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The Current Transcript for January 11, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

It's a nice and clean thing to say with so-called respecting the sovereignty of another country, but everyone knows no justice will be done there. And it's also known that these are Canadian problems.

MATT GALLOWAY: Canada is a big deal when it comes to mining. Some 1500 Canadian mining companies have operations around the world. But the oversight of those operations doesn't happen here. Most leave it to the countries in which they operate in an hour. Why activists in Latin America are trying to change that, calling on the Canadian government to regulate Canadian companies no matter where they work. Also this morning, when you think about the great Canadian author Lawrence Hill, a talking crocodile probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

SOUNDCLIP

It's about a girl who wakes up alone and abandoned without any memory of who she is or where she came from, and a massive force that she can't seem to escape. And she forms a very testy relationship with a hyper verbal 700 pound crocodile named Harry.

MG: Lawrence Hill is here in 30 minutes with the story behind his first children's book and the big ideas he's trying to get across to young people. We start, though, with the push to vaccinate kids against COVID and the resistance public health officials are facing. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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The impact of Omicron on kids, and easing vaccine hesitancy among parents

Guests: Dr. Fatima Kakkar, Michelle Driedger

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CHILD 1: It went kind of good.

VOICE 1: Yeah. Explain a little bit.

CHILD 1: But it didn't hurt. It just felt like this tap on my arm.

VOICE 1: Really?

CHILD 1: Yeah.

VOICE 1: How were you feeling when it was your turn?

CHILD 2: A tiny bit scared.

CHILD 3: You don't really need to be scared because you can't really feel it.

VOICE 2: The six year old just got her COVID vaccine. So we're really happy that we got here and that she's vaccinated. I'm looking forward to the second dose. I know that for many parents, it's scary as well, and it is for me too. But for me, it's more scary for them to get COVID.

MG: That's the sound of relief for kids and parents in Calgary back in November, when the COVID vaccine was opened up to children from the ages of five to 11. But two months later, plenty of young Canadians still haven't received their shots. And with al-Muqrin driving case counts and schools reopening, there is now a fresh push to get more children vaccinated. Dr. Fatima Kakkar as a paediatric infectious disease specialist at Centro Steen Children's Hospital in Montreal. Doctor, good morning.

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: Good morning.

MG: Let's talk briefly just about how Macron is affecting kids. How seriously ill are the children that you're seeing at your hospital?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So overall, children are still not severely ill from COVID, so it's only about one or two percent of them that might get hospitalised, but what we're seeing is just the sheer number of cases in the community. So we're getting, you know, 20-25 admissions. And so the sheer number of cases is going up. And when you have so many cases, there are more severe cases. I think every centre across the country has had a handful of severe cases. So even if they're not and overall a large proportion, just because there's so much emotion going around right now and they're representing more and more hospitalisations.

MG: what do we know about whether or not being vaccinated, even with one dose, what can that do in terms of protecting kids during this wave?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So this is some good news that actually came out last week and that up until now, kids were not being hospitalised with such a frequency. So we didn't have enough trial data to say that the vaccine protected against hospitalisations because they're just even in that initial Pfizer study, there wasn't very many hospitalisations. But as many people have heard, there was a huge surge in cases in New York states this last month. And so they actually look now at what they've seen is that the risk of hospitalisation is significantly higher so that 91 percent amongst those who are unvaccinated versus only five percent amongst those who are fully vaccinated. So it's the first evidence we have that vaccination really protects against hospitalisation for kids who might get COVID.

MG: We know that there will be many children who catch COVID during this wave. What if parents need to be aware of as they look after kids who might test positive in the next few weeks?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So that's a great question, because we're seeing tons of cases every day. So for the most part, COVID will be mild for most children. But there are specific groups that I think really should be looked out for a little bit more carefully the first thing or newborns. So any newborn with COVID that has a fever or has a fever for any reason must be seen in the emergency room right away. A newborn is any baby in their first month of life. Also in newborns, really important signs are increased work of breathing, using their chest muscles and just not waking up to feed and drink. And then the older you get, the more we have a little bit of time to wait at home and just monitor those symptoms. So in general, you know, Tylenol for fever. But if the fever persists for more than three days, we'd like them to see a doctor. And then at any age, if your child is having trouble breathing and in general, we can see increased muscle use changes in the colour of their skin and their lips. That's a sign to go to the emergency.

MG: What do you tell parents then about why vaccination is important, even if, as we've been saying, a child is not likely to get particularly ill from this virus?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So even if most children are not likely to get severely ill, some children are. And again, we've had a handful of deaths across centres across Canada. And these are preventable with vaccination. So I do strongly urge parents just for, you know, even if it's a small chance of severe illness, there is a chance. But the other thing and this is great, it is. It also came out recently is that the vaccine has been now shown to be protective against the multisystem inflammatory syndrome. So that tends to happen about four to six weeks after COVID and that is quite severe. Brings children to the intensive care unit and really is that is a severe illness and can lead to long term heart complications. And we've seen data from France and now from the United States to show that having a two doses of the vaccine protects against this. So it protects against severity illness, it protects against MIS-C and also for other vulnerable members of the household. You know, we don't have a vaccine for newborns, but if there are vulnerable grandparents and newborns in the household, it protects against further transmission to those family members.

MG: How much has into hesitancy are you hearing from parents about getting their children vaccinated against COVID 19?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So there was quite a bit initially, and I think, you know, white after the vaccines were approved, it was really based on two things. The impression was that COVID is a [unintelligible] on kids, so why should my child have a vaccine? And also they were saying, you know, maybe there isn't enough trial data. I think two things have really changed since that time, and the first is that we've got now data on over eight million U.S. doses given to show that it is safe. And really, the effects are just miles local side effects. And now, with increasing numbers of COVID cases, we are seeing increased hospitalisations and we are seeing children with severe disease. And so I think those two things really should factor and hopefully changing the equation for those who still might be hesitant.

MG: Dr. Stay with us. I want to talk more about what's at the root in some ways of of that hesitancy. We're going to bring Michelle Driedger into our conversation. She's a professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, who has been researching COVID 19 vaccine hesitancy in Canada. Michelle, good morning to you.

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell me about some of the research that you've done. You've been doing in-depth interviews with some parents based on what you're hearing, what is driving their concerns around this vaccine.

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: A lot of it revolves around the fact that COVID 19 vaccines are seen as being a very different kind of vaccine relative to routine immunisations that they would accept for their kids. Because kids, you know, particularly in that zero to 24 months of age, will be receiving a number of their childhood routine immunisations. So for parents, they they have, they've been having that, that kind of hesitancy around the COVID 19 vaccine simply because these are new. And so they're very much the reasons that the doctor has just described that sense of my kids probably not going to get terribly ill from it, and they didn't want to see their children being part of that safety data set. But the more the time that we progressed, the more data that we gained, particularly since in Canada, we don't have as many haven't had as much access as, say, in the United States, where we can learn from what's going on south of the border and use that knowledge to our benefit.

MG: We're seeing hesitant. And I mean, is that important to be clear about what we're talking about here, that these are parents who who aren't hostile to vaccination, they're hesitant about the vaccination?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: Absolutely. And if you actually start approaching it from a perspective that these parents are anti-science or anti-vaccine, you're going to really shut down any hopes of kind of addressing where are the concerns coming from so that there can be an open dialogue and addressing those issues. And that's probably the most important kind of recommendation is to recognise that this is hesitancy. And for a lot of parents, they want to have a higher level of evidence or reassurances about the vaccine for their children than they would even have set for themselves. They would have been much. They accepted vaccines for themselves much more easily than they are prepared to accept these vaccines for their kids.

MG: This is a message that we got from the cbc.ca portal that kind of picks up on that. We heard from one mother who questioned how sick children would get if they actually caught COVID and also said, And these are her words, "By the way, our children are vaccinated with all the traditional vaccines because we do believe in normal, not emergency approved vaccines. How dare they try to pressure parents to vaccinate kids if they don't know the long term effects?" Now I know that you have studied other childhood vaccines as well, and that attitudes towards them can change. How much more resistance, again, you've hinted at this, but how much more resistance is there to this vaccine than others that are out there?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: I think there's just a lot more open questions about COVID 19 vaccines than we have for routine immunisations, routine immunisations. We've got such long term safety data and historical experiences with these vaccines. We even had parents say, you know, I had the MMR vaccine when I was a kid and I grew up to be a healthy woman, and so I had no trouble in giving that to my child. So people don't have that same kind of experience base when it comes to COVID 19, which is why we need to approach those conversations more thoughtfully.

MG: We have seen real variation in childhood vaccination rates across the country for COVID. The latest numbers show that 38 percent of Alberta children age five through 11 have had their first shot, compared with almost 70 percent in Newfoundland and Labrador. What do you think is driving that variation?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: I think a lot of that kind of revolves around people's responses to it in some respects political ideology, but also kind of just that small C conservatives are conservative and that's not political, but more just kind of general approach too. There's not a quick adoption of new things. And so it takes a little bit longer for that kind of uptake to take place.

MG: How much of this is about access and making vaccines convenient, convenient and accessible for many busy parents? We know that in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, some of the vaccines were given in in schools and there were programmes that were set up actually in the schools where kids would be to make it easier to access those vaccines.

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: There have been many of those programmes because we know that the more convenient, the easiest you make it possible for vaccines to be delivered, the easier it is for them to be taken up by parents with busy schedules with their kids. When we start having those access issues, it can come into play when you're dealing with more rural or remote communities and trying to make sure that there is a lot more efforts to deliver those vaccines in accessible ways. But we also have that kind of what we're seeing a little bit in the West is some of that pushback of how dare the government tell me what to do? And I think there's a lot of that has kind of polarised some of this debate. I think as the doctor was just describing earlier, you know, as we're starting to see more cases of severe COVID, particularly in children, that's probably going to have a bigger impact in changing parental attitudes towards accepting this vaccine than than possibly anything else.

MG: One thing you looked at was the kind of information that parents want and how well they respond to things like government websites. When you take a look at the messaging around childhood vaccines. What is government doing right? I think I mean, there are different levels and layers of government here. But but broadly, what are governments doing right and what are governments doing wrong

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: when they had more standalone website specific to COVID 19, as opposed to embedded within larger provincial health websites? Those have always been hubs, have worked better when it's more standalone than when it's embedded, because then when a parent uses like the search bar to try to find some information, it doesn't take them to something that's completely unrelated. At the same time, we're finding that a lot of these websites aren't properly curating information for parents or for anybody. Canadians who are seeking information about these vaccines. So what you want to do as much as possible is layer that information so that if the short answer to the question isn't sufficient for one person that there are links to further information that that person can follow effectively, you want public health and government to curate those rabbit holes for people so that they are led down appropriate tunnels to see the kind of depth of information that they might want to have, as opposed to relying them, not seeing it on the official websites and then going to let themselves because that will take them down entirely different rabbit holes of most likely uncredible information.

MG: How well do you think governments did in anticipating the issue of hesitancy, particularly when it comes to childhood vaccines?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: Sadly, I think we could have done a lot more earlier to try to help address and anticipate what people's concerns would be. And I don't think that kind of advance work was done sufficiently in order to be able to be as responsive as needed. When we heard that there were going to be immunisations available for five to 11. There were announcement that provinces would be coming out with specified, you know, information relevant and tailored for children. And then it was almost like overnight the vaccines were approved, but that information wasn't in place and that was something that really needed to be. Prepared much sooner.

MG: We've been talking on this programme over the last week or so about the return to in-class learning. It's starting in some parts of the country. It's been telegraphed for the days and weeks ahead in other parts of the country. And one of the things that some observers are saying is if you want to increase childhood vaccination rates, mandate those vaccines for a return to in-person school, there are some provinces that mandate other vaccines for school attendance. What about that idea of mandating vaccines for children in order to attend school? How viable would that be and would that achieve the goal that you and the doctor have been talking about?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: Well, I mean, I think it really depends on all you're achieving and and why and using what aids. We know that mandates can work in the sense that if somebody when we've seen it, even amongst adult uptake of COVID 19 vaccines, I certainly spoke to participants of my research who said that, you know, they delayed getting the vaccine until they absolutely could not. They wanted to keep their job, so they ended up getting vaccinated. So if there were mandates in place at a school level, that might be something that would encourage some parents who are still sitting on the fence about whether or not they would vaccinate their kid. For those parents, where all of a sudden the government coming in and telling them that now this must be done for you to maintain in-person learning, they might find entirely different alternatives, either alternative schools that won't insist on that kind of approach or at least doing home schooling. But how sustainable is that going to be in the long run? Who knows? It depends on how strong those beliefs are for those parents.

MG: I want to bring in Dr. Fatima Kakkar back into the conversation, a paediatric infectious disease specialist at St. Justin's Hospital in Montreal. Dr, as you're listening, what do you hear as in some ways, the roots of the hesitancy that we've been discussing?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So I really appreciate this this discussion, because, yes, it's exactly that. A lot of the parents were just are worried about long term effects and the fact that this seemed to come out of the blue and all of this experimental technology that we might be experimenting on kids and the speed at which everything happened. So, you know, it takes a lot of time to explain, but you know, the technology's been years in the making and you know, people work day and night. And so the speed is something we can explain. But again, it has to be done on an individual basis to really explain to people that there was not an immediate rush and that there's the science behind this is valid, but that's not something. This is something that really has to be done on a one on one basis. And I think it's also important that given this hesitancy initial initially that people are aware that things are changing so quickly and that there is so much more data and that all the crime is really changing the equation and that at this point there is so much community spread it is inevitable. I think that most kids are going to see COVID and others are vaccinated when they see COVID or their unvaccinated. And I really encourage people to take that into the equation because there is so much of it. And you know, we do want a return to school return to normalcy. But if your child's unvaccinated right now, there is a strong likelihood that they will encounter COVID in these next few weeks.

MG: So what's the best way, then, to reach those parents who aren't yet convinced Dr.?

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: So I think that one on one conversation and it had this in my clinic on multiple occasions. You know, it's not easy to get in touch with your physician, but that one on one conversation helps. And oftentimes they really do want me. Just they want my reassurance to say that, listen, I've been vaccinated, it's safe and they want to hear. That's the other element. And I think Michelle said it really well is that there are a lot of barriers to getting the vaccine. So it's not so simple for every family to make appointments for, you know, three or four children and get that time off work. And we actually have very different vaccination rates even here in Montreal, depending on neighbourhoods. So I think making it more accessible and in some cases, I make the appointments with them, in some cases I have extra doses in hospital. I'll offer it to them right then and there. And that really helps overcome that barrier because it's yes, being convinced, but also getting the access.

MG: To take the vaccine to the kids, not bring the kids to the vaccine.

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: Exactly. And really make it easy for parents. And you know, some of this technology we have to book these appointments is great if you're very tech savvy, but it's not the case for everybody and it can be a challenge.

MG: Michelle, just briefly, are you optimistic that enough parents will ultimately go and get their children vaccinated to really blunt the spread of on the ground based on what we've been talking about?

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: I think in in the majority of cases, yes, and I mean, I think the thing that we always have to remember, particularly in these conversations and Dr. Kakar, is correct, it's that individual one on one with their physician that's probably going to have the greatest impact, but it's knowing that parents are making these decisions and they're having these questions from a foundation of love for their kids. They don't want to see their child be sick. They also don't want to see their child, you know, experience adverse effects, you know, from exposure to COVID. But there's still always that nagging fear. Could there be possibly adverse effects from a vaccine? And sometimes that conscious choice of I don't want to expose my child to this one risk from a vaccine might override the other acknowledgement that it is equally a conscious choice when you decide not to vaccinate your kids. And sometimes parents can rationalise that one way if their if their child does get exposed. And that's what we need to try to always kind of keep front in mind that all of these decisions are conscious choices to vaccinate or not. And the the best choice right now with COVID 19 is vaccination in terms of long term prevention of harms from hospitalisation, long term COVID and so forth.

MG: It's great to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much.

DR. FATIMA KAKKAR: Thank you.

MICHELLE DRIEDGER: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Fatima Kakkar is a paediatric infectious disease specialist at Centre City and Children's Hospital in Montreal. Michelle Dredger is a professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. You're CBC News is up next. And then a girl lost in the forest and her 700 pound talking crocodile nemesis. Canadian author Lawrence Hill will be here in six minutes to tell us the rest of the story on his newest book. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us!

Canadian author Lawrence Hill on tackling big social issues for young readers

Guests: Lawrence Hill

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

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MG: Still to come, regulating Canadian mining companies at home is one thing monitoring what they do on indigenous territory in Guatemala is another question entirely. In just under 30 minutes, we'll talk about the impact of some of those companies. But first, a story of a girl and a talking crocodile.

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MG: Lawrence Hill is one of this country's most celebrated authors. He's known for novels like The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, both hard hitting fiction with serious commentary on race and social justice. You might not have expected his next book to feature a talking crocodile. His newest novel is called Beatrice and Croc Harry, and even though it's meant for children and yes, Croc Harry does speak. It also deals with those same themes of race and social justice. The book is out today. Lawrence Hill joins me now. Lawrence, good morning.

LAWRENCE HILL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Congratulations. This is a lot of fun.

LAWRENCE HILL: Thank you so much. I had a lot of fun writing it.

MG: Why did you write this? Why did you write a book for kids?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I guess I was looking to entertain myself and kind of move into a joyous, playful mode that was quite liberating in comparison to, say, writing literary fiction for adults. And it just played out that bedtime, chillies and playfulness, you know that you'd feel as a father telling stories, children bedtime. But it also maybe it was soothing in the pandemic, soothing to me and hopefully for my readers.

MG: Me to talk about those bedtime stories. We'll talk about the stories that you read your kids, but you also speak at the end of the book about the stories that you were read. Your father, historian, human rights specialist, was also a storyteller?

LAWRENCE HILL: Oh, yes. My father didn't read to us. That was my mother's role. But he told us bedtime stories, as I did to my children. And he just made them up and he can mimic animals and create the most fantastic and ridiculous but entertaining stories, you know, man fighting the lion, that kind of thing. And so he told us bedtime stories, and he was terrific at it. He invented [unintelligible] like [unintelligible]. These rich, colourful kind of words from African-American vernacular. And so I sort of rejoiced in the play of language, you know, at bedtime with my dad.

MG: What does Goozlem of mean?

LAWRENCE HILL: The Ghoozlam that's an organ in your body, located just a little bit above the Hippophlam. And its--

MG: Sorry... Sorry... Stop. Just a little bit above the which?

LAWRENCE HILL: The hippophlam, that's another organ in your body.

MG: Good to know, ok.

LAWRENCE HILL: It really refers to the soul. And if you're a soulful person with a good heart, maybe you'll have a Goozlam. So it's a mysterious but valuable organ in your body, and it's really one of the most important organs in the body, the Goozlam.

MG: What were the stories that you read your kids?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I mostly told my children stories, but I read, you know, and in Green Gables and Charlotte's Web and The Tittle Prince and stories like that. But most of the time when I was doing bedtime with my children, I just made up stories. And that was really what provided the origins of Beatrice and Harry.

MG: Who's Beatrice? Tell us a little bit about her.

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, Beatrice is my daughter who's twenty two years old and just graduated from Givati, but when she came into my life at the age of three, I wanted to bond with her and really create a good blended family. And so I used to tell her bedtime stories featuring a fictional Beatrice just a few years older than she really was. It was always fighting the jaws of death, you know, in dealing with crocodiles. And so she just loved these stories about a girl, always outfoxing the crocodile at the very last minute, escaping death in the jaws of the belly of a crack. And so she made me promise that I'd turn these stories into a novel, and it took me about 15 years. But here we are.

MG: And Beatrice in the book. Tell us a little bit about her.

LAWRENCE HILL: Beatrice is a girl who awakens with no memory. Zero. She doesn't even know her last name. No idea who she is, where she comes from, if she has a mother and father, siblings. Nothing. And she doesn't even realise that she's black and she's all alone in the massive, inescapable forest in a tree house is where she wakes up, and she has food and books in the tree house. So she's not going to die of starvation, but she has no idea who she is or where she's from, and there no other humans that she has no idea why she's been ex-communicated from the human race. And she developed a tempestuous relationship with the 710 fast-talking 609 tooth crocodile named Harry, and Harry will eventually be enlisted to help her piece together her last identity.

MG: Why a talking crocodile?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, he's dangerous. He's a predator. She has the unfortunate obligation as so many of us do in this world of turning predators into allies, so she's got to sort of tame this attacker and turn him into an ally and use him in the form of a bond with him that will help both of them, she hopes. And he's, you know, he's an entertaining guy. He's got this fast talking, soothing voice with a PhD vocabulary, and she's always learning new words. You know, as he's insulting her and she wants to keep up with the insults and insulting him back. And so she has to consult the dictionary to keep up with him. And he is a threat, but is also going to be a close friend and she's going to form a relationship with him. That's going to be good for both of them and they're going to go on a journey and they're going to try to find out who she is and who he is.

MG: You've written, as I said, these big, serious novels before. Is it different writing a book for kids?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, it was. I mean. The propulsion is the same, you won't tell a good story and you want to engage yourself, and I want to excite myself. But it was very different in that the light sort of blew off all the constraints. I can't have a talking crocodile in the search of adult novels, right? Normally, writer, I can't set a novel in the year 2019. That's not really my thing normally or to have a talking lemur and a talking tarantula into an event, you know, fantastic things. Just really how I work as a novelist normally. But I felt so free and playful and fun, and it kind of brought out a Saigon with it. Has it been allowed? I haven't let allow surface before in my writing. Again, it's that kind of bedtime storytelling persona. So I felt that kind of tapped into another aspect of my own personality, and I love to let it just come out of that moment rather than play.

MG: As you mentioned, Beatrice wakes up in this tree house and has no idea where she is and who she is. What's what's going on there beyond what's happening right on the page?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I mean, there's no need to say this on the page. And so I don't. But we have millions of people were ripped from Africa and howled across the ocean in chains and enslaved in the Americas and divorced entirely from their culture, not knowing, especially if they are the descendants of those who are enslaved, not being able to know who they were or what their names were. Religion's faith, cultures, geographies where they came from, who their people were. Nothing makes them less, you know, the accident oral history being transmitted from generation to generation, but most of us. If we descended from enslaved peoples have no way of knowing who we really were, where we came from, and so I think of this novel for children is is an allegory about the aftershocks of the transatlantic slave trade because Beatriz also through no fault of her own and wakes up having been totally excommunicated from her, you know, natural setting. And she has no idea. And she wants to find out. She wants to know who she is and where she comes from and why she was sent away. And so she's hungry for knowledge and for her own identity. And she's so alone that she doesn't even know that she's black, because why would you think about your blackness if you're an animal in the forest with no other human beings? The concept of race only enters into a concrete perspective when you're engaging with other people. And so even that is something she's going to have to discover. So she's a bit of a blank slate, which is very exciting for me as a writer because I get to kind of draw her into a state of awareness.

MG: As she starts to figure out a bit of who she is. As you mentioned, she comes to understand that she is black, and she wonders initially whether there's something wrong with being brown. And then when she's called black, she says, I'm not black, I'm brown. Tell me a bit more about that and about sketching that out in the story?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I mean Blackness is so many things and colour, so many things, but blackness is a question of identity that isn't really a function of your skin colour, it's a function of how you're seen and how you see yourself and how you engage with the world and who your people are and how you identify with that. And so when she is first called black, unfortunately in an insulting way, you know, her first contact with the human race is negative and insulting. When she's first called black. It doesn't make any sense to her because it doesn't relate to her understanding of the word as a colour because her skin isn't black. She's brown. But she has to sort of juggle with this, this complex notion of blackness being more than just the colour of your skin. And so that's why she initially says to herself, How can they call me black and I'm not black? She hasn't been forced to juggle with these things before. And so she has no memory. So she has to sort of become aware of the deeper meaning of racial identity.

MG: One of the ways that she does that is through her hair. Tell me about her hair and why that's interesting to you in terms of the way that she comes to terms with the hair on her head.

LAWRENCE HILL: I had such fun writing her juggling with her hair, and I think when you have a character, you need to give them things to do. And what better thing for Beatrice have to do in this first, which is all alone, is that having to figure out what to do with their hair? And she doesn't have any hair products but she has black hair, and so she's got to figure out what to do and she puts, you know, just water on it. That doesn't work. And then she, you know, smashes open a coconut and puts coconut water in the hair. But that doesn't really work. And she's got to kind of figure out how to manage it. You know, initially with some twists and then braids, and then she gets a, you know, a lemur who's a hairdresser in the forest to finally cardrona her hair and eventually graduate to an afro. But you need some assistance with this. And so the hair is a vehicle by which when she begins to take care of herself, she has some embedded memories. Somehow, even though she didn't know her last name or who her mother and she kind of nails, her fingers sort of know what to do when they're sort of twisting her hair into. It did twist, for example, she just seems to have some kind of embedded memory, and I think it's fascinating to watch her learn to work with her hair as a means of personally discovering who she is and what her identity is.

MG: There are very clear and sort of deliberate attempts in the story to make her feel better about who she is and to make her feel better about where she comes from. Does that mean as a father? Does that come from personal experience in terms of things that you talk to your kids about?

LAWRENCE HILL: Absolutely. And, you know, not just as a father, as a person myself, remembering my own childhood, you know, in my early youth, I really thought that I was ugly and I really struggled with that in the, you know, because I was growing up with, you know, black features in an otherwise entirely white suburb in Don Mills in the early 60s. And it took a while. It took me until my adolescence before I could grow into a sense of self acceptance and, you know, feeling good about how I looked. And so I want children to feel good about how they look, and I'd like black children to feel good about, feel great about how they look. They love their hair and their skin. So absolutely, I wanted Beatrice to go into a place where she likes playing with their hair. She likes the things she likes, the way she likes. When people can't get that, well, that's their problem.

MG: Is it difficult to write about big, complex topics like racism for a younger audience?

LAWRENCE HILL: It is. I found it really challenging and equally exciting. I mean, this is a journey of kind of the reconstruction of the last identity. It's a journey in which Beatrice has to learn, to oppose and to stand up against kind of genocidal thrust and gross human injustice. And so there are big themes and of course, there's a theme of, as I mentioned, you know, the kind of the aftershocks of the transatlantic slave trade. Others not mentioned. That's really how the novel is operating. And. And I chose to try to approach these things with a light kind of death, sometimes irreverent, playful touch, and to use a lot of exaggerated language and the fluid on the page with words. And to be funny and to have some slapstick. And it's really tricky to be funny and to be light-hearted, witty, deft with about painful issues. But it's what I set out to. I found it really exciting and I thought, Well, if you're going to do this, just go for it, go for broke and let it rip and really try to be the most exaggerated bedtime story telling that I can be. And that page. So I did find it difficult, and it's hard to write publicly about painful issues, but it's when I set out to do.

MG: But you said it was exciting as well. What's exciting about it?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I got to invent, you know, I feel for Harry, and there's another character named Horace Harrison Junior, the third who's who's a rabbit and the lemur who's also got some identity issues in terms of her racial identity and a tarantula who's a lovable, lifesaving but very toxic tarantula. And I got to invent these characters and imagine them to be people that have interacted with Beatrice and to create this story end to end, and also to invent the concept that and people who've been wronged as Beatrice has been wronged in a previous life and people who caused the harm will find the opportunity of reconciliation. You know, in this alternate universe, which is called the force of Juliet, where Beatrice wakes up and I got to sort of engage my heart and go to issues that mean so much to me, but to be playful and imaginative and just create a whole new world.

MG: Is there something that you think fiction can do in terms of articulating those issues, particularly to young people? That's more difficult. And other venues that does fiction open a door in a way that that perhaps it might not be open to otherwise?

LAWRENCE HILL: Absolutely any. And it's not just fiction, you know, it's it's film and it's works of art and it's painting theatre. But storytelling is such a door opening method of introducing children to important issues and helping them think through things that happened and develop a sense of reality and exciting them about a personal journey. Because what child doesn't love a great story about a great character who's in trouble, who's struggling, who's having difficulties, and you identify with this personal struggle, these challenges. If she ever going to find her mother? And even though her mother might be if she saw her in a crowd, how would you know her own mother? Is she going to find her last name? Where does it come from? What year is it? And I think the children, certainly my own children, did, and I did as a child love that kind of a whodunit. Where are we and how are we getting there? What's this all about? And so the personal struggle is often what engages readers, children and others, you know, adults to engage in serious matters. And so art is art as a way of guiding us, and exciting is about issues of importance.

MG: What do you make of how those serious matters, as you say, are being talked about now? I think of when the Book of Negroes came out in 2007 is a huge sensation here around the world, across the United States. Since then, the U.S. in particular has had a racial reckoning, including around issues of its own history of slavery. And now it's in the midst of this convulsion in terms of how they will deal with that history. When you watch what's happening there? What do you make of it?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, you know, I just sent some Americans, my father and mother were Americans, and most of my family are still African-Americans, and white Americans are still in the states. They're either in Brooklyn or California and, you know, are other places on the beloved seaboard. There's my black family and friends and I feel that in many ways, certainly through my experiences in the states and living there and being with my family, Americans struggle more openly with- yes, tortured in yes, polarised, but struggle more openly and more fearlessly with their own painful histories of slavery and racial oppression and segregation in some degree of liberation than we do in Canada, where we're still, I think, mostly in a state of denial. And I still feel it's true that most Canadians, you know, from from Whitehorse to St. John's, still can't tell you anything about the history of slavery or segregation or the civil rights movement in this country. We can talk about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And in the Civil War and so forth in the United States. Why is this so? It's still the case that most of us in Canada have very little knowledge of the history of the 400 year history of black peoples in this country.

MG: Why do you think that it's so?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, I think that it comforts us to think I say generally in referring to Canadians, comforts us to to put an accusatory finger at those around the world, whether it's the former regime of apartheid in South Africa or the history of slavery in the states and other countries, Comfort says they refer to other people's problems rather than openly examining our own. Why is it that so many Canadians can be so appalled by the murder of unarmed black people in the states, but not know that many other black people have been killed in Canada, too? Because it's somehow comforting to think about other people's problems and not recognise it were made largely in the same kind of mess. And so I'm always looking to provoke. Conversations in awareness and to engage in stories and drama about these issues, which are just as serious in Canada as they are.

MG: What do you see as your role in this? I mean, in the acknowledgements of the book you write, some people might say that writing is a ridiculous activity. Think about it. You spend years living in your own head, drifting away from the dinner table, conversations, walking right by friends in the park, and you talk about how some people could dismiss writing. But why you love writing as a writer? What do you see as your role in this country in addressing those issues?

LAWRENCE HILL: Well, to provoke conversations, to make people feel that they're free to talk and to make people feel they don't have to be attacked, you know, to bring up their concerns and insecurities in questions and conversations and to to open up a dialogue through drama. But I also feel my role in one of my roles is to encourage black people and indigenous people, people of colour to have the courage to embrace the arts. And there is a tremendous pressure amongst children of immigrants. Certainly, it was my own experience. As a child of an African-American immigrant to avoid the arts like the plague because it's not secure, you should be in medicine or architecture or dentistry or something secure. And in most black students that I meet these days as a professor at University of Guelph, I'm not alone in the arts because their parents wouldn't allow it because they think it's kind of like a waste of time. And how is that going to get you a job? And so it's very difficult. I think if you're racialized in this country and you're 15 or 17 to have the courage to say, yes, I'm going for it. I want to be a novelist. I'm going for it. I want to be a musician because the pressure is so intense to sort of look for something more secure. So I guess part of my role is to encourage people of all backgrounds to have the faith to pursue their passions and to go for the arts. That's the thing.

MG: That could start with people telling their kids stories. You can imagine parents reading this book to their kids as they get tucked into bed. We're just about out of time, but I mean, as the writer, as the author of that, having been inspired by the stories that you told, what is that? How does that make you feel knowing that that this this is the last thing that the kids could hear before they drift off to sleep.

LAWRENCE HILL: It makes me feel great. A friend of mine wrote the other day to say her son, who read the book, came to a very young age and said, Let's palaver, which is one of the words to speak, you know, used in the novel playfully. Although it's a real word and it makes me feel great, the intergenerationally people make you write and read this book together, and I hope it's it's just as much for playful, you know, adult readers as it as it is for your children.

MG: It feels like there could be a sequel when you get to the end of the story not giving anything away, but it feels like there could be more.

LAWRENCE HILL: I wrote it with a sequel in mind. Let's see if the world wants a sequel and if they do, I'll write one. But I haven't written a novel for children before, so I don't really know how people will take to it. But if they do, I have a sequel in mind and I have some new invented words in the sequel to use.

MG: It's been launched out into the universe, and we'll see how the universe responds. Lawrence Hill. It's always great to talk to you. Thank you very much.

LAWRENCE HILL: Thank you so much. Take care.

MG: And you, Lawrence Hill. His new book is called Beatrice and Croc Harry coming up after a regional update.

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It's been 12 years. It's exhausting. I am so tired and I continue persevering, seeking justice in.

MG: Angelica is an indigenous Guatemalan woman who refuses to give up on the idea of justice in 90 seconds. We'll hear why it's taking so long to see a day in court. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

Calls for the federal government to regulate Canadian mining companies operating overseas

Guests: Grahame Russell, Angelica Choc

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. When it comes to the global mining industry, Canada is the major player more than half the world's publicly listed exploration and mining companies are headquartered in Canada. That's more than 1500 companies with interests in some 100 countries around the world. And yet, when it comes to overseeing or policing, when necessary, the activities of Canadian based mining companies and their subsidiaries. Canada largely leaves that to the countries in which they operate. According to a 2017 study done by researchers at McGill and York University's, Canadian mining companies have been associated with dozens of deaths, hundreds of injuries and detentions against opponents of their mining operations in Latin America. Grahame Russell is the co-editor of a new book called Testimonial Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala. He's also the director of Rights Action, which works with indigenous groups in Guatemala and Honduras. Fighting against industrial mega-projects on their traditional lands. Grahame, good morning.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Good morning.

MG: Tell me a bit from your knowledge as to how long mining companies from this country have been operating in Guatemala.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: There's two timelines. One is the more recent sort of new wave of what I would call aggressive Canadian mining investment in Guatemala that began in the late 90s and early 2000s. And we document four of those stories. So it was mining those indigenous land defence struggles, human rights, defence struggles in testimonial. One of those mining companies, the nickel mining operation, has a back story that goes to the late 50s and early 60s.

MG: You've described some of those operations. These are your words as predatory and uncontrolled.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: We've documented widening Guatemala, and I've seen this with all my work in Guatemala and Honduras is that I believe the Canadian government and our companies know that there's almost no way that any legal accountability can be achieved in a country like Guatemala that is characterised by systemic corruption and impunity, let alone repression. And so it's a nice and polite thing to say. We're so called respecting the sovereignty of another country, but everyone knows that no justice will be done there. And it's also known that these these are Canadian problems. All the major decisions, political decisions by the Canadian government, all the major major corporate and investor decisions are being taken here in Canada. I think in many ways the mining companies actually don't know or even care as to where the resources are. They know little to nothing about a country like Guatemala. This is a Canadian problem and it should be policed and we should have minimal criminal law and civil accountability in Canada.

MG: We'll come back to that in a moment. In the meantime, let's talk about Guatemala itself. This is a country that's that's been through Civil War more than three decades of civil war until the peace accord in 1996. How active were mining companies from Canada? How active were they in Guatemala during that conflict?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Well, one company was active during the conflict, and this is a story that goes through the International Nickel Company, Inco, came into the country late fifties, early sixties, but there was as part of the peace accords, it was something called the Truth Commission report, and they investigated human rights violations across the country. It was the United Nations Truth Commission that concluded that genocide was carried out in parts of the country by the U.S.-backed military regime. And it also documented one international company income is subsidiary, is known as export in the eastern sort of sketchy territory land of the country. And the The Truth Commission report showed some documents six different cases of smelting in coal mining company and the military carrying out human rights violations.

MG: What about what about the purposes of Guatemala for the leaders of of that country coming out of a devastating conflict like that? How important was mining in terms of creating and rebuilding an economy?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: I don't think they helped rebuild an economy whatsoever. They've actually undermined the possibility of good community development across the country. They've depleted what water sources, they've contaminated water sources, they've forcibly evicted communities and broken the communities apart, let alone the cases of violence and killings. So that's not good development. That's not helping the economy of the country. It's definitely helping the economic interest of the economic elites, so-called economic elites, and it's definitely benefiting the Canadian companies and investors. But to take that back a bit. Canada had a very intentional role in the 90s. But at the same time that it was publicly supporting the so-called peace processes and saying that it was going to respect the letter of of the law in the implementation of the peace processes. We learnt after the fact that they were aggressively advocating for reforms to the Guatemalan mining law that were brought about in the late 90s with Canadian funding to then open up the country's resources to Canadian extraction companies and testimonial is the proof of how that story went for the Guatemalans.

MG: Who was pushing for that?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Canadian government was aggressively pushing for that. And there was mining companies that were involved and then people, individuals who were involved in the writing of the mining law later went on to work in the mines and environment energy in Guatemala or with mining companies themselves.

MG: And when you say the Canadian government is that the Canadian government from abroad or the representatives of the Canadian government in that country threw through an embassy,

GRAHAME RUSSELL: I say specifically the case of the embassy because we had sort of front row seats to that. I was living in Guatemala in the early 90s full time when these stories started to crop up just a little bit. And then my work continued on from there. And so by the late 90s, early 2000s, we were openly engaging in ongoing discussion with the Canadian Embassy, sending them urgent actions about what was starting to happen. And at the same time they were, they had a they were sort of working in a sense, and this is a bit crass as a PR office for the Canadian mining industry, and they were unabashed about it. They were taking out op ed pieces in newspaper. They were co-funding public forums with the World Bank to extol the virtues and benefits of this quote unquote development model. And every step of the way groups like rights action, local groups on the ground were sending them urgent actions, saying, Well, this is not what's happening. Could you please respond to this? Can we talk to you about this? And we got almost no response whatsoever.

MG: And years in those laws being rewritten, what did that allow the companies to do? What different freedoms did it offer them?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Well, that's a good question. What it did is it brought it the veneer of modernity, and this was how it was pitched as an aid project. We want to strengthen the rule of law in Guatemala. We want to strengthen good governance, and here's a new law in place that sets out all the rules that they're going to abide by. But when you have a country that's characterised by impunity and corruption, I think that's just window dressing.

MG: How much, say, did the indigenous peoples on whom land whose land many of these operations took place? How much say did they have in these mines going forward?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Zero. I don't think I'm exaggerating that point that I think they had zero say. We started hearing about them through people that we work with around the country. Did you hear that a Canadian companies come in to such and such an area? And when they did find out they were coming in, they were being told explicitly that they were squatters on company owned land and the problems just go forward from there.

MG: There are different contexts, but do you see a parallel given what we're seeing in this country right now, when resource projects on on indigenous lands become very controversial and can lead to explosive situations in the courts and on the ground and beyond? Do you see a parallel between how these issues have been handled in Guatemala, for example, and then here in Canada?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Huge parallels. Certainly resource extraction on indigenous territories in Canada, there are many direct parallels with what's going on in Guatemala. It's not to get too comparative, man. It is worse in Guatemala, the levels of violence and corruption and impoverishment and displacement. But there's a lot of parallels.

MG: Well, let me bring another guest into this conversation. Her name is Angelica Choc. She is an Indigenous Lands rights campaigner in Guatemala who has paid a heavy personal price for her activism around mines. I spoke with her recently with the help of a translator. Take a listen to our conversation.

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MG: Angelica, hello.

ANGELICA CHOC: Hola.

MG: Your husband, Adolfo Ish [unintelligible] was killed 12 years ago. Do you mind telling me what happened?

ANGELICA CHOC: Yes. Adolfo was a great person. He was a great person in our community. He was a great husband, a great father, and he was a great leader. He was a great defender of indigenous peoples rights, of human rights, of environmental rights. And for that, he was persecuted by Hudbay Minerals, a Canadian company. The chief of the security company killed my husband on the 27th of September of 2009. And I continue seeking justice. It's been 12 years. It's exhausting. I am so tired and I continue persevering, seeking justice in the Canadian courts.

MG: I'm sorry for what you went through and what you've been through,

ANGELICA CHOC: Gracias.

MG: a security official who worked for that. Canadian mining firm Hudd Bay Minerals pled guilty to Adolphus killing earlier this year in a Guatemalan court. What did that mean to you? How significant was that for you?

ANGELICA CHOC: Firstly, I always say it's it's an achievement. It has a lot of value for me as a moeketsi woman. It was very difficult for a woman and especially an indigenous women to be heard by the justice to be validated. And so it is meaningful in my struggle for justice. I also think it's an example for other women allies in this struggle. It's very important.

MG: your husband's killing isn't the only time that your family has been targeted over land rights and the anti-mining activism that you've done. What else has happened to your family?

ANGELICA CHOC: We all know as human rights defenders, we are persecuted. We are targeted. Our families, my kids have been suffering because of the state of siege. It's a state of siege that was declared by the Guatemalan state, by the Guatemalan government. They sent the military, the police to our communities. They raided our houses. They raided the houses of my family, the houses of my kids, my sisters. We've had our belongings trashed and gone through in our own houses. This has all been traumatising and it's been traumatising for my kids and especially for my grandchildren. It has created a lot of pain.

MG: You're part of the indigenous Mayan Ceccacci people in Guatemala. How big of a factor do you think your heritage is in? How you've been treated as a land defender?

ANGELICA CHOC: They have excluded our rights. Our culture is our identity in the way that we connect with nature during the internal armed conflict up to today. Indigenous peoples rights have been abused. They don't recognise those as the guardians of nature, as the Guardians of Mother Earth. Companies come and take away everything.

MG: Why are you suing Hudbay Minerals civilly in Canadian courts over your husband's death? Why is that happening in a Canadian court?

ANGELICA CHOC: I often am asked similar questions. The company needs to be judged in their own country, not in Guatemala. They are a Canadian company, so they need to be judged in Canada. We've been waiting for justice for a long time. It's been 12 years. I think that's actually what they want these companies. They want to lengthen the time for justice. They want to make us wait until we disappear. We want reparations. We will wait. But there's also a need for laws to hold companies accountable for what they do in other countries. We are impoverished here. The companies need to be judged in Canada,

MG: Your husband's killer was convicted in a court in Guatemala. Do you think that Guatemala is capable of providing justice?

ANGELICA CHOC: About that conviction, it took many years. He did plead. And it was very late. I was very tired of all the waiting for justice. Still, it's an achievement. He was a Guatemalan person and the case was held in Guatemala, but he was the chief of security of Hudbay minerals. That means that had been minerals has also guilty about what happens.

MG: When you look into the future, what do you hope happens with mining operations in Guatemala?

ANGELICA CHOC: Truly what I feel and what I think for my Guatemala, for my kids, my grandkids, our grandkids, because my struggle is for our people, for our Guatemala. What I think is that we not depend on the company, the companies bring destruction to Mother Earth. If we continue with mining companies, if we continue depending on them, everything will become a desert. And I do not want my grandkids to inherit a desert. I want the grandkids to live in nature, to live a fulfilling, happy life, to live from the forest and from the lake to enjoy all of these things. I want things to be like the were before, where there were no divisions, where there was no pool of leaders, where there was harmony. I want to go back to that.

MG: Angelica, thank you very much for speaking with us. I appreciate you talking to us this morning. Thank you.

ANGELICA CHOC: Muchas gracias.

MG: Angelica Choc is a leading indigenous land rights campaigner in Guatemala. Graham Russell, what did you think of what she has gone through in the price that she and others have paid for their anti-mining activism in that country?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Oh, and it's very, very moving as hard as it is to listen to that. She's understated the degree of suffering that's hurt her particular families who's been targeted with. But then it just pushes back out to the broader issues. And I do want to highlight the Hellicar story is harsh, but it is one of many stories in a place like Guatemala that are harsh.

MG: The lawsuit that she has filed is one of three in Canada targeting US HUD Bay Minerals for the activities of that company's subsidiaries in Guatemala. How significant do you find that those cases to be if you take a look at them as a whole?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: I think they're extraordinarily important and courageous lawsuits that the 13 plaintiffs in the three lawsuits are people like Angélica. They're all extraordinary. They live in conditions of extreme poverty and ongoing racism and conditions of violence. And yet they've stuck with these cases. And we're 11 years and lawyers, Corey want us and Maori and and Trundle have stuck with it, and it's extraordinary. And so their precedent setting cases for a reason. But at the same time, I think they're a tip of the iceberg, and they're almost the exception to the rule of impunity in Canada. These are the first cases in Canadian legal history, and it's only in a civil lawsuit. There is no criminal law accountability whatsoever in Canada. We have the corruption the Foreign Public Officials Act that is is sort of moribund. There is no political interest or resources behind it to actively investigate what oftentimes looks like criminal behaviour in country by Canadian companies in countries like Guatemala or beyond. And so the Hudbay minerals lawsuits are both extraordinary precedents in Canadian law, long overdue, and they're the tip of the iceberg and almost exception to the rule of impunity.

MG: You said earlier that these are Canadian problems. Is that why you believe it's important that a Canadian mining company be held to account in Canada rather than leaving it to the judicial system in Guatemala?

GRAHAME RUSSELL: I think these are, and we send it out in the book co-editor Katherine Nolan. That's sort of the the constant theme. These are Canadian problems all across the board. It is Canadian government policy at work and there's no there's little to no oversight or accountability for Canadian public policy in other countries. These are Canadian corporate and investor problems. Investment companies, pension funds and private equity funds heavily invest in resource extraction sector, and they're one fiduciary duty is to maximise profits. They have no responsibility to investigate or find out if they're what they're benefiting from. They're profiting from is contributing to the types of violence and corruption set out in testimonial. And lastly, Matt and I say this respectfully. I think it's a Canadian media problem. This the breadth and the depth of this problem, which is a very systemic problem in many countries around the world with the breadth and depth of this problem, which is a Canadian problem. There is not the media coverage has not been there yet to pursue these stories as they should be pursued. And I say that with a lot of respect and acknowledging that we're talking about this now.

MG: Hudbay sent us a statement, and in that statement, it says that, "While it takes the allegations very seriously, it does not believe the accusations made against it to be true". It also says that Hudbay - this is from the statement, "Recognises that our ability to successfully operate our business requires that we operate responsibly and ethically as an operator of mining operations in Peru and Canada. HUD based human rights policy includes commitments to constructive and mutually beneficial engagement with local communities and security practises that respect human rights". What legislative changes would you like to see in this country to create more oversight and accountability for companies like this that are operating abroad? Canadian companies.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: I think I'm not the legal expert, and I'm not going to deflect fully that question, but what I think the underlying problem is not a lack of laws, though I think we do need some legislative change. I think it's a lack of political will. I think that this situation for the Canadian said of the mining sector, the investment sector, including public pension funds right through to the government, which is aggressively promoting expansion of Canadian economic benefits around the world. It's too beneficial. There's not. And so we have civil law and the precedents been set with had been in those lawsuits and was followed up by the title resources lawsuits and then the Nelson case. But these are again, I think, the tip of the iceberg and one of the chapters in the book testimonial was written by Cory Wanless and [unintelligible], and they let they set out some clear recommendations they have as to how to enhance and facilitate access to justice in Canada. For people like Angelica Choc, who are deeply impoverished people, oftentimes not speaking English, let alone even Spanish living on the other side of the world, so they have little to no access to justice. Even when civil laws are fine, civil cases are finally being accepted. And as I said earlier on the on the criminal law side, there's we have the corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act on the book. It's it's binding criminal law. I think my experience with that over the last 17 years is there is zero resources behind it. There's zero political interest to have prosecutors follow up on some of these allegations.

MG: So when the government of Canada says that it's appointed a Canadian ombudsperson for responsible enterprise and that she has the tools to review human rights complaints and launch reviews. You don't believe that the teeth are there to to to to enforce what you're calling for in a meaningful way.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: There's no teeth there. Teeth would be at a bare minimum binding criminal law where people actually went to jail for if and when it was proved that they they knowingly participated in or, you know, by omission or by commission, they committed crimes. Or there are other operations committed, contributed to human rights violations, environmental harm, et cetera. Then there would be that would put the fear of the rule of law into two Canadian companies and investors, whether in the mining sector or not. The horse. Since the mid-2000s, there's been a series of these sort of ombudsperson offices established, and they're not. They have no teeth behind them whatsoever. It's all based on voluntary compliance. And if and when there's a problem found, the role of the Ombudsperson office is to sit down with the quote unquote stakeholders, i.e. the company and the people being harmed to say, Let's resolve this amicably. There's no teeth. And and if and if wrongs are proven, there's no there's no legal remedy.

MG: Grahame, it's good to speak with you about this, thank you very much.

GRAHAME RUSSELL: Thanks very much.

MG: Grahame Russell is the co-editor of a new book called Testimonial Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala. That is The Current for this Tuesday, coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Malcolm McDowell, star actor made his name in award winning films like A Clockwork Orange and Caligula, and now he finds himself in Newfoundland and Labrador playing Mark Critch's grandfather in the new CBC sitcom. Son of a Critch. Tom Power speaks with Malcolm McDowell about his extraordinary career and what he made of Newfoundland. That's coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio one. We were just hearing about the impact that Canadian mining companies are having on indigenous people and their lands in Guatemala. Sara Curruchich has been fighting for her homeland in her own way. She's indigenous Guatemalan. She's also a musician. She writes songs in Spanish and in her native language of Chico, about the Earth, about animals, about her ancestors and about the strength of indigenous women. Her first studio album came out in 2019. It was an international hit and will leave you with a song from that. This is Sara Curruchich song called Ser del Vientro. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and we'll see you tomorrow.

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[Song]

Tuesday January 11, 2022 Transcript

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