Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The Current Transcript for December 22, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Our fight against this virus is not over, even as we're preparing to say goodbye and good riddance to 2020. It may be the holiday season, but we have to be more careful than ever.

MATT GALLOWAY: The holidays are here, and for many, the familiar rituals simply will not be possible. And that includes in many parts of this country, gathering with others at a church, a synagogue or a mosque. In 30 minutes, three faith leaders are here to talk about what they're saying to their congregations and what hope they're finding as this year draws to a close. Also this morning, there are many people who might be feeling a bit like Scrooge in these tricky times. Hear from an actor who's found joy in portraying the cold-hearted miser, even now. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Money is a made up thing, a shared fiction. The social part of money is exactly what makes it money. Otherwise, it's just a chunk of metal or a piece of paper or in the case of most money today, just a number stored on a bank's computers.

MG: It's not just Scrooge, money is top of mind for so many of us, this year more than ever. In an hour, Jacob Goldstein is here to discuss what money is and why it still matters. We begin though in one of the hardest hit areas for COVID and the workers who can't or can't afford to call in sick. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: theme]

Stronger measures, paid sick days and rapid testing are needed to control COVID outbreaks in factories, say advocates

Guests: Mike, Deena Ladd, Patrick Brown

MG: Well, as lockdown restrictions go into effect in Ontario in a few days, banning social gatherings, closing retail outlets and services. Many places that pose transmission risks will still be operating. Factories and warehouses have been the site of dozens of COVID-19 outbreaks since the pandemic began. And some people say that much more needs to be done to protect the people who work in these places and their families. Our next guest works at a manufacturing company in the Greater Toronto area, and we have agreed to call him "Mike" because he's worried about losing his job. Mike, good morning.

MIKE: Hi.

MG: First off, describe the conditions that you're in. I mean, it's a manufacturing company and I know that you need to be careful about describing too much because we don't want to identify where you're working, but describe describe where you work every day and sort of the conditions that you're in.

MIKE: Yeah I work in a manufacturing company. They make the parts for machineries. So 350 to 400 employees working in the manufacturing industry.

MG: And you're working there on the floor?

MIKE: Yes, I work on the floor.

MG: Right. How close are you to other workers when you're working?

MIKE: Yeah it's maybe one feet, one and a half feet, two feet, like that.

MG: So very close. I mean, we hear about social distancing and, you know, the request is that people stay six feet away from each other.

MIKE: I don't see the social distance here.

MG: That wouldn't be possible where you're working?

MIKE: Yeah.

MG: What sort of precautions has your employer taken to ensure in the midst of a pandemic that you're safe?

MIKE: I don't see they take anything, Matt. I don't see the difference before pandemic, after the pandemic. Actually, my suggestion, they should follow the health department rules and regulations. They need to put the sanitizer everywhere. They need to follow the social distance and they need to sanitize the floor. They run three shifts. Morning, afternoon, midnight. So they need to clean the spot cleaning every day. They need to protect, start cleaners in the floor.

MG: Are they doing that? Are those extra cleaners in between those shifts, are they there?

MIKE: No, no, I don't see that.

MG: What about things like masks and gloves and PPE?

MIKE: Masks, they don't provide the mask. We had to use our own masks. They give one or two months six months ago. This is a very basic that looks like dollar store mask. After that no mask.

MG: Other than that, you have to bring your own mask?

MIKE: Yes, we have to use our own mask.

MG: Have any of your workers gotten sick with COVID?

MIKE: There are more than 10 people they get, I think almost seven or eight employees they got COVID-19. They don't show up, but other employees who were working with them, they are working. Also manufacturing companies they don't close, they continue farming. That's not fair.

MG: You were saying how close you work to them. Do you know whether you were working nearby any of these people who contracted COVID?

MIKE: My department no, but other departments, they can't provide. It's a big plant, almost 100,000 plant. They work more than 350 employees. So they have more than five, six departments. So two or three departments, they get the COVID-19.

MG: What happens if somebody gets COVID or even has symptoms? Are you able to, do you have sick leave there?

MIKE: No, we don't have a sick leave. We don't get any sick leave. Ontario government, they give it before two days. But the employer pay for two days. Right now Ontario government said no days sick leave, so our employer also they don't give us sick leave. No sick leave.

MG: What happens if you're feeling sick? What happens then?

MIKE: We have to stay home and inform the HR and then we have to go back to work. But we don't get anything, no benefit. So if people sick, I need to go work because no money, right. Right now living expense small, employer they don't pay anything. So I had to go to work.

MG: Even if you're feeling sick, you have to come back to work?

MIKE: The employer doesn't say if you feel sick, I have to come back to work. But if you don't have the money, what can I do? You know what I mean?

MG: How busy is your company during the pandemic?

MIKE: Really busy because a lot of manufacturing companies they're closed. So they get more jobs, that's why before they're running two shifts, right now they're running three shift. The actually sale for, you have more than 150 million dollars.

MG: How worried are you about getting sick on the job?

MIKE: I'm really worried because they don't follow the rules. They don't have the proper sanitizing or cleaning system the floor. So if they get the COVID-19, that means our family also, they get COVID-19. If I'm living in my house, almost four five people and this affected three people, it's hard to run my family. You know what I mean? If two three people not working, really hard for me.

MG: What would you want the government to do to deal with the conditions?

MIKE: Government needs to tell the employer they need to follow the rules of whatever the COVID-19, right. If the health department say follow the rules. Otherwise they need to give a proper punishment for the manufacturing. If we give you a punishment, they can follow the rules.

MG: You want the company to be told that if it doesn't follow the rules, that it would face some sort of punishment?

MIKE: Yeah, if they don't follow the rules, they have to give you a ticket or they have to give you a warning letter or something like that. Or they have to tell them close couple of days then open. They give you some punishment like that., you know what I mean?

MG: I appreciate speaking with you and I wish you the very best. Thank you. And stay healthy and stay safe.

MIKE: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

MG: That's a worker we've agreed to identify as "Mike." He works for a manufacturing company in the Greater Toronto area. Deena Ladd is executive director of the Workers' Action Centre in Toronto, which runs a hotline for people who have concerns about their work environments. Deena, good morning to you.

DEENA LADD: Hi. Good morning, Matt.

MG: How common are the kinds of working conditions that Mike was describing where people are side by side, a foot or two away from each other, no personal protective equipment and the sanitation that he was describing is not adequate given the pandemic that we're in right now?

DEENA LADD: Oh, it's very common,. We have lots of workers phoning our hotline right from the beginning of when the pandemic started in March with all kinds of questions about, you know, what to do, you know, if people have been tested and they've been found positive, but they've been expected to continue to go to work. And you know first it was an absolutely no testing that was happening. Now, even now, Mike's situation is very common. People, again, are stuck between that really hard place of knowing that if they've got a job, they need to keep it because there's mass unemployment right now and things are shutting down, but their employer is not paying any attention or is not taking public health recommendations, you know, they're not not following them.

MG: We spoke with Dennis Darby, who is the head of the industry group Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters about the COVID-19 situation in manufacturing environments like the one that Mike works in. Take a listen to some of what Dennis Darby told us.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Every manufacturer that we've spoken to and we've been meeting with our members regularly have all put systems in place where they can. But in some manufacturing environments, providing physical distancing isn't possible. So in that case, it's got to be hand sanitizers, masks, you know, daily questionnaires. Right now, we don't have rapid testing. Most manufacturers go through a protocol every day in terms of limiting the overlap outside of the workplace. Beyond that, manufacturing and its workers and the people that run the plant, they're exposed to the same things in the community as all of us are.

MG: Deena Ladd, we've heard the same story when it came to meatpacking plants early in the pandemic. If manufacturers aren't able to physically distance their employees, what else should they be doing?

DEENA LADD: Well, they should be offering paid sick days. I mean, I think that that's one of the biggest things that is missing right now. People are expected to go to work, yet they have no paid sick days. So if they're sick or if they need to, you know, feel that they've been exposed to the virus and they need to take a day off to get a test that they can. And I think that that's an essential part of public health policy and and it's an essential, you know, mechanism for workers to use. But if you're in the situation like Mike, where, you know, every cent is important to your family to put food on the table and to put a roof over your head, then, you know, you're then within this choice of like, do I feed my family? Do I have enough money to pay the bills or do I take a day off and potentially get lose a day's pay? And that is not a choice. In Mike's situation as well, it's not just about social distancing. I mean, you know, I know the situation that he's facing and he is in a situation where they don't have cleaners, they have a part time cleaner that comes in. They have no hand sanitizing stations. He's not even getting masks. And so, you know, this notion that just because we can't socially distance, then, you know, we just need to do contact tracing and testing. Well, absolutely we need to do testing, but we also need to make sure that there's proactive enforcement. We, you know, we've heard that the Ministry of Labour has been doing all these inspections, but we've also heard that throughout all of the inspections that they've done, they have only and these are thousands of workplaces, only one employer has been fined. One out of thousands of inspections and we know workplace inspections far, infections sorry, far out surpass public transmission.

MG: There was a big announcement yesterday in the province of Ontario. The province is essentially going into a lockdown, but manufacturers are exempt from these lockdown rules. What does that tell you?

DEENA LADD: Well, it tells me that we're supposed to you know, there's a double message. For those of us who are lucky and privileged to be able to stay at home, the message is stay home, stay home, stay home, don't go outside. But then on the other flipside of that, basically, they're saying to essential workers, you have to keep working. But what was shocking to me in that announcement yesterday was that the province is saying that this is such a dire situation that, you know, we have to do all these measures, however, they're not actually putting in the essential measure. The provincial government has the power to implement paid sick days for workers. And they are not doing it, and that is to me shocking and that then tells workers that I work with every day, that you're not important, that your lives are not important. And that is terrible because workers need, you know, I'm not working in a logistics warehouse, I'm not filling in those Amazon orders and, you know, working around the clock to do this work, you know, so my heart goes out to people who are being forced into that situation every day, knowing that there is no safety net if they get sick.

MG: Just before I let you go, is there a role for the federal government in this? If the provincial government and I mean, this is an issue that goes across the country, people working in essential workplaces, and we're being told, you know, shop from home because we're not supposed to be out shopping in person. Is there a role, just briefly, for the federal government in this?

DEENA LADD: Well, the federal government did actually implement a sick day policy at the federal level because the provinces weren't doing it. However, that plan is inadequate. Workers find it difficult to access. They cannot wait two months for a week's worth of wages. People need seamless access. They need to be able to not lose a day's pay. They need to be able to continue to take care of their families and the federal policy doesn't do that. And that's where provinces have the responsibility to step in and to actually ensure that workers have those paid sick days.

MG: Deena Ladd, good to speak with you about this this morning. Thank you.

DEENA LADD: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Deena Ladd is executive director of the Workers' Action Centre. The city of Brampton, just west of Toronto, has some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the entire country. It's also a major centre for warehouses, distribution centres and other essential workplaces. Patrick Brown is the mayor of Brampton. Mayor Brown, good morning to you.

PATRICK BROWN: Good morning.

MG: How important are warehouses and industrial facilities to the spread of COVID-19 in your community?

PATRICK BROWN: We've had 170 workplace outbreaks in Peel region and the vast majority are in those settings. Our largest sectors for employment are food processing and transportation logistics and they're exempt. They're considered essential workers. And so whenever we have these shutdowns, it doesn't affect the major sources of employment in our community where we've had significant transmission of COVID-19.

MG: OK, so, I mean, in some ways you've hinted at this, but in the new rules that were announced yesterday in the province, this, you know, province wide lockdown, will those rules do anything to address the spread of COVID in those warehouses and industrial facilities?

PATRICK BROWN: No, it doesn't. There's no new restrictions. There are no restrictions on these settings, which are the most dangerous in Peel region and the reason behind our high positivity rate.

MG: We spoke with a worker who's afraid to use his real name or say where he works because he feels that he will lose his job. It's against local public health policy to name the workplaces where these outbreaks are happening. Why is that the case?

PATRICK BROWN: Yeah, it's one of my frustrations as well. Our medical officer of health and we've actually asked questions about this at regional council, at the region of Peel, he says that his responsibilities under the Public Health Act of Ontario are that he can only disclose the name of and the location of an outbreak if it's a risk to the public, just like he owes a privacy protection to an individual patient, he also owes it to a corporation. Matt, I can tell you my personal opinion is that we should be completely transparent and that any outbreak should be listed publicly.

MG: The belief is from some people that if you're not naming those who are having outbreaks in the facilities, you're just protecting the companies that aren't actually protecting their workers.

PATRICK BROWN: It 's my opinion we should name and if there's been ethical lapses and responsibilities, name and shame, and make an example of them that we expect better in Canada. And that if you look at any country that does well and responding pandemic transparency is a cornerstone of that.

MG: Let's talk about the issue of paid sick days. We know that if you are feeling ill or you have symptoms of COVID-19, staying home is a huge part of fighting this pandemic. But as we heard, there are workers who say that they don't get paid if they take sick leave and that in, you know, an expensive community like the one that they might live in, that's impossible to make work. Take a listen to Dennis Darby. Again, he heads the Canadian manufacturers and exporters.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Some companies are able to afford more paid sick days. Some can't. Remember, most manufacturers are small and medium sized, you know less than 50 employees. So I think everyone is doing their best and we applauded and helped advocate for the things that the government put in place to help protect workers and we support those completely.

MG: Mayor Patrick Brown, what do you make of that? That there are some employers who just simply can't afford to pay their employees to take a sick day?

PATRICK BROWN: Well, let me say, first of all, it was music to my ears to hear Deena talk about the importance of paid sick days. We've been on the campaign in Brampton for the last six months, pleading with both federal and provincial governments for this critical tool. There are some companies that provide paid sick days, but the majority don't. I don't care who does it, whether it's the federal government or the provincial government, but nine months into the pandemic, in a country as prosperous as Canada, the notion that this critical tool is still absent is beyond frustrating. Because I hear again and again Matt that there are employees who are going to work with symptoms simply because they can't afford to miss a paycheque. For them, it's the choice of putting food on the table for their families, about paying their rent and whatever programs exist s Deena articulated, they don't work. You can't wait two months to do to wait to pay your grocery bill. This is an integral support that's missing. And, you know, as we've had these discussions around lockdowns, I continue to plead with the premier and the prime minister very directly that, you know, you shut down restaurants where I don't have a transmission in Brampton, but don't give me the tools to deal where we've had an abundance of outbreaks in industrial settings. I need that isolation centre in Northeast Brampton. I need paid sick days. I need active ministry of labour workplace inspections. There are tools that can make a difference, and it is frustrating Matt that we still don't have those tools, despite escalating case numbers.

MG: Deena talked about this. There are more than 7600 workers in Ontario who got COVID on the job, but just one fine was levied by the Ministry of Labour against an employer. What does that tell you?

PATRICK BROWN: We need a lot more workplace inspections and and frankly, we need public health to have more tools to deal with this. You know, right now we have fines that are $5000 fines if there's a breach. Do you think a large international company is going to care about a $5000 fine? I don't.

MG: Your region has hundreds of new cases of COVID-19 every single day, and again, we're being told to stay home. These are essential workplaces, whether it's warehouse distribution, fulfilment centres, they call it, an intermodal centre where things come off a train and go on to a truck. What are you most concerned about as this pandemic continues?

PATRICK BROWN: Well I'm concerned that more of the same restrictions won't actually bring case numbers down. And I've actually suggested to senior officials, both in the provincial and federal government, why don't you consider closing some of these essential workplaces for a few weeks? I'm being told that you can't because they're critical to Canada's supply chain and we have the largest trucking sector in the country. So medical supplies, groceries come into Canada through these transportation logistic companies in Brampton. But, you know, maybe if Canadians had a little less choice in the grocery store, maybe we couldn't use companies like Amazon for a few weeks, we could get by, we could manage. And I just question the sacrifice that so many employees are making, you know, a small number in Peel region for the sacrifice they're making for the greater benefit of of Canada. And I'm not sure there's an appreciation for their sacrifice. Frankly, we've seen a lot of stigma associated, finger pointing at these sectors that tend to have a large racialized new Canadian population and they deserve better.

MG: Patrick Brown, we'll leave it there. Good to speak with you. Thank you.

PATRICK BROWN: My pleasure.

MG: Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton. We did ask to speak with Ontario's minister of Labour Training and Skills Development, Monte McNaughton. He declined an interview, but in a written statement said the ministry is hiring another 100 health and safety inspectors and has stopped unsafe work sites dozens of times over the course of the pandemic. "I take these complaints very seriously," he wrote, and "we will not hesitate to stop unsafe work." Your CBC News is next. And then for those whose faith is important to them, finding spiritual support and community this holiday season is, like everything else, very different. We'll speak with three faith leaders about how their communities have fared during the pandemic and what they're hopeful for in this year ahead. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music]

Faith leaders come together to talk about celebration, grief and togetherness

Guests: Maya Douglas, Yakov Kerzner, Ibrahim Long

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, this pandemic holiday season may have a lot of us muttering agh humbug, but for Calgary actor Stephen Hair, humbug is a holiday tradition. For 27 years, he has taken the stage as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. And in 30 minutes, he shares why this story holds that much more meaning in 2020. But first, keeping faith.

[Music: theme]

MG: Celebrating Christmas this year will look very different and a lot of families, churches will probably still have the minister or priest standing on the altar, but they might be preaching to a virtual congregation. During this difficult phase of the pandemic, people who need spiritual comfort and a feeling of togetherness are having to find it in new ways. This is something that the Jewish community has just gone through as it celebrated Hanukkah in the last week. We've been checking in with faith leaders throughout this pandemic and we thought we'd do it again now as we approach the end of this difficult year. The Reverend Maya Douglas is the minister at St. James United Church in Toronto. Rabbi Yakov Kerzner is the Rabbi at Beth Israel Synagogue in Halifax. And Imam Ibrahim Long is a youth chaplain and a teacher who also does outreach work for the Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton. Good morning to you all.

IBRAHIM LONG: Good morning.

MAYA DOUGLAS: Good morning.

YAKOV KERZNER: Good morning.

MG: Reverend Douglas, how different does this Christmas season feel to you?

MAYA DOUGLAS: To be honest, it has been lonely, it's an isolating experience. You mentioned that we are speaking to virtual congregations and a big part of our ministry when we approach Christmas is to have these big events at our churches and my church is live streaming. So I am up there speaking to the tech team and a music minister and a soloist behind a screen, and the pews are empty and I just have to imagine that someone is out there. And indeed, my people have been going on to see the different services, but it has been challenging and I can feel the loneliness and isolation that they must be feeling as they stay at home and they stay safe.

MG: What do you lose? It sounds obvious in some ways, but what do you lose when you can't look into the eyes of your congregants, Maya?

MAYA DOUGLAS: Well, you don't have that personal connexion, I mean, in our worship services. It's like pastoral care, you're you're speaking to them, looking at the scriptures, but also talking about their present lives and present condition. And so, in a way, it is appropriate to be there with an empty church because that emptiness is what we're feeling right now when we can't be connected with each other, we can't get hold of a neighbour and give them a hug. There is that emptiness. And so, yeah, you lose that personal connexion. But it is a reminder to us, the worship leaders, that our people are missing out on the personal connection between each other.

MG: Rabbi Kerzner, you've just come through Hanukkah, Festival of Light and I'm just wondering, I mean, in what feels like a really dark, difficult time right now, where's the light in a moment like this, if you, to Reverend Douglas's point, can't be together in person?

YAKOV KERZNER: Well, we try to take advantage of the technology that we have available and through Zoom, at least we're able to, in one way or another, connect with people. We still have services in our in our synagogue. We just started actually yesterday because it was a lockdown in Nova Scotia. So we have minimal amount of people coming to services and we connect through the phone and a lot of Zoom. The Zoom, we have classes and we're able to see each other's faces to a certain degree. There's as she said, there's no replacement for the one on one and a very, when you're in front of someone's face, but we try to manage and try to use the like the metaphor for the light of Hanukkah of the menorah is maybe an apt metaphor that a little light we try to shine through and hopefully the darkness that surrounds us and the isolation could be penetrated by some of the connection that we could make through just speaking on the phone, just a voice and a picture over a computer.

MG: Imam Ibrahim Long, is the Zoom working for you? Are you able to connect with your community virtually, or are you missing something?

IBRAHIM LONG: Well, there's definitely that aspect of that social connection and the meeting of hearts that, you know, that's missing. And technology, while it's come with its many advantages, it's also come with its, you know, challenges as well. On our side, you know, for the first time ever, we got to start thinking about the lighting of our face and so forth when we're giving our talks. And then as well, even on the other end, many of the elders in our community, maybe they don't have as ease of access to technology and so technology is it's a mixed bag. We do what we can and we know that this is all that we can do to a certain degree, but, man, do we miss each other's company.

MG: One of the things that people are looking for right now is a sense of meaning and trying to understand why this is happening. How do you and I'll start with you, Ibrahim Long, how do you help people make sense of of this moment and why this is unfolding the way it is?

IBRAHIM LONG: Well, to a certain degree, you know, if someone were to come to me and ask me that question, you know, as a congregant, as a youth even, the best answer that that I have is that we don't have an answer. And to struggle with accepting that. That we don't know the full story, we don't know why, you know, we're going through what we're going through. And part of that is since we don't know where this is leading, we don't know the end of our story, we don't know what possible good there might be here. We just place our trust in the writer of our story. So even if we don't know what the purpose is or what the meaning is, then trust in the one that's writing the story and place our trust there.

MG: Reverend Douglas, what do you see as the role of your church in helping people in this moment to understand the moment?

MAYA DOUGLAS: Well, we have several roles, Matt. We have a ministry, a food ministry, so we have always had the food basket at our church where we pre-package food that may be needed by people who are experiencing food insecurity. And so because that's an essential service, we've been able to still offer it. But we do it in a way that is safe for ourselves, the volunteers and for the people that are receiving. We also have the ministry of presence. We find different ways, as my two colleagues have said, to connect. And for those who do not have the technology, our older congregants, we still reach out using a phone tree. We have this presence where we call each other and I've called upon them, those who are not used to calling each other to disrupt each other's lives, to find ways to call friends and see how they're doing. We all have a directory with each other's phone numbers, call each other and reach out. And sometimes, even if you don't have anything to say, maybe that's a good thing. Listen, have some deep moments of listening and find meaning in your conversations.

MG: The interesting thing about this moment of there are so many Rabbi Kerzner, but I mean, one of them is that we are all experiencing this in different ways. And I think of the year that you have had I mean, there have been highs and there have been lows. One of the highs certainly has to be that your son got married this year, which must have been a wonderful moment, but a moment that was not the moment that perhaps you expected. What was that wedding like for you without all the normal hoopla?

YAKOV KERZNER: Actually, I had two sons that got married.

MG: Two? A blessing doubled.

YAKOV KERZNER: Yeah, so that's half my children got married this summer. And the experience, you know, we were expecting it to be somewhat a little bit saddened because there was many, many parts of our family and friends that that weren't there, almost all of them. But we ended up finding that a small wedding had more meaning. And again, we live streamed it so people could share to a certain degree, of course, it's missing and that's just the presence. But it turned out to be a very, very meaningful, both were very meaningful weddings. And we really had the experience and we realized that you don't need, you know, hundreds of your closest friends, you really just need close family to really experience these highs. I've also had two deaths in the family from COVID. So my father and my father in law passed away. So we've experienced that on both ends.

MG: I'm sorry for your loss. Tell me a little bit about about the difficulty and we've heard so much about this in speaking with people across this country who have experienced loss, the difficulty, particularly as a leader, in having to say goodbye under these circumstances.

YAKOV KERZNER: Well, on a personal level, it was very difficult, my father in law passed away in the very beginning of the COVID pandemic and it was all through FaceTime, that was the only connection that we've had. And my father also was sort of in isolation when when he passed away just a few weeks ago. So it was, it's very difficult. But you try to pull out whatever you could from it. You try to pull out some of the positives. And as we said before, the connections that you do make, however, however lacking they are, I think really helps people. And that's true with congregants also. We've had numerous people who happened to pass away during this time with funerals and sometimes only five people, but reaching out to them and making them feel that their loss is still meaningful, even if it's not experienced by a large group of people. I think it makes a connection which I don't want to say makes up for fact that they were missing the, you know, the people around them, but it helps penetrate some of the darkness.

MG: That's got to be incredibly difficult, not just personally, but as a leader to help people find, again, it goes back to that idea of finding the light to help people find something in a really difficult moment. Is there a, go ahead, sorry, go ahead.

YAKOV KERZNER: No, no, continue.

MG: No, in some ways it's your job to to find that space. Ibrahim Long, you have to do this as well. How do you try to help people come to terms with loss during a pandemic when as the rabbi was saying, you can't gather in ways that you might normally gather?

IBRAHIM LONG: You know, that's perhaps one of the most difficult questions, because the sense of isolation, there's so many aspects within our faith and within our culture where in which we would visit people, provide them with food, provide them with that care that helps them, that lets them know that though they've, while they've lost a loved one, they have loved ones still with them to help carry them through. And so within our community, like others, we have and continue to have many losses. And when close community members, you know, people who are within the bubble can go visit, when they can drop off something, certainly that's something we do. Our funerals are small, you know, like in other provinces and unfortunately, we're just not as able to meet in person and so sometimes deliveries will be made, food will be dropped off, but people just won't be able to have that same togetherness that we so desire, especially in times of difficulty.

MG: You also do counselling, particularly with young people, and I'm wondering how that has changed during this pandemic. Young people I mean, everybody's been thrown by this, but there is real concern around the long tail effects on this, on young people in particular.

IBRAHIM LONG: Yeah, and that's a very good point to draw upon. You know, interestingly enough, I used to provide counselling, like in an office on university campuses and then also in the downtown centre and one of the interesting things about the COVID is that it's introduced me and those a counsel to online counselling. And if anyone would have asked me beforehand, oh would you ever consider online counselling? I would have said, no, I need to be in person, you know, be able to feel the person, see the person. But interestingly enough, online counselling has been such a blessing. The youth in particular have really taken to it and I find that a higher diversity of people have been making use of it because of its availability. And so even though, like, I'm not always able to just feel them to be with him in the same room, by being able to connect with them at their home while they're, where theyare in their isolation, it also creates a different type of intimacy that might not have been the case if we met in person.

MG: Reverend Douglas, do you see a silver, not a silver lining in this, but it goes back to a little bit of what the rabbi was saying and what Imam Long is saying as well, going down to some sort of essentials and being able to find the essentials. We live busy, noisy lives and when some of that noise is stripped out, we're able to focus in some ways on what's most important. Are you finding that?

MAYA DOUGLAS: Yes, indeed I am. I'm finding that because we have to be more mindful of our time, there's some intentionality behind that time and we're more aware of time passing when we do not actually connect with our parents. We're also where I think more so now that the senior people, the older adults, the elderly are also vulnerable. And we're finding ways to engage them where they are. So when you cannot just easily take up space and meet people on patios and in cafes, you have to find new ways, imaginative, flexible ways of being with each other. And so when you take away that presence, that physical presence, then what's left is the emotional and psychological and spiritual presence. We now have to reflect on for us in the church, in the Christian church, we have to reflect on, you know, when you strip away all of those baubles and those flashing lights and the big turkey, what is Christmas about? What does it mean to say that we feel God's presence in our lives? Who is God in our lives and who are we to each other when you say that we care for each other? Are there ways of abiding with each other that does not involve big, huge parties and in which you you you spend time physically, but when you leave, you realise that you really did not have any deep conversations, authentic conversations, vulnerability. Unfortunately for many of us who avoid it, vulnerability is right there, front and centre. And so how can we be vulnerable with each other while feeling emotionally safe is, I think, something that we are all navigating with.

MG: What we're also navigating is how to interpret the calls for the sacrifice that's necessary. Rabbi Kerzner, how do you how do you convince people perhaps who might be resistant to some of the public health measures and we've seen this in various communities, how do you convince them that the sacrifice is necessary? That you need to go without some things to try to get through something like this?

YAKOV KERZNER: Well, that's a problem that we all face and, you know, there's a certain fatigue with the isolation, with wearing masks, but I and a lot of people would argue that, well, we just rely on God and we move forward and do whatever we have to do in life, even if there's some risk. And my response to that is that relying too much on God removes our responsibility. My understanding is that God wants us to take control to a certain degree. We have to always have a, you know, there's the idea in Hebrew, it's called [Hebrew word] and usually translated as faith. But I really think it's trust. And the trust isn't just that God is going to be there to take care of us when we are not acting responsibly, but trust that whatever is thrown our way could be used in some kind of a positive way. So we take responsibility. We don't forget the past, we have to remember the past, but we also have to focus on rebuilding. We have to be resilient. We have to look at it in whatever positive way we could, because there's no value in looking backwards anymore.

MG: Is that a delicate line to to walk as a leader?

YAKOV KERZNER: Yes, I find that in the larger community, throughout North America, I feel that this is a problem. People want to just rely on on God taking care of whatever needs they have and sort of sometimes just, you know, doing riskful behaviour and we have to be able to say, no. We're responsible. We have to also the fact that we have a vaccine now, we have to say there's this light at the end of the tunnel and we're going to appreciate coming back together. We're going to appreciate be able to be seeing someone's face rather than just their eyes and that's in the not so distant future.

MG: Maya Douglas, you talked a little bit about the work that your church does when it comes to food insecurity and ensuring that people have enough to get by and get through this. We've talked about how this pandemic has exposed the cracks in the system and that we don't need to go back to, you know, normal, we need to go to something that perhaps is better than where we were before. Are you optimistic that we'll keep our eye on the ball once we, to the rabbi's point, you know, get through this and see the light at the end of the tunnel?

MAYA DOUGLAS: Oh, goodness. That's such a deep question. Yes, I'm optimistic. I think part of my job is to find the light even in the darkness, and to know that it will, the darkness will never overtake it. At the same time, I'm realistic in that we are forgetful people. This is not the first pandemic that has ever been experienced, this is not the first wilderness moment. And people, once they are free to roam and to be together and to enjoy themselves, they sometimes forget. They often forget those who still cannot. And so I am optimistic that we will have a different normal after this phase is done, this illness is done. But I'm also realistic and I'm concerned, I'm concerned when money is thrown at our long term care facilities, money is thrown at the parents who have to now homeschool their children through different government initiatives and there's no reform around it. We've seen a crack even looking at how people racialized people are treated, racism and it's not the first time. There has been many times in history that people became allies and said, you know, black lives matter. So, yes, I'm optimistic that we will not want to go back to the way things are, but realistically, if we don't actually change our hearts and change the policies and reform the institutions in which the COVID has run rampant, then indeed history will repeat itself.

MG: Imam Long, what do you, what's the light that you're looking for as we get to the end of this year and look forward to 2021?

IBRAHIM LONG: I've really appreciated how there's actually been a great, greater increase and awareness in mental health. It's perhaps almost needless to say, how much more aware we are certainly of mental health in that has been brought about by this pandemic. Throughout our community and North America a lot more Muslim organizations are actually drawing attention to the needs of mental health and really increasing our literacy, which I'm really happy about. My counselling services, right, have increased. I have people contacting me that I'm the first person that they've, you know they struggle with for a while and they finally reached out to someone . we're doing, you know, several different projects within the community that focus on mental health. Yeah, and so this is something that, you know, once we get through this, you know, God willing, I really hope that continued mental health literacy and awareness of how we can care for ourselves more holistically continues to maintain part of our community.

MG: Rabbi Kerzner, the last few seconds to you. What's the light that you're looking forward to in 2021?

YAKOV KERZNER: Well, as I said before, hopefully we don't forget what we just experienced and we realize how more meaningful life is and those precious moments are. Whether it's a wedding or a funeral or a connection that we make, we shouldn't take things for granted and we'll appreciate once again when we're able to socialize, to eat a meal together, to share whether it's sacred space or just just getting together on a social level. But we have to remember not to be, not in sadness, but to remember what we've learned and hopefully there's some positive lessons that we've learned and make sure to take that into the future.

MG: It's been a great pleasure to speak with you all. I wish you the best of this holiday season. Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happier new year in 2021. Thank you very much.

IBRAHIM LONG: Thank you.

MAYA DOUGLAS: Thank you.

YAKOV KERZNER: Thank you very much.

MG: The Reverend Maya Douglas, minister at St.. James United Church in Toronto. Rabbi Yakov Kerzner, Rabbi at Beth Israel Synagogue in Halifax. And Imam Ibrahim Long is a youth chaplain and a teacher who also does outreach work for the Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton. Your regional update is next. And then the story of money from two very different perspectives, one from the perspective of Ebenezer Scrooge. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

[Music]

An 18th-century gambler crashed France's economy. His story tells us something about money today, says author

Guests: Jacob Goldstein

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The holidays, yes, indeed, they're tough this year, but one thing that hasn't changed is that this is a time of the year when people tend to spend a little more dough than normal. Presents for family and friends. Check. Food for the feast. Check. Work your way down the list. The tree, the decorations, donations to charity, maybe a few stops at the liquor store. This year you probably need to fork over a little extra for mailing costs as well. All this talk of money can really put a damper on things, and yet so many of us are consumed by cash. Why is that? Jacob Goldstein knows more about our money mania than most. He is the co-host of NPR's Planet Money and the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. I spoke with him in October. Here's our conversation. You talk about money as a fiction, a made up thing. What do you mean by that?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Before I started covering money for Planet Money, I didn't study economics or anything like that, I studied English. And I think like most people, I thought of money as this thing that sort of just exists in the world, like a part of nature subject to the laws of physics. I mean, not quite that, but sort of that. And what I realised once I started thinking about money, studying money, covering money is it's not that, right? It is a thing that people collectively invented, made up and have continued to reinvent, to make up in different ways to suit sort of changing needs over time.

MG: How did people get stuff before money existed? Before we dream dreamt this thing up.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: So, you know, if you think about societies a long time ago, cultures a long time ago. They were small, right, that, you know, pre-industrial societies tended to be small based on family relationships. You might say tribes. And those kinds of cultures are built around lots of rules, it turns out, about giving and getting. Gift giving, reciprocity. Some of the classics or if you want to marry somebody, there's very often strict rules like, you know, you have to give cattle, say lots of places if you want to marry someone to their family. If you murder somebody, there's lots of rules about that. If you kill someone and somebody's family got to give them stuff. And those rituals and norms and rules, those are really the roots of money.

MG: How did coins change the way that people think about the value of goods and services? Because, you know, we're not carrying around cattle. We're not carrying around in bundles of hay or something like that. When you have a coin, what does that do to how people think about that exchange?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: So it changes it a lot. I mean, not only are we not carrying around cattle, but more importantly, we are transacting all the time with people who we don't know. So we're not bound up in these norms and rules of gift giving and reciprocity anymore. And that's really the big shift. You know, coins come along, but not that long ago. And like the great scope of history. They come along a few hundred years B.C., they first emerge in what's now Turkey. And they really explode in in Greece, in ancient Greece. And I think that's no coincidence because, you know, the Greeks, as far as we know in many ways, were the sort of roots of a lot of Western culture. And they are developing this new kind of society that, on the one hand, is too big for those kind of norms of gift giving and reciprocity. And on the other hand, doesn't have like one ruler at the top telling everybody what they can take and what they have to give. And so coins allow for this kind of civilisation that we live in.

MG: How do you figure out what a coin is worth? I mean, if I owe you three, you know, cows, there's the cows. How do you figure it out with a coin?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: I'd say that's kind of a skimpy cow not a bigger one. Originally, coins were worth what the underlying metal was worth. Right. And for a long time, I made a coin. Coins were made typically of silver or gold, sometimes of copper. And those metals themselves were desirable to people. You know, they were relatively scarce and they were shiny and they were pretty and you could make jewellery out of them. I was kind of the origin story of how that came to be. And so the value of a coin was just the value of a metal it contained. And people would try and like skim. You know, people would like shave a little silver off the side of a coin or put it in a bag and shake it so you can get a little dust. So, like, as long as there have been coins, people have been trying to, you know, take a little skim off the top. But it was basically the value of a metal.

MG: You could imagine that that would make for some pretty heavy coin. Jemmy, tell the story of the giant coins in Sweden.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes. So Sweden had a lot of copper. This was in the 1600s. And there was basically no paper money as we know it in Europe yet. And so other parts of Europe were using silver and gold. Sweden was using copper. But because copper was not that valuable. And because the value of a coin was based on the value of the metal it contains, they wound up with these coins that were like the size of like a desktop. They weighed like 30 pounds and people would, you know, strap them to their backs. And so it's perhaps not a coincidence that Sweden was the first place in Europe where somebody said, OK, I'll tell you what, you give me that copper tabletop and I'll give you a piece of paper. That's good. Like, you know, as a claim cheque for the copper tabletop. And you can just go use that piece of paper as money instead of the copper tabletop.

MG: That idea of paper money, as you said. Paper money wasn't in evidence in Europe, but it was being used elsewhere. Where did paper money first appear?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, it first appeared in China. A long time many hundreds of years before it first appeared in Europe. Around 1000 A.D. and at and initially for kind of a similar reason in the same way that Sweden used copper, which is very bad for money. There was a province in China, Sichuan, that used iron. A lot of China used bronze, which was not bad for money. But in Sichuan, they didn't have that much bronze. So they used iron coins. Iron is not that valuable. So you needed like a pound and a half of iron coins to buy a pound of salt. One scholar told me, it's just like, you know, go to the grocery store and shop with pennies. Did you guys even have pennies? We don't even have pennies.

MG: Not anymore now.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Smarts, you're ahead of us on that one. And so similar lay some merchant in Sichuan was like, give me your iron coins. I'll give you a piece of paper that's like a coat cheque ticket. And that turned into money and then it spread throughout China. Because, you know, it's really we don't think of paper money as a technological breakthrough, but it is. It was, right, especially at this time when there was no, you know, mechanised transport having to carry pounds and pounds of coins. Overland was costly and being able to have lots of value and just a piece of paper was a real gain. It went along with this great economic flourishing in China where there was more trade and cities grew and there was new technology and there was restaurant scene. It was really an incredible period in China.

MG: As you said. Initially, it's a coat cheque ticket. You give me your stuff and I'll give you this piece of paper which represents the stuff. When does that change and when does it when does the paper ticket become something that is more than just what I have given you?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: What's interesting because in in the West, say, in Europe and North America, it won't change until the 20th century, until the 1900s. But in China, it changed in the 1200s. It changed hundreds of years earlier. You know, so the paper money was invented in China under the song Dynasty. A few hundred years later, the Mongols conquered China. Kublai Khan became the great Khan. And in the twelve hundreds and at some point he says, OK, this paper money that has been a coat cheque ticket, they called it a treasure voucher. I believe he says, you know what? It's just going to be paper. You can no longer come to the government and turn in your paper money for bronze coins, which is a wild moment. I mean, I do think it's hard for us to understand how profound that moment is and how amazing it is that it worked. It worked. You know, China's economy kept functioning. And, you know, there's a few reasons, I think, for this. One is Kublai Khan could say, use this money or I'll kill you.

MG: Because he's a tough guy.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: He's a tough guy, is an authoritarian. And, you know, the threat of state violence is a is a thing. But the other thing I think that's important to remember is like they had been using paper money, albeit backed by metal, for hundreds of years in China at this point. And so, you know, I think they saw that it worked and understood that money is this thing that well, let's all agree on something. And if we all agree on it that, you know, it's going to stand in for value, then it works and it's useful. And they went along with.

MG: Is that the moment that money becomes you talk about it being a pure abstraction? Is that the moment when it changes into something else?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: I mean, it's one of them. You know, there is this series of moments. I mean, in a sense, you know, coins are somewhat abstract. Paper money not backed by coins is more abstract. Today our money, you know, we think of paper when we think of money, but we shouldn't really. Most money is just in the bank, right, as bank deposits. And the bank does not have piles of paper bills for every dollar you have in the bank. Sorry, they have, you know-- so today, money is just a number stored on the bank's computers. So, you know, it's increasingly abstract over time.

MG: And in many ways then you have to have trust that your money is there and that you're going to get your money back. Right. I mean, when you say that money is around based on this idea of belief, is that what you're talking about?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you have to have trust. You know, it's trust all the way down. You certainly have to have trust that your money is there when you're using paper. You have to have trust that people will take your paper. But even if you're using gold coins, I mean, you can't eat gold or live in gold. Right. You have to trust that people are going to give you something truly useful, like food or shelter in exchange for gold. So even that is fundamentally based on trust.

MG: Can you point to an episode in history when the public lost trust in money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh, yes, that also sort of, unfortunately, has happened again and again. Just to go back to China, I mean, we were there sort of telling the story in China. Kublai Khan says, OK, paper is is just going to be money and it works for a while. And then the Mongols are driven out and there's a new dynasty. The Ming Dynasty comes to power. And I mean, a few things happened there. So one is inflation a classic problem with paper money. The paper money loses a lot of value, and that's a way that people traditionally lose trust in money. Suddenly, this piece of paper doesn't buy as much stuff as it used to. And also, the new rulers are wary of money. They themselves don't really trust paper money. They think it's some kind of hustle, you know, as leaders throughout history would think. And they take China back. China, hundreds of years, you know, before anybody else adopts paper money. Then they get rid of paper money. Paper money disappears from China. They go back to using, you know, lumps of metal in some cases because they don't trust paper anymore. And paper money essentially disappears from the world for a few hundred years.

MG: Who is John Law?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: John Law is an amazing figure who I can't believe. I didn't know about him before I wrote the book. To be honest, I didn't know anything about him until I read this. Yeah. So John Wall was born in Scotland in the sixteen hundreds, and he grows up and his dad's a goldsmith and goldsmiths are kind of becoming bankers at this time. So his dad is doing pretty well. John Law goes off to London as a young man becomes what they called at the time, a Bo, which I think of as like a bro, you know, kind of guy about town and has lots of romances and gambles. And he winds up having a duel, killing the other guy in the duel, getting sentenced to death, escaping from prison, fleeing to Europe and then in Europe. First he gets rich as a gambler, then he gets interested in economics. And this is a moment this is now like around the year. Seventeen hundred, the turn of that century. This is a moment when sort of capitalism, as we know it, is kind of just getting going in Europe. Paper money is a new thing. This is like, you know, a few decades after its first showed up in Sweden, as we discussed, and it's starting to show up and in England and Amsterdam is doing really well. They got a stock market and they've got like a city bank that's kind of like a central bank. And so John Law sees all of these kind of economic ideas swirling, and he's like, "You know what? I'm going to create a modern economy in some country." He goes around pitching his idea to different countries, and he finds a taker in France. In France, the king is a little boy at this point, France is being run by a regent who, like John Law, is an intellectual who loves to party, basically. So they're like a perfect fit. And the regent gives John Law this power. John Law creates the first paper money in France, the first modern bank in France, this big trading company that controls half of North America, like French North America. And there is this great stock boom, economic boom really, and stock boom in France. This is like 1719 or so now. And the word millionaire is coined, people are getting rich, they're flooding into Paris to trade stocks. And then of course, you can see it coming, it all collapses. John Law is chased out of France by a mob. France abandons paper money. John Law flees and lives the rest of his life in Venice as a gambler.

MG: How does his story, what does it tell you? But of the way that the world looked at money and how that that changed?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, that's a great question. So, I mean, you know, I'll tell you. one of the interesting things to me, you can look at what France was doing, which is that story, and then you can look at England, which was kind of on a parallel track. England had created the Bank of England in the 1690s, which was like an early central bank. They had started printing paper money. England had its own stock bubble, the south east bubble at the same time. But England didn't have the total collapse that France had. And one of the differences that I think is really important and people at the time thought this, too. It's not like I made this up. People have seen this for hundreds of years. But is that England? You know, at this point, parliament had more power. Parliament had become more of a check on the king, whereas in France it was still basically an absolute monarchy. So the Regent could give John Wall all of the power to run the economy, and do anything he wanted. And I feel like that difference is really important, that balance in England where you had the interests of the bank and the interests of parliament and the interest of the king, and they were all kind of fighting with each other — I like that fighting. I think that fighting, which we have echoes of now in any open society, basically, where you have different interests who are allowed to fight it out in public. That I think is good. I think that gives you a shot at monetary and economic stability, at least relatively speaking. Whereas in France, John Law basically had too much power, so he did too much, too fast and screwed himself and France.

MG: What do you love about stories like this? I mean, this is like listening to a long episode of Planet Money where you take something that seems abstract and you bring it down in their stories and there's drama and there's tension. What do you love about the stories that are at the heart of this?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh. I mean what's not to love right? You've got a guy who kills somebody in a duel and escapes from prison and then becomes a monetary genius! I mean, look, I guess, you know, there's a few things as when. One, the stories are just delightful. Two, I find the ideas interesting, but a book that was just a series of ideas would be very dull for me to write, much less read. Three, I think it is useful specifically in the context of money to remember, to go back to the first thing you were asking about. Like money is just what we all collect actively decided is going to be. And there are these times, these moments in history like [unintelligible], like on, like with John Law, when that can change really quickly. And I think it's really important to remember that. I mean, the stories are delightful and fun and interesting, but they're useful on a kind of meta-level because we think whatever we're doing for money now is just, oh, that's the way money is. That's the way it works in nature. That is not true. And what happens every once in a while, every hundred years, a few hundred years, whatever, is somebody comes along, there's some crisis, there's some set of things, there's some story that happens and there is a big change or some set of big changes in the way money works. And it's really important to remember that, so we don't get confused and think money is just is always going to be the way it is now.

MG: How do you think you have demystified talking about money? I mean, there used to be a time when there was be the business section of the paper. And if you were in business, you read the business section. But often people would skip over it because they thought, well, I don't know what that means to me and I don't know how it relates to me and what Planet Money does and what a book like this does in many ways is make talking about money relatable. How do you think you have demystified how we talk about money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, that's a very kind question. I mean, you know, as I said, I was an English major. You know, I came to economics from, you know, whatever modernist poetry. Like, I was not interested in making money. I didn't even think I was interested in studying money. I guess I always had some kind of a version, like I had some kind of vague notion like, oh, being interested in money, that's bad in some way. That means I'm greedy and greed, I don't know what. Something like that. Not really articulated. But what I realised when I came to study it was this is like humanities. This is studying how individuals work, how people work in groups. And I think there's a lot of people you know, it's like econ for poets, right? Like, I took physics for poets in college. They didn't have econ for poets. But that's what I'm trying to do. Like, let's think about money as this fundamentally human thing that explains and reveals all these weird, interesting things about what it is to be a person, what it is to be a society.

MG: In the last few minutes that we have. I want to talk about money now. When was the last time that you carry cash around with you?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: You know, I still carry a little cash. I started going out again. There were several months when I didn't do anything at all with cash this year. But I finally went back to an ATM, still scared of it. You know, like other jobs are out there are not out on the street. Like, I didn't want to go into the little ATM room, you know, in New York in April, May. But I definitely use a lot less cash than I did at the beginning of the year.

MG: Are we moving to a place where there will be a cashless society? People have talked about this for a long time. I can pay for things with my watch and my phone. Are we getting to a point where cash will disappear?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: You know, that's a really interesting question. There are two things pointing in sort of opposite directions in response to that question. One is what we just talking about, the fact that it's really easy to not use cash. You can buy a pack of gum with your phone or whatever. So that feels like yes. On the other hand, there is actually more and more cash in the world. I'm sorry I didn't look up these figures for Canada this morning. I should have. But to take the U.S. dollar. The amount of paper money in the world is increasing really fast. It's growing faster than the economy. That happened during the pandemic, but it's also been happening for years before the pandemic. And it's a little weird. Because it doesn't seem like that is like money for normal people. It's mostly hundred dollar bills, for one thing. That's one tip off in. You know, we know a lot of people outside the U.S. use U.S. dollars as as savings. If you live in a country where the banking system is unreliable, where the currency is unreliable, people will just get paper money and put it in their drawer under their mattress savings. We also know that criminals use hundreds a lot because they're very convenient way to trade anonymously.

MG: There's also there's the whole underground economy as well, where people pay for things in cash.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes. Yes. Which we don't think of as criminal. But quite often people do it to evade taxes. Right. I mean, the reason or maybe to pay someone who cannot legally work. So they thinks that we have a different maybe moral feeling about then than classic crime. But they are they are things to evade the law one way or another.

MG: Do you do you see that kind of moving into a point where we're in a crisis now and money is flying out the door, perhaps less so in your country now, but the governments are putting money out the door to address the crisis. Is that going to help accelerate how we think about the changes and how we think about money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Maybe. I mean, you know, I would say yes on the kind of nerdier end of the spectrum on the left, sort of dramatic John law end of the spectrum. I mean, one thing that's been striking in general in the developed world is how much deficit spending countries have been doing without worrying about it, and how low inflation and inflation expectations have remained. Traditionally, what you expect in sort of econ one or one type thinking is if governments do a lot of deficit spending, people will expect that even if inflation doesn't creep up now, it will go up in the future. But you can look at how people are investing different kinds of bonds they're buying to see what people who are actually betting money think inflation is going to do. And people who are actually betting money think inflation is going to be really low for a really long time. I do know that Canada. Canada's government can still borrow money extraordinarily cheaply and the U.S. government can borrow money extraordinarily cheaply. So this might be a moment when people are starting to think differently about government deficits and being more open to government deficits and less afraid of inflation. So that's nerdy, but really a big deal.

MG: This is a fascinating book. And as I said, it's a bit like reading an episode of Planet Money. A pleasure to talk to Jack. Thank you.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh, thank you. You've been so kind.

MG: Jacob Goldstein is the co-host of NPR's Planet Money. His book is Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. We spoke in October.

How Scrooge became the role of a lifetime for one Canadian actor

Guests: Steven Hair

MG: And now, as promised, the money man himself. For so many of us, a Christmas Carol is a holiday tradition and for years, Steven Hair has brought that tradition to life. He played Ebenezer Scrooge in Theatre Calgary's annual production for almost three decades. But this year he and two other actors had to do things a little differently. Their performance was filmed and made available online. No matter the circumstances though, he tells us why Scrooge has become the role of a lifetime.

SOUNDCLIP

STEVEN HAIR: My name is Steven Hair, and I've been playing the role of Scrooge at Theatre Calgary for 27 years now. I guess I started from the concept that I never wanted Scrooge to be the cartoon character that we very often see. I believe it's a true, a real story about a man who took turns in life that, you know, he's not an evil man, he's just like all of us who make bad decisions in life. A gentleman brought backstage to me a few years back and he was in tears. He was about 40 some odd and he was with his wife and he said, I came to the show not knowing the story at all. And he said, as this started going on, I realized this was my story. And he said at the end of Act I, I was in tears because I thought, oh, my God, what have I done? And then at the end of it, Scrooge finds his way out of it all, he gets happy and he just wanted to tell me that he saw himself in what I was portraying and he was going to change his life. Now, that's a pretty profound thing for anybody to be told. But I took it so much to heart and I repeat that story when asked, because it's the power of theatre. It's the power of acting. It's the power of what a story a playwright can put together and we do touch people's lives.

VOICE 1: In a moment, I want you to imagine that you're in a city called London.

VOICE 2: It's 1843.

VOICE 1: And of all the good days in the year.

VOICE 2: It's Christmas Eve.

STEVEN HAIR: I totally thought that the show wouldn't happen this year because everything was shut down, the Arts Commons, which is where we perform. The public couldn't get in. Nobody could get in. And then our wonderful artistic director, Stafford Arima, came along and said, we want we have to try something different. We have to do something. And it was like a gift from heaven to be able to perform again, to create something just for a few weeks, four weeks. And I know that many of my colleagues are going, oh, you're so fortunate, you're so lucky. And I am.

VOICE 1: He was a tight fisted hands at the grindstone Scrooge. A squeezing wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching old sinner.

VOICE 2: It was the very thing he liked. To wedge his way.

STEVEN HAIR: People wonder sometimes how screwed I am. I've never been very big on Christmas. I will admit that. And for me for 32 years doing A Christmas Carol has been my Christmas. But this year is kind of different. I mean, I never decorate my house, but I've got two beautiful poinsettias. I'm bringing in some bows and I'm going to put them around. I've got Christmas lights outside. I never do Christmas lights. My inner Scrooge is sort of melting away this year.

VOICE 1: My dear friends, how do you do? Merry Christmas to you.

VOICE 2: Mr. Scrooge.

VOICE 1: Yes, that is my name and I fear it may not be pleasant to you.

STEVEN HAIR: And my favourite scene is also one of the hardest scenes when you're going from it's right at the very end where he finally realizes, he opens his heart to everything that he's been shown by the spirits of past, present and future and realizes that moment of oh my God, everything is there for me, all I have to do is embrace it. He says, I don't know what day of the month it is, I don't know how long I've been amongst the spirits, I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Nevermind, I don't care, I'd rather be a baby and he runs around and he acts silly and stupid. And then he gets out on the street and realizes that it's life. He's alive, I'm alive. He's been dead and shut off for so many years and now he's alive.

VOICE 1: Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy New Year to all the world. Hello. Woop. Hello.

STEVEN HAIR: The show in itself and what Dickens wrote was to awaken people of his time in 1843 to the horrors of, you know, child labour and what was going on and so on and that story of self realization and self resurrection, if you want to put it like that, is really important. And I think especially now we spend so much time, you know, locked up in our houses that we spending time much more time with ourselves. And I think the time to be looking at ourselves. And with Christmas coming up, we may or may not be able to visit with family, so we have to look inside ourselves and go, OK, what have I done? What can I do? How can I help? How can I be a better me? It sounds a little Pollyanna-ish, I don't really mean that, but there's something about the show that resonates. I've been asked for 30 years, why does this show still, why is this story still viable? And it's because we're all human beings and we've all done the twist and turns in our life, just as Scrooge has done and in the end, there's a chance that we may come out of this on the bright side rather than the dark side.

MG: That's the actor Steven Hair. He's been playing Scrooge for 27 years. He has the voice for it. You could really hear it in his voice. You can watch him in Theatre Calgary's digital production of A Christmas Carol until the 31st of December. That is The Current for today and for me this year. I'm going to take a couple of days off to catch my breath. It has been an exhausting year, a year that I think a lot of people will be happy to see the back end of. So I wanted to say thank you to you for being with us as we made our way through this year and it's been a great pleasure to talk with you. Hopefully these conversations that we have hopefully have provided not just some information, but a bit of comfort in what has been a pretty tricky year. The good news is we are on the other side of the solstice and so the days are going to start to get longer. There is light at the end of this. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. A happier new year to you. We're going to leave you with some music by one of my favourite performers. Music has been a huge thing for me this year to help me get through this year. Jon Batiste is a musical genius. This is from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It's Jon Batiste's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and take care.

[Song: "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" performed by Jon Batiste]

Dec. 22, 2020 episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode