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The Current Transcript for November 17, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: The new climate denialism is when our leaders say that they get the climate crisis, but then they don't practice a politics that aligns with what the science says we have to do.

MATT GALLOWAY: The clock is ticking and science says we need to take bold action now if we want to meaningfully address climate change. So if pragmatism won't cut it, how do we get politicians to embrace the big steps needed? Seth Klein says we need to take lessons from Canada's involvement in and approach to the Second World War. He makes that case in 30 minutes. Also this morning, as we wait for a vaccine for COVID-19, an update on the drugs being used now to treat this disease. Plus.

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VOICE: Usually you have to really fight to get into Marvel and you've got to like a lot to prove, but for them to come to me, it was like, wow.

MG: Wow, indeed. How an illustrator from Edmonton ended up behind Marvel Comics' special issue on Indigenous superheroes. But we begin with COVID's arrival in Canada's north. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Crowded houses, isolation fatigue among concerns as Nunavut enters COVID lockdown

Guests: Selma Eccles, Joe Karetak, Lorne Kusuguk

MG: It was one of the only places left in Canada to be mostly untouched by the pandemic until now, Nunavut announced its first case of COVID-19 on the 6th of November. And over the past few days, cases have been rising steadily. There are now 26 cases and starting tomorrow, new restrictions take effect throughout the territory. All non-essential businesses and services will close as well. Schools and all health centres will close except for emergency services. The Premier, Joe Savikataaq announced the restrictions yesterday.

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VOICE: I know this will be hard. We do not want to be back to the restrictions we had in the spring, but for the health and safety of all Nunavummiut, this is necessary. Think of it as a circuit breaker, a chance to reset. No one is above the rules here. Let's make this clear. It is more important than ever that we do everything we can to help our communities and we can do this.

MG: The small hamlet of Arviat in southern Nunavut that has been hit hardest by COVID-19 thus far. There are now 20 cases there in a town with a population of only 3000 people. Selma Eccles is a CBC journalist who's originally from Arviat and is based now in Rankin Inlet. Selma, good morning.

SELMA ECCLES: Good morning.

MG: As I was saying at the beginning, none of it had largely been spared covid for many, many months. And that really changed in the last week. So walk us through how quickly the virus spread through the territory.

SELMA ECCLES: Well, when we first heard that there was a positive case in Rankin Inlet, that gave us a wake up call, but we were also concerned ahead of time because people from the region, we have to go to Winnipeg for medical treatment. As an example, anybody who has to go through chemo, radiation, more serious medical needs and hearing hot spots of COVID in Winnipeg, we were getting concerned, but we have no choice but to go there.

MG: Up until this point, how has the government managed to keep COVID out of Nunavut?

SELMA ECCLES: They limited things as soon as they had heard back in March, we were pretty vigilant about it and we embraced it actually, because daylight was longer, warm weather was coming and a lot of us have cabins outside of our communities that we go to, our fishing camps or where we dry our caribou meat, which is usually in the spring. It gave us a chance for us to be out of our houses for a good reason, but now it's still dark out and it's a lot colder and we're now stuck in our houses. So it's really real now.

MG: Selma I want to bring someone else into our conversation. Joe Karetak lives in Arviat He's a health research coordinator at the Aqqiumavvik Society, which is a community wellness society. He's also Selma Eccles's brother. Joe, good morning to you.

JOE KARETAK: Hey, good morning to you.

MG: What are things like now in Arviat as these cases continue to rise?

JOE KARETAK: Yeah, it's it's definitely a different feeling now with COVID being actually here now, even though it was inevitable that eventually we would have COVID come to our communities. It's something that we've heard being very serious throughout the news and how it's affecting the world. And knowing how close knit families we are, if it ever got up here, it was going to spread fast.

MG: Would you say it was inevitable? Like even though it was kept out of the territory for many months, you felt that eventually it would arrive?

JOE KARETAK: The Nunavut government had done a really good job when we first heard about COVID and they understood that it was best to keep it out of these communities and like if we were self-sufficient up here and none of our people had to leave the north for medical services, I'd have been very confident that it would have stayed out.

MG: You mentioned close knit families. How does the housing situation in Arviat impact the way that COVID might spread?

JOE KARETAK: Yeah, well, we have fairly small houses up here, and like I have a three bedroom house with one bathroom and tou know, we have off and on three to five people living here at a time, and and if one was supposedly to contract, get COVID, we're being told they'd have to stay isolated in their room. The space is so small and there's families that have way more than five people living in a three bedroom house with one bathroom.

MG: Do you worry as well about health care systems? I mean, we've seen across this country that hospitals are already straining. Are you worried that if the case counts, continue to go up, people won't be able to get the health care that they need in the community?

JOE KARETAK: Yeah, I mean, we don't, we don't have like the hospital where there's a lot of rooms there that patients could stay in there. It's not set up that way. It's anytime there's a serious situation like Selma said, they get sent down to Winnipeg. So if you have to be hospitalized, we don't have hospitals here designed to take to have you stay there. It's really more to assess you, to see if you should be sent down or you can recover from your home. There's already no spaces up here to isolate people. The only thing I could possibly think of is if you confiscated the two main hotels that are in this community and converted them into like a place where you could place people that have COVID that could stay isolated there, get the proper treatment if things got severe. It's really the only way I could think of not spreading.

MG: Selma we've reached you in Rankin Inlet, where you're quarantining because you were visiting your mom in Arviat over the weekend in an Elder's home. How's she doing?

SELMA ECCLES: She's doing good. She understands that COVID-19 is happening. It's concerning because when I was there, I had to wear a mask when I would go in, there's hand sanitizers there. But the workers that help, I'm worried about them because they're the front line workers. I don't know if they're equipped. They have families. It's concerning.

MG: We've also seen concern across the country when it comes to elders in seniors residences and long-term care, in Indigenous communities. Just broadly, how is this affecting elders across the community?

SELMA ECCLES: It affects everybody because we are taught to go and see our elders. We have to check on them, go and see them. My mother's younger sister lives here. She lives alone. With COVID-19, they're even more isolated. We also have local radio just for Rankin Inlet and people are able to call on there and people are calling on there just to have somebody else to talk to. So radio is so important right now for our community, not just the elders. People that are sick to isolate when you're feeling awful. It's so, you don't want to get sick at all right now. And just like what Joe said, our house is, not too many houses with two bathrooms. When they say if you get sick, isolate, don't share the bathroom, we have no choices in that matter. And. I think it has become so real. Before we were COVID-free, we were happy about that, but now it's in our communities and it's like people are cleaning their houses like there's no tomorrow almost. And that's what I did too.

MG: Joe, Selma mentioned the radio and I know that the lockdown is going to be hard, but apparently the local radio station is going to be hosting games, so that people can play along. Do you think that that's going to help deal with some of the isolation that people are going to be feeling?

JOE KARETAK: Yeah, well, the local radio is often used as a socializing, you know, people call relatives and friends and stuff through the radio. People will just call to talk about random subjects and tell stories. Sometimes it gets emotional, some people are feeling the weight, so it's something that really has always helped this community help go through difficult times.

MG: You're facing difficult times now. I appreciate you both speaking with us. Take good care, both of you and thank you very much.

JOE KARETAK: Thank you.

MG: Joe Karetak lives in Arviat, where he's the health research coordinator at the Aqqiumavvik Society. It's a community wellness society. Selma Eccles is a CBC journalist in Rankin Inlet. Lorne Kusugak is Nunavut's Minister of Health and joins us now from Iqaluit. Minister, good morning to you.

LORNE KUSUGAK: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Nunavut had been so successful in keeping CPVOD-19 out of the territory. As you see these cases grow, what's most concerning to you?

LORNE KUSUGAK: That very thing. What's most concerning is that we're seeing these numbers grow and, you know, our primary goal is to keep it out and it has arrived in our territory and it's most unwelcome.

MG: How prepared are hospitals and clinics for this?

LORNE KUSUGAK: As prepared as the health centres that we call them in our communities can be. We have, we've had the luck or fortune of not having had it in Nunavut for the last seven months and that has given us an opportunity to take a look at what is happening in other parts of this country and it's given us an opportunity to analyze things and and prepare for it. We've had desktop exercises in most of the communities to see what we would have to do and what the community would have to do should the COVID arrive in a community. So we've had some, a lot of preparation for it, but it's never the same as the real thing.

MG: What happens if somebody needs to leave the territory to get care for COVID? Because resources could be stretched and we know I mean, in the best of times that that happens for people who need more serious medical intervention. So what happens in this time if people need to leave because they need treatment for COVID?

LORNE KUSUGAK: As soon as we find out that an individual needs to have more medical support than is available in the community, the individual will be taken care of to make sure that they're secure enough and able to fly. And we have medevac aeroplanes in our community in Nunavut that will go to the community, pick up the individual with medevac nurses on board, and they will fly the individual to centres such as Winnipeg or Ottawa or Edmonton. It depends on where in the, Nunavut is a vast territory, it depends on where we choose the closest hospital to be able to accept the individual.

MG: Would they be going solo or would their family be able to join them?

LORNE KUSUGAK: No, in this case, they would most likely fly solo and then in the case of the family member, we do have escorts to go with them and they would most likely, in any given scenario, follow down on a scheduled airplane.

MG: One of the things we just heard from Joe Karetak, who's in Arviat, is that he's worried about the reality of how you isolate people with COVID if they have large families and they're living in small dwellings. Is that sort of isolation possible in a community like Arviat?

LORNE KUSUGAK: I believe it is. I think what's important is that we got the we catch it at an early stage and what we've done in the communities, I said we've had a chance to prepare for this, is we actually have created situations in the community where we have emergency volunteer volunteers and emergency workers in the community. If it's the fire department or a team of people who have stepped forward to say, OK, this is the emergency dispatch team that we are going to have in the community, if and when this hits the community and we've actually located where we might be able to isolate individuals. Joe was saying, you know, maybe some hotel or empty government units. We have we have identified units such as that. We might be able to isolate individuals with COVID and just as much the same way individuals who may not have COVID, but can if there's an individual isolating in in the house and we need to, it's easier to remove one or two people into and get them out of the house and into a safe location. So we might be able to do the same. And there are houses and or hotels or gymnasiums or what have you located in the communities where we may need to put individuals in those situations.

MG: Selma Eccles also raised the issue of elders and the isolation that they may feel under this new lockdown. In a community and in a society where elder care is so important, we're seeing this across the country where in long-term care facilities, there is a second wave that is more ferocious in many ways than the first. What's being done specifically to ensure the protection of elders?

LORNE KUSUGAK: In terms of the e;der protection, the elders facilities have been locked down, there will be no visiting with any anybody in the elders facility unless it is authorized by the public health officer on duty or on call at the time. So in that scenario, if an individual wants to visit their elder, the public health officer has to make sure that the individual is not, is safe to do so. That they are not on the watch list. They're not one of the people who are under contact tracing and so on and so forth. They have a very strict measures to follow and then that individual is allowed to visit. And when they do visit, they have to be at a certain distance from the individual they're visiting. And also every staff member in the facility is going through a daily screening process to ensure that the staff that are entering the facility are safe. And the staff are also being advised not to go to public places and to remain isolated when they are not in the facility. So and ensuring that the individual working at the facility is only working at the facility and not at the store or at a gift shop or something like that.

MG: There are a lot of questions, obviously, about how these cases managed to make their way into Nunavut. And both you and the premier have said, and these are the words of the premier, the sort of blame game serves no purpose. You said, let's please stop guessing about who, what, where and when and how this happened. What are you concerned about in that you would make those statements?

LORNE KUSUGAK: I'm just concerned about people thinking that the rumours and stuff are true. You know, it just takes a slip of the tongue and sometimes the tongue is too sharp and the blame game begins. And we just want to protect our neighbours, because at the end of the day, the only person we have to stand beside is our neighbour and to protect each other to to stay away from the that that whole ugly side of humanity where we need to blame somebody in order to make ourselves feel better. And just to stay away from that. It's not necessary. We have a small territory. The individuals, Joe and Selma you talked to, I know them very well. We have a very small community in Nunavut and we got to stay away from that. We have to stay on top of this. And that's why we send the messages that we do send. We're battling COVID. We're not battling our neighbours.

MG: Just finally, we just have a few seconds left, but are you confident that you can get Nunavut back to zero cases or close to that?

LORNE KUSUGAK: I'm very confident, I think we will get there. I truly believe that the community, if we stay united and and continue to battle this and stay away from all the other stuff and just concentrate on this, we will beat it. You know, it's we've had it out of here for the last seven or eight months and that's because people are vigilant and and supportive of each other and we will beat this. I'm very positive about that and I think we'll have it beat. It's it's doing what it's doing right now, but I think in the long and short-term, we will catch it at the curb and put a stop to it.

MG: Minister, good to speak with you this morning. Thank you.

LORNE KUSUGAK: My pleasure, Matt.

MG: Lorne Kusugak is Nunavut's Minister of Health. We reached him this morning in Iqaluit. The CBC News is next and then reframing the climate emergency as a war. The author, Seth Klein, will be my guest in six minutes to talk about his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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'New climate denialism' is stopping Canada from approaching crisis with WWII-level effort: Seth Klein

Guests: Seth Klein

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

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MG: Still to come, with two COVID-19 vaccines now looking promising, we turn the spotlight onto the work being done now on treatments for those already infected. That's coming up in half an hour. But first, a climate war.

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MG: A common enemy, a pledge to combat it together and an uncertain end game. Those are some of the key ways that the fight against climate change looks like war. Seth Klein started to notice those similarities and he explores them in a new book. Seth Klein is the former BC director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. That new book is called A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. And it draws a straight line from the way that this country responded to the Second World War to what he says is needed now to tackle global warming. Seth Klein, good morning.

SETH KLEIN: Good morning. It's very nice to meet you on the radio, Matt.

MG: It's great to have you with us. Tell me about the wartime approach to climate change. How did you initially make that connection between what's going on with our planet and what we as a society did during the Second World War?

SETH KLEIN: Well, I should say, when I originally set out to write the book, it wasn't all structured around the Second World War. I set out to write a book that would examine really this harrowing gap between what the science says we have to do on climate change and what our politics seems prepared to entertain. And initially, I had planned to include only a single chapter on lessons from the Second World War because I had long been intrigued by the war as an example of rapid economic transformation, but that the more I delved into that work, the more I started to see more and more parallels, not just on the economic front, but in terms of how public opinion was mobilised, in terms of how confederation was navigated, in terms of the role of inequality, how we paid for it, what we did for returning soldiers as a model for just transition for fossil fuel workers today and and so ultimately decided to structure the entire book around the war, but realised in the process that really the overarching parallel was so strong because these are both existential threats. These are both the task of of each generation's lives and I've been drawing inspiration from the story as an example that, a reminder really, that we've done this before. You know, we've mobilized in common cause across society and retooled our whole economy.

MG: You write early in the book that the wartime approach makes you uncomfortable initially, or there's some bits of it that make you uncomfortable and that it could make a lot of other people uncomfortable as well. Why is that?

SETH KLEIN: Well, you know, if you told anybody who knew me when I was starting out as a political activist, as a teenager, that I'd written a war story, they'd be pretty surprised. I cut my political teeth in the peace and disarmament movement of the 1980s. I'm actually the child of Vietnam War resisters. That is, Matt, that's why I'm Canadian. And so I came to this analogy uneasily, but I came to it nonetheless. And I came to it because, you know, I've been active in the climate space for many years and I started from a premise that everything we have been doing isn't working. You know, if you look at Canada's greenhouse gas emissions going back the last 20 years, all we have managed to do is flatline our emissions. They're not going down. You can't help but look at that and say we need a new approach. And the more I started to look at that World War to experience, the more I was forced to marvel at, you know, wow, this is what actually happens when we treat something as an emergency. Now, I should say I was writing all of that before the pandemic. I had actually sent the book off for a final copy edit three days before the pandemic broke, thinking that we needed this historic reminder of how quickly we're capable of moving. And of course, now we're all living and experiencing that in real time. And, you know, that, too, is an important reminder of how quickly we're capable of pivoting.

MG: Just briefly, why don't you explain how far off Canada's climate policies are from what the scientists are telling us we need to do if we want to keep warming, as we're told we need to, under two degrees Celsius?

SETH KLEIN: Well, so, first of all, appreciate that we have been at this for, you know, at least three decades. We've known about this and the companies, the fossil fuel companies themselves have known about this since the 1970s. Throughout most of that time, our emissions as a country continue to rise. As I said a moment ago, over the last 20 years, the best you can say is that it's flatlined. But where it matters most, actual GHG emissions, we have accomplished precious little. But if you listen to what the scientists are saying, and in particular the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they are now saying that we have to at least have our emissions in the next 10 years, in these 10 years, and that we need to basically be done with fossil fuels and be carbon zero by 2050 at the latest. So we're missing all our targets and as I say, we need an entirely new approach if we're going to accomplish what we need to at the speed and scale required.

MG: How do you explain the gap between what scientists are calling for and what governments are actually doing?

SETH KLEIN: I think there's a number of reasons. I mean, first of all, the curse of climate, if you will, relative to covid and relative to the wars, that it moves in slower motion. And that allows, I think, our political leaders to kick the can down the road. Second, I think our political leaders actually falsely assume that the public isn't ready for truly bold action. And I think they're wrong in that. And I actually commissioned some original polling from advocacy data as part of the book research to test that proposition and really found a public that was ahead of our politics when it comes to its readiness for action. I also think at an important level, our our politicians are captured by the fossil fuel industry. They're also captured by neo liberal thinking. Really, that's restrained. It's kind of served as a straitjacket around what we actually have to do. Like why isn't the government spending what needs to be spent? Why aren't they creating new economic institutions? Why aren't they using the regulatory power of the state to actually get us there? And and I think it's because they accept a bunch of false assumptions about what is and isn't allowed. Again, ideas that have been jettisoned during covid, but they remain very resistant in the face of climate and mostly our politicians. But also much of the public has fallen prey to what I call the new climate denialism, which is different from the traditional climate denialism of, you know, Donald Trump or Maxime Bernier just denying it. The new climate denialism is when our leaders say that they get the climate crisis, but then they don't practice politics that aligns with what the science says we have to do. And that is really the phoney war period in which we currently live and as we experienced at the beginning of the Second World War, and it didn't last then and I don't think it's going to last now.

MG: Now, you quote Joyce Murray, who is a Liberal cabinet minister and a long time environmental advocate, and she says these are her words, "I think that to try to move too fast without bringing people along is to lose."What's wrong with that? What's what's wrong with the idea of getting people on board with policy changes rather than pulling the chute and imposing something all at once?

SETH KLEIN: Yeah, well, so I interviewed many politicians and political insiders for the book, including Joyce Murray. And I was only interested in interviewing politicians who I actually honestly believed to get the science as and I believe she does. And guess who's governments aren't doing what we need to do and to try to get at why that is. And almost every one of them fell back on some variant of the line that you just said, which is, you know, you've got to meet the public where they're at and the public isn't there. And I found that a very frustrating answer. First of all, because the leaders we most remember from the Second World War didn't meet the public where they were at. They took the public where they needed to go. Secondly, because I think they weren't giving the public enough credit, which is what I uncovered in the polling. The main reason it's not an adequate answer, it's because we've run out the clock and we don't have any more time. You know, she's saying to move too quickly is to lose, you know, the great climate change where Bill McKibben has a line, which is to win slowly on climate is to lose. You know, politics might be all about, you know, compromise the art of the possible, as they say, but you can't bargain with the laws of nature and nature is now telling us we've run out of time.

MG: You say that the Liberals, the Liberal government right now is, in your words, practicing the politics of appeasement. If you use a wartime analogy, appeasement is generally referring to Chamberlain appeasing Hitler.

SETH KLEIN: Yes, we've got too much Chamberlain and not enough Churchill. I think that's another part of why our politics has been slow, which is that they're they're trying to find a climate plan with which the fossil fuel industry can find comfort and sign on to not just federally, but all the provincial governments as well. In fact, they appoint representatives from the fossil fuel companies to sit on the advisory committees for the climate, the development of these climate plants. And what I'm saying is at this late hour, any climate plan that isn't making the fossil fuel industry deeply, deeply anxious isn't the climate plan worth having. But what we're getting is the politics of appeasement. And we're we're getting the new climate denialism and it manifests in these very contradict. Messages, you know, where the Trudeau government will say, as they did the summer before last, they'll pass a climate emergency motion in the House of Commons one day and then reapproved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion the very next day. That's a very confusing message. And again, you know, because I keep I always keep coming back to the Second World War, that is not the kind of communication we got from leaders in the Second World War. You know, the message then was consistent and coherent, much like we've had in COVID and much like we have not seen in the face of the climate emergency. You don't send contradictory messages. It's confusing to the public.

MG: C.D. Howe is someone that you bring up as an example of leadership during the war years. He was famously known as in some ways, the minister of everything. What was interesting to you about what C.D. Howe was able to pull off?

SETH KLEIN: Yeah. Oh, I became completely fascinated by this guy, even though, you know, politically, I'm sure I don't see eye to eye.

MG: I was going to say.

SETH KLEIN: C.D. Howe, most people who know his name today know it because there's a, you know, rather right wing think tank in Toronto named for the guy. And to be clear, C.D. Howe was no lefty. He was on the right wing of the Liberal Party. He was an engineer by training. He built many of the grain elevators over the 1920s that got as much of the country. Made a lot of money before going into government and was elected in 35. And then he became the minister for Munitions and Supply during the war, overseeing this extraordinary ramp up of military production I was alluding to before. And he just became seized with this task of what had to be done. So in addition to giving tons of contracts to the private sector to build what needed to be built, I describe him as an engineer in a hurry. Any time the private sector couldn't quickly do what needed to be done, he created another crown corporation. He created 28 crown corporations in the course of the war, and what they achieved was jaw dropping, right? From a base of almost nothing, Canada produced 800,000 military vehicles. More than Germany, Italy and Japan combined. 16,000 aircraft, ultimately to produce the fourth largest air force in the world. About 750 ships. I mean, this was incredible. But you compare that to the present where, you know, Justin Trudeau's government has created two new crown corporations, the Infrastructure Bank and the Trans Mountain Pipeline Corporation, the one that makes us all owners of a six year old oil pipeline from Alberta to my problems. But otherwise, none of that ambition is present. And so in the book, I saying, you know, based on what C.D. Howe did, let's take an inventory again. Let's figure out how many wind turbines and solar arrays and electric buses and heat pumps we're going to need to electrify, decarbonize everything and let's create a new generation of crown corporations to expedite the production and distribution of those items to actually get the job done, because in the absence of creating those new economic institutions ourselves, the best we're able to do with our climate policy is to try to incentivize or encourage somebody else to do what has to be done. And really, that is why the best way we have managed to do so far is flatline our emissions.

MG: And so is that what you mean when you say if we were to go onto a war footing, that those are some of the specific things that you think the government could achieve that we as a nation could achieve if we shift in some ways how we approach this fight?

SETH KLEIN: Yes. Well, so what I'm asked, you know, how do you know when the government has actually shifted into that emergency mode? To me, there's really four markers of when you know. The first is you spend what it takes to win. That's what C.D. Howe famously said in the war when he was pressed about how much money was being spent. He said, if we lose the war, nothing will matter. And in COVID we've been spending what we have to spend. But in climate, we are spending nothing close to what we need to be spending and not just by a little, but by an order of magnitude. So number one, you spend what it takes to win. Number two, you create new economic institutions to get the job done like we've just been talking about. Number three, you shift from voluntary measures to mandatory measures. So instead of just trying to incentivize change, you actually require it. And so we would do things like, say, by 2025, the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles will be banned. By next year, all new buildings won't be able to tie into natural gas for space heating, space and water heating. But the fourth thing, the fourth marker is that you tell the truth. You communicate a sense of urgency. And again, this is what we saw in the war. The leaders we most remember are those who were forthright about the severity of the crisis that we faced, but who still communicated hope. You know, interestingly, when you think about those four markers, I would say the Trudeau government passes all of them with respect to COVID and none of them with respect to climate.

MG: You've mentioned a couple of times the idea of decarbonizing and some of the policies that you're talking about obviously would have a direct impact on the energy sector in this country. David Yager is the author of From Miracle to Menace: Alberta, A Carbon Story. And we spoke with him about some of your ideas. Have a listen.

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VOICE: Alberta without oil is Manitoba with mountains. There's 4.4 million people living in Alberta. We live here not because of the weather or the proximity to a beach. You live here because we have this unbelievable trove of fossil fuels. And so they call it the just transition. That is a throwaway line to make everybody feel better about it. But it is impossible. It just it will not work. Without a lot of economic refugees, we just can't retrain all the people that that keep the oil refineries in central Canada going, keep the natural gas and the propane going to Quebec. This is where it comes from. We can't take these people and say, well, we'd like you to somehow go into the renewable energy business, that is more political savve than economic fact. And the worst part is, is that I don't disagree with the science, but I do disagree with the politics, because if it's a global problem, we have to have a global solution. And so we are 1.6 percent of global emissions in Canada as a whole, not just the oil industry, but everything. So I question Canadian climate policy. Is this the best way to help the world is the complete retooling of the Canadian economy?

MG: Seth Klein lots in there. One is we'll start with the small potatoes piece, that Canada is a small player and if this is a global problem, we need a global solution, not something local. What would you say to that?

SETH KLEIN: Well, we do need a global solution, but it's also true that every country is responsible for doing its part. And our responsibility as Canadians is to force our government to act in the face of the crisis and to do so knowing that millions of other people of goodwill are doing the same thing in their countries. Ultimately, what I think we heard there, you know, that's a logic by which we're all going to burn. It's also, incidentally, a logic by which we would have sat out the Second World War. You know, so first of all, it's true that Canada emits less than larger places like the U.S. and China and India and Europe, but our per capita emissions are the highest in the world. And that doesn't capture our role as the pedlars of this stuff. Right? So we are the fourth and sixth largest producers of gas and oil in the world. So we've got to get our house in order. But this is what I love about the Second World War story. You know, we were even smaller than that. We were less than a third the size that we are now. We didn't wait on the Americans. We joined the war two years earlier. In fact, for much of that time, we were the only country in the Western Hemisphere engaged in the war. And I told you before what we actually produced and contributed, because by the time we got to the end of the war, despite the fact that we were smaller then than we are today, nobody questioned the value and importance of our contributions. Now, with respect to Alberta, he's right, of course, that this is very hard for Alberta and we have to make a real and substantive offer to Alberta and not just talk. First of all, Alberta has huge potential for wind and solar panel, amongst other things. But the problem is that these promises have rung hollow for understandable reasons. So one of the things I argue is that we should have a new federal transfer programme, a climate emergency, just transition transfer. That's a big and audacious like we've seen in this covid crisis, you know, something like 20 to 40 billion dollars a year. And we should recognise that Alberta has some real heavy lifting to do. About 38 percent of Canada's emissions are from Alberta, way more than their share of the population. So unlike most transfers that divvy it up by population, I think we should give 38 percent to Alberta in order to fund that kind of transition. But, you know, let me conclude by saying this about the war. There's about 300,000 Canadians employed in the fossil fuel industry in Canada. In the war from a population of 11 million at the time, over a million Canadians enlisted and more than that were involved in military production. They all had to be trained up, they all had to be reconverted back to peacetime. We did that with extraordinary measures of income support and housing support and post-secondary programs that transformed the face of the post-secondary institutions for a generation and changed the lives of thousands of people. The task today is actually smaller and we only have to do it once. If we could do it then, we can do it again.

MG: In the polling you talk as well and there's another chapter that deals with equity issues, about the fact that often support for action against climate change is very high, but we hear that people don't want to pay for it. How do we overcome that as a nation?

SETH KLEIN: You know, when you ask people, would your support for bold action go up or down if we did so by tackling inequality through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations and income transfers to lower income families and a good jobs guarantee for fossil fuel workers, support for bold action on climate doesn't go down, it goes through the roof. So I think these things actually have to be linked. I think that's how we win. And to bring it back to the war, that was true then too. You know, in the early years of the war, the propaganda just encouraged people to sign up and, you know, go get Hitler. And that worked to a point, but only to a point. What they realized midway through the war that if you were actually going to hit the enlistment numbers we needed to hit, if we were actually going to mobilize across all of society, it wasn't enough just to tell people to go overseas and, you know, where the threat was actually quite distant. You actually had to engage people in a conversation about the kind of society they were going to come back to. We introduced our first major social programs during the war, unemployment insurance, the family allowance. The Marsh report that laid the architecture for the whole modern welfare state was written during the war and was offered to Canadians as a pledge and a promise that they would come back to a different country than the one that they were leaving behind. That is how you get everyone on the bus in the face of an existential threat.

MG: Just finally, what is it that gives you any sense of optimism that given, you know, the concerns that people will inevitably raise people in politics, people with power will inevitably raise about some of the drastic changes that you say need to be taken. What gives you the optimism that that can be defeated, that you can rally the troops, if I can put it that way and fight in the way that you say needs to be fought?

SETH KLEIN: Well, when you say give me the optimism, I want to be clear. I'm trying to walk a line in the book between not being Pollyanna on the one hand and not succumbing to despair on the other. The truth is, we live in an ambiguous time. All of us who take seriously the science wrestle with despair. That is the truth. We don't know if we're going to win this fight, if we will do what we need to do in time. I do find hope in the students strikes, I see it and I find hope in the incredible solidarity actions in support of Indigenous land defenders. And I find some hope in the polling that I was referring to later. But mostly I'm recognizing that we don't know if we'll win this challenge, but, you know, to conclude going back to the war again, it is worth appreciating that those who rallied in the face of fascism 80 years ago, you know, we forget this, Matt, to state the obvious, but we lose sight of it. They also didn't know if they would win. You know, there was a good chunk of the war in the early years when it was far from clear what the outcome would be and yet that generation rallied regardless and in the process, they surprised themselves by what they were capable of achieving. And that gives me some hope and I think that's the spirit we need today.

MG: Seth Klein, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

SETH KLEIN: Thank you.

MG: Seth Klein is a public policy expert and the author of a new book. It's called, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for a Climate Emergency. Well, coming up after your regional updates, the promising leap's being made in COVID-19 treatments. Plus, an Indigenous illustrator earning a place on the pages of Marvel Comics. It's a great story. You'll hear it in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music]

Meet the researcher tracking the most important treatments for COVID-19

Guests: David Fajgenbaum

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We have been hearing a lot about the race for a COVID-19 vaccine. Last week it was Pfizer, now it looks like the Moderna vaccine could work as well. But as that race unfolds, other doctors and scientists are working at breakneck speed to figure out how to treat this disease. Dr. David Fajgenbaum has been tracking the drugs being used and which have the most promise. He is an immunologist who runs the Centre for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. And he joins us once again. Doctor, good morning.

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Good morning to you as well. Thanks for having me.

MG: The last time you and I spoke, it seems like a lifetime ago, it was only in May and you were talking about the work that your lab was starting to do to research how drugs that were being used elsewhere could be repurposed for COVID. What have you learned in the gap between then and now?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: That's right. We've been tracking all drugs being given to patients with COVID-19, and we've heard about a few of them in the in the news. But what's been so surprising is that over 300 different drugs have already been given to patients with COVID-19. So lots and lots of drugs are being tried. I think all of us hope and wish that all 300 were highly effective. But the good news is there are there is a fraction of those drugs, about somewhere around 10 of those drugs that look highly promising, several of which have demonstrated to be effective.

MG: Let's talk about some of them. One that people may have heard of is Remdesivir How does that work?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: So Remdesivir is an antiviral. And when we think about treating COVID, I really like to break it up into four categories. The first is drugs that directly target the virus, like Remdesivir. Another one is a drug that targets the immune system because remember, any time you have a viral infection, it's your immune system that fights back against it. So you can boost up your immune response to better fight the virus, where sometimes patients with COVID-19 get so sick and even die because their immune system is too strong. So a third category actually suppresses the immune system. You want it to be on, but you don't want it to be too strong. And then the fourth category really deals with the clinical complications that are a result of COVID-19. So Remdesivir hits that first one as an anti-viral.

MG: There was some news that came out just recently saying that the world's top intensive care body, this is the body that represents ICU doctors, was recommending that its doctors not use Remdesivir routinely saying that it had little to no impact. What should we take from that?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: So Remdesivir is one of the drugs where there have been conflicting results. So one study showed a very, very strong effect of the drug, particularly if given early in the disease course, whereas two separate studies where the drug was given later on in the disease course of patients showed less benefit and even one of them showed no benefit at all. And so I think this highlights the complexity of COVID-19. It's not just that we have to find a drug that works for covid. We used to find a drug that works for a particular timing of a covered illness and in a particular subtype of patient. So it's really, really complicated. And I would agree that Ramdas of ear is likely not going to be very helpful if you give it late in the disease course when someone's already in ICU, already on a ventilator, that's what you should be giving a drug like dexamethasone. But early on, the data really do support Remdesivir just being effective.

MG: Let's talk about dexamethasone. When is that most useful?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: So dexamethasone as an immunosuppressant.So I talked about earlier that sometimes you can get COVID-19 your immune system actually gets too activated and causes problems. We call it a cytokine storm. And so in those patients, you want to suppress the immune response. And that's what this drug dexamethasone or corticosteroids do. And so this drug is actually recommended late in the disease course. You want to give it to people only to the people who are on some sort of supplementary oxygen. They might be on a ventilator or oxygen through their nose. And those are the people that will benefit from dexamethasone. So it's almost the opposite of Remdesivir. You want to give Remdesivir early and if someone gets really, really sick and they're in the ICU, that's what you want to get dexamethasone. It actually is harmful if you give dexamethasone too early because you're suppressing the immune response, which you don't want to do.

MG: We've also heard about this antibody cocktail, the experimental treatment that Donald Trump received. Does that work?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: It does look like it's effective, again, in a particular group of patients, so so all of us, when we encounter this virus, we all begin to make antibodies against the virus. Some of us are better than others, which is why some people have less symptoms than others. But in some of us takes it takes longer to make those antibodies in patients that are very sick, that don't yet have very high antibody levels. Those are the patients that can benefit the most from these monoclonal antibodies like the the one that Donald Trump received. And so, again, highlighting the complexity that you notice that every time I say, yes, this drug will work, I then have to follow it up with which kind of COVID patient will it work in?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: I mean, with him, he's the president. So obviously he's going to get treatment that the average person is not going to be able to get. Is there the possibility that that could filter down to, you know, the rest of us, if I can put it that way?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Absolutely. So regeneron and UI Lily are pushing that product that that sort of treatment, monoclonal antibodies forward. And like I said, it's going to fit a particular niche. It's not going to be the drug that everyone needs and it's going to fit the particular kind of patient. And Donald Trump actually really fell into that kind of a patient where he was deteriorating quite rapidly and and based on comorbidities, he certainly was at high risk of a poor outcome. And so he's the kind of patient and it does appear that that he did benefit from it, given his pretty quick turn around.

MG: So much of this is about, as we're saying, repurposing drugs that are being used elsewhere in some ways to buy time until the vaccine arrives. When we spoke in May, you had a hypothesis the treatments for Castlemans disease could work for COVID-19. Can you just quickly remind us what Castlmans Disease is.

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Sure, Castlemans is an immune system disorder where your immune system becomes too activated and then begins to attack your vital organs and shut them down. And I learned about Castleman Disease because I was first diagnosed with it when I was in medical school and I actually even had my last rites read to me because I nearly died from it went on that relapse after relapse after relapse. And one of the reasons that, so first off, I've dedicated my life to studying the immune system to try to save my life and others and one of the reasons that I really wanted to get into the COVID fight was that I began to learn about all the overlap. If you look in the blood of a Castlemans patient or the blood of a COVID patient, it's almost indistinguishable. You find these hyper activated immune cells doing all kinds of bad things that really look very much like Castleman disease. So one could infer that a number of Castleman Disease drugs may be effective. And there have been a few that are using Castleman that look quite promising in COVID. The one that I was very hopeful would be the solution to the drug that was actually developed just for Castleman Disease 30 years ago. Now it's approved for many more conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, and many of us were very hopeful it was going to be a solution for COVID. Unfortunately, despite some early promising results, we were all disappointed with the larger studies that really suggest that this drug probably doesn't work. It certainly doesn't work in large populations. It may only work in a very small fraction of COVID patients.

MG: I mean, you obviously want it to work, but in the research, how important is it that you find those dead ends as well and that you identify them?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Oh, it's so important, no matter how hard. I mean, all of us want solutions tomorrow. But the most important thing we can do is that exactly what you find the dead end. You have to learn from it and you have to pivot just because you want a drug to be successful. If anything, you should that should make you even more rigorous in how you evaluate the data, because the worst thing we can do is to continue to use the drug and use hydroxychloroquine as an example to use a drug, even after trials have come out to show that the drug is not effective. And again, the large proportion of patients, maybe there's a small fraction they can benefit. But as much as we all hope drugs like this work, we have to follow the data. And that's why I created this project. It's called the Corona Project. Anyone can access the data worldwide and we actually just crossed 20,000 views. So it's being utilized. It's tracking all drugs being given to all COVID-19 patients worldwide.

MG: Why is it that a drug like hydroxychloroquine, which we know doesn't work, is is being used on a lot of patients?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: So the tough thing with COVID is that the vast, vast majority of patients will recover from the virus and will survive. And so regardless of what you ask them to do, you may ask them to take hydroxychloroquine or you may ask them to suck their thumb every day and they'll get better, the vast majority. And then afterwards you might say, oh my gosh, I sucked my thumb and I got better from COVID. But we don't think that there's any association between that, right. And the challenges that we have a disease where the majority of people will recover. It's hard to infer that one thing helped you to recover for another unless you do something called a randomized controlled trial. And that's where you have a group of patients who get the treatment and the group of patients who don't get the treatment. They get a placebo or get nothing. And then you randomly assigned one patient to this group, one patient of that group, and you blind it. So that way the patient and the doctor doesn't know whether you're getting the placebo or whether you're getting the treatment and then if the patients on the drug do better, the patients you don't get the drug, then, you know, the drug is really working. But if you just treat 100 patients with hydroxychloroquine or even a candy, if you give them some chocolate candy, the vast majority will be "cured." And so that's what makes this such a complicated disease.

MG: What are some of the other therapeutics that you're most hopeful about at this point?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Yeah, there are a few that really affect the immune system, and so we talked earlier about the immune response to a virus like SARS-COV-2 really needs to be strong enough, but not too strong. And so it's a very fine line that you have to to walk and there is a drug that's actually a drug that we're looking at quite closely for Castleman disease, and that suppresses the immune system. And it acts kind of like dexamethasone, but it acts in different ways. And so we think it could be better than that in a few ways. So that's a way to suppress the immune response that people are are in the ICU and they're really, really sick because their immune system is out of control. And then there's another drug that actually does the opposite. It boosts the immune response. It's called interferonbeta, and it can be inhaled into the lungs. And there was a press release that came out this summer reporting that it was very, very effective in a randomized controlled trial. Now, I haven't seen the data yet from that that trial, but I'm really eager to and I hope will come out any day now. And I think what it'll show us is that if you're early in the disease course and you've just recently been infected and your immune system isn't really ramping up the way that it should, you should take a drug like interferon beta to boost up the response. And if you're really late in your disease course with cold it meaning that it could be over two weeks from from the time that you were first infected and you're getting really, really sick. You're in the ICU, then we really need to ramp down and we really need to suppress the immune response and make sure that it doesn't get out of control.

MG: What about Vitamin D?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Vitamin D is another drug that falls in the category of drugs that I'm really hopeful about. There was a randomized control trial that was done in Spain. There were a couple of methodological questions, so the way they did the trial was a little unusual. And there were some some questions that arose as I looked at the study. But the results were breathtaking. There was an incredible effect where individuals who got high dose vitamin D had much better outcomes than individuals who didn't get high dose vitamin D. Now, as I said, there were some concerns I had with the study design, and it was published in a lower tier journal than one would expect, which makes you worry that maybe there there were some real flaws with the way the study was done. But the good news is, is there another handful of clinical trials that are going on right now and why wouldn't it be great if Vitamin D is something that's cheap, easily available is something like that? Could could really be helpful. That would be just wonderful.

MG: Just finally, this is fast science. Things are I mean, we talk about, you know, the vaccine and the warp speed that the vaccine research teams are working at right now, but this treatment science is moving very quickly as well. Are you concerned about that or is it exhilarating to be part of something that is moving that quickly?

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Now it is concerning that things can move too fast. I think that it's finding that right balance. I mentioned earlier that that I began doing research because I have this disease, Castleman Disease. You can imagine that creates a sense of urgency like like not too many other things and as a result, I was able to identify a drug that's actually saving my life. I'm chatting with you today because of a drug I found. And of course, there was an incredible urgency there. Now, what you have to do is find the right sense of urgency, but also maintain the high level of rigour that's needed to do good science. And a third really important component is to make sure that you're tracking the data. You can't let yourself get caught up in the newest press release or the newest headline. You have to systematically keep track of the data, make sure that you're always following the data. And I think that many of us scientists and also nonscientists, I think we get excited about the news headlines and and hopeful because all of us want this this crisis to be over as soon as possible. But I think it makes it even more important that we're so disciplined and stay focused on the data.

MG: You can understand, though, why people are tempted by that, why those headlines get so much attention.

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Oh, I can completely understand it because us scientists that are doing the work, we also want solutions quickly, but as I said, will actually cause more harm than good if we don't maintain the level of rigour that is absolutely essential.

MG: I hope we have the chance to talk again. In the meantime, Doctor, thank you very much for this morning.

DAVID FAJGENBAUM: Thanks so much for having me.

MG: Dr. David Fajgenbaum is an immunologist who runs the Centre for Cykotine Storm Treatment & Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. He's the author of a memoir of his experience with Castleman's Disease. He talked about having his last rites read to him, was nearly dead, and then came back. In part because of the research that he's doing. And that's why he's able to talk to us this morning. That book is called Chasing My Cure.

[Music]

Indigenous illustrator from Canada chosen to work on Marvel’s Indigenous Voices issues

Guests: Kyle Charles

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Kyle Charles is a member of the Whitefish Lake First Nation in northern Alberta. Since he was three-years-old, Kyle has been obsessed with drawing comic book characters. Well now, he has received the call that every comic book fan dreams of. Marvel Comics has tapped him to illustrate part of the franchise's Indigenous Voices issue. It comes out tomorrow. Kyle, good morning.

KYLE CHARLES: Hey, good morning, Matt.

MG: This is wild. What did you think when you got offered the job to work with Marvel on this special issue?

KYLE CHARLES: I thought it was somebody messing with me.

MG: How did this happen? Walk us through what what happened.

KYLE CHARLES: So I was sitting where I am right now, so on my couch on my living room and kind of just chilling and you know, I had my phone ping, I looked at it and seen the email headline saying Draw for a Marvel story. And I was like, who is this? I opened it up and I read it. And I was like, well, this isn't real. What the heck's going on? The I read it again. And I recognized the name at the bottom, the editor and I was like, oh my God, this is real. This is actually real. So I hopped off the email and called my parents and my brother and just told them the good news.

MG: You have to kind of pinch yourself to convince yourself that this is a real thing?

KYLE CHARLES: Yeah, I'm still doing it. I mean, until I get the book in my hands, it doesn't, you know what I mean? It's just kind of surreal right now.

MG: I've been looking at some of the the illustrations that you've done and they're great. And they're great for a bunch of reasons, one is it's excellent art, but also this is important that Marvel is doing this. It's hired Indigenous editors, Indigenous writers, Indigenous illustrators. From your perspective, why does that matter?

KYLE CHARLES: Puts us on a platform. It gets us in the spotlight, you know. It gives us representation for our culture and it allows us to tell their own stories, which is to me, at the height of the importance of this book.

MG: You were asked to illustrate the story of Dani Moonstar. Tell us about Dani Moonstar.

KYLE CHARLES: Dani Moonstar is a New Mutant. She's an Indigenous character, powerful female, she's telepathic and a natural leader, and in this story, she's out to find and help a young Indigenous youth who's discovering their powers and kind of gets into trouble and her and her teammate head to Arizona to go find them and help them out.

MG: I was reading something that you'd said that you were trying to channel the energy of your mom and your aunties when drawing this character. What were some of the things that you were bringing from the women in your own life to Dani Moonstar?

KYLE CHARLES: Just be the light she has in itself against all the, you know, the struggles she's faced and the resilience she has and you know, that is just something that I've always admired about my mother. You know, she's been through a lot and she's always kept a great sense of humour, which she passed on to me. So that's just something I want to put into Dani's character.

MG: That light.

KYLE CHARLES: Yeah.

MG: I was saying that that, you know, since you were three, you've been obsessed with drawing comic book characters. What do you remember about the comics that you were reading when you were growing up?

KYLE CHARLES: Oh, Todd McFarlane, who has been a huge inspiration. He was drawing Spiderman at the time. I just loved his artwork and as I've gotten older, I actually got to meet him. And I'm like, that's just somebody who I always looked up to. But, yeah just drawing Spider-Man, my brother would always be drawing with my cousin Derek and, you know, I wasn't old enough to hang out with them. So I'd kind of hangout in the hallway and listen to them talk about drawing. And that's where I started drawing is from there. Just drawing Spider-Man and Ninja Turtles and Batman, that kind of stuff.

MG: How does your career go from hanging out in the hallway to taking this more seriously as something that you could do as a career?

KYLE CHARLES: Just being dedicated, kind of myopic in my approach and just, you know, single-minded and just always wanting to be a conflict artist, never wanted to be anything else my entire life. And I just worked as hard as I could and stayed focused and, you know, went to post-secondary for it. And after that came out and just, you know, made sure I hounded the proper people to get the work that I wanted and eventually broke in. And from there, just, you know, like I said, stay dedicated.

MG: Was there ever a point in that progression where you thought, I can't do this or this is not going to work out because it's just not going to happen for me?

KYLE CHARLES: Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, I've experienced failure more than once, and I just tried to do my best from learning from, but I mean, I've been on the streets while working on comic books. Comic books is not the easiest industry to survive in. It takes a lot of connecting with people and staying the course. But, yeah, I mean, when you're, you know, thankfully it's summer but like when you're on the streets and you're trying to draw comic books, I mean, it absolutely makes you question whether or not you're on the right path. But I just knew in my heart that I was and, you know, I stayed true to myself and I eventually got here. And I mean, that was five years ago. So, I mean, five years from that to this, it's been a huge change.

MG: It's amazing. When, you were talking about your mom, who were the storytellers in your life that you remember?

KYLE CHARLES: My kokum. My kokum is definitely the first storyteller I've known. She's the best storyteller I've known. You know, I'd have to live with her periodically when I was a kid and she would make me beef stew and bannock and she'd set it all up on the table and come get me and say, you know, here come eat something. And then she would just sit with me and tell me stories as I ate. And we'd just sit there for, you know, a couple hours and I would just listened to her stories and, you know, some were hilarious and some weere very tragic and horrifying. And she was just definitely that person who I've always known to be the best storyteller in my life.

MG: And do you think of her stories? I mean, is there one that you know, that you go back to when you are trying to gather the energy for the work that you're doing?

KYLE CHARLES: Yeah, I mean, especially for the graphic novel that I'm working on now. It's a Weetagoo book with Renegade Arts and Richard Van Camp, and it'll be coming out next year. And my kokum, the first person who ever told me about Weetagoo was my kolkum and, you know, I was a teenager and she told me a pretty dark story about it and it stuck with me. And it was always something that I wanted to tackle later on as a storyteller myself. Thankfully, you know, I get to work with someone like Richard Van Camp who is an amazing storyteller. And we're working on something very special, I think.

MG: I mean, just quickly and it is a dark story, what's the Weetagoo?

KYLE CHARLES: The Weetagoo is kind of like a spiritual being who actually is a cannibal and eats flesh and it takes on different forms depending on who's telling the story. Mine was a trapper up here in northern Alberta who had murdered his family and ate them and had to be killed in the lodge and wouldn't die. So they had to separate all of his body parts and bury them in different parts of Alberta.

MG: Yikes.

KYLE CHARLES: And that's the version that my kokum told me.

MG: What was it like sitting around the table having her tell you that story as your kid?

KYLE CHARLES: It's pretty harrowing. I mean I was a teenager by that point, but she told it so well, and you know what I mean? Like, she doesn't tell with any kind of like wink or anything like that. Like it's hers, you know, it's the real thing. It's true.

MG: This is coming out tomorrow, this Marvel comic. It's hard to go back in the time machine, but if you were, you know, 10, 12-years-old and you, young Kyle Charles, picked up this comic book and saw, you know, what you're seeing, but also who was creating it, what would that have meant to you?

KYLE CHARLES: It would have meant the world. You know what I mean? There was nobody like me when I was growing up and comic books, which is, you know, unfortunate, but I think I would be just truly inspired and hopeful again, just to see somebody like me do it and to see myself represented by that person. I think it's special. And I really hope that Indigenous youth feel that when this book comes out, that they see themselves in the book and its creators and they get inspired and they remain hopeful and they pursue their dreams because this is what, you know, it can happen. This is what it is, is you know a dream of mine coming true. So I hope that Indigenous youth see that.

MG: You're going to be signing autographs.

KYLE CHARLES: Well, I'll be doing a signing tomorrow at the Wonder Harbour from 5-7. So I'll definitely be signing autographs tomorrow.

MG: That's great. What a story. Kyle, congratulations. Well done.

KYLE CHARLES: Thank you.

MG: Kyle Charles, a member of the Whitefish Lake First Nation. He's working on Marvel's Indigenous Voices issue. Also on the project, another Indigenous illustrator from Canada, David Cutler from the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation. The Indigenous Voices issue, as I mentioned, drops tomorrow. That is The Current for today. Coming up on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Michael J. Fox has a new memoir out. It's been getting great reviews. This is, I think, his fourth memoir about living with Parkinson's and optimism. And you'll hear all about it coming up on CBC Radio One. At the beginning of the program, we heard about how people in Nunavut are handling their first cases of COVID-19. We thought we'd leave you with some music from the territory. Terry Uyarak is a self-taught musician from Igloolik and just released his first collection of songs a few weeks ago. It's called "Nunarjua Isulinginniani" or "Before the World Ends." And this is Terry Uyarak and a song called "Inuugannuk." I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Song: "Inuugannuk" by Terry Uyarak]

Nov. 17, 2020 episode transcript

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