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The Current Transcript for April 12, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

CONGRESSWOMAN: Where does privacy rank as a corporate values for Facebook?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Oversaw and giving people control of their information and how they want to set their privacy is foundational to the whole service. It's not just an add-on feature, something we have to comply with.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Mark Zuckerberg was clearly short of Facebook friends in Washington yesterday as Congressional Representatives - Republicans and Democrats - questioned him aggressively and he answered carefully. But as calls mount for regulation to protect user privacy those who track can even partake in the collection and use of data say most of us don't even understand how our privacy is compromised. And others say it is time for us to use new Internet hubs to market our own data. We'll default to them in half an hour. Also today.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: [Sound: Dispatcher] Drop the knife... Drop the knife... Oh [Beeped]

VOICE 2: I've got a knife on board...

VOICE 1: Drop the [beeped] knife. Drop it.

[Unintelligible]

AMT: Well the recorded sounds and shouting by police five years ago and the moments before Sammy Yatim, an 18 year old with a pocket knife, by this time alone on a street car was felled by three shots fired by a police officer who then fired six more. The officer would be found guilty of attempted murder. Five years later the civilian chair of the city's police services board, now retired is questioning excessive force by police jurisdictions even beyond Toronto. In an hour, Alok Mukherjee shares his views on the need for police reform. And U.S. president has spent the last 24 hours threatening retaliation for a suspected chemical attack in a rebel held Damascus suburb.

SOUNDCLIP

It was an atrocious attack. It was horrible. This is about humanity. We're talking about humanity and it can't be allowed to have.

AMT: If you're Syrian and you're in the Diaspora what are you thinking? We're starting there. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

What do Syrians think it will it take to end the country's bloody conflict?

Guests: Shiyam Galyon, Ammar Waqqaf

SOUNDCLIP

The president has a number of options at his disposal. And all of those options remain on the table and we're continuing to look at each one of them.

AMT: Well how to respond to a government using chemical weapons against its own people accused of that. Barack Obama famously warned such an attack would be a red line for the U.S. and then he let Syrian President Bashar al-Assad walk over it. Last year Donald Trump said President Assad was crossing many lines and ordered a cruise missile strike after a chemical attack. That strike hit a Syrian airbase that was up and running again within 24 hours. Then last Saturday more than 40 people were believed killed in a suspected chemical attack on Duma, the last rebel held town in the eastern Ghouta area. Yesterday President Trump had a warning for one of President Assad's key supporters. 'U.S. missile strikes in Syria are coming. Get ready. Russia'. He tweeted 'You shouldn't be partners with a gas killing animal who kills his people and enjoys it'. Yet the president has remained coy on the details of any possible strikes, tweeting again early this morning. 'Never said when an attack on Syria would take place could be very soon or not so soon at all in any event the United States under my administration has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our Thank You America'. Well OK Syria continues to assert that neither it nor Russia was behind the latest suspected chemical gas attack last weekend and questions whether it occurred as the conflict stretches into its eighth year. The world waits and watches and few wait and watch more closely than Syrians in the Diaspora. Ammar Waqqaf is a Syrian political analyst now based in the UK. He is a founder and director of Gnosos which says it aims to express lesser known opinions on Syria and the Middle East. We have reached him just outside of London England. Shiyam Galyon is a Syrian American writer and activist. She is the managing director of Books not Bombs. It campaigns for universities to offer scholarships to Syrian students. She's in our New York City studio. Hello to you both.

AMMAR WAQQAF: Hello.

SHIYAM GALYON: Hi good morning.

AMT: Shiyam Galyon. When you heard the news of people dying and the suspicion that this was a chemical attack what went through your mind?

SHIYAM GALYON: The first thing was I was just I was heartbroken because the Eastern Volta area has been besieged by the Assad regime since 2012, and they've been through a lot repeated like bombings, incendiary weapons. Residents were starting to be forcibly displaced Idlib and then during that process, aow a chemical weapons attack. So it is heartbreaking.

AMT: Ammar Waqqaf what was your view? What did you think?

AMMAR WAQQAF: The video was a bit shocking but I was sceptical. Why would the Syrian government bomb you know a besieged area whose militants are just about to leave with chemical weapons to bring the wrath of the planet upon their head. It didn't make sense. It still doesn't make sense until now.

AMT: And who do you think is responsible for that?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Well we don't know that this happened really. I saw a video of Russian military police going to the place where supposedly all happened. The personnel coming out of the car didn't clear any CW gear, no masks, no chemical warfare suits, nothing. They just walked up the building. Obviously they weren't expecting any danger to their personal safety and so on. So I'm quite sceptical that this has actually taken place as a chemical attack. There might have been something to instigate the video and the scenes that we've seen, but you know a chemical attack didn't really make sense, still doesn't.

AMT: So what do you think it was a hoax? What are you saying?

AMMAR WAQQAF: It could have been a hoax. You know we've seen many hoaxes over the years. But we know also that Jaysh Al Islam, the Islamic military group that was taking hold off Douma, eastern Ghouta, do pocess chlorine gas. They used it. There is a video to prove it, a big huge plume of yellow smoke. And they acknowledged it afterwards in a statement. So could they have done it for example, providing these It happened, just to draw some international sympathy. We don't know. But again I question why the Syrian government would do it. It doesn't make any sense, really.

AMT: Shiyam Galyon, what do you say to that?

SHIYAM GALYON: Well it's actually clear why the Syrian government would do it because the central conflict is between the Syrian government and civilians and they've used every means at their disposal to force civilians into submission. We know that the Syrian regime with the backing of Russia committed this attack, because they're the ones who have access to air power, one. Two, we also know that it occurred because the Syrian American Medical Society and the Syria Civil Defence issued a joint statement and at their hospitals they received 500 cases, the majority of whom are women and children, were brought to their local medical centers with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent. I'm literally quoting from their statement. They said that patients showed signs of respiratory distress, central stenosis which is blue skin, excessive oral foaming, corneal burns which are eye burns, and the emission of a chlorine like odor which is very telling. UN Resolution 21 18 explicitly prohibited the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It calls out the Syrian regime as the perpetrator. And the reason why the Syrian and continues to do it is because there has been no accountability. They know they can get away with it.

AMT: Shiyam you have family in Syria. What are you hearing from them?

SHIYAM GALYON: They want accountability. I think that's on every Syrian's mind. There needs to be a political transition and accountability process so that the country can heal.

AMT: Where are they? What's their daily life like?

SHIYAM GALYON: I have family in Homs and they've been displaced. You know my family is originally from Homs and they've been displaced across the region.

AMT: And so what is life like for them?

SHIYAM GALYON: It's a lot of watching the news and keeping in touch with friends and family. Even though you're no longer at the same place anymore.

AMT: Ammar Waqqaf you were last in Syria when a few months ago?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Yes. A couple of months ago actually in January.

AMT: And where were you?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Damascus mainly, a short business visit.

AMT: And what was life like for people there?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Much better than before. Exactly a year before I was there in Damascus some Islamic militant group decided at the time to cut the water source for Damascus. We stayed for a whole month without any running water. At the time Daesh, or ISIS, had reoccupied Palmyra, ie the gas fields that provided gas for the electricity stations, power stations. So we had extensive power cuts. Now it was you know January was much better. I understand that since the Ghouta episode started bringing back under government control there have been thousands of mortar shells coming onto Damascus but people get along. There's been tens of casualties this month. But we understand now that the situation is much better than before.

AMT: You were in government controlled parts of Damascus then.

AMMAR WAQQAF: Yes. Old Damascus basically government controlled apart from a tiny bit the southern part where ISIS or Daesh still exists. I had a cousin who was killed over there a month ago in an ambush. Eastern Ghouta was the area where it was almost outside of [unintelligible]. Almost all of it was outside government control. But if you allow me I would like to mention something. The general perception is that this is about civilians versus dictator in Syria. But actually the underlying issue is much more important than civilians versus dictators. You can call it the export version product. The underlying issue is that in March 2011 some Syrians viewed what happened in the likes of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt as an opportunity and rose up against the government for whatever reason. And other Syrians saw a threat and did not join with the revolution. So what you really have in Syria is two segments of Syrians, let's call it two halves who have different perception on what Syria is all about. One of them rose against the government and the other took refuge in the government and supported it, kept it on its feet. So when we say Assad killing his own people, or civilians and so on and so forth, we have to be a little bit specific here. A lot of Syrians actually feel that the government protected them and allowed them to continue their lives, waived a huge threat especially Islamic threat that was fuelled by the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and so on. And they continued to live so they are quite appreciative of what Damascus has done.

AMT: Well I know I'm well aware we're talking to two people of very different view of what this conflict is about. So Shiyam tell me what you think of what Ammar just said.

SHIYAM GALYON: I think that Ammar is basically telling you what the regime narrative is. And he's telling you this is how the regime- this is the story that they're forcing on the world. But the truth is, and I can be more specific. Ammar said we need to be more specific and I can absolutely be more specific, because the Syrian revolution is one of the most well documented revolutions in our time. And so I was actually listening to some protests yesterday, some protest music, and basically what happened is Syrians came together in March 2011 to ask for government reforms. In the beginning of the protests, you saw the Syrian regime flag being used because the request was for reforms. And then when the regime labelled these peaceful protesters as terrorists to justify brutalising them with the military then the demand came for the government to step down because it became illegitimate in people's eyes. This conflict, these feelings didn't start in March 2011. This has been going on for 40 years because the Assad regime is a dictatorship. And my own family I have an uncle that I never met because he was detained by the regime and we never knew what happened to him. Now after the revolution my cousin, his son who never met his dad, was also detained and sent to prison. And so this is a generational thing. Syrians want a government that respects human rights and civil rights and is there to serve the people. And the Syrian revolution demand as a Syria for all Syrians. A lot of Syrians were afraid to speak out against the government and so they were forced either to continue existing in government areas or they either like paid a price for speaking out against the government.

AMT: So Bashar Al Assad is still in power and you hear what President Trump is saying and what he's tweeting. What is the expectation for you?

SHIYAM GALYON: I know what needs to happen. It's very clear what needs to happen. And as a human rights activist and as a humanitarian and as someone who believes in the justice and accountability process that's important to having peaceful societies. I know what needs to happen.

AMT: What needs to happen?

SHIYAM GALYON: I know that there needs to be either a credible threat of force or a very limited targeted use of force against Assad's airfields to force them to the negotiating table, to adhere to the Geneva communique which calls for- It doesn't even call the Assad has to leave. It just says there needs to be a political transition. There needs to be an internationally monitored fair election and then the accountability process can begin.

AMT: Okay Ammar Waqqaf. What do you think needs to happen?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Well I think the first step is for Shiyam and other Syrian activists on the other side need to acknowledge that a huge segment of the Syrian people do not approve of their view of what to be about. If we take Aleppo as an example - And I am talking Aleppo because it is in Aleppo where we see no sectarian issues appear across struggle - Staffan de Mistura the UN envoy to Syria, in a intercession for the Security Council the U.N. Security Council he said there about one point five million people living under government control areas in Aleppo, and 300,000 living in Eastern Europe which was eventually brought under government control a year and half ago. Those one point five million nobody spoke about. Whenever the conflict was raging and everybody was reporting, everybody was talking about the turmoil that the 300,000 people were under, but the interests and the views of those large segments - you know 5 to 1 ratio.

AMT: Part of that was because there were people surrounded and being bombarded. The other side was not bombarded at the same scale. So of course we talked about that. We will always talk about that.

AMMAR WAQQAF: But even before when these one point five million were surrounded, cut off from Damascus for about a year and nobody spoke about their suffering that you know they couldn't get to tomato, potato, even bread, water, electricity. They were under the mercy of the surrounding areas that were backed by everybody else. Damascus now, the shelling against Damascus, the evacuation of eastern areas of Damascus because of the continuous shelling, nobody speaks about it. The issue is for Syrians to acknowledge that this is not about them versus the government. Everybody wants democracy. You cannot say millions and millions of Syrians who choose to side by the government like dictatorship or authoritarian regimes. Everybody wants democracy but the underlying issue is different and acknowledging this is the first step forward.

AMT: So what do you say to Shiyam's point that there has to be a credible threat of force or limited use of force against Mr. Assad's?

AMMAR WAQQAF: Well that's just justifying you know an imminent threat or an imminent strike by the United States in my opinion with all due respect to Shiyam of course. But the fact of the matter is we need to have this fight and it is not more violence. Suppose that I mean one of the great achievements that we have in Syria is that unlike Iraq, Libya or Yemen we still have a running government. Now we need to preserve that. If we lose that then he will take generations as it is happening now in Iraq, Libya and Yemen to form a government, to form a state. This is a great platform for the state to build upon in reconstruction, in reconciliation, reconciling so on and so forth.

AMT: Let me ask Shiyam. Let me ask Shiyam. A running government run by the Assad regime...

SHIYAM GALYON: Thank you so much. I thank you so much. I think this is a very important point to emphasise is that we don't want the destruction of the Syrian government infrastructure. The infrastructure is so important. What we're saying is call for fair elections.

AMT: But let me stop you there. How do you have fair elections in a place that's in rubble? How do you do that?

SHIYAM GALYON: You know we've put a man on the moon. I think we can do it.

AMT: Well that's an answer but that's- like seriously, practically, how do you have fair elections at this point?.

AMMAR WAQQAF: Exactly.

SHIYAM GALYON: I mean you set up a plan. You set the date for the election. It needs to be internationally monitored.

AMT: And how do you have fair elections with a dictator in power?

SHIYAM GALYON: I mean he would have to adhere to the Geneva communique. So there would need to be like an internationally monitored election. That's why it's so important to have it be internationally monitored.

AMT: Ammar Waqqaf, we're almost out of time. I'm going to give you 20 seconds. Go ahead.

AMMAR WAQQAF: I mean the underlying issues in the Syrian community now are way beyond this. The other day about thousands of people who lost relatives to militants in Eastern Ghouta gathered in Damascus, and they were furious because the detainees, numbered by thousands, all disappeared and only 200 of them were released and everybody was furious about this. The strife between various segments of the Syrian society is the underlying issue. Elections is a fairy tale at the moment. You have to [unintelligible] and you have to rebuild. And then you have to have a fairer system of governance. It is not now. This is the war. We need to pick up our sales first and then move forward in the right way not be imposed by some dreaming, you know, whatever it is, this is how we do it, just like what happened in Iraq. They have fair elections over there. Tell me where the country is.

AMT: Shiyam Galyon. Very briefly go ahead.

SHIYAM GALYON: It's regime double speak to say that everybody wants democracy and of course we want democracy but that fair elections are out of the question and that's such a hard thing to do.

AMMAR WAQQAF: At the moment.

SHIYAM GALYON: Please don't interrupt me. You know it's everything that Ammar said is just a sugarcoated version. It's like the regime's idea of what Syria is. The fact of the matter is that the Syrian regime and Russia are driving the conflict. 89 percent of civilian deaths since 2011 have been perpetrated by the Syrian regime. 6000, that's by the way the 89 percent is 19,500 civilians. 6000 civilians for Russia. 6000 civilians [unintelligible] coalition.

AMT: We are out of time. Thank you both. I have been speaking to Ammar Waqqaf Syrian political analyst based in the UK. Founder and Director of Gnosos says it aims to express lesser known opinions in Syria and the Middle East. He's just outside of London England. Shiyam Galyon is a Syrian American writer and activist managing director of Books not Bombs. It campaigns for universities to offer scholarships to Syrian students. She was in our New York studio. Let us know what you think of what they had to say. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. The news is next. We're talking about online data and privacy and Mark Zuckerberg and that testimony yesterday in Washington. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

What would the 'inevitable' regulation of Facebook look like?

Guests: Alexandra Samuel, Irene Ng, Emily Laidlaw

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come after 10 years as the civilian chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. Alok Mukherjee has come up with some provocative ideas on how to make our streets safer. Chief among them disarming some police officers. I'll speak with him in half an hour. But first Mark Zuckerberg faces some tough questions.

SOUNDCLIP

CONGRESSPERSON 1: Who do you think own an individual's presence online, who owns their virtual you, is it you or is it them?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: I believe that everyone owns their own content online.

CONGRESSPERSON 2: If you don't- you're not listening to us on the phone who is and do you have specific contracts with these companies that will provide data that is being acquired verbally to our phones or now through things like Alexa or other products.

MARK ZUCKERBERG: We're not collecting any information verbally on the microphone and we don't have contracts with anyone else doing this.

CONGRESSPERSON 3: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook yes or no?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: In general we collect data on people who have not signed up to Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping that you were just referring to.

CONGRESSPERSON 4: Was your data included in the data sold to the malicious third parties, your personal data?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: Yes.

AMT: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg faced Congress yesterday for a second day answering a barrage of questions about how much control people have over their own data and what it would take to better protect it. All the while the Internet giant's users grapple with myriad ways their data may have been used or misused. And the revelations about Cambridge Analytica are raising concerns that go beyond Facebook, from Google to Uber, Apple to Fitbit. People are starting to question whether it's time to change how they use social media even technology. Others say it's time to embrace a privacy free existence. Alexandra Samuel is a technology writer. She's the author of Work smarter with Social Media. She joins us from Vancouver. Hi.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Hi good morning.

AMT: What stands out for you from these congressional hearings?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: You know the thing that strikes me most profoundly is how completely unequipped our elected representatives are to deal with a world in which meaningful engagement and regulation of the most important communications media, the most important corporate players is just utterly beyond their comprehension.

AMT: It's interesting that you say that. I've heard criticism like that even early this morning on the BBC where people were saying that they didn't seem to know what to ask him.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: I mean it was very clear that the folks who were questioning Zuckerberg for the most part have a very limited understanding of how the internet works. Many of them do not understand Facebook's business model. A number of people have noted that Orrin Hatch did not seem to grasp that Facebook as an advertising driven business. I mean if you don't understand that Facebook is ad driven you not only don't understand Facebook you don't really understand most of the Internet, because that's how the vast majority of these platforms find themselves. And I just think you know look I'm not expecting to be able to call up my MP and ask her to come over and fix my internet connection when it breaks. But I do think that when we now know that Facebook and other platforms are playing such a massive role in how we get information, and of course now also misinformation, it does behoove our representatives to develop at least a passing familiarity with the fundamentals of how social media works and how the internet works. We need to offer them training.

AMT: So in other words like you're watching this go on in the United States but you're saying Canadian elected representatives are no different.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: I'd be very surprised if there was a handful who are but I would be very surprised if the overall level of understanding were significantly different.

AMT: Were you surprised when you heard about the Cambridge Analytica scandal?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Sadly I was not surprised at all and I think like a lot of people in the tech industry everything that came out this spring was all stuff that we more or less filled in the blanks on when Cambridge Analytica first hit the news, you know a year or so ago. Those of us who work with social media and understand how the Facebook platform works realised that if you're doing profiling of Facebook users in 2014 you were doing it with data that had been collected by onset from unsuspecting friends of the people who installed the apps. And so you know what we've seen now is not so much I would describe it as a scandal of sudden revelation as a scandal of sudden awakening.

AMT: Well you've been a data broker. You've collected data as well. But you've done it differently. Well used very differently I guess that's the point.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Absolutely. And I'd like to be clear I actually have never been a data broker. So that there is there is a business of people who resell data and actually that is a place where people can run afoul of the Facebook agreement - user agreement. But at the time that Cambridge Analytica was up to its tricks I was actually working with a large customer insight company that gathers customer feedback from customers via survey all over the world. It's the company that Angus Reed helped to found actually. And one of the things that we were doing was looking at how social media data could complement what we heard from people who responded to surveys. But the way that we went about doing that was to ask people 'Would you be prepared to share some of your Facebook profile data along with your survey responses' and we were very direct and transparent. But what was really shocking and fascinating to us as we were looking into the tactical possibilities for that work was the incredible number of companies who came to us with tools that would have allowed us not just to ask people can we have your Facebook data, but that would have allowed us to pull in all the data all of their friends as well. And you know we didn't do it because it was, first of all, engrossed everybody out but also because it contravenes the guidelines of the market research industry on how you do ethical data collection. But from the volume of vendors who were calling me and bragging about the vast quantity of profiles they were gathering by just signing up a few hundred thousand users, it was very obvious that the kind of thing Cambridge Analytica did is pretty widespread.

AMT: How concerned should we be about our data?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: I think we should be very concerned about our data but not at the expense of using the power of social media platforms. And though the concern I have about the way this conversation has unfolded in recent weeks is it's turned into this showdown as if it's, you know, people who care about Internet privacy and data protection on one side, and people who care about using Facebook or using social media the other. And from my perspective as somebody who loves using Facebook but also has seen the value of social media to a great many organisations as individuals. You know as an organising tool, as a way for people getting the support they need, as a way for people getting the information they need, I don't think we should have to choose between tapping into what is arguably the most powerful communications medium ever invented and having some basic sense of integrity for our data, our privacy and our ability to make decisions without being manipulated.

AMT: You know we as some people on the streets in Toronto how much they share on Facebook. Listen to this first clip.

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VOICE 1: I don't put things that are really private on Facebook. So in terms of privacy on Facebook I'm not worried but in terms of what they're doing with my information I don't really know.

VOICE 2: I guess I got complacent with how things were running. I think if anything I'm probably more cautious as to what type of information I'd put on Facebook.

VOICE 3: I've changed a couple of things including the two factor authentication and all that and I have limited access to my friends.

VOICE 4: I have yes. My privacy settings are actually completely private so no one can see my information.

AMT: Okay there's that group and now listen to another set of responses.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I deactivated my account like six months ago, kind of saw this coming. Nothing's free so I just I figured it's my own responsibility to take responsibility of where I put my data.

VOICE 2: Oh I've already cancelled. I'm off. I'm on Facebook.

VOICE 3: I just deactivated Facebook for now.

VOICE 4: To be honest I don't really think people are going to be using Facebook that much anymore. They're probably dying out just because the lack of security and how people feel about it.

AMT: Okay. Alexandra what do you think?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well I understand the impulse for people to delete Facebook but I think it comes at too high a price. And yet at the same time when I hear the kinds of protections people were describing taking, none of those really speak to the vulnerabilities we have in Cambridge Analytica scenario; how much you share in terms of self-disclosure or how public you make your posts does absolutely nothing for how advertisers see you. There are some settings that affect what Facebook will share with advertisers but I think what most people miss is that privacy on Facebook isn't about whether you share a personal story or photo in your Facebook feed. Every single thing you do on Facebook, everything you click, every page you like, every person you interact with becomes part of how the platform understands you and that much more than what you actually say is what they use to profile you so that advertisements can be targeted in very manipulative ways.

AMT: Alexandra thank you for your insights today.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Thank you very much.

AMT: Alexandra Samuel. She's a tech writer she's a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and she's the author of the book Work Smarter with Social Media and she's in Vancouver. As many as 87 million Facebook users lost control of their personal data through Cambridge Analytica. As you know, it's an astronomical number and perhaps not surprisingly it's led to a chorus of voices calling for more regulation of the tech sector. This is what Mark Zuckerberg had to say about that prospect yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

The Internet is growing in importance around the world and people's lives and I think it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation. So my position is not that there should be no regulation. But I also think that you have to be careful about what regulation you put in place for a lot of the reasons that you're saying. I think a lot of times regulation by definition puts in place rules that a company that is larger that has resources like ours can easily comply with but that might be more difficult for a smaller start up to comply with.

AMT: Well for her thoughts on what increased regulation could look like we've reached Emily Laidlaw she's an associate professor of law at the University of Calgary and she's in Calgary. Hello.

EMILY LAIDLAW: Hi. Thank you for having me.

AMT: Mr Zuckerberg seems to be concerned about the little guy in that clip.

EMILY LAIDLAW: Well you hear that argument often and I've raised it before too that if you put in a really sophisticated and burdensome regulatory structure the only people who can afford it are the big players, and so they end up becoming entrenched at the top. So actually I didn't agree with a lot of his statements yesterday and the day before but I do agree with that one although I think there's probably a certain self-serving element there which is really that you know tread lightly don't overregulate us.

AMT: And so what form do you think regulation could take?

EMILY LAIDLAW: Well I think at the moment we need the regulators to step in and we are seeing that in Europe. So that's what was talked about is that GDP or the new data protection regulation there that's going to impose much stronger privacy obligations, much more proactive privacy obligations on these companies. And I think the thing for your listeners to understand is there isn't the same kind of comprehensive privacy laws in the United States and that's what's allowed these types of business models to flourish.

AMT: Well you know we've been talking about this on the current with others who feel that Canada will end up putting in a privacy law that mirrors or is parallel to this E.U. General Data Protection Regulation. Is that what you're hearing?

EMILY LAIDLAW: Well we're going to have to. And the reason is is that any company that processes data of EU citizens are going to have to comply with the European law. And that's as of May. And so that's caused a revisiting of the Canadian law and we're not up to snuff. So we're going to have to revise laws here to make the privacy protection more proactive, to address issues of say consent which is much stronger under the new European laws and to a variety of other similar changes. But I want to also add that it's not just about privacy here. I think that one of the bigger things that came out of the hearings is the fact that Facebook and its ilk have such power. And so that's a question of how do you regulate these giant platforms that we use for all our social and political engagement online.

AMT: And how do you want to guide that? If you could guide if you could guide that for governments what would you tell them?

EMILY LAIDLAW: Well I think one of the things that they have to look at is the impact that they're having on citizens and what the basic expectations are of them. And that's more than just about privacy. That's a question of these companies being information fiduciaries. They're trustees and take care of our information online. And from that flows certain regulatory expectations. I think one of the problems here is this has been a giant experiment in corporate social responsibility and what it shows is that it has failed in this respect. And so we need stronger regulations to say no this is what we expect when you deal with information not just to deal with privacy but to do with protection when it comes to hate speech. Other things we're talking about through the hearing such as sales of pharmaceuticals and so on.

AMT: And so can I just ask if Europe is ahead on this and if you do business with Europe you're going to have to comply anyway, are the Europeans really guiding this? Will they in the end influence both Canada and the U.S.?

EMILY LAIDLAW: Absolutely they are the leaders here and they said now a global standard. And I think that's why globally U.S. businesses right now stretched scrambling to try to get themselves ready to comply with the European law. And that's also been a source of the criticism, is the idea that Europe is somehow exporting its laws to the rest of the world. But I think that it's time now that we're at this kind of threshold point where the privacy breaches of trust - I guess you could call it - that we see with the case of Facebook in Cambridge Analytica are showing the need for this stronger regulation.

AMT: So right now who owns our data?

EMILY LAIDLAW: [Laughs] That is the key question isn't it. And I know that Facebook was saying 'Oh well the users own their data' and they don't. They really don't and I think that your previous speaker Alexandra was really spot on and saying you know these profiles are created about you. There's a narrative about you online that's created by search engines, that's created by advertisers for their profiles and then sold and decisions are being made about us whether it's- You know one of these scandals with Facebook is that landlords and so on were using Facebook data to discriminate online that they would advertise for housing but would say well we don't want to advertise to say racial or religious minorities for example.

AMT: So you know the question becomes why does our privacy matter and with that example you're kind of making the point that we don't even know when our privacy matters.

EMILY LAIDLAW: Well and I think that's what came out of a lot of this scandal is. You know unless you worked in the tech space this was really shocking and even for everybody else we don't know what we need to protect ourselves from. And so we have very specific damage which I could point out with the discriminatory ads for rental, of housing. But there's also just the other general ways that kind of chills our participation online. And so we need to care about privacy if you care about just a free and democratic society and participation in it because you need freedom from surveillance to do that.

AMT: Emily Laidlaw thanks for your thoughts today.

EMILY LAIDLAW: Thank you.

AMT: Emily Laidlaw Associate Professor of Law at the University of Calgary. We reached her in Calgary. Well the amount of data we are generating every day is staggering. It's expected to grow. The marketing firm IDC forecasts that by 2025 the global data sphere will grow to 163 zettabytes which I had to learn how to pronounce that which in case you didn't know is a trillion gigabytes - and I didn't know - that is ten times more than what was generated in 2016. Right now very little of that data is controlled by people who created it. Irene Ng wants to change that which is why she helped create what is called the Hub of all Things. It is an online ecosystem that allows people to control and store their own personal data and to decide when and how they want to share it. Irene Ng is a professor at the University of Warwick and the co-founder and chair of the Hub of all Things Foundation. We have reached her in Cambridge England. Hello.

IRENE NG: Hi. Good to be here.

AMT: Tell me more about the Hub of all Things. Tell me more about what it is.

IRENE NG: Right the hub of all things which is what we call the HAT your personal server. We tend to think about it like in 1976 we had the personal computer. Then we had the personal smartphone. Well in 2018 we have the personal micro server which is basically a data micro server that follows you wherever you go when your phone. It sits in the cloud. But it allows you to pick different bits of view of your data with or without identity; it is up to you, to fill in forms to exchange data. Because there's just so much of our data out there that we should be the ones to control it. And so we feel that in a centralised world it's actually better with the zettabytes you're talking about to actually decentralised for me to be able to control. It it's easier.

AMT: So where does the data that's going to be on our micro servers come from?

IRENE NG: So the data come in many different places. You could pull your Facebook data, your twitter data because they're precious memories too. You could also put your health records in there and you could put anything you want in there. But it creates a little bit of an avatar of you but it belongs privately to you. It's your micro server. You can install tools, get great insights of your own life in it and then ping whatever bits of data out whenever an app or a company wants it.

AMT: How would I share the data on my little mini server?

IRENE NG: So little micro server is up in the cloud and you share it to what we call API access. We have a generic term call data debit. It's like money. You have a direct debit from your bank account which you give every month because of bills. You have a date of debit because you maybe give some bits of your data to the insurance company so that they can bill you and data debits either with the way data leaves the hat. And it will be a rolling data debit or a one off data debit.

AMT: And it's my choice what I let leave the HAT or what I keep under the HAT [laughs].

IRENE NG: That's correct. Absolutely.

AMT: So if I'm sharing this with my data debit, what if I'm sharing it with somebody who's on Facebook. That would be like, if you're talking about money like debit, that would be like me tossing my money into the air and anybody could pick it up.

IRENE NG: That is true. So there are two levels of controls here. One if you want to go control yourself in terms of all the data you've given to all the different apps that they don't know what, you can do that. Or you have a HAT provider who might be your hospital or your bank and they could set up certain rules like 'I want the same preferences as my mom' you know, more heuristic rules. And so there are different levels to an organization you trust. All you can do it all yourself.

AMT: And so would we would be able what, sell our own data to marketers?

IRENE NG: If you want to. We don't tend to think that you probably want to do that. I mean if you ran a survey for example, somebody asked you to answer the question, what if the questions you wanted just stayed on your HAT so maybe you could just answer it again by [unintelligible] the other guy data debit. You can re-use and re-share it. And it's for the benefit you get in return, the great services you get in return. It might not be money. It probably shouldn't be money. I mean that would be like selling a kidney right.

AMT: So why would companies want to get data from us this way as opposed to collecting it from companies?

IRENE NG: If you think of my HAT, I've already got all sorts of data in there. But in the world of zettabytes of Internet of things where [unintelligible] your TV data. Truly Google whenever- I mean Google or Facebook will never get that amount money. But different companies might give you better more cooler services because of different combinations of data that can give you better insight and recommendation. So are in control of that means you can actually get better services. And some of these companies they are partnering with the HAR really want that because they can't get the data otherwise or it just seems unethical or a few creepy.

AMT: Sounds like to have to get somebody to manage my HAT. Sounds like a lot of work.

IRENE NG: Not really because we think about it as a transition thing like the way you started with your phone. So if you remember we used to have a phone that did nothing except just talk through it. And slowly we learned how to manage a phone and we got smart phones because it did awesome things for us. So everything is down to the awesome services you can get for data rather than how much effort you have to put it.

AMT: So you've already set this up . You’re using it?

IRENE NG: Yes there are about a thousand people using it. I think Canada is having a HAT provider in September for your house records [unintelligible]. There are HAT providers all over the world. They are slowly rolling out over summer. And yes if you go to HubofallThings.com you can get a HAT.

AMT: [Laughs] I'm sorry. We keep calling it the HAT. And I've got this image.

[Laughter]

AMT: So do you see this replacing or eliminating the collection and storage of our personal data by private companies?

IRENE NG: No. I see this as an alternative power system and I think one of the speakers talk about power. I think about decentralisation being distributing power back to individuals to have more say and power on the internet because they have their own micro server, not just little fingers and mice that can just tap on screen. When you have your own micro server and you decide to tell your micro server what to do and into the Internet. You distribute the power out and you create a sort of pluralistic system. There will still be companies that will want to hoard your data and you may allow them to do that because they do that aggregation across millions of people that give you better insight. But I think having these two systems working together it's healthier for the Internet rather than just have one type of centralisation system.

AMT: Okay well thanks for explaining it to us. Really interesting. Thank you.

IRENE NG: Thank you very much.

AMT: That's Irene ING's she's a professor at the University of Warwick. She's co-founder of the Hub of all Things Foundation and she calls it HAT. She is in Cambridge England. Let us know what you think of what she's talking about and if that's a solution in your mind to controlling more of your own data. Tweet us @The CurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook - I guess. Find us on Facebook or go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. And yes it's true when you search that it will be kept into perpetuity not by us. Stay with us. Right after the break we're talking to the former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board who's calling for police reform on lots of things including crossing guards. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Officers must have options other than to kill, says former head of police board

Guests: Mike McCormack, Alok Mukherjee

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

SOUNDCLIP

OFFICER 1: Show me your hands! Gun! Show me your hands. Can I have your gun?

[Sound: Gunshots]

OFFICER 2: 57 Shots fired. Suspect down.

AMT: That's the son of two police officers in Sacramento California shooting a young African-American man named Stephon Clark last month. The audio is from one of the officer's body cameras and as you can hear they thought he was holding a gun. He was not. He was holding a cell phone but the officer shot him 20 times in his grandmother's backyard. Mr. Clark's killing sparked days of protests in Sacramento. He is the latest in a growing list of black men who have died at the hands of police officers in the U.S. Several are now household names Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice. Canada is not immune. Sammy Yatim, Andrew Loku. Robert Dziekanski may be best known in this country but they are not the only ones. Hundreds of people across Canada have died in incidents involving police over the past two decades. Just last week a 19 year old man in Hamilton Ontario was shot dead by police. A witness said he had been wielding a knife. Internal investigations found that in the vast majority of those cases officers use of lethal force was justified. My next guest says still more can be done to prevent such deaths. In Toronto Alok Mukherjee was tasked with guiding police policy for a decade as the civilian chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. His tenure ended in 2015 and He's co-written a book about what he learned. It's called Excessive Force: Toronto's Fight to Reform City Policing and Alok Mukherjee joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Hello. I'm glad to be here.

AMT: Good to have you with us. First of all how do you react to that audio of the shooting of Stephon Clark?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: You know the feeling of shock does not go away. We felt shocked when Sammy Yatim was killed. We felt shocked when Andrew Loku was killed in a matter of seconds. And each said that tragedy continues to be equally shocking. And the question is why do they go on?

AMT: Do you think policing in North America is broken?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: I think losing in North America needs a lot of self-reflection. The over-reliance on lethal use of force is a big problem. The inadequate or nonexistent systems of accountability which very easily accept the argument of officer safety to absolve the officers is a problem. The culture of policing - I don't mean the formal culture but the informal culture of policing - is a problem. And I think these days with the growing militarisation of policing, the growing concern about securitisation of the state. They are simply adding another layer of complexity to policing in our communities. There needs to be a difference in the policing that involves big issues like terrorism, national security and policing that involves keeping our communities safe. More and more police are doing things that are not conventional policing and yet we are using the same uniformed police officers to deal with people who are not engaged in crime who are in distress.

AMT: Do you see the problem as dire in Canada as you do in the U.S.?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Well perhaps the number of people killed in Canada is lower than the number in the United States. But I worry about policing tactics because my view is that the police strategies, police tactics are quite integrated. Our model of policing may differ in some in some ways but the training, the approaches. For example training police officers to shoot to kill if the draw their gun, they are not going to shoot to injure or restrain somebody they're going to shoot to kill.

AMT: As I'm sure you know many people argue that policing is dangerous work, that officers need to use lethal force to protect the community and themselves, on this program just after the shooting that we just heard in Sacramento California the deputy sheriff and special counsel for the Plumas County Sheriff’s office in California had this to say. This is ad Obayashi. Listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

These were dangerous, potentially violent, felonies. They understand they have to presume that this individual is potentially violent based on what they knew at the time. This will sound callous but unfortunately it is the cost of doing business in our society.

AMT: What do you make of that?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Hugely problematic. I take his point that the reaction was based upon what they knew at the time. Question is what do they know when they're responding to a situation like that? Let me take the example of Andrew local because it came up at the coroner's inquest. The police officers heard from the dispatcher that there was a big African man with a hammer who was threatening to kill and was damaging the hallway of the apartment building where it was happening. Within less than 20 seconds of their arrival, at the scene, Loku was dead. What was the basis of their reaction? What they said at the coroner's inquest is that they were trying to get commando with Mr. Loku. They were shouting so hard, yelling at him, that they couldn't even hear themselves. Within seconds they had drawn their gun because he had said 'What are you going to do? Kill me?' They made no assessment. As it turned out there were other neighbours in that hallway who had spoken to Loku. They were not threatened by him. So what did they know? What planning did they do? And what assumptions did they make as a result of what they knew as they approached that scene?

AMT: And 21 seconds is a very short period of time.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Very short period of time.

AMT: If you could reform one thing to improve policing what do you think would make the biggest difference?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: The over reliance on uniformed officers with guns. I would like our news boards our municipalities to do minute analysis of the work that police do today and ask themselves which of those tasks required the presence of armed officer. And ask themselves what other resources they could be using to respond to people in crisis, to youth bullying, to the needs of the elderly. That's one change I would absolutely ask police sector to think about.

AMT: Well and let's just continue on the story of Andrew Loku the man who was shot in 21 seconds after the police arrived. And there is also the case of Sammy Yatim shot on a Toronto streetcar by a Toronto police officer in 2013. The challenges of dealing with people with a mental illness or some kind of psychiatric episode when police arrive. Do Toronto police have enough training on how to deal with mental health issues?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: They get more training now than they did ten years ago. The board created a mental health subcommittee, brought in knowledgeable people from the community, consumers survivors to assist in improving training. But it is more than training. Training has its limits. I mentioned culture previously. What is that culture? What is the notion that police officers in a dangerous occupation come from? How does putting them all in bullet proof vests that they're required to wear all the time? How does that shape their thinking about what they do? We asked for training in de-escalation, that you don't have to always shout a command. When the person is in distress they're probably not even hearing you. Offering them a cup of coffee, even a cigarette, and saying 'Hey how are you doing. Well how can I help you?' Might get the attention better. But we were told repeatedly by the police that they won't do that because their job was to gain control over the situation immediately. I understand the need for it when you're dealing with a violent crime.

AMT: But statistically you say violent crimes do not happen. The police don't actually come in contact with violent crimes as much as we think they do.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: That is right. Statistically dealing with conventional violent crime is approximately 30 percent of policing, 70 percent is mental health, needs of the elderly, civil issues not criminal issues.

AMT: This is why you're saying 'Do they need guns and body armor?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: That's right.

AMT: How does that go over with the police?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Well when I first said this the police association had a cartoon made of me claiming that I am asking police officers to put down their guns and a picture of a prisoner, a criminal prisoner, expressing his support for my view. So basically saying if I have my way, we'll have criminals on the road.

AMT: So let's talk about this a little more. So that the other 70 percent of a policeman's job, a policewoman, a policeperson's job is not to come in contact with some kind of violent incident. They would argue that it could be random. They need to be ready.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Indeed it could be random but that's why I talk about the need for rethinking the role model of policing. We live in a time when police have much better communications than they did, that much better transportation systems than they did. There's no need to prepare every single police officer for the off chance that they may find themselves in a random incident. But there may be need to make sure that if there's a situation they can get quick response and assistance.

AMT: And that's not necessarily just Toronto then.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: That is just not Toronto. That is something that all of North America needs to think about.

AMT: Other Canadian cities as well.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Other Canadian cities.

AMT: Because we have also seen these cases in other Canadian cities where unarmed people going through some kind of an episode, psychiatric episode, end up dead.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: I mean we've also seen other unfortunate situations in other parts of the country where for example people who are indigenous people, who are homeless in Western Canada in the dead of winter being taken outside the city limits and being abandoned there. Some died in the cold, froze to death, because they were left to walk back home. So there's another dimension of police culture that also - I mean there's a lot of conversation about it, about how police deal with Indigenous people, black people, racialised people, homeless people.

AMT: I'm also talking to you at a time when a story in the news that Calgary has the police officer was shot. That's the other side, that they are vulnerable.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: But if they do an analysis, regardless of the fact that there are some police officers who have lost their lives, there are more severe citizens who have lost their lives. So this is not to say well it's your job to risk being killed but it is the job of policing leaders to think about how to keep them safe without teaching them that your only recourse is to kill the other person.

AMT: I want to ask you about policing costs. For most goods and services the more you pay the better the product but you are arguing that taxpayers would get better policing if they spent less money on it. How so?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Well I think it's a combination of factors. My first thought is that we haven't done a good analysis to say to ourselves what does a police officer actually do? Even bigger, what does the police service actually do? More and more because of government policy because of fiscal pressures - uou name it factors, neoliberalism - we have reduced ready access to supports that people in crisis need. And their only recourse often is to call the police. And the police come with all the training in the use of force, all the assumptions that are around them, the stigma that attaches to mental illness, to being black and what have you and things go wrong. We need to think about what it is exactly that police are being asked to do today.

AMT: So sometimes they're being asked to do too much.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: They're being asked to do too much or too many things that demand too much of them. We need to ask ourselves is it not cheaper and more effective if we are to keep schools safe, if that is a legal requirement, to hire some highly accomplished youth workers to be in this school. They have access to police if they need. They are employees of the organisation. Is it not, we've been using mental health nurses right now - not only in Toronto but this has become a model across Canada - but we don't have them on staff. Why don't we have that as a routine part of how we respond to those domestic violence? There are obviously instances where somebody's life is in danger and we need on response possibly. But when it is a low level of conflict do we need to escalate that situation? What alternative can we have? All I'm asking is let us look at whether we are using the best resources when we are sending a hundred thousand dollars a year police officer, the bulk of whose training is in how to shoot a gun, on the one hand to watch over a sewage system, watch over a traffic light bring...

AMT: I was just going to ask you we also see police officers- you've questioned crosswalk duties that's run by Toronto Police, have uniformed officers covering for crossing guards when they they're ill. You've argued that a non-police service. That put you in the crosshairs of parents and police officers.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Yes it did.

AMT: What did they say?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: It was an interesting discovery for me. No other issue had produced so much reaction from the communities as the idea that I was asking to remove the crossing guards, which I was not being- I was saying cross guarding is not a core police function. And yet we are using 20 police officers to coordinate the program across the city. We are finding or looking for justifications on why it should be a police service function and then when a crossing guard gets sick, it is the job of the coordinator to either find another or send a police officer. It is not a good use of policing resources. So now the city has agreed to take it over. Why should it not be a partnership between the city and the school system?

AMT: And what about things like police at the roads that are being dug up or construction, there is a police officer there. Is that extra work for police officers or is that do the work?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: Well no. There are two parts to it. And this is this was my argument with the police brass. There are certain functions performed on our streets where law may require police presence for safety or the city by law may require that. There are other functions which are basically private security functions which become a source of additional income. For example, when we have the ballgames in the city, the hockey match. It's not a legal requirement. And my point to the brass was why can't we arrange, enter into some kind of a relationship with a group, let us say, commissioners who are ex-military officers, ex-police officers. We could even find a way to deputise some of them, make them special constables so that limited power. They are trained. We could have them deal with that situation or those needs they are not legally required. And when I pushed them it turned out that a very small fraction of pay duty is required by any statute. The bulk of it is optional. It's a business that the police services are running.

AMT: So what impact do non-essential services have on the budgets for policing?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: The claim is that we recover the administrative costs for running this big pay duty system. But we don't adjust the cost that we charge to people who rent police officers year to year, but we do adjust the salaries we pay, the benefits we pay and the office that coordinates and manages duty has continued to grow.

AMT: They are still spending money.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: We're still spending money and all it is doing is putting extra money in the pockets of the police officers.

AMT: Can you explain the twenty eight hour work day? What is that?

ALOK MUKHERJEE: That even Chief Saunders admits that it exists. What it means is that there is overlap between shifts in a day. So one shift ending another shift beginning will overlap for an hour. When it happens to four times in the day. You're paying 28 dollars for a 24 hour day. The justification is that the overlap is needed to change over, to transfer information, to make sure that there is smooth transition, etc. There are serious questions about that but the Police Association in years of bargaining has refused to change that 28 hour payment for a 24 hour day.

AMT: Alok Mukherjee we have to leave it there. Thank you for your time.

ALOK MUKHERJEE: You're welcome.

AMT: Look Mukherjee is a former civilian chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. He's the co-author of Excessive Force: Toronto's Fight to Reform City Policing. He coauthored that book with journalist Tim Harper and Alok Mukherjee is in Toronto. We did request an interview with Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders. We're still waiting to hear back. Mike McCormack is the president of the Toronto Police Association and he's in our studio. Hello.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Hello.

AMT: What are you thinking.

MIKE MCCORMACK: You know I'm thinking of that Maury Chevallier song I remember well and people who write memoirs and reflect on. It might not be an accurate representation of their realities. For instance when Alok was the chair- and a lot of the stuff that he's talking about, you know, he was the chair of the police service board for many years. He freely negotiated the contracts with me, signed the contract, said they were great contracts that we did in policing. So I'm not surprised that there is a sense of bitterness in his reflection and but it doesn't to me present an accurate representation or factually accurate representation of what's going on in policing.

AMT: Well do you think policing in Canada needs to be reformed?

MIKE MCCORMACK: I think that policing like any other industry. You should always look at it it should never remain the same. We have to change with the times, information, education all that. That's a necessary part of policing like any other industry. So we should always be adapting, changing, looking for best practices and doing that and I think that's something we do really well in Toronto.

AMT: Well he talks about the growing militarisation of policing, that some of the policing for terrorism national security gets yet entwined with daily policing of keeping the community safe on different levels, you know like crossing guards.

MIKE MCCORMACK: [Chuckles].

AMT: Well I mean it's a point right?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well not really because when you think a crossing guards, it's presented as if the police service or the association or whatever. First of all I don't represent crossing guards. Crossing guards is a function that the city downloaded to the police service. We're looking at the city taking that piece over. It's not in effective use of policing resources.

AMT: So you don't want it. So what's the holdup?

MIKE MCCORMACK: You have to talk to the mayor because you know this is the frustrating part from our perspective, and the police service and we've been involved in some discussions around the crossing guards going back to the city. So the crossing guards go back to the city in the city said we don't have the infrastructure. We don't have the ability to take that over. We want the police to maintain that. So how frustrating is that that they're using police resources and they're saying to us 'Oh we want you to do this but we don't want to give you the money to do it. But we still want you to do that'.

AMT: So you agree with Mr. Mukherjee on that one.

MIKE MCCORMACK: 100 percent. It's not that I disagree with Alok on every point but I think that his point of view is somewhat skewed when I listen to his interview.

AMT: A CBC investigation last week found that of the 461 people who died during interactions with police, over the last 17 years, 70 percent were dealing with mental health or substance abuse problems. What can police in Toronto and in Canada do to make that number a lot smaller?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Yes and again I think this is a very tragic piece. It's for everybody involved whether it's the people who are going through crisis, the police officers who are involved. And you know this whole notion that we've got a bunch of police officers that say 'Well this is a great day of work I was involved in a fatality'. It has an impact on the police. It has an impact on the community.

AMT: So how do we get it to, you know from like Andrew Loku 21 seconds from arriving the guys down. How do we how do we change those realities?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well first of all what we do is we look at our training and how we do things and that's something we've been doing. And again in Toronto like we look at the best practices. We learn from these experiences. So we've added an extra day on to our internal training every year that the police officers go through to deal with mental health and how do you communicate with people who are in a crisis, who are in a mental health crisis. So that's one aspect I look at it. But again you know when you're dealing with people who have weapons and you're there and you're taking control of that situation, we've been arguing and we've have over 14 inquests in the province of Ontario that have recommended that we got tasers for our frontline officers. Finally we are getting that. We need a less than lethal use of force option. And that's something that we need because not every instance where you're there are you going to be able to do what Alok suggested 'sit down and have a coffee' a discussion is not going to work.

AMT: OK. Let me let me just point out a couple of things.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Go ahead.

AMT: Sometimes they've been armed with a stapler, as in Dziekanski, nothing more than a stapler. And we know that actually tasers can kill you. Like we know that. We know the studies have been done. CBC has done investigative reports on this. But what do you have to shoot to kill? I've always wondered why do you have to shoot to kill? Why can't you shoot to stop or maim? Not everybody has a gun right.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Okay. It's not that everybody has a gun. But this whole notion that this is something out of a movie or a Die Hard movie where you're within a close proximity to somebody a few yards away and then you can shoot the gun out of their hand or shoot the knife out of their hand or the weapon or...

AMT: You could decap on them, make them fall.

MIKE MCCORMACK: No you can't. The bottom line is that when you're faced with a threat that somebody- it's an imminent threat of bodily harm or death, the fact that you're going to say 'Oh well I'm going to try to wing that guy' what you're taught is that if you are facing imminent death or bodily harm is a very serious situation...

AMT: But it's not imminent death if it's a stapler.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well again, that's why we have more oversight than anywhere else. We have SIU special vests...

AMT: But they happen after the guys are dead.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Yes I know but what I'm saying is that the officers, where there is a case where the force is not or the use of force is not justified, at that point officers can be charged. You talked about Sammy Yatim that officer was charged, but we have oversight to look at and say 'Okay what was the threat that that officer was faced with? Did they take the appropriate action?' So when we look at that and that threat that that officer faced - and for somebody said well 21 seconds - things can unravel, really quickly.

AMT: Sure but we've seen people armed with a plastic piece of table. We have seen people armed with stapler. And so the question becomes, in certain cases, how do you get police to kind of recognise what really is a death threat and what is not?

MIKE MCCORMACK: Well that's a really tricky question because again [crosstalk] I don't think it's as simple as just saying 'Okay well you know that's a plastic leg'. You're confronted with somebody who's got a weapon in their hand you're going to assume it's plastic and they're coming up to you. You don't know if it's wood or plastic or whatever. You're trying to have a discussion. You're trying to shout commands, get control of the situation so that you want people to be aware what's going on. You want to get- We want to get the best resolutions possible. So the whole notion of saying well a Taser could be fatal. Well it might be. And again the jury's still out on that from what the research is saying but it gives you a less than lethal use of force option. And that's what we need to see. We need to have better outcomes for people who are in crisis and the police officers who are responding.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you for coming in.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Thank you.

AMT: Mike McCormack president of the Toronto Police Association in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay with radio 1 for Q. Tom Powers talking to Wes Anderson-collaborator Jay Clarke about their latest film Isle of Dogs. Jillian Findlay is here tomorrow and I'm away next week Laura Lynch will be here next week. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Thursday April 12, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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