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 2023

The Current Transcript for May 24, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: If you asked me 10 years ago if I would have been sober today and having introduced a bill that would label alcohol products, I would have probably said, you know, you're crazy. You know, I was drinking way too much because I was hurting inside. I was trying to kill the pain.

MATT GALLOWAY: For years, Senator Patrick Brazeau has spoken openly about his problem with alcohol. Now he wants to speak about our drinking problem. In an hour, that three years sober Senator Brazeau on why he's pushing for warning labels on alcoholic beverages and why he says government officials are pushing back. Also this morning, two stories about what we eat. Coming up, how limiting water use from the rapidly emptying Colorado River could hit that head of lettuce in your fridge. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Cooking over campfires, it's not that crackling, blazing fire. You really want beautiful like glowing coals. That's where your grill goes. That's what you're cooking over. Once you do it once or twice, it's just second nature.

MG: The former restaurant critic Chris Nuttall-Smith has advice on eating inside and outside. His new book aims to elevate campfire cooking well beyond a coal fired tin of baked beans. And he's also just published a list of what he says are the best restaurants in Canada. He's here in 30 minutes. Plus, your mail on the glory days of AM radio. We begin, though, in Ottawa where the decision not to hold a public inquiry has only amplified talk about a foreign meddling in Canadian politics. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

FOREIGN INTERFERENCE

Guests: Tonda MacCharles, Dick Fadden

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID JOHNSTON: Foreign governments are undoubtedly attempting to influence candidates and voters in Canada. Foreign interference is a real and growing threat, and more remains to be done promptly to strengthen our capacity to detect, deter and counter foreign interference in elections.

MG: The threat is real and it's growing, But a public inquiry isn't the answer. That is the key finding in David Johnston's interim report released yesterday. The former governor general appointed by the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate media reports that Chinese officials tried to sway Canadian elections came out with findings in which he described those reports as incomplete and misleading. Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star. Tonda, good morning.

TONDA MACCHARLES: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Let's start with this decision not to call the public inquiry. David Johnston himself acknowledged there was a lot of pressure to do so, pressure that he himself felt. He said he went into this thinking that he would call that inquiry. So how does he explain what he decided to do instead?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, he explains it by way of saying I had access to all the classified information that you haven't seen, you the Canadian public and even the reporters who have reported this all along. And he says he was persuaded that there's no way a public inquiry would be able to reveal that classified information. He's had a look at it. And in a way, he's basically saying to the Canadian public on this, look, it's complicated. And trust me, I've had a look at it. I've concluded that, you know, in many respects, these reports are not giving the full picture. And trust me, we don't need a public inquiry because any judicial inquiry would not be able to show you any more than I'm telling you.

MG: And so what is he suggesting instead?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, it's interesting. You know, he's suggesting that he undertake a series of public hearings to look at sort of the big problems in information flow from intelligence agencies to top public servants and to the political leaders on the issue of foreign interference and elections meddling. But he's also putting the ball in the court of opposition politicians and he's saying, if you don't trust me, have the two committees, there's oversight committees that look at the work of intelligence agencies that can see classified documents in secret. And he's saying to the politicians, look, let them review it and you get security cleared yourselves to get top secret information and briefings, and you review my work and therefore take the partisanship out of this whole debate and you'll come to the same conclusion that, you know, the media reporting on this in so many ways did not give the full picture. And it's incumbent on politicians to take the partisanship out of it, not to resort to slogans and to look at the actual documents and information. So, you know, he's trying to chart a path forward to take the politics out of it, for which, by the way, he blames all parties, and he's trying to say and on the policy gaps that I've identified, yes, there is a problem. You know, political leaders aren't getting the briefings they should get. Let's take a look at that. Should we be declassifying more top secret information? Is CSIS overclassifying what it knows about the threat of foreign interference? He wants to take a hard look at that. And he's suggested in talking to the Toronto Star yesterday that he believes at the end of this, he will come forward with recommendations on how to do just that. There's a reason why the U.S. and Australia and the Brits all talk about their intelligence more freely. They have a bit of a different culture than Canada does around this stuff.

MG: We’ll come back to the politics in a moment. You mentioned his suggestion that perhaps some of the media stories which drove this in many ways were not presenting the full picture. He was critical of some of the media reports in recent months. What did he say that those media reports got wrong?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, look, I suppose it's important to say that Johnston also acknowledges that we all wouldn't even be talking about this to the extent we are were it not for the fact that media have been raising, you know, the issue based on leaks of classified intelligence, which, you know, Global News and the Globe and Mail had access to. Many other reporting agencies did not have access to. But when Johnston took the deep dive into those media reports, you know, he found several things. He found problems overall with the fact that the intelligence documents he saw, he saw he said both the drafts, early drafts and right on up to the final draft that was eventually signed off on and sort of sent by CSIS to either public servants or political offices. And he said in many cases, the picture is incorrect. He says there was no network of Chinese funding to know, no evidence of any network of Chinese funding to some 11 candidates, that if there was money, there's no evidence that it was sent or received. On the issue of a Toronto MP, Han Dong, who ended up leaving Liberal caucus over allegations published by Global News, he said there's no evidence that Han Dong, yes, there was suggestions that there were irregularities observed in his nomination in 2019, but no evidence that Dong knew about it or was a witting accomplice. And he also completely blasted the reporting that said that Han Dong had suggested to Chinese officials that they not release the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Spavor, who were by then back in 2019 imprisoned in China. He said that’s flat out wrong

MG: Han Dong says he feels vindicated by David Johnston's report. What do you make of that?

TONDA MACCHARLES: And I think that, you know, in many ways, he was vindicated. And I think that the lawsuit around that reporting is going to be very interested in what this report says. But, you know, in many cases also, Johnston sort of blows holes in conservative contentions that somehow the election of 2019 and 2021 were unfair and that one of their candidates was defeated as a result of a concerted Chinese government effort. He says to what extent, it's not clear to what extent, you know, Chinese activities, state actor activity on social media was actually conducted by China, or was it that the policies of the conservatives, they were tough on China at the time. Did that defeat them? He even cites some of the conservative campaign operatives, the top operatives and officials who themselves say, look, we can't determine how decisive Chinese interference was in the results. But Johnston says, one by one, he goes through all these media reports and says, this is not the picture that Canadians need to take away, that Canadians need to understand that yes, there is foreign interference, but it did not affect the outcome of any of these elections. And to what extent that will satisfy anyone, certainly, we saw yesterday on the political side, it didn't satisfy. But even, you know, it's hard in this context, isn't it, for Canadians to, even though Mr. Johnston may say, trust me and, you know, he defends his own impartiality and integrity, I think there's an era now where Canadians want politicians, they want agencies, they want people like David Johnston who leads a probe to show their work, not tell us. They want transparency on stuff and I'm not sure that this will be the report that satisfies that portion of the electorate nor the political opposition. We've seen that already.

MG: Let's hear from Pierre Poilievre. He spoke, what, an hour after David Johnston started to speak and did not hold back. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

PIERRE POILIEVRE: We don't trust David Johnston to do public hearings because he is a family friend, cottage neighbour and ski buddy of the Prime Minister. He's also part of the Trudeau Foundation. His report today confirmed his bias by his unwillingness to even report on the money that went to the Trudeau Foundation from Beijing to influence the Prime Minister.

MG: And so you said earlier there was the hope that perhaps from David Johnston, the politics would be taken out of that. You might listen to that and think, good luck with that. There seems to be no possibility of that, right?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, there isn't, to be frank. Mr. Poilievre has shut that door. He's shut it quite a long time ago, but yesterday, he continued to simply refuse to be exposed to the classified information that might put paid to some of the allegations here.

MG: He still said he won't work with the process as David Johnston continues to try to, through his not public inquiry, but a public investigation to try to uncover what was actually going on. He said he won't participate in that.

TONDA MACCHARLES: What Johnston wants and what Prime Minister Trudeau wants and sent a letter to the opposition leaders to this effect yesterday is for Pierre Poilievre, Jagmeet Singh, Yves-Francois Blanchet to get briefed and up to speed on what they know and what the officials saw and what they're claiming is the actual picture. Pierre Poilievre has basically decided to shore up a certain voting population that does not believe in these institutions, does not believe in the facts as Johnston has laid them out. And he's really, I think, protecting a certain voter flank of his own. But no, he continued to throw flames yesterday at Johnston and it was quite something to watch. In a way, it was a very cynical reaction and not adequately really explained. I mean, Mr. Poilievre still has an MP that is part of a committee that does have security clearance. And so to a certain extent, his party is aware of some of these documents, it's just that that MP is also sworn to secrecy. So Mr. Poilievre, you know, one could argue that it is incumbent on him to get as much information and facts as he can. That's certainly the argument that the Prime Minister made yesterday. It's the argument that Johnston made. There's no indication he wants to do this. He is going to keep talking about the need for a public inquiry. But, you know, let's face it, when the Rouleau Commission that was a public inquiry into the Emergencies Act and the freedom convoy, and after it came out with its conclusions, you know, you didn't hear Mr. Poilievre actually sort of discussing and probing that issue any further. So I'm not sure where this would take us.

MG: Tonda, we'll leave it there. Good to talk to you as always. Thank you.

TONDA MACCHARLES: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star. Dick Fadden is the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, also served as national security advisor to both Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau. Dick Fadden, good morning to you.

DICK FADDEN: Good morning.

MG: When you were on this program just a few weeks ago, you said you would be, in your words, astounded if David Johnston did not call for a public inquiry. As you know, he did not call for a public inquiry. And so what do you make of his explanation?

DICK FADDEN: Well, from his perspective, I can understand why he came to that conclusion. But I think that for two or three reasons, this is not going to work. One, whether or not, and I think he is a man of integrity, the perception is that he is not, and not just by the leader of the official opposition, but by any number of commentators and whatnot, the argument that you cannot have a public inquiry because information is classified is simply incorrect. We've had other royal commissions in the past. The O'Connor commission comes to mind. And three, the one thing that's missing here and, you know, a lot of the reporting today refers to this indirectly, one of the advantages of a public inquiry is that you have an independent leader, a judge usually, and you have a couple of people in front of him or her who argue both sides of the story. It's the basis of our legal system in this country that you have controversial issues and you have people debating both sides. CSIS when it goes to the federal court, it often goes to the federal court privately, and the court appoints somebody, a lawyer who's security cleared to argue against CSIS. So even in that system, there's an acknowledgement that just having somebody, and I really don't have any doubts substantively about Mr. Johnston by and large, but even somebody like him, he's the only one who's setting the threshold. He's the only one who's deciding what's going to be published. One of the advantages, for example, of the Rouleau Commission is that sitting before the commissioner were a bunch of lawyers who argued back and forth. I personally thought there were too many lawyers allowed to do that, but that's a different issue altogether. But putting these three things together, it seems to me along with the points that Tonda made about partisanship, this is not going to put this matter to bed.

MG: Can you go back to the issue of classified information? This is something that David Johnston specifically addressed yesterday. Have a listen to what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID JOHNSTON: The challenge is this. What has allowed me to determine whether there has in fact been interference cannot be disclosed publicly. A public review of classified intelligence simply cannot be done.

MG: So he says, in his words, the sensitivity of the intelligence and the damage that would be done by revealing it means a public inquiry would necessarily be held in-camera. You say that that's simply incorrect.

DICK FADDEN: I think that total transparency is impossible. I mean, you cannot reveal everything, but a couple of counterpoints. One, I would argue by and large that Canada over classifies and that over time, we don't declassify. So I would suggest that a lot of the stuff that's now classified, you know, relating for example to the 2019 election could be declassified. So if that's the case, fine. And you get to use that. Secondly. There is no reason why if you use the model I'm talking about you would have more than one person. You can have a devil's advocate in favour of declassification and who would advocate in favour of how you articulate conclusions based on classified information. I think that's better than simply, you know, a representative of the government, which is what Johnston was to some degree, saying You can't see any of this. Even when I was working, I used to argue that we over classified and in particular, we don't declassify automatically very easily. So you put all that together, it seems to me that it is worthwhile because a public inquiry could also do everything that Mr. Johnston is suggesting be done by himself over the course of the next several months.

MG: Do you think the Prime Minister should overrule David Johnston and call a public inquiry?

DICK FADDEN: I do. Although I think he's sort of put himself into a corner, having said beforehand that he is abdicating his responsibility by passing it on to Mr. Johnston. But if there is enough public pressure, your colleagues on television yesterday were arguing that, you know, the one person who could force this is Jagmeet Singh, who could insist that this is a matter of confidence and he wants a public inquiry. I would be rather surprised if he goes that route. But the key to all of this, it seems to me, is that if people want this issue to go away, and I do not think it should be, a public inquiry is one way of doing it. And we're also losing, I think we're losing track of the fact that all of this is riveting. The partisanship, the hyperbole, the big arguments about whether it should be public or not is we have a significant problem here that Mr. Johnston agrees to. And in the meantime, the government keeps saying we've done a marvellous array of things and we're coming to grips with it. But, you know, why don't we have a foreign agents registry? Why isn't the House looking at the possibility of making foreign interference a crime? There are a whole bunch of things we could do now. We are going to have an election within the next two or three years. And if Parliament doesn't act, the government doesn't act in the next six or seven months, nothing is going to be done before the next election. In particular, I'm sorry I'm going on, but all of the measures that the government has taken by and large to deal with this issue and the electoral process have dealt with the point, the writ onwards. And it's very easy to contemplate, I think, a scenario where the nomination process by various political parties can be manipulated as well. I don't think it's easy to inject the government or the chief electoral officer into all of this, but this should be looked at as well because you just start a little bit earlier, you still have some measure of influence.

MG: So we just have a few minutes left. And in those minutes, let me ask you two things. One is just about what needs to be done to ensure and reassure Canadians that the integrity of the electoral system is sound. One of the things that David Johnston mentioned is that the partisanship in this, he calls it excessive partisanship, has harmed the confidence that Canadians have in their institutions. What needs to be done to strengthen that confidence?

DICK FADDEN: Well, I think in the context of foreign interference, we need to go the route of a public inquiry, and we've already dealt with that. But I find it quite interesting that throughout his report, unless I've missed it, there's no substantive mention of the chief electoral officer who is charged by Parliament with operating and protecting our elections process. Surely there's a role here for this officer of Parliament to come forward and to articulate a view of whether, I can't remember if it's a man or a woman, whether he or she thinks the process needs protecting or not. I don't understand why a former governor general is opining on the electoral process without reference to the chief electoral officer. So I think there are a number of processes here that could take place. Unfortunately, and I join Tonda in this, I don't think the House of Commons with its hyper partisanship is the place where much of this is going to take place. And I think, you know, Johnston is right when he says it's not just Mr. Poilievre, it's also the government who is taking advantage of every opportunity to, you know, push back on the Opposition's opposition.

MG: And so I guess just in the last minute or so that we have, how worried are you about that, about the erosion of confidence in institutions that we as Canadians would have in those institutions because of that partisanship, to your point, that's coming from a number of different sides?

DICK FADDEN: Well, I'm quite worried about it. I mean, I do not think that the Chinese are going to influence the outcome of our elections any more than they did in 19 or 20. But if they affect the outcome of even one or two constituencies, it's very, very worrisome. And, you know, it's like an echo chamber. You'll know this better than I do. People start talking about this and, you know, there's no reference point outside the echo chamber. And all of a sudden, we start believing there's a substantive issue. You know, things in Alberta these days are just as partisan. Is their electoral process going to suffer because of all of this or not? I think we really do need to have a fundamental look at our electoral process and mis and disinformation, how social media plays in all of this. And Mr. Johnston is not proposing to do a lot of that I think properly because you need a different kind of review, which a public inquiry involving perhaps more than one commissioner who has some expertise on the electoral process.

MG: You and I have spoken a number of times over the course of this process. I have a feeling we might talk again. In the meantime, I'm really glad that you made time for us this morning. Dick, thank you.

DICK FADDEN: My pleasure. Cheers.

MG: Dick Fadden is the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, also served as national security advisor to both prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau. Your CBC news is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: We think of paella as this seafood feast. And that's what it's become, but it started as a rice workers lunch. They literally cook it in a shovel, in the blade of a shovel over a campfire. The rice gets crackly. It's delicious.

MG: Were you cooking paella over the long weekend when you were camping? Perhaps not. We'll talk more about changing your campsite menu. Goodbye hot dogs burnt to a crisp, cooked on a stick and a can of baked beans put in the ashes. Chris Nuttall-Smith will be here to elevate your cook out game coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH

Guest: Chris Nuttall-Smith

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, a deal on conserving water in the Colorado River has far reaching implications. In just under half an hour, what that means for how and what you feed yourself and your family and what farmers plant in the ground here. But first, summer on the horizon. And that, if you're lucky, means cooking outside.

[Music: Theme]

MG: If you were one of the many Canadians who kicked off camping season this long weekend, you will know this. There is nothing quite like food cooked over a campfire. Chris Nuttall-Smith is a food writer, a restaurant critic and the author of “Cook It Wild”, his new book on how to make great meals outside and Over said Fire. And if you want perhaps somebody else to cook for you and maybe you want that meal to be indoors, well, he's got you covered there as well. He has just published a list on the 20 best restaurants in Canada. He published it for Maclean's magazine. He's here to talk all about that. Chris, good morning.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Good morning. Great to see you.

MG: Good to see you. Let's start with the outdoors. What do you remember about when you were young and eating food outside?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: I remember where we set our tent up on our first trip. We went to Pacific Rim National Park with my family. We had one of these kind of flopsy tents that could barely stand up. We used to be able to camp on the beach there, this area called Schooner Cove. And I'll never forget my dad set the tent up below the tide line. What did we know? It was our first time.

MG: In coming in.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: In coming in the middle of the night, you know, very, very quick. Relocation. The food wasn't a huge part of what we did. When it really begins registering was when I was in grade 12. When I was in university, I used to hitchhike out to the Rockies. I grew up in B.C. and I would eat Mr. noodles and power bars. I would eat, you know, what I think a lot of people still eat. But I went one summer to an area called Lake Ohara in Yoho National Park, and the campfire next to me in the base camp were grilling sausages. And I will never forget the smell of their dinner as I was there, just kind of choking down some rehydrated horrible fuel and thinking, I want to eat like this outside.

MG: So this book is, I mean, there might be sausages, but there's much more in here as well. When did you start to think, and I ask you this as somebody who loves food, I've sat and ate with you. I've seen what you love and how you eat and how you think about food. When did you realize that that identity, that part of your identity could be mixed with your love of the outdoors?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Well, they never did mix until I realized on a trip with some friends who I call them accomplished indoors people. They were not hikers, they were not campers. I brought them canoeing on a trip and told them, you know, pack light, We got to go easy. I was expecting very, very simple meals. And my friend Sasha who is this incredible cook, we’re on the portage and I say, hey, what did you bring? And she says, well, I've got a block of frozen squid.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: And my eyes, I remember bugging out and thinking, this weekend is going to be a disaster. She'd meal prepped everything, though. She'd done the chopping, the mixing, the measuring, she'd pre-cooked the vegetables. She made the most spectacular paella I've ever had in my life to this day. And it took her 25 minutes and no work. And we just had this course after course of beautiful food that was easy to transport, easy to prepare, that was joyful. That really made the trip for us. And that's when I started realizing if you prep food ahead of time, if you do whatever work there is before, you can have the most beautiful meals when you're camping and you can do it in a way that doesn't knock you out at home. The prep doesn't have to be, you know, a huge labour and more than half the recipes in the book take less than 10 minutes at camp. So it's easy there as well.

MG: This is a really practical book. I mean, from how to pack a cooler to how to make sure that, you know, the bear doesn't eat your food, all of the various steps that you would perhaps not think about. What do people get wrong when they think about the food that they could be eating when they are out camping? And again, you can be car camping, you can be deep in the bush, but what do people get wrong?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Camping is a really private endeavour. It's something people do on their own, with their families or with small groups. The shared knowledge isn't really out there, so people get a ton of stuff wrong from, you know, we'll be on a portage and I will see families who are obviously new to camping carrying flats or bottled water because they don't know that you can filter your water. I think one of the greatest kind of myths of eating outdoors, though, is that you have to pack like you're going to Everest base camp. You need to bring a stove that's a blow torch that will boil water and not do much else, and you need to bring dehydrated, freeze dried kind of survivalist food in the packages. When you walk into an outdoor store, that's what you see. That's what they sell. And I do not fault them for doing that, but the reality is if you know what you're doing, you can bring, and you can keep this lightweight, by the way, you can bring beautiful cheeses that don't need refrigeration. You can bring DANDAN noodles that will last in your pack for a week without refrigeration. You can bring so many beautiful foods that are easy to prepare, that are going to make people delighted. And you know what you said in the intro about eating around a campfire or if you've got a stove, those moments around a fire or a stove in the most beautiful places in the world, frankly, at the peak of produce season, yeah, why not indulge in that, Enjoy it, especially if you can do it in a way that anybody can do?

MG: How did you figure out that these recipes would actually work? Again, most people aren't thinking of making a risotto or a paella or fondue when they're camping. How did you, aside from thinking about it, understand that these things would actually, people could actually pull them off?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: There were a few steps in that. One of them was just realizing these are the techniques, the things that you can universally do at home. Like when you do, you know, chop and mix vegetables or measure things at home or pre-cook some things at home, those work almost universally across recipes. So the planning phase was really sitting down in blue sky going, okay, camp food to a lot of people is still hotdogs and beans. What else can we do? How do people like to eat? What about some just indulgent beautiful pastas or fresh vegetables or a bit of fruit, you know? And the other thing I wanted to do in kind of conceiving this was most camp cookbooks are only for car campers. They're only if you can carry a lot of weight. I really wanted to make a book that included backpackers because I backpack, paddlers because I paddle, RVs because I have a tiny little rooftop tent on my car that I use all summer. So I wanted it to go across the kind of span of the outdoors community. So the conception part was that. But then, you know, I went backpacking, I went paddling. I took a friend into a Jasper for five days on a backpacking trip and we cooked out there. We carried our food. We literally drew crowds of backpackers around a pot of lentils one day, people just saying, what is that? These people were like bug eyed with hunger. And to go out there and field test this and make sure this works, make sure this makes sense for a trip was a really important part of developing the book.

MG: And again, a lot of this is about taking steps before you leave, before you leave your house, to prep things, to pre-cook some stuff, pack it away, freeze it so that when you get there, you don't have four hours of work to do, but you can present a meal. Again, risotto in a park in the middle of nowhere, that's going to be delicious and kind of stun your audience.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Risotto is one of those great examples. You know, whenever you go to a restaurant and they say, oh, we're going to make the risotto fresh for you, no, they're not. That is a lie. They never do. Risotto is always pre-cooked to 80%. You pre-cook it at home to 80%, you chill it, you put it in a little zip top bag. When you get to camp, you put it in a pot with a bit of water, you stir it for five minutes and you've got a spectacular, I love the words restaurant quality, but it is a restaurant quality risotto. You know, you put vegetables on it, whatever. The paella, you pre-cook the vegetables so you go there and it's easy to do. You know, in other cases, you know, there's a pancake mix I make with buttermilk powder. It's just a basic ingredient. You can get it at any bulk store. You just add water and you have these fluffy, beautiful buttermilk pancakes. If you want French toast, you make the batter at home, you whisk it up, you put it in a little bottle and you freeze it. It's so easy to do once you're there. So there are so many of these tricks that once you understand them, they're completely intuitive. You know, but the other thing that's important in the book is I also list, hey, here's a bunch of foods you can get at the grocery store that are instant, that you don't have to cook, that you should be thinking about because you don't need to make every single thing from scratch. There's a spread on, you know, the cheeses to bring. Canadians, I think most Canadians believe that if you leave a block of cheese on the counter for more than five minutes, you know, and you touch it afterwards, you're going to die immediately. Cheese was developed through millennia to last without refrigeration. Cheese making is a storage technique. So I list, hey, here are the great cheeses you can bring camping that are delicious. A beautiful piece of cheese when you're out in the middle of nowhere is a spectacular thing. So there are so many tricks like that that you pick up, that you learn. And I see them now in people's hands even from last weekend. People are so delighted to be eating great food out in the wild.

MG: Where will you go this summer and what will you cook?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Our big trip will be to Haida Gwaii, which I'm so excited about. It's a five-day paddling trip. The one catch is it's guided. The logistics of paddling off Haida Gwaii are so challenging of getting gear that we went with guiding. There'll be cooking, which will be an exercising kind of restraint…

MG: Restraint.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Restraint for me, but it should be good. But we will do a ton of paddling around Ontario as we always do. You know, we'll be going to the French River off Georgian Bay. And on those trips, we do a ton of cooking. I'm also hoping to sneak in an early fall backpacking trip in B.C.

MG: Nice. As I mentioned, this is great guidance for people and inspiration for people who are going to get out. But if people want somebody else to cook for them and they can afford to go to a restaurant, you have this list of what you say are the 20 best places to eat in this country for Maclean's magazine. What was the single best meal that you had when you were putting this thing together?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Oh, man, there were so many. I love, I love the restaurant Mon Lapin in Montreal. To me, it's the perfect restaurant. It's joyful. The feeling in there is light. The cooking is fresh right from the Jean-Talon market next door. I had some beautiful sliced fluke fish. They preserve tiny little sungold tomatoes every summer, and then they make a jelly out of the brine. So you have these little like yellow diamonds of cold tomato jelly next to the fish. They pour hot brown butter over top. That was pretty spectacular. But, you know, I had some of the best, some of the best Indian cooking I've ever had. I had this spectacular soup at a place called the Fish Man in Richmond, B.C. that was made with a whole B.C. rock fish and pickled cabbage and Sichuan chillies. It's a soup that they put down in front of you and the steam is one of the most intoxicating things you've ever kind of bathed in. We all just sat around that bowl of soup for a good solid minute just thinking, what do we do with this? This is so good. There are so many great restaurants and so many great experiences across Canada. It was a real joy to experience that.

MG: Is a $600 meal better than a $20 dinner of dosa?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Emphatically no.

MG: Okay. Can you explain why that is? Because people will. And there are restaurants that are very expensive here and there are restaurants that are not expensive. One 2 Snacks here in Toronto that I love.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: One of my favourite places.

MG: I'm reluctant to mention any other names because I'll never get into them now because you've written them up. But explain why price doesn't really matter.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Price doesn't matter and price matters. I think most restaurant lists, I don't think most restaurant lists. This is fact. The big fancy restaurant lists generally don't include less expensive places. It's about where is expensive, where's fancy, where's the decor well-appointed, you know, where are the service staff kind of jumping all over to get you what you need? And I think the reality of going out to eat is you can have a spectacular meal at a dosa place at Guru Lukshmi in Mississauga. I think it's one of the toughest reservations in the GTA. Getting in there is really, really tough, but dinner is 20 bucks. One 2 Snacks to this day, and I think this is actually a problem, but bless them, not a single thing in that restaurant cost more than $10. The labour and the love and the skill and the tradition that go into these beautiful plates of noodles and soups there are incredible. I think what unifies great restaurants is a sense of joy, a sense of hospitality, a sense when you're in there that you are somewhere incredibly special and you are experiencing something that is not an everyday thing. And you can find that in very expensive restaurants and there are very expensive restaurants on the list. You can find that in mid-range restaurants and those are disappearing in a lot of places in Canada. You can also find them in very inexpensive places.

MG: The pandemic was not kind to restaurants and restaurateurs, the people who work in them and the people who run these institutions. What did you see coming out of the worst of the pandemic in terms of that scene and a scene that you know really well?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Coming out of the pandemic was about what you would see and also what you wouldn't see. The first thing is a lot of places disappeared. A lot of very good places disappeared. A lot of the mid-range disappeared. The places where you might take your family on a Wednesday night or a Tuesday night when you're home from work, you're too tired to cook, you want something simple that's not going to cost a lot, but you want it to be a nice time. I went out for one of those meals with my family to a place we used to go to and the bill was $170. You don't do that again at that price. So prices have come way up. And for the most part, this isn't gouging. This is the cost of Labour.

MG: Actually paying people for their work.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: Actually paying people. You know, one of the things that I really saw is in a lot of places, and this is by no means across the board, but in a lot of places and especially more expensive places, staff are getting paid a real living wage now. They're working four-day workweeks. They're incredibly hard days, but they're four days now, so they have a weekend. There are benefits, but rents have gone up. Costs of, I mean, anybody who grocery shops know that food is far more expensive. So we lost a lot of restaurants. We also lost a lot of the mid-range, although it's still there, it's still possible. One of the things that I've really noticed and really begun to lean on is the importance of international restaurants, places in the suburbs maybe that have been the mid-range heroes all along. They're still great, they're still there and they are still for the most part affordable. But what I also saw in restaurants was, especially the places that I fell in love with that I listed, was a sense of joy, a sense of relief, a sense of happiness to be back professional restaurant people, whether they work in the kitchens or whether they work out front, this is what they do. You get a real sense of joy, of purpose, and I found that in Spades. It was so beautiful to be in to experience, you know, to eat that food, to be around those people. I think good restaurants today, and there are so many of them in Canada, are so special. I think we all value them more. The one other thing I saw is patrons are generally so much happier to be out. I missed restaurants. I think so many people missed restaurants. So many people missed the experience of being out in a beautiful dining room with happy people, you know, drinking, eating, talking, catching up on the week, making up for lost time. That is such a common feeling right now in restaurant dining rooms. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know how you could ever replace it.

MG: Especially when life is expensive. And I mean, this is not a daily thing or a weekly thing or a monthly thing for many people. When you go to a restaurant, it's a big deal when life is so costly and you want it to mean something. And that joy kind of matters at the heart of it, right?

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: I think I used the word joy about 15 times in my piece because that's really what I went looking for. There are a lot of restaurants, not just in Canada, but around the world where it's all about the chef, it's all about, you know, the hauteur, you know, they're temples to cuisine and all that. I don't care about that anymore. I really don't. I mean, great food is great, but what I really want is a welcome. What I really want is to see in the faces of the staff and the faces of the people behind the stove that they look happy, they look like they're glad to be there. I want to see a great welcome. I want to see a sense of lightness. Eating out is a special occasion. I get to eat out for a living. I think I went to 57 restaurants for this package.

MG: Hard job.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: It's still a special occasion. It's still eating out. You feel like you are a lucky person. I don't do it nearly as often with my family anymore. So yeah, it is a special occasion. And I think the restaurants that work great, the restaurants on this list are places that recognize that, that treat their guests like that and also treat their staff like that, like their staff are doing something vital and important and skilled.

MG: So in the last couple of minutes we have, take us to one of those places and one of those dishes where all of that comes together, where it just lands and that sense of joy is felt the moment you walk through the door or into the parking lot.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: I'm going to take you to Ucluelet. Ucluelet, B.C., it's on the outer West Coast. There's a restaurant called PLUVIO that's run by a couple there. It's a tiny little room. It's in, you know, a surf and fishing and holiday town. You walk in and you expect it to be very, very relaxed, which it is, but, you know, you don't expect anybody to be working too, too hard. I mean, this is where you move to get away from it all. This couple are making everything from scratch from the soy sauce. They're sourcing from all over Vancouver Island. The food is fun. There's just a spirit of playfulness to what they put in front of you. They have a tiny little hot dog they bring you. It's a squid hot dog with this freeze of shallots on top. It's like looking at a children's toy almost. I mean, you see it and you can't help but be happy. And it's so delicious and the staff are so delighted to be serving it. They're in on this great secret, this great, you know, Joy as they bring it. They so clearly love what they do. Being in a place like that to me is such an affirming thing. You get food that you're never going to make at home and you have an experience around other people who are also so delighted, so tickled to be there, so happy with what they see. That to me is an evening beautifully, beautifully spent.

MG: The enthusiasm that you have will make people hungry by default, but hopefully they will take that hunger and maybe cook something from the book or go to one of these places. Chris, thank you as always.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matt.

MG: Chris Nuttall-Smith is a food writer and author. His new book is “Cook It Wild”. If You Are Heading Out into the Wild this summer, camping season just underway, what are you going to make? What do you cook? It can be high, low. What is the favourite thing that you cook over a fire? Let us know. If you have a recipe, even better. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca.

[music]

AM RADIO MAIL

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway. Yesterday on this program, we talked about how some automakers are getting rid of the AM radio in their new cars and what that could mean for the medium. This conversation went down memory lane, but also talked about the utility of AM radio. It prompted a lot of responses from you. And here to help read some of your mail, The Current’s senior producer, Karin Marley. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So this first letter is from Sandra Olson. She writes, “Where I live 150 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, the AM radio is the only signal that is receivable on any and all radios that I own. No FM signals are received in my house or available in my half ton truck. So if the AM bands disappear from airwaves, then the wonders of the world will be silenced. Not all areas of this world can receive the radio bands of FM, and not all people can afford the extra money to buy extra transmissions of advanced technology.”

MG: This next letter is from Helen who writes, “I was just listening to the show this morning as I do every morning.” Thank you, Helen. “I also listen to AM at times at home and in my car. I would be lost without my AM FM radios. I have one in several rooms for news and information or during emergencies. I don't stream. I watch TV on a TV and I only use my cell phone for talking. Traditional radio is a lifeline for me and I don't know what I would do without it.”

KARIN MARLEY: So Pat O'Brien is in Whitehorse and had this memory. “My father gave me a transistor radio in the late 60s with a single earbud. I would fall asleep while running the dial slowly past stations, some too crackly to listen to, but others so clear. The ones that I recall picking up from where we lived in the Ottawa Valley were one in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and occasionally a clear WABC from New York City. I went through a lot of nine volt batteries while cruising the radio waves. Thanks for a bit of nostalgia.”

MG: One of the things we talked about in terms of the utility of AM radio particularly in the car is listening to baseball. Baseball sounds best on the radio and it sounds even better if you happen to be driving around listening to that radio. Fauna Coates agrees. She writes, “Baseball on the radio is a wonderful summary event. My 80-year-old neighbour would have a couple of buddies over and I'd hear them cheering and talking as they listened to the play-by-play. It's almost more intense than watching the game.”

KARIN MARLEY: Our final letter is from a listener named Luke. He writes, “I still listen to AM radio at home and in my car. At times in the Rockies, it is the only radio I can get. Yes, AM Radio is a lifeline. When those cell towers burn, AM still works. AM frequency changes to other points on the dial as I travel in B.C. and Saskatchewan, But I can usually tune in to a station unless I'm in the mountains. AM follows the curve of the earth so it can be heard everywhere. Great for emergencies. FM can only be heard if one is in range. Bad for emergencies. When semis with wi fi pass me the FM cuts out passing electrical substations, FM crackles and pops. Old technology is maybe expensive, but it works and is worth the expense. As a kid travelling in my 68 Beatle, CBC AM was sometimes the only radio I could get. Driving back to Edmonton from skiing and Jasper, scraping the ice from the inside of the windshield during a serious snowstorm on a winding two-lane death highway, I listened to Alan Maitland and The Shepherd. It is one of my cool memories.”

MG: Now we take no credit for this, but we got news early this morning that Ford the automaker has reversed course and has decided that AM Radio will continue in its cars.

KARIN MARLEY: Indeed.

MG: The Current gets action, so we say. Thank you for all of your mail and thank you, Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: You’re welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer here at The Current. If there's anything that you hear on the program that you want to comment on, do get in touch. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Or pull out your phone, record a voice memo on said device and then send it to us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update, put a label on it. Senator Patrick Brazeau wants alcohol to come with more of a warning. In 90 seconds, how his own sobriety is shaping his push for new labelling policies. And in 15 minutes, we'll talk about how a landmark deal on managing the Colorado River could change the vegetables in your refrigerator. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in just a minute. Stick around.

[Music: Theme]

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU

Guest: Senator Patrick Brazeau

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Senator Patrick Brazeau’s struggles with addiction are no secret, from pleading guilty to a cocaine possession charge to a history with alcoholism. But now, three years sober, the senator wants to make sure Canadians know the risks of alcohol and he's using his own story to make the point. A warning before we start this conversation, this conversation will include a discussion of suicide. Senator Brazeau, good morning.

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Good morning, Matt. How are you today?

MG: I'm really well and glad to talk to you about this. You, as I said, have been very public about your struggle with alcohol addiction. So let's start at the beginning. When did you start drinking?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, I started drinking at the age of 15 years old because drinking at that time was essentially all around me, you know, in terms of people, you know, always looking for a reason to drink, to celebrate or not to celebrate. You know, it was severely around me.

MG: When did it become a problem for you?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, actually, it started getting really serious when in fact, I was suspended without pay from the Senate about a decade ago because I went through three really difficult years, difficult time period in my life at that time. And, you know, certainly, I hit the bottle and I hit the bottle quite hard. And during that time period, I tried to commit suicide on two different occasions. And so it was after the second suicide attempt that I woke up from a coma that I decided to sort of get my act together. And so I started doing my own personal research with respect to alcohol and the negative impacts of alcohol. And I found myself to be in the 75% of Canadians that are not aware that even a small consumption of alcohol could lead to at least seven known different types of fatal cancers. And so by introducing this bill, this is my way to try and give back given my experiences so that people could have more health information to make more informed decisions going forward.

MG: People drink for all sorts of reasons, and I want to talk about the bill. But when you were in those moments drinking, what did alcohol do for you?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, first of all, and I'm just speaking for myself, myself only. But in terms of alcohol, I thought that alcohol was the solution to everything that I was going through at that time and the emotions that I was feeling. And so having said that, now that I know a lot better and in retrospect, you know, I was drinking so much because I was hurting inside. I didn't know. I was ashamed to get help. I was ashamed even to tell my own family that I needed help. And that shame led me to drinking even more and like I said, led me to two suicide attempts. But in fact, I was just trying to kill the pain with alcohol. And so when I decided to quit alcohol in March of 2020, you know, just slowly, things just started improving in every facet of my life. And so it's been a tough struggle. You know, it's a struggle, daily struggle, but I'm committed to winning this battle. And I'm just trying to use the platform and my position that I have currently to try and educate Canadians as much as I can on the negative impacts of this poison.

MG: Can you talk about the decision to speak as openly as you do about what you have gone through? Whether it's the suicide attempts or whether it's a struggle with alcohol, that's a difficult thing to talk, especially in a very public position, to talk as openly as you do. And I just wonder why that's important for you.

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, I'm not quite sure. I’ve reflected on that quite a bit. I think perhaps the answer to that is because my life has been quite public ever since, ever since I was named to the Senate 14 years ago. But just looking at my own struggles and my own successes in the last couple of years, I think that perhaps this is self-serving, but perhaps I would have wanted sort of a role model like that to try and help me or to try and assist me when I was having problems. And so I know that me coming out and sharing my story, even though all stories are different, but I know that by sharing my story, it certainly will help a lot of people. And, you know, hopefully there's a lot of people who are going to start questioning maybe, you know, their own drinking patterns and start putting emphasis on this causal link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Because, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel here with the introduction of this bill. We went through this fight with tobacco companies, which the fight lasted 20, 25 years. And so, you know, we have tobacco in Canada, a carcinogen, we have marijuana, we have vaping products, and all of those come with warning labels. And so it's time that we start having a frank and honest discussion about the negative impacts of alcohol because alcohol should not get a free pass into not having any labels, absolutely no information on a product that has been labelled a carcinogen since 1988.

MG: And so what would you want, the bill is Bill 254. What would you want it to do?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, essentially, the bill would tell us exactly what constitutes a standard drink. That's number one. Number two is how many drinks come in a bottle or in a can, because we hear a lot of the alcohol industry telling us to drink responsibly. But how can individuals and Canadian consumers drink responsibly when they don't even know how many numbers of standard drinks are in a container that they have? And the last thing essentially is to have a clear label about the causal link between alcohol consumption and, you know, a minimum of seven known types of fatal cancers. And so we know that this is happening in Ireland. And, you know, the minister signed off on the labelling, so there will be labelling in Ireland of all places. And so, you know, if given the fact that the alcohol industry since 1988 has done absolutely nothing to share this health information about cancer and their product to their consumers. And so I have introduced this bill with the hope that the Government of Canada will take this bill and force the hand of the alcohol industry to providing these labels because Canadian consumers have a right to know this health information, but unfortunately, they are being left in the dark about it.

MG: You met with Carolyn Bennett, the minister of mental health and addictions, about this bill. What was her reaction to what you are proposing?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, look, this bill, you know, obviously, this bill is a nonpartisan bill and, you know, I'm an independent, fully independent senator. And so, you know, the partisanship is out of this. But yes, I did meet with Minister Bennett who is the minister of mental health and addictions, and she talked more about, you know, the fact that perhaps it's time for Canadians to look at their relationship with alcohol. And I just said, well, that's unfortunate that the minister would say such a thing because, you know, it took me almost 35 years of my life to think about my relationship with alcohol before I started to do something about it. And so I'm not confident that this current government, at least now, is interested in this bill. I think there's a lot of pushback from the alcohol industry. I think that the alcohol industry is one of the most powerful lobbies probably in the world.

MG: But you've been lobbied by them as well, right?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, I mean, they have tried to lobby me, but I have not met with them. And I will not meet with any of them until this bill gets to a Senate committee where real actual experts will come before this committee and provide information, facts and data for the benefit of all Canadians, because the alcohol industry and lobby in this country are not the experts in terms of policies with respect to alcohol.

MG: Canadians have, I mean, you've hinted at this, a relationship with alcohol, if I can put it that way. And I mentioned that because there were guidelines that came out earlier this year saying that no amount of alcohol is safe, that even moderate drinking can lead to an increased risk of health issues, including the cancers that you've mentioned. And there was, we talked about it on this program, there was a really strong pushback from people saying, come on, a drink or a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of beers is not going to tip me over the edge. What would you say to those people who aren't part of the lobby, they're not part of the government, but they pushed back on that idea that no drinking is safe?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, look, this is not a nanny state and this is not about prohibition. In fact, I'm a fervent believer for Canadian rights to decide what they want to ingest and put in their bodies. People have the right to consume what they wish. But at the same time, Canadian consumers also have the right to know really important health information that could impact their lives. And so let's not forget, there's a lot of people who, you know, when labelling for cigarette packaging came out and when that debate started, there was a lot of people who were the naysayers saying that the labelling wouldn't make a difference, but that is in fact wrong. You know, there were labels on alcohol bottles in the Yukon in 2018. There was a pilot project that had started there and after one month, so after 30 days, sales went down by almost 7%. But because of the pressure from the alcohol industry, that pilot project was pulled after one month. And so I could understand the alcohol lobby and I could understand the alcohol industry not wanting to have the word cancer on their products because it's going to lead to a serious reduction in sales, but we are talking about just providing the basic health information like we did on cigarette packaging with respect to alcohol because it is a carcinogen. It does cause at least seven known types of fatal cancers. We know that 80% of Canadians consume alcohol and that's okay. But the problem is that out of the 80, out of all of Canada, there's only 25% of Canadians that know that there's a causal link between alcohol consumption and cancer. And we need to get that number up.

MG: Just before I let you go, you've been sober for three years.

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: I've been sober since March 29th of 2020. Yes.

MG: Congratulations. How is your life different now?

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, you know, like most people who have decided to make the decision to quit drinking, it's probably the best decision that I've made in my life, not just for myself, but for all of those around me and even for those who, you know, I do not necessarily know. They're not necessarily family members, but, you know, colleagues of mine. Like it has just enriched my life in just so many ways because I for myself abused alcohol. I had problems with it. It led me to two suicide attempts because if alcohol wouldn't have been in the mix, there is absolutely no way in hell that I would have had tried to attempt to kill myself on two occasions. And so obviously, alcohol is not just to blame, but if I would have been able to take alcohol out of the formula, there's absolutely no way that I would have tried to commit suicide.

MG: Senator Brazeau, I'm glad to talk to you and glad you're doing well. Thank you very much.

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Well, thank you for taking the time to speak about an issue that is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea.

MG: All the best.

SENATOR PATRICK BRAZEAU: Thank you, sir.

MG: Senator Patrick Brazeau has introduced a bill that would put health labels on alcohol. We reached him in Montreal. If you need to talk to somebody about suicidal thoughts, help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through Talk Suicide Canada. Their number is 1-833-456-4566.

[music]

COLORADO RIVER

Guests: Mark Schlosberg, Evan Fraser

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

SOUNDCLIP

CRAIG ALAMEDA: This is the canal that we're all sharing. This is the whole thing that is going to have to decide on who gets what this water is right here. This is the heart of the whole deal.

MG: Craig Alameda is a farmer in Arizona, a desert area that relies on a dwindling supply from the Colorado River.

SOUNDCLIP

CRAIG ALAMEDA: When we first got here, the river was overflowing and it was they had way too much water. And that's 30 some 35 years ago. And everybody's been just taking it and taking it for granted, basically, and now the rooster’s come home to roost.

MG: The Rooster’s come home to roost. On Monday, Arizona, California and Nevada reached a landmark deal to help keep the Colorado River from going dry. The shrinking river provides drinking water for millions of people and also critical crop irrigation. Now, those states have agreed to draw less water from the river. And with the deal, changes might be coming to your grocery store and to your refrigerator. Mark Schlosberg is National Organizing Director of Food and Water Watch. He's in Berkeley, California. Mark, good morning.

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Hi, good morning.

MG: Just briefly, just run us through this Colorado River deal. What has been agreed upon?

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Yeah. So a lot of the details are still to be determined by the states and the federal government’s still reviewing it. So a lot of things still need to be, I think, cleared up. But basically, there's two parts of the Colorado River. There's the upper basin and the lower basin. And the lower basin states, three states basically agreed to cut their water use by a three million acre feet between now and 2026 when things would need to be renegotiated. This is much less than the Biden administration had previously said needed to be cut, which was going to be two to four million acre feet per year. So it's about a third less than that. And this whole issue is being talked about because the Colorado River, as your intro clip noted, has been overused. It's a very impacted river. The levels of the dams that are along the Colorado River have been rapidly falling. And the federal government basically stepped in and said, we're going to open all this up and we're going to look at, we're going to do an impact analysis of the whole river and the whole agreement if there's no voluntary agreement reached. So these states reached this temporary voluntary agreement. To us, this really kind of, you know, in a way kicked the can down the road. We know with climate change and how things have been happening over, you know, over the last years and what scientists say is going to happen in the future, we're going to be facing more drier and drier conditions in the West, punctuated by, you know, some extreme precipitation like with what we've had in California this year. So the current way water is being used in the West is not sustainable. The river is going to continue to be impacted. And so, you know, this is, you know, an agreement that basically forestalled a larger conversation that really does need to happen about how we're using water in the West and how we can sustainably grow food, have cities, have everybody have access to clean water, you know, kind of moving forward with climate change.

MG: Let's talk about growing food. This is one specific issue that will impact people here far away from the Colorado River in the Arizona desert. I've read something like 80% of the water drawn goes towards agriculture. Is that correct?

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Yeah, 80%, about 80% goes towards agriculture from the Colorado River. And that's kind of consistent with the overall water use in some of these states, some it's even more. And of that 80%, I believe about 80% is used for alfalfa, which is largely feedstock for cattle, for dairies and in cattle. So that's where the bulk of the water goes. You know, these big mega dairies are not, you know, they're not like little family farm operations. You know, they're, you know, upwards of thousands of cows on, you know, one operation that is a big driver of pollution, you know, methane, you know, water pollution, etc., and uses a tremendous amount of water.

MG: So if you're looking at alfalfa, there's also, you know, water intensive crops like almonds.

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Mm hmm. Absolutely.

MG: Is the solution, and part of this is about trying to figure out, you know, what happens if you just kick that can down the road. Is the solution from your perspective going to be to stop producing these sorts of products in these sorts of areas?

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Well, we need to be producing at least much less of them in these areas. Here's an example. California, and California has many water sources besides the Colorado River, but just as an example, California's been in a 20-year dry period like much of the West. The last time we had a big water year was 2017. Between 2017 and 2021, we massively expanded the amount of acreage that we've been growing peanuts, almonds and pistachios. And if you just took the amount of water that was used for just that expanded nut production over that four year period, that's enough water to provide for 80% of Californians’ daily needs for a year. So it's a huge amount of water for just the expansion. We need to stop expanding these industries and then we need to look at where they are. And, you know, we shouldn't be growing almonds and pistachios, for example, in the, you know, salty selenium soil of the western part of the San Joaquin Valley. That makes no sense. So we need to really look at these things. And when the Colorado River debate is covered in the national media here, it's largely looked at as a dispute between the states, who's going to be trading off against who. And what we need to do is look at the region and look at how are we using this water and how can we manage it in a sustainable way so that we can grow enough food for everybody, which we're doing and we can have water for people and the environment.

MG: Mark, thank you for the primer on this. We're going to talk more about how this will impact us here, as I say, far away from the Colorado River. Thank you very much.

MARK SCHLOSBERG: Sure, no problem.

MG: Mark Schlosberg is director of public affairs for Food and Water Watch. We reached him in Berkeley, California. As we mentioned, the impacts on our food could be felt way beyond the Colorado River region. Evan Fraser is director of the Arrell Food Institute, professor of geography at the University of Guelph. Evan, good morning to you.

EVAN FRASER: Hi, thanks for calling.

MG: How much of the food in this country comes out of the Southwest in the United States, this area where water is scarce and hard to come by?

EVAN FRASER: Yeah, that's a super question. You know, in terms of fruits and vegetables, almost all of the stuff we eat comes out of that area. So grains, livestock products, Dairy, Canada's self-sufficient. We’re an exporter of those sort of products. But in terms of fruits and vegetables, something like 70 or 80%, depends on the time of the year, depends on the vegetable or the fruit, come from the southwestern U.S.

MG: What specifically are we talking…

EVAN FRASER: Something like 250,000 tons. Oh, sorry.

MG: I was just going to say, what specifically are we talking about when it comes to fruits and vegetables?

EVAN FRASER: Yeah, exactly. Strawberries, lettuce, 250,000 tons a year of lettuce are shipped into Canada from California I believe every year. Salad and the parts of our diet that are healthy, like we're supposed to eat more of these things, yet we are so dependent on the trade flows from one small part of the continent to meet that demand.

MG: So when you hear how states are looking to reduce their water use from a river that is drying up, but also calls from people like Mark to think differently about what's actually grown, that, you know, the amount of water that is required to produce, you know, the almonds that are on a dish on my desk right now or the pistachios that people might enjoy or the other water intensive products, what kind of impact could that have here in this country, do you think?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I think the short term is they will take land out of producing alfalfa, like your previous speaker said, and there will be more expensive livestock feed for the dairy farmers in California. So that's not going to directly impact us. In the medium term, we're talking about another factor that's pushing the price of food and in particular healthy food up. And we've in the last year seen major shortages in green leafy vegetables and lettuce from California because of the drought last summer. I think we're going to find ourselves as Canadians in a chronic cycle of disrupted supply chains and more expensive healthy food unless we take proactive measures to sort of diversify where we get our salad from.

MG: Diversify because I mean, this is largely one state that we're talking about here. And we've been discussing what's going on in Arizona, but Arizona is second in many ways to California in terms of it being, you know, they talk about the salad basket for Canada.

EVAN FRASER: Sure. I mean, we're talking about the Southwestern USA. And from a Canadian perspective, it's what we're really interested in focusing on because this is where our fruits and vegetables come from and our nut crops come from is, as you just said, Arizona and California. And you think about that, you know, our entire country depends on a very small geographic area for, and again, I want to double down on this, for the parts of our diet which we're supposed to eat more of because this is the fruits and vegetables that constitute a major part of a healthy diet.

MG: So what does that mean then, diversifying? What should we do here in Canada to limit our dependence on produce from states that don't have enough water?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I think there's some good news here. And if anything, the situation of this mega drought, and many meteorologists are calling this the beginning of a mega drought, this mega drought in the southwestern USA should spur action in terms of technological innovation here at home. And there's like three things that I think we should be thinking about bringing our ability to produce fruits and vegetables and store fruits and vegetables home to Canada. And so one is helping field farmers say in the Niagara region, the Okanagan or the Fraser Valley, the Willoughby Marshe, the places in this country that do fruits and vegetables well. We need to be giving farmers the tools to extend their growing season into the shoulder season. So that could be like hoop houses or better irrigation or frost tolerant lettuce cultivars, things like that that would allow our current farmers to farm over more of the growing season. Second big point would be what's called controlled environment agriculture, which could be like a greenhouse or a vertical farm where you actually start farming more indoors with controlled environment. We've got greenhouse farmers around Lake Erie, Leamington area, which are now doing, and this is brand new in the last couple of years, now doing like strawberries 11 months of the year. So that's a mixture of breeding new plants that produce year round, as well as giving farmers the ability to control temperature and moisture and things like that in greenhouses. And then the final thing is we need to be doing more in terms of storage and processing. Jam factories, you know, fancy ways of keeping food from going, keeping fruits and vegetables from going bad. We can do a lot better job of storing the products that we've got so that they don't go bad as fast. And between those three things, we'll see, I hope, a renaissance of fruit and vegetable production and processing here in Canada that will really provide a buffer for the Canadian consumer against what's going on in the southwestern U.S.

MG: I guess, I mean, we're almost out of time, but can you actually replace what's coming from the southwest or at the very least, at the cost that we are used to paying for those fruits and vegetables that to your point, we are told we should be eating more of?

EVAN FRASER: So the short answer is not yet, but soon, I hope. And I guess my point here is 10 years ago, we didn't really have, or 20 years ago, we didn't really have much of a greenhouse industry in Ontario. Now we've got tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers year round in grocery stores at a pretty affordable cost. We have to extend that trajectory out to other crops. And the way I'm seeing the technology developing, I'm guessing within five years, we will see a lot more crops being produced locally.

MG: Because we're going to be forced to because of what's happening. I mean, they may not even sell if it's that much more expensive or being produced not at that scale. They may not even want to export it to here.

EVAN FRASER: It's a push and a pull. The push, we're being pushed into it because of what's happening in California and we're being pulled into the opportunity because of new technologies.

MG: Evan, we'll leave it there. A lot of people perhaps looking in the refrigerator wondering what might be there in months or years to come. Thank you very much.

EVAN FRASER: Thank you. Appreciate the call.

MG: Evan Fraser is director of the Arrell Food Institute, professor of geography at the University of Guelph. That is The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

Wednesday May 24, 2023 Episode Transcript

Social Sharing