The Carley Fortune effect

0:00Hi, Steve Patterson here host of The Debaters, the part stand up part quiz all Canadian comedy competition. This week we're back with a brand new episode to kick off our 21st season. We want to know when it comes to camping, which camp are you in? Tent or RV? This episode really brings the tension when two of Canada's top comedians go head to head on their favorite way to get into the wild. So for an episode that goes off without a trailer hitch, tune into the season premiere of The Debaters wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. We are traveling through the East Coast and we're talking about Canada in this moment and meeting people who capture the spirit of this place. You know, as we traveled through PEI, the talk in every little town and in the cities as well is this summer will be different. It's a novel by the Canadian author Carly Fortune and it's being turned into a Netflix series.

1:00This is the sound of movie magic being made. We're in a secret location. On set, tents are up. The crew is hauling tables and chairs out of the truck. Yeah, go right down. This is the biggest production ever to be shot on Prince Edward Island. Dozens of background actors are arriving with rolling suitcases. They're expecting more than 100 crew members. I'm Noah. Noah Doran. I'm a locations production assistance. It's just helping out with all this tents and pre-set up stuff, basically. Even now, like I watch movies differently now. And I'm like, wow, the hours that they put in behind the scenes, it's wild. Yeah. I'm the safety first, friends. Heather Campbell grew up on PEI, still spends every summer here and she is working in the costume department. I love the engagement. I love the interest. We show up on scenes and we don't necessarily hard clothes as set. And so people are curious and they're coming.

2:01That's been fun for everybody. There's just a lot of interest in the production. Everyone seems to be aware of it. And so that's been very fun just to be a part of it all. What? My name is Lindsay Stewart and I am the co-show runner. And this adaptation of the summer will be different. My name is Dan Clark. I'm the other co-show runner. And we are legally married. That part's very important. There's a last thing that was said too, which is going to save the best for last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just going to remind myself. Tell me about this production. Everywhere we have gone on the island, people have talked about this. We were in tiny little towns and they said, did you hear that it was here? Did you hear that the crew is eating here? Did you have you seen anything? What do you make of it? I love it. I mean, I love the East Coast. I went to school in Halifax, I went to Del Housy a long time ago. I fell in love with East Coast then. So when we read the book, it was just this chance to come back to this place that just holds this certain vibrance and frequency and feeling.

3:05And when I'm here, I feel that. What did you say the frequency of the place? What is the frequency of the room? What does it mean? It's just how I felt when I first watched Annagreine Gables, you know, in the 80s with my mom and every watch since then. It just had a certain spirit and beauty and gentleness. And I just wanted to be here the way that the leaves rustled and the ocean crashed against the red sands. Like there was poetry in that adaptation. And I think there's poetry in how Carly talks about this island. And we really leaned on that when we tried to adapt it and to make sure what we felt as a reader were trying to capture on screen as well. What did you feel when you read the book? I felt, well, I felt a simmering sexiness. That's the kind of undercurrent that everybody kind of dances. Yes. It's nice. No, but there's a bunch of steam. There's a bunch of steam. I felt, I just felt summer and freedom and exploration. And I felt excitement of the adventure, you know, peacefulness when you're on the road.

4:07And there's just like, when you leave Toronto and you leave these big cities, there's a release. What did you feel? Yeah. It's a great sexiness. Yeah. What else felt the conflict of Lucy, the main character, just like coming here and like in this beautiful place, but living with the conflict of like falling in love with her best friend's brother. And so it's like not totally able to get completely lost in it or like juggling both worlds for a forbidden relationship. And all of the beauty within it was a lovely story. Why was it, and this seems like an obvious question, but why was it important to shoot it here? It's based here. But the nature of your business is that it can be anywhere. Absolutely. You just, Carly spent so much time capturing the island. We needed to do it justice and we needed to be here for that authenticity. To be honest, it was never really a question not to shoot here. How important is it to capture it truthfully? People love their place, right? And you can come here. But if you get it wrong, you might get cards and letters. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

5:07I'm sure that might happen. But you know, our locations and so many people are one of our producers is from here. It's like we're getting the ins and outs. We have a patty Murphy jig on the beach that we had people like in the middle of the night telling us that we have to shout at certain points of the chorus for the authenticity of, you know, when these songs break out. And so our ears are open. And we're trying to make sure we get that specificity that's so important. Yeah. We're terrified of all the book readers and everybody else is like, well, we're going to get wrong, but just know we have our best intentions. So the other thing is just the last thing is you both mentioned a couple of times. Yeah. The Anne effect. Yeah. It's still like brings people here. You go down to Charlottetown and you will see the sign and the musical and the buss and everything else. This is already kind of doing that. The book is starting to bring people here. But when people around the world see this on TV, it's going to juice that, right? Yeah. What does that mean, too? Everything. I think that's so cool. There needs to be more recognition of how beautiful this part of the country is. It's not a lot of Canadians, even as close as Toronto.

6:09Don't come all of this way to the Maritons for their summer vacations. And it's like, no, come to the East Coast. And if this book helps make you feel enchanted and makes you feel a certain way and this screen adaptation makes you want to desire the Richard's lobster roll and the jump into the ocean at stand-hope and all of those feelings that Anne and Green Gables did and what hopefully this does, then that makes me so happy. And it's so well deserving. Yeah. We just love playing Canada for Canada. So the more we can show that off to the rest of the world, we're all for fabulous. Thank you both. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. Thank you guys. Lindsay and Dane said there was never really a question about filming this summer will be different on PEI, but the provincial government did kick in some five million dollars to help seal that deal. So certainly, Netflix is a big fire on a stage globally to get them to come and visualize how they can be here. I think certainly opens doors for the future and that would be our hope. Let's PEI's Minister of Economic Development, a met up with her on one of the prettiest streets in Charlottown, Victoria Rowell.

7:12Certainly these opportunities are wonderful for our arts and culture, our creative industries, but also for all of the sectors that benefit and need economic growth for PEI. Netflix doesn't need the money from PEI. Netflix is a big company. They could pay for this themselves without any incentives. I think the partnership is really important. All the dollars that they are spending here is really important to Islanders. The hat that I would wear is about the opportunity for economic growth. It's about the investment into our restaurants, our coffee shops. We're hearing from lots. We're hearing from our smaller communities that Netflix has been here eating. Others are here eating. That's really exciting. Because of that, others are going. It's driving traffic to have that opportunity for here is really beneficial for PEI. We were in Victoria by the sea yesterday and everybody was talking about that. They were there and they were shooting and do they eat here and who is eating here. It's a big thing. It's a big thing. It puts those that work hard, especially in our tourism and film and creative industries, it's really hard to get those accolades to see that the fruits of their labor are paying off

8:12and others are going to see how the great things that they do. The other part of it is, I mean, there's like a banner for an Anna Greengables musical. People still come here because of Anna Greengables. Is the sense, or your hope, that people will come here because of the Carly Fortune effect, if I can put it that way? Definitely. I think any time we get an opportunity to diversify our creative industry, to open it up to other audiences to come, to bring reasons to come here. We have the number of productions that are happening this summer at the Confederation Center and the Carly Fortune story is just another investment into that sector that's really important to offer opportunity to come here. Fabulous. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. This week on Two Blocks from the White House. From trade wars to the war in Iran, it's been anything but a quiet summer in Washington. And this fall shows no signs of letting up. And so this week we're asking what moments defined American politics this summer and what can we expect this fall?

9:13Find and follow Two Blocks from the White House wherever you get your podcasts. And watch us on YouTube, new episodes drop every Wednesday. We continue our road trip across the East Coast of Canada and pull into Sussex, New Brunswick. What you're hearing now is the sound of a multi-million dollar investment and a Canadian success story. Sounds like heavy industry. And in a way, it is. And it quees, have a sense as to what's going on. This is Mrs. Dunster's factory. And every pst you hear is a piston squeezing donut batter into the new fryer. And stuff like dreams when you're a kid to come to a donut factory. Yes indeed, yeah. It smells amazing. Yeah, thank you. Watch your supporting here. Blair Hislok is the CEO of Mrs. Dunsters. And if you grew up in New Brunswick or you know somebody who did, you probably know that logo with a smiling grandma and the curly white hair and ruffled apron.

10:16Mrs. Dunster was a real person. So angry Dunster started making donuts six out of time in this cast iron pot that her family recently gave us. So this is how it started. In 1968, imagine being a female entrepreneur in 1968 in New Brunswick. And that's how it all started with this cast iron pot. When Blair and his wife, Roslyn bought Mrs. Dunster's 12 years ago, it was front page news in the local papers. It's emotional for people, right? We've met, you know, people who were bus drivers, truck drivers, millionaires, billionaires who talk about their story and Mrs. Dunsters and the brand and the impact it had on their life like it crosses all, political lines, all demographics and socioeconomic profiles. It really is an emotional business to be in for people. Since they took over, Mrs. Dunsters has been growing by about 20% a year they are expanding across Canada. And we're also part of the recent team Canada trade mission to Mexico. This is a brand new donor prior. Last year we replaced our old one with 50 years old and we replaced it last year with

11:18this one. We've got the capability now to make 85 million donuts a year on this new friar. So this was once in a generation kind of... Like this was a giant donut friar like this cost. This was a $3 million project. But one of the things you notice about our donuts is our donuts don't have holes in them. So there's an old fashioned donut and so that's what we're kind of famous for. If we have a hole in our donut, it's a reject and we sell it as a second. Having said that, getting a warm donut off the line is an experience you don't often get to have. I'm not going to. You want to pack some donuts? If I do it now I'm going to be responsible. I don't want to sell your company's good name. I have confidence in you. I like that. I say with a half. I would check that after quality control. Apparently you just can't eat donuts for free. You have to come to the donut factory, you have to pack some donuts. You got to do some work. It's like doing the dishes if you just get out on your bill at the restaurant. It looks like the Lucille ball thing with the candies coming along.

12:20This moves a bit slower than her conveyor belt. I feel like they slowed it down for you. I'm not sure. For packing a great donut, it takes practice. You get to make sure you put the right amount in. You want to make sure that it looks good because you want your customer to have the best product possible. Look at how fast she is. One, two, three, four, six, seven. They want to be gentle. They don't want to mash up these donuts. Eight, nine, ten. She's done four bags since you started your one. Wow. She does not look impressed with my amateur donut packing. I can tell you that. Don't quit your day job buddy. Matt, you just got quality control. There's only seven dollars. How did I do that? I don't know. I told you. My time as a donut packer may be coming to an abrupt end. That's ten. There you go. Thank you very much.

13:20Thank you for your donut packing tips. Trust me, these donuts are delicious and the investment and the new equipment is a big deal. But one of the keys to the success of Mrs. Dunsters has been newcomers. The Blair is worried about what changes in federal immigration policy will mean for his future plans. It's interesting walking through the factory and just taking a look at the people who are working there. It is a snapshot of people from all over the world. Twelve years ago we had one person who wasn't born in Canada working for us out of 50. And today we have 13 different nationalities and we speak 24 different languages. And so we have a very diverse workforce. That has really been a consequence of our growth and having to find workers. What is immigration meant to the success of this company and the growth of the company? Well, like I said, we have more than 55% of our employees today.

14:21We are born somewhere other than Canada. And I can't imagine that we would have been able to grow as a business. We are five times larger than we were 12 years ago. And we would not have been able to do that if not for immigration. We were strong advocates for the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Project. We were strong advocates for policies on affordable housing in rural areas and other things. And now we are strong advocates, sort of against the undoing of all of that. Talk about the undoing because the federal government cut new Brunswick's allocation of permanent residents. And that Atlantic immigration program means that the changes to it means that Baker is no longer qualified for that. Well, so what's happened is the workforce in Canada is 20 million people. Two million of them are on work permits that expire this year. 1.9 million on work permits that expire next year. And the government's current policy is largely to not renew many of those. So what that looks like for us is we're going to lose 10% of our work force

15:24are on work permits that expire this year that are going to be sent home. Now these are people that have been here for a number of years. They've been working. They've been paying taxes. They're in housing. Their kids are in school. They've been promoted. They're experienced. They're adding value to our business. You saw downstairs. And we're going to have to replace them with newcomers who work permits expire a year later, two years later. So it's this sort of turnover by design, by policy, which makes no sense. In an era where we're being told we need to be more productive, we're losing 10% of our workforce every year and having to replace them with people who don't have any experience. What was the reaction in this company? And I want to talk a little bit more about who is working here. But what was the reaction in the company when those changes came down? Oh, I mean, culturally. It was basically a standstill for two weeks as people emotionally calling home, trying to explain to their parents why they're going to have to come home after they've sacrificed, sold land, borrowed money, made sacrifices to come to this country in the hope of becoming permanent residents.

16:26So the morale in the business went in the toilet. Attendants dropped by 30, 35% while people got their heads around. The challenge is associated with that. Even the people who aren't affected directly this year that are affected next year or the year after are now suddenly terrified for their future. And I had one young man who told me his father calls him every night from India and yells at him for 35 minutes, try to do something more, do something different. I had a young man on the weekend who his father passed away. His mother took out a big loan to send him to Canada to go to school. He's been here for three years. And he was basically begging me to do something to help him because his work permit is not going to be extended and that the family has leveraged everything and made a big bet on him. And he's currently supporting the family from here. And he's 22 years old. And his whole future was in front of him and now it's all coming crashing down. So the impact on him, on his family back home and on the people he works with every day

17:28in the bakery is insurmountable. How do you understand how the mood broadly in this country around immigration has changed in the last of the month? You know, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around immigration. And I think immigrants are bearing the brunt of people's frustration. What are the misconceptions? Well, one of them is that employers are paid or wages are subsidized by the government, the federal government or provincial government for workers and that's our motivation for doing it. For hiring them is not true. There's no programs in Canada, provincially or federally, at any scale that support that argument. The other thing that in the Brunswick in particular, in the Atlantic Canada, generally is different than the rest of Canada. We need workers. We have one of the oldest populations in the country. You know, in the Brunswick, we have 15,000 people entering the workforce every year and 30,000 leaving. So we have a net deficit of 15,000 people in the workforce every year. There's also an unemployment rate, though, of what, 7% in New Brunswick? Yeah, it's 7%.

18:29But you know, in the last five years, we added 100,000 people to the population in Brunswick and our unemployment rate went down. It's just at that point and the statistic, people will hear you say that you're losing employees and they're going to have to hire people who are going to be on permits that are going to expire next year or the year after. Right. You might say, well, why aren't you hiring people who are here? Why aren't you hiring people who are from New Brunswick? Yeah, we get that argument a lot. And there's a couple of answers to that. One is less than 2% of our applicants come from people that were born in Canada. 98% of our applicants come from newcomers that are either here or want to come here. The answer to the general question around 7% unemployment is, you know, 4% unemployment is basically normal turnover and is considered really full employment. So then we're left with the 3% on top of that. And, you know, this is a very, you know, in Atlanta, Canada, we have a lot of geography and no people. So, you know, the 3% is people in Bathurst and Camelton and in Frederaton and they're not going to move to Sussex in the Brunswick. And, or they want a career that's maybe not packing donuts or mixing bread.

19:30So there's a mismatch in terms of skills and experience. And, you know, what most employers will tell you in the Brunswick is their biggest struggle is finding enough people to work. And, in our business is going to double again in the next 3 to 5 years. In the context of us losing 10% of our workers each year, I don't know how we're going to do that with the company. When I was here in the province, I guess it was a couple of years ago, just before the last provincial election. This was a real issue, the issue of population growth and what population growth has meant to healthcare and access to healthcare to schools. In Paris, I didn't figure where the kids are going to end up in school and what the schools are going to look like, and portables scattered throughout the playground because there weren't enough spaces. Do you worry about the impact of more people coming to the province on the services that people in the province already depend on? Yeah, so as an entrepreneur, when we reach a capacity issue, you know, in our business, you know, we look at where we need to invest, to increase the capacity to make more donuts or bake more bread or do whatever. That's what we do as entrepreneurs.

20:31I think the issue is the government increased the population without thought to the capital investments that needs to be made in education and healthcare and so on. So obviously we got behind and so I think that's a real issue and it's a real concern. This has become a really emotional issue across the country. It's a business issue, but it's a people issue too in some ways. So what would you say to the people who are making these decisions, particularly around immigration, about what it means in a community like yours? I would say that, you know, the immigration policy is designed to alleviate, largely eliminate the burden in the large cities, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. In rural Canada, certainly in Atlanta, Canada, that is not our circumstance. We need more workers. Where our workforce is shrinking every year. There's not a premier in Atlanta, Canada that thinks that we need to send people home. Everybody here really understands the issue. I think we're dealing with a federal policy that's been designed based on the circumstance of largely a central Canada. And that also creates division in our country.

21:33We're going to meet one of those employees who arrived here and faces an uncertain future. In the meantime, I've done interviews in many places. This is one of the tastiest interviews. Oh, thank you. The pleasure of doing it. Thank you very much. Awesome. Thank you. One of the people affected by the changes to Canada's immigration policy is Amherjee Corp. She's 23 years old, originally from India and started working as a baker at Mrs. Donsters last summer. So there have been big changes to the immigration policy here in this country, particularly reducing the number of people. Like yourself who would have that path to permanent residency. Yeah. When you heard that about those changes, what went through your mind? It was all like uncertainty that came to my mind like what I'm going to do. What my friends are going to do who is, who is, who is expiring very soon. And that time I was like unclear, like everything was like, oh my god, now what to do? What we are going to do? Because when we came to Canada, we had a plan that we will study. We will gain Canadian experience. Then we will apply for permanent residency.

22:34But when we listen to the new changes or anything government making, then it just all came to mind like, okay, now what we are going to do? We have invested our time, our savings, like our family have invested like so much money on us. You have a permit that is expiring? Yeah, my permit is expiring in upcoming 10 months. And there have been people around me at my workplace whose permit have already expired last month. And some of them have taken against studies. Some of them are going back to India and saying them like in that condition makes me feel like so sad for them and for myself, even I don't know, like what will happen next year? Like government is changing rules like all of sudden. We don't know what to do next. What do you think you'll do? What 10 months is a long time and it's not a long time? And it's not a long time exactly. So basically right now the government have made French a priority, healthcare a priority and construction.

23:34So some of my friends, they are looking for work in healthcare or construction. And some of them are working on French, even working on French. But learning a new language, it's not that easy. So you're trying to learn French to increase the possibility that you will have a higher score for the year? So that I can apply for my permanent residency. If and I hope things work out for you, but if you don't get the score and your permit expires, what are you going to do? Then eventually we have to move back to India. We don't have any other options over here. And earlier like government used to extend the permits, but now everything is like unclear. Like they are not giving a transparent policies. Like we have to move back to India. That's the only option we have. What would that mean for you to move back to India? I don't want to move back to India. Like it's very hard because it's not only me, I have seen people like coming from India. They have sold their lands.

24:36They have like sold their assets. And they have taken a very like big amount loans from Indian banks. And they eventually came here to have a better future. So they have sacrificed so much of their families. So moving back to India is not a option for us. Is it feel like home here? Yeah, it's been almost three and a half years. Now I can say I can call this country a Canada. That's why I don't want to go to India because I'm used to here. I have developed relationships here. I know like my friends are here. My coworkers are here. I have learned so many skills from this country. So that's why yeah. I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you. Thank you very much. Nice to talk to you. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Emergy Core works as a baker at Mrs. Dunsters. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.