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The Current Transcript for April 21, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

JUDY BLUME: It is terribly controversial, I think. It deals with sixth grade girls, religion, menstruation, bras, boys and other goodies, but I think girl readers are going to love it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Generations of kids have grown up reading the fearless writing of Judy Blume. In books like Forever, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, she wrote about sex, puberty and bullying in a way that felt like she was speaking directly to you. In 30 minutes, the directors of a new documentary about Judy Blume on how those books changed lives and why they are still being banned today. Also this morning, 40% of farmers in Canada are set to retire in the next decade. Coming up, your mail on the barriers preventing a new generation from taking over the family farm. Plus.

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PIERRE POILIEVRE: How much did the prime minister pay for his accommodations at this luxurious villa?

[audience applauding]

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Mr. Speaker, our family have been good friends with this family for about 50 years. And as always, we work with the Ethics Commissioner to make sure that all the rules are followed.

MG: It is day three of a massive public servants strike, and that's just the latest headache for the prime minister. In an hour, our national affairs panel on unprocessed passports, the ethics questions around Justin Trudeau's Jamaican vacation and his admission that Canada will never meet its defence spending targets. We begin, though, with a game changer in the fight against malaria. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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GHANA MALARIA

Guests: Adrian Hill, Dr. Fred Aboagye-Antwi

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NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Vaccine nationalism that was played out by the developed world in the rollout of COVID 19 vaccine meant that we have to take urgent, critical steps towards making sure that never again will we be victims or pawns of the international vaccine order.

MG: Those are strong words from Ghana's president, Nana Akufo-Addo. He was speaking at a ceremony launching a facility that will produce a newly approved malaria vaccine, a development which is being described indeed as a game changer. Ghana is the first country in the world to approve the R21 vaccine. This week, Nigeria followed suit. Malaria remains one of Africa's deadliest diseases. More than half a million people worldwide die each year from the illness, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa. Adrian Hill led the design and clinical development of this vaccine. He's director of the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute at the Nuffield Department of Medicine. He's in Accra, Ghana. Adrian, hello.

ADRIAN HILL: Hello. Good day.

MG: What is it like for you to see this vaccine get across the finish line and be approved in Ghana?

ADRIAN HILL: Well, two things. Personally, it's wonderful. It's the culmination of 30 years of research on malaria vaccines in my lab at the university. But much more importantly, this is a public health tool that we think can really make a difference in controlling malaria better, in saving many of the 640,000 lives that are being lost to malaria every year, principally amongst children in Africa.

MG: I’m going to ask you more about that public health tool, as you say, but you spent and your team has worked on this, as you've mentioned, this project and this idea of a malaria vaccine for some 30 years. Why has it taken so long for the science to get to this point?

ADRIAN HILL: Yeah. Well, there are until now no parasite vaccines that have been licensed and deployed. Parasites are much, much larger than viruses, maybe 100 times bigger, thousands of antigens, you've got to pick the right one. And some of these diseases have been around a really long time. Malaria has co-evolved with us over millions of years, so it's learned how to deal with our immune system.

MG: And so how does this vaccine, the R21, break through that?

ADRIAN HILL: What it does is induce really exceptionally high levels of antibodies. Remember, maybe with COVID, that vaccines were competing to induce the highest antibody response against the coronavirus and the longest lasting. Well, the technology here is really very, very potent in that we get very high levels of antibodies and they're pretty durable as well. And it's taken lots of iterations of different vaccine technologies to find one that will do this very well.

MG: How will it work? I mean, how will it address the crisis and be, as you say, that public health tool that so many on the continent have been waiting for?

ADRIAN HILL: Yeah. Well, malaria has a complex life cycle. When it comes down to it, a mosquito injects parasites into your skin. They go off and infect the liver and then the blood and so on. If you can track them in the skin with antibodies induced by a vaccine, they're only about 20 or 30 parasites inoculated each time we estimate. So that's a good time to try and intervene. And it turns out with this vaccine that about three quarters of the time, the vaccine works and clears every last one of those parasites, and the child or the adult or whoever is vaccinated does not get malaria. So how does that work in practice in the field? Well, people who die most of malaria are young children, particularly in the first and second years of life, before they acquire any natural immunity from being exposed to malaria through natural infection. So we would aim to vaccinate as you do with other vaccines, young children and infants, and protect them as soon as possible, maybe starting at five months of age. We do need three doses. That can be done. It's done with other vaccines. And this would add to the infant immunization schedule in Africa.

MG: What sort of difference do you see it making from a distance?

ADRIAN HILL: Well, you know, that over half a million deaths that are happening every year and have been for the last five or 10 years, they should come down by well over a half. So, you know, that depends on us being able to deploy the vaccine without bias and distributed effectively. But I have confidence we should be able to do that as an international community.

MG: I want to talk more about deployment in just a moment, but let me bring Dr. Fred Aboagye-Antwi into the conversation. He's with the NGO Target Malaria Ghana, medical entomologist and a parasitologist. He's also in Accra. Doctor, hello to you.

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: Hello.

MG: You see this on the ground level. What from your perspective is the impact of malaria in Ghana right now?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: Yeah. Malaria is a very big problem in Ghana. In fact, the whole country is endemic in the sense that everyone in the country is at risk of getting malaria. And indeed, almost everyone has at a point in time had malaria. The most affected group is children. Pregnant women are also equally at risk. These are the two most affected groups. It is estimated that as at 2021, there were over 12,000 deaths that occurred in Ghana as a result of malaria.

MG: With those numbers, it would seem as though everybody would know somebody who has died from malaria.

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: Yes. Yes, indeed. When I was young, one of my best friends had malaria and unfortunately, he passed on in secondary school. Every term, I had malaria at least twice. So it's a big problem. And mostly the symptoms that goes with malaria, the headache, nausea, the throwing out. It's indeed a dreadful disease.

MG: And so in the wait for this vaccine, what have been the treatments that have traditionally been deployed in Ghana?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: So when I was younger, malaria was treated with chloroquine. However, there have been reports of the development of resistance to chloroquine. So a new first line drug for treatment was introduced in 2005, and that is artemisinin-based combination therapies.

MG: And how successful have they been in the treatment?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: I would say that largely, it's been successful, except that some persons don't complete the treatment. This non-adherence to the treatment protocols has repercussions because if you don't complete the treatment, it leads to a whole lot of issues, including the build-up of drug resistance and so on.

MG: Hmm. And so from your perspective, again, this vaccine has been a long time in coming. And in the announcement of it, it was heralded by many people as a game changer. Do you think that that phrase, knowing what you know, from what you have seen, what you've experienced, the work that you do, is it a game changer?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: I will say that indeed, it comes at an opportune time to add on to the arsenal available to us in the fight against malaria. This is more so because there is no single bullet when it comes to the fight against malaria. We have to bring on board all these tools towards achieving the goal of elimination. Presently, when we talk of malaria control, the national control program is shifting focus from control to elimination.

MG: Adrian Hill, the process in getting this drug approved is fascinating because the World Health Organization has not yet approved this vaccine. Why was it important, do you think, to request regulatory approval in Ghana ahead of a WHO decision?

ADRIAN HILL: Yeah. So we've been working with the Serum Institute of India as our commercial partner and manufacturing partner in this malaria program. They are very clearly the largest vaccine supplier to sub-Saharan Africa, and they have great experience of working with national regulatory authorities on the continent, as well as, of course, internationally. And what they sensed and we sensed was there was a real push from regulators to see the data on this vaccine in the Phase three trial that's been running for about two years now. And we proposed submitting directly to them. They were very interested in that. You know, what was so impressive was the quality of the review that came from Accra, from the FDA Ghana. Excellent questions, very rapid response and a decision within a few months, which is really unusual for new vaccine registration. So, you know, this is how vaccines are registered in most of the world. The WHO is not the decision making body. And I think things are going to be moving in Africa towards a lot more African control of what vaccines are going to children.

MG: The phase three trials have been happening where?

ADRIAN HILL: In four countries. Two in West Africa, in Mali and Burkina Faso, but also over in East Africa, in Kenya and also in Tanzania. So a total of 4800 children were dosed starting two years ago. We now have close to a two-year dataset that has been submitted to WHO starting in September of last year. So we are anticipating a decision from WHO in the near future.

MG: We started with comment from the president of Ghana who talked about how never again will people in his country be victims or pawns of what he called the international vaccine order. What does that mean in your mind, the international vaccine order?

ADRIAN HILL: So what I think the president was referring to was what's widely known, that when COVID came along, Africans were last in the queue for receiving vaccines. And, you know, we were involved at the Jenner Institute in developing a vaccine that eventually produced 3 billion doses. And we were very concerned, firstly, to keep the price of this vaccine very low, you know, cost price, and also to have it distributed internationally. That worked. Eventually, 180 countries had the Oxford AstraZeneca Serum Institute vaccine, but, you know, it took time. There are very few manufacturing facilities in Africa producing vaccines today. Yet another one is being started, and that's why the president was there at the soil breaking, if you like. And that is a sign that Africa is again deciding, look, we have to manufacture our own vaccines if we're going to have them here. So let's get on with investing in that area, which makes sense.

MG: Dr. Aboagye-Antwi, how important is it? We've spoken about this on this program over the course of the pandemic, that scientists and doctors want, you know, some degree of vaccine autonomy for the continent. How important is it that countries like Ghana are able to in some ways control their own destiny when it comes to the availability of vaccines?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: It's very, very critical that we get to the point where even if we are not manufacturing it, we should get a handle over the value chain when it comes to the manufacturing so that at least we always are sure of having some in stock. In fact, we've recently had issues with vaccinations for children because we run short of the vaccines because we don't manufacture them here. Children were at risk of contracting these childhood infections like polio and so on.

MG: Adrian Hill, how quickly will this vaccine actually begin to roll out?

ADRIAN HILL: Well, I can't be precise, but certainly this year, hopefully within the coming months. And, you know, what's important here is the scale of the potential rollout. Serum Institute have committed to 100 million to 200 million doses per year, which is huge compared to any other malaria vaccine that might be coming along, and also committed to a low, sensible price that will allow all the lower income countries to access this vaccine. So this year is the short answer, but we see an incremental rollout and increasing uptake initially in children, but eventually in adults as well, remembering that adults in Africa suffer from malaria too, particularly pregnant women who can lose their baby or even die from malaria. So there are other target age groups.

MG: And will there be local production? I mean, at some point in time, to the issue of vaccine autonomy, will this vaccine at some point in time, sooner rather than later, be produced on the ground?

ADRIAN HILL: That was the whole point of activity marking the start of the building of a vaccine manufacturing facility here in Accra that is partnered with the Serum Institute of India who are the predominant manufacturer. But Serum are very happy and keen to transfer some of that manufacturing to Accra and to DEK Vaccines, the local company. And of course, you cannot build a manufacturing facility in a year or even in two years and registered and producing. So this is going to take some time, but you've got to start somewhere.

MG: But again, there's a bit of proof of concept here, right? I mean, one of the things that we saw during the pandemic when COVID vaccines were not being produced on the continent was vaccine manufacturers saying, well, they don't have the facilities to do it, we couldn't possibly do it. This is showing that it could be done, but you have to build the facilities first.

ADRIAN HILL: You have to build the facilities. And in addition, you have to make an economic case that you can manufacture cost effectively. There's no point if it’s going to cost $50 for every dose. So that's why it's important to have access to technology that has already been validated elsewhere and can be adopted in Africa and moved quickly. But, you know, there is a market. We have over a billion people in Africa, and I suspect most African governments would prefer to buy from African manufacturers.

MG: And again, we're talking about Ghana, but the expectation is that other countries will follow suit in approving this vaccine. And that's already actually starting to happen, right?

ADRIAN HILL: Yes. More than that, you can't run a vaccine business exporting to one country or supplying one country. You have to go regionally or ideally much more widely than that. And as people learned during the COVID pandemic, most vaccine manufacturing facilities are not in Europe and not in North or even South America. They're in Asia, and that's where the really big numbers of doses come from. So Asian manufacturers are ahead on this, and Africa needs to catch up.

MG: This vaccine requires three doses. What are the obstacles in front of you when it comes to deployments, to ensuring that the people who need those doses get all of them?

ADRIAN HILL: Yeah, that's right. Great question. What we found in our trials is that the villagers who are volunteering, if you like, their young children to be involved in these trials really want to see a malaria vaccine coming along. They'd heard a lot about COVID, but where was the malaria vaccine that was already in the press by then? There is a demand. It's not impossible we give 10 vaccines to most children in infancy in most sub-Saharan African countries. Other vaccines you know about like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, pneumonia, rotavirus and so on, this will add to that list. I think what's different about malaria is we're going into a field where there's already interventions happening. So spraying is used, bed nets are used, you heard about drugs being used. And that is to prevent malaria, not to treat it. And that’s standard of care in many of these countries. What's critical to understand is we don't propose to withdraw any of those other measures when we add in a vaccine. Otherwise, you'll be back to where you were fairly quickly. And remember, the world is spending about $4 billion a year at the moment on those traditional interventions to stop malaria killing over a million people, rather than something closer to half a billion people. So those interventions are working. What we really need now is a new tool, a vaccine that’s closest to really knock down those infections and deaths. And by the next decade, we're not focusing on saving lives so much because that's been largely achieved. We're focusing on eradicating this parasite.

MG: Dr. Aboagye-Antwi, what is the biggest hurdle that you think you'll face in getting the vaccine into the arms of people who need it?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: The biggest hurdle will be people in the urban areas, but not in the rural areas. In the rural areas, people are very receptive. But in the urban areas, there needs to be a little bit more education to allow for people to buy into this approach for controlling the disease. When it comes to vaccinating children, there isn't that much of an issue because most parents do take their children to the various clinics for vaccinations.

MG: Last question, doctor, is just about moving beyond control. You said ultimately, the goal is elimination. How far away is that, do you think?

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: I will say that I'm very optimistic we will definitely reach that point because some 10 years ago, I remember over 10 years ago, over a decade ago, we used to talk about a million people dying as a result of malaria, but with increased investment in control efforts, use of bed nets, use of indoor residual sprays, mortality due to malaria dropped to around 400,000 from that one million point. With the pandemic, there was a bit of a low in the efforts, and so it was back to about 600,000. But with the coming on board of the vaccine, I am very certain that it is going to drive down the mortality associated with malaria. Apart from that, there are other new tools that are being developed. When it comes to vector control, we are developing genetic modification approaches that will control mosquito population. So all these when they come on board, I am sure that within the next five, 10 years, probably we will be inching towards elimination.

MG: This is a good news story and I'm glad to speak with you both to share it more widely. Thank you very much.

DR. FRED ABOAGYE-ANTWI: Thank you.

ADRIAN HILL: Thank you.

MG: Adrian Hill led the design and clinical development of the vaccine, the R21 vaccine that will help fight malaria and eventually, if you believe the doctor, help eliminate malaria. Adrian Hill is director of the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, and Dr. Fred Aboagye-Antwi is with the NGO Target Malaria. He's a medical entomologist and parasitologist. They were both in Accra, Ghana. Your CBC news is next. And then.

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JUDY BLUME: My mother who worried about everything, everything, didn't seem to worry about what I was reading, but we could never talk about anything. I knew never to ask her personal questions. I knew I wasn't going to get an answer.

MG: Judy Blume knew she wasn't the only little girl not getting answers. She wrote books about girls, boys, bras, getting your period, All the Growing pains. We'll speak with the directors of a new documentary, Judy Blume Forever coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

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JUDY BLUME DOCUMENTARY

Guests: Davina Pardo, Leah Wolchok

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

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MG: Still to come, the largest public service strike in decades, a vacation choice facing questions and leaked documents about NATO's spending. Our national affairs panel will join me to talk about the thorny issues of the week in Canadian politics. Also, some of your stories about the future of family farms in this country. All of that in just under 30 minutes. But first, getting to know Judy Blume.

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MG: The author Judy Blume was a stay at home mom raising her kids in 1960 suburban New Jersey when she realized she wanted something more. So she started writing. A new publisher was looking for fiction for pre-teens and Judy Blume delivered. As she wrote to her editor at the time, she knew that her manuscript might cause a stir.

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JUDY BLUME: October 14th, 1969. Dear Dick, I am having the best time writing this book. It is terribly controversial, I think. It deals with sixth grade girls, religion, menstruation, bras, boys and other goodies, but I think girl readers are going to love it.

MG: That book, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, was a sensation. As Judy Blume says in a new documentary about her life, it changed everything not just for Judy, but for generations of readers. Her popularity made her a cultural icon. Namechecked on everything from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live to the Gilmore Girls.

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FIRST MALE SPEAKER: I kind of feel sorry for him crammed in that backseat. Toss him a Judy Blume novel now.

SECOND MALE SPEAKER: Oh, all we got is wifey, chief.

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: Nothing with Kids in it? Damn budget cut.

THIRD MALE SPEAKER: For decades, her novels have helped teenage girls cope with the difficulties of growing up. Now, tonight, we present.

[first male speaker singing a song about Judy Blume, audience laughing]

FEMALE SPEAKER: Plane is going to stay here tonight. She had a really bad teen day and she needs to crash someplace sympathetic. I swear to God, if this wasn't a major Judy Blume moment, I would kick her cute little butt right out of here.

MG: Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok take a look at Judy Blume's huge influence and what influences her as well in their new film, Judy Blume Forever. They are in New York City. Good morning to you both.

DAVINA PARDO: Good morning.

LEAH WOLCHOK: Good morning. I cannot stop laughing at that Saturday Night Live. That song played in my head throughout a lot of the making of this film.

MG: Well, it speaks to her influence, right? If you make it on Saturday Night Live in terms of not being mocked, but in being embraced, in some ways, it shows the influence that you have on the culture.

LEAH WOLCHOK: Absolutely. It's the ultimate honour, right? To be satirized on Saturday Night Live, you've made it.

MG: Davina, in the film, there are so many young people who say that it felt as though Judy was talking to them. You don't know me, but this book is about me in some ways. Did that sound familiar? When you were growing up, what did her writing mean to you?

DAVINA PARDO: Oh, absolutely. I was a shy bookworm growing up in Toronto, and I can even remember where I sat when I read Judy Blume books. We had a chair, a reading chair on a landing in the house. And instead of sitting on the chair, I would sit in the crevice between the chair and the wall because it was just like it was a perfect cozy spot to be curled up with a Judy Blume book. I had this feeling that her books were just always there. I don't remember which one I read first, but I remember them always being part of my life. I remember the characters feeling like friends. And in particular, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret was incredibly formative for me. I was an early bloomer. And, you know, to open up a book like Margaret and be inside the head of a girl who wanted to get her period, who wanted desperately this thing that I hated and that felt so secretive for me and that I didn't have a lot of people to discuss it with was just the ultimate comfort.

MG: Leah, there are generations of people who have experienced exactly what Davina was talking about. Why did you want to tell this story now?

LEAH WOLCHOK: We wanted to tell Judy Blume’s story now because we knew how much the world needs Judy Blume now. Book Banning has taken over the United States. I mean, I think you're lucky in Canada. I'm imagining kids are spared the censorship that is sort of controlling what kids are reading and what information kids are getting about their bodies and about themselves. But we knew that this is a story that has to be told. And Judy's work, the work that she wrote 50 years ago is still relevant today because the feelings kids have, the feelings kids have about their bodies: Am I normal? Am I allowed to hate my sister right now? Am I allowed to be afraid of my parents getting a divorce? Am I allowed to be touching myself and feeling pleasure in my own body? Those feelings, they never go away.

MG: This is a film that has so many different voices that run through it, but the strongest voice is Judy Blume’s herself. I mean, Davina, was it easy to convince her to be part of this project, to tell her own story in some ways?

DAVINA PARDO: Definitely not. As is so often the case with documentaries, right, when someone comes to you and says open up your life to the camera, it's often a process. And in this case, there was definitely what we’ve sort of jokingly been calling a courtship over a couple of years, actually. Judi was very hesitant initially. She loves her life as a bookseller. She has a bookstore in Key West and spends a lot of time there. And she knew that if she agreed to do the documentary, she would be open and honest, and she sort of had to decide whether or not she wanted to go there. So it took a couple of years of emails and finally meeting, building a team, bringing out imagined documentaries until she was finally ready. And it was in February 2020 when she said yes. So the timing was I mean, we all know what happens after that.

MG: It must have been a huge moment, though, when she finally agreed to be part of this.

DAVINA PARDO: Huge, tearful, thrilling, yes.

MG: She tells such amazing stories throughout this. And I want to play some of what she says in her own words. This is Judy Blume reflecting on her childhood and perhaps what helped lead to the Judy Blume that we all know and love. This is from the film. She's describing her mother taking her to the library every week.

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JUDY BLUME: My mother, she let me sit on the floor and pull books out and look at them and sniff them. I love to sniff books. I still do. And my mother who worried about everything, everything, didn't seem to worry about what I was reading. But we could never talk about anything. I knew never to ask her personal questions. I knew I wasn't going to get an answer.

MG: Leah, how did Judy's childhood shape how she would later approach her writing?

LEAH WOLCHOK: Judy always describes herself as two Judys. There is this fearful, anxious child and there is this incredibly imaginative child. And I think what comes in between those two parts of herself is the idea that adults were keeping secrets from her. She hated those secrets, and those secrets made her both anxious and fuelled her imagination, allowed her to come up with stories to fill in the gaps of information that adults weren't telling her. So I think it was really that, like her understanding of how honest people should be with kids and her really strong dislike of secrets that led her to start writing these truthful, beautiful books.

MG: What is the process, Davina? I mean, we said earlier that she was a stay at home mom raising her kids in suburban New Jersey in the 1960s. How does that person end up deciding to write books but then also getting them published?

DAVINA PARDO: Right. Well, as you know, it was during a time when everything was in print. I think initially, she was doing it for herself. She was doing it to kind of fill that creative urge. So she was writing picture books and poems which she would share with her kids. And then she started looking at magazines and seeing ads and just sending off manuscripts, you know, one after the other over a year, a couple of years, and getting rejection letter after rejection letter after rejection letter.

MG: You got her to read some of those rejection letters and where people say that your work isn't quite convincing. I just wonder what that was like.

DAVINA PARDO: Well, there was one letter in particular that a friend of a friend of her husband's had sent her, and it was just a long letter basically telling her, get out your handkerchief and get ready to cry because you can't write. You don't know. Get out of that class you're taking at NYU. At the time, she was taking a course in children's book writing at night once a week. And I think it was that letter that really got her fired up, that got her really activated. Like I know I have something, some story that I really need to tell.

MG: Where do you think, Leah, that she got the courage to write about what she wrote about? She talked about, you know, she wouldn't ask her mother questions because she'd never get an answer. Where does she find it within herself to write a book like Are You There God? It's Me Margaret?

LEAH WOLCHOK: It's funny. I don't think Judy at the time thought of it as a courageous act. She just thought she was going back in time to who she was as a sixth grader and how obsessed she was with getting her period and wearing a bra and thinking about relationships with boys and thinking about relationships with her friends and finding a confidant in God and questioning where she fits in in the world. She really just accessed that 11, 12-year-old self that still was so close to the surface in her and she just wrote from the heart. She said a first draft poured out of her in six weeks. So I don't think she thought it was courageous. She just thought she was just telling the truth about what her experience was like as a girl on the cusp of adolescence.

MG: Davina, did it feel courageous as a reader? She talks about how she spoke about the unspeakable in some ways. It seems as though to write those books at that time, not even now, but at that time was a really courageous act even if she didn't see it as that.

DAVINA PARDO: Absolutely. And actually, she found out early on, even before the censorship years, that there would be push backs. She brought a couple of copies, this isn't in the film, but she brings a couple of copies of the book to her kids’ school and gives them to the principal. And the principal says, I won't put these on the library shelf because it's about a girl having her period. So even back then in 1970, she was getting push backs.

MG: That’s wild.

DAVINA PARDO: As a reader, it didn't feel, you know, I've been thinking about this because I think when you're a child, you're not thinking this is radical. This is groundbreaking. This is pushing our culture forward, right? But it's doing something much more intimate for you on a personal level. And I think that's what I was feeling, sort of an affirmation. It feels like it feeds your soul, feeds you in a different way.

MG: I mean, people were moved and kids were moved such that they wouldn't just read the books, but then they would write her these letters. And you go through some of these letters that she received. Tell me a little bit about that, Davina, and what that was like to go through the letters that kids were sending her having read books like Margaret.

DAVINA PARDO: The letters are extraordinary. As soon as we found out about them and had had a chance to see some of them at Judi's archives at Yale, we knew that they were going to be an important part of the film. We were even calling the film Dear Judy for many, many months because the letters are so important. Since Are You There got its name and breaking out, kids have been writing to her. There were periods where she was getting thousands of letters a week. And not only did she get letters from individual kids, but there were kids who she kept up a back and forth correspondence with over decades. And that blew us away that it wasn't a one sided thing, that Judy was really having intimate relationships with kids who needed help. The relationship that Judy has with her readers is unlike almost any other author I can think of. And the letters are just beautiful extension or probably palpable example of that. And so we really wanted to weave them into the film, and we really wanted to include a couple of letter writers who she's still in touch with, who she's had this relationship with.

MG: One of those letter writers is a woman named Lori Kim who wrote to Judy when she was young and then this correspondence continues. You got her letter and had Lori and Judy read from it. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

LORI KIM: First of all, how do you know all our little secrets? In reading Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, I found that Margaret's problems were very like my own, for my mother is Buddhist and my father Christian. Also, I am not yet growing and several of my fourth grade classmates where Broz.

JUDY BLUME: I did not even know what menstruation was until I read your books. Then to test my mother…

LORI KIM: I took a sanitary napkin from the box and asked what it was for. She pretended to not hear me and evaded my questions. When do you think is the average time for girls to get their periods and bras? I would very much like to have an answer for that. Sincerely, Lori Kim. Ps, if you know some good sex books, could you take the trouble to give me title, author, etc. of the book?

MG: It's quite a thing to write your favourite author and then to have your favourite author write back.

LEAH WOLCHOK: Exactly.

MG: Davina, tell me a little bit, you hinted at this, but that relationship such as it was back and forth between Judy and Lori carried on for quite a while, right?

DAVINA PARDO: It did. Now, I’m trying to remember. Lori first wrote to Judy when she was nine. And it's hard to believe that those words come from a nine-year-old because she is just beyond articulate and has lasted till today. So from the late 70s until today. It's almost like she was thinking of Judy as her diary. She didn't have anyone to talk to, and she put it all down pen to paper and sent these letters off to Judy. And then imagine what it would feel like to have your diary respond, your diary who is also this author.

MG: People wrote about some really heavy things and things that they felt that they could confide in Judy Blume about. This is one of those letter writers. Karen confided in Judy about her brother who had died by suicide.

SOUNDCLIP

KAREN: It was hard to reach out. I said, what's complicated about my brother's suicide is that he was the one who abused me. I just needed to be able to tell another human being like look what happened to me.

JUDY BLUME: She was just so scared of, you know, how her family would react if she really, if she really wanted to talk about this.

KAREN: I said, Judy, I feel very alone. I don't have anyone to turn to. Judy was my last chance. Judy was the last chance I was willing to take at that point in my life.

MG: Leah, that's a big responsibility to be on the receiving end of those sorts of letters and to be in some ways the only person that kids felt that they could confide in or that they could talk to. What did Judy Blume tell you about the weight that that put on her shoulders and the responsibility that she had to people like Karen?

LEAH WOLCHOK: We talked to Judy a lot about that feeling of responsibility she had. I mean, Judy felt so grateful to all the kids who were reading her books and reaching out to her because they enabled her to keep writing. And I think when she started receiving letters from kids who were in such vulnerable moments in their lives and telling her there was no one else they could turn to, she knew she couldn't ignore them. She knew she had to write back. And she at one point consulted a therapist because she was getting so involved in one particular letter writer's life, she thought she might invite her. This wasn't Karen who you just heard in the film, but she thought she might invite her to come live with her because she wanted to save her. And the therapist told Judy, you know, you can't save all these kids. It's your job to be supportive, to be a good listener. I think it was really hard for Judy.

MG: One of the things that we're reminded of is that Judy Blume, her career changed over time. And the books that she wrote about weren't specifically about just young people, but their topics grew and grew and grew. And it seemed as though that fearlessness that she had when she was writing earlier continued, but just in different ways in terms of different subject matters in a book like Wifey, for example. When you think about that, Davina, how does that fit into the narrative of who Judy Blume was? People were scandalized by that book when it came out.

DAVINA PARDO: People were definitely scandalized. And that was one that I never read growing up. So I feel like someone must have been hiding it from me. But, you know, one of the things that's so interesting to us about Judy’s story is that her coming of age didn't end when she went through puberty or when she graduated from high school. Judy is constantly coming of age. She's constantly sort of transforming. And you see that when she leaves her marriage and writes Wifey. So to us, I mean, Wifey represented Judy sort of, as she describes it, like coming out of adolescence finally, realizing who she was and finally growing up and doing what was best for her, not what was expected of her. And so I mean, Wifey is fun because of how it scandalized everyone and because it was Judy also saying once again, like I'm going to write from my gut, write from the heart, write the story that I need to tell, even though some people are going to be shocked that the person who's been writing for kids is now putting out this pretty sexually explicit book about a woman who's fantasizing about having affairs and doing all these things that are going to be pretty shocking.

MG: You see the scandalized reaction in a number of ways in this film, including this clip of her on the TV show Crossfire where she's facing attacks from the Moral Majority, and she tells the story of facing off against the conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

PAT BUCHANAN: Now, I looked at several of these, Mrs. Blume, and one of them talks about masturbation. Another one talks about a little boy who is at his window peeping on his neighbour, a little girl. The other one talks about somebody throwing up.

JUDY BLUME: Throwing up is sex?

PAT BUCHANAN: Well, it has to do with bodily functions. What is all this doing in a book for 10-year-olds?

JUDY BLUME: There is no preoccupation with it. Did you read the whole book or did you just read pages that were paper clip?

PAT BUCHANAN: All right, here's the copy.

JUDY BLUME: Pat Buchanan was coming after me. You know, it's like he had a hammer. And it's like, whoa, what is with you?

PAT BUCHANAN: Why can't you write an interesting, exciting book for 10-year-olds without getting into discussion of masturbation?

JUDY BLUME: He was attacking me and reading pages out of context.

JUDY BLUME: First of all, Dini is not about masturbation. It's about a girl with scoliosis.

JUDY BLUME: And he kept going at me how that's not normal and what a terrible thing. And finally I said to him…

JUDY BLUME: Are you hung up about masturbation?

PAT BUCHANAN: You are hung up about this stuff.

JUDY BLUME: Why one scene in one book?

MG: Davina, what do you make of her reaction? I mean, we talk about fearless. I mean, that's awesome.

DAVINA PARDO: It's incredible. I mean, when we came across that clip, we just couldn't get over it. And we knew that it would be the climax of that censorship section of the film. It says so much about her. It says so much about what's behind censorship and how disingenuous it is in so many ways. And the conversation that they're having is actually chilling to listen to because it's happening today in this country, in the United States in such similar ways, such frightening ways.

MG: Leah, what does she say about what's happening right now? Because in many ways, you hinted at this earlier, what she was going through when those books were coming out predates, but also predicts what we're seeing right now with books being hauled out of libraries. We were talking on the program about defunding libraries entirely. How does she respond to what's going on right now?

LEAH WOLCHOK: Judy is infuriated. She's enraged and she is also activated. The fighter within her, that is the fighter you've seen from the time she was a kid. That same fighter whose voice you heard fighting back against Pat Buchanan, that fighter in her is doing everything she can to make sure the authors whose work is being banned today and yes, Judy's books are being banned still in some places. The county right next to the county where I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, just put Forever on the banned books list a couple of months ago. But the authors whose work is being challenged today are primarily authors who are writing characters who are black or brown or queer or trans. It's something that Jason Reynolds says in the film. If you want to know what fears are bubbling under the surface in this country, look at the banned books lists. And, you know, books that are tackling race or gender or sexuality, those are the books that are most frequently being challenged, and those are the books that are being taken off the shelves in places where the kids most need them. I mean, Alex Gino just commented at a screening we had with the ACLU last night that, you know, if you take a book off the shelf in a place like New York City, it doesn't matter because actually, sorry, it was Jason Reynolds who says this, there are plenty of kids who are transgender in their own classrooms. So that loss of that book isn't going to impact them. But the places where these books are being taken off the shelves are the exact places where kids need to find those books because they're seen as marginalized in their own communities. And Judy is still working with the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN America, the American Library Association, the ACLU, all these great organizations that are fighting back against these outrageous book bans.

MG: Just before I let both of you go, Davina, can you go back to that, you know, young Davina squished between the chair and the wall reading that book? What does this film remind us about in a time when kids can get information from anywhere, the power of that moment? And if you're a parent, you've seen that, your child just with a book kind of lost in their own little world. What do we need to be reminded of in that power?

DAVINA PARDO: I mean, Judy says in the film, a book cannot harm a child. And what I feel from the film and thinking back to my young self is not only can a book not harm a child, a book can actually save a child. A book can bring comfort. A book can affirm your experience. A book can offer a window into a world you don't know about and may help you become a more empathetic adult. Books do so much. I mean, books help kids let their imaginations go wild. We're less concerned about what kids are doing on their phones than we are about what they're reading.

MG: It's a beautiful film and really powerful and just a great reminder of the power of those books and what those books meant to so much of us. It's a real pleasure to talk to you both. Thank you very much.

DAVINA PARDO: Thank you.

LEAH WOLCHOK: Thank you so much for having us.

MG: Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok are the directors of the new documentary Judy Blume Forever. It streams on prime video starting today. Did you like so many of us grow up reading Judy Blume? Let us know what those books meant to you and whether you've passed them along through the generations. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Or send a voice memo to that same email address, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Well, coming up after your regional update, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was taken to task this week by the Conservatives for where he had his family vacation again, for leaked comments he made about Naito, and then there is the public servants strike. All fodder for our national affairs panel. They join us in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stick around.

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NATIONAL AFFAIRS PANEL

Guests: Rosemary Barton, Catherine Levesque, Steven Chase

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. It has not been a particularly smooth week for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government. Early Wednesday morning, 155,000 public service workers walked off the job and onto the picket line. He's also once again under fire from the opposition for yet another vacation. And things aren't any better with Canada's allies after a leaked report that the prime minister told the Americans Canada will never meet its NATO's funding requirements. Our national affairs panel is here to sift through all of this. Rosemary Barton is CBC's chief political correspondent and the host of Rosemary Barton Live. Catherine Levesque is a parliamentary reporter for the National Post, and Steven Chase is a senior parliamentary reporter for the Globe and Mail. Good Friday morning to you all.

ALL GUESTS: Good morning. Good morning.

MG: Rosie, let's start with the public service strike. It's in its third day. What effect is this already having on the operations of government?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yeah. I mean, it's beginning to have an impact on Canadians’ lives in I wouldn't say yet dramatic ways, but in irritating ways, because these are primarily sort of the service providers for the government as opposed to the people who come up with the policy and figure out how it's going to work. So people at Service Canada, those people who get your passports done and hand them to you. Where we haven't seen problems yet is at the border, for instance, because those people are also on strike and other places. I don't think it's going to take that long, though, before we start seeing a real backup at some of these places. And I think that that's where things will get difficult for the government. Right now, it's just annoying, but I think it has the potential to be actually difficult for the economy and for the Canadian public at large.

MG: Steven Chase, people don't like to be annoyed and people will remember being annoyed when they had to camp out to try to get a passport not so long ago. The Conservatives have been using this as yet as they see another example of the Liberals botching things. Do you think that's a fair attack or is this just, you know, a convenient stick for the opposition to swing?

STEVEN CHASE: It's certainly a convenient stick. I think one of the big issues in these labour negotiations is the desire by the labour unions to institutionalize working from home, to make it a permanent feature. And that is an item in bargaining that we have not dealt with before. So yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the Conservatives and the NDP and the Bloc are all willing to let the Liberals wallow in this predicament for a while.

MG: Wallow in this predicament suggests that perhaps this won't be resolved anytime soon, that there could be and this gets, Steven, and we'll talk about this in further detail, but it gets to how this thing could be resolved. You're suggesting that the conservatives would be happy to keep their hands off of this.

STEVEN CHASE: A few weeks is my sense from talking to them. Yes.

MG: Which could lead, as Rosie was saying, from irritating to actually real impact. Catherine Levesque, Jagmeet Singh is on the record saying the NDP won't support back to work legislation. He said that he looked into the Prime Minister's eyes and told him We are a workers’ party. The Conservatives, to Steven’s Point, and the Bloc haven't really said a whole lot yet as to what they would do if it came to back to work legislation. Where does that leave the government?

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: Well, I think the government will have to search for a new dance partner, right? It won't be able to rely on the NDP should we come to back to work legislation now. It's not in the cards yet. It might come to that, but certainly should that arrive, I think the best bet would be to actually work with the conservatives, you know, of all the parties, because the Bloc Quebecois has been on the record this week saying, look, we've never supported back to work legislation. And certainly, you know, if we take the example of the Port of Montreal, you know, that strike a few years ago, well, at the time, the Trudeau Liberals had to turn to the Conservatives to pass this legislation. At the time, Erin O'Toole was the leader. So really, I think the government will try to resolve and to get to an agreement. Certainly, we're just on day three at the moment. But I think, you know, should it come to back to work legislation, I think Justin Trudeau will have to have a little conversation with his good friend, Pierre Poilievre.

MG: Rosemary Barton, do you think that his good friend Pierre Poilievre would pick up the phone and listen?

ROSEMARY BARTON: I don't know. I actually don't think it's going to get to that stage. Certainly, anyone you ask in government is not feeling that right now. And the people I've spoken to in the union aren't either. I think it's worth reminding Canadians the two sides are still at the table. So that is good news. I'm told that there are a few issues that are still not dealt with. I mean, the primary issue I think is the wage increase. The union is looking for 13.5% over three years. The Treasury Board is offering 9%.

MG: Can I just ask you about that? I mean, part of this is Chrystia Freeland has said that she's presented, the government has presented a fair offer to the public servants, but also one that recognizes that there is a finite amount of money to offer. What sort of bind does that put the Liberals in?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure that the union will be able to extract more money from the government, which you hear from union members is annoying because this government doesn't seem to have problems throwing billions of dollars at other things. But when it comes to paying its workers who, you know, supported the country through a pandemic, suddenly then they tighten the purse strings. I think there's a couple of things going on there. I think it’s about setting sort of the goal for other labour negotiations with other parts of the public service moving forward. I think it's also about, you know, perhaps protecting other governments, other levels of government from having to negotiate very high wage increases or higher wage increases for workers. You know, the other sticking point is the one that Steven mentioned there, the remote working thing. And, you know, all companies have gone through versions of this, but the government really believes that if you are employed by them, they should be allowed to say where you work. So I still have the impression that the next few days, they're going to get some real work done and potentially have this dealt with by next week. The last big, big strike of this nature, though, back in 91 was three or four weeks long. So that kind of timeline is simply not sustainable for this government, right? They cannot be falling into Pierre Poilievre’s narrative of we break things and we don't know how to fix them. So they cannot allow that to go on for too long. And they really don't want to have to turn to him and say, please help us out of this mess.

MG: Let's move to another narrative that Pierre Poilievre has put forth this week. And this is about the prime minister's Christmas vacation to Jamaica. Catherine Levesque, what is prompting the leader of the Conservative Party to call the prime minister a free loader in question period?

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: Yes, that was quite a rowdy question period we had this week. So, well, we already knew that the Prime Minister and his family travelled to Jamaica during the New Year, but your French colleagues at Radio-Canada revealed that he actually stayed at a luxurious estate belonging to family friends where rooms can cost anywhere from 1000 to 9000 Canadian per night. And it just so appeared that the family, that the Green family had funded a scholarship for the Trudeau Foundation back in 2021. So, you know, Pierre Poilievre’s questioning this week basically was to ask the prime minister, well, will you pay back the accommodation that you benefited from? Because that is a gift. And the Prime Minister repeatedly refused to say that he would be paying back that amount, which, you know, Pierre Poilievre estimates could be tens of thousands of dollars. And that's what prompted Mr. Poilievre to call the prime Minister a free loader apparently multiple times. I only heard him say it one time.

MG: Perhaps to some, one time is enough. Who knows?

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: I know right? So it really fits into Pierre Poilievre’s narrative that look, this government has a problem with the perception of ethics at least, and thinks that certain rules do not apply to them. But it also fits into his narrative that this government is out of touch, that the Prime Minister doesn't understand everyday Canadians’ concerns. So what we really saw this week was yes, some personal insults, but also some red meat yet again, he was throwing to the Conservative base.

MG: Steven Chase, this isn't the first time that the prime minister has been under attack for what people have characterized as a questionable vacation. What do you think this story says about Justin Trudeau's judgement?

STEVEN CHASE: I guess it does indicate that he doesn't seem to mind the criticism. He doesn't seem to care at a certain level. I mean, in fact, the first case of such a trip was the Aga Khan vacation very early in his first mandate, and then he went on to win two more elections. So I get the impression that the brain trust around the prime minister thinks that people who would vote for the Prime Minister and his party both existing voters and possible voters don't care about it. And so therefore, they think they can skate through as they have in the last two elections following the first time he did this with the Aga Khan.

MG: Rosie, what do you make of that? Because the Radio-Canada story quoted sources within the prime minister's office and liberal circles who had raised concerns around the optics of this kind of trip. One of the quotes was “we wonder why he goes to places like this.” This is a source speaking to Radio-Canada. What does a story like this suggest? What are the questions that it raises about judgement, do you think?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Well, first of all, I'm glad you raised those comments because to me, those were sort of the more interesting parts of the story even, and that is that there are liberals, and I don't know who was speaking to Daniel Leblanc and Louis Blouin, my colleagues, but there are Liberals who are starting to wonder why he's doing these kinds of things, and it's sort of causing them to raise their eyebrows.

MG: Another quote was, “I can't explain why he provides them ammunition and feeds these kinds of attacks.” This comes from people within his own party.

ROSEMARY BARTON: That's right. And I think that should be potentially troubling to him. I think Steven's right. I think he no longer particularly cares about how these vacations are perceived. The man does not know how to have a clean, clean, quote unquote, vacation, like to have a vacation where it doesn't make it into the headlines. It's just not possible. And I think that that becomes a reminder, maybe not about his judgement, but it's at least a reminder that he's not like you and I. Like we don't have rich friends who have villas in Jamaica where we can go and hang out over the holidays. And that's fine. So people that like him have accepted that part of him that, you know, the legacy of his family and his name, because these are family friends from the 70s. And the people that don't like him, well, this gives them more ammunition to say, well, how can he possibly relate to Canadians and the middle class? What kind of judgement does someone have to go gallivanting off in the midst of an inflationary crisis? And I tend to agree with Steven. Like I don't know at this stage that the Prime Minister's office thinks that that is a risk worth avoiding at the expense of a guy not getting a holiday.

MG: Aside from the holiday, though, the other part that came up this week is the interim ethics commissioner stepping down after a House committee agreed to investigate her appointment. That's because she's the sister-in-law of the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, Dominic LeBlanc. So, Rosie, and then I'll ask Steven this as well, this goes beyond, questions of ethics and questions of judgement seem to go beyond vacations, right? Why does this keep coming up within this government?

ROSEMARY BARTON: This one is a real perplexing one to me because I also thought, well, why would you open yourselves up to criticism? Like why even bother? Surely there's someone else because this person's not going to get the permanent job. And when I spoke to liberals, the answer was, but she's qualified. She's been in the office for so long. She's an actual qualified person. And they don't seem to be able to sort of extract themselves from that conversation and see how it might be viewed. And in this case, this is the very position that is supposed to judge ethical behaviour of elected officials. So you would think that that's the position that they would care the most about in terms of how it looks. And even then, they couldn't seem to see their way out of it. And she eventually had to step aside because I guess there was so much pressure. I mean, I'm sure that's disappointing for her. I have no doubt that she's actually qualified, but sometimes, that's not all that matters in the political realm.

MG: Steven?

STEVEN CHASE: You know, without making any predictions for the future, there is a late stage government feel to this. The way they handle things, they don't move with alacrity. Late stage government meaning late, late, late in a government's term in office.

MG: How big of a headache do you think this is for the government, Catherine?

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: The interim ethics commissioner?

MG: All of this, all of the questions that it seems keep being asked about judgement.

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: Well, look, I think, you know, and my colleagues have said this, but I think at this point, you know, it becomes clear that Justin Trudeau, his advisers, are not giving him the right advice. I mean, they're not really actually telling him, look, there might be this perception about your trip, about this nomination. I really think and I thought it was interesting because actually, the outgoing ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, who's actually very active on Twitter these days, well, he actually told my colleague a few weeks back that, you know, the liberals really need to read the law. You know, they need to really do their homework and know what the ethics rules are, because he really sees this as a chronic problem within the liberal government. So at this stage, I don't know if it’s because they don't care or they don't think it's going to be an issue, but they just keep on repeating the same mistakes related to ethics. And I really think regarding Madame Richard, I think it was the right decision for her to step down. I don't know if it came from her or if she was told to do so, but certainly, this position was absolutely untenable. And yeah, well, we'll see who is the new ethics commissioner. But as of right now, it is a problem because you need an ethics commissioner to actually conduct investigations, and they won't be able to do that at the moment.

MG: Let's spend the last few minutes just talking about this other piece of news that came out this week, Washington Post reporting that the prime minister told Americans that Canada will never reach the 2% of GDP spending on defence that is a huge tenet of NATO's membership. This came out of these leaked documents that are part of a larger narrative. But from your perspective, Steven, how is this going to go over with other NATO countries? How have people responded publicly? But also, what do you understand about how they've responded privately?

STEVEN CHASE: Well, everybody knows that Canada has failed or is failing to reach the sort of 2% mandated target. And we've done that. We haven't hit that target since the dying days of the Cold War. But what happened here with this report, which is a Pentagon document, is that allegedly, apparently, Mr. Trudeau said the quiet part out loud. He said we're actually not going to meet this. And that is a source of frustration to a lot of our Western allies who actually track this. You know, people with as good a relationship as Mr. Obama had with what the Trudeau government actually said raised this issue when he spoke to parliament in 2016. It's a file. It's a problem which has become more acute because of Russia's all-out assault on Ukraine. But it's a persistent problem. And the thing is neither this government nor the last government have taken this seriously. It was Mr. Harper who signed a pledge in 2014 with all of his NATO allies to move towards 2%. And when we talk about 2%, what we mean is spending an amount on the military that's equivalent to 2% of your annual economic output. Mr. Harper made those promises even as he was cutting spending. Mr. Trudeau hasn't really moved the dial that much. He'd argue that it is going to be moving up, but it's nowhere near that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer last year, the fiscal watchdog in Ottawa said we'd have to spend $75 billion over the next five years to make headway and to reach that amount. So everyone knows we're not reaching it. Generally, Canada like just sort of grins and bares it and then moves on. But we're coming to a NATO leaders summit in July where apparently, according to the secretary general, there's going to be a push to even make that target even more ambitious and have 2% as a floor, not a ceiling.

MG: Rosie, I mean, again, people have pointed within the Liberal Party that Canada's commitments overseas, that Canada's commitments to Ukraine in the face of the war with Russia should qualify toward that spending. Is the issue that Canada is not meeting those targets or to Steven’s point, that the prime minister said the quiet part out loud?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yeah. I mean, I think it's problematic that the government isn't willing to admit and defend publicly why it can't get to that number. You know, I think there's lots of Canadians who would say spending $75 billion more on defence is not acceptable to me, right? There are people who would not support that. So why would you not then go and defend it? I think the other part of that story in The Washington Post was that the other thing those documents showed is that allies are not impressed with Canada. And that's something that you hear around Ottawa too from some various ambassadors.

MG: When it comes to the issue of Haiti, for example?

ROSEMARY BARTON: Yes. I mean, perhaps that's one example. But I think spending overall, defence spending overall, that simply Canada is not pulling its weight. For instance, I mean, at the recent visit with President Biden, one of the most important things they wanted to get out of that, the Americans, was the modernization of NORAD. They're going to get some of that. They're probably not going to get it as fast as they would like. The Government's also committed to purchasing F-35s again. That's a long way off. So, you know, I don't think there's a question that the government is committed to supporting Ukraine. I think the bigger question is how much should Canada be doing at a time when, as Steven says, there's a war going on in Europe? And is Canada just going to ride the coattails of other nations? And there's plenty of other nations that spent more than us. And of course, we ride the coattails of the United States. Or is there something more we should be doing on that front because of the kind of world we're living in right now? And I think that's a good and fair policy debate, but I don't see the Liberals openly explaining why they can't get there or why they won't get there.

MG: Busy, busy week in Ottawa. Glad to have you all here to stitch it up for us. Thank you.

STEVEN CHASE: You’re welcome.

ROSEMARY BARTON: Thanks.

CATHERINE LEVESQUE: Thanks so much.

MG: Rosemary Barton is the chief political correspondent and the host of Rosemary Barton Live. Catherine Levesque is a parliamentary reporter for the National Post, and Steven Chase is a senior parliamentary reporter for the Globe and Mail. This is The Current on CBC Radio One and your CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. Earlier this week, we spoke with farmers on the verge of retirement about how difficult it is to find someone to take over the family farm. A new report is calling on the government to bring in tens of thousands of new immigrants to help fill the looming labour shortage. This was one of those issues that you talk about and people respond in droves. Many, many, many of you shared your thoughts with us. So here to help read some, just some of your mail, The Current’s senior producer, Karin Marley. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning. So this first letter is from Randy Lamble. He writes, “We have 240 acres that have been in the family for about 70 years. We have leased this property out for the last 30 years to keep it in the family. Now, my son would like to farm the property. Getting financing is almost impossible and passing it on to our son incurs a huge capital gains tax that neither he nor we can afford. He is willing to work hard to farm the property, but it is prohibitively costly.”

MG: There are a lot of people who wrote in talking about the obstacles in place to get a new generation into farming. Rob Alexander is in Port Perry, Ontario, and Rob writes, “Securing our national food supply and meeting our obligation to the global population as a producer of safe and nutritious food is a must. With projected shortfalls in labour and massive barriers to entry for new farmers, our country is poised to lose some of our most productive lands to development. I am a new young farmer attempting to get into the industry as an owner operator. I've managed a mixed use farm with a pick-your-own Apple business in the GTA for the past five years. I'm hardworking, entrepreneurial and a people person, which makes this business attractive and a natural fit. It is the best career decision I have ever made and I see a viable future for myself in this business. My biggest hurdle is the cost of buying into the industry. While some financing programs exist mainly to help farmers transition their operations to their children, there is no real support to help someone like me buy a farm business. I believe one solution to the farm labour crisis is for government, provincial and federal, to create a zero interest loan program for new or young farmers to purchase land and equipment to get started.”

KARIN MARLEY: So Christina Morgret in Toad River, B.C. had a different idea for helping people start up farms. “Would it be possible to have some sort of a rent to own type immigration program for farms? This way, I would think that we could attract experienced farmers from other countries who might not have the millions of dollars to purchase a Canadian farm. However, they would have a lot of the necessary experience. Also, in a rent to own situation, the Canadian farm owner would be available as a valuable resource for the immigrant farmer. The Canadian farmer/owner would have a guaranteed income to be able to live well in their retirement, and it wouldn't need to be restricted to immigrants. I know a couple of twenty something Canadians who would love to be farmers. They work on local farms when they are not at their real jobs. However, they do not have the finances or the equity to purchase their own farm.”

MG: Finally, Laurel-Anne Millis writes from Calgary. “As a daughter of farmers, I grew up on a farm in southern Manitoba in the 1950s and 60s, and there was a joke that went around. A farmer was asked, if you won a million dollars, what would you do with it? The farmer replied, oh, I’d just keep farming until I ran out of money.”

[Karin laughing]

MG: It's funny because it's true and it's painful as well. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer here on The Current. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. As I say, we had pages and pages and pages of your emails on this subject. If there's anything that you hear on the program that you want to comment on, do get in touch. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Even better because we're radio and we'd love to hear your voice, record a voice memo on your phone and then email it to us at thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's The Current for this Friday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We were talking earlier about a new documentary that looks at the life and the career and the influence of the author Judy Blume. Judy is having a moment. There is a feature film that comes out next week based on her breakthrough and beloved novel. And like the book, the movie is called Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. It stars Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates. If you've seen the trailer, people love this film who've seen it already. A lot of people will go and see it. If you've seen the trailer, you might recognize this tune. Mr. George Harrison will take us out for this week. This is What Is Life. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and have a great weekend.

[Song: “What Is Life” by George Harrison]

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Friday April 21, 2023 Episode Transcript

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