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The AIH Transcript for July 25, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

Prologue

LAURA LYNCH: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Carol Off.

MARCIA YONG: Good evening, I'm Marcia Young, sitting in for Jeff Douglass. This is “As It Happens”.

[Music: Theme]

MY: Tonight:

LL: The arms market. A police source tells CBC that the gun used by the Toronto shooter was illegally acquired, and it might have come from the U.S. We'll ask a criminal defense lawyer about how easy it is to get a gun on the city streets.

MY: Life gave him cars that were considered lemons. But the late auto executive Sergio Marchionne jumpstarted Fiat Chrysler, and saved the company. And our guest tells us what drove him.

LL: After the Deluge. When a hydroelectric dam project collapses in Laos, entire villages are submerged by the torrent. And two days later, hundreds of people are still missing.

MY: Anti-stealth tactics. A series of sloppy clickbait articles forced a Japanese city to issue an unusual official statement: no, we don't have an engine shortage. So please stop sending applications.

LL: A liquid and a promise. After more than a century of investigation, scientists have found a huge sub-glacial body of water on Mars — and potentially another clue in the search for alien life aquatic.

MY: And she's up every morning at the quacks of dawn. an amateur photographer from Minnesota tells us how he got a viral shot of the single female duck, followed by a flotilla of six dozen ducklings.

MY: “As It Happens”, the Wednesday edition. Radio that knows when you're a single parent, the bills really add up.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Greektown shooting: guns, Mars water, duck + ducklings

Greektown shooting: guns

Guest: Jordon Donich

MY: In the wake of Sunday night's shooting on the Danforth, more information is emerging about the shooter — and about his weapon. A police source told the CBC that the gun used by Faisal Hussain was illegally acquired, and traced back to the United States. Meanwhile, Toronto City Council has passed a motion to call for a ban on the sale of handguns in the city. But questions remain about the availability of illegal guns. Jordan Donich is a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto. That's where we reached him.

LL: Mr. Donich, just how hard is it to get an illegal gun in Toronto if you want one?

JORDAN DONICH: There's different ways of getting an illegal gun. One can purchase it on the street from perhaps a dealer, or somebody that actually sells guns illegally on the street. That's one way. That's typically a scenario that would arise in a gang. Other ways are people who actually steal guns from legal gun owners. So they know someone has a gun. They know they don't store it correctly. They know they don't follow the law with respect to that. So they actively go over a potential scenario where they could steal it from that individual.

LL: Do you have any sense of how many of these illegal guns — the ones that aren't taken from legal owners — are flowing through the city right now?

JD: No, I mean I personally don't have a sense of that. But I can tell you the issue starts at the border. They're imported from the U.S. because it's easy to get guns in the U.S. You can buy guns online from here in Canada and ship them to a P.O. box in the States, drive across the border and bring them across.

LL: But you're smuggling them illegally then. You're hoping you don't get caught.

JD: That's right. But the truth is a lot of people don't get caught. And if they do get caught, it's on the tenth time and not the first time.

LL: Is that the only way that the guns are brought in from the U.S.? Are there other ways?

JD: There are probably many, many ways. And the truth is the only people that are likely the police and border security. But at the end of the day, it's the easiest and probably the least sophisticated way would be to just walk across, put it in the trunk of a car and drive back. And we have to remember it may not necessarily be what we would think of as a completed gun or a firearm. You can actually purchase something called a gun kit in the U.S., which is a 70 per cent of a gun. So it's not a full gun, but basically all you have to do is add a barrel. You can bring a kit across like a puzzle, build it at home and you now have a gun that's not traceable because it doesn't have a serial number.

LL: But again, that is being smuggled across illegally?

JD: Correct. Yeah, that would still be importing a firearm. Correct.

LL: So if you know this is a problem, if the police know this is a problem, if the Border Service agents know it's a problem, then why aren't they doing a better job of checking for guns coming across the border?

JD: I mean this is the problem we're having right now is the enforceability, right? We want to get it at the beginning of the chain, not at the end. And it probably comes down to resources, right? And then you get into the whole counter argument. Well, who do we target? What vehicles do we look? Do we search every vehicle? Then it gets into the nitty gritty. Given the amount of traffic we have between U.S. and Canada, and of course the size of the border, that's a consideration as well. We're not dealing with one or two gates. We're dealing with a large border. And once the firearm gets into Canada, it's very easy to transport it between provinces because there isn't the same level of security clearance.

LL: Once a gun is on the streets, can it be traced?

JD: It depends whether or not it's serialized. And that's kind of I think the issue we're having. A lot of these weapons have been de-serialized; they are invisible guns.

LL: You mean you mean all serial numbers been scratched off?

JD: Correct. Or the barrel’s been drilled. Or it’s been modified in such a fashion that you can’t trace it to its original source, whether it's the store that sold before the owner got it legally with a license.

LL: So is there anything the police can do at that point to try to trace where the gun came from?

JD: Well, we have to ask ourselves okay, what's the point? So they trace it, they find out where the source was. They find out it was a store in the U.S. The store owner is going to say I sold it to a person legally here in the U.S. I sold it to a person with a license. That’s what the store owner is going to say. That's not the problem. The problem is the trafficking.

LL: OK. But you also hear the reports of people in Canada buying guns legally in order to turn around and sell them. Have you heard of cases like that?

JD: Personally, no, we haven't defended cases like that. But guns are like anything else that can be bought and sold. Just like drugs. People go and take out prescription drugs and sell them. It's the same issue we have as a society.

LL: So last night, Toronto's city council passed a motion calling for a ban on the sale of handguns in the city. Given all that you've just told us about access to illegal handguns, what do you make of the motion?

JD: Even if it were to go through, we have to ask ourselves is it going to actually have any meaningful impact on crime? I think that's what we're talking about here, right? The issue here is crime, not lawful gun owners going to the shooting range, and locking their guns up safely, and protecting them. Those people as a general rule I think are not the problem. The problem is the unlawful weapons. So banning handguns I think isn’t going to have a larger impact on violent crime. Because the handguns used in the violent crime generally are not legal.

LL: So what's the answer then?

JD: The answer I think is going back to the source. Where are the guns coming from? And I think from the data we see there certainly is a problem south of the border. And that's just based on differences in culture. Differences in the way our society treats guns. So the answer really is at the border and controlling the flow of weapons illegally into Canada. Now, remember it's not like it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. People don't just put a fully loaded weapon in a suitcase. They’re smarter. They disassemble them. They send them in parts so that they can come here and be reassembled at a later date. So we have to get better I think at detecting more sophisticated ways of trafficking.

LL: So if I talked to you a year from now, what do you think, if anything, will have changed with regard to illegal guns in Toronto?

JD: I don't think much can happen in that timeframe. That's my concern. As we know, government moves slow. It's easy to talk. It's easy to say things, but the actual implementation always takes time. And even if we successfully find a way to deal with the flow of firearms, we have to ask ourselves what do we do about the ones that are already here?

LL: Mr. Donich, thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

JD: My pleasure.

LL: Bye bye.

JD: Bye for now.

MY: Jordan Donich is a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto.

[Music: Ambient]

BBC Spicer

MY: Yesterday, Sean Spicer went on “BBC Newsnight” to promote his new book "The Briefing". But anchor Emily Maitlis didn't just question the story he's telling. She questioned Mr. Spicer's character. Ms. Maitlis grilled the former White House Press Secretary on the details of his book, which chronicles his short but tumultuous stint as the spokesperson for the Trump Administration. And at one point in the fifteen-minute interview, Ms. Maitlis circled back to the start of Donald Trump's presidency. She asked Mr. Spicer why he used "alternative facts" to misrepresent the size of President Trump's inauguration crowd. Here's part of that exchange.

SOUNDCLIP

EMILY MAITLIS: My point is it became a joke. It became something that defined you. You joked about it when you presented the Emmy Awards, but it wasn't a joke. It was the start of the most corrosive culture. You played with the truth. You led us down a dangerous path. You have corrupted discourse for the entire world by going along with these lies.

SEAN SPICER: I'm sorry, Emily. You act as though everything began and ended with that. You're taking no accountability for the many false narratives and false stories that the media perpetrated.

EM: He shouts “fake news” when he doesn’t like something.

SS: But I wrote a book that I think is a fairly strong representation of what happened in the campaign and the transition in the White House. I take responsibility where I think I've fallen short or I could have done better. But for you to lay that kind of claim and make everything sound like it started and ended with Donald Trump is just absolutely ridiculous.

EM: I guess my question is you were his press secretary, and I know from what I've read that you care about the freedoms, and the institutions, and the democracy on which your country was built. And this is the office of president spouting lies, or half-truths, or knocking down real truths. And you were his agent for those months.

SS: My job, as I lay out in the book, was to be the president's spokesperson, and to communicate his thoughts and his ideas when he wasn't able to do it or wasn't present. That's my job. My job wasn't to interpret for him. I gave him the best advice and counsel that I could in private. I shared with him what I thought strategy would be. But at the end of the day, he is the president of the United States. And it was his thoughts, and his ideas, and his feelings that it was my job to communicate them. Whether you like them or not, those were his thoughts and his feelings.

MY: That was former White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaking with "BBC Newsnight" anchor Emily Maitlis last night.

[Music: Acoustic guitar]

Mars water

Guest: Cassie Stuurman

MY: A briny, sludgy, underground lake may not sound like the most exciting discovery. But this one may just hold the secret to extra-terrestrial life. Scientists have detected a 20-kilometre-wide liquid reservoir on Mars. It's the very first time a stable body of water has been identified on the red planet. Cassie Stuurman is a geophysicist who found evidence of a huge Martian ice sheet in 2016. We reached her in San Francisco.

LL: Ms. Stuurman, why is the discovery of this reservoir so exciting?

CASSIE STUURMAN: So this is the first time that scientists have ever found evidence that there's a large liquid body of water on Mars. Previous discoveries of water on Mars have either been frozen. And discoveries of liquid water have either been transient, like the water streaks we see at the equator. And those are even still debated as to whether there is any liquid water there at all? So the sub-glacial liquid water deposit talked about in this study is unique.

LL: So can you describe for us exactly what was found?

CS: Sure thing. What the researchers did was they used radar data from the Mars Express Satellite to show that there's a really bright radar-reflective region in the subsurface underneath the polar cap in the south. And there is something very unique about the way that liquid water reflects radio waves. It returns a much brighter signal than what you'd see from rock, or ice, or anything else that we found on Mars.

LL: So could you compare it to something that we might recognize here on Earth — what's been found?

CS: Sure. So we have sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica. A lot of people have heard of Lake Vostok, and we find them in the Arctic as well. Essentially what they're talking about is a liquid body of water of some form underneath kilometre-thick ice. And there's still some question as to whether this is a clean liquid water lake like Lake Vostok? Or if it's more of an aquifer situation where we're looking at muddy sediments with high water content? It’s not clear based on the radar reflection alone which one of those it might be.

LL: You anticipated my next question, which is whether you could drink it?

CS: Well, we expect it would be very salty. One of the ways that liquid water could be stable at these kinds of temperatures and pressure requires a pretty high salt content, so I don't think it'd be very tasty to drink.

LL: There is some skepticism coming from another corner — a research team using an alternative instrument says it can't detect this lake. So what do you think?

CS: Yeah. So we're not seeing it in the data, but an explanation for why we're not seeing this lake is that it’s too deep. This instrument can only see up to one kilometre deep through clean water ice. But others have argued that you know if this is a salty water lake then the radar reflection should be so bright that even this would see it, which supports the idea that it might actually be muddy sediments. So water saturated sediments and not a clean water like underneath ice. But there's definitely something very unique happening in this region. I mean you can't argue with the radar results. We're looking at a highly anomalous reflective zone, and whatever is there, it's unique to the spot as we know.

LL: But there still are questions to be answered. There's still more work to be done to figure out exactly what it is?

CS: Of course. I mean I don't think this is a slam dunk just yet. We're going to need to see more supporting evidence to say there's definitely a clean water deposit there. But this is I mean a really compelling start.

LL: Now, a couple of years ago, you made headlines yourself after you found signs of an ice sheet on Mars that was bigger than Lake Superior. How did this new discovery tie in with yours?

CS: Right on. So we know that sometime in ancient Martian history, there was a huge amount of water on Mars. We see these massive river flow channels. We see deltas and all kinds of evidence that there was once a huge amount of liquid water on the surface of Mars that isn't there today. And when we try to budget for that water, I mean we know that there are some glaciers. We know that there is some mid-latitude ice. We know there's the polar caps. But there's still a lot of missing water when we look at you know how much water there was then and how much water we've discovered now. So this ties into that idea of we're trying to discover more and more where the water on Mars actually is. There could be lots more water buried in the deep subsurface.

LL: Ok, so your sheet says there's ice on top. Today's discovery says there's water underneath.

CS: Exactly, yeah.

LL: Does this bring us any closer to actually discovering life on Mars?

CS: So this is the most habitable environment we've ever discovered on Mars. This is the first time we've found an environment on Mars where life as we know it on earth could survive. We've found microbial life underneath Antarctic glaciers up to hundreds of metres below the surface buried in ice with no access to sunlight, surviving only on the water that's there and different minerals in the subsurface. So we know that microbial life can persist for a very long amount of time in environments like the one we found on Mars.

LL: So at the very least, this points you in the direction of saying there's some kind of very, very elemental microbial form of life. I'm not a scientist, can you tell?

CS: So I mean this would support the idea that life could be on Mars today. We have no reason to think there is currently life on Mars today. But I mean life is very persistent. And if it ever evolved on Mars, I mean this would be a good place to find out.

LL: Does it get us any closer to answering the question of whether Mars could be a habitable place for humans?

CS: I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a human that wants to live underneath a glacier.

LL: Good answer. So what is next for the exploration of Mars?

CS: I anticipate that this region — this potential sub-glacial lake — is going to be getting a lot more attention and the upcoming literature over the next few years. I think we still need to see more supporting evidence before we send another mission to explore this spot specifically. But it's a really exciting time for Mars. And especially the polar regions of Mars, which I think are understudied.

LL: All right. Ms. Stuurman, thank you.

CS: Thank you very much.

LL: Bye bye.

MY: That was Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas who will soon join the European Space Agency as a radar scientist. We reached her in San Francisco.

[Music: World music]

Duck + ducklings

Guest: Brent Cizek

MY: Brent Cizek is an amateur photographer who can often be found searching for wildlife. And last month, his fleet fingers captured a fleet that was like nothing he'd ever seen before. Now, his image of a duck followed by dozens of ducklings is being talked about by experts, and being shared across the web. We reached Mr. Cizek in Bemidji, Minnesota.

LL: Mr. Cizek, take us back to the day that you captured this photo. What were you doing?

BRENT CIZEK: Well, I originally was just pretty much going out on a scouting mission on the lake to just scope things out. And the lake was fairly wavy that day. It was pretty windy. So the conditions weren't the best or ideal. I wasn't really expecting to get any kind of a photo of that day.

LL: And then you saw the ducks?

BC: And then I saw the ducks. I had seen them from quite a distance away in my binoculars. But then the closer I got, the more excited I got. And I was able to get close enough to them, and try to frame up a shot as best as I could with how choppy the water was. And fired off as many shots as I possibly could, just praying that one would turn out. And sure enough, one photo out of the very many actually turned out halfway decent.

LL: Yeah, it did.

BC: And here we are. So the image I think it paints a very good story. You see this mom duck out in front, and you just see this long line of baby ducks. And the photo itself it's even kind of hard to see how many babies there are. There's so many. They're all lined up, just following their mom. It just looks very protective and very serious. And the photo just makes you question you know how is this possible? How did this happen? How is the mom taking care of so many ducks?

LL: You've described the mother as proud and stoic?

BC: It's hard not to look at her and say OK, you know this this is pretty unbelievable. Multiple people are saying you know “Mom of the Year” and stuff, which I definitely think is very fitting for her to be able to be raising that many ducklings behind her. And she's taken in even more into her brood than I’d originally seen.

LL: Right. How many roughly did you see on that first day?

BC: So the first time, I was able to count 56. Now, there could have been more, but they were all grouped together. But the best I could count was 56. And then a few weeks later, I had gone out again, and I was able to get a shot where there were more spread out. And I had counted 76.

LL: And mom is just still sailing along there at the front of the crowd — the growing brood?

BC: You bet! It seems nowadays you know the ducks are starting to get larger, and maybe a little bit more brave. Right away, they're very skittish of me. I couldn't get close, and I didn't want to get too close. I didn't want to scare them somewhere they didn't want to go. But now, I go on my boat and I kind of just sit there, and then they will come up to me and. And she was very protective right away. You know she would purposely fly 20 yards or so then all the ducks would very quickly follow her. And now she kind of lets them adventure off out on their own, without being too cautious of them, you know? She'll kind like stay on the beach. And the ducks will kind of just kind of go on their way you know 50 yards out. But as soon as she stands up, they'll all quickly come back to her. And they're just incredible to watch.

LL: What you been able to find out about why all of these ducklings are following this one adult? They're not they're not all her babies?

BC: No, they're not. I’m no wildlife expert, but I have tried to spend as much time as I could researching about them from different books, and talking to different people. And from what I can best tell, the most eggs that she could have laid was right around a dozen. And this species of duck will lay their eggs in multiple nests just kind of as on insurance policy for making sure that some of the eggs will hatch. And they will actually dump their eggs you know into multiple nests with even other bird species. And then they can only incubate up to 20 eggs at a time. So only 20 eggs will hatch, if they're incubating on a nest, only 20 of those eggs actually hatch. So she had to have picked up these ducks from other moms. And from what it seems, I read from another wildlife expert, and he was kind of saying that it's this is more than likely an older female, and she kind of took in all of the chicks from all of the younger female hens. And is kind of watching over them as their feathers molt, and they're taking care of themselves.

LL: Now, I know you're not a wildlife expert. But according to The New York Times, it's somewhat common to see around 50 ducklings with type of bird, which is a common merganser. But more than 70, how can you explain such a big group?

BC: It is absolutely wild. I have spent quite a bit of my time trying to look on the Internet to see if I could find other photos of similar situations. But yeah, everyone is pretty much saying that over 70 is just kind of unheard of.

LL: How much longer are the ducklings going to hang around? You're already saying that they're starting to strike out on their own a bit.

BC: Yeah, I'm not too entirely sure. I was going to try to look into that more. It will be a sad day, but I'm hoping that I can continue tracking them along and kind of track when they do finally leave the area.

LL: Yeah, it's going to be sad. You made quite a connection with them.

BC: I certainly have. You know I've been down on the beach kind of every morning looking for them and want they do. Some of the days it hasn't been very great photo days. So I kind of just lay there and watch them and have fun with that. And then there's been a couple days where people will come down to the beach to swim, or you know try to get as close as they can with their cell phones to take a picture. I have to kind of yell at them and tell them to keep them back and let the birds just live their life without ganging up on them and kind of forcing them out of where they want to be.

LL: Well, Mr. Cizek, thank you very much for telling us about it. And wonderful photographs — it was a great thing to see today.

BC: Well, thanks for thanks for having me. It's great.

MY: Brent Cizek is an amateur wildlife photographer in Bemidji, Minnesota. That's where we reached him. If you'd like to see his pictures of the ducks, and they’re so cute, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: percussive jazz]

Listener response: kombucha

MY: It's a complicated, elaborate, and totally pointless car modification. And as one listener told us, it's been going on for decades. Last night on the program, we spoke with Daniel Tillotson from Cochrane, Alberta. Mr. Tillotson rigged his car's windshield wiper system to squirt raspberry kombucha into his mouth. He doesn't recommend you try it at home — and he doesn't seem to enjoy it much himself — but it turns out someone else did it long before he was even born. We got this call on our Talkback line.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH MITCHELL: My name is Keith Mitchell; Chester, Nova Scotia. Listening to your story about the windshield washer thing. This is not new. We did it back in the ‘70s. You went to Canada Tire, you bought a brand-new one, you put your hard liquor under the hood. You dumped it into a can of Pepsi, or Coke, or whatever your preference was. And you didn't have to worry about flushing the system. It's an awful thing to say because of the way MADD and drinking and driving has gone since the ‘70s. But it's not new. Have a good night.

MY: Mr. Mitchell wasn't quite done reminiscing.

SOUNDCLIP

KM: Hi, it’s Keith Mitchell again. East Chester, Nova Scotia. Finished the rest of your story about the windshield washer fluid. He said he was going to move onto cooking something on the manifold. I can't tell you how many cans of beans I've had warmed up on the manifold of a portable welder. The first thing I didn't know was that you had to punch a hole into it first. Have a good night.

MY: Thank you, Keith Mitchell for sharing. Of course, drinking and driving wasn't legal in the ‘70s, it's not legal now. So don't do that. If you are desperate to rig your wiper system to spray something in your mouth, go with Daniel Tillotson's kombucha thing. But probably don't do that, either.

[Music: Bluegrass]

Part two: Sergio Marchionne obit, Laos dam

Sergio Marchionne obit

Guest: Dino Chiodo

MY: When Sergio Marchionne entered the auto business, not a lot of people had faith in him. But despite his doubters, he saved both Fiat and Chrysler — and turned the companies into the world's 7th largest automaker. Mr. Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat Chrysler, died today. He was 66 years old. According to the news agency ANSA, he died of cardiac arrest, after complications from an earlier surgery. Sergio Marchionne was born in Italy and raised in Toronto. In 2004, he became the CEO of Fiat and helped the company recover from a dire financial situation. But most of all, he was known for reviving Chrysler, after it clawed its way back from bankruptcy. Dino Chiodo is the automotive director for the union Unifor. He worked with Mr. Marchionne several times at the bargaining table. We reached Mr. Chiodo in Markham, Ontario.

LL: Mr. Chiodo, you worked with Sergio Marchionne for many years. You sat across from him at the bargaining table. Can you remember the first time you met?

DINO CHIODO: Yeah, I can tell you the first time that I met with Sergio was when Ken Lewenza Sr had a meeting with Sergio. And we were supposed to go to restaurant which was in the United States. And when we went to the restaurant, he was having some challenges in Italy at the time with Fiat. And he had security guards because there were threats on his life. And you know it's interesting you raise it because when we went into the restaurant, he had actually reserved the whole restaurant because of the severity of the threats. But he was amazing to me when I talked to him then.

LL: That was quite a first meeting! Mr. Marchionne became the CEO of Chrysler around 2009, after the car company emerged from bankruptcy protection. Can you give us a sense of just how bad things were for Chrysler back then?

DC: Well, I mean the reality is if an individual like Sergio didn't come up and say hey, I'm going to try to revive FCA — and he couldn't sell that to Congress and the president — we would have went into receivership — because that was the decision that was going on. And realistically, it was Obama that really said hey listen, we're going to give them an opportunity to separate the good and the bad assets. So you're either part of the new company or the old company. And Sergio had already turned around Fiat at that time, which was remarkable in-and-of-itself because they were actually doing well at that point. And when he merged with Chrysler, we were basically given an ultimatum by Sergio. And Sergio basically said to him you can implement a program called world-class manufacturing. And if we didn't, he basically said you could be part of the old company, which we're going to basically liquidate that asset and close the factories here in Canada.

LL: We've heard stories though that back then dealerships were so strapped for cash they were going to wrecking yards for spare parts to cover warranty work. Is it true? Was it that bad?

DC: I do remember that we were having problem with some steel. And they were using recycled steel. And with that it was cracking on the vehicles. And the wields weren’t holding as well as they should have. But there were some major challenges because I mean the reality is we didn't know if we were going to exist as a company. And the only way that we had the opportunity to exist is through a visionary person like Sergio to say hey, I can make this work. I just need the opportunity to do it.

LL: How did he turn it around?

DC: Well, I mean like I said, he was very goal-oriented. He surrounded himself with very good people. He worked long hours. He understands the business. He understood the financial side of it. And he set goals and made sure he met those targets. But I'll tell you we were very worried on the union's side — the Labour side — to think that potentially we would not exist anymore.

LL: What did it take for him to convince people — and people in government — that merging Fiat Chrysler was a good idea?

DC: All I'm thinking is it's not that he had to convince them. If nobody would it came out with a plan to help Chrysler at the time, I think it would have been easy pickings for the government to say hey, in order to make the others profitable, like Ford of General Motors, we have to select one to not exist any longer. And the only way that you know it became relevant or able to maintain is when Sergio come up and says no, no, no, wait a minute, I've got Fiat. They’re successful. And if I can merge that with Chrysler, I could become a bigger manufacturing company. We can trade technologies. We could make better efficiencies. We could improve productivity. We can incorporate programs like world-class manufacturing, of which he's been very successful. And you know right in Windsor we have a silver plant. One of the first manufacturing plants to achieve silver in a relatively short period of time. And we have 6,000 employees. We've grown by about 1,300-1,400 employees in that factory. So it's pretty amazing what's happened there.

LL: You and he essentially had had the same goals in terms of wanting the company to flourish, so your workers would have jobs, etc. but were there any moments when you had disagreements?

DC: Absolutely. I mean sure, there were disagreements all the time. And again, did we sit in a room and argue with each other? No, I don't think it was like that. It was more professional. It was a matter of this is what we're looking for and what we need to do in order to move forward as a bargaining agent for our membership and the people in our workplaces. And he was like hey, this is what we need to be successful as a business. And, obviously, if there's no business, there's no workers. So it has to be a cohesive relationship and you have to collaborate. We were able to build that relationship. He loved Canada. He knew that we were productive. He knew that we were competitive. And we could put out amazing quality in vehicles. And we did just that. We turned around a lot of heads.

LL: It might be strange for some people to hear the head of a union like yourself praise the head of Fiat Chrysler this much.

DC: Well, you know the reality is you have to have individuals who know how to get there. And you have to be able to work with all kinds of people. It's not building silos. It's working collaboratively. Sure we're going to have arguments with reference to you know at a micro level — at a smaller level. But when you're talking about a corporation, if the corporation doesn't exist you can't have demands for employees to improve their conditions in the workplace.

LL: Outside of his work though at Chrysler, what was Sergio like as a person? I understand is he could be quite blunt?

DC: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean again, I didn't know him outside of work a lot because all of the times I've talked to him I talked him on the phone a couple of times. But listen, he loved cars. I was in Torino in his office. And there's two things he loved. I think he loved cars and smoking. Obviously, he loved his family as well. But he would smoke in his office. And he was like a chain smoker. It was like I'd never seen him without a cigarette. It was funny for the most part when we met in Torino. But he brought us down and I told him hey listen, what kind of cars do you like? What are you interested in? And I remember that at that time he says why, do you like cars? I says yeah sure, I love cars. So he had called the security detail and they put out ten or twelve cars: a Maseratii, a Ferrari, they had put a Fiat. It was very amazing to see the amount of vehicles that he had in his collection.

LL: Did he let you drive them?

DC: We did, but very short. It wasn't out into the city; it was just in the garage area. But what was interesting I said to him what about vehicles in North America? What’s your favourite vehicle we build today? So he says what we build with Chrysler? I says yeah. He said the Nitro. And I said oh my God, I hate the Nitro, it looks like a box. He says yeah, but the touch, the feel, the drive. It's the experience he says. Okay, so he was fond of the Nitro when we built it back then. But yeah, he was an interesting individual.

LL: Mr. Chiodo, thank you for sharing your memories of Mr. Marchionne with us.

DC: Thank you very much.

LL: Bye bye.

MY: Dino Chiodo is the automative director for the union Unifor, and worked with Sergio Marchionne for many years. We reached him in Markham, Ontario. Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat Chrysler, died today. He was 66 years old.

[Music: Sad piano]

Economic terrorism

MY: The war on terror has a new enemy. And its name...is Canada. Now, to be fair, we're not alone. And the fear may only exist in the rhetoric of one Republican congressman. But when Sean Duffy appeared on Fox News today, he did his best to spread concern. Representative Duffy was asked about the 12-billion-dollar aid package that President Donald Trump wants to give to U.S. farmers who've been hit by the trade war that the US president began.

SOUNDCLIP

SEAN DUFFY: I'll tell you this the administration is going to prop up our farmers. This is this is utter shock to me. I've known this for months that this was the administration's plan because we knew that Europe, China, Canada and Mexico would go after American egg. That's how they try to take us down. This is I think economic terrorism in a way. They want to shock us into submission by going after our egg, instead of saying you know what? Let's reduce barriers. Let's make this free and fair, and the best producer at the lowest cost with the best product actually win. They can't do that because they know we'll beat them, so they want to protect their products. And in the end when do we say enough is enough? I look at this president and if you want to be politically maybe smart — maybe that's not the right way to say it. But you wouldn't take on a fight like this because you might say that could affect Republicans in the November election, and it could affect me as a president in 2020. But Donald Trump doesn't care about elections. He cares about fighting for the American people. He's a patriot. He is looking forward to a long-term success story for America. We need a strong business leader like Trump to actually fix this for our country. So I love that he's out playing politics. He's playing for America, and that's why I think in the end he's going to win here.

HARRIS FAULKNER: I wrote it down economic terrorism, that is a subject that I'd bet will burst today after you have put it on the landscape. Congressman Sean Duffy, thank you.

SD: Thanks, Harris.

MY: That was Republic Congressman Sean Duffy speaking to Fox News host Harris Faulkner. Afterwards, President Trump held a press conference at the White House with one of Representative Duffy's economic terrorists — European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. They agreed that it would great to get rid of tariffs on most goods.

[Music: Trip-hop]

Laos dam

Guest: Sebastien Perret

MY: It was about an hour after sunset on Monday, when the water came out of nowhere. Today, rescuers are racing to find survivors, after a hydroelectric dam collapsed in southern Laos. The dam was under construction when it gave way, letting lose an unimaginable 5 trillion litres of water. Now, several villages are flooded. At least 24 people have died. And hundreds more are missing. Sebastien Perret has been trying to get into the area of the collapse since Monday to rescue residents. Mr. Perret is with the volunteer group Viantiane Rescue. We reached him in Attapeu, Laos.

LL: Mr. Perret, you've been travelling for 18 hours to try to get to the villages affected in Laos. How close are you now?

SEBASTIEN PERRET: We are about 60 to 70 kilometres away. So we have two solution: we take the boat or take the road. But we are not sure about the road because it has been damaged by the flood, as you can imagine.

LL: Do you have any idea how much longer it will take you to get there?

SP: We expect to be there about two hours. By boat, it's going to take three hours. And if we go by car, two hours maybe should be possible.

LL: It must be so frustrating that this is taking so long when you know what the need is?

SP: Yeah, it's a very remote area, and it's going to be very complicated to organize rescue operations and everything.

LL: What kind of equipment and expertise are you trying to get in there to help these people?

SP: Well, if you’re talking an ideal situation, we would need like helicopters to be able to survey the whole situation of the dam and locate the villages and the people affected. From our side we have some cameras and some advanced equipment that we can use to recognize people. But there's a lot of things missing. Like the biggest issue we have at the moment is about the logistic and the communication. We have two trucks that we can transform into a command centre and communications centres. But we have to bring them to the site. And if it's not possible by road, then it means that we're going to be blind. It's really hard actually. The only solution is by helicopters.

LL: And do you have access to helicopters?

SP: There’s a helicopter on the site, but it belongs to the army, so we're going to talk to the governor tomorrow morning, and we're going to try to get access to it. But it depends on us actually.

LL: What have you heard about the scale of the disaster and what is going on in the flooded areas right now?

SP: We got the official figures from the governor of the province this morning. They're talking about 6,600 people affected. And the surface itself we have no idea at the moment. But it's kind of huge because the dam is a very, very big one. And if you compare last year, there has been a dam collapsing in northern Laos, but nobody talked about it because it was a small one, but this one is huge.

LL: So you say there's 6,600 people who are stranded, but you don't know about the conditions that they're facing right now?

SP: The local authorities are saying that about 3,000 people still need to be rescued. But if you consider about the means that we have at the moment, we have the army on one side, and then on the other side there’s only us because we're still waiting for Japan, Korea and Thai rescue teams to arrive. And in our team we have 20 people. We're going to work, but it's a difficult situation.

LL: And they're sitting there on the banks of the water?

SP: Yeah, on the roof of the houses mainly. Highlands.

LL: I was going to ask you what do you know whether the status of their homes? Are they destroyed?

SP: Some of them are destroyed, but some of them managed to get to the roof of their houses. We've seen some islands that have been emerging.

LL: What can you tell me about this particular dam and how it failed?

SP: If I answer this question it’s going to get pretty technical. You know I cannot play with these kinds of questions here. So I'm sorry, but I can’t give you an answer for this.

LL: OK, I just understood it was heavy rains that contributed to the dam’s failure.

SP: Yeah, but you know we're in Laos where there is the monsoon season every year. So this is something that you're supposed to expect when you build something like this.

LL: How important are the hydroelectric dams to the economy?

SP: In the future it's going to be the main source of revenue for the country. There's about 60 dams under construction in the whole country. There's not so much electric resources in all of Southeast Asia. So they provide electricity to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.

LL: So you'll be leaving very soon to make what you believe will be the last part of your journey to the area. What is the first thing you're going to do when you reach it?

SP: We're going to make contact with the army. We're going to share responsibility and see what they offer us to do and which part of the dam we're going to take car of. Because we are diverse and swift water rescue specialists. And this is a unique specialty in Laos that or our team has, so we're going to offer our specialties and equipment to the army. And they’re going to maybe take over on this side where we have to be dispatched.

LL: So you would be sort of trying to get to the people who are, as you describe, sitting on the tops of their houses and ferrying them to safety?

SP: The huge majority of people in these countries don't know how to swim. So organizing a rescue operation is quite complicated because you know sometimes they want to just jump into the water to reach the boat, but they cannot swim. So that's why we took divers and equipment. We are scared about this kind of situation, and it can happen. So it's really tricky actually.

LL: I imagine it is. Mr. Perret, I wish you good luck in the next few hours, as you attempt the rescues. Thank you.

SP: Thank you so much.

LL: Bye bye.

MY: Sebastien Perret is with the Vientiane Rescue group. We reached him in Attapeu, Laos, earlier today.

[Music: Ambient]

Lincoln Brower obit

MY: When Lincoln Brower was five, he saw a butterfly land on a clover bloom in his parents' garden. It was a fleeting moment — but the light, fluttering insect made a lasting impression. "I just stared at that tiny butterfly, and it was so beautiful to me," Mr. Brower recalled in an interview with NPR. "That was the beginning." It was the beginning of a life-long fascination with butterflies — and, in particular, the monarch. Mr. Brower went on to become a leading expert on monarch butterflies. He was a staunch advocate for protecting the habitat of the fragile species, and his research provided new insights into the insect's curious migratory patterns. Last week, Mr. Brower died. He was 86. In 1977, "As It Happens" spoke to Mr. Brower about an expedition he made to a secret location in the mountains of Mexico where the monarch spends the winter. From our archives, here is Mr. Brower in conversation with our former host, Barbara Frum.

SOUNDCLIP

LINCOLN BROWER: We had not intended to divulge the place. In fact, the object being that is really all the North American butterflies east of the Rockies — all the monarchs east of the Rockies go to one place. This means a potentially very vulnerable. Here is the most common butterfly in the United States and Canada, or one of the most, which could be very vulnerable because of this overwintering. And if indeed it was only one site, then it is essential to try to protect that site in some kind of a national park.

BARBARA FRUM: Well, obviously it was protected because you couldn't even find out where it was.

LB: Well, unfortunately, it's protected only in the sense that nobody knows where it is.

BF: What do you figure the butterflies do down there?

LB: At the end of January and the beginning of February, 14,000,000 to 130,000,000 monarchs was our estimate of the numbers there all mate in one of the largest mating ceremonies that ever occurs in any terrestrial animal. It's a remarkable phenomenon.

BF: The Woodstock of the butterfly world.

LB: Well, I wouldn't put it that way. There's no music playing, just the wind whistling through the beautiful forest.

BF: What did it look like?

LB: Looking through the forest with the shafts of light coming down through the forest on a warm day. The butterflies look like dancing embers as they fly through it. It is one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen.

MY: From May of 1977, that was scientist and monarch butterfly expert Lincoln Brower speaking with former "As It Happens" host Barbara Frum. Mr. Brower died last week. He was 86 years old.

Ninja town

MY: Here's the headline from Maxim Magazine's website. Quote: "This Japanese Town is Suffering a Ninja Shortage, Will Pay 85,000 Dollars to Anyone Who Wants To Be One". Unquote. I know: that's surprising news. But it's true: Maxim Magazine still exists, although maybe you're more interested in the part about the ninjas. Which is not true. Over the past week and a bit, more than a hundred people have called or emailed the city of Iga, Japan to get some of that sweet ninja money. Now, Iga is considered the "birthplace of the ninja". It does have a ninja museum, and it's building a second one. This true information comes from the NPR podcast "The Indicator", which did a story last week about how depopulation is forcing Iga to take dramatic ninja-related steps to survive economically. So, the hosts of "The Indicator" did joke about a "ninja shortage". But you can blame lazy reporters from other media outlets for claiming anyone who wants to be a rich ninja should go to Iga immediately. Speaking of the 100-plus people who called about the non-existent ninja positions, a tourism official and master of understatement in Iga told Reuters, quote, "Some had real confidence in their bodies and strength." Unquote. And, about the huge response to this game of lousy-journalism broken-telephone, he said, "We were made to viscerally feel how high interest is in ninjas all around the world." However, now, he and his colleagues would like to stop viscerally feeling it. So if you're headed for Iga in your full black ninja costume expecting a huge paycheque, maybe turn around — and go back in black.

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July 25, 2018 episode transcript

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