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The Current Transcript for June 2, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

You know, the guards are very gentle with him. He’s walking out, like, big high fives, smiling, laughing. I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Who says stuff like that? Donald Trump's outbursts from the podium are so constant they're now expected. He's alternately threatening, mocking his competitors using words like sleazy, disgusting, loser, bragging about everything from his sexual prowess to his own brilliance and in the process he offers a lot of information to those looking to create a psychological profile of the man who will carry the Republican banner into the US presidential election. So, what can we learn and what are they saying about him? From narcissistic to clown, we get the assessments of two scholars who are tracking Trump, in half an hour. Also today, when Susan Creeley’s son Daniel was murdered in prison her reaction was prophetic.

SOUNDCLIP

My other children are in prison too and it kind of gives me a head up. Is my son going to live today?

AMT: Susan Creeley’s sons are the Wolfe brothers, co-founders of the gang Indian Posse. Just a few weeks ago we heard from the author of The Ballad of Danny Wolfe. Joe Friesen joins us again today after news that Danny Wolfe’s brother Richard has now also died in prison. The story of one family and the ripple effects of personal trauma when we follow up on the stories we brought you, in an hour. But we're starting today with is playing out in a Halifax courtroom and the role of cultural assessment. It's been something that has, until now, been associated with Indigenous people facing sentencing.

SOUNDCLIP

And on a case by case basis the Supreme Court of Canada, numerous public inquiries and commissions of inquiry have already found that the system discriminates against Indigenous people.

AMT: This time the concern is about systemic discrimination against Canadians who are Black. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Black Canadians need pre-sentencing cultural assessments, says lawyer

Guests: Robert Wright, Anthony Morgan

SOUNDCLIP

In order for judges to have a better understanding of the folks that come before them to be sentenced it's often important to get as much information as possible, to look into their background and circumstances, which often affect their behaviours and the choices that they make.

AMT: Well, that is Pamela Williams, the Chief Judge of the Nova Scotia Provincial and Family Courts, addressing the broad issue of cultural assessment when determining a sentence for someone who has been convicted. Right now, a different Halifax judge is considering if the history of discrimination against African Canadians in Nova Scotia should be a mitigating factor in the sentencing of a Black man convicted of murder. Last February, 27-year-old Kale Leonard Gabriel was convicted of second-degree murder for the 2010 shooting of Ryan White. And last week, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge delayed Mr. Gabriel's sentencing, to allow the defence time to prepare a cultural assessment - a report which looks at a defendant's racial and cultural heritage. Chief Judge Pamela Williams is on the record supporting these reports.

SOUNDCLIP

A sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offense and also the degree of responsibility of the offender. So, if we have a cultural assessment or we have a Gladue report or we have a mental health assessment, it gives us much more information, much richer information on the individual. We may be able to help identify what are the root causes of the crime and if a sentence can address the causes and not just the effects of crime, then perhaps we're able to reduce the likelihood of the individual coming into conflict with the law again.

AMT: Well, the number of Black Canadians in federal prisons has jumped by 80 per cent in the last ten years. Advocates say that spike is one of the reasons Canadian courts should make wider use of cultural assessments. Robert Wright is a social worker based in Halifax and that's where we've reached him today. Hello.

ROBERT WRIGHT: Good morning.

AMT: Why are cultural assessments an important part of pre-sentencing for Black Canadians?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, pre-sentence reports are considered and often prepared for any person who's before the court who’s been convicted of a serious offense and a person's cultural, racial background and how that may have affected them and even affected their involvement in crime is an important part of the background information that a judge would want to have.

AMT: And you've written cultural assessments in the past. What's involved in preparing such a thing?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, like any other kind of pre-sentence report or psychological or psychiatric assessment, these assessments start with interviews of the individual and then contact with collateral. So a person may want to interview the individual and interview their family members. If the individual has been involved in any kind of civic activities - the Boy Scout leader, or a basketball coach, former teachers, members of the person's community who would understand the nature of the community and the nature of the conditions that the young person grew or the person grew up in. So, it's a pretty standard assessment.

AMT: Well, it's pretty standard except that this is different. We know that there was a decision called Gladue that actually talked about doing these assessments for Indigenous people, am I correct?

ROBERT WRIGHT: That is correct.

AMT: And they are not routinely done for people based on their race, if they're Black, am I correct?

ROBERT WRIGHT: That is correct, although that I believe that trend is changing and you heard Judge Williams, the chief of our provincial court, explaining why.

AMT: Okay. So, I know that there are always pre-sentencing reports, but what distinguishes this kind of report, a cultural assessment?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, I'd say this, that the cultural assessment focuses on the person's race and cultural background and I don't think it's particularly a special assessment. In fact, what I think is happening is that we are recognizing that the pre-sentence reports, psychological and psychiatric reports that are routinely brought before the court are actually incomplete because they miss large sections of the person's life experience that is tied up in culture and race. So, it's not just a person's culture, but the fact that an individual who's Aboriginal or African Canadian lives a life with in the political and racial and historical challenges of their communities. So, to live your life as an Aboriginal person or a Black person means that you must encounter racism as part of your life experience and other reports tend to ignore those factors.

AMT: So, if these assessments are going to include this, who should be writing them?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, I really have a lot of confidence in people who tend to write these sorts of reports. Unfortunately, the psychologists, the probation officers, the social workers who tend to write these reports thus far have been missing a part of their education. They have been missing an understanding of the importance of race and culture in a person's psychosocial development and even in their criminal behaviour. So, I think that social workers, probation officers, psychologists can do these things, but they need to come to that work with a real education around these issues - a thing that we call these days cultural competence.

AMT: And in this particular case, how might a cultural assessment of a man convicted of second degree murder have an effect?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, again, one of the things that Judge Williams talked about is that these assessments help to give judges who are sentencing a more nuanced or in-depth knowledge of the person, so that the sentence can be made in a way that is designed not only for deterrence, but to promote the rehabilitation of the individual. So, for example, a person might be sentenced to a particular institution or their length of sentence may be adjusted because the cultural assessment helps to show that their level of criminality and level of dangerousness is different than perhaps might have been understood previously.

AMT: There are critics of the Gladue report that argue that it's a get-out-of-jail card. How do you respond to that?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, anyone who says that a Gladue report is a get-out-of-jail card for Aboriginal persons doesn't understand the statistics on the incarceration of Indigenous persons. Indigenous persons are grossly overrepresented among persons in correctional facilities. In some jurisdictions where they might make up eight or nine per cent of the population, they represent 40 per cent of the incarcerated population. So Gladue report certainly isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. What a Gladue report is, metaphorically I guess, is a recognition of the need for the whole criminal justice system to address the systemic racism that is at work in the criminal justice system.

AMT: And now Theresa White's son Ryan White was murdered by Kale Gabriel and she has made comments about some of this. This was made to CTV. Listen to what she says.

SOUNDCLIP

I think that a crime is a crime and colour shouldn't matter whatsoever. It's very difficult to try to forward your life when you're being called back to that same sadness over and over.

AMT: Robert Wright, what do you make of that comment?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, I would say this, that we shouldn't really expect the family members of individuals who have been murdered to have any perspective on the system that now has the job of adjudicating and properly sentencing the murderer of your loved one. From personal experience, I can tell you that a family cannot be expected to have any kind of understanding of what happens next. The good news is that the criminal justice system takes those considerations away from family members and works to sentence properly people who commit these acts. What I hear in that voice, the pain and the anguish I hear, is really something that needs to be responded to by another system - counselling program for the families who are the victims of serious crime, community system supports, and other kinds of things that families need in those circumstances.

AMT: Are there other groups that could benefit from cultural assessments?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Absolutely. I think of increasing immigrant populations in Canada who will begin to experience, once here, extreme challenges in integrating into the Canadian society that may result in the kind of social problems in communities that may lead some of those individuals into conflict with the law. And if those persons are sentenced, then certainly their immigrant status and the experience of their peoples in Canada, judges will need to be informed by that.

AMT: Okay. Well, thank you for your insights into all of this.

ROBERT WRIGHT: You're very welcome.

AMT: Robert Wright, social worker. He wrote a cultural assessment for a Black Nova Scotia youth who had been convicted of attempted murder. He's in our Halifax studio. Now, the backdrop to cases, such as the Kale Leonard Gabriel case and his victim Ryan White, is one that has become frustratingly familiar and potentially avoidable, according to my next guest. Anthony Morgan is a lawyer for the firm Falconers LLP. In February, he authored a report to the United Nations called The Blackening Margins of Multiculturalism: The African Canadian Experience of Exclusion from the Economic, Social and Cultural Promise and Prosperity of Canada. Anthony Morgan is with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning.

ANTHONY MORGAN: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you thinking as you listened to what Mr. Wright was just saying?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Well, I think it's about time that we get to a point within our justice system where we recognize that we have to appreciate the full context and background of an individual so judges can shape fair and just sentences.

AMT: So, how useful would a cultural assessment be in the case of Kale Leonard Gabriel?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Well, I think it's important that we understand what are the economic factors? What are the social factors? We know that this crime took place, for instance, in Mulgrave Park. Mulgrave Park within Halifax has its own history of social exclusion. It's a public housing project where communities were removed, some from the historic community of Africville, and placed within this community and there's not the kind of access to jobs, education, opportunities, transportation and so on and so forth that would allow for the healthy development of community. And so it's important that any judge who's going to be sentencing him be able to factor those social conditions in.

AMT: Ryan White’s family is going to be looking for a sentence that, quote, “fits the crime” that took their son's life. What concerns do you have about what lies ahead for Kale Leonard Gabriel as he faces sentencing and potential prison time?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Well, my concern has to do with, of course, looking at the over representation of Black men in prison. I don't think he should get a, certainly, as Mr. Wright noted, a get-out-of-jail-free card and he certainly won't.

ATM: He is he convicted.

ANTHONY MORGAN: Yes, he is convicted.

AMT: He’s convicted of a very serious crime.

ANTHONY MORGAN: Exactly. And so I don't want anybody to think that's what we're looking for when it comes to a cultural assessment. But in terms of determining his eligibility for parole, we have to be able to look at the factors that may have led him to engage in this behaviour and be able to determine his sentence accordingly. And so the concern is that we may get a situation where that is not adequately addressed. But it looks like there's an opening here to influence the judge so that, again, a fair and appropriate sentence for this particular individual is taken into consideration.

AMT: What kinds of things could that look like? I know we can't really second guess what a judge is thinking on this, but what are the options, if you want to look at a cultural assessment and say, okay, there's this person who has been convicted has also been a victim of systemic racism, ergo, when we sentence him we will do-- What would they do that would be different?

ANTHONY MORGAN: So, I won't speak to this specific case, because not a case that I've worked on, but I'll speak to cultural assessments in general and the impact that they can have. And so, for instance, we might look at, say, maybe instead of having such a long custodial sentence, we'll have a sentence where the person is in community and servicing community, because we found, historically, that they, for instance, have issues of abandonment, where maybe they were put up for adoption. They ended up in the child welfare system. They have difficulty maintaining connections. And therefore they feel alienated from community. And so the judge factors that in and says, well, maybe we can place him with a community organization so he can build those healthy relationships, get connected to community, and that be actually a part of their sentence. And I'm saying ‘he’ because the overrepresentation of Black people within prison is overwhelmingly a Black male phenomenon. Certainly, we're seeing it with Black females, for sure, but I'm saying ‘he’, again, just because it specifically has a very disproportionate impact on men.

AMT: Well, I want to pick up on the actual numbers. I have a clip here. This is Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga's Faculty of Sociology, who has spent time analysing data on prisons in Canada. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

We know that both, at the federal and provincial levels, that Blacks generally and Black males are greatly overrepresented. When we look at the provincial for Nova Scotia, for example, Blacks are overrepresented by about seven times their proportion of the population. So, whereas Black Nova Scotians make up about two2.1 per cent of their population they made up 14 per cent of the prison population in 2010/2011. At the federal level, Blacks are overrepresented about three times their proportion of the population. There's been a fairly substantial growth in the Black federal offender population, upwards of about 80 per cent over the past ten years.

AMT: Okay. Big numbers there. Anthony Morgan, how do you explain that overrepresentation? What's going on?

ANTHONY MORGAN: One of the important things that we should be considering in this conversation is the decision that we make around policing. So, we're having this conversation in Ontario about carding and street checks and we have to be able to consider the fact that disproportionate targeting of certain populations will, of course, lead to overrepresentation in prison. If you look at the history of carding, when the practice was implemented and then accelerated, you see a consistent line between that and the times at which the increase of Black people within prisons has happened. Now, within the data on carding we know that it specifically targets young Black men. Now, the federal prison population, more than half of the people in federal prison, Black people in prison, are under the age of 30, more than half, right. So we know that there is some sort of connection here. I don't think it's just a correlation. When you have policing that is going around and targeting specific individuals in specific communities - overwhelmingly Black, Indigenous, Brown - then you get the expression of that within the overrepresentation within our prison systems. And so when we have cultural assessments this is something that would be considered, where a judge would look and say, okay, what is criminal justice policy? What is this practice that surrounds policing within this particular community, for instance, Mulgrave Park? But let's look at other communities in other cities. And folks will say Jane and Finch, and Regent Park, and Jamestown, and so on and so forth, and say, okay, yes, this is this is odious behaviour. This is a problem. It needs to be punished. But we also have to recognize that there's a force, like the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy, TAVIS, which targets people within this community. So how do we balance that to determine a just sentence?

AMT: And then I guess the goal is that if you have someone who is convicted of a violent crime, a serious crime like second degree murder, that you're also looking at, what do you do in the sentence so that when their sentence is complete they're not going to reoffend. How do you bring them-- Because the goal is to get people back in the community, right?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Absolutely.

AMT: And so the cultural assessment also works on that front?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Yes. And so, for instance, say the individual, the violent crime came out of their interaction with the drug trade, right. And so how do we look at a sentence that factors in - maybe this person's lack of education or just skills and training - how do we get them into a trades program to make sure they are properly suited not to find themselves within the drug trade again, but meaningfully contributing as a citizen once they've served their sentence?

AMT: Okay. So, we're talking about the actual sentencing, but you think a lot can be done before a crime is committed in the way that we look at certain communities and try to encourage people. What do you think needs to be done on that front?

ANTHONY MORGAN: Well, I think, generally, as a society - and I'm confident that we're moving in this direction - we need to recognise that the roots of crime need to be more adequately addressed. We need to have a prevention model that looks at the social circumstances that make crime more likely. So, poverty within community, social exclusion, anti-Black racism, marginality as it relates to access to food, access to childcare, access to jobs, and so if we were to have more of those social investments to address crime, I think we would be spending less money on policing. Right now, our reflex often is to just give the police more money, give them more money for more programs. But, no. Why can't we build more schools? Why can't we build more community centres? Why can't we fund more scholarships and opportunities and training programs for these young people?

AMT: Anthony Morgan, thanks for coming in.

ANTHONY MORGAN: Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: Anthony Morgan is a lawyer at the firm Falconers LLP. He's with me in our Toronto studio. We're interested in knowing your thoughts on this. Should get the cultural heritage of someone convicted be considered as a mitigating factor in sentencing? Tweet us. We're @thecurrentCBC. Post on our story on our Facebook page. Email us by clicking on Contact, cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Inside the mind of Donald Trump

Guests: Dan McAdams, Aaron James

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, how technology is helping one Toronto hospital bring medical care to isolated Indigenous communities. But first, a philosopher and a psychologist peer inside the mind of The Donald.

SOUNDCLIP

Trump Steaks, where are the steaks, do we have the steaks? We have Trump Steaks.

[scattered applause]

He said the steak company, and we have Trump Steaks. And by the way, you want to take one, we'll charge you about what, 50 bucks a steak, normally.

[crowd laughter]

AMT: That is presumptive U.S. Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump at a news conference, where he was celebrating his victories in the Michigan and Mississippi and primaries. And Trump Steaks were on display, but not solely Trump Steaks. There was Trump champagne, a Trump magazine, lots of Trump merchandise. It was not your typical victory speech; then again, Donald Trump is not your typical candidate. Who Donald Trump is and what is going on in his head have never been more important. And two professors have decided to take a deeper look. Dan McAdams is a professor and chair of the department of psychology at Northwestern University. He is the author of George W. Bush And The Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait. And his cover story in this month's Atlantic Magazine is called The Mind of Donald Trump, it's been getting a lot of notice in the U.S. Dan McAdams joins us from Evanston, Illinois. And before I introduce my next guest, I have to give you a warning about language. There is a word in the title of his books that some may find offensive or inappropriate for children. It is sure to come up in the conversation, as well-- it's coming now. Our guest is Aaron James, a professor and chair of philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. His bestselling book is Assholes: A Theory. His new book is called Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump. Aaron James is in a studio in Irvine, California. Hello to you both.

AARON JAMES: Nice to be here.

DAN MCADAMS: Nice to be with you.

AMT: Dan McAdams, I want to start with you. Why would a man like Donald Trump, who is so rich and powerful, on the night of two of his biggest wins in the race for the nomination, have a press conference with a pile of steaks on the table?

DAN MCADAMS: [chuckles] Only Donald Trump would do that, right? What a lot of psychologists would probably say, and I guess I'd probably go there, is that this is yet another example of self-reference. Donald Trump has a pretty deep-seated motivation to display himself and to see himself as adored and see his name everywhere. And whether it's on steaks or it's stenciled across a beautiful building in downtown Chicago, the Trump Tower, T-R-U-M-P. That's the name, it's out there for everybody to see.

AMT: Aaron James, what do you think when you saw that press conference by Donald Trump?

AARON JAMES: I found it sort of amazing. Not just that he's drawing attention to himself, but the way that he drew attention to himself. I mean, because he realizes that part of his appeal is that he claims to be a successful business person, and here he's putting himself forward under that guise by offering Trump Steaks as an example of, you know, of a successful and promising business proposition without having any sense at all. That's incredible. You see it, and it's hard to believe that, he can't be serious, right? You think he must be joking and putting this forward as examples of a successful business, and all the other things, Trump water bottles, you know, Trump wine, which is- that was the one thing that was selling reasonably well, some of the others apparently don't sell very well. And yet, he's still putting it forward as examples of his business prowess. I mean, that's extremely funny in itself, but funny not in the sense that a comedian is telling a joke, it's funny in the sense that he's telling the joke, but somehow not in on it, right? So he's oblivious to what's humorous about it, to what everyone else sees. And then it's sort of fascinating, and in its own way flummoxing but still human, that someone could be seemingly so serious and yet so oblivious to what everyone else would appreciate.

AMT: Which brings us to the question of what is going on in his mind. Dan McAdams, tell us how you came up with your psychological profile of Donald Trump.

DAN MCADAMS: Well, let me go back to the point the Professor James made. I think it's really interesting, and this is something other people have observed, too, about Donald Trump: he goes through life as a man who knows he's always being observed. He's a consummate social actor. And at the same time, the kinds of things he does, they're so outlandish, it is as if he doesn't realize what the implications are going to be. So there's a little bit of a, like, oh my God, this is Donald Trump playing Donald Trump. Is this for real, is there something behind it? And this is the big question, I mean, what's going on behind the role, behind the social actor? And this was a big challenge for me when I wrote the piece for The Atlantic. I was pretty sure I could find something beyond the surface, that I could find some interesting, deep-seated motivations, some goals, a life narrative. It was very hard to do. To the extent I was able to come up with something, it was mostly about narcissism, it was mostly about this idea of putting yourself out there for everybody to adore. And sure, it does suggest his business prowess, but it also is him. You know T-R-U-M-P: the picture, the word, it's got to be out there. And like Narcissus in the ancient Greek legend, Trump is in love with this image and in love with the name, and why wouldn't everybody else? And so he's putting it out there all the time. So that's part of what's behind the role, and it sort of dovetails with this story that he has created about his life. Somewhat ironically, really, a man who grew up in the lap of luxury. His parents were extraordinarily rich, he had a secure childhood and so forth, no big trouble. But from the get go, his father told him, listen Donald, you've got to be a killer, because it is a tough world out there. It is a dangerous world that only a few will survive. And his father Fred Trump, well, he's talking about the real estate world, which is the world Donald went into. And so this has become his narrative: the narrative of the warrior who needs to fight all the time. So he wants to win this election to win because he's a fighter. If he does win, what happens after that?

AMT: And so is there a phrase to describe that whole personality? Narcissism doesn't cover the whole thing, does it?

DAN MCADAMS: Yeah, there's no single phrase. I mean, there's a lot of different levels going on here. In the article, I sort of deal with three of them. I mean, there's the trait level, you could talk about his social- I think this is where the asshole idea comes in. I mean, he's extraordinarily socially dominant. He's out there all the time. And at the same time, very low on a trait that's called agreeableness, which, you know, translated is he's a mean guy. He's an extraordinarily in-your-face, aggressive guy. We can't believe what he does. So you put those two traits together, the high extroversion and the rock-bottom agreeableness, and you've got his volatile character who is extraordinarily mean-spirited. It's all fueled by anger, but that's appealing to some people, it sort of channels their anger. So there's lots of different levels there, and no single phrase.

AMT: Aaron James, what is the philosophical definition of an asshole?

AARON JAMES: As I defined it in an earlier book without thinking of Trump in particular, the a-hole is the guy who takes special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people. So cut in line, or swerve through lanes of traffic, or inject a cutting remark when it's inappropriate, things like that. Things that are in principle, it might be okay to do under the right circumstances, but the a-hole does this sort of systematically. The a-hole is motivated, I think, to do these things by a sense of entitlement to do it, which is a moral sense of entitlement, which generates moral feelings of being treated unfairly. For example, when criticism comes back or when someone pipes up to complain, and because the person is entrenched in this sensibility, they're unwilling to entertain the complaints of other people. See other people who complain is beneath them or as, you know, by complaining, not giving them the respect that they think they deserve.

AMT: And so Donald Trump fits your definition.

AARON JAMES: I think it fits Trump. [chuckles] It fits, but what's interesting about him is that when you think about his sense of entitlement, it's not a thick sense of entitlement as I put, it it's thin. And in his own mind, that can be as thin as, I'm a winner. I mean, he thinks he can take special advantage because he's a winner and winners win, so winners can do what's required to win. And why he feels, you know, unfairly treated when people object or push back, or when the media even questions factual claims that he's made. [chuckles] Why he thinks that's a source of unfairness, and he's being treated very badly. But the sense of entitlement doesn't have to be sort of plausible to be sort of moral. In a broad way, you know, in the sense that it gives rise in his mind to moral privileges.

AMT: You write that Donald Trump is not solely an a-hole; he is an a-slash-clown. What do you mean?

AARON JAMES: He's in a-hole, you know, a very clear-cut kind. Successful a-holes walk a fine line between alienating people and keeping them cooperating so that they're there to take advantage of. And that takes a certain kind of social skill to balance that. And the main thing, I think, that successful a-holes have to do is have to have something going for them, some redeeming qualities. In Trump's case, I think he really does have to be appealing in certain ways, and he is. Part of that is the sense that he'll be a sort of destructive force for good, a disruptor of the political system. So that's part of it, but there's lots of people who would be comparably disruptive who are just totally unappealing, that people wouldn't get behind and vote for. But so why is it that people sort of have this connection with him? And, in fact, he just has a lot of charisma. He can be likable, he can be very funny. I mean, he's constantly telling jokes. His insults are often funny, and I think it's really important that he's what I call an ass-clown, which is exactly what exemplified in the Trump Steak example at the primary Michigan and Mississippi acceptance speech. This is part of his appeal, I think. Part of why we can relate to him as sort of seemingly authentic or human, because he's the guy who's telling the joke, but not in it. And that way of being oblivious is something that we can all relate to, it's a deeply kind of human moment. Sort of like slapstick comedy: you know, it's relatable, it's simple, it makes him likable enough, anyway, to sort of cut the gag reflex you have by the other things that he's doing that are really revolting.

AMT: But do you think it's deliberate?

AARON JAMES: I mean, he's deliberately a showman, and he's deliberately seeking attention, and he's deliberately looking for ways to excite other people and get attention and have people share his view of himself that he's great. And that's a way of, he's trying to create a loving relationship, in a sense, so that's-- for people who love him, he loves them back. As for whether he's aware of all of the other social expectations or norms that he's violating routinely, I mean, he's aware of it in the sense that he sees that he can get attention by violating expectations. He sees that as a kind of stroke of genius. But he's oblivious to the force of their point or their significance. So the obliviousness works in his favour because it makes him relatable, or just interesting, and potentially likable; but on the other hand, it's part of his being a major a-hole and tearing through sort of social understandings or informal norms of cooperation that, you know, other people understand. And so that makes them dangerous.

AMT: Well I have a bit of tape from the 2011 Correspondents' Dinner. This is President Obama, listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

Donald Trump is here tonight.

[crowd laughs and claps]

And I know that he's taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing?

[Crowd laughs and claps]

What really happened in Roswell?

[Crowd laughter]

And where are Biggie and Tupac?

[Crowd laughs and claps]

AMT: Aaron James, what do you think of that kind of public ridiculing?

AARON JAMES: Well, I guess-- one theory about this, which draws from Rousseau's idea of amour-propre, or a threat to self-regard or a threat to your sense of standing, and then a self-desire to assert yourself as superior. Is that, you know, this event, his public humiliations enraged him and sort of set him on a course to prove to the political class, who was there just laughing at him, that he could dominate them, right, that he'd be a winner, that he was going to be taken seriously, he was going to be respected-- if not respected, than feared. And in fact, then he did it, so at least that seems to be some kind of, possibly one kind of turning point that triggered his sense of self-regard and put him on a course to being especially dominant.

AMT: Dan McAdams, what do you think?

DAN MCADAMS: Yeah, I don't buy that. I mean, this turning point business. Donald Trump wanted to be president back in the late '80s, I mean, this is something he's been talking about for 30 years. And this idea of humiliation and shame and so on, I mean, a number of people have said this, you know, that he's walking around with a lot of shame. I don't think I see that so much. He grew up in a very luxurious household, but the money comes from real estate in Queens and Brooklyn, and that's just not the major leagues. That's more like the minor leagues, here, that's not as top. And so some have said, well, he felt shame about that, and that's why he moved to Manhattan and so forth. And I don't see the shame. I see it's more like building on what his father developed for him and trying to win on a bigger stage. But the shame business, you know, Donald Trump comes out of a culture of business and self-promotion and so forth. The rules of the game are different, there. And so insults are part of the game. He's insulted his business partners, then the next day, they sign an agreement, and on day three, they're like buddies. I mean, he does this all the time, where the rules are reality TV, okay? Now, he's kind of developed all these norms in those arenas, and now he's putting it out there in the political arena in a way that nobody has ever done before and it turns out, so far at least, to be working. Which is-- I'm surprised, too. It's fairly extraordinary. But I don't think he sees himself as violating norms, and I think many of his supporters are pretty happy with the kind of conventions that he's following.

AMT: Aaron James, when you look at history, doesn't democracy need an occasional a-hole in a position of power? Didn't being a-hole help General George Patton destroy the Nazi Army in World War II?

AARON JAMES: I mean, I think that in some cases, an a-hole can be a force for good; but it's just an accident that when that happens. The a-hole isn't concerned, isn't guided by the good that might come. They're doing what they're doing for other reasons. And so in many cases, they end up being destructive; in some cases, sort of by accident, by luck, by moral luck, they wind up being a force for good. So the success of a democracy, especially the American style democratic republic which depends on the sort of fragile cooperation between distinct branches of government where there's a constant risk of constitutional crisis and things like that, require there not being too many a-holes, or there being some effective mechanism for a-hole control. So as you know, Madison pointed it out, you know, if we were devils, democracy wouldn't be possible; if we were all angels, it would be necessary. But still, we're [indistinct] more in between, but everything depends on, you know, people rising up, co-operative people rising up from the better angels of our nature to sort of keep the a-holes at bay. So I think the long-term success of the union and its stability depends on a-hole management, on keeping it under control. So at best when they do succeed, when a-holes succeed is a force for good, it's going to work on the margins of cooperative life. So I think the basic strategy of Trump supporters, at least many of his supporters who think this, that he's going to sort of bring order to a corrupt political system by out a-holing all the a-holes, that's an incredibly dangerous strategy. I don't think that the potential risks could be limited to the political system. I think they'd go to the heart of the republic and potentially unravel, in fact, what's made America great in the post-war era. Both in domestic life and in international relations, as well.

AMT: I have another clip I'd like to play. This is Donald Trump on Tuesday responding to questions about money he says he raised for U.S. veterans' groups. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm not looking for credit, but what I don't want is when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC, he's a sleaze my book. You're a sleaze, because you know the facts, and you know the facts well. Go ahead.

DAN MCADAMS: It's extraordinary.

AMT: So what do you see there, what worries you, what do you think about that?

DAN MCADAMS: I'm worried about what many people are worried about. I mean, you know, we have sort of a certain kind of anger rooted in xenophobia and this notion that once upon a time, we were a fabulous place, and we've lost all that. This sort of lost paradise idea, this nostalgia for a past that maybe never even was. I mean, this is something that Trump pulls into. There just really hasn't been a political figure in my lifetime-- I guess maybe George Wallace, going back to late '60s comes closest-- who has risen so high through such inflammatory kind of rhetoric. It will be interesting to see how this all plays on the national stage once it's sort of sorted out, and you've got Hillary versus Trump one-on-one.

AMT: Aaron, what do you think of that? I'm wondering, do you worry about the anger that he connects with some supporters on being unleashed or legitimised? Because he talks about taking action against identifiable groups: racial, religious.

AARON JAMES: Yeah. I think at a personal level, some of that will cause action. I mean, calls people to act out. I don't know that there's as much anger in the in the general population, as Professor McAdams mentioned, that might not carry through in the general election in the same way. But I think--

AMT: [interposing] Of course, that's what they were saying when all those other guys were in the Republican race, too.

AARON JAMES: Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. But I think to the extent that they're-- I think everyone is angry in this sense, or a lot of people are angry, maybe most, that look, the political system has become corrupt. I agree with that. It's been corrupted by money in politics, by obstruction, by short-term political thinking. There's just a lack of political comedy and cooperation that existed not too long ago, it's been disrupted because of, you know, basically political entrepreneurs sowing discord for reasons of power and profits. And then the political discourse is just you know full of platitudes and ideology and it's hard to penetrate. People on all sides, right and left, now have contempt for a system that has contempt for them, a political system. So why wouldn't-- that's something that makes people just want to break things, right? [chuckles]

AMT: Yeah.

AARON JAMES: And so Trump is a way of breaking things, and I completely understand that. The point that I think is really important is that Trump is bad medicine to try to break and disrupt that system because he's so unpredictable and unruly that he's just going to break-- the risk of him breaking so much else that's so important or so grave that it's akin to Russian roulette, right? There is there's catastrophic loss if you lose the gamble, and if you win, there's very little upside. [chuckles] When you win, you just survive and things just go the status quo. So I don't think he's likely to reform the system, the political order that much, but the chances of things being a lot worse are really significant.

AMT: It's fascinating, and it's really important to hear your thoughts on all of this. Gentlemen, thank you.

BOTH: Thank you very much.

AMT: Speaking to Dan McAdams, the author this month's Atlantic Magazine cover story, The Mind of Donald Trump. He's in Evanston, Illinois. Aaron James' new book is called Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump, he joined us from Irvine, California. We did contact the Trump campaign to ask if anyone wanted to comment. We haven't heard back. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

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Making sense of the prison death of Richard Wolfe, co-founder of the Indian Posse gang

Guests: Joe Friesen

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

[Music]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The whole notion here is that a person who is experiencing that serious a mental illness is not making choices; he or she is morally innocent and is entitled to be treated rather than punished while still protecting the public.

VOICE 2: Everything was burnt out. Ashes, rubble, dead bodies, dying people. Very quiet. It was a city of death.

VOICE 3: Nothing will be done until this government realizes that people are dying. What else are they waiting for? We don’t know. We really don’t know.

AMT: A taste of the week that was on The Current and there is no shortage of reaction from our listeners. Our Friday host, Piya Chattopadhyay, also the host of Out in the Open, joins me to read through your responses. Hi.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi.

AMT: I've been listening to Out In The Open, I'm loving it.

PC: Oh, thank you. Show two comes out Saturday. It's on you know, as we ready ourselves for legalization of marijuana in this country, who's going to profit from it potentially and also issues that intersect with it. So, race and class, we’ll be talking about that Saturday 3:00 PM.

AMT: Terrific. Okay, let's start with Hiroshima, Japan. Last Friday marked the historic occasion Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site where the first atomic bomb was dropped on a civilian target. He laid a wreath at the site but he did not apologize for the destruction caused that day, and Piya spoke with a Canadian-Japanese Hiroshima survivor. She was 13-years old on August 6^th, 1945.

PC: Setsuko Thurlow told a powerful personal story of that day and this was her reaction to the fact that President Obama did not say sorry.

SOUNDCLIP

You don’t force people to apologize to you, it has to be voluntary and it wasn’t forthcoming from him. Well, what if he chose to apologize. I consider that appropriate. If he chooses not to, and he didn't, I understand because of the political climate of the United States.

AMT: Patricia Miller from Guelph, Ontario, wrote in to say that she was moved by Setsuko Thurlow: Her graceful, peaceful, intelligent description of what happened to her, a violent unspeakable act affecting thousands of people, was an inspiration. David Cunningham thought an apology from President Obama should have been forthcoming writing: Be a human and admit it was a terrible thing to do. The people who were killed were innocent civilians with no control over Japan or its terrible decisions.

PC: Ernest Barteldes disagreed. He wrote: It was an act of war, Japan was willing to fight to the last man. Mark Hillard posted on Facebook: Standing at the memorial and solemnly paying respect to the victims is far more powerful than uttering meaningless apologies.

AMT: Ted Pearson from Montreal wrote in to say: I spent three-and-a-half years in a Japanese camp in China. There were many rumours that the camp commandant was going to have us all exterminated. Do I regret the bomb? Not at all.

PC: Grad McGregor reacted to Setsuko Thurlow's disappointment that President Obama didn't speak more forcefully about nuclear weapons with this comment: Would Obama really discuss nuclear disarmament on the toes of a hotly contested presidential election? I don't think so. Obama would take the teeth out of the Democrats by making such a statement. Trump would jump all over it.

AMT: Well, moving on.

SOUNDCLIP

I wasn't ready to be a parent because I didn't know how to parent. I was raised in residential school and I never seen my parents...like how they parented us. They never said, I love you, in residential school. They never said come here let me hug you...like that. And it was really difficult for me to do that to my own kids. My life was in a whirlwind of drugs and alcohol. My kids were there but I hardly ever see them. My life was just a haze when they were small.

AMT: That is Susan Creeley, the mother of Danny and Richard Wolfe, the co-founders of the notorious Indian Posse Gang. In 2010, Danny was attacked and killed at a Saskatchewan prison. Friday, his older brother Richard collapsed and died at the St. Albert Penitentiary. He was 40-years-old. Joe Friesen is a reporter with The Globe and Mail, he's also the author of The Ballad of Danny Wolfe: Life of a Modern Outlaw. He met with Richard multiple times while researching his book. Joe Friesen is with us in our Toronto studio, hi.

JOE FRIESEN: Good morning.

AMT: You were in here a couple of weeks ago telling us about Danny Wolfe, now his brother Richard has died. Do you know anything about the circumstances?

JOE FRIESEN: The correctional services said the they do not suspect foul play at this time and having spoken to his mother, she said it's a suspected heart attack.

AMT: You met Richard a number of times, what was he like?

JOE FRIESEN: Richard when I met him, was just out of prison after serving a long sentence, and he was trying to put his life back together. He was living in Fort Qu’Appelle, had got a job harvesting Christmas trees, and at the time was eager to talk to me about his brother Danny, which is what I was interested in doing.

AMT: And we heard that clip of his mom saying that he had a difficult childhood and she had a difficult childhood. How did all of that shape the role that he played in the establishment and running of the Indian Posse Gang?

JOE FRIESEN: Well, Richard grew up in poverty in Winnipeg and when he was 12 years old, he and Danny and a bunch of others formed the Indian Posse. They were looking for a way to survive, something that they could be proud of, and Richard was sort of the leader of that group. He was the one who came up with much of the iconography, many of the rules for the gang and was seen as the person who could talk to the room; to bring the gang together.

AMT: And compared to his brother, what was his temperament like?

JOE FRIESEN: To simplify it a little bit, Danny would have been the hothead and Richard the calm, cool one.

AMT: And so was Richard sort of the brains behind some of business of the posse?

JOE FRIESEN: In the early days, yes he was.

AMT: And so he was 19 when he was first incarcerated? What did he do?

JOE FRIESEN: He committed a terrifying crime in Winnipeg. He ambushed a pizza delivery man and shot him. It was a very difficult to understand crime because Richard was a high ranking member of the gang. The kind of act that someone in his position probably shouldn't have been carrying out, and he explained it years later to the parole board by saying that he was trying to collect a debt and wanted to send a message that debts to the Indian Posse had to be paid. Supposedly he was waiting for $60,000 in a pizza box and when it didn't come, he fired on this pizza delivery driver.

AMT: Who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

JOE FRIESEN: Yes, completely innocent.

AMT: And he did get out after that. What was his life like?

JOE FRIESEN: He seemed to be living a good life. He had a job, he had started a family with a woman, they had a child. He seemed to be on the right track and then things started to go awry for him.

AMT: What happened?

JOE FRIESEN: He had suffered a number of tragedies. He was struggling to get over the death of his brother, he had a lot of residual anger about that, anger towards people in the gang life who had taken Danny's life, then as he was getting closer to his father, who he had not known for most of his life, his father who was a chronic alcoholic, got very sick and was put on life support and Richard had to make the decision to take him off life support eventually, and he died. Then, quite tragically, his teenage stepson was killed in an accident and Richard was present for his last moments, trying to revive him. I think the combination of those things pushed him to the edge and he returned to drinking and drugs, which had always been a really negative influence for him.

AMT: And so what was the crime that he committed at that point?

JOE FRIESEN: So, he'd been basically kicked out of his own home and some people in the community had taken him in; friends of his and let him stay in their basement. One night Richard had been drinking and doing drugs and crept into the bedroom of the wife of this couple and tried to sexually assault her. Her husband heard her screams and came in with a baseball bat. Richard wrestled the bat away from the man, and beat him bloody and senseless, and ran off. Richard described coming to his senses, covered in someone else's blood, terrified that he had killed someone.

AMT: You've spoken to his mother since he died?

JOE FRIESEN: That's right.

AMT: And what is she saying?

JOE FRIESEN: It's very tragic for her. This is the second son who has died in the same prison. I think she's having a really hard time coping with it.

AMT: There is a third son in prison, is there not?

JOE FRIESEN: That's right. Their younger brother, Preston is in prison at the moment, too. She has said that she would like people to know that Richard wasn't always bad, that he had some good qualities and sometimes that gets lost, I think in the stories about him, because he had committed so many terrible crimes. I think for a mother anything like that is difficult to cope with.

AMT: Given what you know about the two brothers, how they each ended up dying in prison, what chance do you think they had to carve out a different narrative for their lives?

JOE FRIESEN: It was a very difficult situation. The poverty they grew up in was overwhelming. As with anybody, they had options, they had choices in life, they chose the criminal path as the only viable one for them. Obviously, I think that was a terrible choice and it led to many, many tragedies.

AMT: They started stealing food when they were kids.

JOE FRIESEN: That's right. They were stealing food from gardens, they would steal blankets from clothes lines to find somewhere warm to sleep in parks or in apartment hallways. They were trying to get away from a life of drugs, and alcohol, and violence that was all around them all the time. It was a tragic upbringing.

AMT: When did Richard start using drugs and alcohol? How old was he?

JOE FRIESEN: Richard was about 12 when he was getting into some pretty serious criminal activity, which is awfully young. His first crime I think, was for possession of a weapon at age 12, which was a gun.

AMT: And so you know, after really looking at these brothers and sort of the trajectory of their lives, if they hadn't started stealing just to eat when they were boys, could their lives have been different?

JOE FRIESEN: I think anything is possible, certainly it could have been different. If there had been there had been something for these boys to attach themselves to, some mentorship that they could have latched onto, that's what they were looking for; a purpose in their lives and a way to provide meaning. They just saw no future for themselves.

AMT: So maybe the lesson in them is not about them at all, but of the generation coming up behind them.

JOE FRIESEN: That's right.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

JOE FRIESEN: Thank you for having me.

AMT: That is Joe Friesen, he is the author of The Ballad of Danny Wolfe: Life of a Modern Outlaw. He joined us in our Toronto studio.

PC: Let's turn to some more letters, tweets, and Facebook posts that you sent us. Last week, Matthew de Grood was found not criminally responsible for five stabbing deaths at a Calgary house party that took place in 2014. Now we followed up with a discussion about whether the system set up for those designated not criminally responsible, or NCR, is working as it's supposed to protect public safety.

AMT: We heard from Toronto resident, Katherine Newman who was attacked by a delusional man who was later found was later found not criminally responsible, NCR. The man has been allowed out since at a psychiatric facility on day passes.

SOUNDCLIP

Whoever authorized this pass did not even do due diligence to find out where he is in relation to me. I could have easily ended up on that street. I think the mechanism fails because the mandate is for the least onerous circumstance for the NCR defined person. I don't think that there's an equal mandate for the protection of public safety. I think there has to be consideration of both equally.

PC: Well, you wrote to us with a lot of different, and often very personal, responses to that story. Nora Gavarre of Barrie, Ontario, shared her fears about the man who was deemed NCR after attacking her father: Good behaviour is reviewed in a very sheltered way in the context of a controlled hospital setting. A person can be well-behaved in a very strict environment, but our fear is that once he is released his behaviour becomes his responsibility. There is nothing to protect our family and all the help is for the accused. The system has left us feeling abandoned.

AMT: Steven V. Smith wrote about his personal experience trying to navigate the system from the perspective of a parent of someone with mental illness: Our son is able to repeatedly offend, then avoid treatment or consequence. We're trying to get and keep him in treatment, but there's very strong pressure to turn over space in the hospital, so out he goes. He's unapologetic, and unable or unwilling to comply with rules.

PC: On the other hand, JL Dub tweeted: Mental health issues that are that serious are a life sentence as well. The accused is never free either.

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Children in remote communities get psychiatric care via telehealth

Guests: David Willis

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: On to another story now. Earlier this week, I spoke with Dr. Elena Shurshilova about her personal mission to bring mental health care to remote Indigenous northern communities. After hearing that story, David Willis contacted us about a program that does just that, but not by physically going to the community. David Willis is the Clinical Manager of the Telelink Mental Health Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He joins me in studio, hello.

DAVID WILLIS: Good morning.

AMT: So when we interviewed Dr. Shurshilova, she said mental health assistance for remote communities is barely available. How would you describe it?

DAVID WILLIS: So, mental health for First Nations and Aboriginal communities is scarce but it is there. When we look at the two different models of care that are delivered to First Nations and Aboriginal, one is to actually fly up, spend some time in the community, and the other one is to take advantage of technology, which is what we're doing at The Hospital for Sick Children.

AMT: And so, what do you do? How does that work?

DAVID WILLIS: So we connect with mental health counselors, nurses, and physicians in rural remote and under-served communities and we provide psychiatric assessment, we provide education, and we provide something called a program consult, which is really a building capacity in the community. Working as a partner with these organizations and with these individuals in these communities, we’re able to serve almost 5,000 kids a year.

AMT: What is the age range?

DAVID WILLIS: Zero to 18.

AMT: And so, when you're assessing and you're actually doing this, what's the set up? What's the actual physical set up?

DAVID WILLIS: At Sick Kids, we have seven studios, five of them have these huge 60” plasma screens. On the far side, it's a bit different. It can be a computer screen, it can be a set up like you know, a 45-or-60” T.V, there's a video camera attached to it, there's a microphone and we connect over live video.

AMT: Okay, and then how do the sessions work?

DAVID WILLIS: So, a typical assessment starts with everyone who's involved in that client's life that going to bring some sort of meaning to this assessment, or professional to professional consultation. That could be parents, that could be caregivers, that could be teachers, often it's a combination of all of those folks.

AMT: So, they come in the room and sit in front of the camera and they talk—

[crosstalk]

DAVID WILLIS: They sit and then our clinicians on our end slice and dice that and say, okay, let's talk to you first, let's talk to you, but it's really centred around the patient. At the end of that there are recommendations given to the case manager of the family. We don't prescribe medications from our side. If it's part of our recommendations, then it's up to the case managers and the family to find a medical physician in the community who can support that recommendation.

AMT: Okay, so you are assessing, do you actually have a psychiatrist providing treatment via the Telelink as well?

DAVID WILLIS: Ongoing treatment is a different thing than the consultative model which we've primarily followed, which is really a one off. I think as we move towards different areas such as developmental trauma, and we recognize that there is a long standing relationship that needs to be established, so what we do is we say to these folks you are welcome to connect with us when you feel that we will bring value to the work that's being done in the community.

AMT: Do you have teenagers, for example, who then connect on a regular basis with you that way? Like, kids at risk.

DAVID WILLIS: Yes, absolutely.

AMT: So they’re connecting with a psychiatrist at the other end?

DAVID WILLIS: Yes. We have a psychiatrist on our end, on the other end it's usually a case manager within the children's mental health agency, but you know when we define case manager in rural and remote communities, we do work in Nunavut, we do work in the northwest of Ontario, in flying communities and that can be a nurse, that can be a nurse practitioner, really it's whatever's available in the community and we work with those folks to help manage the situations in those communities.

AMT: I just want to understand there, who sits in front of the camera on the other end? The child at risk or the case manager?

DAVID WILLIS: The child at risk supported by a case manager.

AMT: Who is in the room?

DAVID WILLIS: Yes, absolutely.

AMT: Do you have case managers everywhere? Isn't part of the problem you don't have people who are qualified as case managers in all of these communities?

DAVID WILLIS: Defining case manager is an interesting conversation, depending on where you are. Part of what we did at the beginning of this program was to decide that building community capacity is a major way that we can actually keep kids in the community; that we can provide better care in the community. So what we do is when there's a team, or an individual, or group from a community that recognises that they need to enhance the services or build on their current skills, they connect with us and we embed a psychiatrist into that program and that psychiatrist meets with them ongoing for as long as they want and it can be to do anything from debriefing very serious situations to case presentations, and at the end of it what we're doing is building community capacity so that the folks who are actually working with these kids have better skills, families and children aren't leaving their communities, and the care is staying there.

AMT: Have you seen a real change? How long has this gone on, what have you seen?

DAVID WILLIS: So the program itself has been in existence for about 15 years. When we first introduced this program consult idea, we thought oh my goodness, we're shooting ourselves in the foot, we're not going to get referrals. In fact, the opposite happened. Our referral rates increased but those referrals were more appropriate referrals. The case managers recognized when we needed to be a part of the care and then they were able to reach out and bring us in when we needed and the patient needed us to be together.

AMT: How many of the communities you deal with are indigenous?

DAVID WILLIS: I would say about 30 percent of our communities.

AMT: Because you know, when we were doing all of these stories about Attawapiskat at risk, all of the leaders, all of the Aboriginal leaders as well said there's just no resources. Are you in Attawapiskat?

DAVID WILLIS: We are.

AMT: So, where's the disconnect?

DAVID WILLIS: Each community in these areas have their unique and individual challenges. There's a theme that runs across these communities in terms of crisis situations. I think the way Sick Kids has positioned our program is that we're there for the long term. So we don't go into communities if they don't need us, we don't go into communities if we're not asked, it's a partnership from our side and what we say right at the beginning is that we're there for the long haul and we'll help you build those skills. In terms of the communities on the James Bay coast, yes we have a relationship with those folks, but sometimes they need support from outside when the situations become more than they can manage.

AMT: And you need psychiatrists to fly in?

DAVID WILLIS: Yes, and we do.

AMT: We heard the frustration of Dr. Shurshilova talking about there just not enough people doing it and I mean, she actually spends her own money to fly to Saskatchewan so that then the system can fly her up. What should we make of that?

DAVID WILLIS: That's an interesting situation there. I think part of part of the problem across the country is that we work in silence sometimes and that conversation has to be a national conversation around children's mental health. We partner with the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, we partner with the Child and Parent Resource Institute in London, and together we can provide that care across the province and then reaching out, but we need to make sure that what we do as service providers is continue that conversation so that folks like this physician don't feel like they're isolated; that they can reach out and use the supports or use the infrastructure that's already developed.

AMT: So, the leaders who tell us they need resources, they don't mention that this is already happening in their community.

DAVID WILLIS: Right. Technology is a way that most communities have existed in fly-in and remote areas. Entire education systems are done over technology, so it's not seen as the first go-to. People want to sit in front of someone; they want to see someone's face, but we recognise through the research has been done that in fact when you can't have that, technology is as good as face-to-face.

AMT: Especially in a day of everybody connecting online, anyway.

DAVID WILLIS: Absolutely.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

DAVID WILLIS: Oh my pleasure.

AMT: That is David Willis, clinical manager of the Telelink mental health program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He joined us in our Toronto studio.

PC: We have time for your responses to one more story. On Tuesday we heard firsthand from Venezuelans about how they're coping with the ongoing turmoil in the South American nation. The oil bust has drained the public coffers there. The result? Shortages of everything from food to medicine. Hematologist/Oncologist as Dr. Maria Alejandra Torres described losing patience because chemo drugs aren't available.

SOUNDCLIP

This is the first time in my whole life and career that we just want to quit. We just want-- I wish to not have to go to the hospital. I know I have to go, because at least the patients have the opportunity to see the doctor just to give them some comfort, but we just seem to be so helpless. We don't know how to help them. We don't have the way to help them.

PC: Well, since our story ran, the head of the Organization of American States has called for an emergency meeting that could see Venezuela's suspension from the organization. Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro responded by calling that group interventionist traitors. And many Venezuelans wrote in to say they were happy to see the situation in their home country getting attention. Jose Ernesto Souki tweeted: It's good to know people care about my country. Sad situation back home.

AMT: Adnan Herrera wrote: The Venezuelan government could help the situation greatly by taking obvious decisions, but they're not willing to it.

PC: Jorge Sorger from Ottawa found the perspectives of the guests one-sided: The Venezuelan government does not deny that there are big problems and even that it has made mistakes in the past, but it is trying to correct them. The problems of today are not due to government neglect, but rather to opposition intransigence, criminal activity by important economic actors and violent opposition to the elected government. David McLaren of Neyaashiinigmiing, Ontario, wrote: The indigenous peoples and the campesinos have long suffered under the discriminatory rule of the elites. Yes, the collapse of oil prices has made life more miserable for everyone. And yes, Venezuela's economy is sinking into debt. But your show today highlighted the miserableness of elites.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Now, it's time to give credit where credit is due. This week on The Current was produced by Idella Sturino, Shannon Higgins, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Julian Uzielli.

PC: Sarah Grant, Pacinthe Mattar, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Marc Apollonio, Willow Smith and Karin Marley.

AMT: Special thanks to our network producers Anne Penman in Vancouver, and Michael O'Halloran in Calgary. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer this week is Sarah Claydon. Our technicians this week are Greg Fleet, Jennifer Rowley and Gary Francis.

PC: Our senior documentary editor is Joan Webber. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. And the executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: To add anything you hear on The Current, weigh in by tweeting us @TheCurrentcbc. And if you want to join the conversation about our season long project Ripple Effect, make sure to use the hashtag @ripplecbc. You can find all our Ripple Effect stories by going to our website and clicking on Features. That's at cbc.ca/thecurrent. While you're there, subscribe to our podcast or email us your thoughts by clicking on the contact link. Or post on Facebook, you can find us by searching CBC Radio The Current. There you go.

PC: There you go.

AMT: So, I got a letter yesterday from a woman in Pictou, Nova Scotia. She has cows that she names after women she admires.

PC: [laughs] I see where this is going.

AMT: She has one named Anna Maria Tremonti.

PC: Three, or just one. It could be three. Come here, Anna Maria Tremonti. I don’t know if you call cows like that.

AMT: Well, apparently Anna Maria Tremonti is strong-willed and independent, and is friends with another cow named Elizabeth May [laughs]

PC: Nothing like you. I want to see a photo.

AMT: I have a video of Anna Maria with her little calf.

PC: I bet she dresses well, too.

AMT: She looks like she doesn’t get any sleep. There is a dog and cat named Piya Chattapadhyay.

PC: People are very kind and someone wrote in to say, we named our cat after you. And then a few years later, someone named their dog after you. The woman who wrote said when the dog is really misbehaving we use your entire name.

AMT: There you go, and earlier in the week, we had Esther the pig. The only thing is, Anna Maria likes apples. I like chocolate. Can I just put that out there?

PC: Congratulations. It’s a nice honour.

AMT: [laugh] I’m pleased. Piya Chattopadhyay will be here tomorrow. That’s our program for today. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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June 2, 2016 full episode transcript

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