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The Current Transcript for March 6, 2025

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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ANDY O’BRIEN: We have a food security issue here in Canada. We're getting majority of our produce from the US. I think what's happened over the last, you know, call it two months, is it's a heightened awareness that we need to do something now.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do something like grow our own. As calls get louder to buy Canadian, shoppers are wondering how they can replace what comes from south of the border, particularly fruits and vegetables from the Sun Belt. In 30 minutes, how vertical farming might help get our leafy greens in the dead of winter and also address food insecurity in remote communities. Also this morning, 7-Eleven. It's a national institution in Japan selling everything from delicious rice balls and bowls of ramen to allowing customers to pay bills and send money. It's a big leap from those hot dogs rolling on the grill for hours on end. Coming up, why a bid for the convenience chain by a Canadian conglomerate is causing consternation in Japan. Plus.

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DONALD TRUMP: If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted and made in the USA it's going to be. It's not going to be made anywhere else.

MG: Donald Trump is bullish on cryptocurrencies. In an hour, the CBC's Nora Young on why the president's plan to create a national reserve for the digital currency is setting off alarm bells. But we begin with your questions on how to manage your finances in a time of tariffs. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

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TARIFFS QUESTIONS

Guests: Rob Carrick, Armine Yalnizyan

MG: If you've had trouble thinking about almost anything other than tariffs this week, you are not alone. The trade war with the United States has sparked widespread fear in Canadians about what will happen to our money, our markets and our country. We spoke with a few people at Toronto's Union Station yesterday to see where their heads are at.

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SPEAKER: The average consumer, the average business owner is already struggling.

SPEAKER: There is such volatility in the market, so I don't know, maybe you just hold tight if you're, because you don't know what's going to happen.

SPEAKER: Is there an opportunity for Canada to receive cheaper goods from Mexico?

SPEAKER: I really like people's suggestions about list of how to buy Canadian to cope with the situation.

SPEAKER: It's going to be an emptier fridge, that's for sure. Buy what you can, what you need, and that's about it.

MG: Yesterday on the program, we asked for your tariff questions and questions about how these tariffs will impact all of us. You had many, many questions. And so we have brought together some experts to bring us some answers about what this means for the bottom line and for the economy as a whole. Rob Carrick is a personal finance columnist with The Globe and Mail, and Armine Yalnizyan is an economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. Good morning to you both.

ROB CARRICK: Good morning.

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Good morning.

MG: We'll get to the questions in a moment, but Armine, we are at day three of this trade war. We heard from a lot of listeners. They're rattled and they're worried about the future. And I thought it was interesting in the conversation that you and I had earlier this week, you admitted there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to what's going to happen. What do we know now about how bumpy the economic road in front of us is going to be?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Well, look, as with almost every aspect of reality, expectations will shape the reality. And expectations are for the greatest amount of uncertainty in the market. This is what the markets are saying, much greater than even in the pandemic. So if you're feeling like you're on a roller coaster ride, get in line because we're all on that same ride. We don't know what's going to happen next.

MG: Rob, same question to you. A lot of people are feeling nervous about what this is going to mean. And we'll get to the questions, but you've been writing about this in the Globe. Just broadly and briefly, what's the big picture? What should people be focusing on right now when it comes to personal finance?

ROB CARRICK: I think people should be focusing on their own personal security, cutting risk, figuring out how they're going to weather yet another storm. I mean, it's exactly five years ago that the pandemic was hitting, right? And I think we have to adopt almost the same mindset. We don't know what's happening. How can we prepare and increase our own personal security? It's going to be tough.

MG: So I asked yesterday what the questions were from people who are nervous, people who are feeling a bit freaked out by what's going on. We got a lot. Here's one question about the low Canadian dollar. Have a listen.

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LISA: Hello, this is Lisa from Winnipeg. With these tariffs in place, how will they affect the Canadian dollar? Specifically, I'm wondering how this will affect travel plans to Europe in the latter part of the year.

MG: Armine, how concerned should people be about the value of the Canadian dollar compared to the US dollar, but also, as we heard, other currencies, if people are heading abroad?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Well, this is another area of uncertainty. In the last, in the run up to Mr. Trump, the Canadian dollar had been faltering as had every other currency. So if you're going to go to Europe, actually, the exchange rate between Canadian currencies and European and the euro or the peso had not changed that much. It's our relationship to the US dollar. But what Trump is doing is now starting to devalue the US dollar. And so we don't know where the future of that lies. But just a note of caution. Quite apart from going travelling, Canada is available at fire sale prices to anybody that's investing with US dollars. Every single US dollar buys $1.45 in Canadian priced assets. So watch out, real estate. Watch out, businesses. The takeover might not be military. It could be purely economic.

MG: That people will see bargains here north of the border.

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Absolutely. As our businesses weaken, not only are they going to be cheaper to buy, but that price differential between the Canadian dollar and the American dollar will buy more.

MG: Rob, we got a lot of questions from listeners who are set to renegotiate their mortgages. There are, what, more than a million mortgages that are apparently in this country up for renegotiation in 2025. Have a listen to this question.

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CHRISTINE: Hello, my name is Christine. I'm calling from Prince Edward Island. We have a mortgage that's up for renewal in a few weeks. I wonder if your panel could share some insights or predictions on where they think borrowing rates might go.

MG: Rob, the Bank of Canada is going to make a rate announcement next week. What are you looking for in that announcement?

ROB CARRICK: I'm expecting a cut of 0.25 of a percentage point. The bank will want to do what it can to help stimulate the economy, keep confidence going. So that's why there’ll be a rate cut then and probably subsequent rate cuts.

MG: One of the things people are juggling is again, if they are renewing mortgages, renegotiating, the decision is between a fixed or a variable mortgage rate. There are different terms. You have a competitive market where you can go to your lender and say, listen, somebody else is going to give me this rate. What are you going to do to match? But when people are looking at that difference between a fixed or a variable rate, what should they be thinking about?

ROB CARRICK: Well, variable rates scared a lot of people, did a lot of damage when people took them out during the peak of the pandemic. And that interest rate soared higher, and so did the cost of the variable rate mortgages. Now, we are going to see variable rate mortgages falling at price. They have fallen and they're going to continue to fall. Every time the Bank of Canada cuts a rate, a variable rate mortgage will cost a little bit less. Fixed rate mortgages, they're harder to predict because the Trump economic policies are roiling the bond market, and the bond market has an influence on fixed mortgage rates. And it's sort of hard to predict what's exactly going to happen there. But I can say with reasonable confidence that variable rate mortgages are going to remain the same or get cheaper in the next little while. And if you've got the stomach for a floating mortgage rate, and a lot of people don't after what's happened in the past two years, and I think variable has some attraction right now.

MG: Is there anyone who…

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Can I just weigh in?

MG: Sorry, Armine, go ahead. Yeah, pick that up.

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Can I just weigh in on the uncertainty that Rob is saying that rates will continue to come down? The Central Bank of Canada has already said, we're not sure if rates are going to go up or down because we are in this weirdo moment where unemployment is going to go up and so is inflation. So as a central bank, do you try and tame inflation by hiking rates, or do you try and tame unemployment by dropping rates? That's the bind that they're in. And while we haven't seen price spikes yet, we will. So it’s unclear how the future is going to play out for interest rates.

MG: I mean, one of the concerns is, and we heard about this earlier this week, if these tariffs stay in place, there's a real belief that the economy could slide into recession. What does that do to that conversation, Armine?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Well, for sure, we are looking at at least a million people that are in trade and trade adjacent jobs that might be affected. We know unemployment's going to go up. There's just no question about that, because anybody that was going to hire is not hiring now. So even if it wasn't an expansion, if it was just replacing people that were leaving, that's not happening on both sides of the border, by the way. So we are looking at higher unemployment and in an era where we've got only about 35% of people who are jobless receiving jobless benefits, though they pay in from their very first hour of work. So we are absolutely not recession ready. And that's for me, job one for the federal government is EI reform that they have been promising since 2015. Let's get going.

MG: Rob, if you go back to the housing market, I mean, the squeeze in the housing market existed long before Donald Trump was back in office. Is there anybody who might gain from the tariffs disrupting that market here aside from the foreign buyers that Armine was talking about?

ROB CARRICK: Young people. This could be an entree to them. I mean, a lot of young people have been despairing about the affordability of a first home. And we did get a big drop from peak prices in 2022 to now, but it hasn't made that much of a difference because mortgage rates are higher than they were when the market was peaking. This could be if you're looking for a long term entry point into the real estate market and you've got a job, etc., then I think we may be repricing the housing market. I mean, the numbers out of the Toronto and Vancouver market for February, preliminary numbers show it's kind of freezing up. There's a lot of people putting their houses on the market and not a lot of people buying them. It's really switching to a buyer's market. I don't think in a trade war a lot of people are going to want to stick their neck out and buy a house. And that will keep prices, you know, where they are or down.

MG: One of the other things you wrote about in a piece was kind of looking at, you know, these are the four things you need to do right now to protect your family and your personal finances. And you talked about preparing, and Armine has hinted at this, preparing for inflation 2.0 and looking at your expenses. Can you tell me a bit more about that, Rob, and what people might do now to try to figure out if this is coming, how they could save a little bit of money down the line?

ROB CARRICK: One thing I'm floored about is how angry people still are and how they still feel the recessionary surge of the past few years. I was just looking at some polling results that have asked people, what do you think the number one issue facing the country is? And obviously, Donald Trump was one. Inflation was just behind it. And the inflation rate today is right where it should be at below 2%. But as Armine said, I think we are going to see inflation kick higher, driven by a lot of things that we import from the United States. And I think people are going to need to figure out what can I cut to offset that? And I was suggesting the easiest pickings are those subscriptions that we've all signed up for. Get your credit card statement out and start thinking, I'm going to trim expenses A, B and C, and maybe I can generate enough savings there to help offset higher costs when we do grocery shopping.

MG: Actually look at the credit card statement and say, this is where the, see where the money is going and figure out what you can do without.

ROB CARRICK: You know, believe me, if they're anything like me, you can let expenses slide because, oh, there's a line there for this service and that service. And if everything is going okay, you think, fine, maybe we'll enjoy it more next month than we did last month. Now you got to get tough. Go line by line on the credit card. These are recurring statements. These are companies you've allowed to deduct money every month. Do you want to continue with that? You can save, you could probably round up $50 if you cut a couple of streaming services per month.

MG: Armine, did you want to pick up on that? I mean, again, people, this is specifically what people are looking for in some ways, is very practical information on not just what's coming, but if this is going to happen, we don't know. The decision changes minute by minute, day by day. What can people do to kind of futureproof themselves?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Well, can I just say that everybody wants to know how they can fix it for themselves. And everything that Rob has said is correct. You know, we've gone from an ownership society to being owned by digital services. And so, you know, anything you can do to cut free of that, go for, especially since, don't forget the people that were standing behind Mr. Trump during the inauguration were four of the five richest people on the surface of the planet. And they made their money from digital services, and they don't want us to tax them. We introduced the Digital Services Tax in June of 2024, and part of this is to get us to change our laws and change our taxation. And that brings me to a bigger point. We cannot buy or save our way individually out of this bind. We need to do things collectively. We need to treat this economic war like it is an economic war and lever all of our collective power. And that happens through governments. So who we elect as our government is incredibly critical because they will all have different plans on how to deal with what happens going forward.

MG: Christine in Calgary has a question specifically about that. Have a listen.

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CHRISTINE: I'm most concerned about how this affects the overall economy and employment. What's Canada going to do to help people who are going to obviously be affected by these tariffs, either losing their job or not having the same amount of spending power that they would because of all the price increases?

MG: So Armine, pick up on that. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said in his remarks earlier this week that he believed what would be required from governments across the board, and in his words, was similar to the pandemic, almost exactly the same as the pandemic. That means a large support system that would be put into place to help people through difficult times. What are you looking for?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Well, it isn't just incomes, but it's incomes, like EI reforms that I was referring to. The last time we reformed EI was 1996. The fact that only about a third of people who are jobless get something out of an insurance plan that they and their employer pay into is nuts. So we should get moving on that. But another thing that can be done to offset costs is not make us reach deeper into our pockets for health care, not make us reach deeper into our pockets for childcare, for pharmacare, for dental care. So the federal government has been starting to move in that direction. Not fast enough, not far enough, but actually dealing with the affordability crisis through what it can do without intervening directly in the market. The second area is We need greater surveillance over how prices get spiked up. We saw greedflation was a real thing all over the world in the pandemic. Businesses use the economic shock as cover for raising prices not only to cover the cost increases, but to add a little bit more. So we saw not only prices go up, but profit margins go up during the pandemic.

MG: So we had a question specifically about that from Michelle Ailes in BC who wrote, what happens if grocers increase the price of Canadian products as well? Think about it. If USA sour cream goes up in price, grocers won't miss the opportunity to raise all sour cream product price. Is that what you expect to see, grocery store chains taking advantage of the tariffs to crank up the costs and the prices at all of their stores across the board?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: It certainly won't be limited to groceries. But, you know, it's one of those fool me once, you know, fool me twice problems. If we do not pay closer attention to how prices are being manipulated in an era of economic shocks where the big players can, who are already price setters, can get away with jacking up prices. Look, the Canadian economy is so concentrated in terms of corporate concentration. There's three or four players in almost every sector that set prices. So why not be more vigilant about how prices go up? And as Tiff Macklem, the central bank governor, said back in the pandemic, we are expecting prices to come down as fast as they go up when this economic storm is over. Those prices have not come down. So let us expect that of the people that are around us.

MG: Rob, it’s not just the president of the United States that pays close attention to the stock markets. Many people who have investments feel like they are on some sort of elevator that is going up and largely going down, and their stomach kind of jiggling around when it comes to what's happening in the markets. The Wall Street, the belief is that it's going to open with losses again because there's still anxiety. There's often a fear of tearing open that statement or going online and looking at what your investments have done. And you have written that we need to suck it up and see what has happened to our investments. Why should we? Why should we look at that horror movie?

ROB CARRICK: Well, I think there's going to be some, a little bit of good news if you have a properly diversified portfolio, by which I simply mean that you have lots of stock market exposure, but you also have some exposure to bonds or to GICs. And if you have bonds or GICs, they're fine. If you have 40%, like a normal portfolio might have 60% stocks, 40% bonds, the 40% is doing okay right now. The 60% is going to get hammered hard, but that happens every five to 10 years anyway. If it wasn't the pandemic, it was the last time. If it wasn't for the trade war, if it wasn't for any other like unexpected event, we're always saying that, but stocks go down. They always come back. It's painful. It's horrible. I hate stock market declines. I've lived through many of them. But this is normal procedure for investing. There's nothing exceptional going to happen to your stocks that hasn't happened before. We will come through it, but it's going to take time for it to heal. If you take a peek now, don't make a habit of it. But if you take a peek now, you will see that, okay, at least my bonds are hanging in there. My GICs, any cash you have, that’s stable. That's something to hang on to as we go through the uncertainty of the weeks and probably months ahead.

MG: Are there any aspects of the current economy, Rob, that might give people a bit of comfort about how we can weather this storm? Like is there anything that's going well?

ROB CARRICK: You know what, I would…

MG: That’s a big sigh.

ROB CARRICK: Yeah. Yeah, because I could say it's going well, then Trump slaps a terrified like in a tweet at 9 a.m. I can't really single anything out that's economically killing it right now. But if you're an investor, there's these old-fashioned utility stocks. They generate electrical power for households. They're doing okay. They're holding their own. They're paying nice dividends. If you want to invest in something that's going to be relatively stable, I would say start your search there.

MG: We just have a couple of minutes left. Let me read one final letter, and I'll get you to comment quickly both on this. It comes from Wendy Grater who wrote, having navigated a tourism business through COVID, I feel and understand the uncertainty that's being felt. However, the solidarity and sense of support from the whole country, across party lines, across provinces, territories, ages, genders, backgrounds, is inspiring. There is this kind of elbows up mentality right now. Rob, briefly from you, is this a good thing in terms of how it's going to allow us kind of some sort of energy or some sort of initiative to protect ourselves and the economy?

ROB CARRICK: I think it's inspiring. And I think it gives us latitude to do things as a country to reorient ourselves, acknowledging that there is going to be some pain ahead and that if we're all in solidarity on this, I think it makes it easier for the next government that Armine alluded to to take the measures that are going to need to be taken.

MG: Armine, if this is economic warfare, is that approach of elbows up the kind of thing that's going to, you know, give us the initiative to make our way through this in a way that's not, you know, going to leave people behind?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: The elbows up is actually quite inspiring because it's elbows up against another nation. Let's make sure it's not elbows up against one another within the country. We have the fiscal firepower to take care of one another. You know, Rob's been talking about what you can do with your savings. A lot of people in Canada don't have savings. And when they become unemployed, they're going to strip to the very thin financial cushions they've got. We're already, before Trump, we were at record food bank usage and record numbers of people being evicted from their homes. We can take care of one another, but it can't be an elbows up strategy around one another. Great news is we do have savings both federally and as well as in our own pockets. Why don't we treat this as the economic war it is and reissue victory Bonds so that we can actually infuse our coffers with the funds we need to help one another when we need that help and fight the good war for democracy.

MG: This is really helpful. I think we will have you back because people will still have questions. This is to Rob's point. This is not going to go away. It may change again later on this morning. In the meantime, thank you both for being here.

ROB CARRICK: You're welcome.

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: My pleasure.

MG: Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist with the Globe and Mail. Armine Yalnizyan is an economist, Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. If you have any further questions on the tariffs and how they may impact you, email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC news is next, and then we're going to talk about one way that we might future proof how we get our food in this country. If you rely on leafy greens, at this time of the year, it can be pretty hard to find. We're going to talk about vertical farming in Canada and how that might allow us to grow our own food here and address some food insecurity across the country as well. That's coming up in six minutes here on The Current. Stay with us.

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VERTICAL FARMING

Guests: Andy O'Brien, Corey Ellis, Alida Burke, Lenore Newman

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Have you been looking to try and find some grown in Canada things?

SPEAKER: I'm buying all. Yeah.

MG: Are you?

SPEAKER: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s Matt Galloway.

MG: No, no, no, that’s fine. We’re from CBC Radio. Can we ask you a couple of questions?

SPEAKER: Sure.

MG: Sure. Tell us what your name is.

SPEAKER: Gail Funston.

MG: And tell us what you're doing here now. You're doing your grocery shopping?

SPEAKER: Doing my, yeah, weekly grocery shopping.

MG: You have the list there. And are you looking for buying Made in Canada things?

SPEAKER: Yes, completely. So far, I've been able to get everything that was either Canada or Spain or some other place. But I've just been looking at the lettuce and I can't find so far anything that's not USA.

MG: Why are you doing this?

SPEAKER: Oh, because of the tariffs. Yeah, it's a protest for sure.

MG: My trip to the grocery store last month. I got a ton of response, many of you also trying to buy Canadian. And that increases day after day, it seems like. While we were shopping, we couldn't find it at the grocery store, but many of you wrote in to tell us that you actually can get home grown lettuce and leafy greens during the Canadian winter. And one company that kept coming up in that conversation is a company called Good Leaf Farms. It operates vertical farms in four Canadian provinces. If you're wondering what a vertical farm is, well, you're about to find out. The CEO of Good Leaf Farms is Andy O'Brien, and he's with me in studio now. Good morning.

ANDY O’BRIEN: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. For people who don't know, what is vertical farming?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Well, vertical farming is a controlled environment indoors, growing it upward versus horizontal like in open fields. We have literally stacks of benches that go up probably, you know, 40 or 50 metres. And we have 10 different stacks. And they're probably, I don't know, 100 yards long.

MG: And so take me inside one of those buildings. What does it look like aside from with the stacks, how the stacks are?

ANDY O’BRIEN: It's pretty impressive. It's a pretty advanced technology where we have lights on each bench that mimic the ideal lighting conditions outside. We have irrigation that we control by stack. So every plant that we have gets a certain level of water controlled by our computer systems. And we control the air, so it's perfect conditions for growing.

MG: The advantage of this, I mean, it probably is an obvious answer, but the advantage of this compared to a traditional greenhouse, for example, this sounds like a stacked greenhouse in some ways, is what?

ANDY O’BRIEN: That's a good comparison. The advantages would be that first off, we don't have to use any pesticides. We use less water, we use less land. And because we're so close to the source of where we sell, roughly 350 kilometres is probably the farthest we have to go, our product lasts longer on the shelf.

MG: Why did you think there was an opportunity in vertical farming? You've worked in the food industry for a while. You've had a bunch of big jobs in different parts of that food industry.

ANDY O’BRIEN: Yeah. You know what, I have. I've worked in the food business for 30 years on both sides of the border. When this opportunity was presented to me a year ago and I did my homework, I realized pretty quickly that we have a food security issue here in Canada. We're getting majority of our produce, you know, 90% of it from the US, mostly from California and Arizona. And it takes, you know, three or four weeks sometimes to get up here. The quality of the product is not great, and particularly, you know, in Canada where we have pretty long winters. I was out in Newfoundland back in November, and they have a real challenge getting fresh produce from Arizona and California to St. John's. So I looked at it and said, there's an opportunity here for us to develop, you know, the capacity to produce leafy greens right here in Canada.

MG: How is that opportunity sharpened by the context that we are talking in where we are now in a trade war with the United States?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Yeah. I don't think the trade war or the tariffs brought this issue out. I think the issue has been around for a while. I think what's happened over the last, you know, call it two months, is it's a heightened awareness that we need to do something now.

MG: If this is as, not straightforward, but if it makes sense in the way that you're talking about, we can grow things all year long. We can grow things in places where you haven't been able to grow things or get things in easily. Why aren't there more vertically farmed vegetables available across this country right now?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Well, the reality is it's very expensive, you know, built. You know, these facilities are not cheap. They're advanced technology. And we're very fortunate that we have some really, really good investor partners.

MG: How much when you say very expensive?

ANDY O’BRIEN: $70 million to build one farm.

MG: $70 million to build one farm.

ANDY O’BRIEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MG: And that cost, break that down for me. Why does it cost $70 million?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Well, that's all the equipment, all the lighting, all the irrigation. We have robotics in there that lift up benches, you know, 30, 40, you know, metres in the air. It's expensive technology.

MG: And yet there is an opportunity, you believe, that this is viable? That's a huge start up cost.

ANDY O’BRIEN: It is. And I think, you know, that's a major reason why there's not, you know, more players right now. But I think the opportunity is massive for Canada.

MG: I mean, I guess one of the reasons why people would ask whether this is viable is because there have been a number of pretty high profile business failures in vertical farming. Infarm, AeroFarms, AppHarvest declared bankruptcy in the last few years. 15 companies based in Europe that do vertical farming all had to cash out because there wasn't the money there. People have compared this in some ways to, you know, the cannabis bubble. Is this really a viable business? If people can't make a go of it and because of the start up costs, companies are going bankrupt, how is this possible?

ANDY O’BRIEN: It has definitely been a very challenging sector for the last five years. And you're absolutely right, Matt. There's been a number of companies that have come into this space and for various reasons didn't make it. I can't speak to why they didn't make it. I can only speak to how we're going to make it. And we're looking at this not only as an opportunity to provide food security in Canada, but it has to be a business model.

MG: How much energy does it take to grow? If you're not relying on the sunlight, if you're not relying on rain and typically irrigation, how much energy does it take to grow in one of these towers?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Well, I'll give you an example. Our farm in Quebec, we use about 12 million kilowatts a year, but we use renewable hydro energy for that.

MG: Is 12 million kilowatts a year a lot?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Well, it's not insignificant for sure.

MG: And so that's a significant carbon footprint, presumably. I mean, you are using renewable. But if you aren't, that's a lot of energy that you’re using.

ANDY O’BRIEN: Correct. Yes.

MG: What about water consumption in terms of your irrigation?

ANDY O’BRIEN: We use 90%, 97% less water than traditional farming, and we recycle most of it.

MG: And why are you able to use less water than traditional farming?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Because none of it's wasted. It's going directly into the plants. And then we bring it back into, we clean it up and put it back into another plant.

MG: What is the cost of vertically grown vegetables compared to the imports that people are familiar with from Arizona and from California? Does it cost more?

ANDY O’BRIEN: They do cost more right now. And, you know, we're an early player in this market. So right now, our costs are probably about 50% higher versus your, you know, your open field produce.

MG: You've said that this is a premium product in some ways.

ANDY O’BRIEN: It is a premium product. It comes with significant benefits. No pesticides, non-GMO. You know, it has nutrient density in it because the way we grow it and how fast it gets to the store. It has a longer shelf life. Those are all really significant consumer benefits.

MG: I mean, there are a number of people who got in touch with us saying this is something that you need to think about when we were at the grocery store and we couldn't find Canadian grown lettuce. And part of it is about buying Canadian, but part of it is also about food security. Just finally, what is at stake when it comes to food security? And what role do you think you can play in terms of allowing us in this moment to have some control over our food supply?

ANDY O’BRIEN: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think if you look at probably five or six months of the year here in Canada, we really don't have access to fresh produce grown in Canada. A vertical farm like Good Leaf really allows us to be able to provide Canadians with fresh produce 365 days a year.

MG: Andy, thank you very much.

ANDY O’BRIEN: Thank you very much, Matt.

MG: Andy O'Brien is the CEO of Good Leaf Farms. Vertical farming at scale could take, as we heard, serious money. But my next guests are trying to make it a lot easier for small farmers to get growing vertically. They manage self-contained vertical farms in shipping containers and sell them across this country. Their customers include retailers, non-profit organizations, schools and remote First Nations. The company is called The Growcer, spelled g r o w c e r. See what they did there? The co-founders, Corey Ellis and Alida Burke, are in our Ottawa studio. Good morning to you both.

ALIDA BURKE: Good morning.

COREY ELLIS: Hi, Matt.

MG: Corey, describe your farming machines. What are these?

COREY ELLIS: So they do look like shipping containers, but they're steel buildings. We build them 100% in Winkler, Manitoba. And inside are shelves with LED lights to grow hydroponically all sorts of vegetables. We prefab them. So they essentially just get loaded on a truck, they show up to our customers’ site, we offload it, we plug it into a garden hose and power, and you now have a, in a 400 square foot footprint, you now have a farm that can feed 600 people a day for 30 years.

MG: How does this compare to the technology that Andy O'Brien of Good Leaf just described?

COREY ELLIS: The fundamental principles are the same. I mean, we're using similar science. We're just scaling it down to a community scale. So what we are trying to build is a network of local farmers across the country that can feed their own communities with a locally owned farm.

MG: Alida, people may have seen the two of you on Dragons Den a few years ago, right?

ALIDA BURKE: That's right.

MG: Where did the idea for this come from?

ALIDA BURKE: Yeah, it was about 10 years ago now, which is hard to believe. We were students at the University of Ottawa and looking at social entrepreneurship. So looking at building a business that looks at environmental, social and economic factors. And we were able to go up north, and we experienced the very common sticker shock that one does when one goes into the grocery store and sees the incredibly high prices for consumer goods. And what we then realized in our journey is that that's a problem across Canada. And we thought, how can we combine technology with local options for people to grow food in their community?

MG: You mentioned the north. I mean, one of these containers is in Yellowknife, right?

ALIDA BURKE: Yes. That's right.

MG: Tell me about what it's doing there.

ALIDA BURKE: It's supporting the local co-op in Yellowknife. And so they're growing in their parking lot and having their own brand of produce on their store shelves.

MG: I mean, based on what you saw and what people in the north certainly see every single day, how much of a difference can something like this make, do you think?

ALIDA BURKE: It makes a massive difference, and that's what really drives us to do what we do every day. We hear the local stories of how this has ripple effects. Food brings us all together and it creates local jobs. It supports the local economy in keeping those dollars in the community and builds that network to be able to have that fresh, nutritious local product right there in the community.

MG: Corey, one of the things that Andy and I were just talking about is the cost and the cost of getting started up in the vertical farm space. How much do these farms cost and who's putting that money up?

COREY ELLIS: So the farms are about a quarter million dollars. So $250,000. You can make that money back in about five years if you're running it commercially. But as of last week, we will actually now fully invest in 100% of that start up cost for an organization locally that wants to produce food. So what we'll do is we'll put up 100% of the equipment cost, the farmer will put up the site preparation cost, and then we'll revenue share over a five or 10-year period. So that's for a food bank, for example, we have First Nation customers, grocery stores and so on. If any of those local organizations want to get a farm, we will put up the upfront capital to help them do that.

MG: Did you find that, I mean, and that's a great initiative. Did you find that that initial start up cost was an impediment for people who might want to get involved in this? Again, with Good Leaf, we were talking about the $70 million that it takes to get rolling. Both of those numbers, they're different, but they're big numbers for people.

COREY ELLIS: They are big numbers. It is an impediment for sure, Matt. I mean, a food bank, for example, raising a quarter million dollars to put in a capital cost, there is a return on investment there. They would offset and no longer have to procure vegetables, which many food banks already do. So there is an economic case, but it's a barrier. And so we wanted to, at the heart of what Growcer is doing is how do we make it easier for Canadians across the country who want to start growing locally in their organization? How do we remove those barriers?

MG: Alida, what about the energy consumption? Again, this is something that I was talking with Andy about, particularly when it comes to electricity.

ALIDA BURKE: Yeah. Similarly, it takes about four homes worth of energy to power a grocery farm like ours.

MG: That sounds like a lot.

ALIDA BURKE: Yeah. But I think there's a variety of other benefits that support that and, you know, offset some of those long transportation costs that a lot of our clients are in very remote places. So there's definitely some side benefits as well.

MG: So you think the carbon footprint might work itself out.

ALIDA BURKE: Yeah, that's right.

COREY ELLIS: Yeah. It's about a 75% reduction when we looked at it. Largely, as Andy mentioned, you know, most of our power across the country is fairly green, but we're using about four homes worth of power to feed about 2 to 300 homes.

MG: When you started this company, Corey, you were university students and you were just selling the machines. And now, you're invested in helping people, you know, afford them in some ways. Tell me a bit more about how your business model has changed and what the… you start out with an idea, but what is the big goal here?

COREY ELLIS: I mean, we had a very modest initial goal. We just wanted to start a single farm in the north with some of our friends and community partners, and we couldn't find a supplier that we could trust and that actually had a solution that was turnkey, ready to go. And so we basically just went about building the solution we wish we had had. And that's been the mantra for, I mean, the last decade.

MG: But this is a business. It's not a philanthropy, right?

COREY ELLIS: Absolutely.

MG: And so I mean, again, as we talked about with Andy, I mean, there are people who have tried to get into this space who have found, what do they say, the juice isn't worth the squeeze in some ways, that the cost going in is more than what you can get out of it. So is there a sustainable business model here?

COREY ELLIS: Yeah, there absolutely is. I mean, we're proof of that. We have 110 organizations across the country that currently have a Growcer farm in their community. There's about 50 more on the way for the next 12 months. And they're doing a self-sustaining operation selling produce in their local community.

MG: And it's not just a luxury product. Again, in a community that is already facing food insecurity, a luxury product in some ways may be the last thing that they need.

COREY ELLIS: Yeah. I mean, there's different ways to look at it. I, you know, the way I see it is those are dollars that stay in the community and then create local jobs and create local employment. We've seen a huge uptake even in some of the smaller communities for a product like this because people are actively trying to support their neighbours and their local community members.

MG: And what do you see as the potential here? I mean, how big could this get?

ALIDA BURKE: You know, we have grand ambitions. We're looking to, you know, start this movement. I think the local food movement is an important one. You know, we're also here to support our local community. So we're looking to start here at home and hopefully expand globally as well.

MG: Corey, pick up a little bit on that and what Andy was saying as well about this moment and the interest in food security given our changing relationship with the United States where so much of our vegetables come from right now.

COREY ELLIS: Yeah. I mean, so if I look at our business today, we're feeding about 60,000 Canadians every day with the network that we have today. And I think that can expand significantly. So I think we just need to learn that we have the resources and the know how and the skills within Canada to feed ourselves. And we just need to be willing to activate that network and that potential.

MG: It's really interesting to hear about the work that you're doing. Thank you both for being here.

COREY ELLIS: Thanks for having us.

ALIDA BURKE: Thank you.

MG: Corey Ellis and Alida Burke are the co-founders of The Growcer. They were in our studio in Ottawa. Lenore Newman is director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley. And with Trump's tariffs now in effect, she believes there is an opportunity in Canada for new approaches to home-grown farming. She's been listening in. Lenore, good morning to you.

LENORE NEWMAN: Good morning. Great to be here.

MG: What do you make of what you've just heard from Corey, Alida and from Andy?

LENORE NEWMAN: Well, I think it's a really exciting time in this industry, because what you're seeing is an industry that's going from really the research phase where it doesn't quite work yet and there's a lot of experimentation, a lot of failure, to an industry that is actually starting to be economically viable at scale. And for Canada, what that means is we could be food secure in these crops in, you know, looking forward in 10 years or so.

MG: Just to be clear, you believe in 10 years, we would be food secure when it comes to these crops that we rely on the United States and other places for.

LENORE NEWMAN: We certainly could. Already, Quebec has had about 50% self-production in the leafy green space. And that's huge. I mean, here in BC, we still get about 90% from California, Arizona and Mexico. So we got a long way to go, but it's moving very quickly.

MG: What do you see as the challenges to scaling this up? I mean, again, we've talked about the input costs. We've also talked about how there are some parts of this industry that have tried and failed at this. What to you are the big things to think about?

LENORE NEWMAN: For investors in this space, one of the challenges has been that farming is very expensive. And it's a bit of a shock for people who are used to being in the tech sector, where you can fund a guy in a garage and somehow it turns into a company. Like even building a conventional lettuce farm is incredibly expensive. But the example I like to use is a century ago, greenhouses were basically toys for the rich until the Dutch basically created an industry. So here in Canada today, if you buy a cucumber or a tomato or a pepper or even an eggplant, it probably grew inside. And that's a big win for us. It puts jobs in our communities. It makes us food secure, which is part of national security, which of course is on everyone's mind right in the moment. And we're basically at that point now with particularly leafy greens largely because of work done in Japan and the Netherlands.

MG: Tell me more about Japan, because Andy talked about the opportunity here, that if you stack and you build up, you can grow more. You don't need the spread of land that a traditional farm would require. What's happening in Japan?

LENORE NEWMAN: Exactly. Japan's a great case study in how a country can really build a domestic industry because after the tsunami disaster, they decided as part of the recovery to invest in vertical farming. And it had always been a weakness for Japan. They’re large leafy green consumers. And they like a very high quality product, and they couldn't always get it. And so they put government funding into developing farms. And yeah, at first, all the farms lost money. But at this point, they have a thriving industry, and they produce pretty well all of their leafy greens now in-country. And most of those farms are actually making money and producing product at a similar price point. And we're moving towards that here. It's just a little slower.

MG: Let me ask you about the price point. Tamar Haspel is a food columnist at The Washington Post who has been critical of this idea of vertical farming. Have a listen to this.

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TAMAR HASPEL: You cannot grow any of the staple crops that actually feed people, that are the backbone of a diet for people and planet in vertical farms because the energy costs there are somewhere, depending on who you ask, between 50 and 100 times the price of the product that you can grow. So we're talking about just luxury products for rich people around the periphery of the food system. This is not a way to feed people.

MG: Lenore, is this just luxury products for rich people?

LENORE NEWMAN: No. And it's weird because I both agree with her and disagree with her. Like I would never try and grow grain or lentils indoors even though we could do it. And there are situations where if, say, we were in, you know, travelling to other planets, we might want to do it. But here on Earth, Canada is a, you know, a grain superpower because we have prairies. I'd never try and build a prairie in a box and make money. It's not possible. But that's not what we're talking about. And so yes, at some level, is lettuce a luxury product? Well, I don't know.

MG: What about arugula? I mean, I love arugula, but people could say, well, people don't need arugula. People need staples.

LENORE NEWMAN: Well, I feel it's a bit of a silly argument, to be honest, because number one, food is cheaper than it has almost ever been in history. And if all we want to eat is porridge, yes, that's very easy. We don't need these technologies. But we're trying to build an economy. And I really do feel the customer is always right. And they want lettuce, and they also want their lettuce not to be rotten. And really, her argument, if you take it to its logical extreme, we don't really need a lot of things that are made. We don't need, we don't need Teslas. Probably aren't buying those today either. We don't need cars. We don't need fancy houses. We just need simple houses. It's, I mean, it's a good argument if someone is actually trying to grow a prairie in a box. But that's a bit of a straw, man. I mean, all we're trying to do is grow lettuce. And the truth is in Canada, you can't do it outside in the winter. Now, I will say, I do feel the industry, to be successful, has to hit the same price point as California import. And my group actually tracks the price of California import versus indoor grown in BC. And routinely over the last couple of years, we have occasionally been cheaper. It fluctuates a lot, though, so that's still an issue. We're not quite there yet, but we're really close.

MG: What do you think, in this moment, there is a buy Canadian kind of feeling. What could government do to make vertical farming more sustainable, do you think?

LENORE NEWMAN: There's a number of things. So number one is to cut red tape that make it hard to build things in this country. And I'm not talking just about vertical farms. Sometimes, it's not even changing regulation. It's just say appointing a concierge to walk people through all the regulation. Now, if we wanted to actually subsidize this industry, probably the best way is to give people a cheaper hydro rate and to help them with direct subsidies. But really, the buy Canadian bit is fascinating because it's supercharging this industry, and an industry that I was like, oh, you know, 10, 15 years from now, it's probably how we're going to grow all of our greens just the way like we grow tomatoes. It's probably cut five years off that runway because all of a sudden, everyone really wants the product. And the other thing I will mention, it is a far superior product. And there is a health benefit to that. The quality on this product is far superior. The nutrient count is really high. And if we can get it to a price parity that agrees with people, they will actually eat more leafy greens. And that saves all of us money and makes everyone healthier.

MG: Lenore, really good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

LENORE NEWMAN: Wonderful to be on.

MG: Lenore Newman is the director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley. Well, coming up after your regional update, Donald Trump is set to host the first ever cryptocurrency summit at the White House. The CBC's Nora Young will be here with what Washington's new crypto confidence means. That's coming up in just about 90 seconds. Plus.

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SPEAKER: When you go to Japan, everyone hypes up 7-Eleven and for good reason. It's truly elite.

MG: Truly elite. In Japan, 7-Eleven is not just a gas station pitstop, it is an experience with delicious food: ramen and rice balls and frozen fruit treats. And in many ways, it ends up being a centre of the community. But a potential takeover from Canada has some people worried that the charm of 7-Eleven in Japan could wear off. We'll tell you more about that coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in a minute and a half. Stay with us.

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DIGITAL CURRENCY

Guest: Nora Young

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

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DONALD TRUMP: The United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world. If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted and made in the USA it's going to be. It's not going to be made anywhere else.

MG: Donald Trump loves crypto. The president has not only launched his own TrumpCoin, but is also making the digital currency a big part of his new administration. Tomorrow, the White House is hosting its first ever crypto summit. This event will bring together the who's who of the crypto world. The CBC's Nora Young is with the Visual Investigations Unit and has been following this story and is with me in studio now. Nora, good morning.

NORA YOUNG: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is this crypto summit that is happening tomorrow at the White House? There's a lot going on in the world.

NORA YOUNG: There is a lot going on. So this is the first time the White House has hosted essentially a conference for the cryptocurrency industry. But it's focussed on bringing together Trump and his crypto team, which includes the crypto czar David Sacks, who's chairing it, together with the CEOs of some of the kind of biggest players in the crypto world, somewhere around 20 of those people, to look at, you know, the state of the industry, the regulatory framework and the future of crypto and what it might look like under this administration. And of course, the backdrop of this, as you pointed out, is what looks like this dramatic shift in policy toward crypto from this administration. Like recall that Trump’s called himself the first crypto president. So definitely a shift in tone.

MG: He says the United States will be the Bitcoin superpower of the world.

NORA YOUNG: Exactly.

MG: And he has announced the creation of this crypto reserve fund. What is that?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. So the rumour is they're going to sort of officially launch this at the summit, though it's kind of been floated and talked up earlier this week. So if it goes forward, the idea is for the US to maintain a strategic crypto reserve. So he named five of the many, many current cryptocurrencies out there to start, Etherium and Bitcoin and then three lesser known ones. So strategic reserve is usually maintained by a country for something like, you know, critical minerals, like something that have a vital role in the economy.

MG: We have maple syrup here. The strategic reserve of maple syrup.

NORA YOUNG: Exactly, right? You know, in case there's disruptions in the supply chain or, I don't know, something like a trade war, say. But it's a bit hard to see how cryptocurrency does something that you couldn't do with just having money basically, right?

MG: So what has the reaction been to the reserve fund?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, certainly some excitement in some quarters. But I was interested in this. Like it hasn't been met entirely positively even within the crypto industry. According to the Financial Times, after an initial flurry of activity and this kind of crypto rally at the beginning of the week, that was followed by a bit of a slump. And there have been questions and some concerns from within the industry, especially around things like why these particular cryptocurrencies, especially the smaller ones that might be seen as a bit more risky. And there's also been very little detail about how this would actually be funded. So for example, even within the Republican Party, some Republicans have questioned whether this is basically a waste of taxpayer money.

MG: This is interesting because people are trying to figure this out, I mean, and wrap their head around what exactly this means for the United States in this time, in this economic time.

NORA YOUNG: Exactly. And there is this question about, you know, do they want to be taking on this kind of extra risk? But of course, I'm not a financial person, so I need some expertise in this. And I talked to Stephen Cecchetti. He is the Rosen Family Chair in International Finance at the Brandeis International Business School. And he's been highly sceptical.

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STEPHEN CECCHETTI: Analogy I would use is imagine that you have a mortgage, and maybe you're having a little trouble making the payments. Would you borrow more and invest in risky assets in the hopes that maybe these things that you buy, maybe they’re stocks, maybe they’re cryptocurrencies, whatever they are, that they're going to gain in value and relieve this debt burden a little bit, make it easier for you to make the payments? That makes no sense.

NORA YOUNG: Makes no sense.

MG: Makes no sense.

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. He points out that for a country that has a huge amount of debt, why would you be borrowing more in order to make investments in something as potentially volatile as crypto?

MG: The crypto president has also pushed to change regulation around cryptocurrency. What has that looked like thus far?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, the Biden administration had been looking for some time at bringing in more regulation in crypto. But now, we're seeing at the same time as you have this interest from government this move to back off of regulation. And where we're seeing that most clearly is in the role of the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. So last week, the SEC agreed to press pause on a high profile investigation into a controversial crypto entrepreneur. And before that, they dropped a high profile case against Coinbase, which as you know, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US. And one of the things that the SEC has been pursuing is to try and get crypto treated like other securities, which means they'd be subject to the same types of regulations as other securities on the market.

MG: But you talked about the volatility. I mean, beyond that, maybe that is the risk. What are the risks of pulling back on regulation here?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes appropriate regulation, right? Can you have guardrails against fraud but still be fine about letting people do what they want, invest however they want? But obviously, there's certainly concerns that people might lose their shirts. And it's not necessarily that everyone in the sector wants a totally unregulated industry. And this surprised me, but it makes sense. Stephen Cecchetti pointed out that a lot of people he hears from within the sector want the legitimacy that could come with regulating out fraudsters.

MG: What is going on here? Why is he so interested in this? Because he, Donald Trump, and the first lady, Melania Trump, launched their own crypto coins. As you mentioned, there's a crypto czar. People love the word czar. What is going on here?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, I'm thinking of becoming the photocopy czar around CBC actually. Yes.

MG: We'll get that title approved, certainly.

NORA YOUNG: No, but to your point, it's just back in 2021, Trump called it a scam against the dollar, right? But he's gone all in, saying he's going to be the first crypto president, etc., etc. And of course, there are a lot of pro crypto people in the administration now, including most obviously Elon Musk. Stephen Cecchetti takes a more critical tone of all this. He believes the reserve, the crypto reserve in particular, is a way to help Trump's backers.

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STEPHEN CECCHETTI: A person like that who is really into making business transactions is going to do it for money. So presumably, he did that for the support of the crypto industry. And one of the important things that a crypto reserve does is that it allows the people who have large crypto assets in their portfolios to sell them at high prices.

MG: Have there been concerns around conflict of interest here? I mean, when the Trump coin, Trump coins were launched, everybody was wondering who was making the money in some ways.

NORA YOUNG: I mean, even at the most straightforward level, it's a conflict of interest position to both have your own crypto at the same time as you're promoting the future of cryptocurrency and signalling a pro crypto direction in your administration. Trump is also involved in something called World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto project. And a leading investor in that project is the crypto entrepreneur I mentioned before that the SEC has just suspended investigating. So regardless of whether there's anything actually wrong being done here, it's certainly a conflict of interest position to stand to gain financially from a particular type of investment that you're promoting politically. Under ordinary circumstances, I don't think we would need to be talking about these.

MG: Are these ordinary circumstances?

NORA YOUNG: Not in ordinary circumstances, right?

MG: There is a summit that is happening tomorrow. What are you going to be watching for coming out of that summit?

NORA YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, I do think, you know, crypto is here to stay. And we should be publicly discussing what appropriate regulation looks like so that you can have a healthy market, but that potentially people are not losing their shirts, or you rein in the fraudsters. So I think that aspect is important. And I think actually just hearing about what the perspective of the big players in the crypto industry is is important.

MG: We were talking yesterday on this program. This is something different, but it's interesting. We were talking yesterday on the program about, speaking of ordinary times, questions around the United States and its role in intelligence sharing and spy agencies and the sort of Five Eyes spy network. You have been, and this is a question that came up in our conversation yesterday. You've been following what's going on at the US Department of Defence and its cyber operations in Russia in particular. What do we know about this?

NORA YOUNG: I'm going to do my best to keep us out of the weeds here, Matt.

MG: Okay.

NORA YOUNG: Okay. There's been this flurry of stories over the last kind of week or so from Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, and on and on, suggesting that the Trump administration has been pulling back from addressing Russia as a cyber security threat, which is obviously potentially very concerning because it is a cybersecurity threat. The most high profile of these is that it was initially reported that the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered Cyber Command, which is the part of the Pentagon that is responsible for cyber security, to halt offensive cyber operations against Russia, right? So potentially very concerning. Separately, there was this recent case in the UN where the US specifically named China and Iran as cyber security threats, but omitted naming Russia, which is virtually always talked about as a cyber security threat. But as things unfolded over the course of the week, it actually seems like things are more nuanced than that. And it's probably too early to be freaking out about this move.

MG: But there are concerns in the security community right now about this.

NORA YOUNG: Yeah, absolutely. And I talked to Kim Zetter about this. She's a security journalist and is the mind behind Zero Day, which tracks details about what the US is up to when it comes to cyber security. And she's sceptical about this particular thing, which is that these are major changes. She thinks it has more to do with negotiations with Russia over the war in Ukraine. And she points out that it's sort of standard procedure with the US when they're in the middle of negotiations with another country that essentially not to tick anybody off, right, to sort of back off these sensitive kinds of topics. So she doesn't think there's that much to do with this particular issue that they're really backing off on it. But she is, though, worried about cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the impacts that that might have.

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KIM ZETTER: They don't really understand who is a significant player and who may be a minor player. They're just sort of slashing across the board. That's a concern, is that you eliminate people whose job it is to be doing active monitoring of networks, whose job it is to actively notify agencies, to fight back, to defend, to disable attacks. When you start eliminating those people, then you really are opening the door to adversaries and not just adversaries from Russia.

NORA YOUNG: So you start to have, you know, this wholesale cutting of jobs, but in this incredibly sensitive area, you know, right at the time where we're seeing this growth in ransomware, we're seeing potential cybersecurity as a threat to infrastructure and on and on.

MG: That's unsettling.

NORA YOUNG: Yes. That's my job, Matt.

MG: The unsettling czar. Nora Young is with the CBC's Visual Investigations Unit. Thank you very much.

NORA YOUNG: My pleasure. Thank you.

7-ELEVEN JAPAN

Guest: Gavin Whitelaw

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway.

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SPEAKER: This is everything I got from the 7-Eleven in Japan. My first time seeing one, and they are unmatched. Like I've never seen anything like it.

SPEAKER: It's our last 7-Eleven breakfast in Japan. Here's what we got for breakfast dessert. One of the famous strawberries and cream sandwiches, which are so good.

SPEAKER: I got my favourite onigiri rice ball. It's in this spicy roll.

MG: All right. When was the last time you walked out of a 7-Eleven excited to eat the food that you bought? Or better yet, when was the last time you took a look at one of those hot dogs rolling in perpetual stare and staleness on the grill and you thought, yeah, that looks delicious. I should get maybe one or maybe more of those. In Japan, 7-Eleven is a different beast. Tourists like the ones you just heard are enthralled by the novelty, but locals feel a real sense of pride and connection to the stores and of course, the food.

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YOSHIKI OKANO: I love their bun, you know, Chinese bun, and then like fried chicken. The fried potatoes, oh my goodness, so good. Some of my friends, they don't cook. They just go get food 7-Eleven and bring it to home.

MG: That's Yoshiki Okano. He usually lives in Toronto, but we caught up with him while he was visiting his parents in Japan.

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YOSHIKI OKANO: So 7-Eleven is integrated into our daily lives. So it's not just a place to shop, but also as a hub for essential services. So you can withdraw cash and even pay tax. And you can also send and receive packages. In Canada, sometimes we have to go Service Ontario, but we don't have to go there. You can just go convenience store and then pay tax registration of where you live.

MG: Certainly sounds much different than a convenience store here. And that is part of the reason why people in Japan are worried about a potential takeover of 7-Eleven. The Quebec convenience store giant Couche-Tard is in talks to buy 7-Eleven from its Japanese parent company, and people are worried about the unique Japanese stores and how they could change if that deal goes through. Gavin Whitelaw is an anthropologist and executive director at Harvard's Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. He's both worked at and studied Japanese convenience stores. Gavin, good morning to you.

GAVIN WHITELAW: Good morning.

MG: We heard a bit of that in the introduction, but set the scene for us. For people who've never been to Japan and never been to a 7-Eleven in Japan, what is it like walking into one of those stores compared to one in North America?

GAVIN WHITELAW: I would say it's familiar and yet completely different. It's going into a space. It's a compact store. It's well, it's well lit. It's got all kinds of products. There is a counter where people are waiting, waiting to wait on you. So in that sense, it's familiar. But you can use the bathrooms there without having to ask for a key. You can stand around for hours reading magazines without anyone bothering you. And then there's the food, of course, which you just described from various points of view, but fresh foods that are on the shelves, individually packaged, that you can pick up quickly and leave with and have something delicious and sometimes very new to eat or something very familiar to eat. So it's that combination. It's this space that really provides a sense of comfort and stability to people that I think stands out. And certainly, for someone who hasn't been to Japan before, it's a shock. And for those that do go, it's sort of where you want to go first. It's like a homecoming is actually going to the convenience store to get something that's familiar to you and connects you with Japan.

MG: Can you tell me a bit more? I mean, Yoshiki talked a bit about the role that these stores play. And it's not just 7-Eleven. It's the convenience stores, the role that they play in Japanese communities.

GAVIN WHITELAW: Absolutely. So yeah, it is, you know, the focus is certainly 7-Eleven for this talk today, but really, it's convenience stores in general. There are 57,000 of them in Japan. They've been around since the early 1970s. And certainly, Japanese today have, many have grown up with the convenience store, and they've seen it evolving with their lives. These are very locally based stores. Sometimes, there's one on every corner at an intersection. They compete with each other, they compete for customers, but they also have their loyalties and conveniences for people. And they've really integrated into and in many ways adapted themselves to people's lifestyles. And part of that is really being in neighbourhoods and within a short walking distance or on your way somewhere. So that's one way in which I think they really distinguish themselves from maybe a North American model, which is you drive to it, right? So where you get gas, maybe some alcohol, or maybe a newspaper scratch ticket. That is not the model in Japan at all.

MG: Which would explain why this Canadian company, Couche-Tard, would offer $47 billion for 7-Eleven in Japan.

GAVIN WHITELAW: Yeah. I think it gives, I mean, certainly, the Japanese convenience stores, or konbini as they're called in Japan, this model of Japanese convenience stores has spread throughout Asia and Southeast Asia. And I think Couche-Tard would like to plug into that. And I think there are things that they could learn, particularly as we've heard on the food side of things, the food side of convenience where they could pick up. But I'm not sure the value is equally appreciated by a Japanese consumership who's come to appreciate the ways in which convenience has been adopted and adapted and evolved in Japan, and whether or not a foreign entity managing the stores will appreciate many of the ways that the convenience store has developed and keep it convenient to a Japanese public.

MG: There was a Japanese retail analyst who compared the potential takeover of 7-Eleven in Japan to a foreign company taking over Toyota. Can you tell me more about that and why people would be so exercised? I mean, there have been, there's a new CEO that's in place. There are efforts to try to figure out a way to block this deal. Why are people so worked up about this?

GAVIN WHITELAW: Well, I think there are a number of reasons for it. One is the company itself. 7-Eleven, really, it was born out of Japan's wanting to change and develop small retail in Japan. And 7-Eleven has become the flagship for the gold standard of the convenience store industry in Japan. It's the one to watch. And so many innovations and relationships in Japan have been developed and innovated by 7-Eleven. So it stands out, I think, in that way as really a unique and sort of the great father of convenience stores in some way. Another piece is just to how essential they are to people's daily lives. And they've grown more essential over time in recent years, with certain disasters, for example. The convenience store has been more responsive in many ways than the government to people's immediate needs partly because of this intense relationship the stores have with a franchisee, a local owner who is very much a partner in the running of these stores. And so I would say, yeah, symbolically, Toyota is important, but people drive all kinds of cars.

MG: Sure.

GAVIN WHITELAW: But 7-Eleven is a daily essential.

MG: Do you think the deal will go through in light of that?

GAVIN WHITELAW: It's… I think it's still an open question. We're seeing ways in which 7-Eleven itself, Ito, the Ito family is reaching out and trying to find different ways to Maybe connect with and get supported by larger entities in Japan like Itochu, the company that owns FamilyMart, another major convenience store chain. Although that fell through, I think they're trying to find ways in which it can be kept local and therefore, or managed locally, so therefore it can survive.

MG: I have to let you go, but what is your favourite, what's your favourite part of going to 7-Eleven in Japan?

GAVIN WHITELAW: My favourite part of 7-Eleven might be the onigiri. It's fast slow food. It's my go to in many ways. I mean, just being in the source is a wonderful experience.

MG: But I mean, onigiri in a convenience store is not something I think a lot of people in North America would think of as something that you would be celebrating. And yet, there, it's a very different thing.

GAVIN WHITELAW: It is. It is.

MG: Gavin, thank you very much for this.

GAVIN WHITELAW: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Gavin Whitelaw is an anthropologist and Executive Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Have you been to Japan? Have you been to the convenience store in Japan? Are you listening to us from Japan right now? Tell us about the role that that, I mean, for people who go, it is a very different experience, as Gavin was saying. And so if you have stories on what you have had, the connection that you have made in that convenience store in Japan in particular, we'd love to hear from you. thecurrent@cbc.ca. This is The Current. My name is Matt Galloway. And yesterday on this program, we spoke about the growing number of adults in particular being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed medication to treat it, and also some concerns around the role of private clinics in that. We heard from many of you with your experiences on this. And so Karin Marley, The Current’s senior producer, is here with some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So this first letter is from Ingrid Gubner. She writes, this is funny. I haven't even finished listening to the podcast because my adrenaline is rushing to write to you. I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2011 after my seven-year-old was diagnosed. I was told it runs in the family. What? First, we got help for my son both behaviourally and with medication. Then we had his two younger brothers tested. Finally, I got tested myself, and bingo! I was 38 when I was diagnosed. Now, I'm 52. I still deal with its challenges daily, but hearing ADHD talked about openly is so validating. I carried so much shame. I remember hearing other mothers make offhand comments about kids, saying things like, that kid didn't get enough attention at home. I never spoke up because I had no confidence, no self-esteem, and no argument for why that was such a terrible comment. The first years of marriage were incredibly difficult. I can hardly look back at them, but I am so grateful for my husband for sticking with me.

MG: This next one is from Stephen Graf Racca in Vernon, BC, who writes, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 19 after I told my doctor an article on ADHD resonated with me. I didn't have challenges in school, but as an adult, I struggled to keep track of times and dates, frequently spaced out, and had certain mental blocks that felt impossible to push past. None of the medications seemed to help. Mostly, they just felt like coffee without the jitters. I couldn't work. I had to apply for disability assistance just to get by. Now 25, I no longer take stimulants and don't see myself as ever having had ADHD. My time issues are explained far better by fibromyalgia, a chronic health problem which causes brain fog, fatigue and widespread pain. And thanks to the neurodiversity movement, I can now understand and cope with my mental blocks better thought of as the rigid thinking common in autistic people. Even my episodes of spacing out have a new explanation, temporal lobe epilepsy, a common but understudied brain disorder affecting hundreds of thousands of Canadians. My quality of life has improved dramatically on new medication and I now work part-time. My message to anyone questioning if they have adult-onset ADHD is this: misdiagnosis happens.

KARIN MARLEY: Rosemary Thomson writes, I think it's important for people to realize that ADHD can also give many gifts. I hope that neurotypical people are interested to learn more about how people with ADHD can make amazing contributions to the world, but need to be understood and embraced for who we are and how we function without judgement. It's all part of the beautiful diversity that makes our world a better place. Thank you for shining a light on this neurodiversity.

MG: Sally Jackson from Oakville, Ontario, writes, I was diagnosed last year six weeks before turning 82, after a battery of tests and interviews and questionnaires, including one my son had to fill in, and the consulting psychiatrist confirmed mild ADHD. I was also the oldest patient he had treated for ADHD. How I wish I had known why I was the way I was when I was young. The roads taken and not taken all these years. Medications turned out not to be helpful. Counselling has been wonderful. But still, every single day, it's a struggle to create the structure I need to be able to function and keep some semblance of order in my life. Most surfaces are covered with things half done, and I live with constant regret and remorse that I was not a better wife to the fine man who was my husband for 53 years and a better mother to my fine son.

KARIN MARLEY: This last one is from Corinne Howard in Hamilton, Ontario. She writes, I have to disagree with your expert on this idea that if it wasn't caught in childhood, it might not be ADHD. I never acted as if I had ADHD in school because I was afraid of being labelled as the bad kid. I was academically strong, generally well-behaved in class. And despite being socially awkward, I coasted my way through many levels of school. I'm 35 years old now, married, and have three kids under five. The trigger for me was recognizing that I was happiest in a dark room with the white noise machine turned way up and a weighted blanket over me. I started forgoing family gatherings and ignoring chores, often excusing myself to escape to the quiet, dark space. Suddenly, we had virtually no food in the house, piles of dishes, piles of laundry, and an ever growing list of things to do. It felt so overwhelming that lying down was the only thing I wanted to do. My husband works long hours, and the two of us began to drown in the mess and the parenting. I made myself an appointment with my family doctor who diagnosed me with OCD and ADHD. I'm now on low dose stimulant, and I have biweekly visits with a registered psychotherapist. Eight months later, I feel like I have control over my life again. I still have slip ups and the odd day or two when I fall apart, but I no longer seek a dark room.

MG: This was one of those stories that really caught people's attention. Thank you all for your letters on this. They're very personal stories, so we appreciate that and we appreciate you being willing to share. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you.

MG: Karin Marlie, senior producer here at The Current. If there's anything that you hear on the program that you want to comment on, do get in touch. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That is The Current for this Thursday, the 6th of March. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We end where we started, and that is if tariffs have got you down, don't worry, you are not alone. There are a lot of Canadians who are feeling the same. Here's The Rankin Family and a great tune, “You Feel The Same Way Too.” I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Song: “You Feel The Same Way Too” by The Rankin Family]

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Thursday, March 6, 2025 Episode Transcript

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