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The Current Transcript for September 23, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: Chief and council have had threats. Many threats, violent threats, slander on all of us. I've even had to move my family for safety reasons.

MATT GALLOWAY: More than 30 years ago, a treaty agreement in Saskatchewan was supposed to provide the Piapot First Nation with opportunity and prosperity. Instead, that agreement left the small first nation in turmoil in a conflict over land and control. Geoff Leo's documentary on tensions in that community coming up in 30 minutes. Plus, it was the stuff of parties in the 1970s and 80s. Maybe you've got a cupboard in the kitchen jammed full of containers that are somehow missing their lids. Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy after decades of being the thing we put leftovers in. Coming up, how an iconic brand and its groundbreaking sales tactics fell out of fashion. Also this morning:

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: They said you are under suspicion of endangering China's state security. You are going to be interrogated. And at that point, a chill went down my spine.

MG: Michael Kovrig had good reason to be worried. Chinese officials snatched the Canadian off the streets of Beijing and transported him and imprisoned him and Michael Spavor for more than a thousand days. Now, three years after his release, Michael Kovrig is speaking for the first time about what he went through in an exclusive interview with the CBC's Adrienne Arsenault. Adrienne's here with a preview in an hour. We begin, though, with the nurses who work in Canadian hospitals, long term care homes and clinics paid with public money but employed by for-profit companies. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Why more nurses work for private agencies — at public cost

Guests: Joan Almost, Linda Silas, Leigh Chapman

MG: One and a half billion dollars. That is how much Canadians paid private for-profit agencies to provide nurses to our public health care system last year. That figure comes from the first comprehensive report into the use of so-called agency nurses in Canada. The report is out today, and it paints a picture of an industry that is growing every year with little oversight by the provinces whose health authorities hire them. Joan Almost is the author of the report. She herself is a registered nurse who studies the work environment of nurses and health care quality at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. The Canadian Federation of Nurse Unions commissioned her to look into this issue. Joan Almost, good morning.

JOAN ALMOST: Good morning.

MG: For people who don't entirely understand this, can you just briefly describe-- what is an agency nurse and what role do they play in our health care system?

JOAN ALMOST: Well, agencies have been around for a long time, staffing agencies, and they are definitely for-profit, in this case, is what we're examining. And they provide what's usually referred to as travel nurses, temporary nurses or agency nurses. So, what happens is the agency hires the nurses, places them on a roster, and then arranges contracts with a facility, a hospital health authority, that the contract typically spans anywhere from a few weeks to several months and then arranges for nurses to fill those contracts.

MG: Where are they being hired now? I mean, and where are they being deployed now? This is throughout the system, but it's across the country as well, right?

JOAN ALMOST: Practice settings that they are needed the most, especially currently, is long term care. Critical care emergency departments are the main ones as well as rural and remote settings still. So, acute care predominantly, but they have, you know, crept more into long term care and rural and remote, they've always been there.

MG: How much has this industry grown over the past four years?

JOAN ALMOST: Well, what this study really has shown is that it's just skyrocketed. I mean, there's been a sixfold increase in costs between 2020 and the current numbers. So, it's-- and the number of hours that's still being required is going up every year. So, I think that's the concerning trend is, you know, during the COVID years, it made sense that they were needed because again, because of sick leave and nurses needing, you know, time off because they were testing positive for COVID themselves. But now, it's still carrying on because of the nursing shortage.

MG: Well, tell me more about that. Why would public health agencies and public health authorities rely so heavily right now in 2024 on these nurses that work for for-profit agencies?

JOAN ALMOST: Well, I think it varies. I think, you know, during COVID, they were desperate because they needed to staff their units. And, you know, there's been a huge influx of nurses leaving the system. You know, the vacancy rate of nurses, you know, in 2019 spiked. And then we've slowly seen to go up further and further and further. So, you know, nurses are fed up with the system and who can blame them, really, because the working conditions aren't great. Employers are really needing someone to bring in. And ideally, they should be working out their retention strategies and retaining the nurses that were there. And I think a lot of employers are doing that. But sometimes, you know, it isn't enough. We spoke with employers in the study that, you know, said they've done everything they could, and it still wasn't enough to keep the nurses. So...

MG: If they've done everything they can and this is filling a gap, what is the issue? Is it that cost? Is it that one point five billion dollars that's going to these for-profit agencies? What's the concern here?

JOAN ALMOST: Well, I think the concern is that, yes, the money. I mean, billions of dollars is being spent because, you know, even to say one point billion is just the tip of the iceberg. We had a hard time obtaining data for this study. So, that's just the data that we obtained. But, you know, it's probably billions of dollars more. So that's money from the public system that's going into private for-profit agencies. So, that's one part of the problem. The other part is in what we found in the study is that these short term contracts and the frequent turnover of nurses coming in is having a significant impact on team morale, on the health care teams, it's disrupting health care teams, and ultimately affecting the continuity of patient care because nurses are coming in for a short period, they just get comfortable on a unit and learn the processes and then they're gone again and then someone new comes in.

MG: Sixty-one per cent of fourth year nursing students said that they would work with an agency in their career. One nurse that's quoted in the report says, "I make triple what I did working as a staff nurse, I have guaranteed overtime, can support my lifestyle goals, investments. I can support a future that I want." How can a public system compare with that? If agency nurses are being paid as high as $300 an hour in some places-- triple what the public system would offer-- how can that public system compete with what agencies are providing?

JOAN ALMOST: Well, I think we need to be careful to say that they're making $300 an hour. I think that that, you know, we're not quite sure what that $300 includes. In some cases, they're making...

MG: Well, they're making at least triple what the public system could offer.

JOAN ALMOST: Yeah, well double or triple probably. And you're right, the reality is the public system can't compete with these wages. I mean, there's no way we would be able to do that. But yet for-profit nursing agencies earn a sustainable solution to Canada's staffing crisis. So, we need to really stop putting a Band-Aid on this wound and really start to look at alternative solutions. So, the recommendations in the report, you know, outline about what, you know, an example is creating a public agency. And Manitoba is doing this currently where they have a provincial agency that initially was mostly within the rural remote health authorities, but has moved in, I think, into now into the Winnipeg that, you know, it's under the public system. The nurses are paid extra money. They are given the flexibility, which is besides salary, one of the main reasons nurses are going into working for agencies, they have more control over their work life. So, that's an example of Manitoba. B.C. is doing something similar as well as Alberta to a lesser extent, and Newfoundland.

MG: I'll let you go. And we are going to speak with the Nurses Union Federation that helped commission this report. But I mean, one of the things, just finally, the recommendation, one of the recommendations is to phase out agency nurses. Given everything that you've said in terms of the precarity of the system, but also where are those nurses and nurses to be want to work, is it actually realistic to phase something like this out?

JOAN ALMOST: It's going to take time. I mean, it's not going to happen overnight, without a doubt. There needs to be some broad systemic changes. And I think we need to really learn to think outside the box. I think what we've been doing isn't working. And we need to think of other ways to become more flexible with help making sure that working conditions are improving.

MG: Joan, thank you very much for this.

JOAN ALMOST: Thank you.

MG: Joan Almost is the author of a new report on the use of agency nurses in Canada. That report was commissioned by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Linda Silas is the president of that federation. We've reached her at the airport in Ottawa. Linda, good morning to you.

LINDA SILAS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: We just heard a snapshot of what agency nurses mean for nursing. From your perspective, what does the use of agency nurses mean for patient care? For the care that we get?

LINDA SILAS: It is destabilising our workforce so much that our next study will probably be on the impact it has on patient care, because we've had about 20 years of evidence on the continuity of care. The longer the same nurse takes care of the patient, the better it is. And if he or she comes back the next day, the better it is. And all of that build on the experience and the expertise of nurses, provides safe patient care. And that's why we're so strongly supporting governments that want a long-term health care human resource strategy that will keep our nurses today, which keeps our experienced nurses today, but also looks at tomorrow. We need to recruit more in.

MG: And yet you will hear from people in the public health care system who say that these nurses keep that system afloat. Have a listen to Dr. Sean Moore, who's chief of emergency services at Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora, Ontario.

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DR. SEAN MOORE: We would not be able to keep the doors open in our emergency department without agency nurses, and it's been that way for a couple of years. The agency nurses really did save our bacon. We really would not be able to operate the emergency department, and we would be forced to close on some of the shifts that we have had agency nurses filling in for over the last couple of years. We would also be very dysfunctional in the hours that we were able to scrape enough bodies to stay open. There would not be a safe environment whatsoever.

MG: Linda Silas, he says that it would be a dysfunctional environment, that they would have to close their emergency department. Given that, how can you talk about phasing out agency nurses?

LINDA SILAS: We have to phase them out. We're going to go broke if we don't phase them out.

MG: But it sounds like the hospital would-- like, parts of the hospital would shut down without those nurses there?

LINDA SILAS: You know, we have examples in the U.K. where their experience of agency nurses would skyrocket and they'd work together and either return nurses back to the service, provided them the flexibility and the respect that they need. These nurses are still working. It's the same nurse that an employer could be hiring. They're just not willing to commit to these employers. So, that's the problem. If we bring back, like when I graduated nursing or a job in health care was the best job in my community. Now, it's gone on to be the worst. We have to flip that around because that's how we're going to enhance and protect our public health care system. It's creating those best jobs in our community from medicine to our personal care workers to our nurses. And an employer that cannot keep their nurses, needs to shake their head.

MG: How do you do that, though? I mean, again, we heard 61 per cent of fourth year nursing students say they would be interested in working in an agency. Part of that is about flexibility and freedom. A lot of it presumably is about the amount of money that they're being paid. And it sounds like that horse has left the barn if 61 per cent of those nurses-to-be are willing to work there. So, how do you turn that around? Is that actually realistic?

LINDA SILAS: Yes, it is, because, you know, when I graduated, there was no jobs in nursing. We had a surplus of nurses. In the late 1990s, we had another shortage. Today we're questioning is it a shortage of bodies of nurses, actually? Which Stat Canada said is 47,000? Or, is it the fact that the current nurse workforce don't want to work in these conditions? So, we have to do what British Columbia is doing. Nurse patient ratio. Nova Scotia is doing the same thing. You heard Dr. Almost talk about the travel pool of nurses in Manitoba. Really, they're seeing a decrease in agency nurses because nurses are saying, I'll get more flexibility, I'll be able to travel and I'll get more money. And I'm still an employee of the health authority for Winnipeg. And that gives you stability for the future.

MG: There has been an exodus, though, of nurses from the public system, and they will complain about mandatory overtime. About working in situations where they feel as though they're unsafe. That, you know, they're understaffed, they're burning out, they're not being paid enough. What have the unions done to make sure that those jobs are actually better?

LINDA SILAS: It's bringing the evidence to the face of employers, such as nurse patient ratios. At the end of November, we're going to be hosting with Health Canada a symposium on nurse patient ratio. What does safe staffing mean? Well, safe staffing means that our nurses are going to have the expertise and the time to do their job properly. That will increase their job satisfaction and that will increase the retention. And that's why they exist in over 30 countries all over the world. It's to make sure you give that guarantee to nurses.

MG: In the face of that, though, that will mean that will take some time to correct itself. Can you understand why nurses would say, there's another option? There are-- they have choice. And that they're making that choice, perhaps leaving the public system to go into that agency? Well, can you understand why they would do that?

LINDA SILAS: Oh, for sure. I'll never blame the nurses for doing those choices. But my job and every other nurses’ unions job in the country is to make sure that the jobs in the public sector are the best jobs in our community. And that's what we will work with employers and governments that are willing to change things around and to keep our system afloat and to be able to provide the best service to our citizens. And that's what we all want to do.

MG: Linda Silas, I know you have a plane to catch, so I'll let you get to the gate. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

LINDA SILAS: Thank you so much, Matt.

MG: Linda Silas is president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Reached her at the airport in Ottawa. Leigh Chapman was appointed Canada's Chief Nursing Officer in 2022. She is the most senior advisor to the federal government on nursing issues, including workforce stability and planning. Leigh, good morning to you.

LEIGH CHAPMAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: This report from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union says the use of agency nurses needs to be phased out. Do you agree?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: I think that we need to really think about appropriate use of agencies. And certainly, the phasing out would cripple health services in rural and remote communities. And so, I think we really need to look at the structural changes that are needed in terms of how we're valuing our nursing workforce.

MG: So, you think there's a place for agency nurses then, in our health care system? For for-profit agencies that would take public money to help fill those gaps within the system?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: I think there's ways of actually leveraging what agencies do, and actually modelling that in the public system. So, you've already heard about the Manitoba example-- the provincial float pool. But it's a great example of providing the flexibility, having employers and health authorities work with the union to provide exactly what nurses want.

MG: Can I just be clear, though? I mean, are you comfortable with the idea of public money going to a private agency, a for-profit agency?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: Oh, no. I think there's lots of ways that these types of, you know, durable health workforce strategies can be embedded into the public system. And I think that as Dr. Almost said, this is really a Band-Aid solution to a more structural or systemic problem.

MG: Part of this is down to the issue of staffing. But also, the fact that nurses have choice now. You've said that your goal is to make nursing a profession of choice in Canada. What is broken in the system when some nurses, especially young nurses, are choosing to work outside of that public system for private companies?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: I mean, so much is broken in terms of how we're valuing nurses and how we're retaining nurses. We really need to think about, you know, nursing being a largely feminised professions, so this is also a gender issue. In terms of those, you know, nurses wanting more flexibility, more work-life balance, more professional development opportunities. So, I mean, there's no health care without nurses. And I think this study really shows that we have nurses who are willing to work. We also have employers willing to pay. And so, I think that we really need to shift the balance to focusing on retention strategies, to keep nurses in the work environment in the public sector.

MG: Can the public sector compete with what the private sector is offering in terms of flexibility? Pay is one thing, but flexibility, the ability to not have mandatory overtime, to have some freedom, some work-life balance, can the public sector actually compete with that?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: The public sector absolutely can. [MG: How?] We really... Well, I think it's through all of these strategies that we've been talking about, like professional development, safe staffing frameworks, decreased administrative burden for nurses. We have many nurses across the country who are driving past five hospitals to work at their employer of choice. So thinking of, you know, what are the things that keeps them there besides the team, besides the clinical environment, and really kind of enhancing those strategies? I think we need to think about parking subsidy, transit subsidies, housing, day-care for shift workers, all kinds of things that we put in the nursing retention toolkit that I think would really shift the balance over to the public sector.

MG: Are these things that you just mentioned, are those tools in the toolkit that health care authorities aren't using already?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: Some are. I mean, we provided a number of examples of these initiatives that are happening already across the country that can be absolutely scaled and spread. But I think it is really piecemeal in terms of how retention strategies have been implemented to date. There's been a great focus on recruitment and on filling those vacancies. But, you know, we need that strategic reorientation in terms of how we're valuing our nursing workforce. And that really comes down to retention.

MG: What happens, though, in the environment where nurses have choice? That they don't just have to work in the public system, there is now another option. Can you go back in time so that they see nursing in the public sector as, you know, the employer of choice? That that's where they want to be? Or are we passed that moment already?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: I don't think we're past that at all. I think, you know, again, the Manitoba example, many of the nurses they hired for this provincial float pool were from travel agencies or staffing agencies. And the example that you gave around the 61 per cent of new grads who want to work for staffing agencies, I think that's an opportunity. We had new graduate guarantee initiatives 20 years ago as a means of really transitioning them to the work environment, supporting them through professional development and mentorship. And so, I think, you know, we have a history of strategies that have worked in the past. We just need to look at implementing them again. And that requires investment.

MG: Well, in the meantime-- I mean, we just have a minute or so left-- but one of the things you have now is a nursing shortage where hospitals are competing for the same staff. Provinces are poaching nurses from different jurisdictions, from other countries. And now you have agencies that are offering more and offering a different package to kind of lure those nurses over. Where are we going to find the next generation of nurses in this country, do you think?

LEIGH CHAPMAN: Well, I mean, I think we certainly have a global shortage of nurses. And so, it is also about looking at the work that nurses do and how we can really optimize models of care and focus on those essential aspects of nursing care. But I think that nursing is a wonderful profession. There's so much breadth and variety to what you can do as a nurse. And we really just need the structural change to focus on those durable workforce strategies. Nursing has always been a very popular profession, a very popular route in the health sciences. We have almost half a million nurses in Canada. So, certainly we need to really look at, you know, how we can focus on what's going to keep them in the work environment.

MG: Leigh, thank you very much for this.

LEIGH CHAPMAN: Thank you for having me.

MG: Leigh Chapman is Canada's Chief Nursing Officer. If you're a nurse, we'd love to hear from you. Have you worked for an agency? If so, why or why not? You can email us: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is next. And then:

SOUNDCLIP

PAUL HOFER: The [unclear] is very dangerous for safety. We better completely get out. I didn't want my workers to be carried out on a stretcher.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Coming up, the story of how a farmer found himself in the middle of a bitter conflict over control of land on the Saskatchewan First Nation. That story in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stay with us.

[Music: Fades up]

How a land deal led to decades of conflict for Piapot First Nation

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Some farmers in Saskatchewan say they are being threatened and intimidated. The allegations relate to a land deal signed more than 30 years ago. At that time, the federal and provincial governments gave first nations in that province half a billion dollars in payment of a debt, money that would allow members of the First Nations to buy land they were promised under the treaties but never actually received. This was supposed to help those communities generate income and opportunities. The CBC's Geoff Leo caught up with one man who found himself in the middle of this dispute.

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PAUL HOFER: Hello.

GEOFF LEO: Yeah. Hi. Looking for Paul.

PAUL HOFER: Speaking.

GEOFF LEO: Yeah. Hi, Paul.

GEOFF LEO: For decades, Paul Hofer has been the farm manager for the Arm River Hutterite Colony near Regina. When I reached him, the 70-year-old was dealing with a classic farmer frustration.

PAUL HOFER: I would do better if we don't have any [censored] gophers.

GEOFF LEO: You said gophers?

PAUL HOFER: Yes. The gophers are making a hell of a mess of the crops.

GEOFF LEO: Earlier this spring, as he was checking on his crews that were preparing for seeding, he found himself in the midst of a more unusual and consequential battle.

PAUL HOFER: So, I got a phone call from one of the boys at the colony. There are people here that want to see you.

GEOFF LEO: He was told that a convoy of ten vehicles had arrived on the colony.

PAUL HOFER: Ten of them guys on the opposite side came out to the colony without permission, without phoning. And here we are, we got to have a meeting with you.

GEOFF LEO: It was a group of band members from the nearby Piapot First Nation. Hofer had been half expecting something like this. A few months earlier, he had signed the contract with a representative of Piapot's chief and council, agreeing to farm thousands of acres. That decision placed the small Hutterite community in the midst of a bitter land dispute. Hofer and a group from his colony agreed to meet with the convoy.

PAUL HOFER: I was ready for it. I was totally ready for it because I had a backup of ten of our own people sitting in the same room.

GEOFF LEO: The group sitting across the table from him called themselves the 'treaty rights holders.' They were led by Roland Crowe, a thin, feisty 81 year old man with a shock of white hair and an air of authority. CBC met Hofer in a field near his colony to learn more.

PAUL HOFER: It looks like a Roland is their king. I had right a sense of, oh, there's something that right here. There is something not right here. The way that guy looks and the way he speaks and everything. So...

GEOFF LEO: And what was he up to?

PAUL HOFER: He was [unclear] to stop us from going and farming.

GEOFF LEO: He said Crowe told him that Piapot's chief and council had no right to rent out that land to the Hutterites or anyone else.

PAUL HOFER: And all they could talk is about their land. That land belongs to them. And all they could tell me, it's our land, our land, our land.

GEOFF LEO: Crowe and his group had been delivering a similar message to other non-Indigenous farmers who had recently signed contracts with Piapot's chief and council. According to court filings, Crowe left this voicemail with one farmer.

ROLAND CROWE: There’s only one way that anybody will ever take my lands, and that’s over my dead body.

GEOFF LEO: At that impromptu meeting on the colony, ten Piapot band members were staring down ten Hutterites.

ROLAND CROWE: And then I said, Okay, if it's your land, I want some paperwork. I want some, to see some land titles. But they could not show me not one, not one land title or what one name on there that they said it was theirs.

GEOFF LEO: There's a reason for that. Roland Crowe and his group don't actually own the land. The title is held by the Crown on behalf of the entire Piapot First Nation. Despite that, for the past 30 years, he and his group have been collecting millions of dollars of rent from farmers and pocketing the money. This is a story about how that happened and the struggle that's now underway to fix it.

GEOFF LEO: In 1992, 32 years ago, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow gathered with Chiefs and Indigenous people for a formal signing ceremony. The treaty land entitlement agreement. Roland Crowe was the guy who negotiated the deal.

[Sound: Applause]

SPEAKER: Cheif Roland Crowe, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians. Chief Crowe.

GEOFF LEO: Back then, he was the most powerful Indigenous leader in the province.

ROLAND CROWE: Good morning, Your Honour. Mr. Prime Minister. Premier. Respected ministers.

GEOFF LEO: When the treaties were signed more than 100 years ago, many First Nations were shortchanged. They were not given all the land they were promised.

SPEAKER: With the signing of this agreement on treaty land entitlement, the page has been turned. The mistakes of the past will not be repeated.

GEOFF LEO: First Nations communities in Saskatchewan signed the almost half a billion dollar agreement. With that money, they could buy land and build for the future.

SPEAKER: It's the beginning of a different world, an environment where we can have a decent place for economic employment opportunities. A decent land base to raise our children and a decent place for our families to grow.

[Music: Instrumental]

GEOFF LEO: The Piapot First Nation received more than $20 million, enabling it to purchase tens of thousands of acres. Shortly after signing that land claim agreement, Crowe became Chief of Piapot. He claimed a large chunk of Piapot’s land for himself. Some of it he farmed and some he rented out to non-Indigenous farmers. But instead of paying rent to the band, he pocketed the money. Crowe and his council began handing out land to other band members so they could profit, too. That proved to be a controversial decision, one which I explored in a 2005 CBC TV documentary.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Everybody in council at that time was grabbing a parcel of land. I didn't want to be in that bunch, just to get something I could have because I was a band councillor.

ROBERT OBEY: Certain people, certain families benefited at the expense of others. It wasn't very fair about how things went.

APRIL MAJOR: But people have land. And who is that benefiting? That's not benefiting the whole band. That's benefiting that family and that family only.

GEOFF LEO: At that time, Crowe defended his decision to hand out land to just a few.

ROLAND CROWE: My theory is, if you show initiative and you're trying to do something, I think you do everything within your power, which I did, to give those people a chance at life.

GEOFF LEO: If it's only a few that are benefiting from what was supposed to be for the group, then isn't that wrong?

ROLAND CROWE: If I was the only one, elected or unelected, had lands from the Treaty Land Entitlement Agreement, I would really agree that something went wrong. But I am not the only one.

GEOFF LEO: In the 20 years since, Roland Crowe and others have continued to rent out Piapot owned land to non-Indigenous farmers, keeping the money for themselves. These arrangements with farmers are known as 'buckshee' agreements, and courts have found that they are legally invalid. Piapot councillor Crystal Crowe says, over the years, people in her community have tried unsuccessfully to stop it.

CRYSTAL CROWE: Every time it was attempted, then the handful of-- some of the handful of land owners would get re-elected and put an end to it. And that's why it's never moved forward.

GEOFF LEO: That's a familiar story to Cadmus Delorme, former chief of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan.

CADMUS DELORME: It's one of the most uncomfortable conversations in almost any First Nation. Chiefs have tried to address it in the past, and some didn't get re-elected. This is how-- an example of how political this gets.

GEOFF LEO: When he was elected chief of Cowessess in 2016, the band was in a similar spot. Much of its land was controlled by just a handful of men. One of them was Delorme's own dad.

CADMUS DELORME: A non-Indigenous farmer used to come into my late father's house in the spring and fall, and they would have tea, break some bannock my mom made, and little envelope would be shared.

GEOFF LEO: Delorme and his council decided it was time to end this practice. The dispute wound up in court, but after a long struggle, they won.

CADMUS DELORME: We found the situation and corrected it. Now we have a new compass for the next 50 years to be the biggest farmers in southern Saskatchewan because we have, you know, a real understanding now of how we could utilize our lands collectively.

GEOFF LEO: Piapot's Chief Mark Fox says that in 2020, he and his newly elected council decided to follow the lead of Cowessess.

MARK FOX: We decided at the table the best thing was to bring this revenue back to the band for all the people, for all the membership. No matter what repercussion comes.

GEOFF LEO: Piapot's issue was fraught with complications. For example, Chief Mark Fox himself had land and buckshee agreements with farmers. He has now given control of that land back to the band.

MARK FOX: What's done is done. We're correcting it, which is the main thing. And the people are going to benefit from it now.

GEOFF LEO: They hired Deverell Crowe as the fixer. Piapot's new lands manager. Her task was complicated by the fact that she had no idea who was actually farming Piapot's land. So, she started posting "No Trespassing" signs on all the farmland. That caused concern for non-Indigenous farmers who had buckshee agreements.

DEVERELL CROWE: Well, it was kind of designed to be a shocker because we don't know who's on the land. And now you're calling us. Now we know. We're starting to gain some intelligence about what's happening on our lands.

GEOFF LEO: Piapot purchased 50,000 acres through the treaty land entitlement deal. Deverell Crowe discovered that 40,000 of those acres were controlled by just 45 band members. For context, Piapot has 2700 members. That means fewer than two per cent of them were profiting from the land, some pocketing thousands of dollars a month. Not only was Piapot losing rental income, it was also paying taxes on all that land. In addition, because of the buckshee agreements, the band was missing out on a per acre land management fee from Ottawa. Deverell Crowe says this has all been devastating for a band that has struggled financially for decades. She says Piapot has lost millions.

DEVERELL CROWE: Well over $60 million in that 30 years... [GEOFF: Lost.] Lost. Lost opportunity. And not only the lost opportunity, but the wealth that could have been generated from those opportunities is also gone.

GEOFF LEO: She was infuriated to discover that some land valued at $60 an acre was being rented for far less.

DEVERELL CROWE: I found some folks that were leasing the land five dollars, ten dollars. And folks thought that that was a good price that they were getting.

GEOFF LEO: She began meeting with non-Indigenous farmers in the area, signing new agreements at market value. It's money that now flows into Piapot's bank account. Ingeborg Schmidt and her husband met Deverell at her Regina office. She says she and her husband are happy to be signing an agreement with Piapot.

INGEBORG SCHMIDT: Well, thank you for taking this on.

DEVERELL CROWE: Take care.

INGEBORG SCHMIDT: I am optimistic and I feel that this is going to be tremendously positive for First Nations people.

CRYSTAL CROWE: We expected pushback. Anybody would.

GEOFF LEO: Crystal Crow, a Piapot councillor, says reaction from a small group was more intense than anticipated.

CRYSTAL CROWE: Chief and council have had threats, many threats, violent threats, slander on all of us. I've even had to move my family for safety reasons.

GEOFF LEO: Paul Hofer says he started fearing for the safety of his workers as well. In May, they were out spraying the fields when a group of treaty rights holders showed up. One of them drove her pickup truck onto the field.

PAUL HOFER: She drove right crazy... right beside the sprayer, and all of a sudden she ducked in front of the sprayer. And our guy on the sprayer, he could not stop … so he went into her.

GEOFF LEO: Crowe and several other band members were criminally charged with mischief for unlawfully blocking the Hutterites' access to their land. In a civil court case, a judge ordered Crowe and his group to stop, quote, "Physically interfering with, threatening, or intimidating those trying to farm Piapot's land." Despite that ruling, Hofer and his Hutterite colony decided to end their agreement with Piapot.

PAUL HOFER: The [unclear] is very dangerous. For our safety, we better completely get out. I didn't want my workers to be carried out on a stretcher.

GEOFF LEO: CBC asked Roland Crowe for an interview. He told us to start driving toward Piapot until we saw a white pickup truck on the side of the road. We were instructed to follow it to the meeting place. The winding road took us to a fenced in compound. Inside a one room shack, Crowe and the other treaty rights holders were waiting for us. One of them was Claude Friday, also a former Piapot chief. He has been charged with confining one farmer and assaulting another one, threatening him with a pipe and a piece of wood.

CLAUDE FRIDAY: All of Canada and the United States is our traditional land, buddy. You know that, and I know that.

GEOFF LEO: But Crowe was clearly the man in charge.

ROLAND CROWE: So, I'm going to [unclear] up our Monday meeting.

GEOFF LEO: He was on the speakerphone planning his next moves.

ROLAND CROWE: Somebody will guide you in once you get here.

GEOFF LEO: In an interview, Crowe continued to defend his decision to hand out Piapot land.

ROLAND CROWE: I will tell you this once: self-sufficiency so we don't have to band on anybody's door to look after our families. Simple as that, Geoff. Can I get that through? Yes or no?

GEOFF LEO: He says he gave land to people who showed initiative.

ROLAND CROWE: We turned nobody down, Geoff. You know where the ones, the ones that want equal share now? You know where there were? They were drunker than hell on drugs.

GEOFF LEO: According to band records, Crowe controlled at least 2240 acres worth approximately three million dollars. He says he earned that land through his years of advocating for Indigenous people.

ROLAND CROWE: I own [unclear.] The band doesn't own me. They don't own band members and they don't own my land. I don't want to beg anybody, Geoff. I don't want to beg any government, whether it's federal, provincial or band government. I beg nobody. I want to make it on my own, just like all the rest of us.

GEOFF LEO: Crowe says he and his group need the rental income because the band is freezing them out of services and benefits. He also accuses the chief and Council of Corruption paying themselves up to $330,000 a year each, including salary and expenses.

ROLAND CROWE: And they're telling me to share? I would share the income off my land any time if things were fair and just.

GEOFF LEO: As for the allegations of threats and intimidation, Crowe dismisses them.

ROLAND CROWE: Have you ever known me to be a threatful person? I have received appreciation from government. I even received medals that I took negotiation rather than confrontation. Do I look like I'm a dangerous guy? Answer me honestly.

MARK FOX: The land issues always been going on. Like, ever since I could remember.

GEOFF LEO: Chief Mark Fox says despite all the conflict, his community is starting to turn the corner. The rental revenue is now flowing into band coffers.

MARK FOX: After we permit it out, we're already putting it to good use. We're helping our elders out. We're helping our youth out, we're helping our housing program out. We got allocated five homes. We're going to build eight homes. Three extra homes. Why? Because we got land revenue coming.

GEOFF LEO: Former Cowessess chief Cadmus Delorme says right now in Canada, there's a lot of talk about the importance of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. He says this land issue is also about reconciliation, but in this case it's an internal matter.

CADMUS DELORME: We have our own reconciliation we have to address. This isn't a Western Canadian issue. This is an Indigenous to Indigenous issue. And, you know, as Indigenous people, we are going to address it. It has to happen because it's foundational to us moving forward.

GEOFF LEO: He says while he doesn't regret the changes he effected in this community, he knows it was costly.

CADMUS DELORME: When you address historical family dynamics such as relationship to certain parcels of land, you know, there are some families that were really upset with that. And to this day, I still feel it a little bit. You know, it never really goes away.

MG: That documentary was produced by the CBC's Geoff Leo with help from the audio documentary unit. This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway. We live at a time where you can track just about anything from your phone, your luggage, packages that might be sent to you, see where your car is if your car's not where it's supposed to be. Increasingly, parents are monitoring their children in various ways. Some are putting AirTags on their kids' bags or clothing. Others are using apps that can track everything from the location of your children to how fast they are driving. Last week on this program, we spoke about the kinds of surveillance parents are doing. The impact that it has on kids and parents. Got a lot of mail on this after that segment. And so, our senior producer, Karin Marley, is here to sift through the mailbag. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So, yeah, this is a tricky issue for parents for sure. And we heard a lot of different thoughts on this. So, the first email is from Kait, who writes: "I am a single parent. I have a 15 year old son who is wanting to take transit and explore the city with friends. I support this, but it is contingent on him sharing his location with me. As a parent, I'm concerned that if something were to happen, I might get in trouble for not knowing where he is given the tech available. Parents are under so much pressure and experienced so much judgement, especially single mothers. There is little room for error. If something happens, we are blamed and shamed at risk of having the quality of our parenting questioned by authorities. It is unfortunate that this is the cost we must be prepared to pay as parents to let our kids have encounters natural to the growing up process."

MG: This letter comes from Jill McDowell in Toronto: "My son is now a young adult, but when he was a young teen, he had a cell phone. To restrict his use at bedtime, he was required to put the phone on my bedside table each night and he would pick it up each morning. So he complied, and for months we were pleased with our parenting skills. One morning I awoke to the sound of him chatting on his phone downstairs, but I was confused because his cell phone was beside my bed table. Lo and behold, he had been putting a decoy beside our bed for months. Busted. That was the extent of our tracking, since he's now in his early 20s and got through the pre-teen and teen years just fine without any of the tools that currently exist."

KARIN MARLEY: Teens are smart.

MG: Yes, indeed.

KARIN MARLEY: So, Astrid writes: "My thoughts on this are wise after raising four responsible children and working as a registered nurse in a paediatric clinic for 30 years. My message to parents is to allow kids to make mistakes when they're young and learn and build on those situations. An example would be when my seven year old child forgot to take their swim bag and had to sit out of swim class. This was harmless, and yet they learned a lesson. Another example would be not arriving home at the scheduled time. A phone call found them at a friend's place, but they learned that someone was worried about them and they learned to communicate. Teaching is a lot of work, but parenting should be about supporting their safety and independence. Let's not chase them. Let's teach them to think for themselves." And finally, Jill Morton writes: "My son was born in 1997, and I think we just missed this new form of monitoring and surveilling our kids. I found this segment very scary and disheartening. The fact that parents are feeling so fearful for their kids, we have to ask ourselves, where does that come from? And how does this manifest itself with these kids, and when they become parents themselves? Hopefully they will be able to take the good and the bad from their experience. We cannot live in a society where everything becomes scary and negative for our children. They need to be responsible, critical thinkers, and that's where we can help them."

MG: Thank you all for your letters on this. And thank you, Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer here at The Current. If there's anything you here on the program that you'd like to comment on, do get in touch. We read all of your mail. Some of it ends up on the radio. You can e-mail us. You can send us a voice memo. Do that to: thecurrent@cbc.ca. Well, coming up after your regional update:

[Music: Tupperware jingle]

MG: Tupperware is for you. Tupperware, the brand that made big promises and started it all for plastic food storage may have hit an expiration date. The company filed for bankruptcy. Coming up, we'll hear about the lasting cultural impact of Tupperware. And of course, those wild Tupperware parties as well. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Back in a minute and a half. Stick around.

[Music: Fades up]

Adrienne Arsenault shares some of her exclusive interview with Michael Kovrig

Guests: Adrienne Arsenault

MG: Hello again, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. This week marks three years since Michael Kovrig was released from Chinese detention. Chinese authorities, as you'll remember, grabbed him off the streets of Beijing, accused him of espionage, held him for more than a thousand days, and now he is telling his story in detail for the first time in an exclusive interview with the CBC's chief correspondent, Adrienne Arsenault. Adrienne is with me now. Good morning.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How is he doing?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Wewf. It's good question. I mean, there's the person you see, and he looks good. He's obviously incredibly intelligent and well-read and he looks healthy. There's the internal reality. You know, the pictures don't always match what's going on inside. I would say that he's very self-aware. I think that helps him manage the trauma that without a doubt sort of just lock, stock and barrel moved in and embedded itself in him. He doesn't like this label of the two Michaels that-- which is how he was referred to for all those years. Or being a hostage. But he also understands that's part of who he is now. It was interesting to see him when he came to the interview. He brought a stack of books with him and some of them-- and you don't often see this, right-- these were the books of stoic philosophers. And he put it right on the table with him for the interview because those were books that sort of carried him through. So...

MG: And the fact that he brings them with him now is something.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Yeah, they're very near and dear to him. As stoic as he is, there are very clearly moments when the emotion lies just beneath, like the thinnest of veneers. And whether he's talking about his child, or the people who fought for him, it doesn't take long for that veneer to sort of slide off and the emotion to come out. But we talked about how he's coping. And you might as well hear it from him. Here's a sense of how he's holding up.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL KOVRIG: To be honest, I still carry quite a lot of pain around with me and that that can be heavy at times. But one of the things that I was able to do while I was in detention was learn a great deal about my own mind and how to manage it, how to be at home in my own mind in some ways. Because when you're sealed in a cell, your mind is just about all you have, and it kind of forces you to do some long overdue maintenance that most of us, by the time you get halfway through your life, you haven't done.

MG: Given everything that he has been through and where he is right now, why did he want to talk now? Why is he speaking publicly right now?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Yeah, I think there's a lot swimming around in that big brain. I mean, it was three years ago tomorrow, right? That he was released. I think there's something to that. We've been talking about talking for years. And it was never the right time. And when he sat down to do the interview, there's a moment where he sort of like snaps his jacket, you know, as you're sort of readying yourself. And it had this sort of physical effect of saying, I am ready. And I think he is. He's on a bit of a gratitude tour. He says he wants to look people in the eye who helped him or who advocated for him. He's also a forever researcher and he's trying to piece together still some of what happened, who did what, what didn't work, what was this diplomatic snag over here, what led to this one? This is really important for him to put this together. And I think all of that mixed together is why he said, okay, this time I am ready.

MG: One of the reasons why people have wanted to hear directly from Michael Kovrig is because of what he went through and also how it unfolded. What did he tell you about that day when he was snatched off the streets?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: You know, to me, the really interesting part-- I mean, it's all interesting, but if you go back a bit-- so Meng Wanzhou, December 1st, is arrested in Vancouver aiport.

MG: CFO of Huawei.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: That's right. This is at the behest of the Americans. This isn't something Canada decides. The RCMP did it for the Americans. And so, because he had been a former diplomat, foreign service officer, researcher, journalist, he was the Asia advisor for the International Crisis Group, who do you call to find out what the implications of this would be? You call Michael Kovrig. So, there he is on Al-Jazeera, and a number of other outlets, being called by people around the world saying, Mr. Kovrig, what do you think will be the consequences of the arrest by Canada of Meng Wanzhou? And he says-- and he says he's been kicking himself for years, obviously-- he thought, well, China will be very, very angry and it will be angry with the United States, not Canada, because Canada didn't do this. It was the United States who asked for this. So, it didn't occur to him that they would come after Canada or Canadians and certainly not him. And it was on December the 10th, he was having a conversation with his partner after dinner in Beijing about that very thing. What do you think China will do when it happened? And I asked him, walk us through what happened. So, here's how it went down, according to him.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL KOVRIG: I come out of the stairs and there's a dozen men in black. Cameras on them, dressed identically, but no indicate- no markings, no badges, no nothing, surrounding us, shouting in Chinese. They grabbed me. They grabbed my phone out of my hand so I couldn't make a call. They pinned my arms. They pulled my partner, who at the time was six months pregnant away from me. So, my number one concern at that point was her safety and our baby's safety. But they wouldn't let me get to her. Just before they pushed me into the car, I looked back at my partner and tried to, we made eye contact for a split second, and I just tried to say, Be safe. Take care of yourself. I will get out of this one day, but I don't know when I'll ever see you again.

MG: Michael Kovrig was held in detention for more than a thousand days. What did he tell you about what he went through over that time? Again, this is part of why people want to hear from him. There were little snippets, but nobody really knows, aside from him, what it was like.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Exactly. I mean, point blank, he says psychologically the most gruelling, painful thing he's ever been through. That the purpose of it all is to bully you and torment you and terrorise you and coerce you and gaslight you, and brainwash you into accepting this false version. You know that you're a bad man. You're a spy. He's very, very descriptive of this. So, he says his nearly three years of detention was split up. The first six months in solitary confinement. It's important to realize that the U.N. considers 15 days of solitary confinement. Anything past that psychological torture. So, he was there for six months, locked in a room, fluorescent lights on 24-hours a day, a padded room, which creates the effect of-- I mean, we're sitting in almost one year right now.

MG: It makes the space smaller.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: It small and makes it silent. And so, he happens to have, like terrible tinnitus. And when you have tinnitus, that roar ringing in your ears, silence exacerbates it. So, all he could hear was the ringing in his own ears. It was relentless. He was interrogated six or seven hours a day. Serious food rationing if he wasn't cooperative. He lost ten kilos in the first month. And when he was interrogated, they would sit him up in a hard chair and put a board across his legs. And the point of that was to make sure he didn't sort of shift his thighs or shift his position. It was impossible to move.

MG: You just had to sit in this one position in this hard chair.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: You just had to sit in that position. And if you tried to squirm again, you were punished. So, all this-- and imagine, it was COVID. Imagine somehow, someone telling you, oh, by the way, there is also a global pandemic going on. He-- I mean, the confusion and thinking this is more gaslighting that's going on, constantly wondering what's coming next. He did eventually get moved to a cell with other, with about a dozen Chinese men. But he said that was like just like going from held to limbo.

MG: He has no idea what the end goal is here. When he would get out, how long this is going to last, what the next day or the next day after that might hold. How did he cope with that? That idea that-- psychological torture is a really evocative way of describing. What what was Michael Kovrig doing to cope with that?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: He lived a lot in his mind. I think that's when the stoic philosophers sort of stepped up and made themselves known to him. He did yoga and did meditation. I mean, he's a very disciplined man. And at one point he said, at the embassy when he'd been working there, there'd been a plank competition. And he...

MG: Like planking?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Like planking, like, you know.

MG: Working your core muscle.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: That's right. And the record at the embassy was 12 minutes. And so, he said, I'm going to beat that. He did half an hour. He got up. I mean, if people know what a plank is, you can Google it if you don't, try it.

MG: Ninety seconds and you'll be...

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Ninety seconds and you're begging for mercy. So, he did it for half an hour. And why it was half an hour? He said they never left him alone for longer than that. There was always somebody in there bothering him, so that's as much peace as he could get. He also, at some point, when he was moved, had the capacity to write letters and to receive letters. He's a huge music fan, and he wanted to be able to convey to his family how he was really feeling without it getting intercepted by the guards or giving something up. And so, he used lyrics in the songs that he loved. He loved Nick Cave. He loved Leonard Cohen. And sometimes he'd write them out. And sometimes he knew that the mere mention of the lyrics was enough that would tip his family to look them up and get the point. This is very emotional for him. And I know, I'm going to play a clip here. I know you can't see him, but you can absolutely hear how close to the surface the emotion is here.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL KOVRIG: One of the first ones that I sent to my partner and to everyone else was Nick Cave's Rock of Gibraltar, for example. Which is basically a message that I'm going to, I'm going to hold on. That I will be your Rock of Gibraltar no matter what happens. So, another one was Anthem. And it has that, it has that line.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: I have the lyrics here. You want to look at them? I bet you know them off by heart.

MICHAEL KOVRIG: Yes, that's right. Yeah. "Ring the bells that still can ring." And the whole point of that, right? Was... yeah. "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." The letters from my loved ones were like the... were like the light coming through the cracks of the darkness. And the whole point of ringing the bells was basically a metaphor to not stop advocating to keep this issue on the front, on the desk of everybody with the power to resolve it, to make it so that they couldn't forget about it.

MG: You can hear him working.... and you think doing a plank for half an hour is tough. You can hear him working overtime to try and keep it together.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Yeah. That brain works overtime all the time. But you could imagine it being tortured like that.

MG: The Globe and Mail reported last year that Michael Spavor, who was also detained by Chinese authorities around the same time, was threatening to sue the Canadian government, alleging that Michael Kovrig was involved in intelligence gathering, essentially that he was a spy. You were able to ask Michael Kovrig about that directly. What did he say?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Yeah, we talked to a few times about that. I find this especially interesting because...

MG: And tough for him, too, to work through.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Absolutely. Look, both men have been, we know, both men have been seen, but not really heard from directly. They really dropped out of the public conversation until, as you say, these reports leaked out that Michael Spavor had threatened to sue. Something that never materialized. And this unproven allegation that Michael Kovrig, who had met Spavor a few times, had put him in jeopardy by onpassing information. It rekindled absolutely these questions about Kovrig. He says he finds it, in a way, kind of surprising because not even his interrogators were all that interested in Michael Spavor. And he always knew that if it wasn't him who was grabbed off the street, it would have been someone else. It wouldn't have been two Michaels; it would have been a Michael and John. He says he finds the entire suggestion that he was a spy, it hurts him, and it baffles him.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL KOVRIG: I've never been a spy of any kind. I was a foreign service officer, a diplomat. Before that, I was a journalist years earlier. I was a researcher. The kind of work I do requires complete transparency, and it requires trust. And frankly, I was disappointed at how quickly so many people were ready to believe a narrative that was based on zero evidence and that counteracted what everybody knew to be manifestly the truth for three or four years.

MG: Having gone through this in such a public way. One of the things that Michael Kovrig is saying that motivated him to speak out, not just this anniversary, but also something broader, is that he says he wants Canada to learn the right lessons. What does that mean? What is he looking to see? What are the changes that he's looking for?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: I mean, I wish there was a list of like four things that he says need to happen. He says he's still working through this. He's still researching, writing about it. So, I'm fairly sure we're going to hear more from him about this. But the bottom line is, he says Canada needs to accept that it wasn't ready.

MG: It wasn't ready?

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: It was not ready. It was not prepared for the consequences of taking the action it did by arresting Meng Wanzhou. He doesn't think the United States was ready for the blowback either, that they hadn't thought this through. That if a country is going to do something that will antagonize a huge power, what's your plan? You know, what's your plan for your own citizens? So, he's fairly sure they didn't think that through. And when the worst happened and when Canadians were caught in the middle, he says Canada did actually have a choice. The justice minister could have intervened and stopped the process with Meng Wanzhou. By which he means, you know, stop, interrupt the prosecution. There are lots of caveats here that arbitrary detentions are complicated, that there's always costs and consequences, and there would have been costs and consequences if the justice minister had intervened.

MG: To the relationship between Canada and the United States.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Huge. I mean, you're talking about the Trump presidency, as well. What would have happened? But ultimately, when you ask him who to thank, he has a long list of people to thank. But he's very clearly, he says, ultimately it took the moral courage of Joe Biden to make this happen. He says Canada has to be less of a perceivable, easy target. You know, he says he's also been working with a, towards a permanent team, working on arbitrary detention, because he knows his case won't be the last one. But he said the best we can hope for is that, boy, this country is better prepared.

MG: What a conversation. We will listen and look for the full interview with Michael Kovrig. Adrienne, thank you.

ADRIENNE ARSENAULT: Thank you.

MG: Adrienne Arsenault is the CBC's chief correspondent. You can watch that interview with Michael Kovrig tonight on the National at 9 p.m. on CBC News Network, or you can find it right now on The National's YouTube page.

[Music: Instrumental]

Tupperware’s iconic brand set to expire

Guests: Amy McCarthy

MG: This is the Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Music: Tupperware jingle]

MG: They don't make ads like that anymore, do they? For decades, Tupperware ruled the resealable food storage universe. And apart from the catchy jingles, a big secret to that success was the creation of the social event that everyone wanted on their calendar-- the Tupperware party.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE ONE: I remember that it was the thing to have when I was a young bride. We had Tupperware parties. It was fun. It was an excuse to get together. And of course everybody bought stuff. Today, I'm left with one cheese container. All of the rest has disappeared.

VOICE TWO: You couldn't really escape with buying something. And if you bought a lot of stuff, you could be eligible to be a seller of Tupperware.

VOICE THREE: I do fondly remember Tupperware parties that had great snacks and wine sometimes. And it was, it was super. Yeah.

MG: People on the streets of Vancouver sure remember them fondly. Those days and those parties are long gone and the brand itself has fallen on hard times. Last week, Tupperware filed for bankruptcy. Amy McCarthy is a reporter for eater.com. She's written about Tupperware and what seems like the end of a story. Amy, good morning.

AMY MCCARTHY: Hi, Good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well. Did you ever go to a Tupperware party?

AMY MCCARTHY: I did not. I am too young. But I do remember my mom going to a couple in the early 90s. She had a friend who was selling Tupperware. And, you know, as the folks in Vancouver mentioned, that's just what you did.

MG: We'll talk more about the parties in a moment, because the parties actually were a big part of this story. But, do you think, I mean, in most people's kitchens right now, there is a drawer. I have an entire cabinet, it seems like, filled with reusable containers. The lids seem to be missing on many of those containers. I don't know what that's all about. But when Tupperware first came onto the scene, this was a revolutionary product, right?

AMY MCCARTHY: Absolutely. So, Tupperware was invented in the 1940s by a man named Earl Tupper who had figured out a pretty innovative way to reuse some of the by-products from petroleum production. These polyethylene pellets slag that were kind of leftover. And he turned them into a plastic. He purified them and turned them into plastic that was incredibly durable, that would hold up to being used as a serving dish, being used to store your leftovers in the refrigerator. And that really was innovative at the time. The other thing that Tupper did was invent an airtight seal for these plastic lids. In the jingle that you heard before we started chatting, you know, he talked, the singer talks about making cakes cakier, and keeping your foods fresher. And that was a big part of that, that airtight seal.

MG: How does it go from a piece of plastic that makes your cake cakier, into a status symbol? Something that you needed to have in your home?

AMY MCCARTHY: Yeah. So, the person you really have to thank for that is a woman named Brownie Wise, who sometime around 1946 teamed up with Earl Tupper and made it clear to him that the party model, a.k.a. the Tupperware party, was the best way to move forward. Prior to that, Tupperware had been sold in retail stores, but Wise was kind of an experienced independent seller salesperson who realized that this was a really unique opportunity to sell to people in her home, to give them a very personalized experience. So, you know, for the original Tupperware party, you would invite your friends over. You would make snacks, you would serve wine, and you would demonstrate the products and show your friends how much better this was than, you know, trying to cover their leftovers with tin foil or, you know, just shove them into the refrigerator in a bowl. It was a really interactive experience. It was also pretty revolutionary. And there is some controversy about this, but it was pretty revolutionary at the time for women because it offered them a way to make income from their home while they raised their children. And that was pretty significant for a lot of people. It gave them the ability to, you know, feel like they were contributing to their households financially and also to have some cash on the side.

MG: There's a documentary about Tupperware. And the creator, the director of that documentary says that these parties empowered an entire generation of working class women, in some ways.

AMY MCCARTHY: Yeah. I mean, whether or not, you know, there's plenty of dispute over exactly how empowering the Tupperware party was. You know, some people would say that it kind of locked women into the domestic sphere and made them, you know, that was the only place that they could be an expert was the home. But I think generally, it was a very big opportunity for especially middle class women in the United States, because it was such a distinct thing. You know, it wasn't necessarily going to be a threat to their husbands. It wasn't going to interrupt their, you know, sort of work as a housewife. But it was an opportunity to both socialise and earn some income.

MG: Where did things go wrong for Tupperware? You say that towards the end of, you know, the company's relevance in some ways, things got a bit weird.

AMY MCCARTHY: Yeah, I think, you know, I think once other companies realized that we can also make very high-quality plastic containers, you know, your Rubbermaids or, you know, just every knock off in the world for Tupperware exists, I think that was a big part of it. But I also think that Tupperware really somewhere along the way, lost its way. You know, in the beginning, Tupperware was all about function. It was beautiful, yes. But it was very much about making your food better and making your leftovers last. Now, what you see-- you know, Tupperware is still available for sale. The bankruptcy filing is very new. You can still go purchase what you want. It's just, what exactly do you want? You know, I was browsing through the listings of what's available, and there's just a lot of weird stuff. [MG: Like what?] There's a microwave pressure cooker. And, as I said in my piece...

MG: Sorry-- a pressure cooker that goes in the microwave?

AMY MCCARTHY: Yes. It is a plastic pressure cooker that sort of locks on both sides. And, as I mentioned in the piece, the recipes that you see for this piece of equipment are pretty rough. You know, it's a chicken that's been-- I mean a whole chicken that's been microwaved for half an hour. You can kind of imagine what that looks like. And another big part of it, I think, is sort of people's diminishing interest in using plastic to store their food. I think our concerns over BPA and other forever chemicals have really made Tupperware seem a lot less appealing in addition to the fact that, you know, yes, they still have the storage containers. Yes, they still have the mixing bowls, but everybody already has storage containers. You know, how many storage containers and mixing bowls do you really need?

MG: I don't need any more personally, but that's just me. This is still a thing, though, in terms of people using plastic storage containers. I want to play you something. Just have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

RAVEN ELYSE: I got more organization container thingies for my fridge! Everything is from Amazon, and I will link it in my bio. But I got this because I saw someone on here put their deli meat and their bacon in a nice container and I wanted to do that. So, it's just a set of two plain, clear little containers with lids. I buy these things of turkey and ham and like, this almost looks like a resealable container, but it does not reseal. So, it does not, like, keep it fresh. So, this is what my fridge currently looks like. I have my drink organizer, lazy susan, egg holder. These bins here, the new veggie bins, meat bins and still extra space.

MG: That's Tik-tok influencer Raven Elyse. She's got 1.9 million followers, and she is organizing her fridge, taking the things out of the packages they came in and putting them in clear, hard plastic containers. This is known as fridge scaping, apparently. Is that the direct influence or legacy, do you think, of Tupperware?

AMY MCCARTHY: The fridge caping moment certainly could not exist without Tupperware. That is definitely true. But I think a big distinction is, you know, a big thing with Tupperware was that it came in all these really cool colours. And they would match your decor. Now the trend is much more clear containers, so you can see what's inside. I think the fridge caping trend and you know, what we would call decanting kind of generally is really more aesthetic driven than functional. Obviously, it doesn't make it easier to use your spaghetti if you put it in a cool, you know, glass or plastic container. But it does make it look nicer in your pantry. And I think that's a lot more important to people now than it used to be. You know, the idea of putting a flower arrangement in your refrigerator does sound pretty silly, but I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting your pantry or your refrigerator to look nice and appealing and not, you know, overwhelm you the second that you open it.

MG: But, you can't really compare...

AMY MCCARTHY: As soon as I heard the clip...

MG: You hear those avocado green Tupperware containers of the 70s. You can't really compare, can it?

AMY MCCARTHY: Definitely not. And I mean, those avocado green Tupperware containers are still in the mix. You know, I love to go antiquing and shop, you know, vintage stores. I see them all over the place. And they're still in relatively high demand. So, it's not that Tupperware didn't at one time have really excellent quality products. They absolutely did. It's just not the case anymore.

MG: Amy, thank you very much. It was kind of like a walk through the kitchens of the past and perhaps the future. Thank you.

AMY MCCARTHY: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Amy McCarthy is a reporter for eater.com. That's The Current for this Monday, the 23rd of September. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. We'll leave you with something kind of in the spirit of leaving your leftovers all sealed up. Sort of. Maybe. Almost. Not really, but sort of. It's Weird Al and Foil. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: "Foil" by Weird Al]

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Monday September 23, 2024 Full Transcript

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