Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for March 30, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Crowd cheering]

And now, a 24th Stanley Cup Banner will hang from the rafters of the famous forum in Montreal! The Canadiens win the Stanley Cup!

[Crowd roars]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Forgive us, we're teasing you. You have to go back more than 20 years to celebrate a Stanley Cup for the Habs, or the Oilers, or the Flames; almost 50 years if you are besotted with the Leafs. And now, we're in a year where Canadian teams are seemingly shut out of the NHL playoffs, and the love and lure of other games beckons. So what's it all doing to the hockey business, and the hearts of hockey fans? It depends on who you ask, and we are asking in just a moment. Also today, girls and sex.

SOUNDCLIP

If I want to look hot, I definitely wear something that shows my stomach.

AMT: Journalist Peggy Orenstein reached out to talk to young women about sex and concluded that many are missing out on the pleasures of intimacy because they live in a world that confuses being sexualized with being sexually fulfilled. Hear her in half an hour. Also today...

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: News theme]

New reports that Syrian forces have entered the ISIS held town of Palmyra. ISIS captured this historic city last May.

AMT: The Syrian army of President Assad has retaken the ancient city of Palmyra, even as the Iraqi army moves closer to retaking Mosul from ISIS. All of that against a backdrop of terror attacks outside the region, and intelligence that says ISIS has been sending some recruits back home. In an hour, we are focusing on how the strategies there play into security decisions elsewhere. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Canadian hockey shutout from NHL playoffs spurs fans to defend national sport

Guests: Jack Jedwab, Bruce Dowbiggin, Paul Riley

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: There are some things we will probably never agree on. Whose beer is better? Who is better at hockey?

[crowd laughs]

BARACK OBAMA: Where's the Stanley Cup right now?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Now, now, now…

[crowd laughs]

BARACK OBAMA: I'm sorry, is it in my hometown? With the Chicago Blackhawks?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Speaking of exports, we know with certainty that there is a high demand for Canadian goods down here. A few that come to mind: Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, and Patrick Sharp of the Chicago Blackhawks.

[crowd applause]

AMT: Some good-natured ribbing there, when U.S. president Barack Obama hosted prime minister Justin Trudeau on a state visit to Washington, D.C., this month. And, of course, teasing the Canadian leader about his nation's hockey prowess ought to be fair game. Hockey has been Canada's official winter sport, and paramount pastime, for decades. But just as the Stanley Cup is indeed stateside right now, it seems destined to stay there for at least one more year. In fact, barring an act of the hockey gods, the current NHL season will be the first since 1970 without a single Canadian team in the playoffs. That is 46 years. It's true that the Ottawa Senators technically still have a chance, but it's honestly more of a snowball's chance. And it has us wondering what it all means for the Canadian psyche, and hockey's place in it. We have three guests facing off on that question today. Jack Jedwab is the president of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration. He joins us from Vancouver. Bruce Dowbiggin is a sportscaster and the author of Ice Storm, the Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever. He's with me in our Toronto studio. And also here in studio with me is Paul Riley, the former Commissioner of the former National Basketball League of Canada and a sports and media lawyer. Hi everyone, welcome.

JACK JEDWAB: Hi.

PAUL RILEY: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: Bruce Dowbiggin, let’s begin with you. No Canadian teams in the playoffs. In your view, what impact will this have on Canada's love of hockey?

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: I think for one year, virtually nothing. I don't think that hockey is that vulnerable that one year without the teams being in the playoffs, it's a bigger business story. It's going to kill some broadcasters in Canada. The advertising community is going to be shaken. But hockey, at least the sentimental roots about hockey, I don't think they're in any danger in one year. If this happens over the course of two or three years, and every spring we're watching a Toronto Raptors run for the NBA crown, or we're starting to watch the Toronto Blue Jays season come on and we watch that instead, then we're looking at some change.

AMT: Paul Riley, your sport is basketball. You can gloat, it's okay.

[both laugh]

AMT: Are the standings this season having an effect on the appeal of hockey in Canada, do you think?

PAUL RILEY: I think it certainly is, and I think it's been happening. The seismic shift has been happening, and some people just haven't embraced that fact yet. But the popularity of basketball, it’s never been more popular than it is right now. You know, a couple years ago, Forbes Magazine did a study that showed that basketball was the fastest growing sport in popularity in Canada, and for young people coming up, they don't know the Leafs. The Leafs have been irrelevant, certainly in Toronto, the Leafs have been irrelevant for young fans for a long time. And the success of the Raptors, the last couple years making the playoffs, they haven't done well in the playoffs this year, we hope that will change. I think that's been pulling more fans, especially young ones, to the sport of basketball.

AMT: Jack Jedwab, does it matter that no Canadian teams are in the NHL playoffs this year?

JACK JEDWAB: Well, I agree with Bruce. I don't think it matters that it's happening in this year. If it were to happen over a number of years, I think it would probably matter more. I think it's going to affect people locally. Again, I don't think it's a national identity crisis in the works in any way. I think Canadians still feel very good about our performance in hockey. It's just that, as regards to these local markets, I think if your favorite team is in Montreal or Toronto, that's going to affect you.

AMT: And Bruce, you mentioned a little bit about the business side of that. Talk about the immediate fallout for the game when every Canadian team is out of the playoffs.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Well, I would suspect that we're going to see the ratings drop by, you could see them drop by half at certain levels of the playoffs, because the entire thing about Canadian people watching their own teams is not there this year. Yeah, people want to watch Sidney Crosby, they want to watch some of the Canadian stars who play on American teams, but it's going to be a huge drop off in the ratings. The advertisers have noticed it. The people at Sportsnet, Rogers, committed $5.2 billion to buy this NHL package. They didn’t anticipate--

AMT: [interposing] That is U.S. dollars.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: US dollars, that's right. And it was signed as a 12-year contract. They didn't anticipate years in which there were no Canadian teams. Seven teams, and all of them out. I mean, the odds are pretty stacked against that. So that’s a huge thing, and the other part is it also depends on, we talked about that a second ago, where you are in Canada. Where I live in Calgary, where hockey is the big dog still, it’ll be all right and people will still do it. But if you're in a market like Vancouver or Toronto where you have lots of options, you can explore those options.

PAUL RILEY: I think a lot of these broadcasters and media companies, they buy the games, because they've always bought the games. You know, hockey is been such a dominant sport in our culture in this country. I grew up in this country loving Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald and the like, but I can tell you, my son wouldn’t know the name of one of the Leafs right now. But he certainly can name the Raptors, and he can name the Chicago Bulls, and the Golden State Warriors. I think a lot of what's happened, is the decision makers in media companies are still holding on to the love of hockey. They're missing the fact the basketball is a sport that all the young kids are gravitating to now, not just in Ontario, all over the country.

AMT: And why do you think that is, Paul?

PAUL RILEY: It's a world sport. I think, you know, hockey has kind of priced itself out of the market. The Globe had a great story a couple of years ago that spoke about the fact that there'll never be another Wayne Gretzky or Gordie Howe, guys who grew up in blue collar families to become the best in the world in that sport. Blue collar families can't afford hockey anymore. So the young kids are playing sports that their families can afford: soccer, basketball, you don't need anything, you just need some shoes on your feet and you show up and you can play. Hockey has priced itself out of the market, and the marketers and the guys who run the media companies right now in Canada, they haven't embraced that yet, but that seismic shift is already happening.

AMT: Bruce, not only the cost of hockey. You don't get concussions in basketball, do you?

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Well, that's the other thing. And across the country, and this has nothing to do with teams being in the playoffs or out, but there's a lot of parents who sit at the table with their son or their daughter and say, what sport are we going to choose.? The point about the cost is absolutely true, but it's also, how can my kid get hurt playing this sport? If my child isn’t going to be a pro or get a scholarship in it, do we really want to pursue an elite level of hockey, which is dangerous, and where they can get concussions? And I think those discussions are happening at kitchen tables across the country, whether you’re in a big market or a small market. And I think that's another thing that hockey has to really come to grips with. Over the last few days, the league has been saying, well, they're not sure if there's a connection yet between brain damage in hockey and fighting and all that sort of stuff. Most people in Canada at their kitchen tables have already made up their mind about it. And it's not a good decision for hockey.

AMT: Jack Jedwab, talk to us a little bit more about the generational issues, particularly in terms of how young Canadians relate to hockey versus other stuff.

JACK JEDWAB: Well, I think there's some truth in the fact that, you know, back in the day if you like, when the Canadiens were in their glory years, the people locally that were young, sort of the younger crowd, would really take a shine, if you like, or really find those teams attractive to them. And you don’t find that same attraction today. My son, for example, likes the Tampa Bay Lightning, he’s a big Steven Stamkos fan. Hockey has become much more multinational in that way. So you don't have the same sort of affinity or attachment to your local team as you would have had, say, a decade ago or two decades ago. But I would lightly take issue with what my two colleagues are saying, as regards the popularity of hockey. If you look at Hockey Canada, their numbers are still really good. A lot of young people are still gravitating towards hockey, even though it has priced itself out of the market, to some extent. But Hockey Canada is strategically trying to address some of those issues, and see if they can reach out to people, and then try to moderate the price effects of participating. So I don't think we’re on that downward slide. And I have to acknowledge, by the way, I have to say that I can offer an unbiased opinion, because I have become an obsessive. Toronto Raptors fan, even on my Montrealer. So…

[chuckling]

JACK JEDWAB: Even, you know, I've gotten sort of super attracted to the basketball side of the sports story.

PAUL RILEY: Not bad loving a civilized sport, is it, where no one punches anyone in the face.

AMT: [laughs]

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Wait a minute, I’ve seen some guys under the hoop. I think it's a good point, as well, about the visibility of the sports, and that we have other options on TV. And that's one of the things that's bringing people to the NBA. And if I have to say so, too, I have to think that part of the problem for hockey right now, is the style of hockey is not particularly attractive. In the NBA, you've got 30 teams, and there's probably about 20 different styles teams play. It depends on who the players are. Hockey, everybody's kind of playing the same style. To me, the old days of the Canadiens, they were the flying Frenchmen, they played an offensive style, the Leafs were a defensive team. There's no difference in the style between the teams anymore, and I think that also hurts.

AMT: What about baseball in this equation?

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Well, it comes in at this time of year, in April. And the Blue Jays, after last fall, people just can't wait for the season to get started this weekend. And I think when again, when we're talking about the number of people who are going to be watching an NHL playoff game, St Louis versus, I don't know, Colorado or something. And then there's a Raptors game on the TV, or there's a Blue Jays game on the TV, I'm sorry, there's no choice as to which way it's going to go.

PAUL RILEY: People tend to be romantically involved with the Blue Jays, and they used to just have a romance with the Raptors back in the day. The Leafs were that long term love affair, but loving the Leafs has turned out to be, for Toronto fans, being in an abusive relationship. You know, every fall, they promise you they're going to do better, they're going to treat us better, and every spring, they rip our hearts out and break our hearts. You're going on two--

AMT: [interposing] It’s unrequited love.

[both laugh]

PAUL RILEY: Two generations now that has had that kind of love, and I think, certainly in this area of the country, that gets old after a while. Young people now love the Raptors. That's who they want to embrace.

JACK JEDWAB: But Anna Maria, let me jump in and say that in a way, if you look back at all this, we've been a victim of our own success. You know, in the sense that we envision exporting hockey to our neighbors to the south, and we've done really well by that. We've got a much larger NHL, there's a lot greater interest in the United States in hockey, the fact that Barack Obama would talk about hockey is a major accomplishment. We may not appreciate that he made a joke about Canadian hockey, but it’s a major, major stride for us in terms of exporting what we considered to be our national sport. And we still, by the way, in all the polling that I've been involved with, consider hockey to be our national sport.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Well, Jackie, being in Vancouver, you were there, I presume, for 2011, which is the last time a Canadian team went to the finals. The Canucks went to Game Seven of the finals, that’s what I wrote about in my book. And all it would take is for another Canadian team to do that to get the interest to go back. But it won't necessarily be just because it's a hockey game, it will be because it's a TV event. And when teams make runs these days, it becomes a cultural event on TV that people follow. So hockey is an integral part of it, but you also have the marriage with the media. And I think if we if we get a Canadian, and it's going to be a while, looking at the Canadian teams right now, but if we get a Canadian team make a run again, I think we'll see some very healthy TV numbers come back.

AMT: Jack, how important is hockey to Canadian identity?

JACK JEDWAB: It's right up there with the RCMP and the beaver. I mean, it registers as very strong as a national symbol and any scale, any measurement across all demographics, hockey is extremely popular. It's the sport we think we excel at. We may do well in basketball with the Raptors, but it's not, sort of, as Canadian, if you'd like, in terms of the type of participation that you see from the from the mass.

PAUL RILEY: No, we've had two Canadians been the top pick in the NBA draft out of the last three years.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Could have a third this year.

JACK JEDWAB: Don’t get me wrong, I think we're doing fantastic in basketball. And it's becoming increasingly something that attracts Canadians. We’ve got a lot of great role models out there. But it hasn't sort of reached a level, if you like, of just how many hockey players that we're generating, both in Canada and the United States, and elsewhere in the world.

PAUL RILEY: No, but--

AMT: [interposing] We also haven't talked about soccer, and its popularity and where it fits in in this equation. Paul, go ahead.

PAUL RILEY: Absolutely, and soccer is another sport that's affordable for everyone to play. It's also a world sport, that fans who are immigrating to Canada, they're coming here already with the love of soccer in their blood, in their family genetics, if you will. Whereas hockey is something that normally people who come here would then learn to embrace. But I've got to say these changes don't happen overnight, they happen incrementally, quite often when people are sleeping on them and not noticing it. But, you know, hockey, yes. Clearly still a defining sport for Canadian identity. But that shift is happening. We're in the midst of it right now. A lot of people don't notice it, but the young people coming up., they notice it. What's going on right now with Golden State and Steph Curry. Here's a young guy, a small guy, probably one of the smallest, least athletic guys in the NBA, not a big, huge guy. He's drawing more fans to the sport, more young kids are saying, wow, I could be that. My kids are growing up, young kids are growing up in this country, not saying like I did, hey, I want to be Darryl Sittler, I want to be Lanny McDonald, they're saying I want to be Steph Curry. And I think that's happening in basketball, and is happening in soccer, too.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: But you have to be careful about the urban rural split in Canada. If you're in a Western city that has a junior hockey team, if you're in Swift Current or Prince Arthur, any of those,. Prince Albert, rather. Any of those kind of places, believe me, hockey is still number one, number two, number ten. It's got all of the ones in the list. So the urban markets, they do tend to have more diversity, but hockey is extremely popular, not just as a sport, but also as kind of the important thing in those communities. That is a lynchpin. And the thing about, the other thing I was going to say about hockey and why we love it, is because whether you’re in St John's, or whether you're in Vancouver, you can start talking to somebody about hockey and you can relate right away. It's a conversational thing that Canadians have that we can identify with each other.

AMT: What Paul is saying, you're really talking about the disrupter of the sports world. 10 years from now, Paul, what are we going to see, do you think?

PAUL RILEY: That's exactly it. The change is happening now, and in ten years, the kids who are loving the sport now, well, they're going to have families, too, and what sport do you think they're going to want to coach their kids playing in, and they're going to encourage their children to play? And it's not going to be hockey. It's not going to be hockey. The failure of the Canadian teams is a part of that, and that's further embedding the demise of the sport in our culture. And there is a demise of hockey. When you look at what are young people playing, it's not just in the urban cities. You go, with the National Basketball League of Canada, London, Ontario, they pull sometimes 8,000 people to a game, to watch a minor league basketball game there. When you go to UPEI, and Moncton, New Brunswick, they pull thousands of people to their games, as well. So it's not just in the urban centres, it's all over this country. Hockey, there is a demise to it. The lack of success by the Canadian teams, the concussion issues, just the sheer entertainment of the NBA package and the way they sell their sport. It's really affected the culture of this country, and in ten years from now, basketball is going to be the top sport in this country, and hockey may be third behind soccer, as well.

AMT: Jack, what do you think?

JACK JEDWAB: I'd like to take that bet, actually. I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think basketball is making great progress and it's doing great, but I still think hockey is going to remain dominant. And I think Hockey Canada’s numbers are still very good, and they're thinking about all these issues, and how they can attract a lot of immigrants, recent immigrants and their children, who are gravitating, it's true, towards soccer, I would say, probably even more than basketball if you look at Soccer Canada's numbers, because they come from countries very often where soccer is really popular. But Hockey Canada is thinking about that. It's a winter sport, by the way, hockey, and basketball, also, of course, is in terms of when it gets played. Professionally, it's coinciding with the winter season. But, you know, I still think hockey is going to remain dominant in ten years from now.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: The other thing I'd point out is that probably the second or third most popular sport on TV in Canada is the NFL. Nobody plays American football in Canada, and it's still wildly important. So there is a diversity between what people play and what people watch, and I think that's part of what we're hitting on about hockey. Yes, the numbers in terms of participation are down, but at the elite level when it's successful, people are still going to gravitate to it.

AMT: Well, you know, we can go back to the health issues, though. If you look at the parents of children coming up, and you look at the health issues around both football and hockey.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: [interposing] But the money is so great--

AMT: [interposing] Those conversations-- Well, the money is great now.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: The money is so great, there’s such a reward. Risk-reward, if you hit the jackpot and you become a guy who makes seven, eight, ten million dollars, a year, it's enough for you and your parents to try football or hockey. But you're right, it's--

AMT: [interposing] But if you're 19 and you get a concussion…

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Right.

AMT: That’s over.

JACK JEDWAB: You know, rugby is--

AMT: For some. For some, right? That’s possibly over.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Possibly.

JACK JEDWAB: At the university level, rugby is becoming more popular. I see a lot of kids going to rugby, which isn't exactly a sport with lower contact.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Yep.

JACK JEDWAB: You know, so…

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Kids still like--

AMT: And you talk about the immigrant culture, I mean, I am in my 50s, I am the daughter of an Italian immigrant, where soccer was always bigger. it's just shifting over time, though, right? It was always there, but suddenly, it's coming forward in a new way, isn't it, Paul?

PAUL RILEY: It definitely is, and for people who suggest that no, hockey, hockey remains, no. No it's not remaining, there is that shift, it is happening, younger generations. Listen, you tell me an athlete in Canada, name a hockey player that's had more influence over the last, say, 15 years than Steve Nash, or when Vince Carter was here. There hasn’t been a hockey player that has affected young people like those two guys across this country, pulling young people to the sport. Hockey doesn't do that anymore. We don't just wake up and say, we're in Canada, we're Canadians, we’ve got to love hockey, no. We’re in Canada, what else is available? Oh, basketball, soccer, those are sports that are open to everyone. Those are sports that embrace all cultures. Those are sports that don't say, hey, you can't afford to play once you get past a certain level. And I think that's part of the reason, as well as the health issues, that basketball and soccer popularity continues to grow, while hockey demises.

AMT: Bruce, let me ask just about the business thing again.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Yep.

AMT: If we see this shift that Paul is talking about continue, you will also see a shift in sponsorships, and that’s part of the hype around hockey, too, is it not?

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Well, a lot of advertising money in Canada will go to the Blue Jays this year, just because they know there's no Canadian teams in the NHL. If you're looking to get eyeballs on your product this spring, that's the place to go, is to the Blue Jays or to the NBA broadcast. I'm sure they’re probably a bargain on TV to get the advertising, so yes, that's the kind of thing that's going to happen long term. And the NHL has to be very concerned about it. I don't think we're going to see another season in which all seven miss next year, but it's a serious consideration. And the broadcasters are really hurting.

JACK JEDWAB: Yeah, but hockey had to expand into those American markets. Otherwise, you know, it risked becoming another Canadian Football League.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN: Oh, I'm not saying they shouldn't be there, I'm just, and the odds of this happening are not great, but the TV product, they've got a problem.

AMT: Okay, we, it you get the last word on that, because we're done, we're out of time. Thanks everybody, for being part of this discussion. Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration. He’s in Vancouver. Bruce Dowbiggin, sportscaster and the author of Ice Storm, the Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever. And Paul Riley, former Commissioner of the former National Basketball League of Canada and a sports and media lawyer. Over to you now. What does the end of Stanley Cup dreams for Canadian teams this year mean to you? Tweet us, we’re @thecurrentcbc. Find us on our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, stay with us, the news is next, and then we’re back.

Back To Top »

Pleasure in sex for young women is a matter of intimate justice, says author

Guests: Peggy Orenstein

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Still to come in the past week ISIS has suffered a symbolic defeat in the Middle East losing its hold on the Syrian city Palmyra, but it also demonstrated its ferocity inside the EU with deadly attacks on the city of Brussels. We're asking how ISIS is likely to act next, that's in half an hour. But first, everything you wanted to know about girls and sex, but were afraid to ask.

SOUNDCLIP

MAN 1: The world is facing one of the biggest crises in the history of history. Girls are getting hotter and hotter.

MAN 2:…and you told Elle Magazine this time last year that a star is someone who doesn’t have to take her clothes off to be sexy, and do you still agree with that statement?

WOMAN: No, not at all, I think you should definitely—you get a lot more famous if you show your [bleep] off…

[Music: Anaconda by Nicki Minaj]

AMT: Well, if there's one topic that is everywhere in popular culture it is sex. But as much as we celebrate it and sing about it, my next guest says we're not doing a great job of having frank talks about it, especially when it comes to parents and their daughters. So fair warning now you're about to hear some frank talk about girls and young women and sex. And we'll do our best not to venture into somewhat hysterical territory that the talk shows often do, when they take on this subject.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: If you're the parent of a teenage girl you may want to sit down right about now.

VOICE 2: How many of you guys here are having unprotected sex? [sounds of shock from the audience] Again a majority…

VOICE 3: I think as a parent, parents are freaking out when they hear about this hookup culture…

VOICE 4: What is the deal with the oral sex thing?

VOICE 5: Let me tell you—

VOICE 4: what is the deal? I mean I get 13-year-olds last year who will tell me that it is just as common as dirt.

VOICE 5: They tell me that too... [audio fades]

AMT: Well, when New York Times journalist Peggy Orenstein decided to delve into the real sex lives of teenaged girls, she decided to go to the source. And after in-depth interviews with more than 70 American young women aged 15 to 20, what she learned is enough to bust some popular myths and misconceptions. But it's also a cause for some concern. Especially when it comes to whether young women are finding respect and even pleasure in their intimate lives. Peggy Orenstein’s new book is called Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape and she is with us from New York. Hello.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Hey, thanks for having me on.

AMT: You went to a Miley Cyrus concert for research, what was going on, on stage?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I went to a Miley Cyrus concert so you don't have to. [laughing] There's lots of nakedness and lots of sex, but it's like a performance. There's nothing actually erotic about it. It's just kind of so much flotsam and jetsam being thrown at you. I always think Miley is so interesting because I think she kind of embodies every girl's dilemma writ large, like how do you walk this line between being slutty and being a prude? And how do you be hot but just hot enough and get attention for your body but not too much attention for your body? And it's really a complicated thing that girls are going through.

AMT: What did you hear from the young women you interviewed about pop stars like Miley Cyrus or Nicki Minaj, who are very then sexual in their music and their performances?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: We would get into real arguments and one of the things I wanted to do in the book was--I mean I look, it turns out there's a generation gap and I'm on the wrong side of it. [laughs] And you are too probably. And I mean all of us, I mean I have a daughter, all of us parents are. And so how do you figure out how to talk to your child about it without sounding like a fusty old handwringing person? To me, I mean hot is so narrow. It's so commercialized, it's such a superficial version of what’s sexy and what's attractive. And whereas for our generation, that was something that we would kind of have protested against, this idea that how your body looks to other people, is more important than how it feels to yourself. Girls today embrace that as a source of power and self-confidence. So, one girl showed me a picture of her and she was wearing what I thought of as the party uniform, the little crop top and the little high heels and short skirt and she said, you know I'm proud of my body and I never feel more liberated than when I'm wearing skimpy clothing. But then a few minutes later she said that she wouldn't wear that skimpy clothing if she weighed a few pounds more. So then what you have to talk to girls about and ask about is, so who gets to be proud of which body under what circumstances. And how liberating is that really if humiliation lurks just around the corner.

AMT: We spoke to two 16 year old women from Toronto to get their perspective on their sexuality. We're not naming them to protect their privacy. Listen to what one of them had to say about what she thinks about when she gets dressed.

SOUNDCLIP

If I want to look hot, I definitely wear something that shows my stomach. But like I feel like it has to be-- there's like a kind of like a fine line about that because again, If I wear something that's too revealing then I'm like a slut or I'm asking for any kind of attention that I get for men…

AMT: Okay, she could have been in your study.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: She sure could have been. You know the thing is, what one girl said to me that I thought was so brilliant was, usually the opposite of a negative is a positive, but when you're talking about girls and sex, you're either a prude or you're a slut. One girl said to me isn't there a difference between dressing sexy because you need validation and you don't feel good about yourself, and dressing sexy because you do feel good about yourself and you don't need validation. And I said well, sure maybe, tell me what the difference is. And she just kind of drooped and said, I don't know, you know I spend my whole life trying to figure that out and I think it sometimes at the expense of my well-being. And we know that it actually is at the expense of well-being because one of the bait and switch aspects of thinking that sexy is the same as confidence and the same as sexuality is that self-objectification for girls is linked with all kinds of the issues that we worry about. It’s linked to cognitive deficits, it’s linked to depression. It ironically reduces sexual pleasure.

AMT: Now, the women you talk to were mostly in college or college bound.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Yes.

AMT: Why do you focus on that demographic?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I wanted to talk to girls who had opportunity, who were the beneficiaries of the feminist movement because I thought if even those girls who are leaning in in the public realm, are toppling in the private one, then you can't deny that there's a problem.

AMT: We spoke to Kim Katrin Milan, who runs the People Project, where she talks to marginalized youth about sex and sexuality. Listen to what she says.

SOUNDCLIP

Especially like younger immigrant women, they’re often taking care of a lot of people in their families. They’re taking care of their elders and their family and maybe a generation of kids. And I think that that changes the kind of priorities that they have and the decisions that they're making for their own kind of like body and pleasure. I feel in those cases that their desires often come last. Often the more marginalized women like young trans women, young women of color who are really low income who are often street involved, they have to think about their safety first and foremost before they can even really start to explore their sexuality and their desire.

AMT: Peggy Orenstein, what do you think you might have missed by not looking at that wider demographic?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: You know, what I think is interesting and what I think is the same, is that regardless of whether you're talking to girls who have opportunities or girls who are marginalized, what they're talking about is a sexuality that ends up being boy centered, if they’re heterosexual, that ends up being for others and that puts their own pleasure last. And I don't think that that's less true or more true for either demographic, but it's for different reasons.

AMT: Now let's talk about hookup culture. It's become a bit of a catch phrase. What did it actually mean to the girls you spoke to?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: That's the thing you know, hook up, it’s another one of those things that's really ripe for a media panic. It really doesn't have a meaning. Every time a girl told me she hooked up with somebody, I'd have to stop and go wait, what do you mean by that? Because it could mean anything from kissing to intercourse and you know all the forms of behavior. So what's different about--I mean obviously kids didn't invent casual sex, right? It existed. What's different [laughing]…

AMT: Every generation invents casual sex. [laughs]

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Every generation invents casual sex but is different, is now it's normalized as being--the idea that sex precedes rather than arises from intimacy has been normalized. For me, again, just like with the dressing thing, I'm not trying to take a moral perspective. I'm trying to look at this in a more pragmatic and practical way and look at the forces at work. And so when I think about hookup culture I don't want to tell girls the context in which you should and shouldn't be having sex or hooking up or relationships. I want them to know what they're likely to get of a hookup and what they're likely not to get out of a hookup. I want them to know you know in a hookup, you might get an adrenaline rush, you might get a war story. You're probably not going to get great sex and you're probably not going to get practice with intimacy. But, regardless of the context in which girls have sex, whether it's a liaison that last ten minutes or a relationship the last ten years, what I want is for girls to have experiences that are ethical, reciprocal, responsible and pleasurable.

AMT: I've got another clip here. Many of the girls you talked to said they enjoy hooking up. This is what one of the young Toronto women we talked to had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

So I'm kind of just like doing things whenever it's there, whenever I'm bored or something, which sounds kind of bad, but like nothing really like commitment based or relationship based. But I do things with people who I'm just like with or hanging out with a lot. I personally prefer it, at least right now because I don't feel like I have time for relationships, I don't feel like I can give myself to someone else if that makes sense, like emotionally. So I think I prefer doing just really casual things instead of having a commitment.

AMT: How does she compare to the women you talk to?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: She was definitely representative of one group. I mean there was a whole range of how girls related to hook ups and for some of them it was what they wanted right now, exactly for those reasons, they felt they didn't have time, they wanted to focus on themselves. No longer are girls looking for husbands in college. Other girls felt it was unhygienic or that why would you want to be sexually involved with somebody that you didn't even know. So, all of them were thinking about it and they all had to negotiate their sex lives and their relationship lives in the context of the hookup culture. Whether they chose to engage in it or chose not to engage in it. One girl said to me, you know you just want to be like just slutty enough. You want to have had your one night stands and had your adventures but not so much that you know, screwed every guy in the fraternity. And the other thing they said over and over was my parents have no idea.

AMT: Did they tell you why their parents don't know? Is that just a no go zone or would their parents judge them?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: They don't talk to their parents about sex. Just the other day I got an e-mail from a girl, a lot of the girls stay in touch with me that I interviewed, and she really wants to have that relationship with her mom. Some would run screaming for the hills, but some of them really want it. And she said it makes her really, really sad, she's 21 years old and she can to sense her Mother’s discomfort. So she never brings it up and she feels like it's sort of a wall between them. A big part of what I wanted to write about was allowing parents to see what's going on and also talking really directly about what we need to do to make sure our girls’ experiences are better.

AMT: Well let's keep talking about this. Let's talk about oral sex. You write that it's becoming a casual thing. Why is it seen that way?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I heard so many stories. It was basically, oral sex was a one way street. Most of the time it was girls performing sex on boys and they did it for a lot of reasons, to gain popularity, to improve or what they felt was improving relationship, to get a boy to like them, whatever they were doing and there are many different reasons. But I started saying to them, because I started getting so frustrated that I would kind of drop my journalistic remove, and I would say, look, what if every time you were with a guy, he asked you to get a glass of water for him from the kitchen but he never offered to get a glass of water for you. Or if he did, it was like [scoffs] okay if you really want me to get the water.

AMT: [laughs]

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: That's exactly what happened, they would laugh and they would say I never thought about it that way. And I'd say so you're less insulted by the idea of being asked to perform oral sex than being asked to get a glass of water from the kitchen. And just like that interaction, I think really helped a lot of girls even though that wasn't really supposed to be my role as a reporter, but it helped a lot of girls go, hey wait a minute. Maybe there's something that I should be questioning here.

AMT: It's fascinating, and again we have a clip from one of the young women we spoke to in Toronto. She's asked whether oral sex is looked at the same way for a boy or a girl. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

I think mostly nowadays, it's not really. I think a lot of the emphasis is on pleasing the guy just because again, I feel like guys are very entitled when it comes to sex and it's really like about what they can get and not about how you can like please the girl you’re with. And I think girls kind of know that and have internalized that through like, they've just been told that our whole lives. So when it comes to having sex with guys or just doing anything kind of sexual, they're really focused on just like pleasing the guy so that they don't have to like, I guess worry that they're not doing something right or that they're not like good enough I guess.

AMT: Peggy Orenstein, what are the effects of those unequal expectations?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: We don't talk to girls about their anatomy and we don't talk to them about their pleasure, basically ever, it's silent. So when kids are born, we're much more likely to name all our boys body parts even if it's just you know like here's your pee pee, something. But with girls we go right from navel to knees. So when you don't name something it becomes taboo and then they go into their sex education classes, their early classes and they only see the internal parts of the woman and they learn boys have erections and ejaculations and girls have periods and get pregnant. The clitoris is never mentioned. No surprise, fewer than half of 14 to 17 year old girls have ever masturbated. And then they go into partnered experiences. Why would you expect them to feel that they have any sense of entitlement? This is a social justice issue, just the way that who does the dishes in the house is a social justice issue that touches on ideas about equity and economic disparity and violence and all these things. Researcher at the University of Michigan coined this term intimate justice that I just loved. And it's questioning these power dynamics in our most personal relationships so, I mean, I think those are sticky issues for adult women, but especially for girls in their early formative experiences. Your early sexual experience should not be something that you have to get over. When we think about sexual satisfaction we think we're talking about the same thing with young women and young men but what research shows, is that we're not. And young women are more likely, not exclusively but more likely to talk to measure their own satisfaction by their partners pleasure. So they'll say if he was satisfied, I was satisfied. And conversely when we're talking about bad sex, the language is really different. Girls talk about pain, they talk about humiliation, they talk about degradation. Boys never use that language not a single young man in the studies use that language.

AMT: You make the point too that anal sex is the new oral sex.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: That's something that's really been on the rise. It's basically doubled since 1990, anal sex among young people. When there was a study of 16 to 18 year olds that found that mostly it was boys who were pushing for that and mostly it was not that they saw it as an intimate act to share with a partner but as a competition with other boys. They expected that their female partners would need to be and could be coerced into it. You know it's a metaphor in a way for a new behavior that was once taboo and now becomes expected that you are uncool or frigid or whatever if you won’t engage in it. But it's one that normalizes female pain and is again, very much about the boy directing what's going on.

AMT: Well, is there a widely held attitude among boys, from what you learned from the women you were talking to, that it's okay to coerce the girls?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Girls would say the boys were much more clear that they were not supposed to coerce into intercourse, but oral sex was fair game. So they talked a lot about the shoulder push, where the boys put a hand on either shoulder and silently push down. The girls, because it was not just the boys who were unwilling to perform oral sex, the girls also were unwilling to let them because they felt uncomfortable about their genitals. And so where the boys would push down, the girls would describe scooping up under a boy's armpits and pushing up to push them away from there and away from any possibility of doing that and away from sexual pleasure.

AMT: Well, then this gets into the whole issue of navigating consent, right?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Right. You know I wanted to find out very much what happened after yes and also how those issues of entitlement were playing into assault on campuses and in high schools. We don't talk as much about assault in high school.

AMT: One of one of the young women we spoke with was writing a manifesto on female sexuality for a grade 11 English project.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Cool.

AMT: Listen to her describing it.

SOUNDCLIP

I was kind of looking at kind of like self-love and like a radical self-love where you use self-love to like resist sexism. I kind of took a perspective where like if you could find power from your vagina and from having a vagina you could kind of use that to feel empowered about being a woman in general.

AMT: What do you think of that?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: I loved that.

AMT: Do you think that we are giving young women enough credit though, in terms of how empowered they can feel?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: No. I mean I think that's exactly it, I mean I think she's absolutely right. In Holland-- one of the things that I did at the end of the book and this struck me so much not only as a writer but as a mom, because I do have a girl who's almost 13 myself, there's comparisons between Dutch and American college students and the Dutch girls had fewer negative outcomes in their early sexual experiences. They were less likely to get pregnant, they were less likely to contract disease, they had less regret, they were more likely to be sober. They also had more positive outcomes, they enjoyed sex more, they could communicate with their partners.

AMT: They could do this because really what you point out is that they were communicating with their parents.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: It was interesting because it wasn't necessarily that the parents were more comfortable or uncomfortable talking about sex, American versus Dutch. But, the American parents only talked about risk and danger and the Dutch parents talked about balancing joy and responsibility.

AMT: After all this research, how is that affecting the conversations you're having with your own daughter?

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Well my daughter is prone to saying, Mom stop working on your book whenever I talk to her. The poor thing is a guinea pig, but it's really radically changed how I think about talking to my daughter and I no longer think about it as The Talk. I think about sexuality as something that you know comes up in everyday life and something that we can talk about across the broad spectrum of pleasure, joy, responsibility, risk, danger. And I’ll tell you one thing that really meant a lot to me in reading those studies about the Dutch and that was the idea that American kids grow up by creating a rift with their parents and we force our daughters to be two different people. The person they are with us, who is the good daughter, the pure daughter who either is lying about her sexual encounters or is just kind of not saying anything and then the person that they are in the world. So we're forcing a distance between us and our daughters. Whereas in the Dutch model, the idea was that kids grew up within the family, within the community talking about these things. It was another opportunity in having these conversations to create connectedness and closeness. And I thought oh, my gosh, that's what I want. I want to be on my daughter's team. I want to be her advocate and yes I know it's hard. I know it's embarrassing, I know it's mortifying, I know it's not how we were raised. But once you start talking it really does get easier and I have to say it's really meaningful not only in how we talk to them, but in our relationships with them.

AMT: And you know you are talking about girls and sex but of course those conversations need to happen with boys and parents as well.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Absolutely. And boys need to be talked to about the effect of alcohol on them and they need to be talked to about the whole spectrum of consent, coercion and assault. They need to be talked to about female pleasure. They need to be talked to about reciprocity and egalitarianism. They need to be talked to about ethics and responsibilities. So it's not something that just needs to happen with girls. So one of the things I did though, the last chapter of the book I go into a sex education classroom with a youth advocate teacher who's really working on these issues with kids. And so much of it is not even about sex. It is about decision making and practice, being assertive and all these ideas of how we conduct ourselves really as people and being able to stand up for yourself. And there was one moment where they were talking about the baseball metaphor of sex, rounding the bases and scoring at home and all that. One of the boys just stopped and he said, wait a second. I never thought about it before but in that baseball metaphor, there are winners and there are losers, so who's supposed to be the loser? I just thought bingo. That is shifting that boy’s perception and he's going to keep asking questions and he's going to go into his encounters as a partner rather than somebody who's trying to score against a girl.

AMT: Lots to think about Peggy Orenstein. Thanks for your work.

PEGGY ORENSTEIN: Thank you. Thank you for having me on, I appreciate it.

AMT: Peggy Orenstein’s book is called Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. She joined us from New York. Now over to you, what's been your experience talking to your teens or your parents about sex and sexuality? If you're a girl or a young woman, can you relate to what we've been talking about? Where do the conversations with boys play into this? Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Find us on Facebook or send us an e-mail from our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact Us link. And if you're joining us partway through, you can download the podcast right from the site cbc.ca/thecurrent.

Back To Top »

ISIS under pressure as Syria recaptures Palmyra, Iraq targets Mosul

Guests: Zeina Karam, Malcolm Nance, Christian Leuprecht

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[heavy gunfire]

[large vehicles rumbling]

[rapid gunfire]

AMT: Well, the sounds outside of Palmyra, Syria on Sunday as government forces moved in, with the help of Russian air support, they managed to wrest back control of the city back from the grip of ISIS. When the jihadist group first seized Palmyra in May, it was especially disheartening for much of the world. The city is home to UNESCO World Heritage archeological sites and many were concerned its ancient ruins and artifacts would be destroyed. The world can take heart at the fact that the defeat of ISIS at Palmyra was the latest in a string of defeats for the group. And even as ISIS lays claim to last week's deadly attacks in Brussels, portions of its self-declared Middle East caliphate appear to be slowly being clawed back. Zeina Karam is the Associated Press' news director for Lebanon and Syria, and we've reached her in Beirut, Lebanon. Hello!

ZEINA KARAM: Hi.

AMT: What's been happening in Palmyra since it was recaptured over the weekend?

ZEINA KARAM: Well, army units and the mining experts are now working on removing what they say are hundreds of mines and other explosives that were planted by the Islamic state group around the ruins of Palmyra. And so they're limiting access to the town until they've cleared if of explosives. So it has been no clear assessment of the full extent of the damage inflicted on Palmyra yet because very few experts or journalists have been able to visit since the army took over.

AMT: Now, you visited it before the war. What were these ancient ruins like?

ZEINA KARAM: This is a UNESCO heritage site. It's really an archaeological gem. And you cannot visit Palmyra and not be stunned by the beauty of the place. It is one of the rare places in the world where you find so many well preserved roman ruins in one place and, in fact, it attracted tens of thousands of tourists every year.

AMT: And we know that ISIS very symbolically used parts of it to show their power. Once they took it they even used - they made a show of executions in the amphitheatre, did they not?

ZEINA KARAM: Yes. Yes, they did. There was one video that was released by ISIS that showed - it was very much a theatrical production - it showed 25 children at the amphitheatre shooting captive Syrian soldiers in the back of their heads and all of that was done, you know, to the backdrop of the amphitheatre. And they've also produced videos showing the destruction of the Temple of Bel and the Temple of Baalshamin and the Arc of Triumph. These are some of the worst, biggest damage inflicted on the ruins.

AMT: These heritage sites are and what, 2,000 years old, huh?

ZEINA KARAM: Yes. Yes, exactly.

AMT: They also made a show of executing the man who was in charge of the site, who wouldn't tell them where treasures were.

ZEINA KARAM: They did. Yes, they did. He was the antiquities chief in Palmyra. He was 81 years old. And he was beheaded, allegedly, because he would not point the militants to the hiding place of some of those treasures.

AMT: And beyond the heritage, what is the strategic value of Palmyra in the fight against ISIS?

ZEINA KARAM: Palmyra is on a strategic crossroads. It links the Syrian capital Damascus with the countries east and the border with Iraq. And so it does put the Syrian army in a better position to launch an offensive on other ISIS strongholds, such as Raqqa to the north and Deir ez-Zor to the east. So it is militarily strategic and, of course, it's also politically very important or, you know, it was treated as a propaganda coup for President Bashar Assad and it underlines the role that his army has been playing in fighting ISIS and Assad hopes to convince the West that the army is a credible partner in combating terrorism.

AMT: And how successful will he be at that, do you think?

ZEINA KARAM: It's a very awkward situation. Of course, the West has repeatedly rebuffed his offers to cooperate in the war against terror. They keep, US officials keep pointing out that it is Assad's crackdown on his own people that allowed militants like ISIS to flourish in the first place. But, you know, if-- Now the world's focus is on fighting ISIS and if the Syrian army is doing it, then it's better than nobody doing it. So there seems to be tacit, if not cooperation, then just acknowledgement that this is something that the Syrian army should continue to be doing and that plays into the narrative of Assad.

AMT: You make the point that it is both strategic and symbolic then for Assad. When ISIS captured Palmyra it was a big propaganda victory for them. How significant is this loss for ISIS?

ZEINA KARAM: It is a significant loss. It's not-- I mean, they still control vast areas of Syria. It’s not a decapitating loss at all. They can still make up for it in other areas. But it's very symbolic because, as you say, they made a big show out of it. And it only adds to the territorial losses by the group, both in Syria and Iraq, recently. So, yeah, it’s definitely a blow.

AMT: Tell us more, in a broader context then, what is happening in ISIS territory in the in the push back.

ZEINA KARAM: ISIS has lost some major territory in both Syria and Iraq. They have been fighting against the Kurds in Syria, the Kurds making significant progress. Last month, they were able to take the stronghold of Shaddadi in Hasakah province and now comes the takeover of Palmyra. In Iraq, of course, they have lost, in the past month, they've lost Sinjar, they have lost Ramadi, and a few days ago the Iraqi army announced that it was starting the long awaited operation to take over the ISIS held city of Mosul.

AMT: And from where you are in Beirut, what effect is that having on that leadership?

ZEINA KARAM: It's not clear with a group which is not transparent it's hard to tell exactly what the effects are but they are bound to be suffering on a significant scale.

AMT: Okay, well, Zeina Karam, thanks for giving us some perspective.

ZEINA KARAM: Thank you.

AMT: Zeina Karam is the Associated Press news director for Lebanon and Syria. She was in Beirut. Well, let's bring this latest news into a wider context in the fight against ISIS. Malcolm Nance is a counterterrorism expert. He's the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project and the author of Defeating ISIS. He joins us from Philadelphia. Hi.

MALCOLM NANCE: Good morning. So what does the loss of Palmyra do to ISIS in your view?

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, the loss of Palmyra pretty much exposes ISIS’ southwest flank of what they have designated as their caliphate, which is a geographic area of most of eastern Syria, northwestern Iraq, and western Iraq. ISIS, you know, is an offensive organization. They don't like to be on the defense. And so last year when they launched this offensive towards Palmyra it was a dagger stabbing at the heart of Syria heading towards Damascus. But, apparently, they didn't have the capacity to hold the city. And now they're being pushed back and being pressured all around, almost in a full circle.

AMT: Even beyond that, what other setbacks are they facing?

MALCOLM NANCE: ISIS is facing many, many setbacks. I watch the situation on a day-to-day basis, almost minute-to-minute basis, and ISIS has lost almost 25 percent of the territory that they took in 2014. And you have to understand that they made two major offensives in 2014, not just the one that we saw in June, which took Mosul and Tikrit and started heading towards Baghdad, but earlier in that year they took Falujah, Ramadi, Al Qaim, and major parts of western Iraq, Anbar province. So, all of those areas, that people might remember were what we called the Sunni Triangle during the United States- Iraq war between 2003 and 2011, fell to ISIS, because the people in those in those areas, the Sunni population, they joined ISIS. They were actually former regime loyalists, Ba’athist, who went along and became a component of ISIS. So the Iraqis have been pushing back very hard with US assistance. They've retaken the city of Ramadi, which was the toughest nut western Iraq. They've surrounded the city of Falujah to the point where it's almost collapsing and are pushing back very, very hard in the West. In the north, they're surrounding the south and southeastern approaches to the city of Mosul for a spring offensive against the city of Mosul. And like the previous caller had mentioned, operations going on in Syria have cut the main supply route between Mosul and ISIS’ capital of Ramadi. So, ISIS is beleaguered to a certain extent. They are certainly under a lot of pressure.

AMT: You make the point that the supply route’s been cut. What are the finances looking like right now? Can you tell?

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, it's very interesting. Last year, the United States carried out an extremely, extremely dangerous special mission. The president of the United States himself has to sign off on missions carried out by the forces we know as the National Mission forces. That's the Delta forces and SEAL Team 6. Usually, those missions are never executed unless they have an extremely high rate of success or high probability of success and they're almost exclusively being used for hostage rescues or extremely sensitive intelligence collection missions. And last year they carried out a mission in eastern Syria near the town of Deir ez-Zor where they went after the ISIS’ finance minister, a guy by the name of Abu Sayyaf. Unfortunately, he was killed because he resisted. They captured his wife, but, more importantly, they captured the entire ISIS - what we believe is - the entire treasury database. And that means that everyone who was it within ISIS’ so-called caliphate, who had to be paid, all the foreign fighters, all the tribal chiefs, all of the people who were fronting for their oil shipments. All of those records fell into the United States’ hands. And using those, there's been a systematic decapitation of all of the ISIS leadership, senior leadership, over the last eight months. It's been really incredible. And more importantly, we know where the money is.

AMT: Just to interrupt you – They did kill what they believe to be the number two ISIS leader just last week, did they not? The US.

MALCOLM NANCE: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. And he was also--

AMT: Sorry. I interrupted you are on money. So you know, because one of the reasons they had been so successful is that they were selling oil on a grey market and they had a lot of money so what does that look like now? Can you tell?

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, now they're hemorrhaging money. Most importantly because the Russian campaign to destroy the oil infrastructure led the United States to shift its tactics from just disrupting oil shipments and, you know, and attacking some tankers to actually attacking wellheads. And the reason the United States wouldn't attack those structures is the Syrian opposition had requested the United States not attack the oil infrastructure. But ISIS was generating so much money selling oil to the black market and mafia organizations in southern Turkey, who in turn were actually shipping these things to the port of Ceyhan and reselling it to countries like Israel and the Assad regime. So, you know, ISIS was making an extraordinary quantity of money, perhaps as much as quarter of a million dollars a year just in illicit oil sales. Not to mention all of the taxes that they levy on to the people who are technically a slave population—

AMT: [interjects] Right, so I'm going to try going to move you forward though. So you're saying they're hurting financially. You've also been arguing that they're sending some of their foreign fighters home. Why is that happening and what does that mean?

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, to a certain extent, you know, with most terrorist groups, particularly entrenched insurgencies like this, terrorist groups operate sort of like a ball of mercury. When you press down on a ball of mercury it tends to break up and spread out and that's why it's so difficult to actually get your finger on the core terrorist leadership. They break up and they create smaller cells. ISIS had fancied itself as a nation state and had created this expeditionary army. But since they adopted—And, you know, this is the same group that was Al Qaida in Iraq, just with the name change. So they had already taken on the largest counterintelligence operation in the world, largest military operation in the world and combining their experience with some of the ex-Ba’athist intelligence officers who took over ISIS’ combat operations and intelligence operations they have created a strategy where they would return some of their European fighters and try to destabilize Europe as a way of taking pressure off of their country, off of their “caliphate”, quote unquote.

AMT: Is that what we saw in Brussels?

MALCOLM NANCE: That's absolutely what you saw in Brussels. And there's been a lot of evidence about this. Again, in the intelligence community none of this is a surprise to us. You know, once it reaches the media it becomes a surprise to everyone. For the last year, there have been many small indicators of ISIS’ external operations and returning foreign fighters, guys who have gone home naturally, and ISIS reached out to them while they were home or people who were being trained in Syria and sent back a special mission, you know, special agents to a certain extent. Not to live in sleeper cells, you know, but to live as active coordinating terrorist cells who would spread their message and mayhem overseas. So we saw the attack on the Brussels Jewish centre museum last year, the thwarted attack on the Thalys train, attacks in southern France on Jewish children - all of these were part of this.

AMT: And so what do you expect to see now?

MALCOLM NANCE: Well, I expect to see more attacks. Terrorism is a very simple tool. It only requires one person with the willpower in some form this capacity to wreak mayhem. So whereas we in the West have to use overwhelming force on a geopolitical level and bring that down to the street level in a place like ISIS’ caliphate, all ISIS has to do is return some of its trained foreign fighters or inspire an individual, as we saw in Canada with the attack on the Parliament in Ottawa or in the United States with the San Bernardino shooters. These were not people who were enabled or directed by ISIS. These were people who thought it up themselves. And just did it.

AMT: Okay. Well, I'm going to pick up on what you're saying with our next guest. Malcolm Nance, thank you.

MALCOLM NANCE: It's my pleasure.

AMT: Malcolm Nance, executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project and author of Defeating ISIS. He was in Philadelphia.

SOUNDCLIP

There's something over half a billion dollars in the budget in terms of specific measures related to safety and public security. Plus, there's another 500 million dollars for program integrity measures to ensure that organizations, like CSIS and the RCMP and other elements of the government of Canada, have the adequate core budget to do the jobs that we ask of them to defend Canadians, keep us safe, and make sure that the other activities of government are properly financed. So you roll that all together and it's very close to a billion dollars.

AMT: Well, that was Canada's Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale speaking on CTV this week. He was responding to critics who say the new federal budget doesn't set aside enough money for combating terrorism. So, to talk more about this, I'm joined now by Christian Leuprecht. He is a professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada. He’s also a professor at Queen's University. He joins us from Colorado Springs today. Hi.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Hello.

AMT: How prepared is Canada in the face of an increasingly outward-acting ISIS?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Well, it seems that we've been doing fairly okay in terms of detecting clots and being able to use the extended toolkit that C-51provides to try to deter these types of attacks, but, ultimately, it's always difficult to gauge because what we are measuring or what we're trying to measure is, effectively, non-events. And so, that then, for instance, raises the question of is it that our security organizations, in particular CSIS and the RCMP, are just to be effective and we have very good joint investigative capacity, such as the integrated national security enforcement teams, or is it that we're just lucky and don't have as big a problem as perhaps some of our other allies.

AMT: Well, our last guest was talking about still the possibility of lone wolf attacks of people who are quote unquote “inspired.” But, in fact, the reporting coming out of the Middle East now is that there are groups that were actually sent back to work on attacks. How much of a target is Canada for that kind of thing?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: So, I mean, we know that from both Michel Coulombe, who directs the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and from Bob Paulson the commissioner of the RCMP, that returnees are veterans, as I might call them, are a significant concern and that we have significant numbers who have returned to Canada, that it can be a considerable challenge to monitor these individuals, both in terms of the resources required as well as being able to obtain and sustain the warrants necessary to monitor such individuals. And so as a result, inherently, these individuals may pose a considerable threat. We know that about nine out of ten of them return with serious mental health issues. We don't know whether they had these mental health issues before they left or with whether they have them as a result of having fought with ISIS, but we also know that about one out of ten -this is the Hegghammer study out of Norway - come back as hardened ideologues and then once you translate that into recruitment funding, spreading the extremist ideology, and then also moving thought to action. And then a very small portion of then have the capacity, that we saw in Paris and in Belgium recently, not only to act on themselves, but to build a network of considerable capacity for surveillance organization and making explosives and then be able to plan these calamitous attacks.

AMT: Right. And so are what I'm asking is, how vulnerable is Canada to that? Do we know?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: Well, certainly Canada is vulnerable. By virtue of a geostrategic location we’re perhaps a little bit less vulnerable than our European allies, by virtue of our intelligence collaboration through other Anglo-Saxon countries, the United States, the UK, and Australia, we have perhaps better coordination mechanisms and a more effective sort of institutional culture in countering this. But certainly, none of us are immune to this threat and the ideology is going to be around for quite some time. We can try to dismantle the organizations, such as ISIS, but the ideology is going to continue to persist and is going to continue to inspire individuals and certainly now that we have individuals who have experience in the region who are returning, this is certainly disconcerting.

AMT: We just saw in the last several days, an individual who was detained and then just yesterday charged. Kevin Omar Mohamed, charged under the terror act. This is the Conservative so-called anti-terrorism law that they were using, I do believe. Am I right?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: So, this is under—

AMT: C-51.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: C-51. The expanded capabilities under C-51, including the peace bond, conditions of reconnaissance that were imposed on this individual.

AMT: And so the Liberals promised to make changes to C-51. Do you expect they will now or will they back off?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: So the Liberals had always indicated that they were uncomfortable some of the provisions. And the provisions I think are more specific than sort of making broad based changes to C-51. It seemed that even when C-51 was being debated that by and large the Liberals were on board with many of the measures that were being put forward and the ends these are meant to achieve, perhaps, not just the means and specifically, they were uncomfortable with what's most a threat mitigation mandate, sometimes referred to as disruption for CSIS. So we will likely perhaps see some movement on that front, whether that's specifically constraining CSIS’ ability to use those or to have more specific review or accountability measures. And I think we'll see, primarily, movement on the review oversight and accountability mechanisms that are in place to ensure that security organizations act within the law and within the Constitution. But as has already been demonstrated repeatedly in Canada, since the passage of this bill this enlarged tool kit is proving very important for security agencies to prevent potential attacks and other means of following through on extremist ideology. And we see in Belgium what happens when the legislative framework is not quite adapted to this emerging threat.

AMT: And so we just heard that clip from the Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale defending the federal budget against criticism that it falls short. What do you think? Are they putting the money in the right place?

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: That's always difficult to gauge. I mean, we don't have very good metrics. In other policy areas such as health care, education we have very extensive data and we have reasonable transparency on how these services are being delivered. We don't have that on national security. Would we have a safe if we spent half as much money? Would we be twice as safe if we spent twice as much money? And I would say that much of the debate here, if it is solely directed at money and resources, is perhaps misdirected. That the challenges that we have were a more variegated tool kit security services, which we got on C-51, but that we also have capacity challenges that the RCMP simply, I would contend, doesn't have quite the capabilities, the experience, and the capacities to carry out this many national security investigations. They largely treat national security as if it was, for instance, an organized crime investigation. National security investigations are extremely complex and we need, I think, a federal police force that has very specific capabilities for these highly complex investigations. Because Bob Paulson has come out and said that these national security investigations are cannibalizing other types of investigations, such as, for instance, organized crime, simply so the organization can direct all its resources and capabilities to national security and that suggests that perhaps the RCMP needs to restructure, both in terms of recruitment professional development and other capabilities, that you can’t fix simply by putting more money into the organization.

AMT: Well, that's a lot to take back to the government to ask about. Christian Leuprecht, thank you for your thoughts on that.

CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT: My pleasure.

AMT: That is Christian Leuprecht. He is a professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada. He’s also a professor at Queen's University. And we reached him today Colorado Springs, Colorado. That is our program for today. Now, there was a tragedy that befell Canadian political and the media world yesterday when former Liberal Cabinet Minister and masterful political commentator John LaPierre died, along with his wife and three of his siblings in a in a plane crash. They were on their way to their father's funeral in Îles-de-la-Madeleine. Jean LaPierre was first elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in 1979. He was part of the infamous Liberal Opposition rat pack of the early eighties. He bolted with Lucien Bouchard 1990 to help found the BLOC Québécois. Mr. LaPierre left politics shortly after that and he became one of Quebec’s unorthodox and most enduring media gurus until more than a decade later when former Prime Minister Paul Martin brought him back into the Liberal fold as his Transport Minister and his Quebec Lieutenant to clean up after the sponsorship scandal. Jean LaPierre left politics for good in 2007 and he returned to the broadcast mic where he ruled as ‘king of the Quebec pundits’. The CBC's Bernard St-Laurent has said that he'll be remembered as a person who absolutely loved politics and who loved communicating it. We’ll give the last word on the life of Jean LaPierre today to the former Prime Minister Paul Martin. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

PAUL MARTIN: When he talked to you about the issue, great Canadian issue, you were talking to somebody who had made himself an expert and he had a wide range of connections, people he knew, people he had wanted to talk about, sometimes very ordinary people and sometimes the lights. And everybody would talk to him because the fact is that there was never a conversation with Jean LaPierre that was one-sided. You know, he gave as much as he got. And he-- Just think about what's happening right now. I've never seen so many people touched in the way that it has. Everybody’s here. Look at all of you that are here. And everybody says the same thing - how much they loved him, how much they wanted to listen to him.

REPORTER: What are you going to miss most about him?

PAUL MARTIN: He was a real friend. I think there are an awful lot of us. I’ve had the occasion-- My phone's ringing off the hook and we’ve all been talking. Everybody says the same thing. He was a very—He was a very hardworking, but he was also a very profound person. He understood the issues and he loved people. He loved people. And I think perhaps that was his greatest strength.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Mar. 30, 2016 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This