One Bullet: Waiting for a Witness

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: Moving to that place you know, ruined our life.

VOICE 2: Did it, did it hurt? Did he try to call me? Did it, you know did he try to get up when he fell?

VOICE 1: I was in jail when another friend, when I got the news and we just begin to cry.

VOICE 2: The people who did it, do they ever feel affected by that?

VOICE 1: I didn't know who you could trust. So I live my life on the edge, not knowing when it's my time.

[Music]

PETER SLOLY: So I was an inspector during the midnight shift when a call came in for sound of gunshots, possibly someone shot in the area of Sherbourne and Bloor.

JESSICA LINZEY: Toronto, June 23rd, 2001. Peter Sloly is a cop rising through the ranks.

PETER SLOLY: It's a very hot, hot night and kind of quiet night. So there's a lot of cars buzzing around, trying to find any signs of a crime scene or any evidence of shots being fired. For whatever reason I decided to head down on to Rosedale Valley Road and had pulled my car over to the side of the road trying to figure out, you know was this a legitimate call. And as I was sitting, I remember hearing a couple of drops hit my windshield. At first I wasn't particularly concerned because I thought it's a hot humid night, maybe we're about to get some rain or maybe it's just some condensation. But then I realized, I looked up and realized that the drops were actually blood.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I never knew you could love somebody that much until you know Justin came around. Justin was my only child and he was the best thing that ever happened in my life. That was my, that was my everything.

JESSICA LINZEY: Earlier on that same evening, just blocks from where Peter Sloly would report a possible injured person, Audette Shephard is at home in the apartment she shares with her 19-year-old son Justin. His girlfriend, Latanya Langford, impatient to get their night under way, is waiting to go to the movies. But then Justin gets a call.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I heard his phone ring and then he says mom I'll be back in 10 minutes.

LATANYA LANGFORD: He was agitated. He's like no, you're staying here. I'll be right back.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And he left and then my phone rang and when I picked up, I saw unknown name, unknown number. So I said, oh that must be Justin and I picked up the phone, I didn't any. Noone was on the phone. So I kept calling back again and he wouldn't answer.

LATANYA LANGFORD: So we get in our car and we start driving around.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Nobody knew where he was.

JESSICA LINZEY: By now Inspector Peters Sloly has made his way to a footbridge. It's about 1:00 in the morning. It's a dark heavily treed area above a busy Toronto road and it has become apparent that this is a crime scene.

PETER SLOLY: I was able to see a body on the bridge.

JESSICA LINZEY: Eventually Audette and Latanya give up their search and head home. They're hoping Justin will turn up later that morning. But when that doesn't happen, Latanya contacts police.

LATANYA LANGFORD: And they told me that they were coming to me and that was odd.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette is leaving Sunday church service when Latanya calls and says.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Oh Audette someone got killed at the bridge.

JESSICA LINZEY: And that the police need to speak to her.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So I got into my car and I just I was just bawling. I said not my child, not my child.

VOICE 2: Three shootings in Toronto over the weekend. The most recent came last night.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I heard on the news that they said someone was shot. I just kept saying it can't, it's not him. It's not him.

VOICE 2: On Saturday the body of a promising young basketball player was found not far from his St. Jamestown home. He'd been shot in the head.

LATANYA LANGFORD: I broke down. I went down to my knees, I'm crying and I'm thinking how do I tell his mom. Like how, how do you tell a mother her only child is gone.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So by the time I got home, she came with to two police officers and then I realized, you know what, it was him.

VOICE 2: 19-year-old, Justin Shephard, had planned to go to the U.S. in the fall on a basketball scholarship. Shephard's older half brother, Jamaal Magloire, plays in the NBA. Shepherd's mother plans to make a public appeal today for witnesses to her son's shooting.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Come forward and the people who did it, if you have any kind of love in your heart, just think of your mother.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: It was hard to say the least and even to this day, it's a challenge. At that point I was playing in the NBA, so a lot of attention was brought on to what has happened and you know having to answer questions that I didn't have the answers to and at the same time trying to help solve the case.

JESSICA LINZEY: In his tiny condo in downtown Toronto, Jamaal sits on his couch. His 6'11 frame is accentuated by the size of this room. In 2001, Jamaal was playing with the Charlotte Hornets in North Carolina. He'd just undergone surgery for a shoulder injury.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: When I woke up, that's when the team told me.

JESSICA LINZEY: My producer Joan and I meet Carlton Cohen out front of his modest apartment in a leafy neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city. We walked to the curb where he's being dropped off by a woman and her son, a small boy, he looks about 11 or 12, leans eagerly out the backseat window. Carlton works with kids with special needs. Carlton was a close friend of Justin Shephard. He invites us into his apartment. Joan asks if she can shift a pile of Bibles down the sofa, so she has room to sit. Carlton tells us he was behind bars when he got the news about Justin and it seems hard to square with the man we're meeting today.

CARLTON COHEN: I was in jail with another friend when I called his mom and his mom was just going crazy. She was just crying, crying and I'm like mom what's wrong and right away, we just begin to cry.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hundreds of people turned out for the funeral.

CARLTON COHEN: What is the hardest thing that happened, the day that they buried Justin, you know I called his mom just to see how she's doing. And she said to me Carlton, the school because he was supposed to go away and she said to me the school just called and asked why Justin had not checked in and she said I have just buried him.

VOICE 3: Myself and the other officers involved in this investigation are disappointed by the lack of response from people in the area who knew this popular.

JESSICA LINZEY: Nearly 18 years later, that frustration lingers. Detective Sergeant Stacy Gallant is with the Toronto Police cold case unit.

STACY GALLANT: We had people that saw a car parked on the road near the pathway where this happened, reported seeing a car fleeing, reported somebody coming, running, jumping in it.

JESSICA LINZEY: Maybe beige, maybe not, maybe an SUV, maybe something smaller. The descriptions were vague. So maybe it's not surprising that Justin's killer has never been found. That is until we learned this.

STACY GALLANT: Well the belief is that he was with people when this happened, at the time it happened or shortly before. And they ought to have known what happened as well and are very likely eyewitnesses or key witnesses.

JESSICA LINZEY: As we piece together the story, we learned Justin was with three people that night. Friends we're told, teenagers who presumably would be able to help paint a picture of what went on in the time leading up to Justin's death. But none of them has ever spoken with police.

STACY GALLANT: Unfortunately we cannot force people to tell us things. That's within their rights not to say anything to the police or telling us the truth.

JESSICA LINZEY: Stacy Gallant thinks the only way this case will be solved is if someone wants to unburden themselves and so police wait for that someone to come forward.

[Sounds of dribbling basketballs]

JESSICA LINZEY: It's a bright Saturday afternoon, a bunch of kids crowd a basketball court in this inner city Toronto neighbourhood, dribbling, faking passes, shooting baskets, they look as young as 8 up to about 20. And across from where we're standing, family and friends have gathered around a barbecue. This the court where Justin spent much of his time before someone shot him dead.

CARLTON COHEN: Sky was the limit. His talent was unique. He was a gift from God. He would have gone far, gone far, but life was not fair for him.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I envisioned you know him being a professional athlete. I envisioned him going to college and being a star. I knew that eventually, if he didn't pass, that would have been the inevitable.

JESSICA LINZEY: Jamaal is now an assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors. At a practice, I watch him running drills. He gives a friendly wave in the court. It's easy to picture how Justin would have fit in here. By 13, he was already 6'6, ambidextrous, a rare skill on the court I'm told.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Justin had this heart. He had this determination. You know it didn't matter how big you were, he was going to go to the basket. And I remember one time he went up for a layup.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: He you know hit me accidentally obviously, so hard.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I think Jamaal tried to block him.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: You know I thought my nose was broken.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: His nose. [Laughs]

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: That was a testament to him that he did not give in to his big brother and that he wanted to do bigger and better things.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I loved that boy more than life itself. You know I would do anything for Justin.

JESSICA LINZEY: And she did. Justin was in his mid teens when Audette moved them from the suburbs to downtown for the basketball program at a local high school where Jamaal had also played. And it was in this new neighbourhood that Justin met Carlton.

CARLTON COHEN: Everybody just fall in love with him. Everyone who knows him just, man, the biggest mistake is moving to that place.

JESSICA LINZEY: That place is St. Jamestown. In 2001, this was Canada's densest neighbourhood. 15,000 people jammed into a four block radius. Forty percent of its residents had emigrated to Canada after 1996. It was a tough place and though it's changing, it still is.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: When we lived in Mississauga I knew all his friends and they you know, they'd call me mom. It was just like a big family. So when we moved downtown and he would bring people to the house and I would kind of say Jus, like who are these? And mom don't worry, mom these are my boys.

CARLTON COHEN: It's the project, so you know what's happening in the project, a lot of hustling, partying. That was my life, so that was the life that all who hang around me, we just play ball all the time. We never lose.

JESSICA LINZEY: We'd heard Justin and Carlton played for money. We thought 25 bucks here, 50 bucks there, but when Carlton describes one particular game, it's striking the amount of cash they gambled with. Remember Justin was still in high school.

CARLTON COHEN: I think about $2000 within that game, but Justin and I, we'd give a good spanking. After that we just split the money and he left and he went and get junk and we were just laughing.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: If they were going somewhere, I would you know be okay because Carlton would tell me. He says, don't worry, he's safe with me. You know I'll keep him safe. Took him at his word.

CARLTON COHEN: I was big in the game. So I'm out now, thank God, but I was big in the game. And when you're big in the game, people do respect you and they fear you, sometimes they want to kill you.

JESSICA LINZEY: Do you think Justin was involved with gangs and drugs as well?

CARLTON COHEN: Can I play the fifth amendment on that one?

JESSICA LINZEY: 18 months after Justin's death, Audette left St. Jamestown and settled at this townhouse in Scarborough. Audette leads up to the top floor, to a room where she comes to find peace. It's a shrine to Justin. Here there are old jerseys.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Jamaal's old 21 from Eastern Commerce.

JESSICA LINZEY: Ribbons and trophies and plaques, too many to count. And then there are the pictures, action shots of Justin flying through the air towards the basket.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He was dunking when he was in grade 8.

JESSICA LINZEY: Posed with teammates with Audette. Audette's favourite picture though is from a calendar. Each month displays another picture of her son and in this one, June, Justin is just a boy of five or six, in a bright red sweater, crisp white collar arranged just so, gazing into the camera, a smile playing on his lips.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: This is at Eastern.

JESSICA LINZEY: But a later photo of Justin, hanging on the wall downstairs, shows an unsmiling young man.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Grade 12, his last school picture.

JESSICA LINZEY: Hair and tight braids, wearing a heavy coat with a fur collar.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He just seemed you know like he was getting rougher.

JESSICA LINZEY: But none of that answers the question of who killed him and why.

CARLTON COHEN: I tried my best to figure it out because I hear so many conflicting stories. I was inside, but I think they went to meet somebody for some type of exchange between weapon and drugs.

JESSICA LINZEY: In many ways Justin's death has altered the course of Carlton's life and I'll tell you more about that later, but for now I'll say this, what he knew immediately when Justin was killed was that he should get out of the game as he calls it. But he says he couldn't, not until years later. He admits he wanted revenge.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: One of these buildings used to be that Jamaican restaurant I told you about.

JESSICA LINZEY: In St. James Town, Audette was leading us to where Justin was last seen alive.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: My stomach just feels so weird.

JESSICA LINZEY: She hasn't been back here in a long time and she's nervous.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: So the restaurant used to be, right over there, by the, oh no it was right here.

JESSICA LINZEY: She points to a storefront. It used to be a Jamaican restaurant.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: He came in there with three people, they had patties and pop and they were joking and laughing around.

JESSICA LINZEY: They were reportedly the last customers to leave, after which the worker closed up the shop.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And by the time she went to her car to leave, the ambulance and stuff was coming.

JESSICA LINZEY: From where we're standing, I can see the entrance to a pedestrian tunnel. It empties onto the footbridge where Justin was shot. We had that way. Audette is shaking.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: It was a lot of anger with the community. The same guys that I had asked Justin about, they were with him and they wouldn't talk. I spoke to one of the mothers and she says oh that's not fair you know because if he knows anything, I'm going to make him talk to the police and I gave her the detective's number. The next day the detective told me a lawyer called him and said his client is not interested in talking. So you know I sort of, you're 19, how did you become a client you know to something like that. So I realized they're no winners. They have one mother who's worried her son might be implicated . I've already lost my son. I think it was about here. I think I want to go now.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: People don't say anything out of fear, but me as a brother that's going through you know a very hard time, I expected you know some more answers than maybe say the police would have got.

JESSICA LINZEY: So as the years have ticked by in silence, Audette has sought purpose elsewhere, in advocacy. She works with Toronto Police to help families whose kids have died in violent ways and she's motivated by her faith. Audette began volunteering to lead prayer groups for young men in prison. She tells of one visit that was so surprising that would renew her hope that maybe her son's murder can still be solved.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: When I was finished the prayer, one young man I remember him saying to me, miss can you pray for me.

JESSICA LINZEY: The man wanted her to pray for him. He had an upcoming court appearance. And as they spoke, Audette noticed out of the corner of her eye that another inmate had picked up her pen and was writing something on a piece of paper.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And then all of a sudden, he puts my pen down and I looked at him, he says Miss take this. He said Miss take this and I said I'm sorry, I can't and he says Miss just read it then.

JESSICA LINZEY: Scrawled on that piece of paper was a name and a message so compelling, she broke the prison's rule and took the note with her.

[Music]

AMT: Stay with us. After the CBC News, the conclusion of waiting for a witness. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is a special edition of The Current. One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country. One bullet, one person at a time.

[Music: Theme]

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

[Music]

AMT: Today we're beginning a week long series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country, one bullet, one person at a time. In our last half hour, we heard part one of the documentary, Waiting for a Witness, about the lives of family and friends who've been affected by the still unsolved murder of Justin Shephard, a 19-year-old basketball player who was shot in the head on a Toronto footbridge in 2001. Here is the conclusion of Waiting for a Witness.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I expected you know some more answers than maybe say the police would have got.

CARLTON COHEN: That's the code and it is serious. You can't talk. If they knew that you snitched, they're coming for you. They are coming for you.

PETER SLOLY: Unsolved homicides can enable and embolden the perpetrator or perpetrators to commit other acts and victimize other people.

CARLTON COHEN: The minute I said who is it [imitates gunshots] the first one hit me, you could feel, you see the blood. It's just my turn. This is my turn.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette Shephard is sitting in an empty board room at the bank where she works in downtown Toronto. She taps the table with a carefully polished nail. She has just revealed to my producer Joan and I, that a little more than a year ago, she was slipped a piece of paper containing possible information about who killed her son, Justin. Audette remembers the face, but not the identity of the inmate she met while volunteering at the East Detention Centre.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I know exactly what he looks like.

JESSICA LINZEY: She recalls taking the paper from him.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And then I read it and it says the man who killed your son was and he gave me a name and then at the bottom he said he was also killed and of course I took it.

JESSICA LINZEY: Do you still have the note?

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Yeah, it's in pieces though. It's in my purse, I kept it in the back of my purse. I could show it to you now, it's in pieces.

JESSICA LINZEY: When she returns she pulls the pieces from her wallet and arranges them on the table like a puzzle. Sixteen years after Justin's murder, a possible clue. The sections worn through where it's been folded and refolded. We asked Audette, if police have seen it.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I saw Chief Saunders and I gave him the information and I asked if he could get back to me. As of this time you know he hasn't, so.

JESSICA LINZEY: But is this tip credible? Audette doesn't recognize the name. She's googled him and she doesn't know his face either, but Carlton does.

CARLTON COHEN: I know him. No, not a friend at all. Not a friend. He's from Regent Park, we're at Bleecker. So that's why up to this day, I'm surprised what he was doing there. I'm still surprised. He is so brutal and so cold. So malicious.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton believes it's entirely possible this person pulled the trigger.

CARLTON COHEN: I don't mind stalking the gentleman's name because I know he's dead. But if he wasn't dead, I couldn't say his name.

JESSICA LINZEY: So was blaming Justin's murder on a dead man a little too convenient? As Carlton suggests there's no real danger in pointing the finger at him. Yet could it be the truth, one that someone felt a grieving mother should know about. The man was 21-years-old when he was shot a little more than a year after Justin.

VOICE 4: Toronto Police responding to reports of gunshots early this morning at the Dufferin and Eglinton area, discovered the body of a young male.

JESSICA LINZEY: We tracked down the man's sister to see what we could find out about him.

[Phone dialing]

VOICE 5: Good morning.

JESSICA LINZEY: How are you? It's Jessica calling from CBC.

VOICE 5: I'm well, how are you?

JESSICA LINZEY: She wasn't naive about what her brother was up to back then.

VOICE 5: I mean I know that he was involved in street, I don't know violence maybe, street activities or whatever.

JESSICA LINZEY: But whether she could imagine him firing the bullets that killed Justin.

VOICE 5: I mean I watch a lot of movies and you know TV shows, you know there are a million stories. I personally can't, I can't see or picture my brother you know pulling the trigger and taking another person's life. But again I couldn't say for sure because it's obvious that he was involved in street life or making decisions that brought him to the place where he ended up. So you know there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle missing for me.

JESSICA LINZEY: Her brother's case, like Justin's, has never been solved. But remember, there were three other people with Justin that night. Three people who never spoke to police. Latanya Langford recalls him as a constant presence in her boyfriend Justin's life from the time Carlton was sent to jail and she wasn't comfortable with it.

LATANYA LANGFORD: You know bad company from bad company and they were just the young bucks that were just always seemed like they were up to no good.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton remembers them too.

CARLTON COHEN: They're serious.

JESSICA LINZEY: And it's clear to him why not one of them ever spoke to police.

CARLTON COHEN: You can't talk. Even me, I got to be careful too, right. I know I'm not careful, but that's the code. And it is serious because if they know that you snitched, they're coming for you. They are coming for you.

LATANYA LANGFORD: And that's the problem in this society, period. You don't want to snitch because you don't know if those people are going to show up at your door. You don't know what, who they're affiliated with. You don't know if they're going to meet your kid at the school. You don't know if they're coming for you. So people keep quiet.

CARLTON COHEN: I wanted to get out, but the game have a grip on me. I loved the money, I loved the limelight, I loved the party, I loved the drinking, I kind of loved that, but I still had something deep within me that said get out, you know death is knocking at your door.

VOICE 6: And CNN can now project that Barack Obama, 47-years-old, will become the president-elect of the United States.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton describes the evening of November 4th, 2008, the historic night Barack Obama was elected US president for the first time.

BARACK OBAMA: If there are, is anyone out there, who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, tonight is your answer.

CARLTON COHEN: That night I was home and I was watching the election. There's a knock on my door and the people was black and that there's a sign that to show me that was my friend and I went to open it and a voice was saying to me, don't open it and I live alone. I'm like who's talking to me, who's saying to me don't open this door. So I went back and I sit down watching the election. Five minutes pass, the door knock again. The people was black and I went to open it and a voice said don't open it. So I said who is it and when I said who is it? [Imitates gun shots] Three shots through my door. And the first one hit right here.

JESSICA LINZEY: He lifts his shirt to reveal a scar that runs from his sternum to below his belly button.

CARLTON COHEN: And when I went back into my room, I call my mom. I said mom and when I said mom, she said to me what me son? In Jamaican that means, how are you do my son? She's Jamaican, so she said what me son. And she's like how are you doin my son? I'm like mom, I'm shot. And she just begin to weep. Just begin to weep cry. Yeah.

JESSICA LINZEY: Why did you call your mom, before calling 9-1-1?

CARLTON COHEN: Because my mom is a Christian lady and she always telling me that you know to come to church and to give up that life and all I could hear and all I wanted to hear was her voice cause I thought I was going to die. I was looking at my stomach and the blood was just like turn on the pipe and the blood was just gushing out.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton does call 9-1-1, using a second phone. He keeps his mom on the other line until help arrives.

CARLTON COHEN: God allowed me to feel the pain of a mother, when she was crying. She couldn’t cry. When she couldn’t cry, she begin to moan. There was no tears left in her eyes, so she began to moan. Moan like she's, I don't know. I don't explain it. But that one bullet can have done so much.

JESSICA LINZEY: Carlton is slipping in and out of consciousness as he's transported to the hospital, but there are few things he can't forget.

CARLTON COHEN: I heard the nurse said that the bullet was travelling and then I heard the nurse say that we're losing him. I'm grasping for air and I just said God give me a second chance and that's what I remember.

PETER SLOLY: It was a bit of a strange period because we had spent it in the city and I think in Canada, the most of the 90s, kind of dismissing US-based gang violence and that we didn't have a gang problem. You know in retrospect, we were wrong.

JESSICA LINZEY: That's Peter Sloly, the former police inspector who worked the night of Justin's death. By 2001, young black men are dying by gunfire in ever increasing numbers in Toronto and those homicides aren't being solved.

PETER SLOLY: Unsolved homicides, unsolved crimes of any sort, but particularly shooting homicides, can enable and embolden the perpetrator or perpetrators to commit other acts and victimize other people and it can disable communities feeling that they're disempowered to address the single crime and that becomes a vicious self-fulfilling cycle.

JESSICA LINZEY: And he stresses that many of those cases, which are unsolved.

PETER SLOLY: Are not necessary because we don't know who did it, but we can't bring the right evidence to court and in many cases, the evidence is the human being, the witness. And in many cases the witness is also the victim.

JESSICA LINZEY: Peter Sloly is keenly aware of the dangers for people coming forward with information. For Sloly there's one particular case that embodies that risk. Kenneth Mark was a young man who saw someone from his neighbourhood being threatened. He then became the witness.

PETER SLOLY: The witness in the case against this group of young members, some of whom were gang members and ultimately was targeted and executed himself, the victim of a homicide, a firearm homicide.

JESSICA LINZEY: Sloly calls Mark a hero. He's also a cautionary tale. And his death pushed Sloly to try to find ways to better protect witnesses.

PETER SLOLY: Now I don't want to say that you know I raised the bar significantly and changed the dynamic that I just talked about it, but you know that's a type of influence, positive influence, that these unfortunate tragedies can have as a ripple effect on people in the system and outside of the system.

JESSICA LINZEY: But for people like Carlton, those efforts mean very little. No one was ever arrested for shooting him.

CARLTON COHEN: Police don't really care, like I don't think that they've done much investigation. Nah. Nah. I'm not innocent myself. So probably I deserve it.

JESSICA LINZEY: To be fair, Carlton says even if he'd seen who'd shot him, he wouldn't have told police. The relationship between police and young black men in the city is a damaged one, but Carlton gets why. He understands what police were walking into that night. The officers could still smell gunpowder in the hallway.

CARLTON COHEN: When I called the police and the police arrived on the scene, they knocked my door and when they knocked my door and I open it, the two cops that came first, they were so nervous, they almost shoot me. And when I opened the door, he was, the officer was like shut the f'up. And I'm like officer, I'm a victim. Shut up and he was swearing at me and I'm bleeding. He almost shoot me.

JESSICA LINZEY: That Carlton survived was for him, a sign from God to get out of the so-called game, but he didn't.

CARLTON COHEN: I want revenge. I want revenge. I wanted to go and kill the kid who shot me. I was bitter. My heart was cold.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette has no appetite for that kind of retribution, but she knows it's possible. That that's the justice has already been meted out for Shepp or Sheep as Justin was known.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: One young guy I spoke to, he said to me, Miss.

JESSICA LINZEY: He offered Audette what he thought would be comfort.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: If we find out who did this to Shep, I said no, no, I don't want that kind of stuff. I don't want blood on anybody's hand.

JESSICA LINZEY: It was some time later that a family member was approached by a stranger who said.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Tell your family not to worry because what happened to Sheep was not fair or something like that and tell them it's taking care of or some craziness like that and the guy just walked away.

JESSICA LINZEY: In many ways, Audette has become weary of all the theories. And while she holds out hope that one day she'll know what happened, for now her focus is elsewhere. She works with police, goes to schools, prisons. She talks about Justin, about retaliation and about finding a way to let go of anger.

PETER SLOLY: I'm not sure what Audette's life would have been, what direction she would have gone in, but as a result of the tragedy, she propelled herself and many others in a very, very productive and enabling, widely enabling way and would she have had such a positive impact through her own life and mission in life post the tragedy of Justin, absent the tragedy. So it's hard to tell whether the you know which way the scales would have balanced out with the loss of potential of one life and the impact from the passion of the other life.

JESSICA LINZEY: Sometimes when Audette wonders if her work makes the difference, she reminds herself of one inmate in particular, who heard her story and was moved to talk to her.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: And the young man looked at me and he says Miss, you know how God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts? And I'm like yeah OK and he says you know, you know how we look at justice as arresting somebody, putting them in jail for life and we think that is justice. He says you know what God's justice could be, he says for your son, he says all the good you do, what the enemy meant for bad, God has turned it around for good because I see you on TV all the time and I see and you're doing good for someone else. So that could be the justice and I just looked at him and I said young man I came in here to try and inspire you, I said you just inspired me today.

VOICE 7: With it, a special guest, one who's 6'11, to be exact.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: I'm no different than each and every one of you boys and girls.

JESSICA LINZEY: Justin's brother, Jamaal, has cut a similar path. His foundation that bears his name, tries to help kids at risk and he tells them what it means to lose a brother.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: It's very tough and that's another reason what drives me and motivates me to come out and talk to the youth each and every day and each and every week.

VOICE 8: I found it very inspirationable.

VOICE 9: Stop being in gangs and listen to your parents and get a good education. You wouldn't get hurt or have to go to police station and get arrested.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: Yeah, I think about violence and how tough it is for not only the person that is in the act of doing it, but to the family that is affected or families.

JESSICA LINZEY: Back in 2008, Carlton still wanted to kill the man who shot him.

CARLTON COHEN: And then the Lord begin to speak to me and said, if I do this, I will never get to know him. The Lord began to speak to me then, but I'm like no, I don't want to hear that. I want to do it myself. I'm going to kill him. And what happened that my mother, she's a believer, she's a Christian lady, nice Christian lady. So she had called my pastor and my pastor now and a few church brethren they came by and they pray for me and I just begin to cry. And I said I forgive him. I don't walk with that fear no more. I walk with confidence now. I'm living, my life belongs to God right now and that fear is long gone and I'm an advocate for gun violence now. I went back and share my testimony with other people, letting these young men know that the game breathe evil, Jessica. Because all we do is plant evil and if you plant evil, you're going to reap evil.

JESSICA LINZEY: So what we know is this, a 21-year-old gunned down, a year after Audette's son is named by an inmate as Justin's killer. This in a chance meeting years after his death. If anyone could shed light on this, it would be those three young men, the ones who were seen with Justin the night he was shot. Joan and I have been looking for them. Our search for two of them has come up empty, but what we have learned is that one of them recently spent time in prison. In fact between 2001 and 2012, he had 70 interactions with police. In 2013, he was found guilty of trafficking cocaine and for being in possession of a banned firearm, which was loaded. At the time, he was on social assistance and living with his mother.

[Phone dialing]

JESSICA LINZEY: The phone at his mom's place has been disconnected and calls to neighbours in her apartment building yielded nothing.

[The number you are calling cannot receive incoming calls. This is a recording.]

JESSICA LINZEY: We had also contacted his lawyer and after a number of weeks, he got back to us to tell us that his client had respectfully declined our requests to speak with him. Police maintain they cannot compel any of the three of them to talk.

CARLTON COHEN: Since I lose Justin it's like, they're not really play after that. It hurt too much, you know. That was it.

LATANYA LANGFORD: Ah man, I think about him all the time. I have some stuff at the house with his name on it from when he used to play basketball and I have, I currently now have four children and my oldest son is going to be 19 and I fear for his life every single day.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette knows Justin would be proud of the work she's done since his death, but her grief is always right there at the surface.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: Did it, did it hurt? Did he try to call me. Did you know did he try to get up when he fell and you know, I don't have any answers because they ran away and left him there. And do they ever feel affected by that? Do they just go home, wash their hands and go to bed? Do they live in peace?

JESSICA LINZEY: After Justin's death, this cemetery is where Audette and Jamaal would meet every Sunday. Though Jamal is not her son, he shared a father with Justin. She's come to know him well.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: We've come so close together. He sort of tries to step in where he thinks Justin would have been. You know do you need anything? You want it? You know like and I admire him for that because he could have just sort of.

JESSICA LINZEY: Audette pauses. She's trying to find the right words. He could have gone his own way, she says. Disappeared.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I think a lot of people in Canada wonder if he is my son.

JAMAAL MAGLOIRE: You know even though I can't replace Justin, I, you know I love her dearly and it's heart-breaking because she's such a good person and just try to be there for her whenever I can.

AUDETTE SHEPHARD: I just love him for who he is and for just sticking with me all this time.

[Music].

AMT: We have been listening to the documentary, Waiting for a Witness. It was written and produced by The Current's Jessica Linzey and Joan Webber. It's part of our ongoing series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country, one bullet, one person at a time. If you have a story or questions about gun violence in Canada, please contact us. You can call our toll free number and leave us a message. That number is 1-888-416-8333. Or you can email us by going to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or reach us through our Facebook page. Our One Bullet series continues all week. Tomorrow we bring you the story of Lynn Kalmring. We'll hear how her murder in 2011 left a deep impression on the officers who investigated the case right up until this day. In large part because of the perpetrator, a former RCMP officer, in the small community of Penticton, B.C. This is Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth followed by Sergeant Clayton Wiebe, two the officers who were first on the scene.

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DON WRIGGLESWORTH: It hits home a little bit because here's a person that was someone who applied to become an RCMP officer, which I did and graduated. Which I did and probably felt that same moment of pride. But what was he exposed to over the years and how was it that he dealt with it or didn't deal with it that caused him to get to where he was or who he did become.

CLAYTON WIEBE: I was very shocked by it, like you know part of the business in the serious crime world is you may get called out after midnight for a homicide or a stabbing or something like that, but when you get called and you're told it's a retired RCMP member, you don't, I don't think many people can say they've had that call and I'll probably never have another one like it I hope. I really hope involving a retired RCMP member. I think about it. Yeah, I think about it.

AMT: Our series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country, one bullet, one person at a time continues all week. And again, if you have a story or questions about gun violence in Canada, please contact us. You can leave a message for us at this number 1-888-416-8333 or e-mail us by going to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. You can reach us on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC and find us on Facebook. Coming up, a look at the Brexit drama under way in Britain and closer to home, a CBC investigation into Muslim families and polygamy. The Fifth Estate's Habiba Nosheen joins me with that story in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

Polygamy is happening in Canada's Muslim community, but convictions are rare, says reporter

Guests: Habiba Nosheen

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

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VOICE: I am living my religion. It is a part of my faith. It is something that is hugely important to me and to my family and to my father and his father and you know going and hopefully going forward generations.

AMT: That is Winston Blackmore defending his practice of polygamy following his conviction in 2017. His case and the case and the James Oler, also a former leader of a breakaway BC Mormons sect, helped keep the topic of polygamy in the headlines for years. But it seems the pair's conviction and sentencing has not deterred Canadians determined to have multiple marriages. Habiba Nosheen has been investigating polygamy among Canada's Muslim community for the Fifth Estate and she joins me in our studio. Hello Habiba.

HABIBA NOSHEEN: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What have you found out?

HN: So Anna Maria, we know that there are over a million Muslims in Canada and I learned that while polygamy is illegal, unpopular and relatively uncommon, it is still happening within the Canadian Muslim communities. But because these marriages are not registered, they really escape any sort of detection or accountability.

AMT: Who did you talk to?

HN: So my team at the Fifth Estate and I talked to dozens of people in the Canadian Muslim community and just a note Anna Maria, given the sensitivity of the subject and the reluctance of people from the community to talk about this issue openly, for some of the subjects we have agreed to use their first names or their chosen Muslim names that they go by. Now the first voice I want you to hear is that of Zaib. She's in her 40s. She's been married for 26 years and has three children. So you can imagine her shock when she got this call from her husband about a year ago.

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VOICE: So he said you know I just want to tell you that I got married to some woman and I was like, no I thought he's kidding. I was just literally quiet, maybe in a shock mode. In some kind of you know unbelievable denial. He said, no this is true. Don't worry about anything. I'm going to still provide for you, take care of you and the kids. You can continue living the way you're living and it's just going to be one extended family. That we added an extension to the family.

AMT: That must have been devastated. Did she have any warning it was coming?

HN: No. She said she was completely caught off guard, but when Zaib started talking to other women in the community, she says she realized she really wasn't alone.

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VOICE: I thought this doesn't happen in Canada. You know, it's illegal, but to my surprise when I went into the situation, I have a friend who found out she's getting a divorce because her husband has a second wife. And a friend of my friend also got a divorce very recently because I her husband also got a second wife. So I was like this is not just me, there is so many women going through this.

HN: And Anna Maria, in our reporting we spoke to dozens of Canadian Muslim women with similar stories, husbands with secret second marriages.

AMT: So clearly it wasn't hard for her to find women with similar stories. Do you have any idea just how common it is?

HN: Anna Maria, as far as I can tell, no one tracks these marriages in Canada and because they're illegal and conducted in secret, people obviously don't register them with the province either. So there is no way to track them with the government or no official statistics. Anecdotally though, it's not prevalent in the Muslim community, but the thing is Islam does permit men to have up to four wives at the same time, but women are only allowed one husband at a time. Having said that, Imams we spoke to point out that in Islam, you also have to follow the laws of the countries you live in.

AMT: So given that, what did you hear from Canadian Muslim leaders on this?.

HN: So Imam Hamid Slimi is a prominent Canadian Imam, based in Mississauga and he has spoken out against polygamy. Here is some tape of what he recently said in a sermon followed by a conversation I had with him.

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VOICE: And most of these polygamy, the way it's practiced today is unfair to women. So we want to make it clear that we don't encourage polygamy.

[Sermon]

VOICE: The context is very important. It was permitted for a certain, within a certain context in the past hundreds of years ago, but it's not acceptable. Context is very critical here. If people want to do that, they can go and live in countries where it's permissible, but here in Canada it's not allowed.

HN: So Imam Hamad Slimi is also the former president of the Canadian Council of Imams and the group has issued an official statement condemning the practice of polygamy in Canada.

AMT: So just to be clear, it's not just unacceptable, it is illegal in Canada.

HN: Yes, but charges and convictions are extremely rare. Law banning polygamy has been on the books for about 127 years, but the cases you referred to in your introduction, involving Winston Blackmore and James Oler, those were only the third and the fourth conviction of polygamy in Canadian history. The two were convicted, but received a conditional sentence last June. So house arrest and community service.

AMT: So it's illegal, it's frowned upon by the clerics, how is polygamy persisting in Muslim communities then?

HN: So you probably won't be surprised to learn that people are connecting online.

AMT: What on dating sites?

HN: Yes, but we're not talking about Tinder. There's one that's called secondwife.com and another one called muslima.com. For example, when you go on muslima.com, it has about 5000 members and the site allows you to state if you have an interest in polygamy. If you want to join the site and message other members for a fee of about $40 a month, members can message each other and connect with others who are also interested in a polygamous marriage. I should mention, they aren't just Canadians on these sites, but when you are on it, you can use it to find other Canadians who are open to the idea of polygamy and that's what we found Halima. She's a convert to Islam. She uses her chosen Muslim name Halima on the site and our producer Nazim Baksh explained that we were working on the story and wanted to talk to her about polygamy and here's what she had to say.

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VOICE: I have had Muslim brothers ask me in the past, would you like to be a second wife? So if I was in a polygamous marriage and the first wife was accepting of this, I would welcome her and help her in any way I can because I've been through raising a family and children. I would just love to help her.

NAZIM BAKSH: You know in Canada, polygamy is not permitted by law. It's not allowed. Does that concern you?

VOICE: Yes, it does concern me. I know it's not allowed legally, but I do know that in some certain situations I think some imams are willing to help the brother.

AMT: She says in some cases some imams are willing to help. What does she mean by that?

HN: So what we learned is that one way polygamy is happening within the Muslim community in Canada is people are being told you can have a second marriage as long as you don't register your marriage.

AMT: In other words, keep it out of the government records and you'll be OK?

HN: Yes. Right now when someone gets married, say in Ontario, they go to the city or the municipality that they want to be married in and apply for a license, which essentially ensures that the couple getting married is permitted to be married. Once you get this licence, as most people will recall who've been married, you take it to the city hall and can have a civil marriage or you can take that license and have one of the many people authorised in the province to perform religious marriage, perform the marriage. There is a list of thousands of people from different faiths on an Ontario Government's website who are licensed to perform marriage and sign the license. That license is submitted to the government and now you're legally married and your marriage is registered. The imams who want to make sure they aren't accidentally performing polygamous marriages, say that if you don't have a license, they won't perform the marriage. But in our reporting we learned that some people who want a polygamist marriage, think that they found a loophole that by just not registering and finding an Imam to perform the religious marriage or the Nikah, as it's known in Islam, without a license, they can get away with it.

AMT: So Habiba we heard from some women affected by this, did you manage to speak to any men who are seeking a second marriage?

HN: Yes, here is Isa, a Toronto restaurant owner, who says that even though he's happily married, he wants a second wife someday.

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VOICE: I see nothing wrong with it. It's part of our religion. I'm open to it and I accept it, you know.

HN: What does your wife think of this?

VOICE: Most of the times, women don't like it, but she accepts it.

HN: But it's not legal in Canada, polygamy.

VOICE: Correct.

HN: How do you reconcile that?

VOICE: Our marriage is through the Islamic institutions, so we got what is called a Nikah done. So she is.

HN: So a religious marriage.

VOICE: Right, so she's basically my wife, but we haven't registered our marriage in the.

HN: Civil court.

VOICE: Yes correct.

HN: Why did you choose not to at that time?

VOICE: I may get married some time again later on down the line because it's part of our religion? So therefore I left it open.

HN: Is any part of you ambivalent about that?

VOICE: No.

AMT: Okay interesting. So he says if it's only registered through the mosque, he doesn't think he's going to break a law if he has a second marriage.

HN: Exactly. So this is what people are doing there. They will go to an imam, who isn't against second marriages for men and say Imam, please perform my second marriage and the Imam does a religious ceremony and there might even be a record with the mosque that the marriage took place, but nothing is registered with the government. And Anna Maria, we've learned that in some cases the second wives don't even know that their marriage, which is taking place in a mosque, feels and looks like any other Muslim marriage, will not be registered.

AMT: But we heard from an Imam a few minutes ago condemning polygamy and that is the official stance. So who's sanctioning the second marriages?

HN: That's exactly what we wanted to find out. Obviously this is not a service that people are going to advertise. So we reached out to someone from the Muslim community to go under cover for our investigation to help us find out what goes on behind closed doors.

AMT: And how did that go?

HN: So one Imam we spoke to was pretty clear. He says I don't do this and you can see in the video he's looking very uncomfortable and seems to want to get far away from our undercover man who's essentially asking this Imam if he would do something illegal.

AMT: So that person is in line with the official stance of the Canadian Council of Imams.

HN: Yes, but several Muslim women fed up with polygamous men in their community pointed us in the direction of Imam Aly Hindy of the Salaheddin Islamic Center in Toronto. Take a listen to the audio of the undercover footage.

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VOICE 1: The reason I wanted to see you privately because it's a bit of a private matter.

VOICE 2: OK, sure.

VOICE 1: So Sheikh, I've decided to take a, to have a marriage again. Take a second wife.

VOICE 2: OK, alright. Do you have the wife?

VOICE 1: I am married, yes.

VOICE 2: No, but you found your second wife?

VOICE 1: Yeah, so she's actually from this community and so she wants it with an Imam.

VOICE 2: OK sure.

VOICE 1: OK good, so there will be like a contract.

VOICE 2: Oh yeah, yeah.

VOICE 1: You'll write that up for me?

VOICE 2: Yeah, yeah. We have no problem with the government. There's no problem. We're not going to register. If you register then it's illegal. You are cheating, not me, but it's halal and allowed and there's nothing wrong with it. OK.

AMT: Interesting, so he says it's your responsibility. You're cheating not me and he's willing to do the ceremony.

HN: Yeah exactly. And he says as long as the second marriage isn't registered with the government, then there is no problem. And I'm not sure if you could make it at the end, but he said it's halal, meaning it's totally permissible and okay to do.

AMT: And what does Canadian law have to say about this?

HN: So Anna Maria after our undercover meeting with them, I contacted the Department of Justice in Ottawa and I asked them if it's a religious ceremony and the marriage is now registered, what's the law on that? And here's what they tell me. Criminal law prohibits practicing polygamy in Canada. If a person who is already married, whether religiously only or legally, enters into a new religious marriage with a third person, both people are violating the law, regardless of whether the religious marriage is registered with the government or not. So given this, I decided to pay Imam Aly Hindy a visit. To his credit, he did agree to the interview and I asked him to watch the video of our undercover footage.

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HN: Imam I want to show you this video. This is the gentleman who came to you for advice.

[Plays undercover video]

HN: So we watch the video together and the Imam didn't dispute anything about the video. In fact, he stood his ground on the question of second marriages. Have a listen.

VOICE: What's the problem?

HN: Did you say what's the problem? Imam, that's illegal.

VOICE: So, sue me. Let them sue me and then we're going to go to Supreme Court and we see who's going to win. OK? Because this law is unconstitutional.

HN: But, Imam this is the law that we have currently.

VOICE: Well it's a garbage law.

AMT: Did he just say that's a garbage law?

HN: Yes. He says he doesn't understand why as a society we don't outlaw people having affairs, but we outlaw a person having two wives. And I should point out that this is an Imam who is on the Ontario government's website as someone who is authorized to perform marriage ceremonies by the province, which means he signed a declaration that he will uphold the marriage laws of Canada.

AMT: So how does he reconcile that with the fact that he's sanctioning marriages that violate the law?

HN: Same thing. He says he's not breaking the law. These are just religious marriages. And it's actually interesting because I think the Imam is hitting on an important point, which is it's virtually impossible to prove these marriages. If it's done in private, in front of a few witnesses, there's no paper trail with the government, even if the first wife finds out about it, it's not exactly easy to prove that this even happened.

AMT: Habiba, do you have any sense of whether this issue is on the government's radar?

HN: Again there doesn't seem to be any enforcement when it comes to polygamy and we can see that by the lack of charges or prosecution in cases of polygamy.

AMT: So you started by telling us about Zaib and her story, learning that her husband, after so many years, has taken a second wife. Where is she in all of this now?

HN: You know Anna Maria, many of the women we spoke to shared their stories with our team, but would not agree to go public with their story. And Zaib told us that she's decided to come out with her story because she thinks it's important that these men are held accountable. And in her personal life, she's reconciled herself to a new and a different reality. She's decided to divorce her husband and she plans to go back to school.

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VOICE: Yeah it's a new skill, new education, new chapter. There is no way to compromise because I'm going to be living the rest of my life with a burden and I know myself, so I thought you know best way, just let him go, live his life and I'll figure out my own life.

AMT: Really fascinating. Habiba Nosheen, thank you for this.

HN: Thank you, Anne Maria.

AMT: Habiba Nosheen is a host of CBC's The Fifth Estate. You can stream the full polygamy investigation online at cbc.ca/fifth or through the CBC app, which is available through Google Play or the App store.

'Moment of truth' nears for Brexit, but not everyone is worried, says academic

Guests: Alan Wage

[Music]

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

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VOICE: As we start this crucial week in our country's history, let's take a step back and remember both what is at stake and what we stand to gain by coming together behind this agreement. Settle the question of our withdrawal and we can move on to forging our new relationship. Back to the deal tomorrow and that work can start on Wednesday. Fail, and we face the risk of leaving without a deal or even a bigger risk of not leaving at all.

AMT: Well it's pretty high stakes in Britain this week, which is why prime minister Theresa May was out and about this morning at a factory in Stoke-on-Trent in central England, one day before a very divided House of Commons votes on the Brexit deal she has cut with the European Union. You just heard her speaking at that factory earlier today. As you may recall they were all set for that vote back in December, but Prime Minister May postponed it then believing it didn't have enough support. Not much has changed. So this is set to be a roller coaster of a week in Britain and potentially one for the history books. Alan Wager has been tracking every twist and turn in the story. He is a research associate for an academic organization working on Brexit. It is called the UK and changing Europe and Alan Wager joins me from London. Hello.

ALAN WAGER: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What's the significance of Prime Minister May's choice to go to Stoke-on-Trent today?

AW: So Stoke-on-Trent is the sort of place that voted quite heavily for leave in the referendum back in 2016. Something like two thirds over two thirds of people in Stoke-on-Trent voted to leave and it was also somewhere that switched from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party in the election last year. So that's the exact kind of place where her message of if you don't vote for this deal tomorrow, we're going to have no Brexit at all. We'll cut through she hopes.

AMT: Okay and so she's saying that there's a risk of leaving without a deal. I noticed that on the weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury was also speaking out about this. He says a no deal Brexit would hit the poorest and most vulnerable Britons.

AW: Yeah that's true and it's areas, according to the economic forecasts and the research on the impact on trade and so on. It's areas that are in the northeast of England and sort of the Midlands. Areas with heavy manufacturing basis that would see the biggest sort of short term hit economically from a sort of no deal Brexit, if you like.

AMT: So does this signify the fact that she's not getting any traction with her fellow parliamentarians and so she is now talking to the people one day before this vote?

AW: Yeah. Her long held hope was that she could appeal to the electorate and say to MPs well look the public support this deal, you need to back it. It's looked like that hasn't really, that hasn't worked. There was some initial support for her vote, but actually it's gone downhill since Christmas. It looks like it's not something that she can say with any confidence the majority of people support and it looks like she's going to go down to a heavy defeat in the House of Commons tomorrow. It looks like anywhere between 150 and 200 majority against her deal it looks like at this stage.

AMT: Okay when you say she goes down to a defeat, does it affect her standing as prime minister? If she stays prime minister, but what about the deal, what does that mean?

AW: Well the funny thing is in normal times a defeat like this would almost certainly spell the end of the prime minister, but these aren't normal times in British politics and I guess it helps her, the fact that this defeat has been so heavily forecast and so heavily talked about. So everyone's expecting this defeat and I think this means that she would be able to potentially have the opportunity to pass something like a deal the second time. If she can keep the scale defeat as low as possible effectively, but it means that the House of Commons will have to decide what to do next because once they reject Theresa May's deal, they need to come up with something else. Otherwise the status quo is no deal. So unless parliament can come up with something different then the UK will sort of crash out with this sort of no deal that the Archbishop of Canterbury was warning about.

AMT: And where does the opposition Labour Party stand in this?

AW: Well the Labour Party position is currently to reject Theresa May's deal and then to come up with a better deal. The problem is that any deal that they come up with would end up looking quite a lot like Theresa May's deal in a lot of respects. The sort of the deal that has been made on the island of Ireland about the Irish border would have to stay intact, regardless of whoever negotiated the agreement. There's pressure from within the Labor Party to, after Theresa May's vote, for the party to switch to support for a referendum on another referendum on Brexit and it's whether or not Jeremy Corbyn will sort of succumb to that pressure because he's concerned about places like Stoke-on-Trent where Theresa May was today about losing further support for the Labour Party.

AMT: So a second referendum might not fix anything. It might just show that they're as divided as they are right now.

AW: Yeah a second referendum is something that the majority of Labour, sort of members support as well as the Labour supporters would like to see. But it's something that the Labour leadership is really sort of reluctant to do to get it because they worry that as soon as that happens they'll be framed as the anti-Brexit party and it's really difficult to win a majority in the House of Commons in any general election, if you know half of the electorate think you sort of betrayed their vote in 2016.

AMT: There's something called an alternative called the Norway option, where they could sort of stay in. What's that about?

AW: So that would be sort of what people in the UK calling a soft Brexit. So we'd remain members of the sort of customs union, which would mean that we'd be part of all of the EU sort of trade deals, we'd stay members of the single market, which means that a lot of our trade with the European Union wouldn't be disrupted. However, this is something that would mean that we'd keep things like freedom of movement and wouldn't be able to sign trade deals with other countries around the world. So a lot of people that supported Brexit would say, although this is a type of Brexit, it would be betraying why people voted Brexit and it wouldn't be sort of real Brexit if you like. But this is something that potentially might have a majority in the House of Commons because it sort of unites everyone, everyone's vaguely unhappy about it. It's no one’s first choice, but it's something that could potentially have a majority in the House of Commons. Some sort of soft Brexit, something that means that we have Brexit, but some would say sort of Brexit in name only, if you like.

AMT: Well and you make the point that freedom of movement, one of the big issues was immigration right. People who wanted Brexit wanted to control who gets to live in Britain.

AW: Yeah. One of the funny things since the referendum though is there's actually been a quite a fairly dramatic in sort of polling terms de-escalation of people's fear about immigration on any sort of metric you see, people's concern about immigration has actually gone down since the referendum. So although Theresa May, when she became prime minister, interpreted the vote to leave as a vote against immigration, if you ask people today, they're less fussed on the that and yet the government's Brexit policy has been sort of defined by ending freedom of movement as the sort of core main aim of government policy, but that doesn't necessarily reflect where people are in the country now and that's a bit of a problem for Theresa May.

AMT: Alan, how panicked are people? What's this going to do to their daily lives? Their ability to keep jobs? Their ability to get food?

AW: People are less panicked than you might expect. I think a lot of people haven't quite, there are some areas of what people are saying no deal would mean, things like queues of lorries that are coming in and out of the European Union, potentially you know a lack of medical supplies. People understand and people got to get, but there are still some areas that until they see the effects of no deal, on the destruction that it might cause, people are still pretty skeptical, particularly leave voters are still pretty skeptical that it all might happen. And the same applies with a lot of conservative MPs and a lot of MPs that voted for leave. They actually don't believe, that they argue that it's sort of a project fear, sort of scaremongering thing. A lot of these effects are real and would have a real effect on people's lives.

AMT: So could we see this week fundamentally change Britain?

AW: Well, yeah I think it's a pretty pivotal week and the big question is what happens once MPs reject Theresa May's deal and whether or not they can sort of weigh in against Theresa May's deal and come up with something different. So now it's sort of a moment of truth for the House of Commons. Can they stop no deal from happening? Do they have an alternative plan and what's it going to look like? I think we'll know a lot more about that, whether we have a sort of Norway or whether we have a second referendum, whether we have a no deal by the end of this week. I think this is going to be a moment of truth if you like for Brexit, that's been coming for the last two and a bit years.

AMT: Okay Alan we'll keep watching. Thanks for bringing us up to date.

AW: Thanks for having me Anna Maria.

AMT: Alan Wager, a research associate and an academic organization working on Brexit it is called the UK in a Changing Europe and he joined us from London. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Today the Q screen panel takes a look at the biggest stories in the worlds of film, television and streaming entertainment. We're going to leave you with some music from the British songwriter and long-time left wing social activist Billy Bragg. In this song, Full English Brexit, he sings from the point of view of a Brexit supporter. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Song: "Full English Brexit" by Billy Bragg]

The Current Transcript for January 14, 2019

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'Moment of truth' nears for Brexit, but not everyone is worried, says academic

Jan. 14, 2019 episode transcript

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