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The Current Transcript for April 19, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: The federal government will cover all costs and coordinate getting any extra staff from other provinces to the front lines in Ontario, including providing air transportation.

MATT GALLOWAY: Things are not good in Canada's most populous province. Cases are through the roof. On Friday, the government brought in new regulations that its own science table said missed the mark on what's actually necessary to tame a third wave. And the federal government and other jurisdictions are now offering help. In a moment, how things went so wrong in Ontario and why the rest of the country needs to be paying attention.

MG: In the midst of all of this. The finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, will deliver her first budget today.

VOICE: Canada's fiscal situation has deteriorated a lot because of the pandemic, shrinking government revenues and increasing government spending.

MG: In 30 minutes, our national affairs panel on what's at stake when it comes to how your money is spent. Plus, the incredible untold story of the young Jewish women who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto almost 80 years ago. We begin, though, with a health system on the brink. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Third wave of COVID-19 battering Ontario, and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc on how Ottawa plans to help

Guests: Robert Benzie, Dr. Tasleem Nimjee, Dr. Ann Collins

DOUG FORD: The reality is there are few options left. We've implemented the strictest measures in all of North America, but we've never shied away from doing what's necessary. And as you're premier, it falls on me to make the difficult choices.

MG: Canada's most populous province is in a dire situation as new modelling shows the potential for more than 10000 cases per day by the end of next month. The province announced new strict lockdown measures on Friday. An emergency brake, that critics say, is more like pushing the panic button. And yesterday, Ottawa said it would get involved.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: At the prime minister's request. I convened a Saturday meeting of the covid-19 Cabinet committee. Along with colleagues, we discussed the ways in which we can provide additional emergency support to the people and to the province of Ontario.

MG: That's Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. He announced the federal government would pay to move health care workers to Ontario and could use military aircraft to do so. We'll hear more from the minister in 30 minutes. Before that, though, Rob Benzie, Queen's Park bureau chief for the Toronto Star, joins me.

MG: Rob, good morning.

ROB BENZIE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Let's start with these new restrictions that came in over the weekend. It was quite a weekend in Ontario. What has changed since Friday?

RB: Well, I mean, it's been a topsy turvy world in Ontario, Matt. I mean, on Friday, Premier Doug Ford at a much delayed announcement, it was supposed to be 2:30, then 3:30. Then finally at four o'clock on Friday afternoon, they announced new policing powers. They announced closures of playgrounds, golf courses, tennis courts and a bunch of other measures, workplace inspections and so on, designed to curb the spread because that same day, they've had terrible modelling that showed, you know, thousands more cases a day. They'd also set a record, a single day record, 4800 cases earlier in the day. So there was a lot of panic, I guess, at Queen's Park. And so they announced these measures. And then on Saturday morning, they wake up and they have 30 police departments in Ontario saying they're not going to enforce these random stops of motorists who are driving around and threatening them with $750 dollar tickets if they don't say why they're out and about. They also found parents saying, well, wait a minute, what do you mean the playgrounds are closed? I was walking around Toronto on Saturday, Matt and saw kids on swings and their parents, you know, watching them carefully, not they weren't worried about flouting the law. So later on Saturday, Premier Ford had to clarify that they're going to be amending or they did amend the policing stuff and opened playgrounds. But golf courses, tennis courts and soccer fields are still closed.

MG: What does it tell you? That the government announced this and then 24 hours later has to retreat?

RB: That there's a lot of panic and that there's a lot of confusion and frankly, they missed the mark, I think, on Friday there are a few things that the government could do that they've chosen not to do. And I'm not really sure why. And one of them is a provincial paid sick leave program. This is something the science advisers have asked for, the medical officer of health has asked for it. There is a federal program that pays $500 dollars a week for sick pay, but it's complicated and they actually take 50 dollars off for tax. So it's only 450 dollars after tax. And it's just not a well-designed program particularly. And for whatever reason, the provincial Tories have resisted a provincial paid sick leave program that would be simpler to access than the federal one.

MG: When you say for whatever reason, I mean what? Help me understand that. Just briefly, what's the opposition to this? This has been explicitly called for by doctors on the front lines, but also by the government's own science advisers.

RB: It's I don't know if it's ideological, Matt. I mean, remember in 2018, when the Tories were elected, they cancelled the previous Liberal governments two days of paid sick leave that was guaranteed. Their argument is businesses can't afford it. And, you know, this is pre-pandemic. They would say this and post-pandemic they're saying or during the pandemic, they're saying businesses are facing enough of a burden. But this is not a government that's particularly fiscally conservative. They're spending billions more, tens of billions more than they're taking in running huge deficits. So it's not clear to me why they haven't just said, look, we're going to have a temporary pandemic, provincial pandemic, sick pay program that will be paid for not by business, but by the government. I mean, they're spending money like it's just been invented anyway, Matt. I don't know why they haven't capitulated on this fact. And they still might because there's so much pressure. And we know that workplaces are where this is spreading, specifically factories, warehouses and places like that, where meatpacking plants and so on, where people work in close quarters and they may not be able to take a day off without pay.

MG: How did Ontario get to this point? There was a decline in cases during the provinces last stay at home order in January. What has changed since then?

RB: I think they took their eye off the ball because I think... some context is important, Matt. I mean, Ontario had, you know, we've had 7,700 Ontarians have died from covid-19, but Quebec has had 40 percent more deaths, even though they have 3/5 of Ontario's population. Manitoba on the other side of Ontario has a greater death rate per capita than Ontario, over covid-19. So there is some context that's important. Michigan and New York, our other neighbours are also in far worse shape. However, for whatever reason, the Tories in, I guess, January and February really started to take their foot off the gas and the science table and other advisers were saying, look, we've got to keep these things closed down. There was a lot of pressure on Premier Ford from businesses and others, including folks in his own cabinet and caucus, to say, look, we've overreacted. We need to start opening things up. Businesses are hurting. So there's this kind of pressure from within. So but the problem is by lifting the foot off the gas, they've undermined the relative success they had over the last year or so. So it's really... we are in a terrible situation right now and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But there are some good signs on the horizon. One is that they lowered the threshold for AstraZeneca from 55 to 40 as of tomorrow. So that's going to get a lot more shots in arms. But we know from the scientists and the doctors that we can't vaccinate ourselves out of this problem. We really do just have to stay home. Schools are you know, and I say this as a parent, you're a parent. We know our kids are going to be learning from home for many, many more weeks, unfortunately.

MG: So, I mean, just before I let you go, we have about 30 seconds left. I mean, how much has Doug Ford's government lost the trust of the public in the way that it's handled this pandemic? Should they be worried, an election is a year away.

RB: Elections are a year away and that's a lifetime away. But they should be worried in the sense that they have undone or undermined whatever good stuff they did in the last year. And they've had their challenges for sure, in long term care and other places. But by and large, Ford has listened to the doctors and the scientists for the most part, unfortunately, since February. That seems to have changed somewhat. And I think they have... I spoke to some senior Tories on the weekend who were saying that they've never seen such a negative reaction to a government announcement before. And that was what happened Friday. And then we saw the capitulation, the U-turn, the flip flop Saturday. So they should be glad, probably that we're not having an election for more than a year in Ontario.

MG: Rob, good to speak with you, as always. Thank you.

RB: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Rob Benzie Queen's Park bureau chief for the Toronto Star. We did request to speak with the premier, Doug Ford, and several members of his cabinet. We did not hear back.

MG: One of the main reasons for the new restrictions in Ontario is that ICU numbers continue to climb. Late last week, the premier announced a plea for other provinces to send health care workers to help with Ontario's situation. Dr. Tasleem Nimjee understands why. She is an E.R. physician at Humber River Hospital in Toronto.

MG: Doctor, good morning to you.

TASLEEM NIMJEE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: You've been working in the hospital all weekend. What did you see?

TN: You know, we're certainly seeing higher and higher numbers of admissions and that's, you know, to our hospital wards and to our ICU, unfortunately. And as you know Humber River hospital is in the northwest of Toronto and the cluster of hospitals in that area and in the adjacent area, in the Peel region is really seeing increased numbers of patients coming in that are a really high acuity, really sick.

MG: How sick are they?

TN: You know, so if I can give you some examples, we admitted 20 patients with covid on Friday and close to that number again on Saturday. And I'll have yesterday night's numbers soon so you can imagine how quickly you know, at that rate, how quickly you're putting patients into beds and some of those patients go direct to ICU. So these are patients that come in in respiratory distress. These are patients that have really low levels of oxygen and require intubation or high flow, nasal oxygen, as we call it. And then we have other patients that we admit to the wards that are oxygen dependent. And we see that these patients deteriorate very quickly, again, requiring ICU care. And this is a system that's already so strained in terms of health human resources. So we have to keep that context in mind.

MG: Who are you seeing? I mean, if you were to paint a picture of who is being admitted, you know, what are they doing for a living? Where are they catching this virus?

TN: Yeah. So this is so interesting. Right? And this is why you saw such a reaction to the restrictions and to the announcements from government on Friday, because there were no measures targeted to the people that we're actually admitting to our hospital. And so when you look at... When I think of, you know, my last shift in the emergency department, you know, I think of the case that, you know, really was sort of the hardest one is an eight year old child who's covid positive, as are both of his parents. And his parents are being admitted to the hospital because both of them are now oxygen dependent. And I'm working with, you know, Children's Aid Society to place this child because there's no family. So you can imagine the strain on these families. Another mother who's being admitted, also needing oxygen so cannot manage at home, who has a 15 year old and a nine year old, doesn't have a husband and is wondering who's going to care for her children. And they live in a small apartment where any family that she has that's extended family that may be able to offer to come into the home and help is putting themselves at risk. And these patients that we're seeing are young and these patients that we're seeing are primarily all essential workers. Yeah. And so we didn't see measures targeted to protect this vulnerable population. And I think that's why you saw such a strong reaction from the medical community.

MG: I was going to say what's missing? In the announcements that were made on Friday in terms of what the government was going to do with these case counts that are exploding. What was missing in that announcement that would protect the people that you're seeing in your emergency department?

TN: So all this time, you know, it's so interesting. So I sit on the GTIMS committee and I'm part of the group that's helping with hospital transfers to sort of load balance and ensure patients are at a hospital where we have resources. And so this is such a downstream measure. Right. And we look at upstream measures to actually stop or prevent these people from getting sick and being admitted to hospital. And that's where we wanted targeted measures. And so, first of all, you know, you've heard repeatedly the argument for paid sick time. And I think what's really missing is, is you've got to understand for these people, for an essential worker, for people that are dealing with, you know, really harsh economic realities for their family, it's very hard to not go into work when you have to feed your family. And to not have paid sick time really doesn't allow protection for these workers. We also haven't seen protected time for them to be able to go get a vaccination. Right. And so that's another issue. And we've not been able to target... You saw the modelling that came out was comparing even rates of vaccination and how that really shifts the curve that we're looking at. And we've been arguing to say that this vaccination rollout needs to be targeted to the right population in these high risk neighbourhoods.

MG: In the meantime, there are calls for help from other provinces and jurisdictions to help you on those front lines. What do you need the most right now?

TN: Right now that the real limited resource that we have is our ICU. And so what you're seeing every hospital doing is looking at how they can... We've been using stretch models for months and months. So this is where you have nurses that aren't traditionally ICU nurses that are trying to support an ICU nurse to be able to provide care. You now have physicians that are doing this kind of work, especially with the directive that came out to stop surgeries. So we're now just doing emergency surgeries. So those physicians are saying, OK, you know, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and I'm going to dive in and I'm going to help these nurses. And so now the call out to other provinces really is to get support for the ICU, ICU physicians, ICU nurses, and then that will also spill over into support on our medical wards, which are also at capacity and then ultimately down towards the emergency department where people are actually entering into the hospital system.

MG: Just before I let you go, you've been through a lot, and it's been a hard year and certainly a hard weekend. What are you most concerned about in the weeks ahead?

TN: You know, I'm concerned for our patients, I'm concerned for a system that is already so stretched and how are we going to manage? And I'm concerned for my colleagues who are digging deep and have been doing so for a year and really need to have resolve and solidarity. And we've done a tremendous job at that. So, you know, really, I think that's an important point. The collaboration has been tremendous, but the weeks ahead are going to be very, very difficult. Very.

MG: Dr. Nimjee, take care of yourself and I really appreciate speaking with you this morning. Thank you.

TN: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Dr. Taleem Nimjee is an E.R. physician at Humber River Hospital in Toronto. The Canadian Medical Association is also calling for the deployment of resources to where they are most needed. Dr. Ann Collins is the president of the CMA.

MG: Doctor, good morning to you.

ANN COLLINS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What needs to be done now to help doctors like Dr. Nimjee in the emergency department?

AC: I think she has spoken to that very clearly. And so what we did on Friday was also made a call out to have a national approach to this critical emergency that we're seeing primarily right now in Ontario. But we need to have collaboration between all levels of government to encourage and support provinces to look at what they can do in this situation and then facilitate delivering that to those areas of most need, which right now is in Ontario.

MG: When you say a national approach, what do you mean by that? Because as you well know, health care is funded federally, but it is the provinces and territories that are responsible for the health care systems in those communities. So what does a national approach mean?

AC: Well, I think it's always easy to say that when we're talking about the day to day and we haven't been talking day to day now for over a year. So it's to look at what's available with respect to provincial resources, but to eliminate those boundaries, bring those resources together and to have the federal government do what it can to marshal those resources and get them to those critical areas of need.

MG: So just to be clear, does that mean overriding those jurisdictional barriers to make sure that, you know, you can put the resources where they're needed most?

AC: At this point in time we're quite confident that if we see what we saw to some extent on the weekend, if we see a collaborative and coordinated approach between all levels of government, that there will be assistance delivered to those areas. And we need to also remind ourselves that it's happening in Ontario right now. But we're hearing about great concern from our members, those physicians in other provinces, Quebec, B.C., Manitoba and Alberta as well.

MG: How likely is it that in the midst of a pandemic, as you say, this isn't just in Ontario, across the country, in many jurisdictions, cases are rising. How likely is it that healthcare workers would drop everything and go to help fight the situation in Ontario?

AC: Well, there is some encouragement being offered by what we've seen with Newfoundland's response over the last few days about at least looking to see what they have available, either by way of human resources, staff, equipment. And so it's a question of at least looking to see if there is availability. In no way should any jurisdiction put itself at further risk. And yes, they must meet the demands of their population. But if there is capacity there, let's take it and share it like we do with other disasters in this country.

MG: I was just going to say, how do you go about freeing up those health care workers who would be responsible for that?

AC: Again, I think it's important within those provinces to look and see what capacity they have. And then if there's a need for transportation, for housing, for licencing, that has to be looked at a different level. But it's to at least take this approach to start thinking this way, because this can happen in many parts of the country.

MG: What about vaccines? There has been an argument that vaccines should be diverted from perhaps areas where they are not as urgently needed. And again, that's a relative kind of idea, perhaps to where the cases are the highest and where the case counts are the highest. Is that something that you would support?

AC: So no question that the vaccines need to be targeted to those essential care or to those essential workers. What we are suggesting is that perhaps the National Advisory Committee on Immunisation look at how the prioritisation process is right now and apply a different lens to it, given these variants of concern and an equity lens so that vaccines, as we get more supply, are directed to those high need areas where we need to have mass clinics and get those essential workers and their families protected.

MG: You're in New Brunswick. How would you convince reluctant premiers and you know, the residents in those provinces who say that their province shouldn't be punished for doing everything right and keeping the virus at bay?

AC: Well, certainly we have heard that and there has been, even in New Brunswick, some consideration given to this idea. But I think what's most important here is that as a go forward, not with what's on the ground, not what's in the fridges now, but as we procure more vaccines and as they are distributed nationally, we look at ways to target that distribution to those highly vulnerable areas that have already experienced the inequities of this pandemic to a great extent.

MG: Dr. Collins, good to speak with you this morning. Thank you for your time.

AC: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Doctor Ann Collins, president of the Canadian Medical Association. She is in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Well, coming up after your CBC News:

VOICE: The amount of borrowing that we're going to be doing is actually larger as a share of our economy than at any point in Canadian history. With the exception of World War II.

MG: It's budget day. We'll dive into the dollars and cents in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

What Canadians can expect from the federal budget

Guest: Dominic LeBlanc, Vassy Kapelos, Heather Scoffeild

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Montreal author, Judy Batalion is putting the focus on female resistance fighters who have been so often overlooked. But first, it's been two years since Canadians were shown a federal budget, and that is about to change.

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MG: Yesterday, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc detailed what Ottawa is doing to help Ontario weather the worst covid crisis in Canada. We heard a little bit about that earlier in the programme. Dominic LeBlanc joins me now. Minister, good morning.

DOMINIC LEBLANC: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What specifically are you offering Ontario?

DL: So the first thing we did, I convened a meeting of the cabinet, federal cabinet, covid committee on Saturday. We received an update on what potential federal health, human resources we would have to offer to Ontario. If you think of big departments like Immigration, Veterans Affairs, the Correctional Service of Canada, there are doctors and nurses and other medical professionals that work in the federal bureaucracy. So we're doing an immediate inventory of who would be available that could help with either some of the respite necessary for the frontline workers in Ontario or some of the gaps that the province had identified. Over the weekend the prime minister and I also spoke with premiers from Atlantic Canada and the Northern Territories because they obviously have health care professionals that may be able to volunteer to help out in Ontario. And I told them, as did the prime minister, that the government of Canada would cover all of the costs. But we would also use military aircraft, for example, to pick them up and move them to Ontario and then return them home and so on.

MG: When would that help actually get to the province?

DL: We're hoping... I spoke with premier Furey of Newfoundland and Labrador a few minutes ago. He's hoping in the next day or so to have at least the first contingent from his province. As an example. I'm going to talk to the other Atlantic premiers over the next day or so. So we're hoping by the middle of the week, the first groups might be able to arrive and the same thing from the federal government side. And some of these people may already be in Ontario. There are large federal correctional facilities in Ontario, and departments like Immigration and National Defence obviously have a footprint in the province, but we'll move people from other parts of the country as well. If it's helpful.

MG: The doctors and scientists who advise the premier, Doug Ford have said that this is the situation that the province’s in right now was coming. The modelling showed this for months. There are a lot of Ontarians who are angry at their provincial government. How much of the blame for what's happening right now, do you think can be laid at the feet of the government for the situation?

DL: We've seen across the country Matt, provincial governments make difficult decisions right from the beginning of the pandemic. If we're in the third wave now, obviously in the first part of the pandemic and again in Christmas and early in the new year during the second wave. Different governments have had to make different decisions. We think the role of the government of Canada is not to point fingers or assign blame, but to really say to provincial authorities right across the country. And that's what we've tried to do. What specifically can we do to help? What are the gaps? Are there things that the government of Canada can do? And the other thing that we've tried to do, Matt, is focus very directly on the economic supports to businesses, but directly to Canadians, so that provincial authorities would be able to make some of the difficult decisions around things like lockdowns, around ending non-essential work. We've put in place a series of measures that, in fact, become more generous as your business may be affected by a provincial lockdown decision precisely to try and remove some of the pressure on provincial governments to understandably ensure that there are the proper economic supports for Canadians.

MG: Those same doctors have called very loudly and for months for paid sick leave that this would better support the workers who are deemed to be essential, that are working indoors in the place where this virus is spreading. It would allow them to take time off and as I say, it would better protect them. The Ontario government has said that this is a federal responsibility. So there is some sort of disconnect, if the provincial government isn't going to do anything, is there anything that the federal government can do now to ensure that those workers are better protected?

DL: And we agree with those public health experts that have said that paid sick leave and access to quick, generous, paid sick leave is one of the most important things that we can do to keep people safe, to stop transmission in some of these essential workplaces. And then, of course, people would take the illness home to their families and so on. That's a real source of concern. We had put in a federal sick leave benefit of two weeks, at 500 dollars a week for two weeks at the beginning of the pandemic. At the end of the summer, we added two more weeks so people would have a total of four weeks of paid federal sick leave.

MG: But they have to, but they have to apply for that after they're off work. And I mean, the issue there is that they are not able to take time off because living expenses are so high. So in the absence of an enhanced provincial plan, is there anything else that the federal government can do now while this virus is spreading in those workplaces?

DL: Yeah, and we're looking at exactly that, because you're right, one of the challenges, Matt, is the federal systems are designed to retroactively reimburse people, which for some families and some people is not a realistic circumstance. So we're looking at... We're always looking at ways that we can improve access. That was one of the successes of the CERB benefit at the very beginning of the pandemic. But provinces also can and some have looked at ways to enhance benefits available to these workers. These are provincially regulated workplaces, in many cases, not in all. And as I say, some provinces have found ways to supplement the basic federal plan that's available. But my colleague Carla Qualtrough talked to us again on the weekend at the cabinet covid committee about ways that we can make this even better. And we're always looking at ways to improve it, because you're absolutely right. That's a critical part of getting the community spread, reduced.

MG: Let me just ask you a couple more things before I let you go. One is around vaccines. There have been calls to redistribute vaccines to change the per capita formula for vaccine distribution so that the shots, such as they are, can get to the people that need them right now. Is that something that your government would support, redirecting vaccines to the hotspots, as they call them, where the virus is spreading right now?

DL: We've taken note. We've seen some of those public comments. The original decision to allocate vaccines across the country on a per capita basis was made on the unanimous recommendation of provincial leaders, that was done in December. Other options were discussed, but that was the conclusion from the provinces that we accepted.

MG: But given that the situation has changed between December and now, is that something that you would reconsider?

DL: We wouldn't reconsider it unilaterally on the part of the government of Canada. The provinces would have to come to us. And we've seen across the country a series of comments that there is not easily a provincial consensus on that. We think provinces can within their own provinces and we've seen examples in other parts of the country as well, reallocate their vaccines to some of these hotspots, their own vaccines that they're receiving now. And the other thing too Matt, our main objective has been and continues to be to accelerate more vaccines to arrive. Earlier in Canada, we had some good news with respect to eight million Pfizer doses last week, but we're working literally around the clock to try and get as many into the country as fast as possible, which would increase provincial shares right across the country.

MG: Just the last question. We know that other provinces, including Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, are reporting sharply increasing numbers of covid cases. Will you provide the same help to those provinces as you're offering to Ontario?

DL: Of course we would. Of course we would. If provincial authorities and we've said that from the beginning of the pandemic, that in any part of the country where there are these urgent needs, like is the case in Ontario now, we would obviously do whatever we can to be helpful. And in fact, the premiers with whom I spoke on the weekend sort of raised that they said, well, if we send X number of teams of medical professionals to Ontario, what happens if our case counts in our particular jurisdiction suddenly start coming up? And obviously, I reassured them that we would be in a position also to return those people. But I also said the same thing would apply, and I know it would from Ontario health care professionals who would see a similar circumstance in another part of the country, if it was possible for them to safely go and lend a hand, they would obviously do the same thing. So, of course, we're looking across the country all the time and open to do whatever we can in any part of the country.

MG: Dominic LeBlanc, appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

DL: Well, thanks for having me on your program. Have a nice day.

MG: And you.

MG: Dominic LeBlanc is the federal minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. While the federal government tries to manage the growing covid crisis, there is also the matter of the first federal budget in two years. That budget will be tabled in Parliament today. Justin Trudeau as government, like many others around the world, has spent an unprecedented amount of money to try to keep the economy afloat through a pandemic that keeps dragging on. Vassy Kapelos is the host of Power Politics on CBC News Network. Heather Scoffield is the Ottawa bureau chief and economics columnist for the Toronto Star, and they both join me now.

MG: Good morning to you both.

VASSY KAPELOS: Good morning, Matt.

HEATHER SCOFFEILD: Hello.

MG: Vassy, what do you make of what you just heard from Dominic LeBlanc about a federal government response to a covid crisis in individual provinces?

VK: Well, I thought actually a couple of things really stuck out for me. First of all, on the sick leave benefit, those are really good questions, obviously, because in the absence of the province, specifically in Ontario stepping forward, it does sound like there are some conversations taking place led by Carla Qualtrough, the minister of employment, about how the federal one can maybe backstop the issues with the provincial one. The main issue for the federal one is that you get it a few days later and that it's only about five hundred dollars a week, a little less with taxes. So that has been a problem for a lot of people who it's just not enough to live on. So I'm interested to see how that materialises. And the second thing that I really took away from it was around redistribution. So, so much talk about directing vaccines to certain hotspots in provinces which we see are being disproportionately affected right now by the spread of the virus. It sounded like there's no way the federal government is going to change its per capita distribution plan and that the provinces would instead have to come to them saying, OK, we're alright with that, except for we know that the provinces are not all right with that. They've all kind of established that even the ones out east which are faring a bit better, OK, we're willing to send you some resources, but we are not willing to send you our vaccine. So I thought that was a significant comment as well. It doesn't look like the original per capita formula is going to change anytime soon.

MG: Heather, what is this pandemic taught us about what investments need to be made into our healthcare system?

HS: Well, I think on the federal side, they are struggling to figure out what to do about... long term care, obviously, you know, has been staring us in the face for a very long time. And so that takes a whole federal, provincial negotiation throughout that we've been struggling with. I mean, they've overcome quite a few hurdles on the federal provincial front, you know, in the face of crisis. But it's still stumbling along. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that in the budget today. And, you know, that extends out beyond the health care system. You know, how do they deal with the federal provincial issues on child care, on benefits, getting benefits? I mean, the whole sick leave aspect of it does require federal, provincial coordination when it comes down to the individual, you know, you can't just depend on the province to do it. You can't just depend on the federal government to do it.

MG: Let's talk about child care. We know that this pandemic is hitting women harder than men. We've talked about the she-cession on this programme a number of times. Take a listen to Anjum Sultana, director of Public Policy and Strategic Communications at YWCA Canada.

ANJUM SULTANA: If we don't act now, we can actually change an entire generation's career trajectory. Women's labour market participation has dropped to levels we haven't seen since the 1980s, 12 times as many mothers have left the labour force compared to fathers because of care duties. And we're really seeing that if we don't actually invest in this essential service, so many people are going to leave the labour market and never return. And so that's really going to put us at a disadvantage. So I think it's something that's bad for the economy. It's bad for gender equality, but it's also bad for our youngest learners because child care is also an extension of education.

MG: And so that has led to conversations around a national child care strategy saying now is the time for something like that to be brought into place. Vassy, what do we know about what that might look like, given the fact that there have been promises in past around the National Child Care Program.

VK: Yeah, promises for about 30 years. Right. The person I think, you know, there's been many people saying now is the time, but the one that I'm listening to or watching is certainly the finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, who has said that over the past couple of weeks, if there was a time to do this, now is the time. There's a couple of things that I'm watching for. She has in the past, the government, through the fall economic statement pointed to, for example, the model in Quebec, which is kind of ten dollars a day subsidised form of day-care. So if that's what it looks like overall, how much money is allotted, because the government in the past has signalled big programmes like, for example, pharmacare, but not attached money to it because so much work has to be done negotiating with provinces. I think it's The Star and Heather who have reported that, for example, we can expect and my colleague Chris Hall here at the CBC, we can expect somewhere in the neighbourhood of two billion dollars initially allotted, which is a fairly substantial sum, but still not as much as people have estimated it would cost. So is there a sort of multi-year outlook for that funding and then sort of the details I'm interested in as well. Is this only, for example, for registered day-care centres? Is it in the form of subsidies, much like the Quebec one? And if so, what does that mean for parents? Like how much are you looking at if you're someone in Ontario and then also are provincial governments open to it because different provinces have different ways of doing things. And as Heather pointed out, this provincial federal relationship right now has, I don't know, it's I feel like it's experiencing a whole other level of scrutiny and it's already pretty complicated and pretty weighed down by the pandemic. So I'm curious to see how the government outlines, they'll pursue negotiations with the provinces over this or if it'll be a no brainer for the provinces because the feds will be supplying all the cash.

MG: Heather, is a national child care system alone enough to tackle again, what would people have called a she-cession?

HS: No, I would say not, you know, Chrystia Freeland has talked a lot about a system which to me just screams a long term conversation, and even if they try to put that on the fast track, I think we would be talking many, many months where the need is right now. I mean, we've got people at home with their kids again and struggling to figure out what to do with them and how to get through to the other side of this pandemic. And so for the next few months, what do we do about that? Or, you know, as we go through that recovery process. So I'll be looking for what they can figure out to do on a more immediate basis. I mean, it's not enough to just go and say we will subsidise families to pay their bills or give some kind of tax incentive, you know, rebate or something like that. If the spaces, if the day-care spaces have closed down. So how do they get that back up and running immediately and make that kind of flow into a more longer term or medium term discussion about setting national standards and building up a national system?

MG: Building up. And I mean, the phrase that keeps getting tossed around is build back better. This is I mean, it's here, but you hear it being used all around the world as well. And one of the issues that people talk about, if you're building something to the future, is something meaningful to tackle climate change. The conservatives came out with their own plan to tackle emissions last week. Take a listen to Catherine Abreu, who is the head of the Climate Action Network Canada.

CATHERINE ABREU: Climate change is a non-partisan issue. And seeing the conservatives enter the climate change conversation with some, you know, interesting ideas is good. Unfortunately, the ambition of their plan is incredibly low. It's much lower than the ambition of the current climate plan we have and the current climate plan we have doesn't have high enough ambition itself. I don't want to see Canada keep falling behind international peers when it comes to our moves to decarbonise our economy, to decouple greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth, and to take advantage of the booming clean economy that is worth trillions of dollars year over year. So let's live up to the vision that we have of ourselves and Canada and use this budget to really turn the tide.

MG: Heather Scoffield, what needs to be in the budget to turn the tide?

HS: Well, I think later on this week, the prime minister is going to announce an increasing of our ambition on climate change. So, you know, they've got to put the funding into the budget and make sure that the programmes are already there to... In advance of meeting that, meeting their new targets. There was a whole bunch of money put forward in December. And the thing is, with the budget, how do you take that a step further? So there was already 15 billion dollars put forward. I think what we'll see in this budget is some incentives for businesses to really adjust and start adopting low carbon technology, a push towards oil and gas to get them to kind of turn the corner there. There are a lot of people that are hoping that that will also come with some help for the workers who are in the oil and gas industry right now to make sure that they can also transition. And then on the infrastructure side, you know, infrastructure is traditionally the answer to recessions. And so I think the federal government will be looking to use whatever, whatever push they give in the infrastructure side of things, to also double up and make sure that that is focussed towards towards green infrastructure, retrofitting buildings, for example. It'll be interesting to see what they do on electric vehicles. You know, the United States right now is moving very quickly and in talks with our own government about how to really ramp up that activity. And if we have, if there's an alliance between Canada and the United States, particularly the auto sector, that gives us a huge opportunity. And so I think the budget will be... I'll be looking anyway in the budget for something on electric vehicles. How do we increase production? How do we incentivise buying and how do we deal with the whole network and backbone of plugging things, plugging Cars in all over the place.

MG: Vassy, what is the conservative climate plan do for them politically? I mean, again, Erin O'Toole ran on the idea of scrapping the Liberal's carbon pricing plan. He says that what he has introduced is a levy. It's not a tax. And people are arguing over, you know, the semantics of that. But the fact that there is a plan out, what does that do for that party?

VK: I think the fact that there's a plan out and the fact that the plan has already come out, probably in the long term helps them take it off the forefront of their own agenda, that they'd like to pursue, the things that they want to be talking about, for example, like jobs, like the economy. I think overall, the sentiment as expressed by the clip you showed, was pretty much across the board. It's good that this is a more serious plan, but it's not as ambitious as most scientists agree. For example, the goals for 2030 need to be and that will be reflected by the current government's own readjustment, as Heather points out, of its targets for 2030, rather, to be announced a bit later. At the same time, I think there's... where it might be politically interesting or problematic for the conservatives is amongst their own base, right. Especially around the price on carbon, carbon tax, whatever, whatever we're going to call it. The fact that Mr. O'Toole had for so long campaigned against the introduction of that and against the one that currently exists and then brought in a form of his own while contending that, no, that's not what it is. Certainly in certain parts of the country amongst certain constituencies, didn't go over well and might in the future be a problem. But there's also probably a reason that he introduced the plan when he did, again, to be able to get this kind of debate out of the way and then focus on what they want to focus on moving forward. Whether they'll be successful in that is, of course, a different question

MG: Out of the way, in part because, I mean, every time we talk, it seems like we talk about the possibility of an election and spring continues. Maybe it'll be the summer, maybe it'll be the fall. But do you see this? I mean, in the last couple of minutes that we have Vassy, do you see this as drawing the battle lines for the next election?

VK: I think probably it's just really hard to imagine it right now. I feel like, as you're right, like so many times we've been on together talking about the possibility of it. And it always depends on the trajectory of the virus at the time. So a few months ago, when things weren't as bad, let's say in October, September, it felt OK, OK, this could be a possibility. And so maybe the election is more imminent and these will be very distinct battle lines drawn up as we head into one. Now, it really doesn't feel like that's the case. I mean, most of your interview with the minister was focussed on the absolutely awful situation that a number of provinces are facing right now. So it feels like, yes, at a certain point, especially when it comes to the kind of latter half of the budget focussed on what a recovery looks like, that that will eventually draw some battle lines. It just feels like I don't know how consumed everybody is across the country right now with, you know, what does recovery look like? We feel like we're in the acute part of this pandemic at the moment. And so the budget will have to reflect that, the messaging around the budget will have to reflect that as well. And ultimately, the messaging from all political parties. I think when it comes to the possibility of an election, we'll have to reflect it too.

MG: Heather, last few seconds to you. Do you see this budget as framing what an election could look like?

HS: Yes, I think it will be the basis for an eventual platform, but I don't really expect a poison pill in here or anything that would really provoke the opposition into that would be so egregious that they would go and and run into an election right away. For me, the bigger concern is that they will start feeling antsy and play politics with this as they try to pass it through. And we haven't had a, we haven't had a fiscal plan really for over a year now. We need to get this thing through. And it requires quite a bit of cooperation. And I do sense that there is you know, people are fraying. They're at each other's throats in some pieces of legislation. And so I'm not sure how easy of a passage this will have. And to get us through the other side on the recovery side.

MG: All to be revealed this afternoon. Great to speak with you both, as always. Thank you very much.

VK: Thank you, Matt.

HS: Thanks.

MG: Vassy Kapelos host of Power and Politics on CBC News Network. Heather Scoffield, Ottawa bureau chief and economics columnist for the Toronto Star. The budget can be heard in full and CBC Radio, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. Pacific, right here on CBC Radio One. This is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

The young Jewish women who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto

Guest: Judy Batalion

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. On this day, 78 years ago, the Nazis moved in to remove all Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. Urna Lassman was a survivor of the ghetto, and she remembers hearing about those plans to transport them to concentration camps.

URNA LASSMAN: But this was the first time that we heard about Treblinka because, you know, people like to fool themselves, none of us. I mean, it just goes for my parents and everyone. We just couldn't believe the [inaudible] that were herding us transporting us to as they called it [inaudible], you know, the places where they are going to gas us, you know, kill us off.

MG: It was impossible to believe. And yet Jews in the ghetto became determined to resist. For 28 days, they revolted. This is Anna Heilman.

ANNA HEILMAN: Order of the day was that we are not going to be taken alive. You know, we are not going to be allowed to take on the transports. And I was all hyped up with it. I knew that this is exactly what I am going to do. We are not going to go just like that. So there was just a conviction, we are just not going.

MG: The determination of Anna Heilman and of other women in the Jewish resistance as part of a Holocaust history that is often forgotten. Judy Batalion writes about their struggle in her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos.

MG: Judy, good morning.

JUDY BATALION: Good morning.

MG: This is a wild story. How did you stumble into the history of these Jewish women fighting in Nazi occupied Poland?

JB: I stumbled into this story completely by accident. I was living in London at the time, and I myself am a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and I was interested in the generational transmission of trauma. I was doing some research at the British Library around this and happened to come across a book that I thought was quite unusual. It was in a blue fabric with gold lettering, an old book, and it also happened to be in Yiddish. It was called [Yiddish title], women in the ghettos. But obviously even more unusual than the book is the fact that I speak Yiddish. So I started reading through this sort of just out of curiosity. And what I found stunned me. These were pages, two hundred pages with information about dozens of young Jewish women who fought the Nazis and fought them from the ghettos. With chapter titles like Weapons, Ammunition, Partisan Combat. It was simply nothing like any Holocaust narrative that I'd ever heard.

MG: Why had you never heard those stories before? Do you think?

JB: Yeah, that's a great question. And this sort of became the subquestion of all my years of research. On the one hand, what happened? What is the story? And on the other hand, what happened to this story? How could I possibly not have heard about this? And I get into much more detail, of course, in my book. Some reasons are political, there are ways of the story of the Holocaust has been shaped for political reasons, in particular in Poland and in Israel. There's also a question of Zeitgeist. I think we've been interested in different elements of the Holocaust at different times. We've also been uncomfortable talking about different elements of the Holocaust at different times. But a lot of this is personal and it comes down to the fact that many of these women didn't tell their story. Either, they tried to tell it and they weren't believed or they were even accused of collaborating or sleeping their way to safety. Many of them felt a very pungent survivor's guilt. These were women who were setting up, working for the Red Army, doing espionage missions, smuggling weapons in broad daylight. And yet they felt that compared to their fellow survivors who had been through Auschwitz say, they hadn't had it that bad, they hadn't suffered adequately. They didn't merit telling their story.

MG: That's heartbreaking to hear.

JB: Yes. And then and then finally, I feel like many of them for many of them, they're very young. I'm writing about young women. When the war was over, they were in their early mid twenties. They had their whole lives ahead of them and they had nothing. They had no families, no homes, no nationalities. And this was... You know, They needed to start over. And many of them felt a great duty to have children to repopulate the Jewish people. And they wanted to try to raise families in happy, healthy environments. And so for all these reasons, both heartbreaking, as you say, and for I believe coping, as well, the story stayed silent for a long time.

MG: Take me to the Warsaw Ghetto and what it would have looked like 78 years ago today.

JB: Well, the Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in Poland, certainly at its height. It had almost a half a million Jews in a very small physical area. It was crowded, several families living in one room. People were starving. There was very little food. People suffered from illness, lice, and everyone felt tremendous fear. They knew that their life is at risk at any second. They felt fully occupied physically and mentally.

MG: Who, in that context and in those awful conditions, who made up the resistance? Because the resistance, as you documented in the book, was made up of people with a range of political ideologies.

JB: But most interesting to me was that the resistance, what we think of as those who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, were primarily youth. They were young Jews.

MG: How old?

JB: Anywhere from about 16 to 25. And they became these underground guerrilla militias, really, because they had been... They had been groups before the war. These were youth movements, almost like the scouts, and they had been very dedicated to these youth movements in the 1930s before the war. And it was these youth movements which promoted, it was their value system, their spiritual, intellectual, social training ground. It's these youth movements that then became the fighting units in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

MG: So describe those fighting units and what those young people were able to do again in the midst of an awful situation and with a worse situation, perhaps even looming.

JB: So these fighting units were comprised of, it's said there were about 750 young Jews who participated, I should say about 175/180, were women. The units were small groups, 10, 20 people, usually based on their youth movement affiliation, whatever their politics were before the war. And these units had acquired weapons over the past few months. They had, both from... was often female couriers who left the ghetto and helped arm the underground, smuggling in explosives, dynamite, materials to make Molotov cocktails as well as ammunition. And the units had, they had strategy. There were meetings. There was a head of the uprising of the ZOB. They called it the Jewish fighting organisation. And they strategized the best way to attack the Nazis.

MG: How did they do this? I mean, what was the scale of the deception that they were able to pull off? You talk about, I mean, people moving across lines with fake papers and as you say, smuggling in weapons, how are they able to pull this off?

JB: You mean the smuggling in particular?

MG: Yeah.

JB: Yeah, so this was done... so this was frequently done by women because it was easier for women to pass, it was easier for women, Jewish women to appear to be Christian women and so that they were able to leave the ghetto. If a Jew left the ghetto, they would be killed. Jews weren't allowed to leave. But Jewish women for various reasons, which I'll come back to, were better able to disguise themselves as Christian women. So they would slip in and out of ghettos, sometimes climbing over walls, sometimes going through basements, slipping through gates, going over rooftops, sometimes entering and exiting with a work group, a forced labour group. They would kind of bribe the head and enter or exit the ghetto gates with this group. Sometimes they just paid off the guards. And then once a woman was on the outside, she was better able to pretend to be Christian because first of all, women were not circumcised. So they didn't have a physical marker of their Jewishness on their body. Women in the 1930s had also been educated. And while many families... education was mandatory in Poland. But many Jewish families had sent their sons to Jewish schools for financial reasons, they sent their daughters to Polish public schools. And in these public schools, girls learnt Catholic mannerisms, habits, even prayers. And most important, they learned to speak, they talk about this all the time, polish like a pole without the creaky Yiddish accent. And so women were able to perform. They called this, this was their life and death performance, a constant acting job where they they pretended to be Christian and as such went to meet with weapons dealers, went to meet with contacts from the Polish resistance and the countless stories I found of them putting weapons into marmalade jars, sacks of potatoes, teddy bears, fashionable handbags that they would often purchase or borrow or just taping them to their torsos.

MG: Where did they find the strength to fight the Nazis, given what they were facing in the ghetto?

JB: That is a great question, and I've thought about this a lot, and I think it comes from a few different factors. For one, I really think these youth movements that I mentioned before that they were part of before the war, they were very dedicated to these movements and these movements trained them to feel pride in their people and in their heritage. And they train them to act. They train them to collaborate, to work together. And I think their training was to really feel collective pride and to be able to fight for that and to work together to fight for that, I think is a huge part of it. Also, they were furious, when you read the diaries and memoirs written in the war by these women, the ones written during the war, they're not sad. They are furious. They are passionate and filled with grief and filled with anger. And these women really, I got the impression, it was they must... They were filled with a need to go fight for justice and to fight for liberty.

MG: Tell me about some of these women, Zivia Lubetkin, who, as she?

JB: Zivia Lubetkin was a leader of the youth movements even before the war, and so she became almost naturally a leader in the Warsaw ghetto of the Jewish youth. She actually was one of the women I write about who in 1939 had actually escaped from Nazi occupied Poland. And she came back, she smuggled herself back into Nazi occupied Warsaw because she felt so responsible to her people. She became a leader in the Warsaw ghetto. She negotiated with German, Polish, Jewish councils and governments. She helped get young Jews out of slave labour camps. She had very Jewish features, but it didn't matter. She would, especially in the early years, slip out of the ghetto, help people try to find rescue routes. She became a leader in the planning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She fought in two ghetto uprisings. There was a small uprising in January, '43, followed by what we commemorate today in April of 1943, she had a gun and she was a guerrilla fighter. She then fought in the Polish resistance, the Warsaw Uprising, in 1944 as well. And after the war, after sorry, after the ghetto was razed, she had to go into hiding. She again, she looked, she had very Jewish looking features. She couldn't pass. And from her spot in hiding she helped administer rescue organisations that helped over ten thousand Jews in hiding in Warsaw alone.

MG: How did she manage to get out of the ghetto?

JB: She got out of the ghetto through sewer canals, she helped lead a group of rebels, a group of fighters out through sewer canals that were, she was neck deep in sewage water. And they had to try to find a manhole where a rescue truck was going to come pick them up. And they ended up staying under there for well over twenty four hours, 48 hours.

MG: And the fighting that she was involved in, I mean, between the resistance and the Nazis was really intense. I mean, because the Nazis were coming in essentially to destroy the ghetto.

JB: The Nazis were coming to destroy the ghetto and to kill all the Jews. This was actually supposed to be a birthday gift for Hitler, that finally the Warsaw ghetto would be completely razed and all the Jews would be destroyed. And it's hard to always get exact numbers in this realm. But it appears about two thousand Nazi soldiers were sent in just on that beginning liquidation, with tanks. And she described it, it looks like a whole country was going to war, to come kill off the remaining Jews in the ghetto.

MG: Did they expect, the Nazis expect that there would be any hint of resistance, let alone the resistance that you document in this book?

JB: I do not believe that they expected any hint of resistance, especially at this stage of the war where Jews were so starved and so weak, and many women write about how shocked they were that women were fighting. One woman, Marcia Futermel. She went to the roof of a building. Their strategy was to fight from the rooftops. This was the Jewish guerrilla strategy. And she talks about how her fingers were shaking, she was so excited and nervous and she could barely light the match to light the explosive. And she did it and she's flinging it from the roof. And what she hears are the Nazis yelling, whoa. [german translation] A woman is fighting? That's what shocked them. I think they were taken by surprise, yes.

MG: Tell me about little Wanda with the braids. This is another woman who was part of the resistance.

JB: Little Wanda with the braids, her name was Anusha Teitelbaum, and she was from the communist youth movement. That was her political leanings. And her tactic and this is before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she was in her twenties. She actually had a history degree from Warsaw University, but she dressed up as a 16 year old Polish peasant girl. She braided her hair and she put a kerchief in her hair. And she looked like a peasant girl from the countryside. And she used this disguise to access Nazi homes and offices and would then kill them. So, for instance, in one story, she goes to Sochua, which was the Nazi headquarters in Warsaw, dressed like a Polish peasant girl and says she needs to speak to a certain guard about a personal matter. And the assumption is that she's pregnant and he's gotten her pregnant. And so the guards at the Gestapo let her in and show her the way. And then she walks into the office, pulls out a gun and shoots the Gestapo man in the head and then puts the gun back in her pocket and walks right out and sort of meekly waves goodbye to the guards at the door. She was on every Gestapo most wanted list, and she was, they nicknamed her little Wanda with the braids.

MG: What eventually happened to her?

JB: She was caught in '43 and killed.

MG: But it has an incredible legacy in terms of what she was able to do.

JB: I mean, and that's just one of her stories. She did this on numerous occasions, she actually ran a military, like a training group for women in the Warsaw ghetto for the uprising, training them on how to use weapons. She was involved in so many, so many efforts.

MG: What does it mean for you to discover this history? You mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation that your grandmother survived. You write about this in the book, at the end of the book, survived Siberian Gulags. And you say that she lived while never quite surviving. Tell me about what this story meant to you personally.

JB: Well, I mean, as I said in the beginning of our interview, this started with me looking at the generational transmission of trauma and how trauma was passed through generations. But I think this project made me also think about how heroism is passed through generations, how strength is passed through generations. You know, I've really rethought my own personal Holocaust narrative and also the general Holocaust narrative. I now see it as a story of constant resistance and resilience and struggle and fight. And I truly feel proud to come from this legacy.

MG: What was your personal narrative? I mean, you say in the book that you spent a lot of time trying to get as far away as possible from the Holocaust.

JB: Yes, I did.

MG: What did you mean by that?

JB: Well, I think as I was saying, I thought that the trauma of the Holocaust had passed through my family. I was an extremely anxious person. And in my own family, various anxieties, even hoarding disorder and different mental health issues that I felt had come from living through really traumatic experiences, had passed themselves through the generations in my family.

MG: And so how does doing a book like this and doing this research and meeting, you know, the descendants of some of these resistance members, how does that change that narrative for you?

JB: Again, I refocused the narrative, I think for myself, there is a lot of focus on the trauma or on the difficulties that pass through the generations. But this has also made me think about the, as I said, the strength that has passed through the generations. And I just thought about it in a more perhaps hopeful light.

MG: Can you imagine being one of those young women, 16 years old in that situation?

JB: That's all I imagined every day doing the research. What would I do? Could I ever have done this? Could I ever have done what they did? I don't think so.

MG: It's a remarkable story. I mean, do the descendants of those resistance fighters, do they understand what their relatives were involved in? You go to Israel and you speak with the family of one of those resistance members, do they have a full appreciation of what they were up to?

JB: So I met about 20 different families, of course, of women who survived in Israel as well as in Canada and in the US. And some of them did know quite a bit about their mothers or grandmothers, and some of them knew nothing. They really knew very little about what their own mothers had done in the war. And as I was saying earlier, many of these women didn't tell their stories in particular to their children. So in some of the families, I am sending them information. I'm sending them even publications that their mother wrote in the 40s, 50s. I've been sending it to the families they did not know.

MG: It is a fascinating story. I learnt a lot in reading this book. Judy, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JB: Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Judy. Batalion is a writer from Montreal who now lives in New York City. Her new book is The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos.

MG: That is The Current for this Monday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Tom Power will be speaking with the directors of Tina. Have you watched this yet? This new documentary about Tina Turner follows her from Tennessee to the height of her fame and her retirement from performing music. It's great if you haven't seen it, you will want to watch it, certainly after this conversation. Coming up on Q on CBC Radio One in just a few moments time.

MG: We know that a lot of special interest groups are watching the budget today, hoping for support. The Canadian music industry is amongst them. The Canadian Live Music Association wrote an open letter to the finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, earlier this month asking for support to save the live music sector in this country from collapse during a covid. Artists can't perform. That's how they make their money. And those artists are suffering. One artist who has spoken out about how difficult it is to make ends meet during this pandemic is Montreal born, Allison Russell. And so we'll leave you with her new single. It's called Night Flyer. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Sound Clip: Night Flyer by Allison Russell]

Monday April 19, 2021 Full Transcript

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