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The Current Transcript for June 5, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

ALEX BURNS: There's no way to just look at someone and know what their story is or why they are on the move.

MATT GALLOWAY: It is one of the issues of our times, hundreds of millions of people on the move, forced out of their homes by conflict, climate change and the search for a better life. Millions of them are travelling through Latin America en route to the U.S. border. The Current's Liz Hoath went to Guatemala to meet some of them. Her documentary and their stories coming up in just a moment. Also this morning, the former governor general David Johnston is under renewed pressure to quit as special rapporteur on election interference. A majority in the House of Commons called on him to step aside. It's been revealed he hired a crisis communications firm to manage the fallout from his report. And the Prime Minister is still sticking by him. Our national affairs panel weighs in on this and more in an hour. As well.

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE SPEAKER: I'm also really amazed by the juiciness and also the kind of buttery feel in my mouth.

MG: Sure, it might taste fishy, but it's not really fish. In 30 minutes, how the fillet you eat in the future may be harvested not from the sea, but from a 3D printer. We begin, though, in Guatemala with migrants on the move. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

BORDER CROSSING DOCUMENTARY

SOUNDCLIP

ALEX BURNS: So we're now walking from our attention centre, which is about a five-minute walk to the actual border point. So it's quite loud. It's very hot, very hostile.

MG: Alex Burns is with the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency based in Guatemala. And this place that she calls hostile is the El Cinchado border crossing.

SOUNDCLIP

ALEX BURNS: It's definitely a place that doesn't necessarily feel like the safest place.

MG: It's in the southern part of the country on the border with Honduras.

SOUNDCLIP

LIZ HOATH: What do you mean by hostile?

ALEX BURNS: Well, as you can see, there's lots of trucks. There's a lot of people kind of on foot. You don't really see a lot of services. There's no shade. Right now, it's probably over 40 degrees Celsius. It's just a harsh environment.

MG: The Current’s Liz Hoath was in Latin America accompanying the UNHCR on their work at the border. She'll have a series of stories about migration and the conditions leading to the mass movement of people in the coming weeks. It is estimated that some 20 million people are forcibly displaced in the Americas, roughly a third within their own countries. But the number of people attempting to reach the United States border has hit record highs. The Cinchado border crossing sees many of those migrants passing through. Here's Liz's documentary, Can't Go Back.

SOUNDCLIP

[moving trucks]

LIZ HOATH: A long line of trucks snakes down the highway. They're all idling, waiting for their turn to pass through immigration control. There are huge semi's hiding their loads and smaller trucks with bananas piled high. Amidst the noise and the smell of exhaust, an economy has sprung up along the highway. There's a stand selling cold drinks and a few makeshift restaurants. And there are money changers, lots of money changers.

[restaurant ambience]

[a woman speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: Some are wandering right on the highway with big wads of cash in their hands. That's not Carlos Gamboa’s style, though. He's under a shelter in his hammock, his money belt casually slung around his chest. His T-shirt has faded writing on it. It reads, California.

[Carlos speaking in his native language]

LIZ HOATH: He calls out to truckers ready to jump up on their cabs and exchange cash through the window.

[Carlos calling out fades up]

LIZ HOATH: But today, business is slow.

CARLOS GAMBOA: Not so good. The better days could be tomorrow, Thursday or Friday. Tomorrow, more crowded. Our customers are all truck drivers. Tourism is not so good.

LIZ HOATH: Carlos is 67. He learned English when he worked as a sailor on cargo ships. But now, he's here five days a week, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. And from this perch, he's watching the migrant crisis unfold.

CARLOS GAMBOA: It’s very sad to see them walking. Some of them are walking along the road.

LIZ HOATH: You see a lot from here.

CARLOS GAMBOA: Yeah, I have seen them.

LIZ HOATH: A few years ago, it was hundreds of families walking by his hammock. There was another rush earlier this year, and now it's more of a trickle of people walking on this highway.

CARLOS GAMBOA: Well, I have seen many people travelling from South and Central America trying to become American citizens, or at least residents in the United States or Canada. So that’s why they risk their lives to go. Many of them are going without money, just travelling by foot or asking ride to Mexico, and then they don’t carry money just to eat something.

LIZ HOATH: They are certainly not his best customers. If they change money, it's not much.

LIZ HOATH: What do they do?

CARLOS GAMBOA: A little bit. A little bit. If you see, they won't bring so much money.

LIZ HOATH: He says there's a lot of wealth in Central and South America. It's just in the hands of a small group of people and it makes them sad.

CARLOS GAMBOA: Especially with the children. Families, complete families. Mother and father and children, some of them walking. You see it in these tropical places very sadly.

LIZ HOATH: In this tropical place with little shade and no sidewalks, it's families like this one from Venezuela that Carlos sees walking by the canal.

[a woman speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: They've just arrived at the UNHCR’s new attention centre for migrants. It's just five minutes from the border. We're not naming them because they fear repercussions for family members back at home. Here, they're being offered food and water. This centre is a series of shipping containers with showers, air conditioning and power. This family is three generations travelling together. A grandma in long red pants and faded black tank top. Her 24-year-old daughter looks almost dressed up. She's wearing a bright pink shirt. It's cropped and it ties over the shoulders. Her son is six. He's wearing a paw patrol shirt. The women drop their backpacks on the floor.

[a woman speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: There's not much in them, they say. Some bed sheets, medication, a Bible. They had to get rid of most of their clothes along the way. They just got too wet and heavy to carry.

[a woman speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: She says they have a few things for the boy, but not much.

[child speaking in his native language]

LIZ HOATH: His eyes light up when he's given a new package of pencil crayons. He settles in at a table and starts furiously colouring. His mom heads for the outlet in the corner and plugs in her phone. She sits cross-legged on the floor, leans on her backpack and starts scrolling. She barely looks up while her mother starts telling their story.

[grandma speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: It starts in Venezuela. In April, she took her grandson and started the journey. First, they pick up her daughter in Ecuador and then they start heading north at one point by bus, extorted for extra fare.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: In another area, she recounts a terrifying ride on motorcycles in the middle of the night.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: Later, they travel by boat.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: Again, every step of the way, being asked for extra money. She tells stories of mistreatment by police and the military along the route, how they were held in certain places until they paid up.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: When they ran out of money, they had to stop so she could work for a day.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: And then there's the dairy in Gap, the infamous stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama that migrants must cross. It's dangerous. It's a thick jungle with difficult terrain. There's wildlife, but also drug traffickers and thieves.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: She talks about walking with dozens of other people. The Panamanian government says 130,000 people crossed the Darian Gap in the first four months of 2023. They were expecting half a million will make the journey this year. That's twice as many as in 2022.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: It's a journey you're warned not to take alone, especially for women.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: So for two and a half days, they walked, then waited for others too scared to go on their own, and then they walked again.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: It's at this part of the story that the grandson looks up from his colouring. His eyes are wide. He remembers there was a canoe trip. There were boats filling with water and they all saw crocodiles.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: The boy starts to get antsy and he disappears out of the room. He's back quickly, though, and he's now carrying a little nylon backpack. He starts pulling out treasures, a granola bar, stuffed toys and notebook with dinosaurs on it.

[child speaking in his native language]

LIZ HOATH: It's a nice break for everyone, but it doesn't distract his grandmother from the reality of their situation. She wipes away tears and keeps talking.

[grandma crying and speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: We're here and we can't go back, she says. She's not sure when she'll see her other two daughters or her grandchildren again.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: She wishes she could have brought all of them.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: Her husband died a year ago. He supported the family. If he was still alive, she wouldn't have even attempted this journey.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: But her kids are everything to her. And one of her daughters was determined to head for the U.S. border. She tried to talk her out of it or at least convince her to leave her son behind, but she was determined. So the grandma agreed to go with them.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: What more can a mother do but help her child accomplish what she wants? She asks. Here we are supporting her 100%. Whatever my daughters want, I'm here to support them.

[grandma’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: Her daughter looks up from her scrolling. She adjusts the messy bun on her head. She is the one with the American dream. She smiles for the first time when asked what she imagines life will be like living in the United States.

[daughter speaking in her native language]

LIZ HOATH: It would be the best, she says. Beautiful. She'll buy a house for her mom. In Venezuela, she says they lived really simply.

[daughter’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: She wants a good education for her son and a life without crime. These are things she says are no longer possible in Venezuela.

[daughter’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: The family spends about an hour at the centre. The women are resting and getting information.

[child playing]

LIZ HOATH: The boy finds some playdough and a Red Cross worker to play with.

[playing sound fades up]

LIZ HOATH: Then they head out again on foot, the son now carrying his little bag of toys.

[walking sounds]

ALEX BURNS: Many of them have been walking for days, months, and so they have urgent need for medical assistance. Many are dehydrated, and so we also give…

LIZ HOATH: Alex Burns is the head of the field unit here with UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency. It's one of the groups that runs this attention centre. Before these shipping containers were retrofitted, they were helping migrants right on the side of the highway.

ALEX BURNS: Nobody would want to leave their home and leave behind all of their belongings, their loved ones and risk their lives on this extremely dangerous journey if they weren't obligated to do so. So I think I just try to think of each person as an actual human being with a story and a family that they've left behind. But I think really, the most important thing to think about is the human behind all of these people on foot with their bags and everything.

LIZ HOATH: The people with those stories are from all parts of the world. A third are coming from Venezuela, another third from just across the border in Honduras. Increasingly, there are people from Haiti and other Latin American countries. They come from even as far as Afghanistan and China.

ALEX BURNS: Yeah. I mean, it's quite dynamic and diverse. We really see anything from families with small children to older people, people with disabilities. We also see quite vulnerable individuals like LGBTIQ plus, women who have fled because of violence that they've suffered. So it's really a wide range of profiles and individuals. I would say that the common thread is that they are very vulnerable. So aside from like the immediate assistance a lot of them need, you know, because they're dehydrated or have suffered some sort of injury along their journey, many of them also lack information on what their rights are and how they can legally access an asylum system and locally integrate into Guatemala.

LIZ HOATH: But that pitch to get people to stay here in Guatemala can be a hard sell. The goal for most is the U.S. border, and they'll do what it takes to get there.

[Miguel speaking in his native language]

LIZ HOATH: Miguel works security here. He's wearing a crisp white shirt and a black ball cap protects him from the sun. He sees the migrants who come past the gates into this centre and the ones who don't. He points across a dusty parking lot. It's for semi-trucks. Look carefully, he says. And there's a path that emerges from the jungle.

[Miguel’s speaking fades up]

LIZ HOATH: That's where many people enter Guatemala, away from the official border crossing. We head over and it doesn't take long for a group to emerge. There are five men and one woman with a boy. The man in front lifts the collar of his shirt up over his face as they pass. They walk by. No eye contact. They're ignoring our requests to talk. They walk across the parking lot right into a waiting van which drives away immediately. The next group to come down the hill doesn't have a van waiting. Instead, the two young men collapse on a bench sheltered from the sun by a building.

[people speaking in their native language]

LIZ HOATH: They don't want to talk either. In fact, they wouldn't even admit that they just emerged from the jungle. Drops of sweat are literally dripping off their faces. The hands of the one who looks like a teenager are shaking. Alex Burns says it's not uncommon for migrants to bypass the border.

ALEX BURNS: There are plenty of reasons why people cross informally. You know, there's fear, anxiety. They may be running directly from some sort of persecution in their community and had to cross there. So there's plenty of reasons why people are essentially obligated to do that. And so we as UNHCR encourage that these people are still given access to territory and asylum. And this is, you know, under international law. So I think that's quite important to kind of distinguish. When someone has entered irregularly, They have international protection needs. They've been forcibly displaced. They would still have access to territory and asylum. And there's probably a very good reason why they chose to cross informally. So here, you can see some people are walking on foot.

LIZ HOATH: The staff at the centre often walk around this border area, dodging the trucks, looking for people needing help.

[trucks honking and moving]

ALEX BURNS: Yeah, I just don't like to be next to them when they're moving. So let's wait one moment.

[truck sounds fade up]

ALEX BURNS: A lot of them are just waiting to kind of continue their journeys. And oftentimes, they're a bit hesitant or anxious. And so it helps when we go out and let them know that this is a space for them and that everything's free and they can come in. I think once they're in here, then they feel a bit calmer and safer and we can do our routine protection screening. But yeah, in the outsides, it's even more hostile. So it's difficult. Yeah. I mean, you can see it's a really hostile environment and people have quite a bit of anxiety. So it's helped a lot that our partners like do rounds basically and go out even out there towards the border and just let them know that they can come in, it's for them and that we have showers, water, medical attention. And quite common to see groups of people in this space out here.

LIZ HOATH: It's work that Carlos Gamboa the money changer is doing too, albeit a little less formally.

CARLOS GAMBOA: But we give some advice. But if they think to go back, no continue because Mexico, I'm not sure if the government will protect you or not. That's why we try to give advice. So maybe they take the decision.

LIZ HOATH: He doesn't have an official blue UNHCR vest like Alex, but he does try to talk to people as they walk by.

CARLOS GAMBOA: Oh, this is very sad because they don't have any security around. That's why when they ask something, some question about how to travel, we respond they must think twice at least. Don't go without any security.

LIZ HOATH: You tell them that?

CARLOS GAMBOA: Yes, I do. But for example, people coming from Venezuela, they said no, we have been travelling 2000 kilometres south, but here, maybe we are at least at the middle of the travel. That's why they go. They continue. They want to go ahead.

LIZ HOATH: The Venezuelan family halfway through their journey that we met certainly is continuing. Last we heard, they made it to Chiapas in southern Mexico. It's still about 2000 kilometres from the U.S. border. They'll stay there for a while and then continue north.

[trucks moving]

MG: The Current’s Liz Hoath will have more in the coming weeks from Latin America, including stories about efforts in Guatemala to keep people from making that journey to the U.S. And from Honduras, stories about the plight of women in a country that is increasingly controlled by violent gangs. That's coming up in the days and weeks ahead here on The Current. Your CBC News is next. And then, you might assume that any fish you eat once swam in a lake or an ocean or a river. That assumption might be getting out of date. A breakthrough in 3-D printing has made the first ever fish fillet. And while it might sound like chum to some, the reviews thus far have been Yum. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. More on the Future of Food coming up in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

3D FISH

Guests: Mihir Pershad, Jonathan Blutinger, Michael von Massow

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: It's being hailed as a world first. A tech company has a 3D printed edible fish fillet. Supporters see this as the future of food and a big win for sustainable fishing. Getting consumers hooked on this, well, that's a different story.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE SPEAKER: I can feel almost the same experience of the fish structure in my mouth, and I'm also amazed by the juiciness and also the kind of buttery feel in my mouth.

MG: Glowing praise for a fish that was never plucked from an ocean, a lake or a stream. At first glance, it might look like any other fillet, but this is not your parent's flounder. It has been grown in a lab using cells from an actual fish and then 3D printed into a ready to cook fillet. Mihir Pershad is one of the people behind this so-called breakthrough in food science. He is the founder and CEO of Umami Meats. Mihir, good morning.

MIHIR PERSHAD: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. Most important question first, which is how does this thing taste?

MIHIR PERSHAD: I think it tastes pretty good. I obviously have some bias in that assessment, but I think as you can hear from some others who have tried it, that there is a general sentiment that the product beats expectations for a novel food.

MG: Beats expectations. I mean, what does it actually taste like?

MIHIR PERSHAD: It tastes like fish. It's got a clean, crisp sort of fish flavour to it, but it's not overly fishy. It's not too strong, and we think it's a very desirable product.

MG: There has been meat grown in labs before. Why is this different?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So I think one of the big challenges with the cultivated meat field has been creating structured whole cut products. And in our case, this is even more critical for seafood because you very rarely come across the sort of pureed or minced seafood products in anything resembling a high end application. So for us, this is a first whole fillet product that can actually cook and serve the same way that you would get fish in a restaurant.

MG: So how did you create this? Walk us just briefly through the process of you start with fish grown in a lab.

MIHIR PERSHAD: That's right. So we start actually with the tissue or a small sample of one or two grams from a fish. In this case, it was a grouper, which is listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. We then isolated the stem cells from that tissue and grew them in bioreactors shaped like and look exactly like beer fermenter tanks. And we grew the cells there for about a week and a half to two weeks, and then over a period of four to five days, turn that into muscle and fat. And then that muscle and fat goes into a 3D printer and within three minutes, you have a printed product that's ready to cook.

MG: Okay. So explain that to me. You have something that is grown in a lab, cells that are grown in a lab, you turn it into muscle and fat and then how does it end up in the 3D printer?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So this is actually a partnership that we did with Stakeholder Foods in Israel. So we ended up having to produce the cells in Singapore and shipped them to our partner in Israel to print them. But in a production setting, those two parts of the process would be co-located. So you would print the cells directly being fed from the bioreactor.

MG: So if people have seen 3D printers before, I mean, there is a substance that goes into the printer, and then that allows you to create whatever it is that you're trying to print. I mean, is it the same sort of thing that there is? What are you printing from? What does it look like, what you're printing from?

MIHIR PERSHAD: Right. So I think actually pretty similar. But instead of where you have a solid spool on most printers, we start with essentially small containers that hold the cells. And then we use a plant based protein basically to help hold the cells and then go through the printer. And that protein also helps to solidify the product as it's printing to form the structure.

MG: So I know what a piece of fish looks like. When this thing is printed out, what does this thing look like?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So to us, it looks exactly like a piece of fish. And I think most of the people who've tried it would say exactly the same thing. I think if you asked maybe the most prestigious fine dining chefs, they would point to particular things that don't look exactly the same yet. But we're printing portions of filets that can go directly onto a plate after being cooked.

MG: And does it act like fish? One of the things that happens is when you cook fish, it becomes flaky. Does this thing look like and act like that?

MIHIR PERSHAD: That was one of the core goals that we wanted to demonstrate, because I think flakiness and delicacy in fish is one of the hallmarks of a high quality product. And so this was one of the things that we were very proud to be able to show, is that the product looks exactly like a fish. And when you put a fork in it, you can see very fine flakes and it feels flaky in your mouth when you eat it as well.

MG: Why do we need something like this, do you think?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So in our case, you know, Umami Meats is focussed particularly on endangered species of fish that are not well-suited to commercial farming. So we look at species like grouper, which was what we printed here, snapper, eel, tuna. And unfortunately, we find these species delicious. And so we're going to keep catching them out of the ocean above the rate they can replace themselves. And we're heading towards driving almost 100 species like this extinct in the next few decades.

MG: And so you see this as not just a supplement, but in some ways, a replacement for those species that people might eat but that, to your point, are endangered, that are threatened by their consumption.

MIHIR PERSHAD: That's right. I mean, I think if you look 30 to 40 years ago, we basically only caught fish out of the ocean. And then we started farm raising fish because demand was rapidly outpacing supply. And farm raising fish has had benefits and it's had challenges. But the biggest challenge is that we can only do it for a handful of species and everything else, we continue to catch the way we did thousands of years ago, maybe with slightly more advanced technology.

MG: How difficult do you think it will be to convince people to eat something like this?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So I think we have seen in our studies that we've done so far that the biggest driver of consumer perception of these products is just prior awareness. So if consumers have had time to do a little bit of reading, understand what the products are and how they're made, that leads to more than triple the acceptance of the product compared to somebody who comes in blind and is given the product and told this is lab grown, would you eat it? And we think that that's driven by a number of things, but more and more, we're seeing heavy metal pollution, microplastics pollutants and other contaminants in our food system that we know we don't want to be eating. But if we're catching things out of the ocean, we don't really have a lot of control over what those fish consume during their lifetime. So more and more, those are the drivers, sort of long term health and cleanliness of food are major drivers that we see of adoption.

MG: When do you think people will be able to find 3D printed fish on their plate in a restaurant?

MIHIR PERSHAD: So we're working on getting first regulatory approval so that we can have products on restaurant plates by the end of next year. That'll be likely in Singapore first, but we are working with regulators in a number of countries, including Japan and the U.S. as well. So those timelines are a little bit less certain, just given that we’ll be one of the early companies coming into those markets.

MG: Mihir, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

MIHIR PERSHAD: Thank you.

MG: Mihir Pershad is the founder and CEO of Umami Meats. The 3D printing of food is still a relatively new development, but many see a bright future here, as you just heard. Jonathan Blutinger is an engineer with the company Redefine Meat. He's a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Creative Machines Lab. Jonathan, good morning to you.

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: Hey there, Matt.

MG: People have been 3D printing many different things for quite some time. When did people start to 3D print food?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: So 3D printing in general first started in the early 80s. First, it was the plastics and metals and it started with food in 2006. Our lab, Hod Lipson, the advisor at Columbia University, at the time, he was at Cornell, but he kind of led the first effort. And initially kind of, we were using food to kind of just test the machines. It was cheap, easy to find. But then we started to realize when you start adding data into the process, you can do a lot in terms of nutrition control and customizing foods.

MG: What is your take on why something like this is necessary? You just heard Mihir talk about sustainability. From your perspective, what are the benefits of eating something that is printed rather than grown, raised, harvested in a traditional manner?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: When you print food, you basically get total control of the nutrition and the flavour, the texture. Really, it's like having total control of what you actually eat. And, you know, I think the idea of alternative meats, which is I guess what this category would be classified as is a necessary step because it just doesn't seem sustainable to raise animals just to slaughter them and use them for sustenance. So I think it's a necessary step to kind of wean us off of animal based proteins, and then we can kind of start to evolve our own new foods from this. And that's where I think it gets really interesting.

MG: The cliche is often that you don't want to know how the sausage is made, you just eat the sausage. But I think how this food is made is actually important. How do you go about 3D printing meat?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: Yeah. So I know that 3D printing meat is kind of the way you heard the last presenter talk about with the cell cultured meats. There's one of two ways. And the first way is kind of what was described by what Stakeholder Foods and Umami is doing, which is they're taking a culture from the animal and then having that kind of propagate and foster and then use that into the actual printing process. And the other way is using plants as your base material, which is what Redefined Meat’s doing. So the, you know, bean or chickpea is kind of the base for say a muscle, and then the fat could be something like coconut fat, and then you can kind of start to interlace. And when you're actually printing it, you can control every little muscle fibre and every kind of marble that you want for each, you know, particular kind of steak that you want, and then you can kind of see where the customization goes from there.

MG: What do you start with, though? I was reading about this last night, and one of the things that came up was you have these cartridges of food paste that end up going into the 3D printer. That doesn't sound particularly appetizing, but is that what you're starting with?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: Yeah, put it that way and maybe not, but yeah, basically, what you're starting with is you need to start with some kind of, you know, some kind of substrate. So the substrate or kind of the base material in this case, in the case of, you know, printed meats is again, this kind of blended bean paste basically. But a lot of the foods you eat are already kind of in this form. We just obviously don't think of it as coming out of a cartridge. But, you know, condiments, you know, if you go to a restaurant, you know, the bean puree in Mexican restaurants, that sort of thing, the name is kind of passing me by now, but a lot of the things we eat are already in this paste form. But obviously, like you mentioned, you know, you don't want to know where it's coming from necessarily. But I think as people get more comfortable with this technology, you know, it'll be a slow burn. We've seen this with, you know, autonomous vehicles slowly start to pervade into our societies and music and other things as well. So I think it'll happen slowly.

MG: Food is different, though, partially because people have an idea perhaps in their mind of what the real thing, he says in quotation marks, tastes like, but also just how it feels, the texture of it. How close are you to getting to that thing that is in our mind?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: That's a really good point. I like to talk about it as the uncanny valley for food. Uncanny valley is something we think about more with robots where it's the idea that the closer we get to something that's super realistic, it's something we're familiar with, the more we think about it, the more irked we are by it. You see this with these super realistic animatronic robots that look like people, and we just look at it and we're like, that's not a person, that's so creepy. So I think that's similar for especially full cuts of steak and fish because we've had hundreds, if not thousands of these over our lifetime and we've built up this knowledge base of what, you know, what good fish, what good steak tastes like. So it's almost like our body’s defence mechanism from our early hunter gatherers so that we don't eat something that's going to poison us. So yeah, it's especially difficult to kind of match that because we've built this idea and this profile of a texture and a flavour in our head. So yeah, it’s a tough challenge.

MG: Tell me about the vegan cheesecake that you made.

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: This vegan cheesecake, so a lot of the work I worked on at Columbia was again developing this 3D printer and this cooking platform that can not only assemble but cook meals for you. So recently, we had this publication where we 3D printed a seven ingredient vegan cheesecake. And our efforts in doing this was to really show what's possible with this technology. And the more ingredients you combine into it, kind of the harder it is. But it just kind of just brought us, it was an interesting process of trying to create something that was pretty complex. And to date, it's still the most complex thing printed. But we're working on an 18 ingredient print which should hopefully come out soon.

MG: Back to the Uncanny Valley Part, though. Would I recognize it as cheesecake when I stuck my fork into it?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: You'd probably taste a lot of notes that were probably not of a conventional cheesecake because I realized after we had printed it that we had no cream cheese anywhere in the structure. So perhaps that was an oversight. But yeah, so we're using all the same ingredients that you normally cook with. You know, unlike this alt meat you’ve kind of just been talking about, when we’re printing stuff in our lab at Columbia, we're only working with ingredients we get from the grocery store because kind of what you've touched on already, like people want to know where their food comes from. So if we're using ingredients that you normally cook with, then that already kind of brings you closer to it.

MG: So just before I let you go, what's the thing, what's the aspirational goal, the thing that you want to see created that you would look forward to seeing on your plate?

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: Wow! I used to be, I mean, I was a staunch meat eater, you know, 10 years ago, but now I've kind of mostly gone to plant based. But I think, you know, a nice kind of full actual breast of chicken or something more, more full-fledged. But ultimately, I think what I want to get towards is a full course, a three course meal I think that's fully printed that has, you know, associations with it. That I think would be really cool to see.

MG: Jonathan, we'll look forward to that. Thank you very much.

JONATHAN BLUTINGER: Thank you.

MG: Jonathan Blutinger is an engineer with the company Redefine Meat. Mike von Massow is a food economist at the University of Guelph in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics. He's been listening in. Mike, good morning to you.

MIKE VON MASSOW: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Is your mouth watering?

MIKE VON MASSOW: It is.

MG: Well, that's interesting. Do you think we're going to be eating 3D printed fish and cheesecake in the not so distant future?

MIKE VON MASSOW: I do think we're going to be eating a bunch of new novel foods, including 3D printed fish and cheesecake in the not too distant future. I'm not convinced that it's going to replace traditional foods. I think it's going to, for the most part, augment traditional foods. You know, the planet has a limited amount of arable land. And while we continue to make that land more productive, populations continue to grow. As your first guest said, we have sustainability issues with fishing and in some types of production. So I'm looking forward to having a wider range of choices on my plate.

MG: This is part of a field known as cellular agriculture. What do you think could be created in the lab that we would be surprised by?

MIKE VON MASSOW: Well, Matt, I think there are several things that are coming down the pike. I mean, already, your first guest talked about Singapore. You can already get lab grown chicken nuggets in a restaurant in Singapore. It was the first country in the world to approve and commercialize those products. In the U.S., we have fermented casein in way products. So we already have products that are dairy proteins that are grown in a bioreactor and have never been inside of a cow and in fact aren't even synthesized from bovine cells. So we're doing some of these things today already. I think as your first two guest said, the challenge becomes creating muscles or creating full products that right now we have them more as an ingredient. So we can't grow milk yet because there's that interesting biological mix of fat and protein and water and we can't do that yet. So many of these cellular products are largely ingredients now. But I think as we get to 3D printed technologies, I know there are a lot of companies working on sort of the infrastructure to grow meats and give us that feel of a muscle cut like we would with a steak or a chicken breast. I think our imaginations are the only limit on what is potentially coming down the pike.

MG: And the potential here, I mean, the University of Guelph published a paper that said that in some ways, this could help meet demand for protein but also address climate change. How so?

MIKE VON MASSOW: Well, I think, you know, it's interesting to see where we will end up. There are some people who are arguing that the climate impacts of cellular ag may not be as beneficial versus traditional livestock. That remains to be seen. But I think the planet has limits on how much it can produce. And being able to produce products, you know, traditionally in vertical farms or through fermentation tanks will allow us to reduce the emissions footprint of the food that we are going to need to feed the growing population.

MG: How do you convince people that this is a good thing? There has been substantial pushback, as you know, to genetically modified food. People talk about franken food. People want to know what's in the food that they eat. How do you convince people that this is not some sort of science experiment, that it's good for them?

MIKE VON MASSOW: Well, you know, the first thing I challenge you on a bit, Matt, is yes, there has been some pushback on GMO foods, but truth be told, most people have accepted it in North America already. And these products are all over our grocery store shelves and restaurant menus now and we've seen no impact. So I think part of it is that there will be some resistance. I think that many of us have neophobia. We're sort of worried about new things. I think that there will be people who won't want to eat them, but there are people who, you know, I look at my 28-year-old son who lives in Toronto. For him, new things and variety is awesome, right? So he'll be at the front of the line, as will I, to try these things. And I think as other people see that they are safe, that they are good, we’ll see a growing part of the population try them. I think you heard your first guest say that they found that people who had some education before or some knowledge before were much more willing to try it. And I think those sorts of initiatives will help. The other thing I think is important is to perhaps not say that these are a replacement for or an analogue of. And I think we saw that with some of those plant based products like Beyond Beef where we said, oh, these will be just as good or the same rather than saying these are a new product, these are good, they taste good, they feel good, they feel good in your mouth and they are good eating experience, but they are not going to be a perfect steak. They're not going to be a perfect fish fillet. They are a great tasting, good experience alternative. And I think that'll be part of the challenge we have going forward as well.

MG: It's interesting. Just before I let you go, one of the reasons people often talked about, you know, we would be able in future to just have a pill that would be your meal. And then they talked about Soylent would be that. And one of the reasons perhaps that those things didn't catch on, aside from, you know, the Soylent Green film, was that people look at eating as more than just eating paste. Do you know what I mean? That there's a ritual to it. There is something that it's about sustenance, but it's also about pleasure. And do you have to be able to achieve that for something like this to be a success?

MIKE VON MASSOW: Well, I think that's important, Matt, But I think what we need to do is distinguish between a great eating experience and an identical eating experience. It doesn't need to be the same as a steak. It just needs to be great. So I'm not sure we'll go to pills necessarily immediately. But I think if we say, look, this can be tasty, this can be a great experience, I mean, there's a difference between chicken and fish and beef. And why not a difference between some of these cellular egg products? It's just coming to grips with that, I think.

MG: Mike, thank you very much for this.

MIKE VON MASSOW: Thank you for having me.

MG: Mike von Massow, food economist at the University of Guelph in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics. Are you looking forward to your 3D printed fillet or burger or reasonable facsimile? Let us know. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. I want to mention something Coming up tomorrow on the program. You're going to meet a man named Dag Aabye. He's a pioneer of free skiing. He appeared in a James Bond film. He runs at least two hours a day, usually more. He has befriended bears and other animals. Lives off the grid in a bus tucked into the wilderness of British Columbia. And his birth might be connected to a Nazi science program. He might be just one of the most interesting people around. Here is a bit of our conversation in which Dag is telling me what keeps him going at the age of 82.

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DAG AABYE: You go into the day and say, today, I'm going to work harder than tomorrow. You don't think of an end game. You're going to fall off the cliff in life, but you keep living it because the terrible thing in life is to tell people to slow down. They put them in long term luxury places where they have fine dining. They play games in the pool and drive them into the mall. No, I want to die alive, not in a bloody room with a bunch of people that don't do anything. You have to be able to think by yourself and do something. Fill your day up. And I’ve got my days filled up now till the end of time. The end of time. That's a good one right in front of us.

MG: Dag Aabye, perhaps as I say, one of the most interesting people you'll ever meet. And you will meet him here tomorrow on The Current. Well, coming up after your regional update, foreign interference, a safe supply of drugs, byelections and a new leader in Alberta. There is a lot to talk about with our national affairs panel. Fortunately, they'll be here in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. Stick around.

[Music: Theme]

NATIONAL AFFAIRS PANEL

Guests: Catherine Cullen, Catherine Lévesque, Carrie Tait

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

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PIERRE POILIEVRE: We know that when the scandal broke, he named Mr. Rosenburg to look into it. Rosenberg is with the Trudeau Foundation. When the scandal exploded further, he named Mr. Johnston, also a member of the Trudeau Foundation. And what did he do? He named another judge from the Trudeau Foundation to look into the conflict of interest. Is the Prime Minister afraid of a public inquiry because he's run out of members of the Trudeau Foundation?

JAGMEET SINGH: Now the appearance of bias is so strong that the Special Rapporteur can no longer continue to do his work. So will the Prime Minister do the right thing?

MG: Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh are, as you heard, not letting up on their calls for the Prime Minister to remove David Johnston from his position as special rapporteur on foreign interference. Tomorrow, David Johnston will appear in front of a parliamentary committee to answer questions directly. That, the Alberta election, and some campaigning on TikTok are fodder for our national affairs panel. Catherine Cullen is the host of The House on CBC Radio. Catherine Lévesque is a parliamentary reporter for the National Post. They're both in Ottawa. Carrie Tait is a reporter in the Calgary Bureau of the Globe and Mail. Good morning, everyone.

CATHERINE CULLEN: Good morning.

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Good morning.

CARRIE TAIT: Good morning.

MG: Catherine Cullen, let's start with this controversy over David Johnston. So there's no sign of waning. A majority in the House voted to have him step down. He refused. Jagmeet Singh says that he is tone deaf in doing that, but the prime minister is still standing by him. Can David Johnston stay on? And if so, why would he stay on?

CATHERINE CULLEN: Well, he is determined to do this job. He says the task has been given to him and he is going to try to tackle it. But I think we have to acknowledge it's becoming increasingly difficult. I mean, I will say when you talk to the liberals, when you talk to cabinet ministers, ask them questions up on Parliament Hill, they're standing firm and they're pointing their finger in the other direction. You know, I was asking Marco Mendicino the other day, Public Safety Minister, how can you continue when you've lost the faith of all of these other parties, all the opposition parties on this process? And he said, well, you know, this is about Pierre Poilievre refusing to be read in on this secret intelligence. This is about undermining Mr. Johnston's reputation. All sides really do seem increasingly dug in on this, but you have to acknowledge this is an incredibly difficult task that David Johnston has ahead of him. And as the CBC reported, as our own Ashley Burke reported on Friday, it appears he's taking on a communications firm, Navigator, best known for Crisis Communications, which seems like a clear acknowledgement. While we don't know exactly what is going on behind the scenes, he knows he is in tough here.

MG: Catherine Lévesque, what do you expect to hear and see when David Johnston appears tomorrow before this parliamentary committee looking into foreign interference?

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Oh, I expect a lot of attacks, a lot of slander, certainly a lot of questions from the opposition parties as to why he's staying on, why he decided not to go along with the motion that was adopted by all opposition parties last week calling him to step down as special rapporteur and certainly, a lot of questions with his links to the Trudeau family, some of which he's already answered, to be fair, to reporters, you know, his links to the Trudeau Foundation. So I think all of this is going to come up, you know, in the three hours that the testimony is going to be. And what I expect, you know, on Mr. Johnston’s side is I think he'll want to actually talk about his report because there are a lot of very interesting elements in what he uncovered, the intelligence he saw. So look, I really think it's going to be a tough three hours for him tomorrow. Certainly a lot of questions on his character, his integrity. I suspect the liberals are going to try to jump in and defend Mr. Johnston, but the reality is that I think there will be a lot of questions. I don't know if there will be as many answers, but no, it's not going to be a good time, I think, for him tomorrow.

MG: Carrie Tate, you are in Calgary, far from Parliament Hill. And so I wonder from your perspective there, I mean, we'll talk about the Alberta election in just a moment, but how is this issue playing out there? Is it a topic of concern among people that you speak to?

CARRIE TAIT: This isn't something right now that's top of mind in Alberta, and I think that's for two reasons. One, the election has really consumed all the oxygen recently, the provincial election. And the second reason is if you don't trust Trudeau, if you're somebody like that in Alberta, it's not going to make a difference who was leading this. You are already entrenched and this is just another data point backing up all the million reasons why Trudeau is terrible in your head.

MG: Catherine Cullen, does that give the Prime Minister some cover in sticking by David Johnston, that on Parliament Hill, this is an issue, and beyond, this is an issue of burning concern, but more broadly in the public, perhaps people aren't paying attention to this?

CATHERINE CULLEN: Yeah. And we've got to acknowledge, Matt, like it is complicated. I don't think that a large portion of the public is really dialled into this alphabet soup of agencies that is trying to deal with this, you know, who faced a threat, what report, what year. It's quite complex. But I think if Justin Trudeau had told himself that this was going to go away on its own and it isn't necessarily an issue that a lot of people are going to decide their votes on,, we would imagine, in the next election when there are pressing issues like affordability, climate change, housing, you name it. The problem is that the issue is not going away, right? The leaks keep coming. The repercussions of those leaks keep coming. And it is about a really important issue fundamentally, right? We are talking about the proper functioning of our democracy. There are still a lot of steps to come on all of this. Some of the groups that he the prime minister has asked to report back to him about it, those reports are yet to come. David Johnston is supposed to hold not a public inquiry, but public hearings over the course of the summer. So the story doesn't seem like it's going away. And I don't think that just because not everyone is dialled in, the Prime Minister can, nor would he say that he is turning away from it, but it is an issue that is eating his agenda and undermining his ability to get other things done.

MG: And so top of mind in Alberta is the fallout from the election. Danielle Smith was directly going after the Prime Minister from the moment that she was re-elected as the premier of that province. Have a listen to part of her victory speech.

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DANIELLE SMITH: We need to come together no matter how we have voted to stand shoulder to shoulder against soon to be announced Ottawa policies that would significantly harm our provincial economy. And if he persists, he will be hurting Canadians from coast to coast, and he will strain the patience and goodwill of Albertans in an unprecedented fashion.

[crowd cheering]

MG: Carrie Tate, what do those comments tell you about how Danielle Smith will lead the province as premier?

CARRIE TAIT: Well, if there was any thought that Danielle Smith would come back after an election with a cooperative tone, obviously, that went right out the window in her victory speech. Of course, keep in mind, that's a partisan crowd and she was still playing to that in this victory. Her victory is very, very narrow. A 49 seat, 49 to, pardon me, 38 is not a gigantic stomping in Alberta. And she has to be cognisant that not everyone agrees with that approach. So while I think on one hand, it shows she's not ready to be extremely cooperative and change her tone, on the other hand, I think we still need to wait a little bit and see what her first real steps are as a re-elected premier before we make that decision.

MG: But is there going to be any reason for her to try to build a closer relationship with the federal government, a federal government that has been politically convenient to run against in some ways?

CARRIE TAIT: It's been absolutely politically convenient, but it has also been there when the UCP, one of the things they campaigned on was striking a deal with the federal government over day care, over health care. So it can't be this complete scorched earth strategy that may have worked, may have benefited her leading up to this election, but you still need a partner. I still think she will be very, very aggressive, however. That isn't to say I think that behind the scenes, she has some other strategy where it's going to be rainbows and unicorns. She's going to be very, very tough, but I don't think she's going to ignore phone calls from Ottawa.

MG: Catherine Cullen, will Justin Trudeau be looking for rainbows and unicorns from a UCP government in Alberta?

CATHERINE CULLEN: I'd love to see that, Matt. No, listen, I think that he knows that this is a potentially difficult situation. You know, we talked to environment reporter Stephen Guilbeault on The House this week and that Danielle Smith called him out by name last week saying like that guy is part of the problem here. I don't like the way he's approaching his posture towards our province. And I think his response is really representative of how the government is trying to handle this, which is, hey, when we're behind closed doors, we can get things done. Just like Danielle Smith is actually very happy to bring up child care deals, health care funding, help on the wildfires in Alberta, certainly, the federal government is very happy to bring that up. It does seem like they're at loggerheads about some key issues, right? The government is determined to put an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. Danielle Smith says no way, no how. This is not, you know, there's not some middle ground that is evident here. They're going to have to find a way to either work these things out or the federal government is just going to impose it and then we're going to find out if Danielle Smith meant it when she passed the Sovereignty Act, right? Does she bust it out and say, listen, we're not listening to your federal legislation on this. It is overreach. Does industry listen to her? It has the potential to get very messy. I do not think, you know, there's a school of thought that that kind of battle might be in Justin Trudeau's interest.

MG: I was going to ask you that. Is there anything that this could be a positive in some ways to have the UCP in power in Alberta for the prime minister?

CATHERINE CULLEN: I think there are some observers who would say that it could be because then he is really focussed on hey, we're not talking about foreign interference now, we're talking about the steps that are necessary to fight climate change. I have to say, though, you know, like people look to a prime minister for national unity and I think you're playing with fire if that's the approach that you do take. I also think these are the kinds of questions that we're very tempted to ask when we're really leaning into politics. But of course, it's a bit cynical, right? This isn't really the kind of relationship we want to have in this country. And I think those kinds of fights have put us in a situation where the newly re-elected premier of Alberta is somebody who passed the Sovereignty Act, right? And, you know, we're always talking about Alberta. Saskatchewan is not too happy either, right? And I do think that these things sort of start to eat at the national relationship. So Danielle Smith Is tough to predict. Hard to know how this is going to go down, but it's definitely a conversation to watch.

MG: Catherine Lévesque, the UCP, as Carrie Tate said, won a majority, but the party lost more than a dozen seats. How do you think federal Conservatives are reading the outcome of this election?

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Oh, that's a very good question. I mean, certainly, I think they're looking a lot into this. They're looking at it more because, you know, there was really a switch during the election, at least, you know, from what I saw from Ottawa, Danielle Smith, you know, trying to not be such a populist, at least, you know, to the electorate, you know, really trying to sound like a reasonable person, to present some reasonable policies and, you know, so and not to lean in to all the controversies even though there were some during the election. So as soon as she was elected, as Carrie said, I mean, she, you know, straight out attacked Justin Trudeau. So I think, you know, there might be a lesson there for Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives, yes, to people want someone who has common sense policies here, who's talking about bread and butter issues like the economy, like inflation, and, you know, who doesn't lean into some conspiracy theories, for instance. So look, and even then, I mean, Danielle Smith, you know, as Carrie said once again, won by a small margin even though she did all those things. So I think there might be actually a lesson there for the conservatives. And certainly, it's the complete opposite of what we're seeing right now from Pierre Poilievre who, you know, as some byelections have been called and, you know, he's especially in Portage-Lisgar in Manitoba, I think he's, you know, really leaning into these attacks, you know, to really excite his base. So it's really, you know, he's just throwing red meat right now and he's doing the complete opposite of what that Danielle Smith did.

MG: Let's talk about some of that red meat that he's throwing. He's caused a stir, Pierre Poilievre did, with a video on TikTok. He compared a homeless encampment in Kelowna, British Columbia, to, in his words, a faraway third world country, and he blamed the Trudeau government specifically for what was shown in that video. Carrie Tait, who do you think Pierre Poilievre is speaking to there?

CARRIE TAIT: I'm a little torn on who he’s speaking to on that. It's an odd video comparing it to a third world country because we see, you know, Kelowna of course is like we see it as this wealthy place and it's not supposed to have that. And to me, it was very much of a reminder that most cities have those troubles and just to say that this is Justin Trudeau doesn't connect those dots. So it was definitely a red meat video, but the reason even just that we're talking about it now shows that it's, you know, stirred controversy just by doing that and maybe didn't quite get him where he was trying to go.

MG: Catherine Cullen, the Conservatives also tabled a motion in the House of Commons against the government's harm reduction policies, including a safe supply of drugs. That motion didn't pass. But given that and this video, how do you think the party is positioning itself and how is Pierre Poilievre positioning himself?

CATHERINE CULLEN: I think, Matt, actually, that it would be a mistake to look at those videos as just something that is red meat for the base, because I do think it is all building this principle argument that Pierre Poilievre has been working on for at least months now that Canada is broke. And I don't think actually that you have to be of the extreme right, for instance, somebody who would be thinking of voting for the People's Party of Canada to look at tent cities in a city and say, I'm really concerned about what's going on in this country. I actually think that it speaks to a fundamental or the conservatives are betting that it speaks to a fundamental discomfort that a lot of Canadians are feeling, that especially if you live in a city, that when you go downtown, you walk out the doors, you see that there are a lot of people who are suffering and maybe you don't have specific views about who should be held accountable for it, you know. Another video that got some scrutiny last week that Pierre Poilievre put out was of someone letting off fireworks on a Toronto, I can't remember if it was a subway car or a bus.

MG: It was on a bus. Yes.

CATHERINE CULLEN: Yeah. Yeah. And so he said, you know, this is Justin Trudeau's Canada. And you think like, well, what does Justin Trudeau have to do with that? But it is all he is just trying to write this thesis over and over again, hammer on this message that this is a country that people should in some way be uncomfortable with and that they should hold Justin Trudeau to account for. Whether or not they will remains to be seen.

MG: What about that specific issue of safe supply and of harm reduction? And you can conflate the two if you're talking about the video that he's showed and the motion. But when he's talking specifically about the issue of safe supply in a time when there is, many people believe, a toxic drugs crisis, a drug poisoning crisis that's being felt across the country, what do you think he's doing there?

CATHERINE CULLEN: I mean, the first thing that we need to say is that the statistics show that a very small number of deaths are in any way related to safe supply, right? The public health experts will tell you that safe supply saves people's lives. But he's poking at a discomfort around the state supplying people with drugs. You know, much has been made of, for instance, photos of these like sort of clean crack pipe kits and people are, you know, Poilievre and the conservatives are saying, well, what kind of country is this where the government is handing out these things? We want to focus on helping people. Now, public health officials will tell you this is part of how you help people. This is part of how you save lives. But it is a very frankly conservative point of view. And it goes back to things like supervised consumption sites, supervised drug consumption sites where there has long been a discord like we're talking, we're back to the Harper years now where conservatives would say this is not the business government should be in. We should be dealing with treating people. We're not interested in, you know, helping people sustain these very challenged, unhappy lives. Like, you know, I think we would all agree that this is not the life we would want for somebody who’s spending their time using safe supply, being in a supervised consumption site. But the goal, public health officials will say, is to move people on to a better life. The conservatives are saying that's not working. It's not the business we should be in. We're going to take things in another direction. But I think the fundamental discomfort around that issue, I think that they believe that there is a, you know, it's a big subsection of Canadian society that is uncomfortable with that and that if he keeps pushing at it and because it is mired in, I think, real conviction that this is not the right way to help people in his mind and somebody who is very happy to stick his finger in the eye of, you know, he would put air quotes, I think, around the word experts, the public health officials we're talking about here, it's on brand and it's very emotional for people.

MG: Catherine Lévesque, in the last 90 seconds or so that we have, do you think it's working? Is it connecting with people?

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Oh, I think so. It's certainly fear mongering. I think, you know, it's working in the sense that, you know, if you tell people, hey, the government is handing out drugs, which is not exactly what is going on, of course, people will be shocked, right? Of course, people are going to, you know, think this makes no sense. The reality is that, you know, this issue is kind of stemming from reporting from The National Post is in fact that, you know, a small portion of people who actually receive these prescribed opioids are trading or selling them to, you know, on the streets to buy fentanyl, which obviously is not a great situation.

MG: It is a small number, though, right? It is a very small number.

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Yes, exactly. Yeah, certainly, that's what we're told. But yes, I mean, I think it is compelling. I think it stokes a lot of fear. But at the same time, I mean, I think, you know, it would be also interesting to listen to actually the effects of the safe supply on people. You know, more and more, we're hearing people who have benefited from safe supply who say, well, this actually saved my life. Because the reality is that if you, you know, you just cut people off from drugs, I mean, sometimes, they can simply die from, you know, yeah, I mean, you can't really treat someone who is dead, right? Like that's just not possible. But look, I see the strategy that Pierre Poilievre is certainly pulling out here. I think, you know, for a number of issues, he's kind of pointing fingers, saying this is bad, this is Justin Trudeau's fault. And certainly, I think it is resonating, you know, in a portion of the population. But I think, you know, as he's digging his heels in some of his subjects and kind of not listening to the opposite views, I mean, you know, that could also be something that resonates with some Canadians who are open to hearing these different views and who are saying, well, you know, he's not really admitting that he could maybe have another position here and, you know, maybe have a more nuanced position.

MG: We're talking about it, which is something, and we will talk more about it, I'm sure, as this continues. Good to have you all here this morning. Happy Monday. Thank you very much.

CATHERINE CULLEN: Thanks, Matt.

CARRIE TAIT: Thank you.

CATHERINE LÉVESQUE: Thank you.

MG: Catherine Cullen, host of The House on CBC Radio. Catherine Lévesque is a parliamentary reporter with the National Post, and Carrie Tait is a reporter for the Globe and Mail and she's in Calgary. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway. Turns out that many people who listen to this program are birders and the issue of bird names, more specifically, the issue of renaming birds struck a chord. Last week, we spoke with Ed Yong. He's a science writer for The Atlantic, and he told us about the unsavoury history coming to light around the renowned ornithologist John James Audubon.

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ED YONG: His reputation, once Sterling, has taken a huge hit for many reasons. Mostly, he dug up the graves of many Native American people and stole Their skulls. And then more than that, Audubon was a slaver.

MG: Ed Yong wrote a fascinating piece about why certain birds have certain names, and Audubon was part of this conversation. There's now a debate over changing the names of birds connected to Audubon, changing the Audubon Society's name as well, and changing the names of other birds that might be linked to other people with dark pasts. The Current’s Kate Cornick is here to read some of your mail. Kate, good morning.

KATE CORNICK: Good morning, Matt. This comes from Vanessa Johnstone. “As I write this, I can hear lovely sounds of birds and elm trees near the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon. I believe that birds’ names should only honour beauty, appreciation of nature and not any person who has done otherwise. Renaming birds to indigenous names would do the former and would also be another much needed step at reconciliation.”

MG: Philip Trefry from Tofield, Alberta, writes, “I would like to see all human names for birds and animals changed. Names based on the calls or behaviours are much more useful and much more respectful of wildlife. Fortunately, most hummingbirds are given names as beautiful as they are.”

KATE CORNICK: And this next one is from Gladys Freer. “The Bird new names should reflect the features of the species or its habitat as most bird names already do. A red-winged blackbird describes that bird so well. Another is a noisy blue jay. In 2000, the American Ornithologists Union decided to rename a duck whose original name was a derogatory term for Native American women. How insulting is that? And how can anyone name a Beetle after Hitler? How disrespectful to the beetle.”

MG: Michael Blythe from Scotland, Ontario, also mentioned that Duck in his email. He says it's now known as the long-tailed duck. Michael writes, “There should be a process quickly set up to rename birds whose names are offensive. I suspect this will not be an easy task, as some folk have a very difficult time realizing that respect trumps stability. And regarding your guest’s inability to discern a Cooper's Hawk from a sharp-shinned hawk, seasoned professional birders experience this difficulty and anyone who instantly identifies one or the other is probably full of BS.”

KATE CORNICK: Arnet Sheppard writes from Ottawa with a different view. “Your guest failed to mention Audubon's main claims to fame as a natural history adventurer and explorer and unquestionably one of the most influential bird and natural history artists of all time. The many evils attributed to Audubon such as gross errors and birding and vacation, profiting from slavery and exploitation of indigenous peoples took place well before ornithology became a real science and at a time when attitudes and actions which we in retrospect now view as flawed or morally wrong were in fact widely accepted among his fellow investigators and in the society of his period. Yet another example of presentism run amuck. If we erase Audubon, where do we stop?”

MG: And finally, Ronald Valentine writes from Hamilton, Ontario, “I'm not a supporter of changing names, but recently, the McCown's Longspur was changed to the thick-billed Longspur. John McCowan was a naturalist, but he defended slavery and fought indigenous tribes while he was a general in the Confederate Army in the U.S. Civil War. I think when you look into the background of many people who have species named after them, you might find something similar.” Just some of your mail on this subject. Kate, thank you very much.

KATE CORNICK: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Kate Cornick, producer here at The Current. You can contact us on anything you hear on this program. If you'd like to get in touch, email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That is The Current for this Monday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. You can get caught up on anything perhaps you missed on today's program or past shows through the CBC Listen app or wherever you find your podcasts. We were talking earlier about 3D printed fish and 3D printed food and how that could be the future of food, if some people have their way, could answer some questions, address some issues around climate and sustainability and other matters. We wanted to leave you with a song today in honour of 3D printed fish, but to be honest, we had a tricky time reeling one in. Do we Play Fish in the Jailhouse by Tom Waits? Do we play Weird Fishes by Radiohead? Do we play Keeping It Real by the band Fish? Too many fish in the sea, if you will. In the end, we are going with the best hook. This is Swamp Dog and Synthetic World. I’m Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Song: “Synthetic World” by Swamp Dog]

Monday June 5, 2023 Episode Transcript

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