Kempa, associate professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. Your CBC News is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

It's not about the veil alone. It's about subjugation. It's about authoritarianism. It's about pressure. And what you need is to allow this to change.

MG: The former Iranian minister of women's affairs, Mahnaz Afkhami, has been exiled from her home for decades now as protests in that country continue. She sees a revolution coming, one being led by young women. She's my guest. Coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

Why Iran’s former Minister of Women's Affairs thinks these protests are different

Guest: Mahnaz Afkhami

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, a breakthrough in the battle against cancer. Could a vaccine be closer than we think? But first, from exile. Iran's former women's affairs minister reflects on what she's seeing in her country.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Protests like this one in Tehran have flooded the streets for weeks. The protesters are chanting 'Death to the dictator', 'Mullas must go away' and 'Freedom'.

SOUNDCLIP

[Protestors shouting]

MG: In videos widely shared on social media, schoolgirls are seen removing their compulsory hijabs and waving them in the air in defiance. These protests were sparked by the death of Mehsa Amini, the 22 year old woman who died in custody of Iran's morality police. The country's Committee to Protect Children's Rights says 28 adolescents have been killed in the protests. Many others have been detained. And Iranians abroad and observers around the world say they have never seen anything quite like this. Mahnaz Afkhami was Iran's minister of women's affairs from 1975 through 1978, when she was forced into exile with the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She has since become an international women's rights advocate based in the United States and has just published a new book titled The Other Side of Silence, a memoir of Exile, Iran and the Global Women's Movement. Mahnaz Afkhami is in Bethesda, Maryland. Good morning.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Good morning.

MG: When you hear those young voices in Iran chanting Death to the dictator, what goes through your mind?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Well, there is a combination of joy and also fear. Joy, because this is the first time in the history of our feminist movement globally that women are causing and bringing about a revolution. So it's a point of pride. Under the circumstances they are facing. But at the same time, the fear because so many of them are being attacked so savagely, we just fear for their safety, for even the young children, almost an adolescent. So I've become involved.

MG: How would you characterise the protests that we're seeing in Iran today? What is it to you and you've hinted at this in terms of this being a feminist movement, what is it that stands out to you about what you see?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: The thing that I I'm very grateful for and have witnessed it in the last two decades, especially, is that what we did in Iran, together with hundreds of thousands of activists, has remained in spite of the pressure, in spite of all the limitations, in spite of women being the target of every savagery that could be possible from losing their most immediate unnecessary rights to even the rights over what to put on their heads or not, or how to walk, how to sit, where to sit. And of course, the limitations on their economic rights, being able to work, get paid, loss of all the privileges they had through the law before in terms of childcare, in terms of divorce rights, in terms of the right to participate in politics freely and equally. So we are grateful for that. All that we did and all that has been done in the 20th century and the 21st century.

MG: Can you describe the Iran that you grew up in? Because in the book you paint a very different picture of the country than the one obviously we're seeing right now.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Well, the Iran I grew up in was actually nowhere near what later became possible. But I did have, even at that time, a grandmother who did what she willed to do, in the sense that she changed her religion, became a Baha'i, and was- of course, her husband was made to divorce her and she set up her first economic independence. She became a tailor and opened the shop with a lot of young girls working for her. This was one aspect. My mother was one of the three women who first attended the university. And so it was both still a feudal kind of a setting with low education for women. In my very early childhood, but at the same time, it was one in which women could go against the customary traditions and do something unusual.

MG: What did you take from your mother and grandmother in terms of inspiration?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: And that independence is highly significant for every human being, and especially for women who were denied it. And that independence connects directly to education and to skills building. And this is what I learnt when I later became the Secretary General of the women's organisation and travelled all over Iran and tried to speak to people and see what they wanted, what were their priorities. And I think what helped a great deal in these conversations was one of the things that I heard, for instance, and I still remember the hearing of it. It was a woman in a textile factory. I kept talking about changing laws and reforming and divorce possibilities. I kept saying, Isn't that most important? And she kept saying, I only get this much a month. And finally I said, Don't you want to have the right to divorce? She said, What's the use of that? If I have to go to my father instead of my husband and be dependent on him? So that's a lesson learnt about economic independence. That was really very important and we were later able to bring that into the planning for women's total emancipation and equality. Without that, it's impossible to have that. And also the other lesson was as a feminist, as an activist, that we should not go over from theory to practise. We should go from what we see on the ground, from experience to theory, which is something that I hope we in the West will get a little more used to, to listen to people and see what the priorities are and what their challenges are.

MG: When you were the Minister of Women's Affairs, what did you think that you could accomplish in that role?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: I was very fortunate because I achieved that position as the second woman in the world to get that position. And one of the good things about it was I already had been working with women across Iran in 400 branches of the organisation, and we were able to do a lot and learn a lot and of course that gave me a huge amount of support. And the good thing was that the Cabinet of Mr. Oviedo was the Prime Minister. Nobody else basically had any idea what a Minister of Women's Affairs was and what was it supposed to do. So we kept thinking of what it was that we would want as women and as feminists and suggested it. And very often because they didn't, nobody else knew what it was supposed to be either. They went along with it. And so we were able to get a lot of things done simply because there was a freedom in defining what this role was. For instance, we decided something that later became a slogan that that women's rights involves everything and all issues are women's issues. So what we did in preparation of our National Plan of action was we had ten ministers from agriculture to justice, health, labour meeting under the Prime Minister once a year to go over the plans for development and see how each of the ministries impact the position of women. So this was a unique opportunity and many years later it became the slogan of the movement, you know, gender, the global movement. All issues are women's issues.

MG: Did you believe that real change was possible for for the lives of women in Iran when you were in that position?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Oh, I was absolutely certain, because I saw how it evolved, how people were learning and learning not about their needs and identifying and defining them. But how about change? How do you make change happen? And it was amazing. What you needed to do was just involve women, giving them give them the possibility and present circumstances that were necessary for them to be able to come to the centres. It wasn't easy for a woman just to take off and come to a centre and tried to take courses or be trained. We did things such as made sure that some respected members of the community, some religious families, daughters or wives were there so that it would lessen the conflict and the aggressiveness of the religious entities which were the main opponent of too much change in women's or any change basically in women's status. We learnt democracy step at a time and what it required in terms of personal commitment and it was, it was really an exciting period and it did pay off. You know, of course one would ask them why the revolution, you know, I guess it was too much change, possibly accelerated change without enough cross country communication, you know, to make it understood.

MG: How much has changed, do you think, in the lives of women in Iran since that time?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Oh, it's it's it's just not even comparable. I mean, women at that time, right before the revolution, they had all the necessity for working and for employment opportunities. They had up to seven months maternity leave. They had childcare on the premises of the workplace. But in other areas we had the best family laws in the Middle East, North Africa. So this was a part of it. And the other was was the hope that was there, the positive outlook was there. So there's been a lot of fiction, a lot of negative imagination into the combination of the extreme right and the extreme left in actually the picture that is given of Iran before the revolution. And that is really unfortunate. But I think now we see that Iranian women are not what they are supposed to be. And, you know, this is what happened even after the revolution. Right before the revolution. Women began participating in their the revolutionary activities, saying they wanted more. They wanted more democracy. They wanted more participation. And they thought possibly the picture that Mr. Khomeini and his followers were giving was what they could expect, because he was being using what is called Typekit, which is lying. You're allowed to lie. If you lie, your career serves the cause. So he was lying. He was saying that I don't want to be ruling the country. I'm going to go to home. I'm going to sit on this side. We're going to have a democratic country. Women are going to be involved. And then the first thing he did, he took away the rights of women, of family laws. The second thing he did, it made the veil compulsory. And three weeks later, the first group that went out and sat down with Khomeini was the women's groups. So they got it very quickly, but unfortunately too late.

MG: There have been uprisings in past. People most commonly will refer to to the Green Movement of several years ago. What's what's different about what we're seeing right now, do you think?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: I think there's a progression through the one million signatures first, which was the first effort that we were very much involved with outside, inside, connecting together. They tried to get 1 million signatures to get change family laws, and what they did was amazing. They learnt a lot in terms of door to door campaigning, in terms of how to advance their point of view. And one very important thing in the global women's movement, which hasn't yet been achieved, is that they sought the collaboration of men. One out of every three signatures were men signatures. That, of course, was not successful because they used the usual killing and imprisoning women. But then it led to the Green Movement, which came out of that one million signatures movement. The Green Movement was very successful, but again, the kind of force and military and assaults that are used. Finally, it's not easy to to withstand. So the two previous revolutions and of course, the Green Revolution spilt into the Arab Spring as well. But what it taught us was that the ways of of of communicating, the ways of bringing people to understand what you're asking for. And, of course, technology, you have to admit that without that, it would be very difficult for people to gather and to have their message heard.

MG: Maybe it speaks to the technology piece, but what about the demographic, the fact that these are young girls and women that are driving this? What does that tell you?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: That, again, goes back to technology. You see, the older ones will have to learn from the younger ones because the younger ones can connect immediately, they can bring images, they can bring sounds, and that can go across the world easily. So that's something that, you know, in another time would have been impossible to do. And also they've learnt the ways and means of shaping their messages through them that 1 million signatures and the Green Movement were really a practise in how to communicate to various diversities of the population and how to get your message across, you know.

MG: What do you think the leaders of the country are afraid of?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: They're afraid of women more than anything. You see, this sounds odd, but it is real. You know, in 1963, when Khomeini had his first uprising, he was talking about the women's right to vote, as well as the land reform, because land reform took away their money. But first, it was women, you know, and they understand and they are absolutely correct that the basic unit of society is the family. And the role of women in the family reflects itself, has for decades, for almost centuries. It has reflected itself in education, in business, in government, in economics, in everything. Because the top down, what we call patriarchal leadership, the style starts in the family and then it just grows locally and nationally and internationally. So the religious fanatics are more than anybody aware that if you shake up that structure, the architecture of human relations in the family, it's going to spread out through the society and change everything.

MG: So when you see those young women on the streets or standing on the hood of a car, taking their hijab off and waving it in. The air. When? When the leaders see that, what are they thinking? What are they afraid of in that moment?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: They're thinking that these people are out of hand, that they cannot control them, that they cannot just kill everybody. And also from within, there is resentment and rejection, you know, from the people who are not necessarily revolutionaries, but they're working in different aspects of society. They are beginning to to show reaction. Everybody from young children all the way to the older people to now the factories and and also the bazaar and the oil production. Everybody is getting involved. They need support because after all, how can they without having any any physical capability of withstanding pressure and assault, unless there is huge support from the outside, and unless some of the leading thinkers outside begin to see that even though it's young women, even though it seems to be about the veil, it's not about the veil alone. It's about subjugation, it's about authoritarianism, it's about pressure. And what you need is to allow this to change. And also, I think if we think about it with the situation that we are in right now, with the wars that are going on, with the climate that is destroying so much and bringing so many refugees, with the pandemics, with all that we have done in terms of ruining our planet and ruining life on our planet, there has to be a rethinking. There has to be a re-assignment of responsibilities and authority to parts of the population. People have to work together. We have to hear from women because they are not the main decision makers. None of what's happened is is decided by women. They've been out of this story. So let's hear them. Let's see what they're saying. And the ones in Iran are basically at the forefront of the global revolution, you know, and we can let it wither, which it will without support or we can help it find its way and bring a model to what can be done elsewhere.

MG: Could you have imagined when you started writing this memoir that that this is the world that it would emerge into and this is the scene that it would emerge into?

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Well, you know something? Actually, I think that the people who continue and just go on with with a cause, an idea, a hope, a wish, such as myself and my colleagues all around the world. They are always seeing not the deadly attacks on people, but the light in their eyes, the energy, the beautiful sense of wish to be free and to have their will recognised. I mean, I always hoped that what they started years ago in Iran and has been replicated in other parts of the world through our organisation and many others, I thought that possibly the message of that transition from Iran globally would be useful and helpful to us.

MG: And this moment feels different to you.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Yes, it does. I'm just full of hope and full of good wishes for my dear country women in Iran and across the world. Really.

MG: It's a great pleasure to talk to you about this book, but also about the work that you have been doing in some ways to establish this moment that we're seeing right now. Thank you very much.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Thank you. Thank you very much.

MG: Mahnaz Afkhami was Iran's minister of women's affairs from 1975 through 1978. She's now president and CEO of the Women's Learning Partnership. And her new book is The Other Side of Silence: A Memoir of Exile, Iran and the Global Women's Movement. The song Baraye by Shervin Hajipour has become a viral anthem for protesters in Iran and around the world. The lyrics for the song come from messages posted online by people in Iran talking about why they're protesting. Each line begins with that word 'baraye' meaning for or because of in Farsi. Early in the movement, Shervin Hajipour was arrested but has since been released. Iranian authorities have tried to take the song down. It's too late for that.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

MG: Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

It's really personalised treatments. It's completely different from the traditional treatments of things like chemotherapy, and they are in very early phase trials in cancer scientists and medicks involved with trials are always very hesitant to say that we are going to find a cure for cancer because we know it's very complex. Every cancer is different, but it's definitely really showing promising results. In early phase trials.

MG: A new vaccine could be life saving development for cancer treatment. We'll hear what hope this gives patients and what still needs to be done to get that vaccine to the finish line. Those who are developing it say it could be available by the end of this decade. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. That story coming up in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

The promise of a cancer vaccine by 2030

Guests: Kelly McNagny, Dr. Otis Brawley, Kate Kornick

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

We fear that a cure for cancer or to changing cancer patient's life is in our grasp. Every step, every patient we treat in our cancer trials helps us to find out more about what we are against and how to address that.

MG: A Cure for cancer within our grasp. That is a big promise from Ozlem Tureci, co-founder of the German company BioNTech. She's one of one half of the team behind the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 vaccine. And now that team's sights are set on a vaccine for cancer, one they say could be available by 2030. Kelly McNagny is a professor of medical genetics and biomedical engineering at UBC. Kelly, good morning.

KELLY MCNAGNY: Good morning.

MG: What do we know about this potential cancer vaccine?

KELLY MCNAGNY: So I think it's actually really promising. It's an approach that should work for many types of cancer. I think what you need to know also, though, is that this is not something you take before you get cancer. This is a treatment for patients with cancer. So it's not that vaccine that you would think of getting your a shot in your arm and you're never going to see cancer. What this is, is it's a way of waking up your immune system to people who have cancer and helping them fight their disease in a more personalised way.

MG: How would that work? How do you go about waking up one's immune system to fight cancer?

KELLY MCNAGNY: Yeah, so so thinking about the COVID vaccine, it's a very similar principle. First they take the patients tumours. They sequence them and they find the mutations that code for proteins that have been altered in the tumours. And you know, tumours make mistakes all the time and they start making mutant proteins. What they then do is use a computer programme to find the mutations that are most likely to get a good immune response. And then they make these smaller mRNA, just like the COVID vaccine, stick them in the patient and activate the T cells. Once you get good activation of T cells to a tumour protein, they start killing the tumour. So that's the basic idea.

MG: How would that work? I mean, I guess at the beginning of the pandemic, we talked so much about M RNA vaccines and what the promise of this technology was. Just remind us how you go about using those vaccines to target specific types of tumours.

KELLY MCNAGNY: Right. So it will always depend on the tumour. And with cancer, things are a bit different. Every person's tumour will have a different set of mutations. So the first step is to take a biopsy and sequence the DNA from those biopsies, find those mutations, and then pick out, you know, a dozen or more of the proteins that are most likely to really stimulate immune response, make more noise to them. That code for those mutations, package them in these little lipid oil droplets that you inject in the vaccine, inject the patient, and then watch to see if you get an expansion of the T cells that are specific for the tumour. That that's how you monitor things.

MG: And the thing with mRNA technology is that you're able to in some ways fine tune those vaccines to be individualised in terms of the treatment.

KELLY MCNAGNY: Absolutely. Exquisitely specific. And I think a lesson from COVID is, you know, that those vaccines we made that went into a billion more or more arms were manufactured cheaply. All right. They were they went around the world so quickly that we were able to kerb a pandemic. And I think that's the advantage of the modern technology, is that it's fast. And with cancer, you can't wait. You have to give a vaccine quickly.

MG: Cancer isn't a singular thing. Cancer is a number of different things. And so what types of cancer do you think this would be applicable to if it worked?

KELLY MCNAGNY: So I think the first ones people are going for things like colon cancer and melanoma. But in principle, this should work for just about any cancer, any cancer where you generate mutations. And really that that's just about all of them. Some of them mutate more, some of them mutate less. May maybe the ones actually that mutate less will be easier- will be better for this technology because they tend to be the ones that you don't already generate an immune response to, and that's where you need a little bit of a boost.

MG: So would you have a, just practically, like a shelf full of these different types of vaccines for different types of cancers? Or would you engineer it specifically for the patient?

KELLY MCNAGNY: Yeah, it's possible, but I doubt that. I think it's more likely you'd engineer them for the specific patient, and that's where the cost would come in. But it would be individualised and it would be tailored to their particular cancer and that particular person.

MG: What have we learnt around the COVID 19 vaccination rollout that helps accelerate research like this?

KELLY MCNAGNY: A ton. And you know, I'm an immunologist. I believe that immunology is at the root of any disease and I defy to find one that doesn't have an immune component. We've learnt a ton about the basic immunology. The most important thing though, I think, is and it's often neglected, is we put all the people in the right room at the right time to develop the technology.

MG: And I had a lot of hand, a lot of money in the room as well.

KELLY MCNAGNY: And a lot of money. But we got the basic scientists, the clinicians, the manufacturers, very important. And the health care delivery is very important. Put them all in the room and said, we're making this. Will it work for you clinician? Can you manufacture? Can distribute health care provider in and get people to buy in? By doing that. At the beginning, they shaved years off of that vaccine trial and getting it into arms. And I think the same is true for the cancer. That's what BioNTech has learnt.

MG: So is it about ambition in some ways that if you if you really want to achieve something like this, people have been talking about, you know, a cure for cancer. And we're going to speak more in just a moment about the war on cancer that Richard Nixon launched in 1971, for decades and decades and decades. Is it about the fact that if you have something like a pandemic that's in front of you and you decide that this is the singular target and you put yourself to it, that something like that is achievable.

KELLY MCNAGNY: That's exactly right. And I think you need to think broadly now, any disease I think you could do the same thing for if you put enough of a technological supply in and the money to do it. Really, the technology has gotten so good that things move quickly. It's just a matter of will and putting enough people in the room to get it done. And so if it's a pandemic that's on people's mind, we can do it. We could do this for COPD, immuno idiopathic, pulmonary fibrosis, a variety of diseases. It's just the willpower to do it.

MG: BioNTech says that it believes this vaccine would be available by 2030. It's not very long. Is that realistic?

KELLY MCNAGNY: I think that's realistic. And I think what you need to remember. So, first of all, traditionally you need to think that anything you're seeing going into arms today probably started 20 years ago. On the other hand, BioNTech has been at this for a long time. They were working on this long before COVID came. So they have been working on it for a while. And again, they've learnt the lessons of how to speed it up by putting all the people in the room.

MG: And so for people who are listening right now, you can imagine again, the idea of the promise of a cure for cancer grabs people's attention for very obvious reasons. So many of us know people who have been touched by cancer, perhaps touched by cancer ourselves. What should we be thinking about as we hear this news?

KELLY MCNAGNY: I think you need to be a little sceptical. So you don't envision ten years from now, everybody walks in and gets their cancer treated immediately and they're cured. What you will see, though, is this technology being used to treat specific cancers, and that's going to start the wave. So that's what I would say is a realistic expectation.

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

KELLY MCNAGNY: Great speaking with you, too.

MG: Kelly McNagny is a professor of medical genetics and biomedical engineering at UBC. Dr. Otis Brawley is a professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. He's also the former chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society. Dr. Brawley, good morning to you.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Good morning.

MG: Do you share that optimism when it comes to this announcement that as the co-founder of Biontech says, a cure for cancer is within our grasp?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Well, I am optimistic, but perhaps not as optimistic as he. You know, I see a lot of very good things coming out of research and I see a need to increase our investments in research. But history tells me we should be hesitant to give specific timelines, and I actually see treatments that are effective as opposed to cures.

MG: What have you seen when it comes to research being done in the areas of vaccine to treat cancer beyond what biotech is is talking about?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: It's it's very exciting. It's very exciting. We've had the in clinical trials so far, we've been able to create a situation where a pancreatic cancer, which normally doesn't express antigens, expresses antigens, and then we can unleash the immune system on that pancreatic cancer. These are all things that are exciting but not ready for use in patients today and things that we need to invest in so that we can get them in the patients as quickly as possible. One of the things I worry about is science is really conducting itself with one arm tied behind its back right now. It's not being fully funded.

MG: Why is that?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Well, there's so many other things that people want to invest money into these days. And fortunately, here in the United States, the National Cancer Institute is literally funding 9% of the grants submitted to it that it says are worth funding. You know, literally 9%. We have investigators who don't want to collaborate with each other because they're in a competition for that 9% of the money. We do have a number of small biotech companies that are really on the forefront right now, but they're are biotech companies that are trying to make a profit. So they're also competing against each other, not sharing information.

MG: Is there I mean, telling me you talked about what we learnt from the pandemic when you. Are facing this huge societal crisis that if you get the same people in the same room, the right people in the same room, that you can you can do something that perhaps wouldn't be possible if everybody was competing against each other. Is that what's needed here?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: The feeling of emergency, the feeling that there was a catastrophe about to happen actually caused people to collaborate and talk to each other, you know, not just bail, not just BioNTech, but Moderna and other companies all talk to each other. And that was a good thing. That was science at its absolute best.

MG: The vaccine that we're talking about here, as Kelly mentioned, is one that would be a form of cancer treatment. Where are we at in terms of a vaccine that might prevent cancer?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Well, we already have several. The hepatitis B vaccine prevents hepatitis. The human papillomavirus vaccine prevents. Certainly cervical cancer probably had neck cancer and several other cancers that are caused by the papillomavirus. I could easily, in the near future see some vaccines that would prevent melanoma. And so I'm very hopeful in that realm as well. I think the investment in prevention is something that we have not exploited. And, you know, we're talking about Richard Nixon declaring war on cancer 50 years ago. And what have we gotten out of that war on cancer? We've learnt a great deal about prevention and we just have not employed it. Even those vaccines that came out of that war on cancer were not effectively employed.

MG: I remember reading something by a fellow cancer doctor who said, We can't treat our way out of this problem, that if you want to make a real dent when it comes to public health, you need to prevent cancer.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Absolutely. You know, the death rate from cancer in 1900 was one third what the death rate from cancer was by 2000. The increase over that 100 years really tells us that we started doing something to cause cancer deaths. We need to figure out what those things are and actually we have and then start removing those things that caused that tripling of the cancer death rate. Right now, 42% of all cancers are due to an identifiable cause, some of them very simple. And we, especially in the United States, are not doing the right things to prevent these cancers.

MG: 42% is a really high number.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Ah, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's 2020, 5% are caused by smoking. We've known for more than 70 years that smoking causes lung cancer. In the last 60 years, we've known this. Smoking causes at least 18 different cancers. Yet in the United States, we have states with 30% of adults still smoke. The average across the United States is somewhere around 17. 18% of the population is still smoking obesity. I really should say energy imbalance. It's not just obesity. It's consuming too many calories, not exercising enough, and then storing those calories. It's a three legged stool. It's not just obesity is the second leading cause of cancer. And by the end of this, by the end of this decade, we'll be the leading cause of cancer in the United States. And we are having increasing rates of obesity in the United States and in Canada, by the way. But we're not trying to work these things off. You know, diets of fresh fruits and vegetables would do a lot to quell the cancer problem.

MG: Why are we doing that? If we know, to your point, that 42% of cancers come from identify and dead viable things that could be prevented? Why aren't we as a society taking that on seriously?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Oh, it's the same it's the same phenomenon, is why a bunch of scientists get into a room and start collaborating when there's a catastrophe or there's an emergency like the COVID 19 epidemic. People don't see overeating and exercising and smoking as emergent issues having to do with cancer and other health. But, you know, keep in mind, those things cause more deaths by cardiovascular disease, diabetes from cancer. But people don't see that as urgent. Unfortunately, all of us, myself included, tend to think about screening and treatment a lot more than we think about. Risk reduction and prevention.

MG: And part of this is individual, but it's also societal. People talk about, you know, the build from where we live and how we live and that that contributes to some of the things that you're speaking about.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Oh, that's absolutely true. You know, the way that we live, especially over the last 50 years, we got rid of our sidewalks and our beach and moved to suburb. As we moved the suburbs, we got rid of sidewalks. We start, stop walking, stopped getting exercise. We bought these big SUVs. We go to the grocery store on Saturday morning, load them up with calorie dense, processed foods, and our way of life is carcinogenic.

MG: Richard Nixon, as we mentioned in 1971, declared a war on cancer. U.S. President Joe Biden said he would end cancer as we know it. Last month, he said he wanted to supercharge what he calls his cancer moonshot. If you have politicians who say this is the thing that I want to tackle and this is the thing that we can do, what difference does that make?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: You know, talk is wonderful. The question is, do we as a society actually have have it within us? Do we have the will to actually do it? You know, a few years ago, when I was still at the American Cancer Society, the society published the epidemiologists there published a paper that suggested that of the 600,000 Americans who die from cancer every year, 132,000 of those deaths would be preventable. 22% of those deaths would be preventable if everyone in the United States got the science that we currently have now. Now, that includes risk reduction and prevention. That includes appropriate screening, appropriate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. And there is not there's inappropriate of each of those going on right now.

MG: If you go back to the idea of the vaccine, which we started this conversation talking about, is there that it may not be by 2030, but is there a point at which we will have a vaccine based on mRNA technology or some other technology that we don't yet fully understand that will help address this?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: I would say absolutely yes.

MG: Yeah.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Yeah. As long as we're willing to invest in the science, as long as we're willing to invest in the science, we will get vaccine technology that will be useful for both prevention as well as for therapy.

MG: In the meantime, when we talk about ending cancer as we know it, what does that mean to you and what is the goal? What is success for you?

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Success for me is not necessarily cure. Some people will end up living in peaceful coexistence with their cancer. It's sort of like the smouldering fire where it may flame up occasionally and we throw some water on you, throw some treatment on it, and it continues to burn. But it's not impairing the patient's quality of life and it's not impairing the patient's quantity of life. The diabetes model, for example, across HIV in HIV. That's happening now. That's that's, I think, going to be very, very achievable over the next I would say over the next ten, 20, 25 years if we were to invest in science. But if we were to double down and truly invest in science, I think we could get some of those things sooner.

MG: It's hard not to want to look for optimism. And again, you have to be cautious in that optimism. But it does feel as though with the right investments, we could move in the right direction.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Yeah, you know, I am very I'm very hesitant to give a promissory note. Our history our history in oncology over the last 70 years is we've literally had leaders in the profession saying there's light at the end of the tunnel. They've literally forecast that we're going to cure this, a cure that in five years when the National Cancer Act was signed in 1971, many people were saying, we're going to cure cancer by the bicentennial in 1976. So I'm very, very hesitant to talk about a a cure for cancer. I am optimist. This trick that if we invest, we can do good and people's lives can improve because of that.

MG: Dr. Brawley, great to speak with you. Thank you very much.

DR. OTIS BRAWLEY: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Otis Brawley, professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Earlier this week, we spoke with Jen White and her husband Neil about their struggle with infertility. Jen's new CBC podcast is called One in Six, and it shares their journey.

SOUNDCLIP

NEIL: My attitude is more Tell the world and we'll all work on this together. So, you know, it was called family, friends, some co-workers. You know, we kept a close to our chest. But Jen was really kind of reigning me in on that.

JEN: I told him he wasn't allowed to tell anybody. We were taking the secret to the grave for the first year and a half. I think I was pretty adamant. Just going back to the idea that I felt something was wrong with me. Right? Like my body was betraying me and I didn't know how to fix it. And as the our journey went along, I tried more and more things just so desperate.

MG: That conversation resonated with many of you. The Current's Kate Cornick is here to read some of your mail. Kate, good morning.

KATE CORNICK: Good morning, Matt. Many people were moved by Jen and Neil's story. Janine Romeiko wrote, I was feeding her 13 month old twins breakfast during the airing, and it brought back memories of countless injections, disappointments, joys, a veritable roller coaster of emotions. I conceived are twin girls on round three of IVF at 40 with a three year old during a pandemic, with my partner stuck in another country due to travel restrictions, driving an hour and a half back for cycle monitoring. I did it all alone. Another twist to our story was our friendships changing. When we did conceive, some friends who had experienced fertility treatments and did not conceive have now become even more distant. It's very sad and I sometimes feel guilty for the family I do have. As ridiculous as that sounds. This is not an easy journey.

MG: Sandi Fiolka wrote to us about her experience more than 30 years ago. Sandy writes, After five miscarriages, two D and Cs and one stillbirth. Our hopes and dreams of becoming parents seemed unattainable. I know what it feels like when the rest of your family and friends announce they're pregnant. Walking through a shopping centre where it appeared everyone was pregnant or had a baby. We then went through a barrage of tests, pokes, ultrasounds, X-rays. Ultimately, the diagnosis was I had severe hormone deficiency. Medication was prescribed and success. Not once, but twice. Two girls aged 32 and 29. And both my girls have made me a grandmother and had no pregnancy issues. It is possible.

KATE CORNICK: Debbie Lozeman men also struggled with infertility. She writes, Over 25 years, my husband and I went through the very same struggle. The pain and heartache is still there, even after all these years. However, I am happy to say that 23 years ago we were blessed to become adoptive parents to a wonderful boy.

MG: As Jen White said, this affects one in six Canadian couples. And so if you would like to hear more about their own experience, perhaps an experience that sounds familiar to you. You can find the podcast. It's called One in Six. It's on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. Another story that we aired on The Current that struck a chord with many of you was our conversation around the minimum wage. Several provinces have raised the minimum wage, although we heard from workers that it's still not enough.

SOUNDCLIP

We want to increase minimum wages because I am a single mother. So my rent, my daughter's day-care fees, groceries or you know, everything is so expensive because of the inflation. I can send money back home because I have family in the Philippines like some of us here works already for two years, but still we have minimum wages.

KATE CORNICK: Our first letter is from New Brunswick. It just increased its minimum wage this month by $1 to 1375 an hour. That makes it the highest in Atlantic Canada. Sylvia Fabiani writes, I do not have access to public transportation. I worked for Wal-Mart at minimum wage, and I had to quit my job because I could no longer afford the gas to get to and from work. New Brunswick is not a cheap province to live in. Taxes are high, food is more expensive, the cost of gas is high and minimum wage is low. Wal-Mart is not a small business. They can more than afford a higher minimum wage.

MG: Randy McClean from Strathroy, Ontario, ran a small business for 23 years until retirement. Randy writes, I always paid more than the minimum wage to all my staff, including part time students. If any business owner is only paying minimum year after year, what they're really saying is I'd pay you less if I could. They have no value in the people they hire. I find it selfish when I hear business owners say This is not the time to raise the minimum wage. To this I ask then, when is it the right time? I never got an answer.

KATE CORNICK: Rita Verlhust from London, Ontario commented The bottom line is that when so many people working full time can't afford to live on their wages, there's something very wrong with the system.

MG: Kathy Lepold-Madigan offers up this suggestion. I'm a senior and the daughter of a small business owner. I go out of my way to support small. Businesses, even though I could save money by not doing so. Some small businesses are just getting by and the owners of others live a good life with lots of frills. If I knew which small businesses paid minimum wage and which paid a wage their employees could live on, I would patronise the businesses that paid the higher wage. Perhaps we should start revealing what businesses are paying their employees and let the public decide which to patronise.

KATE CORNICK: And finally, Sandra Brown is from Montreal. She writes, I'm 74, a single female. No family or support network in Canada. I worked all my life to ensure I'd maintain some semblance of independence as I aged. I don't see how anyone can live, never mind thrive on minimum wage. Part of the solution is simple for me. The rich need to be taxed. Money and tax havens need to be accessed. If we have a minimum wage, let people live on it, not have to choose who eats, who can get their medications, who can afford housing and basic rights. A basic minimum yearly income so one can budget money that is stable. Plan for emergencies. Have some agency. It is a privilege to be wealthy. With great privilege comes responsibilities to society. If there is a minimum wage, there should be a maximum wage.

MG: Kate, thank you very much.

KATE CORNICK: Thank you.

MG: The Current Kate Cornick. You know, we would love to hear from you on a different matter. You can write us about anything you hear on the programme, but on this matter in particular, we're going to be putting together a series of stories on the rising cost of food. You don't need me to tell you that it is more expensive to get food on the table these days. How is that affecting you? What is it meaning in terms of choices you have to make in terms of where you shop and when you shop? If you're a farmer struggling to produce food with the rising cost of inputs. We'd love to hear from you as well. Email us your experience with the rising cost of food. You can email us at thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's the programme for this Wednesday cuz. Up next on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Wednesday October 19, 2022 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This