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The Current Transcript for April 10, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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[Mixture of Dutch speech and chimp sounds]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Do you remember that scene? A dying chimpanzee called Mama is reunited with the scientists who spent so much time with her at the height of her powers as the matriarch of a chimp colony. She goes from listlessness to excitement when she recognizes him, stroking his hair, putting her arm around him. Frans de Waal considers that scene to be emblematic of the emotions that primates and other animals have that we've denied for far too long. Their emotion, he argues, can teach us a lot about ourselves. Frans de Waal joins me with the lessons of Mama's Last hug in half an hour. Also today Prince Edward Island's Green Party leader Peter Bevan Baker can feel the political landscape shifting.

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I think yes it possibly is the time. As I walk around the island and I meet islanders, there's a profoundly deep seated desire for change.

AMT: With a provincial election less than two weeks away, polling suggests the Greens have an historic opportunity on Prince Edward Island and that on the federal scene the sniping between the major parties is opening up new political territory for the federal Greens. Our rotating panel of pundits on national affairs tackles that in an hour. And speaking of change.

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All the sudden one of my group chats blows up and everyone's like: 'You’re banned from Facebook. You're banned from this.' And I'm like [snigger], this can't be the case.

AMT: Facebook's decision this week to banish Faith Goldy and a collection of white supremacists from its platforms signals a sea change for the tech giant, and it's matched by a shift in how a number of governments see their role in regulating online oratory. We are starting there. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Facebook's hate speech ban is 'part of the problem' with online division, expert warns

Guests: Vidhya Ramalingam, Taylor Owen

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Today the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing that I wish we did not have to conduct, which is sadly necessary to examine urgent crisis in our country. We will consider issues relating to hate crimes and the rise of white nationalists.

AMT: That was the topic of the day yesterday on Capitol Hill in Washington. Lawmakers were gathered to address a rising tide of hate in the U.S. and around the world. The hearings were prompted by last month's massacre at two mosques in New Zealand which was all live streamed on the Internet. Before social media companies reacted and shut it down. Among those called to testify in front of Congress were the executives from Google and Facebook.

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Facebook embraces the responsibility of making sure that our tools are used for good. We take that responsibility seriously. There is no place for terrorism or hate on Facebook.

AMT: Just one day earlier the social network had made a move banning white nationalist groups from the site including well-known Canadian commentator Faith Goldy. British lawmakers have issued a policy paper to better regulate online behavior in that country. But as big tech and big government cast about for solutions, it remains to be seen what really works. One company trying a different approach is Moonshots CVE which believes that the way to make change is to engage directly with extremists online. Vidhya Ramalingam is the founder of Moonshots CVE and she joins us from London, England. Hello.

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Hi Anna Maria, hello.

AMT: How does this work? How do you engage with people who may be at risk of engaging in extremist behaviour online?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Well individuals who are at risk of getting involved in violent extremism oftentimes leave behind a trail of clues online which lets us know that they're taking this path. So it's essentially a digital footprint. And that digital footprint is key for us to be able to find those individuals. And that's where we can then start to directly engage them in preventative conversations or offer them safer content and just ensure that their online journey involves alternative options.

AMT: You call them at risk, as opposed to people who are risky for the rest of us.

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: I do I very deliberately used the term at risk because oftentimes people who join these groups are vulnerable in some way and we need to recognise that vulnerability in order to be able to exploit that and pull them out of these groups.

AMT: So you reach out to them. How do you find them?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: So we find them based on information that they are putting into the public domain. As everyone knows, all of your listeners will know, there is no lack of hate content which is being posted online. It's being posted at an alarming rate. And while that can be incredibly disturbing, that that content is readily available online, it also presents an opportunity. You know, their willingness to broadcast their beliefs and their intent provides us an opportunity to identify them find them and actually interact with them.

AMT: So you're using an algorithm. What do you do?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: So we develop databases of indicators of risk. And that means particular phrases that individuals are using which indicate their affiliation with movements, and links that they might be sharing, photos and means that they're sharing. And that database guides our tools to be able to identify individuals who are posting that content in public forae or engaging with that content in some way. And that's where we then try to intervene in their journey.

AMT: And how do you contact them? Do they click on something? What happens?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: So a range of different approaches. One model that we've taken in - and this is an approach that we developed particularly in partnership with Google - is the use of commercial advertising tools which typically are used by companies like Nike, Adidas and others to reach us with you know advertisements for products. We've repurposed that tool to be able to deliver advertisements to individuals that are searching on Google for hate content. And what we do is ensure that the very first piece of content that they see through advertising is a safer option rather than the destructive or dangerous content that they would otherwise look to consume.

AMT: So in the same way that I might like click on shoe sites and then I get all these shoe ads, people clicking on these sites might get a nod from you. You actually have identified sort of issues related to depression and- can you take me through that?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Yes, absolutely. We find that individuals that are joining these movements; they join these movements for a range of reasons and you know they also will lead these movements for a range of reasons. In order to call them out, we need to understand what are their needs and how can we ensure that their needs are met, trying to rebuild a life outside of a movement. And so we will oftentimes work with individuals who are in movements to - not only tackle the ideology - but also understand what parts of their lives need changing in order to really lead to long term sustained change and a life outside of a violent extremist movements.

AMT: I just want to talk a little bit more. According to my research, you've actually done control groups like a Nazi groups versus control groups and who clicks on issues related to anxiety and as an asset you put out like that. Tell me what happens?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: We've been we've been testing social health, mental health messaging with audiences that are engaging with neo Nazi content online. And looking out whether they are more likely or less likely than the general public to engage with advertisements that offer support. So you know advertisements that offer support for dealing with anxiety or support for dealing with issues of hopelessness. And what we found, nearly consistently in every country that we test this, is that the violent neo Nazi and far right audience is disproportionately likely to click on those ads. You know we find in some cases that are 45 percent or more, more likely to engage with those ads then the general public. Now I want to be really careful here and make it clear that I'm not saying that individuals that join right wing extremist movements are disproportionately likely to have mental health issues. What I'm saying is that individuals that are that are in these movements are disproportionately likely to engage with offers of support. And so that's critical for us. It's not about diagnosing individuals. It's about ensuring that when we are trying to have a conversation with someone who's getting involved in these movements that we know that the most effective way of doing that is through social work messaging and that's critical to most of our work.

AMT: And so once you do that you actually partner them with social workers?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: We do. One of the methodologies that we're testing now globally is the pairing up of individuals at risk with a real world social worker, someone who reaches out to them proactively starts a conversation and essentially tries to initiate a longer term relationship. The hope is that you can start these conversations online and ultimately transition into an off line face to face intervention, where there's a huge amount of evidence to suggest that Face-To-Face interventions are effective with people in these movements. So this is our attempt to try and bring that approach into the 21st century and test that the use of social work online with these sorts of individuals.

AMT: And how long have you been doing this?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Well our company is three and a half years old. We've been setting up pilot programs just over the last year to do this sort of one on one social work. I would say you know a lot of these pilot programs are in their early experimental phase. I would say in the next year we'll start to have some real results around the efficacy. And it's important for me to say upfront: these are experimental programs but you know we need we need more trial testing of new methods in this space to see what will work especially when it comes to work on mine.

AMT: And, Vidhya Ramalingam, this is personal for you. Tell me how you got started with this idea?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Yes it is deeply personal for me. You know I entered this space well over 10 years ago now and I came at it from an anti-racism perspective. I had done a lot of anti-racism activism and worked with anti-racism organizations. And so much of the anti-racism community was focused on galvanizing the great and the good against far right and white nationalist movements. And there were so few people that were willing to cross to the other side and actually talk to someone who was in a movement, try and understand why they were there and try and get them out. And to me that was the most critical missing piece of the puzzle, was crossing that divide and actually speaking to people in movement. So I actually embarked on a two year journey where I aimed to essentially build relationships with people who were in white nationalist movements. I started attending the rallies, reaching out to them to meet with them. And you know slowly but surely I started meeting with their families. You know they brought me into their homes to meet their kids and their and their rights. And for me that was a transformational moment in my own journey of understanding how to deal with this issue because I realized that you know these individuals in in many cases they're not monsters they are human beings. You know once you once you speak to them you understand their exact journey and their life experiences that have led them to believe things that they believe. And for me understanding that they were human beings capable of change was so crucial to my approach to basically setting up programs to get people out of movements.

AMT: And did you see some of them change?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Actually a number of the individuals that I worked with over 10 years ago have now left the group that they were a part of. You know that these movements are so transitory. People come and go all the time and oftentimes individuals get trapped in them. Largely because they've isolated themselves from the rest of the community, they perhaps isolated themselves from their family and their networks that were outside of the movement. And this is why it's so critical to get personal with people inside because you oftentimes find that there are a number of people in these movements who are were already thinking of leaving and just need that olive branch someone to reach out to them to start a conversation, to start thinking about how to get their way out.

AMT: Before I let you go I just want to mention you have partnered late last year with the Canadian government on countering hate online through one and a half million dollar project called Canada Redirect. What makes challenges in Canada unique to what you're seeing in other countries?

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: We have yes, we just launched this program Canada Redirect essentially where we're applying a model that has already proven successful in other parts of the world, in the U.S. and globally. It's a methodology which essentially, as I mentioned earlier, uses publicly available advertising tools to ensure that safe content is offered to those within Canada that are using Google to access hate content or violent extremist content. You know what I would say is unique about the Canadian context right now is that, from my perspective, Canada has made a real statement with investing in a program that treats right wing extremism alongside violent jihadism as a threat that we need to get ahead of. And you know I very much welcome the Government of Canada's investment in a program that places these two on the footing that they that they both need to be placed on it. It ensures that we have some real resourcing behind a program to deal with right wing extremists across Canada over the course of a year. And this is going to be a great first step for longer term programming in the online space to work with violent far right audience.

AMT: Okay so we'll check in with you and see how it's going as it goes along. Thanks for your time today.

VIDHYA RAMALINGAM: Great thank you.

AMT: Vidhya Ramalingam is the founder of Moonshots CVE. She joined us from London, England. My next guest has kept a close eye on tech companies and what role they play in combating hate groups online. Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media Ethics and communication. He's an associate professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. Taylor Owen joins us from our Vancouver studio. Hi.

TAYLOR OWEN: Hi.

AMT: What do you think of efforts like Moonshots CVE?

TAYLOR OWEN: I think they are important and will have a big impact. But ultimately I worry, or caution that they're insufficient. In part because they exist within and are using the rules of what is ultimately a private space that I think itself is part of the problem. We have in many ways privatized these discussions. We've got privatized our public sphere and we are outsourcing the governance of this speech of what does allowed to be said and by whom to ultimately what are global private corporations, and taken that responsibility in part away from our democratic governments.

AMT: And so if you look at what's been going on this week you have Facebook's ban of white nationalist groups. How does that speak to the concern you just raised?

TAYLOR OWEN: It's fascinating. I mean my first reaction to that was I mean it's a remarkable how far we've come in the past year. Even just a year ago I believe that - certainly two years - ago Facebook would have, one, denied that there was a real problem of white nationalism or of extreme speech on their platforms, and two, even if there was a problem, probably made the argument that they were just a neutral platform and they weren't responsible for anything outside of the bounds of clearly illegal content, that really it was a place where anybody could say anything they wanted as long as it didn't cross these clear lines of legality. And I think now we are in a very different place. In part because we, society, has a much better understanding of the types of harms that can exist in this space. In part because journalists have revealed them and scholars have studied them over the past few years. Governments are starting to change their perspective on how this should be governed and citizens importantly I think have really shifted their perspective on this, away from what is what was ultimately a very American style notion of speech, free speech, that was absolutist to something a little bit different and a little bit closer to our national norms and regulations and laws that see some limits placed on speech on who can say what, beyond just clear hate speech.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about how this is unfolding. We know that some Facebook banned Faith Goldy from its platform. According to the Toronto Star, after they did that a white nationalist group accounts and ads in their name remained. Now the global director and the head of public policy for Facebook Canada, Kevin Chan, was just speaking on Metro Morning on CBC Radio One. And this is how he answered a question related specifically to that.

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This is going to be fundamentally a security question and if you talk to any security expert the question is not to get to perfection because that's challenging when you have 24 million Canadians on the platform, and when you have what the platform is actually doing is giving everybody voice and that's a very precious and very important thing. What we want to do is say but those people who are in violation of local law, those people who are in violation of our community standards, we want to make sure that we, A, prevent them from being on the platform and where they try to game the system and are able to somehow get back onto the platform. We are going to take them down as soon as we're made aware.

AMT: What do you think of Facebook's response to the kind of thing that's going on right now?

TAYLOR OWEN: I think it exhibits some of the some of the challenges I just mentioned which is that this isn't just about security. This is about the health of our democracy and what kinds of conversations we're having in society and how we are as collectives those making decisions about how speech and our collective behavior are going to be governed. And I think what the challenge we're facing here is Facebook and other global platforms - I mean we certainly don't want to just highlight Facebook here - are ultimately setting those rules right now. And they have a version of free speech that is largely based in U.S. precedent, right, a fairly First Amendment driven vision of free speech which you just heard referenced there. But also later driven by commercial incentives and incentives which highlight some speech over others. And I would argue which are in part because of the types of division and we're seeing in our in our digital public debate. It is driven by algorithmic systems for example which prioritize engagement over potentially thoughtful conversation and engagement turns out to prioritize things we disagree with, things that might divide us. And so that is an example where the speech was allowed to be said and ultimately what is heard is being driven by a model that is one trying to apply the same rules globally to everybody on the planet which we know is not how speech work.

AMT: So let me ask a little bit more about free speech. First of all I have to say that YouTube responded to a request. They said his the quote: "From October to December last year alone we removed over eight point eight million videos. Two hundred sixty two million comments for violating our policies." That's their quote. But you know we know that Karina Gould the minister of democratic institutions has said Internet self-regulation hasn't worked. The Liberal government's looking at ways to ensure better behavior, as she said. And the opposition, the conservative opposition, has a concern about free speech. Listen to Stephanie Kusie of the official opposition on free speech.

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You know certainly as the official opposition as the Conservative Party of Canada we will always defend free speech in this country. We do think that free speech is a cornerstone of democracy and of democratic institutions.

So Taylor Owen, we don't have a lot of time left, but is this free speech? That's that's the fallback. You see a flaw in that argument?

TAYLOR OWEN: Well free speech means different things to different people in different countries and we've always reconciled that through our democratic institutions. Canada has a different notion of free speech than the U.S. does. We have hate speech law for example and the US as the First Amendment. Germany bans Nazi content because they have had a very unique historical experience. So the question is this disconnect between a global platform that wants one set of rules for everybody on the planet and the way we've mitigated speech in the past, which is through national democratic processes.

AMT: Okay, we're going to leave it there. Taylor Owen thank you for your thoughts today.

TAYLOR OWEN: Thanks so much.

AMT: Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media Ethics and communication. He's an associate professor in the Maxwell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He's in our Vancouver studio. Let us know what you think. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent click on the contact link. Free speech. Not free speech. Private company, does it owe the same kind of free speech? CBC News is next. And then do animos feel and experience emotions like we do? The celebrated primatologist Frans de Waal says yes. He will join me with some remarkable and often touching stories to explain that. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Love, anger and grief: Animals can display wide range of humanlike emotions, says author

Guest: Frans de Waal

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come as the SNC Lavalin saga continues to make headlines and tarnish the Trudeau Liberal brand, what's the knock on effect for other federal parties? Will convene our national affairs panel for their thoughts. We'll be looking at how this year's big political upsets could work in favor of the Greens. That's in half an hour. But first how the emotional lives of animals can teach us to be human.

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[Mixture of Dutch speech and chimps's sounds]

AMT: The sounds of an emotional reunion between Mama, a dying 59 year old chimpanzee, and behavioral scientist Jan van Hooff. You might have seen that in April of 2016. Meeting in a chimpanzee colony at the Royal Burgers Zoo in the Netherlands. It was viewed over ten million times on YouTube. Frans de Waal sees the video a little differently than most people. He knew Mama and he knows Jan van Hooff and he knows a lot about the inner lives of chimps and other animals. Frans de Waal is the C. H, Candler professor of primate behavior in Emory University's psychology department. He's also the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. You may know him for his many books and his new one is called Mama's Last Hug: Animal emotions and What They Tell us about Ourselves. Frans de Waal joins me from Atlanta, Georgia. Hello.

FRANS DE WAAL: Hello, I am glad to be there.

AMT: I'm glad to have you with us. Can you describe for us what's going on in that moment between mama and Jan Van Hoof?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well Mama was the alpha female chimpanzee of that colony and she was dying and she was left alone in her night cage instead of joining the whole group as normally would happen. And Jan van Hooff decided to visit her one last time because he knew that, and she actually died two weeks later. And so he did something that we never do. We never go in with an adult chimpanzee. That is a very dangerous thing to do. But since she was so weak and since he had known her - he had visited her many times and groomed her through the bars and things like that so he knew her very well. He decided to do this. And so Mama was asleep more or less and she at first didn't notice him. But this is the moment the moment that you played where she looks up at him and has a big smile and then embraces him and he embraces her and she taps him on the back. And actually tapping on the back part that Mama did is something that chimpanzees do with whining infants to calm them down. So she was actually calming him down instead of him calming her down and that was a very emotional moment. And many people said that they had cried and they were very affected by it. That part didn't surprise me. What surprised me is how surprised people were that mama had gestures, hand gestures and facial expressions very similar to us. So that's why I decided to take this as the opening story of my book because we all know the chimpanzees are our closest relatives, so why would anyone be surprised that they have the same expressions and the same gestures as us.

AMT: That's a good point. Now before we talk more about that, tell me more about Mama.

AMT: Well mama was a very powerful center of the group. She did not physically dominate the males and chimpanzees that is never the case because the males are really built like bodybuilders and have big canine teeth that the females don't have. So she was not dominant over the males but she was more powerful than most of the males. Basically I looked at that colony as being run by the oldest male and the oldest female, even though neither one was at the top rank of the whole colony. So she was a mediator and she would solve issues in the group and she would bring individuals together after fights. She would basically literally take a male by the arm to drag him to his opponent to make up and kiss and embrace as chimpanzees normally do. So she was really a mediator in that sense. And I called her Mama because she was basically the model of the group and she acted like that for 40 years.

AMT: And so what did you read into her reaction in seeing Professor van Hooff? What does that tell you?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well first of all she recognized him and she was glad that he was there. That was it was a very positive encounter. But also I think he must have picked up that he was nervous. I think Jan was probably a bit nervous of getting in there which as I said we normally never do. And he must have picked it up and that's why she calmed him down the way she calms everybody down in the colony. And actually her central role in the chimp colony is obvious now that she died, like two years ago, and we have a lot of turmoil in the colony and so I think her function was really important.

AMT: Can a chimp feel love?

FRANS DE WAAL: Why not? They certainly have attachments and bonding and certainly between mother and infant there's an enormous bond. And of course females go through an enormous depression if they lose the infant but not just between mother and infant. You may have a bond between two males. You may have it between two females. You have a lot of attachments. And I don't see why love could not be part of that.

AMT: And that attachment was what we saw with her and the professor. And so you said that it amazed so many people because we just don't understand primates.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think we underestimate how much of our behavior,, non-verbal behavior is primate like. So we are frightened we have goose bumps, or when we're impressed with something. Well all this hair movement of the Goosebumps is visible in the chimpanzee and they also have goose bumps but it sets up all the hair. So we have all these primate patterns like kissing and smiling and hooting and jumping for joy, everything we do basically is very primate like. And if you are primatologist you see that all the time. So I think people were surprised by it and that's why I felt I needed to speak about the facial expressions. After all the face is we're human studies of human emotions started. It always starts with the face and the facial expressions of chimpanzees are extremely similar. They have a frown and a stare when they are angry. They pout when they're disappointed. They have this smile. They have a laugh. If you tickle a baby chimpanzee they produce laughs and laughing sounds. And so all these expressions are extremely similar. And I think the emotions are extremely similar.

AMT: How did the other chimpanzees respond when Mama died?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well the zoo did something that zoos normally never do, unfortunately. I think they should do more of this. The zoo gave the whole colony access to her body. So normally a zoo would remove the body. And no one has any [unintelligible]. But they opened up the door and they let everyone in. And we noticed because all of this was filmed - we noticed that the males were not particularly interested. Even though the males tested out the body. They jumped on it and dragged it which also has been observed in the wild and we think that is a way of testing if she's really dead. It's a bit like in hospitals they also test you out if you died. They will test you to see if you're really dead. And so we think that the rough treatment of the males was maybe related to that and the females did something similar but some more subtle. They would lift up an arm and then see how it dropped down and so on. Mama had adopted a daughter, a daughter of another female she had adopted that after the death of that female. And that young female was very protective of her body and as soon as anyone did anything with the bodies she would be screaming and yelling at them. So she was very protective. And all the females came to look at her and were very silent. That's another thing is that chimpanzees are normally a very noisy bunch but they were very silent. There's also individuals who don't eat for a couple of days and so the chimps are very affected by it.

AMT: And you're saying that the colony is very different now with her gone?

FRANS DE WAAL: Yes. Her daughters, she had I think two daughters, her daughter dropped in rank which is something that often happens in primate groups when the mother is gone. And the group is a bit restless which I think is related to her absence. So yes she's missed by the chimps and by us.

AMT: What evidence is there that chimpanzees and other animals have an understanding of the permanence of death? Have you got other stories for us?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think they understand the death of others. Whether they have a sense of mortality - which would mean that they understand their own death, upcoming death - that we don't know and I'm not sure about that. But it is pretty sure that they understand when somebody else has died and that that's an irreversible process. Let me let me tell you an anecdote that happened has nothing to do with chimps, happened in a sanctuary where the females had found a snake, poisonous snake. And they were very scared of it and they poked it with a stick and they kept it at a distance and they were inspecting the snake which was very dangerous potentially. And then the alpha female grabbed snake by the tail and hits it several times against the ground and she killed it. Once this snake was killed the young bonobos came forward and picked it up and draped it around her neck and started walking around it with that very dangerous snake, probably knowing that this was it. It was over for the sake. And I think chimps have that kind of understanding of the finality of death. The irreversibility of death.

AMT: You know last summer another story of an animal death captured our attention. A mother orca carried her dead calf through the ocean for 17 days. I've got a bit of tape from some reporting on that. This is CNN's coverage. Let's listen.

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ANCHOR: Experts say orcas have ceremonly carried dead family members in the past but the length of time J35 has been pushing her lifeless calf is unprecedented. A sign she may be experiencing difficult and complex emotions. Not so unlike our own.

VOICE 1: It's just a heartbreaking story but I think that people can relate to these whales in a multitude of ways. And you know they're now showing that they have this extreme grief and the strong ties to family. And I think if people connect to that you know, it pulls at your heartstrings.

AMT: So that's from CNN last summer. Frans de Waal should we be surprised that other species grieve when a death occurs?

FRANS DE WAAL: No because they have attachments, so they have individualized attachments. And so obviously if one of these individuals whether it's an offspring or a friend or a mate dies that's going to affect them. That's going to affect our life. It's going to affect the situation. We know that these attachments are regulated by oxytocin. We know a lot about the neuroscience of attachment and it's very similar in rats and humans. These attachments are pretty similarly regulated. And so yes the response to the absence of the partner or the death of the partner is going to be very similar. For example if the partner disappears or if an offspring disappears, a mother Baboon for example whose offspring has disappeared - because let's say a predator has captured it - she will be looking for days and days [unintelligible] and calling to see if she can find that offspring. So there's a very strong reactions to the absence of it. And in this case of the orcas I believe to have heard that they were afraid to the biologist, because I actually visit the place and I heard from the biologist that they were afraid that she would lose weight because she was not eating all the time that she was carrying the dead calf around. But actually she did not lose weight. And now they suspect they have not seen it, I believe, but they suspect that she has been fed by the other orcas.

AMT: Are you aware of any species besides humans that have rituals to mark the death of a member of the community?

FRANS DE WAAL: That depends what you call a ritual. We know that elephants go to the places where one of them has died and pick up the bones and hand them around and sniff them. So that seems like a sort of ritual.

AMT: We've been talking about the tender emotions but animals of course have brutal emotions. Tell us about the chimp murder at the zoo in the Netherlands.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well that was for me a very defining moment because until then I had studied the reconciliation in chimpanzees. And reconciliation is that they did come together after a fight and they kiss and embrace each other. And I had always looked at that as a sort of nice behavior that may be important, may not be important, but after the death of one of our males I just decided to devote the rest of my career to that kind of behavior, because I know just how extremely important it was in this case it had failed. So these first three males in the colony who were unable to settle their differences and kept going at it and kept having tensions. And then one day it erupted. And one of them got killed by the other two. And we did not find out the individual dead, we found him heavily injured by the others. But we could not save him because he had lost too much blood. And so he was basically killed by the others. But at the time people would say, well, what do you expect. These are captive chimps and of course they kill each other. And so they were attributing it to the zoo environment, even though this is a very big island on which these animals live. But now we know actually from observations in the wild that this is not an uncommon occurrence. In chimpanzees in the wild most of the killings occur between groups, between territorial communities. So the males of one group may kill males of another group but it also sometimes happens in the group as it happened in the Burger zoo.

AMT: It was a really savage killing, it was like sadistic.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well we almost think you could even call it murder in the sense that I think it's intentional. The field workers who have observed this kind of processes in the kind of attacks in the wild - because I did not observe this particular attack - but we have observed them in the wild. They say it looks intentional. It looks like the males are intentionally killing somebody because they keep going till the individual is dead basically. And I would compare with predators. Predators are intentional killings. They keep going till the prey is dead. And in this case it also seems like an intentional process. And yes a very savage attack by two males on one. The females always jumps in if the male battles got out of control and they would drive them apart, because there's many more females in the colonies like 12 or more adult females in there. Momma would have been at the front of it, I'm sure. She did not accept that kind of behavior. And so yes if the females had been present it would have been stopped. It happened in the night cages, at night, and the females were unable to interfere.

AMT: And that brings us back to Mama and the female primates being just as respected in a colony as the alpha male. That's what she was, just as respected, right?

FRANS DE WAAL: Yes. She was very much a central power player and she was also the one the males could not get around her because she was also the one who could make you alpha male. So the males have their battles going over dominance, it's always decided by coalitions is never decided by the individual abilities of the male it's not like the biggest and strongest male will be the alpha male. It is the male who has the best connections. It's more like a democratic system really. A male needs to have male support him. And he needs to give them something in the process I think and he needs to have female supporters and Mama of the best of all of them because mama would line up the other females, in the sense that if let's say one other female had a different preference than her in the male power struggles, she would beat up that female. So she was not always a kind leader. She would make sure that all the females were on the side of the male that she had decided that was going to be the alpha male.

AMT: And how did she get that power?

FRANS DE WAAL: Oh I don't know. I think in chimpanzee females that's usually a combination of personality and age. The females very rarely have dominance struggles. And also this has also been observed in the wild. Basically with age comes a high position and certain personalities have more of a chance of getting that than others. So Mama must have had the right combination there. But I think it's very unusual in chimpanzees for younger females to dominate an old female. So each is a very positive factor for a female. For males it it's not. If males are over the hill at some point and younger males will take over from them.

AMT: What can we learn about conflict resolution by observing chimpanzee behavior?

FRANS DE WAAL: They're constantly in the business because chimpanzees are actually quite aggressive primate. And so there's always conflict. The males are always vying for higher positions. The females may have fights over their offspring or when one of them has been excluded from a feeding cluster or something. So there's always grounds for conflict and they very often do preventative actions. Like for example if you bring food to a captive colony of chimpanzees, the first thing they will do is all embrace and kiss each other. I call it the celebration. There are hooting with excitement and embracing and kissing and then they share food and they are actually quite good at sharing food. And so it's as if all that contact before the sharing is to calm down the tempers. And in the wild for example chimpanzees who enter a fruit tree they may also have some sort of frenzy or celebration probably also to reduce the chances of conflict. So they do it preventative but they also do it afterwards of course when they reconcile or when they mediate. Mama was very good at mediation and bringing parties together after fights. So they have all sorts of ways of dealing with conflict. Just as humans do. I think we have the same tendencies.

AMT: What are some other examples of the range of emotions you see in animals?

FRANS DE WAAL: I think we humans, especially in the West, we love calling ourselves rational. We are rational beings and that sets us apart. But actually we are very emotional beings and in writing this book I started to realize how much our lives are dictated by the emotions. I mean even our political choices. Look at the election in the US. Look at Brexit. They are emotional choices. They are not rational choices because rational choices would probably be different. And I think we underestimate the enormous influence of the emotions in our lives.

AMT: But you've been watching the emotions and the behaviors that connect to those emotions for a very long time.

FRANS DE WAAL: You know who Jan van Hooff was my professor was a specialist in facial expressions and interface. The similarities are really very striking. We used to think of course that humans have more muscles in the face and so that we could convey more shades of emotions than other species. But about five years ago people analyzed the faces of - post-mortem - the faces of chimpanzees and found exactly the same muscles in the face of a chimp. So a chimp can express all the same shades of emotions that we can and Jan van Hooff is a specialist in it. And so as a student I grew up already with the idea is that human emotions and animal emotions are similarly expressed. So I was more immune to that taboo on emotions I think as a result. But it was very strong. I had a lot of professors in animal behavior who would tell you never to mention emotions. You can say that an animal is aggressive, you cannot say that they are angry. You can say that they have escape behavior, you cannot say that they are fearful. And also actually any any link to human behaviour should be avoided. So for example if two chimpanzees kiss each other you have to call that mouth to mouth contact, or if you tickle a chimpanzee and they laugh and produce laughing sounds, you have to call it vocalized panting. We had this whole separate terminology which is really, from a Darwinian perspective, totally ridiculous in the sense that our behaviour is connected with primate behaviour. But the scientists were deliberately interrupting that connection by using a different terminology.

AMT: So what can we humans learn about ourselves from other species on this planet?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think one of the things to learn is that we are much more emotional beings than we think we are and that these emotions are not necessarily new. I don't believe actually in any uniquely human emotions. I believe that yes we may have so many emotions that are more sophisticated or elaborated in other species because we put a lot of cognition in it that some other species may not have. But in the end all the emotions that we have we can find in other mammals. And that's quite different from the prevailing view in psychology. Psychology still often follows this view that there are six basic emotions - like anger and fear and so on - six basic emotions that are expressed similarly across the globe and so are human universals that we share with other species and all the other emotions they are secondary. They're basically our own invention and that includes things like jealousy and love and attachment and hope. Those are basically all emotions that we think are uniquely human and I don't believe a word of that. I think all the emotions that we have one way or another you can find that our species.

AMT: Frans de Waal it's really good to talk to you. Thank you.

FRANS DE WAAL: Thank you. You're welcome.

AMT: Frans De Waal is the C H. Candler professor or Prof of Primate Behavior in Emory University's psychology department. He's the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center. And his new book is called Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell us about Ourselves. He joined us from Atlanta, Georgia. And let us know what you think of that. In these crazy political times, it's always interesting to hear from someone who takes a step back and look at what's going on in our world and what can we can learn from other species. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. And stay with us. Speaking of crazy political times, after a winter of scandal in Ottawa things may be coming up Green. Our national affairs panel is on that story and much more in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

P.E.I. election could be a breakthrough moment for the Green Party, says pollster

Guests: Mia Rabson, David Coletto, Stuart Neatby

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Advice from my heart to my friends in the Liberal Party: Do not dispute the truth of what our Foreign Minister of Justice has said. Do not attempt to question or undermine or impugne her integrity. No one will believe them if they do. What they must do is tell the truth. Let the chips fall where they may. Starting with these three steps. Call for a public inquiry. Release the former Minister of Justice from restrictions in her evidence and fire the clerk of the Privy council office.

AMT: Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May received a standing ovation from opposition MPs when she delivered those remarks in the House of Commons last month. Of course since then the clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick has announced he will leave as of April 19th. The SNC Lavalin controversy however remains and yesterday the MP Jane Philpott pushed back. She claimed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated a law that governs parliament when he made a decision to eject her and her colleague - Jody Wilson-Raybould - from the Liberal caucus without putting the issue to a caucus vote. The unrelenting saga appears to have put a dent in the Liberal brand ahead of this fall's federal election, creating a potential opportunity for opposition parties including the Green Party. The Green Party has a good chance of electing its first provincial premier when Prince Edward Islanders go to the poll on April 23rd. So for more on what happens in Ottawa, and how what happens in Ottawa doesn't stay in Ottawa, we are convening our rotating panel. What do I call you? Are you a cast of critics, a posse of prognosticators, a circle of smart people on national affairs. They're all waiting in the wings. Stuart Neatby is a political reporter with The Guardian newspaper in Charlottetown. He joins us from Charlottetown. Mia Rabson is the energy and environment reporter on Parliament Hill for the Canadian Press. She's in Ottawa. David Coletto is CEO of Abacus Data and he is in Mississauga Ontario. Hello panel.

GUESTS: Good morning.

AMT: What do you like? Do you like circle of critics or a panel of prognosticators?

MIA RABSON: I like the one about smart people.

DAVID COLETTO: Yes, I agree.

AMT: Okay, we'll keep that. Okay, smart person Mia Rabson let's start with you. Jane Philpott is doubling down going after the Prime Minister this week. What's the strategy, Mia?

MIA RABSON: It seems first of all that the bitterness between Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson-Raybould and the Liberal Party is just getting worse. She had left it things when they were booted from caucus last week. She sort of left things saying that she wishes them well. And of course this week they're taking them on again. So clearly there are some hurt feelings there that are not going to go away anytime soon. But really what she's saying is that Justin Trudeau is once again thumbing his nose at the law. That was sort of what their allegations were from the beginning, that he was ignoring the law that did not allow him to interfere in the decision about whether or not to prosecute SNC Lavalin and once again they say he is ignoring a law. That law is the Parliament of Canada Act. It was changed in 2015 trying to give some power back to individual MPs. Right now there's a lot of power in the centre of parties in the leadership and this law was supposed to at least give MPs a little bit more control over what happened in caucus. One of those things was to be that the caucus would have to vote if an MP was going to be removed from caucus rather than leaving it up to the leader. But the only way they got that act passed was if they allowed them to vote to accept that law at the beginning of the Parliament. All of the parties were supposed to have a recorded vote. The Liberals did not do that. They decided they wouldn't have the vote. They would defer to their conventions. It never was actually dealt with at those conventions and therefore they didn't actually have a lot to follow. And so they're saying that Trudeau broke the law by not allowing MPs to know what the process was.

AMT: It's interesting because Michael Chong, Conservative MP, brought that in under Stephen Harper, to kind of keep the Harper government in line.

MIA RABSON: He did and it was definitely a bit of a thing for the conservatives as well. I mean Stephen Harper was also accused of being very controlling and having a lot of power centralised in the prime minister's office. That was what was behind all of this. The problem for Jane Philpott is that this is something that the speaker has already said. He can't really interfere. He doesn't have jurisdiction to force this law to be upheld. There's really nobody that can. So even though the Liberals may not have actually held this vote - and it sounds like the NDP may not have actually had the vote either although they often also just decided to sort of defer the decision. It's an opt in law. It's not one of those things that if you don't vote for it happens. You have to actually choose for it to happen. So it really wasn't in place. The question is whether or not having a recorded vote was breaking the law, not whether what Trudeau did in terms of deciding not to remove them from caucus.

AMT: David Colletto what impact is this ongoing controversy having on Liberal support?

DAVID COLETTO: It's clear from all the polling we've seen that it's had a big impact. It's quite remarkable to look at sort of a trend line and realise that the moment, the day that Jodi Wilson-Raybould made her testimony to the Justice Committee we saw almost every metric that we track - whether it's the Prime Minister's personal image or reputation, whether it's the approval rating for the government, even as things as big as how Canadians feel the country is headed: is it headed in the right direction, in the wrong direction - all of those metrics moved in the negative direction to the point now where we've seen sustained hit on the prime minister himself where-- You know I was a prime minister after he was elected in 2015 was one of those rare politicians who was able to sustain relatively of impressions of himself. It's rare these days that a politician keeps more people viewing them positive than negative. And he had done that for basically three and a half years, until the end of February where we saw now almost half of the country viewing the prime minister negatively. So you ask the ballot question which I think is actually the least important question at this point. But if you ask the conservatives now are ahead the Liberals are trailing. And so I think what this has done is completely reset the political landscape and has really brought the Liberals - and in particular the prime minister - back down to a level that makes them far more competitive and increases the likelihood that Andrew Scheer might become prime minister, or the Liberals reduced to a minority. All the all the outcomes now are much more in play then only a few months ago.

AMT: Is the prime minister during self any favors, David, threatening Andrew Scheer with a libel suit?

DAVID COLETTO: I don't think so. I really don't think that's helping. Although they're trying to probably get past this issue. I think they have too many players in Ottawa who are trying to keep it going. And so they've struggled to move past it. I think the real problem that this issue plays is , the prime minister was elected promising to do politics differently promising to be much more open and transparent, really a shift away from an approach that people didn't like about Stephen Harper and his government. And I think this issue smacks of politics as usual. It's about petty games. And I will say despite how much this has hurt the Liberals and Mr. Trudeau, it doesn't seem to have helped or elevated Mr. Scheer or even Mr. Singh for that matter. If you look at their personal tracking numbers they're not up either because again Canadians are watching this from afar and saying this just seems so petty and it sounds so - although it's an important issue at its core, the way it's playing itself out, given all the other things that we should be discussing and the things that people are worried about, it just seems like it's taking all of the attention away from those kinds of thing.

AMT: Which brings us to Stuart Neatby. Hi Stuart. Prince Edward Island is generally seen as a liberal stronghold in federal elections. What are you hearing from people about this on a federal side?

STUART NEATBY: I mean on the federal side I'm not sure that much has changed yet. Most people are focused on the provincial election that's sort of in full swing right.

AMT: It's less than two weeks away.

STUART NEATBY: Yes exactly.

AMT: And what are you seeing there?

STUART NEATBY: Well I mean the big story for the federal election of course has been the growth of the Green Party. The Greens for the first time that anyone can remember this is a third party that's polling well ahead of both the Liberal Party and the PCs. PEI is sort of functioned as sort of a two party province really for most of its history. So the fact that the Greens are polling ahead of the governing Liberals is pretty much unheard of. A lot of it's really led by kind of more local issues rather than sort of federal politics although the SNC Lavalin scandal has not helped the governing Liberals. Right now they're polling in third place and Premier Wade McLauchlin is not really seen as a very popular political figure. But I mean really it's sort of anyone's guess as to how the election's going to turn out. I mean although the Greens have been polling ahead of the other two parties for about six months, they're not as well financed. They're a relatively new party in terms of being competitive on kind of a provincial scale. But the one that they do have is the leader of the party Peter Bevan Baker - most Canadians probably have never heard of - but you know he's become the most popular political figure in Prince Edward Island, has been really even since as far back as 2015.

AMT: I've got a clip of him. Let's just listen and I'll get you to tell me more about him. Here he is.

SOUNDCLIP

It's a miracle. Miracles happen in Hampton.

[Cheers]

Well I guess ten times the charm. I have learned so so much, during this campaign, during my 23 years of running as a Green candidate. If at first you don't succeed try try try try try try try try again.

[Laughter, cheers and applaude]

AMT: Okay. That's from 2015 when he was elected to the legislature the first green MLA. His tenth attempt at an election so we know he's tenacious.

STUART NEATBY: Absolutely.

AMT: What else can you tell us about him?

STUART NEATBY: Well I mean like I said he's a former dentist by trade you know kind of known as this affable reasonable guy. He whips out a trumpet at party events and you know like you know he's sort of a typical kind of island figure, a little bit corky, but I mean you know he's also been a bit of a natural. You know he's sort of an extremely well-spoken guy. I think Islanders have sort of been responding to him because he's quite different from what you'd sort of think of as typical politicians and Prince Edward Island.

AMT: How so?

STUART NEATBY: Well I mean you know very much focused on kind of environmental values. You know talks about climate change. He sort of suggested in his platform that voting age be sort of lowered to 16 years of age. But really I mean he's just not like the other two parties. PEI, for a long time is sort of function as the kind of kind of place where people vote along family lines. You know your family voted Liberal you would vote Liberal, your family voted PC etc. And you know more and more people are starting starting to see that change. So I think the biggest thing that's different about Peter is that he's a credible alternative. I mean much like you know you know polling starting to show people tiring of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals because of this scandal. The liberals in PEI they have had scandals. But I think what people are sort of tiring of is you know kind of a government that tends to be a little insular, tends to be a little bit removed from the concerns of ordinary people. And you know a government that doesn't necessarily address a lot of concerns.

AMT: So David Coletto I want you to jump in here because there is also a federal by election in early May in Ladysmith in B.C. and the Greens are expected to do really well there. What would a Green Party success in Prince Edward Island mean for the party nationally?

DAVID COLETTO: Well I think you can - It's hard to say for sure, but I think if Canadians in other provinces wake up and they see maybe on the front page, maybe the leading story or at least the second or third story that Canadians in another province elected for the first time the Green Party to govern, whether it's a minority or a majority you know it doesn't really matter. But the fact that if they were to win the popular vote and win the most seats that would be a first. Not just in Canada, the first in North America perhaps. I don't know the history of it maybe even in the world in which there's a Green government standing alone and not part of another coalition. And just as I think if you think back to 2015, in May of 2015 the Alberta NDP which is in its own election right now surprised I think most Canadians when it won the provincial election in Alberta. And what we saw in the polling was within literally days of that Canadians in other parts of the country said they are much more open to voting NDP at the federal level. We saw Tom Mulcair and the NDP shoot up in the polls and that carried them all the way into the federal election that we saw the New Democrats you know either tied or or first in in the ballot. And so what I think it does it doesn't mean that Canadians are going to wake and say I'm going to vote Green, but I think it does perhaps give more of them a willingness to listen and to consider the Green Party because they perhaps never thought they could win anywhere. And though it's been something that's I think held the Greens back is that they're seen as perhaps a wasted vote or not really a viable alternative to those main parties.

AMT: Mia Rabson you did a story with Elizabeth May on Elizabeth May back in December and she was already feeling momentum.

MIA RABSON: Yes absolutely I mean there's many people who see this as this next federal election as sort of maybe the breakthrough chance for Elizabeth May in the Green Party. She's been the leader of this party for 13 years. She's the longest serving leader amongst all of those who will be campaigning next fall by a long shot. And she and the Greens really feel like there is a lot of opportunity here. In the fall a lot of that opportunity was at the expense of the NDP who was not doing very well. Their leader Jagmeet Singh was not polling very well. He wasn't even elected. He didn't have a seat in parliament yet. May has consistently outpolled him when it comes to people's preference for prime minister. And all of that was sort of giving some wind in the sails. She really believes that she will not be alone and the SNC Lavalin scandal has definitely helped her. Their numbers have come up. The political era where people kind of were tired of the traditional parties they turned to Trudeau because he said he was going to do things differently. Those who were sort of soured on him now because they think wow I guess that wasn't true. Elizabeth May could definitely benefit from those voters.

AMT: And so Stuart when you're out talking to voters about Peter Bevan Baker do you see some parallels to how they speak about him and how Mia's talking about Elizabeth May?

STUART NEATBY: I think the Greens in Prince Edward Island are kind of their own local phenomenon. I mean Elizabeth May I think is trying to benefit the national party. I mean she'll be visiting Critser Rhode Island in I think next week to help them campaign here. But yes I mean a bit of a note of caution I mean it hasn't happened yet. You know the Greens are polling.

AMT: You never know until you know.

STUART NEATBY: Yes exactly. I mean it's it's definitely historic here and even the Greens having to MLA is elected here is pretty historic for Prince Edward Island. But you know like the island's economy has actually been booming. So the Liberals actually have a fairly decent track record. The PCs here also have a new leader who claims that he's sort of been building momentum. They have seen an increase in recent polling. And on top of that the two mainline parties are far more well financed than the Greens. So I mean it's sort of similar in that both federally and provincially the Greens have been leaning on their leader figures as hopefully the sort of the vehicle that will bring about a breakthrough, and that may happen in Prince Edward Island. I'm not totally sure that it will translate either to kind of like a huge breakthrough either here locally or federally.

AMT: David Coletto what do you see in terms of the positioning or the jockeying of parties right now with - we've got you talked about SNC and what that's doing to the Liberals. You have Maxime Bernier's party. You have the Greens. The NDP seems stalled. Like where do you see smaller parties getting traction as we move closer to a federal election?

DAVID COLETTO: Well I think to Mia's point there's this growing perhaps - disappointment I think is the right word with the main parties, particularly the Liberals which carries over to the Conservatives. Because I think if you're watching and you're not a partisan you may not be all that attracted to the way that they're conducting themselves in a way that they are you know going after the Liberals and just how personal and petty it seems. And so the result of that means I think there is a growing number of Canadians who are much who are open to doing something they've never done before. We've seen moments of this in Canadian history and I think we're perhaps at this moment where there's growing anxiety around affordability. There's a lot of uncertainty about where the economy is going not just in the short term but the long term. There's issues around climate change. We've seen in our polling growing concern about what climate change means and how it's going to impact people's lives. And so when that happens we've seen in the 90s you saw the rise of the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois you saw in 2011. Jack Layton take hold of I think a desire for something different and ride an orange wave into the opposition. I look at the polling and we asked a question in our research, not that the ballot doesn't matter, it's a question we ask is would you be open or would you consider voting for all the different political parties. And the Green Party that's the highest level we've ever tracked them. 38 percent of Canadians say they are open to voting for the Green Party. That's only seven points lower than the NDP who is at 45, only 11 points lower than the liberals who are at 49 and the Conservatives who are at 50 percent right now. And so for the Green Party, if you're thinking about a breakthrough and you think of the issues set and you look at the competition they're up against, Elizabeth May despite being leader for 13 years still has a lot of people who don't know her that well, don't really have a clear impression of her. But if you contrast her objectively against some of the competitors or her colleagues on the opposition side she comes off as someone who's thoughtful, who's kind, who is doing it for the right reasons, has the right motivations which in today's era of politics that Donald Trump and with Brexit and with what seems to be very nasty kind of politics, that could be appealing to a lot of people. And so I also agree with Mia that there seems to be an opportunity here for the Green Party and if they win or do better than they ever thought they could do in PEI that could be a trigger to- I'm not I'm not going to predict that the Green Party is going to form government in Canada will become the official opposition, but if they're able to get to 10-12 percent of the vote that's a historic breakthrough in terms of popular support that may not ultimately lead to many seats but will have an impact on the federal election and how the other parties have to respond to that.

AMT: And remember they do hold the balance of power in BC too. Mia, you track the politics of carbon tax. So how will that affect the Greens?

MIA RABSON: It's interesting because the Green Party although they have tried to branch out issues, they still are generally seen by a lot of people as a one issue party promoting environmental protections. And the carbon tax was something that they also promised that they would bring in. David suggest the Liberal stole the idea from them. And if people want a carbon tax, if they are caring about the environment, the Green Party is certainly somewhere where people would look to. However, no matter how well the Green party dies in the next election, the odds that they will do so well that they could actually form government are pretty low. Which suggests that if people are at the ballot saying okay if it's a vote between carbon tax and no carbon tax, environmental protections from that we know versus whatever the conservatives are going to be coming up with, that might actually hurt the Green Party. People may say well - which is what happens to the Greens a lot - I really like them. I'd love to vote for them but if I vote for them I might be inadvertently electing someone I don't want. And that's the biggest problem the Greens have faced before. They always pull really well between elections and then they plummet on election.

AMT: Well which election was it where Elizabeth May actually urged that they didn't run a candidate, in Central Nova I think it was, right? Because of strategic voting she made a decision.

MIA RABSON: Yes and she she's also been the leader who often said I'm not going to run against other leaders. She made a conscious decision, I believe it was in the 2011 election, to run a national campaign and to really focus on a few ridings including her own or they could win. The other thing the Greens might benefit from this time is there are a lot of NDP incumbents not running, especially in some ridings the Greens did very well in last time like Victoria in British Columbia. And some of those ridings really are the ones where they will be putting in a lot of effort.

AMT: So let's bring it to the other side of the country back to Prince Edward Island. There's an agriculture debate tonight in Charlottetown, Stuart, so I guess that's a dovetail there; environmental issues, agricultural issues, lots of it is going to come out tonight.

STUART NEATBY: Yes I mean you know - going into what Mia and David were speaking about - I think largely in PEI The Greens have succeeded in getting away from I guess people are viewing them as like a one issue party. I mean what we're dealing with is in PEI, although there's an economic boom, immigration is up, people are moving here, we're in the midst of a housing crisis. I mean rental vacancy rates in Charlottetown are point two percent. So I mean a lot of people are seeing that there's simply no rental accommodation that they can find. And the Greens have actually been a pretty effective advocate on that.

AMT: I'm just going to say well we're going to have to keep an eye on what goes on. I'm going to have to leave it there though. Stuart, thank you.

STUART NEATBY: Thank you.

AMT: Thanks for joining the panel. Stuart Neatby, political reporter with Charlestown's Guardian newspaper. Mia Rabson energy and environment reporter on Parliament Hill for the Canadian Press. David Coletto CEO of Abacus Data. We're going to continue with a rotating panel on national affairs on Wednesdays. We hope you'll continue to listen in for that. I want to mention something that you're going to hear tomorrow on the program. There's a new and unusual art exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver. It's a display of artwork done by indigenous children in residential and day schools ranging from the 1930s to the 1970s. Andrea Walsh is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria and a curator of the exhibit.

SOUNDCLIP

All of the collections that we see here are unusual. This is not a typical day at residential school. We were able to bring together these pieces because they demonstrate these very rare moments when kids were given the opportunity in school that they were brilliantly creative and they were terribly knowledgeable about who they were, where they were from, their language. And that when I listen to others say we were constantly told we couldn't do something or we wouldn't do something because of who we were. This exhibition demonstrates that's just simply not true that all of those children were full of potential. Mr. Walsh at the End Commute day school was a full time teacher but he taught the curriculum and then they did their art after school. The residential school art that was created at the Alberni school and the Mokai school, kids you're taught in classes by a fellow named Robert Owler who is actually trained as a painter by a group of seven member Arthur Lissner. And so Mr. Owler he was a volunteer. He only taught an extra curricular art class once or twice a week, and so he actually wasn't a part of the residential school. It was just serendipitous that he was working in the towns and the directors of the residential school said yes you can teach an extra curricular class. And he happened to save those pieces until 2008 when he died and the family gave them to the University of Victoria. But at the time it was in the middle of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we felt at the university that this was an opportunity for the university to think through how does an institution engage reconciliation. And we felt certainly not by keeping the childhood property of the survivors who are trying to tell us what happened to them. So that's when we started in 2010 and ended up starting to find people in 2012 to give their property back and so the pieces that are in the exhibition here are all paintings that have been returned to survivors and they own them now. So we work in collaboration with them to exhibit them here.

AMT: That is Andrea Walsh curator of an exhibit called There is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children's Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools. It is on now at the Museum of Vancouver. Tomorrow on The Current we'll hear the story behind some of the art on display and talk to one of the artists about what it was like to see his painting decades after he created it. That's our program for today. Stay with radio 1 for Q. Today the American musician and author Steve Earle is on Q. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app it is free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

Wednesday 10 April, 219 Full Transcript

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