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The Current Transcript for January 30, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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There are some gravitational force surrounding Donald Trump that attracts the worst grifters, scowls, scumbags, roadside hobos, incipient serial killers and weirdos.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tell us how you really feel. Rick Wilson, the longtime Republican strategist, is clearly no fan of the US president. And now he's written a book on how to beat him and he wants the Democrats to pay attention. The game plan from a party defector coming up in 30 minutes. And then.

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It's just unfortunate that there are still some party leaders who want to be prime minister to sit down with people who are intolerant instead of standing with the LGBT community.

MG: The three main conservative candidates who all want to be Justin Trudeau say they'll all march in pride parades in contrast to Andrew Scheer and Stephen Harper. But then what? In an hour, why members of the LGBTQ community say walking in a parade is just the beginning, not the end goal. We begin, though, with life inside Wuhan China and why one Canadian is staying put. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

SEGMENT.

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We have secured a plane to repatriate Canadians who so wish to come back, not the next step obviously seems to work on the diplomatic front and the logistics, obviously, with our Chinese counterparts.

That's Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne yesterday announcing the federal government's plan to help get Canadians out of Wuhan, China. Thus far, 160 Canadians have asked for help in the city that's at the centre of the Corona virus outbreak. For those who want to leave and their relatives, the news of a plane is a source of relief. Lauren Williams is from White Rock, British Columbia. She's pregnant, due at the end of February and she wants to leave Wuhan with her husband and young son before the new baby arrives.

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LAUREN WILLIAMS: Honestly, it's about time. They're definitely behind, you know, other countries. So they've got some catching up to do. I'm glad that they've finally made that decision.

MG: It turns out, though, that not all Canadians in Wuhan who want to be on that plane. Wayne Duplessis is a Canadian teacher who lives in Wuhan with his wife and sons, Wayne. Good morning.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Good morning.

MG: Why don't you want to get on a plane out of Wuhan, back to Canada?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: My concern is about the nature of this virus. Tthe fact that there's a 14-day incubation period, that we don't know if we are carrying it. We may be asymptomatic for a very long time, or other people, so there is the chance that we could unwittingly infect someone else. You're in a pressurized environment with a recycled air. I fully appreciate the people that want to go. And It's not that we don't want to go. We would certainly like to leave, if the safety measures were in place.

MG: So what are you most worried about? Is it that you would infect somebody else, or that you would be infected in, as you say, the pressurized air in the tube of an aeroplane?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Well, both. Both. I mean, I've got friends who are medical workers and nurses in who were at Sunnybrook Hospital during SARS. And it's the medical workers that technicians were the hardest hit by this in every country. And that's happened in China as well.

MG: Chinese authorities have said that they won't actually let people who are sick board any planes that are leaving the country. Does that reassure you at all?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Not really. And I'm not saying that to be difficult. We might not know, you might not know unless the test is done. And I know they're getting better at doing these tests. Right now, they're trying to repatriate some Indonesian students who are here in Wuhan. And there's there's a fear there because my wife and children are are Indonesian. So that's that's a concern there, too. You know, are the safety measures in place?

MG: Listening to your voice and I mean, I can hear you sighing. How difficult of a decision is is this for you to make?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: It's not easy. And we talk about it every day. My wife got a little short with me today because she said, you know, we've made that decision, let's stop talking about it. And she's fairly direct and to the point that way.

MG: But you're still mulling it over. I mean, this is something that you feel like you need to talk about every day.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Yew, well, you know, I don't- you can't just, you know, unilaterally make this decision and say this is what we're going to do and move. We've talked over everything in our life and this is certainly an important thing to discuss.

MG: Can you understand and we heard a clip from somebody who feels this way. Can you understand why other Canadians want to leave? They want to be on that first plane as soon as they can get out of Dodge.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Oh, yes, hey, completely. I mean, you want to blow this popsicle stand and you want to go home. You've got a baby, you've got young children, you've got a life, you want to get out. And it's not certain. It's certainly not that we don't want to. But I perfectly understand. I don't, I do not judge anyone in how you make the decision for your own family.

MG: But for you, there are just too many questions that are still unanswered.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Too many questions, too many variables.

MG: What is life like in Wuhan right now? I mean, this is a city that we keep describing as being under lockdown. What is it like there?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Well, it is very much under lockdown. I mean, I've got two children here. I say that I've got a 15-year-old son, he's our youngest. And I've got a son who is 38. And he's in on the other side of the city. Now, he's a teacher. He teaches at the other campus for our school. And he lives in an area called Guangzhou. And we haven't been able to see him since the lockdown. Now, we talk every day on WeChat a couple of times, sometimes three times. But, you know, we'd like to see him and we certainly want to know that he's okay.

MG: And you can't see him because you can't go across town. Is that it?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: There's no taxis, there's no subways, there's no buses, there's no private cars allowed on the road.

MG: What is that like, to be separated from him? You're in the same city, but you can't actually see himas this this story unfolds.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: It's very difficult and it's certainly difficult for his mother as well, certainly for his f younger brother, you know, worried about his older brother. But I'm sure life is like that for a lot of people whether they can't see their friends or they know they can't do the things that they used to do, just to get out and about. Today we had to go out. We had to go out and buy some rice and we had to buy some water and bread and a couple of other essentials. And we got out to the store and a couple of stores are closed. The store that we go to is open, thankfully. It took a while to get in because they were cleaning and they were bleaching the floors and, you know, bless them for that. And there was a little bit of tension. But, you know, still people were relatively well-behaved and they were queuing. And we got through and got our stuff and we got back home and put all our clothes out in the sun to, you know, to do whatever, hopefully, the sun will do to the virus. And, you know, you hope for the best.

MG: When you say there was some tension, what do you mean? What are people tense about in the store.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Well, outside the store, waiting for the store to open. The doors were locked and of course, you know, they had to clean. There's no choice. They had to move things out of the store and they had new food coming into the store. So this store was basically replenished of everything except for meat. The meat is quite limited.

MG: When you go out on the streets, are there people there or is it a bit like a ghost town?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: It's a bit like a ghost town. That's the feeling. It's it's quite eerie. It's quite quiet. And you expect during the winter holiday here, during the Spring Festival holiday, it is very quiet here for a city of 11 million. It is very quiet. Now most people are here. You don't see them until at night. You see the lights on in apartments across the way.

MG: You lived through SARS in China. How is this different than that?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Well, with SARS, we were probably a bit nonchalant about it. But there was no lockdown. Now, I was managing a school at the time in [unintelligible] in the owning province language school, and we were told by the government certain cleaning requirements of the school to be more stringent about that. That makes sense. And we weren't allowed to have our kindergarten or our primary classes, but we still ran classes for adults. And other than that, the stores were opened in commerce. You know, commerce work, does it works.

MG: What are you doing in the midst of all of this to stay healthy?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Keeping a routine, I think is the most important thing. I mean, we're trying to eat as well as we can, but getting up in the morning, making our beds, going to the shower, doing all the things that we would normally do — eating breakfast together as we normally do. But then it changes, and then, you know, instead of going off to school, then we have to find things to do. We've got a Wechat group together of teachers in the area and we're trying to share information. Everything that we can, getting it out there to people.

MG: How long do you think this could go on for that you'd be isolated in the way that you are?

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Well, given that SARS lasted for about six, six weeks, I guess, once once the restrictions were in place, I would look at at least another six to eight weeks.

MG: It's a really tough spot that you find yourself in. Stay safe and stay healthy, Wayne, and I appreciate you talking to us.

WAYNE DUPLESSIS: Thank you very much, Matt

MG: Wayne Duplessis is a Canadian teacher. We reached him in Wuhan, China. Scientists are looking for a cure for the Coronavirus, and part of that means finding the cause of the outbreak. Researchers suspect that the origin of this disease may maybe bats. Jonathan Epstein is a disease ecologist and vice president for science and outreach at Equal Health Alliance. Jonathan, good morning to you.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Hi. Good morning, Matt. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. Given the work that you do when you heard of this Coronavirus outbreak, what went through your mind?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Well, really, the first thing that went through my mind, and largely because of the similarities that were immediately apparent to SARS, that it was a cluster of respiratory disease that was associated with a live animal market. My mind went back to the SARS outbreak of 2003 and started to wonder whether this was indeed a virus that was like SARS and that may, in fact, have come from bats.

MG: Why would bats be considered a likely source of this virus?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Well, it probably would help to take a step back and talk about this group of viruses, coronaviruses. They common viruses. In fact, most animals, particularly mammals and birds, carry some kind of coronavirus in this family of viruses, and that includes people. Before SARS we knew about four coronaviruses that people commonly got. And they all caused very mild disease, respiratory diseases like the common cold. So we didn't really pay much attention to them. And then when SARS emerged in 2003, it was really the first coronavirus we got that caused fatality. And then in 2012, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which is a related corona virus, also caused human mortality. And so we started to see more severe coronavirus that were causing severe respiratory disease. So this novel, one that's coming out of Wuhan also is associated with, in some cases, a severe and fatal pneumonia, severe respiratory disease. And the circumstances were similar to SARS. SARS emerged from a live animal market that sold wildlife in southern China. And some work that myself and colleagues, the Golf Alliance did in partnership with Wuhan Institute of Virology, about 15 years ago, started trying to understand where SARS had originally come from. And we traced SARS and related viruses to a type of bat tha t's very common throughout China, in fact, throughout Asia. It's called the Chinese horseshoe bat. And they carry a whole group of related viruses that are similar to SARS. And when this was identified as a coronavirus, this novel virus, we started to think, okay, how does it relate to SARS? And very recently, our colleagues in Wuhan at the Wuhan Institute of Biology put a paper out that shows that this virus is 96 percent similar in its genomic level to a bat virus that's related to SARS. The bat virus that we had found in the course of studying these viruses in the wild.

MG: So tell me more about the bats. What is it that's going on in the bats that would, I mean, allow that animal to harbour the virus and other viruses as well?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Well, if you think about every every different species of animal has its normal groups of viruses and bacteria that are associated with it, just like people do. And so that's carry a variety of viruses. And it's important to mention that bats are an enormous group of mammals. They represent about one fifth of all mammals on the planet. So there's a huge diversity of species, more than 1400. This particular type of that horseshoe bats carry a variety of coronaviruses that are all similar to related to SARS. They carry other coronaviruses as well. And we know that because we've been studying different populations of bats throughout China and in fact, in other parts of the world as well. And we're starting to piece together a family tree of different coronaviruses that have been found in horseshoe bats. And a lot of them are related to SARS and MERS and in fact, this new virus as well. These viruses don't cause disease in bats. Bats have a long term relationship with their viruses. They've evolved with them over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. And they're able to carry them without being coming sick and they shed them. And what we study is we try to figure out how common is that which bats carry them, how frequently are they infected and shedding virus and exactly how do people in bats come into contact with each other so that a virus could make its way out of a bat and into a person? And that, in fact, is a key question in this outbreak. And we still don't know the answer to that. It's exactly how these viruses may have made their way from wild bat populations into people. But certainly live animal markets that bring bats and other wildlife together in an urban setting is a great way for a virus to get from one animal species into another and possibly into people.

MG: I had read something yesterday, this piece in The New York Times, about how these bats live with all of these different viruses. And it was fascinating, but a bit brain scrambling as well. Something involving the bats' DNA and what happens when they fly. Can you explain that?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Yes. This is really interesting research. That's a fairly new information. You know, we've known for a while that bats as a group are important as potential reservoirs or carriers of viruses that can impact people. And if you had asked me five years ago, I'd say, well, there are a lot of different types of bats and people in bats have a lot of opportunity for contact. So it's just unfortunate. And it's a circumstance that we get bad viruses occasionally. But what we're starting to learn is that bats are actually different in their physiology, in their immune system in terms of how they deal with infection. And it turns out that other animals, including people, when we get infected with the virus or something else, part of the immune response, part of the way our body fights infection is through inflammation and fever. This helps us clear the virus, but it's a damaging process at the cellular level. And it turns out that bats seem to have lost along the way genes that trigger inflammation, that are responsible for inflammation. So bats can be infected with viruses and not suffer from an inflammatory process that could be damaging at the cellular level. And so they seem to be able to carry viruses and tolerate them without getting sick. And one hypothesis that's been put forward, this is by our colleagues at Duke [unintelligible] has been working on this. Is that perhaps the evolution of flight. The act of flying can be so physiologically taxing, potentially damaging at the cellular level that bats had to cope with that. So in order to fly and have that burst of activity that's required for flying, they've dampened their immune response. They've suppressed that urge to have inflammation. And as a result, they're able to carry viruses without getting sick.

MG: That's amazing. If you look at trying to figure out where a virus like this came from, how important is that in tracing the origin to trying to figure out how to prevent the virus from spreading? Do you need to know where it comes from before you can figure out how to stop it from spreading?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: You do, and it's a great question, and I think SARS is actually a great example of why this is true. If you go back to 2003 during the SARS outbreak, the earliest investigations that were done by Chinese authorities in the World Health Organization and colleagues in Australia discovered that early cases, early human cases that were killing SARS tended to be people who worked in the food industry. And what did that mean? It meant people working in live animal markets and handling animals. And eventually it was found that people that were dealing in butchering, handling civet cats, which is a small weasel like animal that's very commonly found in markets and eaten in China, found that people handling these animals were disproportionately getting infected. And eventually the virus, SARS, was isolated from civets as well as people and the viruses were identical. So it's presumed that civets were giving this virus to people and then authorities proceeded to remove civets from the markets to stamp them out, exterminate them. Now, it may have been true that people were getting the virus from civets and certainly removing them from markets would prevent further human cases. But if civets weren't the original source, then that means the risk of this happening again still remains. And that's why it was critical to understand. And a really important study came out about 2004 that looked at whether civets that were grown on farms, that were supplying live animal markets, had stars. And interestingly, there was no trace of virus on the farms that were growing civets and supplying the markets. So civets, in fact, were a victim of this disease transmission that was going on in the marketplace. And that's when we started looking for the natural reservoir of the wildlife source for this virus. And we've been working on bats already, looking at a different virus. And we started to study bats because they're very common. They're commonly found in markets. They're hunted and eaten. And we found that a group of viruses very closely related to SARS were indeed carried by bats in the wild. And if you didn't know that, and that's continued to be brought into markets and continued to be eaten, there was a risk of this happening again. And actually, this is what we're seeing now.

MG: So just in the remaining minute or so that we have, you've mentioned the markets several different times. China shuttered these live animal markets during SARS has now done that again. How important is that in stopping the spread of the virus? And should the markets look at being closed permanently if you don't want to have these viruses spread?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: I think that's the answer is we need to do things differently. We need to stop bringing wildlife into markets, particularly in urban settings. We know that these viruses are still circulating in bats and we know that people who hunt these bats are getting exposed to coronaviruses like SARS. And this is going to happen again if we don't change the way we do things. So I think the answer is to be much smarter about how we have markets and not bringing wildlife in, but sticking to farm animals and improving sanitary and hygienic practices within those markets.

MG: In the meantime, it's fascinating to learn more about bats. They exist in the popular imagination in many ways, bloodsuckers and vampires and what have you but there's there's so much more that's going on beyond what we might know.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Listen, bats are so important to us ecologically as pest control, as pollinators and seed disperses. So the answer is never to try to exterminate Barth, but we have to recognize that it's human activity, like having urban wildlife markets that are triggering outbreaks like SARS and now this novel coronavirus. So that's where we need to focus our attention in terms of preventing epidemics from happening.

MG: And if you don't do that, then we could see this story play out again in years ahead.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Indeed.

MG: Jonathan, it's great to talk to you about this fascinating research. Thank you.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Thank you so much for having me.

MG: Jonathan Epstein is a disease ecologist and vice president for science and outreach at the Eco Health Alliance. The CBC News is next. And then a long time Republican operative shares his secrets. Rick Wilson is so worried about a victory by Donald Trump that he's warning Democrats about what they're going to be up against.

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RICK WILSON: If I was still doing what I used to do and Bernie is the nominee, I'm going to do the victory dance of all time. I'm going to Vegas Bender for the rest of the campaign and I'm going to light it up. Bernie is the perfect foil for Donald Trump. He comes across as a guy who's like a professor of socialist poetry, an interpretive dance at Bennington Community College.

MATT GALLOWAY: Rick Wilson will be my guest in about six minutes time. Stick around. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Back To Top »

Republican Rick Wilson on how the Democrats can win

Guests: Rick Wilson

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

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MG: Still to come, the politics of pride parades. But first, politics south of the border. As U.S. President Donald Trump runs for re-election, meet the Republican operative with a plan to stop him.

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DONALD TRUMP: Now you finally have a president who is loyal to you. Every day between now and November 2020, we are going to keep on working, we are going to keep on fighting and we are going to keep on winning. Winning. Winning.

MG: An ad paid for by Donald J. Trump for President Inc. It premiered in June. And that victory it promises is keeping a lot of Americans up at night. And not all of them, it turns out, are Democrats. Rick Wilson is a long-time Republican. He's run campaigns electing Republicans around the United States for 30 years. But now he's offering his skills to the party. He spent most of his professional life fighting Rick Wilson's new book. It's called Running Against the Devil: a Plot to Save America from Trump and Democrats from Themselves. Rick Wilson, good morning.

RICK WILSON: Good morning.

MG: You used to run campaigns for the Republicans. What went through your mind as you heard that ad? Is it a good ad?

RICK WILSON: Well, look, I mean, Donald Trump is a guy who presents a sort of fantasy image of himself all the time and who presents a sort of alternate set of facts all the time. And so his advertising reflects his disconnection from the ground truth.

MG: You have been described - and I want to get into the ground truth and how he thinks about himself in a moment - but you have been described by some people as it's kind like a spy who came in from the cold. Somebody who is working for the other side, knowing what he knows and bringing the information with him in some sort of elaborate suitcase. There are Democrats who might be suspicious that a guy who spent decades battling Democrats now wants to help them defeat Donald Trump. What should be the right way that that that party looks at you today?

RICK WILSON: Well, if the thinking was that this is happening on the other foot, I would trust but verify. And I think at this point, [unintelligible], someone who is a conservative critic of Donald Trump, if they're not established in the minds of folks now, I don't know what else to do. I've burned down a multi-million dollar business. I gave up 30 years of friendships, relationships. You know, history with folks inside my own party. I've had to suffer through basically now four straight years of death threats to my wife and my children. And, you know, and it doesn't bother me personally. You come at me all day long. I'm in the arena. But these people are a different breed of cat and their behaviour is so hideous and so threatening constantly that, you know, again, if people don't think I've been through the wringer now to prove that I'm going to oppose Donald Trump no matter what my own ideological priors and preferences would be, well, I don't know what, how- I don't know how else to convince them. That's the guy who wrote everything Trump touches, dies and now running against the devil. You know, I'm trying to show Democrats the machine that I helped build.

MG: Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself, as you say, through the wringer?

RICK WILSON: Because Donald Trump represents an enormous threat not only to the idea of America itself, but to the world. And I don't put too fine a point on this when I say that Donald Trump is a corrupt and corrupting figure. He is a corrosive figure. And he is tearing down American's institutions. He's tearing down their belief in the rule of law. He is rapidly and he will be exonerated by the Senate soon. He will have established a degree of executive power in the United States that the founders would have been utterly shocked by where the president is unaccountable to the law, to Congress, and where the president can commit any crime that he chooses as long as he holds office and get away with it, that he can have executive discretion to a degree that that detonates the traditional constitutional balance of power in the U.S. So these are things that I find, you know, as proximate threats to America that go beyond, you know, whether or not you're getting the right judges on the bench and whether or not you're you're owning the libs. And I think these are matters that have to be addressed by folks who come at campaigns with a cold eyed and bloody minded approach. I do not run campaigns or work on campaigns or make TV ads because I want to feel good about them. I want to get to the goal line. I want to win.

MG: You want to win.

RICK WILSON: Too often, Democrats. And by the way, moral victories in politics aren't. And so I want to help the Democrats understand the ways that the Republicans will trick them, the ways that Trump will trick them, and how to avoid these very simple traps.

MG: What happened to the party that you supported for all these years, the GOP?

RICK WILSON: It was eaten from the inside out. And there are a couple of factors that obtain. One of them is the rise of Fox News. And the U.S. allowed a narrow channel of grievance mongering television to convince basically about 40 percent of the American electorate that George Soros and Hillary Clinton and the evil liberals were all coming to make them stop having Christmas and and have make them have forced gay marriages and Sharia law. And, you know, pick your poison of the week. They always have some sort of, you know, scary. Oh, God. The boogey man is coming to take away your your your traditional values. And that Fox was sort of the the virus that kept spreading. And for a long time as conservatives, I thought, oh, well, this is great. We have finally got some way to get our message out that punches back. But it became less and less of a news organization and more and more into this narrowcast, angry, xenophobic frame that that defined patriotism as, you know, white, middle class, Midwestern. And America has always been a propositional nation. It's always been a place where if you came here. From Nepal, or if you came here from Belgium, or if you came here from Brazil, you had an opportunity to become an American. And there is a kind of definitional nature to the emergent Republican Party that is very much unwelcoming to people from other countries and very much- and it will redound back eventually to, you know, Americans are white Midwestern middle class.

MG: Do you still consider yourself a Republican?

RICK WILSON: There's no Republican Party per se.

MG: Sure there is.

RICK WILSON: I mean, look, it's Trump's Republican Party. I'm a trench anthropologist of the GOP. I've been around it for more than half of my adult life. I've in fact, I was raised in it as a kid. So what existed as a Republican Party, you know, it would be like if someone bought the rights to the Edsel car company now and put out ad sales, they're not Edsels. They have the same nameplate, but they're not the same thing.

MG: How do people in the party now - you talked about what's going to happen in the house when it comes to impeachment in the Senate - how are people in the party reacting to what you say when you say that there is no Republican Party or that the party has sold it's sold down the river just to win?

RICK WILSON: Well, look, they point to two things. They say, well, Trump's giving us executive orders that we like and we're doing this and that with executive orders, because legislatively, Trump is a disaster and they know it. He hasn't accomplished any of the promises that he's set out to. There's no border wall. It's a fence that falls down. There's no repeal of Obamacare that's still out there in the wild. And the spending he is engaged in makes, as I like to joke, you know, he's spending like drunken socialist sailors. It's a combination of deficit spending, unfunded tax cuts that are coming due in about a year and a massive amount of continued borrowing from the Federal Reserve. So the economy's on this sugar high, but they point to the economy of the stock market's up and it's great. Well, you know, anybody can go on a credit card bench. Call me crazy. But when I entered politics are conservative economics guy, I was kind of convinced that fiscal probity was part of the package, but no longer. And they point to judges, which, you know, Mitch McConnell and literally owe the federal society have put through about 150 plus judges at this point.

MG: Conservative judges?

RICK WILSON: Yes, they're conservative judges for the federal bench. And that's and that's all fine and good. But I have a sense of caution about what I call judicial fetishism, which the left use to engage in in this country. And they had a long successful run of getting, you know, fairly liberal judges on the court from the 70s to the 90s. And they thought of the courts as their sort of, you know, final arbiter of policies they couldn't pass in Congress or couldn't get through the presidency. I am cautious about judicial fetishism because, again, as a conservative, I want judges who will rule on fundamental constitutional merit and rule on the law, not interpreting the law for my ideological priors. I mean, there are a few Holy Grail items that conservatives want out of the judges.

MG: Roe v. Wade.

RICK WILSON: Roe v. Wade is the biggest. And just as, from a purely sort of conservative, libertarian ish perspective, the idea that government is going to allow something is different than the idea that government is going to forbid something. So they're looking for a ban judicially established on abortion. And while I am pro-life, well, I am quite pro-life, I am always cautious about deploying the power of the state in the in the individual lives of citizens.

MG: What you'd like to deployed is your inside knowledge in terms of how to defeat if not this party, then certainly the president. You would think, if you stand back from a distance and listen to everything that you've just said, you would think that the Democrats are ripe to win this election. What are the big mistakes —.

RICK WILSON: Oh they're absolutely poised to lose it.

MG: Okay so what are the big mistakes they're making this early on in the campaign?

RICK WILSON: Well, there's there are several big mistakes. And the fundamental predicates of this book, like a lot of things, campaigns are simple, but hard and. The first pillar of this is you've got to make this race a referendum on Donald Trump. This is not about policy. It is not about health care or climate change or guns or anything else that makes up the Democratic Party's sort of policy wishlist. None of it. It doesn't. None of it matters on the best day ever, talking about policy is a chance for Republican ad guys and Republican message guys that still surround Trump. He has a lot of competent people in the campaign apparatus. They're not all boobs and these weirdos like he has in the White House. If you don't make it a referendum on Trump, you will lose. You will not motivate your base. You will allow the Republicans to caricature you as crazy left wing, socialist and insane people, and you will give them the tools to cut off your head. The second mistake they're making is that they think of - and this is a hack Republicans used for years - Democrats tend to have a sort of ideological monoculture where they believe that the policy that we have adopted in California must be the same policy we have in Texas. Or what works in Vermont is the same thing we must do in Florida. And America for all of it's for all of its cultural similarity is still 50 states that are much different from one another. When you get down to the individual voting level, we get down on the ground.

MG: And what plays in one place doesn't play in another.

RICK WILSON: Exactly. And so, you know, Democrats used to say things like, well, Florida's 50-50 state, it's quite blue in some places. And it's narrow. You know, the splits between the parties are miniscule. How are you winning all these Democrats? And we won all these Democrats by going after issues that split away Democratic voters from their base.

MG: Let's talk about Bernie Sanders. You've called Bernie Sanders Donald Trump election insurance. What do you mean by that?

RICK WILSON: If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump will win 44, maybe 45 states.

MG: Really?

RICK WILSON: He will destroy the Democratic Party as effectively as Jeremy Corbyn destroyed the Labour Party in the UK.

MG: If you are running the Republican campaign against Bernie Sanders, what would you do?

RICK WILSON: I would use Bernie's own words against him. Bernie Sanders has a 40 year record on video and audio of basically being everybody's kooky communist uncle. He's such a [unintelligible]. He's 80 years old. He's so far to the left of the American political mainstream that that the idea of Bernie as the nominee for the Democratic Party is if I was a Republican in Trump's campaign, I would be on my knees praying for Bernie Sanders every day, which is why they're trying to boost Bernie Sanders. It's why they're literally spending money right now to boost Bernie Sen. Bernie Sanders.

MG: Who has, if this is about winning, as you said earlier, that it's not about policy, it's about winning, who has the best chance of beating Donald Trump?

RICK WILSON: Look, Joe Biden has the best chance of beating Donald Trump for a host of reasons, one of which is just basic name I.D. Name I.D. in politics is the secret sauce. I mean, people know Joe Biden and his likability among voters in these swing states you have to win in, that was one of the other predicates we didn't get to is you've got to fight this battle in the Electoral College. That's the only game in town.

MG: And it's a numbers game.

RICK WILSON: It's a numbers game. And you've got to go out and have somebody that doesn't scare off, because what are the characteristics of Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan? These are older states. They are whiter states. They tend to still have a Democratic plurality at the minimum. And who did Donald Trump break off in those states? He broke off white male Democrats. He broke off white independents. He broke off a good number of educated women in those states. So you've got to be able to go to those states with somebody who doesn't scare the hell out of them. And Bernie scares the hell out of them.

MG: On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee put out an ad using an appearance that you made on CNN. That's where this went viral. You and Don Lemon discussing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asking an NPR reporter to find Ukraine on a map. Have a listen.

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Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map. If you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is an administration defined by ignorance of the world. The credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump wants to think that Donald Trump is the smart one and there are a yo yo yo elitist.

MG: Don Lemon couldn't keep it together. The point of the ad, though, is to say that elites and Democrats think Trump supporters are a joke. As the guy who ran campaigns for Republicans, this is a smart ad for the Republican Party to run. Is it is it all that, you know, the basket of deplorably all over again?

RICK WILSON: All it does is reinforce Donald Trump's base, which is narrow and brittle. And it speaks to something that truly troubles Donald Trump. But what really made him angry and I know this from folks around the White House and the campaign world, because by the way, one of the people making the ad reached out to me and said, oh, my God, I feel bad doing this to you, Mike [beep] I mean, I'm in the arena. Let's go. Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm kind of a pirate. But the idea that that Donald Trump's people are the tough guys, they're not the liberal snowflakes who melt at any criticism and why they're exactly the opposite. And they've been fed this outrage machine fodder from Fox and elsewhere for a long time.

MG: How much of the outrage machine is your fault, having been involved in the creation of it, having been involved in in the dark arts of the Republican machine for a long time?

RICK WILSON: A lot. Look I talk about this in my first book and I talk about this somewhat in this book. Is that we thought for a long time that the tools we were building were like nuclear weapons and they were always going to be in responsible hands. And that applies, by the way, to the Democratic side as well, because they built the same toolbox we did. And so we thought that those ideas were gonna be narrowly applied and used up to a degree. But now those tools are not morally agnostic. And now they're in the hands of somebody who uses them to stoke an awful lot of racial animus, an awful lot of fear, an awful lot of religious bigotry.

MG: Do you do you regret having, you know, put those tools in the tool box in the first place, given the state of the United States right now and how divided it is?

RICK WILSON: Well, I think that the division in the US is in some ways a symptom of what we created. But I also think that there is a traditional, very vigorous political engagement in this country. And every suite of tools and politics evolves over time and can be misapplied. And I don't regret having worked hard to promote conservative ideas. I do regret not foreseeing that a parasite that would transform a party from being something that was, at least, loosely dedicated to limited government, at least, loosely dedicated to the rule of law. At least, motivated by things like fiscal discipline and strong foreign policy and the idea of controlling the power of the state over individuals would be subsumed by what is essentially an authoritarian personality cult.

MG: But how nasty do you think this election will get?

RICK WILSON: I think it is going to go so dark, and I think it's going to go so ugly that Americans will come out of it feeling like they survived it rather than observed it. It's going to be very, very rough.

MG: You have written what you see as a game plan for Democrats to defeat this president. Do you think that Democrats will take your advice on.

RICK WILSON: Well, I hope so. Basically, the response to the book comes in two flavours. Democrats who publicly say we got this, don't worry. It's just Donald Trump. How could we lose? And Democrats who call me and say, oh, my God, we're blowing it. We're doing it. This and this and this and this wrong. So I'm hoping that the latter crowd will have a louder voice around that strategic table when it comes to this election.

MG: But at this point in the campaign, what do you think the odds are of four more years of President Donald Trump?

RICK WILSON: About 65 percent,.

MG: 65 percent?

RICK WILSON: Yup. Yup. And I say that because, again, Bernie Sanders. Is not a Democrat, Bernie Sanders is flip mode Donald Trump. He is about himself. He is, you know, in 2016, Bernie grudgingly endorsed Hillary and then stomped off and about 12.5 Percent of Bernie's supporters. Flipped to Donald Trump. They're not progressives. They're anarchists. They're Bernie people. And now Bernie's people, there's a poll out this week that said 47 percent of Bernie Sanders voters said they wouldn't vote for any other Democrat in the general election other than Bernie. And so that poison pill is very likely going to cause, you know, a weaker turnout unless the Democratic Party really gets their act together and really ensures that that people understand the stakes of this election. That's really that's the first part of the book. The first like third of the book is I try to lay out the stakes for people. I try to explain to them why this is such an existential crisis, what happens in four more years of Trump. What happens if you don't put your ideological wish list aside and get to work and do the hard things of campaigning? So it's certainly something that, you know, I say this in the book. I say this all the time. Donald Trump cannot win this election, but the Democrats can lose it.

MG: What will you do on the fourth of November, if done, if the Democrats win the presidency?

RICK WILSON: You know, first off, I'll probably take a couple days off, because I have basically been doing this fighting against Trump every day since 2015. Don't take a lot of vacations. Don't get a lot of days off between writing books, doing TV, writing articles, doing advocacy, counselling people, trying to get the Democratic Party to wake up and get in the fight. I am pretty tired. So.

MG: And if he wins, are you moving to Canada? That's what everybody always says. I'm moving to Canada.

RICK WILSON: You know? I really am very fond of Vancouver.

MG: Rick Wilson, good to talk to you. Thank you.

RICK WILSON: Thank you.

MG: Rick Wilson is a former Republican political strategist. His latest book is called Running Against the Devil: a Plot to Save America from Trump and Democrats from Themselves. Well, coming up in about 90 seconds time, we're talking politics on this side of the border, particularly around the issue of pride parades, those parades, huge one that happens here in Toronto every summer has become an issue in the conservative leadership race. Some politicians are saying they're going to march in these parades. There are people in the community who say that those politicians need to do more than just march. Stick around for that. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio.

Back To Top »

Politicians marching in Pride parades need to back it up with real action, says journalist

Guests: Karin Marley, Erica Lenti, Karen Vecchio, Randy Boissonault

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Yesterday on this program, we spoke with CBC Calgary producer Jennifer Keene about the massive proposed Tech Frontier mine north of Fort McMurray. Jennifer had been talking with Albertans about their views on this project, which the federal government has to approve or reject by the end of February.

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VOICE 1: This project doesn't just have a lifecycle of 40 years. This is a project that will create six megatons of emissions annually.

VOICE 2: If you limit innovation, you limit investment. If you limit growth, if you continue to say no to everything that Alberta needs, you're going to have a lot of people acting in thinking of publishing this as like separation.

MG: This oil sands project would be enormous. And as you can imagine, it is polarizing. After hearing those voices from Alberta, we asked you what you thought and woo ha, you did not hold back. The Current producer, Karin Marley, is here with the mailbag and she's going to read some of the responses along with me. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. Yes, it's definitely a story a lot of listeners had thoughts on.

MG: Indeed.

KARIN MARLEY: I will start with Mary-Ellen Francoeur from Toronto. She wrote: I feel very strongly that the Canadian government would be very much on the wrong side of history and wisdom should they decide to support this project. I feel deeply for the people of Alberta and their very real concerns today. However, the rapid development of climate change is showing us that we simply cannot afford to make any decision now which will destroy the planet and therefore the life, well-being and health of the people upon it.

MG: Mary-Ellen is not alone. We got a lot of mail calling for this project to be rejected. Patricia Gerber Pauls from Winnipeg emailed us asking: why are we wasting time with projects dealing with oil? Is there no creativity and innovation that we can call upon to get moving with renewable energy sources? Can we not offer people jobs in the green industries that will help us with climate issues instead of the same old polluting oil industry? Perhaps we will all need to make some changes in our lifestyle to consume less oil.

KARIN MARLEY: Of course, not everyone was against the project. A number of people wrote, calling for the federal government to approve it. Gerhart Bruendl from West Vancouver wrote: All these projects should go ahead. We have done this too many times shooting ourselves in the foot in Canada, drilling for more oil is going on all over the world, Africa and the Amazon, Delta, Mediterranean Sea to mention just a few.

MG: Patrick Bogle agrees. He wrote to us from his truck on the coastal gas link pipeline to say Alberta needs this project to be approved for a number of reasons. First, we need to feel support from our federal government and to take steps to repair that relationship. Secondly, we need the jobs and we need the revenue. And thirdly, we need to show foreign investors that we are serious about energy in Canada. This project's carbon footprint needs to be looked at over the long term as our reclamation and restoration here is world class and second to none. Alberta needs this, but Canada needs it more.

KARIN MARLEY: And finally, someone calling themselves Scotty5000 tweeted us this suggestion: forget the massive oil expansion. Make the western provinces the epicentre for renewable energy. They have the brains, the skill and the knowhow. Be bold, be brave. You can lead us to greatness.

MG: Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Karin Marley, Current's producer and director. My name's Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. If there's anything that you hear on the program that you want to comment on. Get in touch. Fill up the mailbag. You can email us at thecurrent@cbc.ca. You can reach us online. Go to cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link or send us a tweet @TheCurrentCBC.

[Music]

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PETER MACKAY: I stand here before you today with my heart on my sleeve. For every Canadian, whoever you love, wherever you live, I promise you my support and I humbly ask for yours. Your effort, your input, your part in this journey that will bring us to a better place, a better Canada and its place in the world. Merci, thank you and God bless.

MG: Whoever you love. That would be the key line in that statement. As Peter MacKay launched his bid for the Conservative Party leadership, he signalled a different approach to the LGBTQ community. A different approach, certainly, than current leader Andrew Scheer. Mackay also said this week that he plans to march in pride parades, something Andrew Scheer was criticized for refusing to do. Candidate Marilyn Gladu has also said she would march in pride parades and Erin O'Toole said he would as well, so long as uniformed police officers were not excluded. While the politics of pride might be helping to shape this race, some say that other, more pressing issues facing the community are being overlooked and not just by conservatives. Erica Lenti is a senior editor for the LGBTQ News and culture website Extra. Erica, good morning.

ERICA LENTI: Thanks for having me, Matt.

MG: Thanks for being here. What kind of reaction are you hearing to this renewed focus on pride parades?

ERICA LENTI: Well, I think a lot of the folks in our communities don't think this is exactly revelatory in any capacity. I mean, to quote Peter MacKay's statement, pride is important and we know that. So I think that a lot of folks are, you know, pleased to see that some conservatives are interested in joining the parade and are open, unlike the former leader. But I think there's much more to do beyond that.

MG: What do you think the motivation was behind Peter Mackay and Erin O'Toole? And Marilyn Gladu you say that they would march in pride parades.

ERICA LENTI: I think it's twofold. For one, the the leadership convention is going to be the same weekend as the Pride Festival in Toronto. And so it's a fairly convenient time to come out and and to support the communities. I think that it's a move away from what Andrew Scheer showed us during the election. I think it's a really good opportunity to move away from him. And, you know, the results of John Baird's leadership review are not public. But I think that it's fair to say Andrew Scheer's inability to voice his his true personal feelings on LGBTQ folks and gay marriage had an effect on his ability to to perform in the election, to win the election that was, I think, you know, at first largely his to win. So I think that there are a lot of leaders or leadership hopefuls, rather, that that want to, you know, separate themselves. They want to differentiate themselves from Scheer and what he couldn't do during the election.

MG: You wrote a piece saying that Andrew Scheer was, these are your words, Canada's last anti-gay political leader.

ERICA LENTI: Mm hmm.

MG: Strong words.

ERICA LENTI: Yes. I think it's just not viable anymore to be a leader who is anti-gay or to a certain extent, anti trans. I just don't think that Canadians want a leader who is not supportive of these communities. You know, there's an Angus Reid Institute poll that said 69 percent of the respondents felt that a politician's views on issues like same sex marriage would affect their vote. So, for starters, I don't think that a leader would ever be viable in that capacity.

MG: What does it mean to march? I mean, it's a huge deal. I love going to the Pride Parade. It's a festival in the city. And there's a million people that come out onto the streets of Toronto for that. They happen all across the country. What does it mean to have a politician marching parade?

ERICA LENTI: I think for some folks, it's important. I don't want to undermine that in any way. For folks who do feel that, you know, Justin Trudeau was the first prime minister to march in a pride parade and that mattered to a lot of people.

MG: Did it matter to you?

ERICA LENTI: To me, maybe not so much. I think that pride is one day of the year. The parade is one day of the year. It's very celebratory. It's a lot of fun. You know, it's something that I celebrate with my loved ones and my friends. But what matters to me more is the action that politicians take beyond pride.

MG: People use the phrase pink washing. Is marching in pride, if you weren't going to take those actions, is that an example of pink washing, trying to be seen but not actually doing the hard work?

ERICA LENTI: I think so. I mean, if an elected official wants to march in pride while also tackling lots of the big issues and to name a few; conversion therapy, the ban on men who have sex with men to donate blood, HIV non-disclosure laws that criminalize queer and trans folks and so on. If they are able to take action on those things and then come out at pride, then I'm totally fine with them being there. It's not a matter of them being there. It's a matter of ensuring that's not all they do for a community.

MG: Are those to use some of the key issues that whoever is in power, whatever government is in power needs to address to truly be an ally and a supporter of the community.

ERICA LENTI: Yes, and it's not just me who feels that way. I think it's, you know, when I was working on the election for Extra, these are the things that people in our communities were talking about. Politicians were not talking enough about them and they wanted to hear about it. And there's absolutely, you know, a dire need for folks to to to think about, you know, ending barbaric practices like conversion therapy that try to stop folks from being their authentic selves and to to stop unfair and harmful practices like the blood ban and HIV non discriminate, non disclosure laws.

MG: The blood ban was reduced from a year to three months.

ERICA LENTI: It was.

MG: Under this Liberal government, the last little government, not the minority, but the majority. Is that not a step forward?

ERICA LENTI: It's a step forward, but there's still more to be done. Science shows that if you're not, you know, undetectable equals and transmittable. And that means that there's no reason why queer men who have sex with men shouldn't be able to donate blood all year round. We know that there is a huge need for it.

MG: How hopeful are you that the Liberal government in its second term would move forward on things like that?

ERICA LENTI: I'm cautiously optimistic, I will say. You know, the Liberal government did have an opportunity last year to nationally ban conversion therapy. There was a bill tabled by NDP MP Cherie Benson based on a I think a petition of 18000 or so signatures. And the Liberal government passed the buck and said it was a provincial issue. The blood ban, they vowed and committed in 2015 to end the blood ban completely. They reduced it to three months. So I'm glad that these things are on their radar. But as history shows, there's still a lot left to be desired.

MG: I just wonder whether in a minority situation there would be an opportunity for more meaningful conversations to happen around these issues in the House of Commons.

ERICA LENTI: One would hope, yes.

MG: In the community. What will show people that that there is serious commitment to those issues beyond, as I say, simply marching in the parade?

ERICA LENTI: I mean, I think listening to communities and getting out there and talking to communities about what they need, talking to the stakeholders and the folks who have been studying this for decades and getting to know what they want. We don't always see that happening with governments and we often see promises and commitments as an opportunity to win progressive votes or votes from the LGBTQ2 community. I just think that there needs to be more than that.

MG: Is your sense, just finally, that there is -- because politicians believe in one thing. But the reality is they're also elected officials and they need to think about their constituents. And they need to think about whether what they're doing is top of mind for their constituents, whether it's going to get them re-elected. Is there the will across the country to address these issues in a meaningful way?

ERICA LENTI: I would hope so for elected officials. You know, Canadians widely embrace our communities. I think that our communities have long been underrepresented. And I think we're finally getting an opportunity, especially for trans communities and queer and trans communities of colour, to have some more representation. And I think that means that elected officials are seeing us more. They're hearing us more, but they can always be seeing and hearing us more in general. So I would hope that elected officials would take some opportunities to get out and chat with our communities and do as much as they can for us.

MG: Erica, thank you.

ERICA LENTI: Thanks so much.

MG: Erica Lenti is an editor for the online queer publication Extra. She was with me here in our Toronto studio. What more might those federal parties be willing to do? Karen Vecchio is a Conservative MP, the party's shadow minister for women and gender equality. And Randy Boissonnault is a former Liberal MP who served as special adviser to the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on LGBTQ issues. Good morning to you.

KAREN VECCHIO: Good morning.

MG: Carol, I'll start with you.

KAREN VECCHIO: Sure.

MG: Why do you think conservatives like Peter MacKay, Erin O'Toole and Marilyn Gladu, are saying early on in this leadership race that they. Yes. Will participate in pride parades?

KAREN VECCHIO: Well, I think it is a huge issue. We do know that in the 2019 election, this was an issue that I was hearing at the doors. People were wondering what is the Conservative Party going to do on this? So this was an issue that really meant a lot to people. And so I think it's really important that we get in front of this and that these leadership candidates are saying, yes, we support the community and we are going to participate.

MG: You've participated in pride parades yourself.

KAREN VECCHIO: Yes. I participate in many. But just as Erica was saying, it's so much more than just a parade. It's those conversations that we need to have. And I know that Randy has been out there doing a lot of those conversations. And so I've I you know, being part of the research that I did when I was looking at what we were doing back in the national apology, just what I was hearing, what I was learning, sitting down with the youth groups that it's okay to be me at a kitchen or counselling centre. Those types of things are what government officials and elected officials should be doing. Talking to our constituents, finding out what are some of the barriers, what are some of the things that get to them. And for me, being a rural conservative member, I recognize that, you know, all of these resources that we have in our larger communities like Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver aren't available in my communities. So for me, that's really important as well, because we see a lot of the members of the community that will move to centres like Toronto, where they are feeling less- where they're feeling that discrimination isn't a barrier, where they're feeling that there are resources there that will help them. And for me, I feel that people should be able to be home in their own communities and be able to have great opportunities there as well as well as being loved.

MG: What was the message sent by Andrew Scheer when he refused to march in pride parades?

KAREN VECCHIO: You know, for me, it was really interesting. And I have my own take on this. You know, pride parades, as many people said, it's one day. But for me, pride is 365 days a year.

MG: But it's a big one day. And so when the leader of the party says that he's not going to march in that parade, what's that message that's sent?

KAREN VECCHIO: Well, you know, the message that it sent, it does seem like you're closing the door. And absolutely, I do understand that. At the same time, our party is not just- we are a big tent party. So we do have these very difficult discussions. But at the same time, over these last years that I've been working on this file and being part of the party for the decades that I had been, seeing the way that our party is evolving, just like Canadians' thoughts are evolving as well, we are moving forward. And you need had those tough conversations because that is, I think where we put it into the politics, where people want to have a right or wrong answer. And things aren't right and wrong. A lot of times it's just you have to have a genuine conversation to understand. For me, I think it's being that youngest child. I've always been listening and I've and I always want to help where people work together. And so I know for Andrew, it is it is very difficult. There are some issues, you know, I'd look at- different parades, offered different things.

MG: Was it disappointing to you?

KAREN VECCHIO: Was it disappointing? Of course. I would like him to be there, because I think that we need to show that our party is very, very inclusive. But at the same time, I don't I do recognize that he would be seen somewhat as a hypocrite as well. So I do see that there's two sides to this. And I had been away at an event many years ago with another P.C. leader who was positive when it came to the LGBTQ community. And, you know, wearing that conservative C can- sometimes people assume, how can you be a woman and be a conservative? How can you be a member of the LGBTQ and be part of the Conservative Party? You know, we all can be part of that party because it is big tent. And we have to focus on our fiscal responsibilities because fiscal responsibilities will help engage and making sure these social programs that we need in Canada are viable.

MG: Randy Boissonnault, you've been listening. How important to you. Is it that politicians from whatever party show up at a pride parade?

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Well, look, it's table stakes, Matt. It's the bare minimum in Canada. And in 2019 to say to an increasingly, you know, growing part of the Canadian population that that the party, the leader and the people who support them care about equality, that they care about diversity. I mean the Pride Parades are just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, I was marching in the Edmonton Pride Parade with Justin Trudeau when he was leader in in 2015. And I can tell you, when liberals go and march in a pride parade, whether it's Toronto or Regina or whether it's Halifax or Vancouver, Victoria, we go back to our desks after spending time with our friends and our colleagues, our loved ones. And we get busy and we work on policy, meaningful policy. And it wasn't interesting for me that Andrew Scheer didn't March, refused to march in a pride parade. It was disappointing. It was predictable. And it was it showed a disregard and discrimination for an entire segment of the population.

MG: You heard you heard Eric Lindsay say that, yes, you can march in a pride parade, but if it's not backed up by meaningful action, it's just pink washing. And that's what some people said about the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Well, those are people whom- I mean, I can tell you the work that we did and it was very clear that when the prime minister asked me to serve as a special adviser, it was to get busy and get things done, which is why we spent a year getting ready to apologize. And the prime minister did apologize to the LGBTQ community for the purge that took place for 50 years. And then, I mean, we took the blood ban from five years down to one year, down to three years. He's still not happy with where it's at. Neither am I. And the science is being funded by the government to make sure that we get to zero. In our time in office and the majority mandate, we found 20 million dollars for domestic LGBTQ groups to actually start to do their work on the ground, better financed than ever. And that's now a 50 million dollar fund over five years. We also found 30 million dollars internationally. For the first five years and then 10 million a year ongoing so that Canada can actually do more work. Canadian LGBT organizations can do more work internationally. And I think you have to take a look at the kind of policies that we passed, Matt, C-16, which now protects trans people and gender non binary people in the law, was an important piece of government legislation and it was held up in the Senate vitriolically by Conservative Leader of the Senate Don Platt, former president of the Canadian Conservative Party, appointed by Stephen Harper. And so there's something in the DNA of this party that finds it extremely difficult to reconcile fiscal issues with social issues. I'm not sure how the new issue deals with it.

MG: Karen Vecchio, is there something in the DNA of your party?

KAREN VECCHIO: I'm kind of laughing at that, because I think that's a little absurd. But, you know, I said then I think we represent Canadians in my riding. I know that we have a lot of people that did question when they started seeing me do a lot of work with the LGBT community, say, you know, that's not our beliefs. I got an overwhelming support from that committee who weren't sure about the LGBT community because they know I'm genuine on the work that I do. They know that what I'm trying to do is actually move this issue forward to make sure that all Canadians are treated equally. Have all of the same resources. And that truly being kind is one of the greatest things that we can do. And, you know, to me, when we talk about the blood ban, very, very important. And to me, it has to come down to lifestyle. It doesn't matter whether you're gay or heterosexual. None of that matters at the end of the day. It needs to be safe.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: It's not a lifestyle. I am who I am. I don't chose to be gay. You used the word lifestyle. That's not fair.

KAREN VECCHIO: Randy. Randy. Lifestyle to me is the lifestyle of a person. A man going out and sleeping with 20 women in one week is not acceptable. That is a lifestyle. So please, what you're doing right there is you're politicizing this by picking and choosing words. Because you know, Randy, that I am very genuine in this issue. So the fact is, is that I look at lifestyle, a person who chooses to be promiscuous, that is a lifestyle choice. And I don't look at gay being a choice. That's not a choice to me. It never has been.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: But you are making parallel saying that gay people are promiscuous, which is not a thing.

KAREN VECCHIO: Randy. Come on.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: And I think we need to like what the conservatives will do on conversion therapy.

KAREN VECCHIO: Randy. Randy. Randy.

MG: Well, if we're talking to the bloodbath. Hold on. If we're talking about the blood and the liberals in 2015, Randy, promised to end the blood donor deferral period and they still haven't done that.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Look, it's a lot tougher of an issue than I think the third party realised that they are running for office, but judges--

[Karen and Randy cross talking].

RANDY BOISSONAULT: And the funding, the science is being funded by the federal government so that we can get to zero. It's a commitment. And I think, Matt, I mean, ask the conservative leaders what their position is on conversion.

MG: Well, let's ask you as a former Liberal. The government sure faced criticism for failing to ban conversion therapy. It hasn't done the ban conversion therapy.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: So the reason that the last government didn't ban conversion therapy is that it won't work to have a federal ban. What you actually need to do is fully criminalize conversion therapy, which is what Minister Lametti is working on right now. It was part of the commitment in the in the campaign. And I know that there's a working group working on conversion therapy, full criminalization already. You're seeing cities across the country stand up and say this is unacceptable. My own city of Edmonton has done it. The city of [unintelligible] has done it because the federal government is limited in what can do. But if it fully criminalizes the behaviour and if this is happening in some of these basement or if it's happening, you know, in a church basement, people need to know that if they're trying to change somebodies sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, that they're breaking the law.

MG: Karen Vecchio, what does the Conservative Party's position on conversion therapy?

KAREN VECCHIO: You know what? I would I look at conversion therapy. This is something that we talked a lot about because of the petition that has come forward. I spoke to four. I spoke to the person. Her name is Pirate, who sits out in the Lethbridge area. I, too, actually had a few concerns just with the discussion that we had, because the definition of conversion therapy. As a parent and understanding like first of all, I would like to say I'm listening to Randy, and Randy, I'm shocked with the fact that you're trying to politicize this, knowing the work that I have done, that you would even say that I was trying to say when I talked about 20 men, I'm talking about men sleeping with women in bars and you know that. So please don't politicize this.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: I just wonder whether.

KAREN VECCHIO: No, no, no. Let me finish.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Okay.

KAREN VECCHIO: But what I'm saying with conversion therapy is to me, I had said to the person, I'm a parent. When my child comes home and is upset because there has been a Break-Up with a girlfriend, when my child does come home because, you know, they've done poorly on an exam, or if my child is saying I identify as a member of the LGBTQ community, I want to be able to have those conversations with them, because it's important for me, mental health. Making sure that my child always felt that they could be open. So when I spoke to the person who put this forward, I said, what happens if I say to my children? Let's talk? She said, Well, that's up to you. But as a parent, I just want to make sure that my children are always feeling that they can have me as a parent. And that is something that's really important to me. First a therapy to me, you know, I think it's really important that we recognize I don't think a person could go through a conversion therapy and say, oh, I'm a heterosexual now. I just don't think that works.

MG: The reason I wanted to interrupt. It's just in the remaining minute that we have, it's just because given how tense suddenly this conversation has become. Is there room to work across the aisle on these issues? And first, Karen, to you just very briefly.

KAREN VECCHIO: 100 percent, but the door has to be open to allow us to do that. And and I think that's part of the problem is Randy and everybody else. Sherri Benson, who is here. Randall Garrison, they all know that I'm here to work with them. And they know that many of members of our party have always been there to work with them. But the moment they come and go public, they want to make this partisan. And that is why the door is open and should be open and it should be open wide and not just open and closed when it becomes partisan.

MG: Randy Boissonnault, briefly to you, is there room across the aisle to work on these issues?

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Absolutely. And we did. And I can say this, Karen, if you were running with leader, I would know what you stand for and what you're doing, but you're not. And so I still don't know what the policies look like for the leadership candidates. And that will be very important. There's way too much work to do, Matt, on homeless kids who are LGBTQ2 on seniors who are being re-closeted, on the LGBTQ refugees and immigrants that want to come to this country, on the issues of basic dignity that trans people still have a challenge with on a daily basis. So, yes, we can and need to work across the aisle.

MG: More on this certainly to come. It's good to speak with you both. Thank you.

KAREN VECCHIO: Excellent. Thank you so much.

RANDY BOISSONAULT: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Randy Boissonnault, former Liberal MP, served as special adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on LGBTQ issues. Karen Vecchio is a Conservative MP and her party's shadow minister for Women and Gender Equality. That's our show for today. You can catch up on anything you hear on the program by going to the CBC Listen app. You can stream just about anything involving CBC Radio or CBC Audio from there. Before we go. Today marks the end of an era for some pretty amazing technology. The Spitzer Space Telescope will receive its final command from NASA, launched 16 years ago, has made discoveries, black holes, comets, planets outside our solar system and a previously unknown ring of Saturn as well. Robert Hurt helped bring the data that Spitzer collected to life. He's a visualization scientist at Caltech and he gets the last word this morning. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Yet, let us see into where distant galaxies and see how the patterns of dust. Tell us about the motions of gas and the dynamics of gravity that operate in these objects. All of a sudden we could create these vast panoramas at incredibly sharp resolutions that we'd never been able to do before. And as a result, everything that was familiar in the sky, every nebula that we're used to seeing in the visible light, images from the ground, things from Hubble, they became completely different when seen through the infra-red eyes and Spitzer. It was this combination of a scientific insight that itself was just stunningly beautiful at the same time.

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Thursday January 30, 2020 Full Transcript

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