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The Current Transcript for July 13, 2018

Host: Ioanna Roumeliotis

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Will more police on the streets be enough to curb wave of gun crime in Toronto?

Guests: Kelly Whetter, Jamil Jivani, A.J. Somerset

SOUNDCLIP

Adding 200 police officers is just an indication that the mayor doesn't really understand the complexity of this problem, and what needs to be done. When they tell you that it's easier for them to get a gun than a job. That's an indictment against we as a society.

IOANNA ROUMELIOTIS: The bullets keep flying, more overnight. But how to get to the root cause of the escalating gun violence plaguing Canada's biggest city this summer? You just heard Louis March founder of Toronto's Zero Gun Violence Movement. Zero gun violence may be the goal, but how to tackle it? Police have a new plan. More officers on the streets overnight. Will it work to slow down the bullets? And what would people who know guns and gun violence best like to see their city do? We'll hear from a few of them, first up today. Then...

SOUNDCLIP

We have to be proactive and ahead of the curve. And not acting is simply not an option. Every day we don't adapt is a day we don't have.

IR: The heat is literally on to act fast. It has been a dangerously hot, even fatally hot summer across Canada, across North America, and the world. And especially in our cities where most of us live. Where heat traps, making it hotter inside a city than out. And with climate change making record highs the new norm, there's never been such an urgency for our cities to act. We're looking for the best, brightest, and coolest ideas to help cities keep cool in summers to come in half an hour. And once again this week teens open up sharing the kind of stories they often keep to themselves. We listen in on feature excerpts from the new CBC podcast Mic Drop.

SOUNDCLIP

Just outside my room. In the basement. To the left is a big open spot. So I come home after school. After a bad day. And I just blast music and dance for hours at a time.

IR: That's coming up in an hour. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and this is the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK SAUNDERS: This plan will include adding more frontline resources during certain days between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. when most of the gun violence takes place across the city. Our focus during this timeframe will be intelligence led with the intention of not saturating the neighborhoods, but to have our police officers focus on those very few who are motivated to have access and to use guns across the city.

IR: During a summer of deadly gun violence in Canada's largest city, people have been demanding action. And that was Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders yesterday, announcing the city's response. Another 200 police officers on the streets in the overnight starting next Friday for eight weeks. The city's mayor John Tory has also committed what he calls significant and immediate investment into community programs. It's all part of a new 15 million dollar gun violence reduction plan. Today we're speaking with three people with intimate knowledge of guns and gun violence. To hear what they think of the plan and what kind of solutions they would like to see. Kelly Whetter, is the co-founder of Communities for Zero Gun Violence and she's in our Toronto studio. Hello.

KELLY WHETTER: Good morning.

IR: This problem is one of hits really close to home for you Kelly. Tell me what happened to your son Gabriel.

KELLY WHETTER: Oh so actually 27 months ago today. April 13th, 2016 my son Gabriel was at Yonge and Bloor. And there was a 10 second altercation captured on CCTV video that turned into my son being shot in the back six times as he was walking away from a short altercation. A young man was carrying a semi-automatic handgun in his pocket.

IR: They got into a fight and he got shot.

KELLY WHETTER: Yeah. Didn't know the guy. It was just random.

IR: How did you find out?

KELLY WHETTER: Detectives came to my door and asked me if I had heard the news or heard about a shooting at Yonge and Bloor and asked my son's name. And then they told me that he didn't make it.

IR: I'm sorry. Yesterday during his announcement Toronto Police Chief Saunders said that the vast majority of gunplay in the city can be associated somehow with a street gang. Obviously that doesn't reflect what happened with your son.

KELLY WHETTER: It doesn't reflect what happened with my son at all. And it doesn't reflect a lot of sadly for other families that I know in Toronto. It's not always gang related that's for sure. As we can stray bullets. Innocent victims.

IR: What do you think of the plan to put more police officers on the streets at night?

KELLY WHETTER: It won't solve the problem. It is a band-aid. It's a deeper multilayered solutions are needed and there's a lot of people that work on the front line that would have the answers to that. They need to be spoken to not people that work in city hall.

IR: You know your son wasn't part of any gang. So what do you think the real problem is?

KELLY WHETTER: A divide between rich and poor. A lack of jobs. Community. Community is strong, people have to stick together. Don't close your curtains and pretend nothing's going on. Look out for each, other speak up. Have communities together the schools, the faith leaders, youth workers, community centers. Just building a strong community and looking out for each other.

IR: The person responsible for your son's shooting is being sentenced next week.

KELLY WHETTER: On Wednesday.

IR: You've been going to all the courts.

KELLY WHETTER: I haven't missed a day.

IR: What do you want to say to him?

KELLY WHETTER: I have a victim's impact statements. That's three pages long. I'm going to be speaking to the judge because somewhere in the last two years that I've been going to court I stopped looking at him. I pretend he's not even there. And I guess that just sort of happened in the process of healing. So I won't be saying anything to him.

IR: What do you want the court to hear or what do you want people to hear?

KELLY WHETTER: Just how isolating devastating not just for me, his mother, but his friends. Everyone that knew him. He grew up in downtown Toronto. He had a great life. He was a great kid.

IR: What are you learning in this awful time? What are you learning about what it's going to take to tackle the issue properly?

KELLY WHETTER: I think it's going to take like minded people all getting together from all walks of life and having the same focus rowing in the same boat. And it's hard work. There are so many people doing that now with different funded programs that after a year and a half, that building trust with young people, the programs were taken away. And we have to reach them younger they're younger and younger that are picking up guns and having no hope for their future. To reach these people before it's too late.

IR: This has been an awful learning curve for you, but it is there something that stands out in terms of what you've recognized in the last couple of years?

KELLY WHETTER: Something that stands out that I've recognized. There's a lot of hurting people, communities right across the city. It's not just isolated to certain ones. I know that certain communities have more shootings or things happen. But there's a lot of devastated communities and hurting people and they need victims services help. I know that I just heard on the radio actually that there's a place I think it's in Parkdale that just opened for. It's affordable counselling. They started with eight counsellors and now they have 24, and in a matter of months. Because of all ages of people that need help and a way to direct their emotions and how they're feeling and some guidance.

IR: Thank you Kelly.

KELLY WHETTER: Thank you.

IR: Kelly Whetter is the co-founder of Communities for Zero Gun Violence. She was with me in our Toronto studio. My next guest has often thought about where he would be, had he been the young man holding the gun. As a teen, Jamil Jivani was drawn to crime and to violence, but gave it up before the lifestyle took an inescapable hold. Today, he is a lawyer and the author of Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. And we've reached Jamil Jivani in Toronto. Hello.

JAMIL JIVANI: Hi. Good morning.

IR: Good morning. You were pretty young Jamil when you first started getting into trouble, can you tell me a bit about those early days?

JAMIL JIVANI: Yeah. They were a time where I was moving without kind of direction. I was kind of like a driver without a map. Unlike in a lot of other cities where you have maybe more sophisticated kind of criminal networks and gangs, and where I grew up it was really just a bunch of young people who are kind of lost and looked at crime often through music and movies, as a way to be cool, to find an identity, to find role models that looked like them. And in our case we fell into a certain kind of subculture, a gangster subculture by default. So it was never a conscious decision and it wasn't until I was closer to the end of high school that I kind of realized the value system that I had kind of fallen into unknowingly.

IR: And that was the turning point for you right? You were in grade 11 when you were presented with the opportunity to buy a gun, but you stepped back at the last minute. Why?

JAMIL JIVANI: Yeah I think a lot of people who kind of look at kind of gang violence or you know criminal subcultures, see it as you know something that you step into because you have no other options. But I think in my case at least it was a matter of not even knowing what else was out there. And so when I was in grade 11, I was at the kind of culmination of a series of escalating moments you know. Like in grade 9 I get into fights, because I want to be like the rappers or the older guys in my neighborhood. And Grade 10 I get suspended. And so the next natural step seems you know like let's get a gun. Let's kind of move into this lifestyle, let's start to earn money doing these things that we fantasized about when you know listening to music or watching movies. And you know thankfully, I wound up kind of you know faltering at that point in my life. I couldn't cross that line. And when you look at you know the young men who make who you know appear in our news headlines for hurting each other. It's often that they crossed the line and they wound up buying that gun and couldn't kind of get out of it. It becomes a cycle that's inescapable. In my case I avoided the cycle in part because I had a mother who while I was making mistakes throughout my life and getting into trouble never gave up on me. And eventually you know her message you know won the day, but it took years for us to get to that point.

IR: You mentioned the headlines and there's so many. There was a shooting overnight in Brampton and you hear about the new plan 200 more police officers on the ground, more investment in community plans. Is that enough?

JAMIL JIVANI: So I mean I think it's important we recognize that you know better law enforcement and in some cases more law enforcement, is an important piece of this puzzle. It's not an either or between cops and community programs. But the challenge is, I think the content of the policing. How are the police going to be in those communities? What kind of relationships do they have? What kind of relationships are they going to build? Now we've spent in Toronto, but also in cities across Canada the last five years debating racial profiling, over policing in minority communities. There's been a lot of tensions between the public and cops. And I think there has not been a really strong effort to communicate to these neighborhoods where gang violence is more saturated. That something's been learned from the last five years. This policing is going to be different that when you see more cops come into your neighborhood they are really going to be able to target the criminal elements and the innocent people and innocent young men are not going to suffer, you know overpolicing by consequence. So in some ways it's enough to say we need community programs and police, but the content of that policing and the content in those community programs are important. Not all law enforcement strategies are created equal nor all community programs. Some of these efforts to say you know we're addressing youth violence simply by keeping youth busy have no evidence to back up that they're actually addressing the kids who need it the most.

IR: You know there is an interesting point I'm sorry to jump in because I do want to get to this though. But when you're talking about police building relationships with the community. I have a clip I'd like to hear. Toronto of course isn't the only Canadian city to be confronted with gun violence, Abbotsford in B.C.'s lower mainland has been wrestling for years with how best to deal with guns and gangs in its community. And a couple of years ago the city's police department sent letters to families of known gang members. Sergeant Judy Bird, is the public affairs officer for the Abbotsford Police Department.

SOUNDCLIP

SGT. JUDY BIRD: Keeping an open mind as to how we're going to address violence in our communities and this was just one aspect of the approach. Yes it went to families. Yes it went to children. It definitely created awareness in our community. It's important that we don't point fingers at different people in the community for being involved as it can be anybody's child or anybody's family. So it definitely started conversation. Some families took us up on it and other families didn't understand why we were sending them letters and some of them just didn't want to talk to us.

IR: Jamil what do you think of an approach like that?

JAMIL JIVANI: Well I think it's important that police officers build positive kind of touch points between themselves and the community. The only time you're interacting with parents and their children are through bad news or through punitive measures, then that leads to the kind of anxiety and negative relationships that are unhelpful. So I think it's good, the letter writing and reaching out to people and saying you know we're going to interact with you in multiple ways not just when someone's in trouble. I think that's a really positive way to build a better relationship. And I suppose you know my general sense is when we focus a lot on kind of systems and structures, we forget that you know in neighborhoods where gun violence is saturated tens of thousands of kids do nothing wrong. It's a very small fraction of people that are you know making the bad choices that I was lucky to avoid making.

IR: Jamil we're going to have to leave it there. I'm sorry. Thank you. It's such a complicated story and we'd love to hear more about it but we've got to leave it there for now. Thank you very much. Jamil Jivani, is the author of Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity. We reached him in Toronto. My next guest is a Canadian gun owner and hunter who has written extensively about guns. A.J. Somerset, is the author of Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun. We reached him in Baltimore, Maryland. Hello.

A.J. SOMERSET: Hello.

IR: What have you been thinking about as you've listened to Jamil and Kelly?

A.J. SOMERSET: Well they are seeing a lot of the familiar things that I agree with. It's a community problem. I think Kelly raised the point that the communities look out for themselves. You know looking out your window, knowing who your neighbors are and so on. One of the problems that comes up in marginalized communities where gun or gangs are active, is that people don't trust the police because they've had a lot of negative interactions with the police through things like carding for example. And as a result you know you don't trust the police. You don't think the police work for you. You don't call the police. You don't involve the police, which is quite different from you know somebody like me, a white guy living in the suburbs. If something happens, I think the police work for me. So I call them. So this is a real part of the problem is for the police to rebuild that community relationship so that the large number of people in those communities who have no affiliation with anybody who is violent, perceive the police as people who work for them and support their interests.

IR: So what do you think is at the heart it? At the heart of the gun violence?

A.J. SOMERSET: At the heart of the gun violence which is largely a gang phenomenon in our cities, is money. This is about money. Gangs are making money through the drug trade primarily and by other means and they need guns as part of their business model. Because when you are making money doing something illegal, you don't have the option of calling your lawyer and suing the other guy when he intrudes on your business, instead you have to take violent action to protect your interests and to preserve your credibility. So this is really about money. And we can talk about the supply side of the gun problem, about trying to better legislation and so on, but we can only go so far there we also have to look at the demand side which means we have to look at how we can take the money out so that it becomes unprofitable to be engaged in violence.

IR: Where do these guns come from?

A.J. SOMERSET: The two sources, they are either coming smuggled from the United States or increasingly in recent years has a pattern where they're being domestically sourced either by theft from legitimate gun owners or from straw buys where a legitimately licensed person is buying guns for the purpose of selling them on to gangs.

IR: And you know you mentioned gun legislation. Do you think better gun legislation can play a role in curbing gun violence?

A.J. SOMERSET: The kind of violence we see in Toronto, which is largely a gang problem, is handgun violence. And Canada already has a pretty effective system of handgun laws. Carrying a handgun is already illegal. Owning a handgun without a license is already illegal. Smuggling a handgun is already illegal. Stealing a handgun is already illegal. So we can make these things illegal-er. It's not going to do us any good. Stiffening sentences which is a standard conservative proposal, doesn't do much good. So really, there's not as much we can really do on the supply side in terms of legislation any more. If we're going to disrupt supply it's primarily about effective policing.

IR: Effective policing. So what do you think of this new strategy that Toronto has announced?

A.J. SOMERSET: Well there's two sides to it. Twelve million dollars for community programs is good. That sort of thing is addressing the long term problem. Three million dollars for more police, is frankly I would say is a suppression tactic. What they're trying to do is to go after the people who have known gang affiliations and say hey we're watching you and put a lot of resources on those people to increase their risk for eight weeks. After eight weeks, I suppose the hope is that there is a cycle to these things, that things will calm down. Also cynically after eight weeks the summer will be over and these sorts of public shootings and public gun carrying and so on, is largely a warm weather phenomenon. It's really not very comfortable to go out and shoot people in the winter that people stay home instead.

IR: Well just to wrap up then, what would you like to see that isn't happening in terms of strategies?

A.J. SOMERSET: I think the most effective thing we can do bearing in mind that the violence problem is largely about money, is look at our drug policies. The handgun violence problem in Canada began growing from the 1980s forward. It is related to the war on drugs which is shown to be a completely failed strategy. We need to start treating drug addiction and drug use as public health problems rather than as crimes. And by doing this we reduce the profitability of the black market in drugs. And we take the money out of it.

IR: Okay we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much.

A.J. SOMERSET: Thank you.

IR: A.J. Somerset, is the author of Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun. He was in Baltimore, Maryland. The CBC News is next. Then, after cities across Canada and around the world have been hit hard by heat waves this summer. We're asking how they need to adapt to this new reality of dangerously hot summers. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

How cities are finding solutions to combat scorching heat waves

Guests: Blair Feltmate, Kurt Shickman, Tracy Heffernan

IR: Hello I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

IR: Still to come, we`re doing something different in our last half hour on Friday`s throughout the summer. We're featuring highlights from the new CBC original podcast Mic Drop, which hands the microphone over to teenagers and lets them talk about whatever they want. It's for teens by teens, and it's worth checking out regardless of your age. That`s in half an hour. But first, heat and the city.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It has been five days of high heat and humidity and it's become deadly.

VOICE 2: Tens of millions of Canadians affected by this extended period of temperatures reaching the mid 30s humidity values well into the 40s.

VOICE 3: And there have been hundreds of calls for ambulances every day since the heatwave began.

VOICE 4: Ninety million in the Midwest and Northeast are under heat advisories and excessive heat warnings. At least three deaths have been linked to the weather.

VOICE 5: You're not going to find much relief from the intense heat in the short term.

VOICE 6: The ferocious heat blasting most of central and eastern Canada is causing misery for millions. And in Quebec, it's more than uncomfortable. It is a killer. At least 17 people in the province have now died, most of them seniors living alone with no air conditioning.

IR: The summer of 2018 is still far from over but it's already been a scorcher with heat that's turned deadly. The death toll in Quebec attributed to the heat has risen to 74. And in Ontario where heat related deaths are measured differently, three deaths are being linked to the rising mercury. Across the country, the continent, and right around the world, record high temperatures seem to be catching cities unprepared. And with climate change pushing more extreme weather of all kinds similar tragedies and heat waves are a virtual certainty in seasons to come. With more of the world's population living in cities than ever before, adapting to climate change and keeping cities cool is a crucial challenge to overcome. Blair Feltmate, is an expert on how cities should adapt to deal with scorching temperatures. He heads the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

BLAIR FELTMATE: Good morning.

IR: How serious is the threat of more extreme heat waves hitting parts of Canada?

BLAIR FELTMATE: It's very serious and as much as there is a formidability of the heat wave that we've just experienced, it pales in comparison to that which is coming, that really isn't a heat wave compared to what we can expect going forward. For example, here in Southern Ontario the maximum daily temperature that we experience pretty much tops out at about 37 degrees celsius approximately. By 2040 that maximum daily temperature will go up to about 44 degrees celsius, an increase of six or seven degrees celsius. The number of hot days that we experience in southern Ontario right now, days above 30 degrees celsius. It's in the zone of about 20 to 22 days per season per summer, that will increase to about 60 to 65 days per season per summer by 2040. And the extended heatwaves, the number of days in a row, seven days in a row that exceed 30 degrees celsius, right now we experience that event about once every second year zero point six heatwaves per summer that will go to two point five heatwaves per summer by 2040. So as challenging as the situation may be on the ground right now, things are going to get far more challenging.

IR: That's pretty alarming and do you think most Canadians are aware of that threat?

BLAIR FELTMATE: No. Not at all.

IR: And why is that? Do you think it's because we believe we live in a cold country?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Yes in part. And it's also because it's just simply not part of our history. We're almost victims of the climate that we've experienced to date. And one of the things we have to realize with climate change is that the weather of the past is not a predictor of the weather of the future. So we're seeing also for example, worsening in the magnitude and the frequency of floods in the country. We were just through major flooding in New Brunswick for example, and then south central British Columbia. That is also typical of the new reality, the increasing floods. And all of these are part and parcel of the package of climate change and the expression of extreme weather events.

IR: And you know we heard in the intro about the recent deaths and it has been in the news all summer in Quebec and in Ontario. How do you think that reality, that very harsh reality, helps change the conversation?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Hopefully it focuses peoples attention to say what are we going to do to not have this problem happen again? And so relative to preparedness we need to focus on actions that can be a gauge both behaviourally and physically to mitigate the probability of a repeat of these situations or even a worse situation in the future.

IR: Well what needs to be done right now?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Well right now what we need to put in place in my opinion, is to start for people in physical settings of living. Apartments basically, that in low income housing areas we need to put in place an active check program to look at vulnerable populations. Particularly, those who may be vulnerable to the impacts of heat. So the elderly, single parents with children in the upper floors of apartment buildings, people with pre-existing physical conditions particular respiratory that could make them vulnerable to heat. We should not be waiting until the heat event occurs then knock on doors to see how are they. We should develop a system right now a priority to get out a reach out to them and say, Do you have air conditioning? Do you have a fan? Do you know where the cooling centers are? For the building that you live in, Do we have backup supply for the electricity system to run the elevators that if an electricity outage happened to hit at the same time there was a heat wave and you had people stuck on the 20th floor of a building with no elevators running, how do we get them out of there down to a safe location if there are people who have trouble walking or getting down a stairwell? What do you do if somebody in their 80s and they need access to medications? So we need to know where they are and we have to have a system in place to assist them a priority rather than responding to the situation right at that moment.

IR: That's a very proactive strategy. How hopeful are you that it is going to be acted on?

BLAIR FELTMATE: I'm reasonably hopeful. In most of the major cities now we see systems in place where people are still starting to recognize the need for this action. And we even see physical adaptation within cities. Where we're doing quite a bit for example here in Toronto to increase the tree canopy in the city to create a degree of cooling in the system that everything is in this city so that it's not all just pavement. We're looking at the deployment of green roofs. We're looking at the deployment of cool roofs, light colored roofs, that when the sunlight hits them it reflects the energy back up into space rather than retaining the heat at ground level if you have a darkroom. So we're looking at ways to physically cool the city and the heat island effect of the city itself. So there are actions in place, but the question is are we acting quickly enough? I think the answer is, no. We could always act faster. But the big threat in the system overall as I see it, is the fact that we are not anticipating the much greater heat that is coming for sure in the fairly immediate future due to climate change.

IR: And that's the priority to get people more aware?

BLAIR FELTMATE: That's right. More aware, more prepared.

IR: Okay, thank you very much.

BLAIR FELTMATE: You're welcome.

IR: Blair Feltmate, is head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo. He was in our Toronto studio. My next guest leads a group of scientists and environmental leaders looking for ways to help cities cool down. Kurt Shickman, is the executive director of The Global Cool Cities Alliance. He is in our Washington D.C. studio. Hello.

KURT SHICKMAN: Hi good morning thanks for having me.

IR: Thank you for coming in. For talking to us rather. What does The Global Cool Cities Alliance do?

KURT SHICKMAN: Well I think your first guest covered it very well. There are strategies out there that can help cool cities down. And the idea is to help cities become aware of these strategies and apply them in a locally reasonable way. So we connect cities with other cities that have done the sort of work, help learn from what they've done, and also to the community of experts across a wide set of disciplines to help address specific issues that cities and not just cities but communities and even national governments might have as they consider how to cool off.

IR: You're right our previous guest did mention the white roofs or the lighter colored pavement. Can you talk a bit about that and why we should be focusing on things like white roofs?

KURT SHICKMAN: Sure. First of all I would say that all of the strategies that we're going to talk about they all mesh together. It's just a systematic approach that we need to take. But in terms of cool roofs it's really an ancient strategy that has modern products around it, and the idea here is if you lighten the color of a surface the solar energy that hits the surface more of that will be reflected out into the atmosphere and out into space rather than being turned into heat that will go into a building and warm it up or be blown by the wind into the communities around it and heating it up.

IR: Especially since most of us do live in cities that's a priority.

KURT SHICKMAN: Exactly. And right now we've made choices about our roofs and our roads that have led us to primarily very dark surfaces that are trapping a lot of heat that we could be rejecting.

IR: So you think literally the solution is a coat of paint?

KURT SHICKMAN: It can be a coat of paint. But I would say that if you look up at a roof and unless you've got a thatched roof on your house there's probably a cool option that you could be installing there on your hospitals, on commercial Buildings, on homes. So those are out there. I would also say that you know that needs to be paired with a pretty robust shade tree program, greenspace improvement program, green roofs. These all provide different levels of benefits. And if you're going to sort of take a broader view of it, these strategies are just a way for us in our cities to manage the sun and the rain that we interact with. It's just that we can do a better job of managing what we're going to be facing to help us cool off. And if we do that at scale we're looking at an average air temperature reduction of maybe three to four degrees celsius in some cases. And in certain neighborhoods it could be even higher than that.

IR: How significant is a drop like that?

KURT SHICKMAN: It's extremely significant. I mean I think if you heard the first guest I think he mentioned potentially maximum temperatures going up by about six to eight degrees celsius. So if you think about the times of the summer where you're going to be dealing with those higher band temperatures, this can cut that in half and perhaps more. And they are especially effective on the hottest days of the year which we've seen from research in China.

IR: Well what are some of the best examples out there of cities working on cooling strategies?

KURT SHICKMAN: Well there's quite a number of them out there. I'd say just focusing on a couple. The one thing that we've really seen cities start to do is to be very thoughtful about where they implement strategies, so you've got know incentives for cool roofs and green roofs. But what we're seeing now is cities really dialing in and understanding very specifically where they're hot, and more importantly where they have heat vulnerable populations. And then taking that information literally a map of the city and targeting their strategies and their financial resources in those communities. Let's take New York as an example. They recently announced a 100 million dollar program over a number of years that's focused in three neighborhoods of New York City, because they identified that those neighborhoods needed the most help. We see this same kind of thing in smaller cities like Louisville, Kentucky going back to New York. You know just talking about sort of how you get people prepared. That's a tough challenge sometimes for governments to reach out to people and have them listen. So what the city does there is they train home health aides, who are interacting with elderly folks that typically are the ones that are most vulnerable to identify when they are having challenges but also to educate them on what they can do. You know we can talk about the change in built environment, but behavioral change is so important. If we look at an example like Paris or Athens. In Paris they have a goal, they don't have a goal to cool the city, they have a goal to create cool islands. And they want every Parisian to be able to walk within seven minutes to be able to get to a cool island.

IR: How are they doing that?

KURT SHICKMAN: So they are creating quite a number of cool islands which can be anything from a water feature, to an air conditioned building, to a shady park space.

IR: But how are people finding them?

KURT SHICKMAN: That's a great question. So they've just enacted an app called Extrema. It was developed out of a National Observatory of Athens, and Athens is also using this. And what it does is, almost in real time can identify where the city is hot and where people are on their cell phones and they can say oh that person has now entered a very hot space. And they can connect with them via their cell phone to guide them to the closest cooling centre. It can alert family members that are on their list of people, that their loved one may be in danger. So it creates a sort of technological advantage that allows not just the government to connect with them via the normal means, but actually people that they know well.

IR: And how about here? What's happening here in Canada?

KURT SHICKMAN: Well in Canada. Toronto, as the previous guest mentioned, has been looking at cool roofs and green roofs. There has been incentive programs in the past for that. I know that the health departments have been very focused on heat related issues and making sure the data being gathered is going to be useful in doing some of these next steps. So I think quite a lot is happening. But you know as you can imagine these events are hard. Once they're in the throes of a heat wave, it's very hard to think long term about these things. But I think Toronto in particular and Quebec have done quite a lot to try to prepare for these things and there's that there's more to be done.

IR: How expensive is it to turn Canadian cities or any city into a cool city?

KURT SHICKMAN: Great question. So the weaselly answer is, it depends. I mean these technologies can be anywhere from less expensive to what we're using now to something that's going to pay off over a matter of decades. But what I think we can generally say is that the payback that we will see from these technologies will happen within the life of the product you're putting up there. So if you've got a you know 30 year 40 year green roof that's going to last that long, that will pay off on the energy savings and the storm water savings within that lifetime. But I think the important point here is, we take a very narrow view of what our costs and benefits on these things. And if we look at the impact on air quality, and health, and social equity, and the other things that they will do to help us, then you are starting to look at things like you know a 12 times payback on your investment. You know billions of dollars potentially. So we must take a broader view of the benefits we're getting. And I think policymakers really need to start thinking about how do we capture those in an economic way to help drive real good decisions on the ground.

IR: Okay. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much.

KURT SHICKMAN: Thank you very much.

IR: Kurt Shickman, is executive director of The Global Cool Cities Alliance. He joined us from our Washington studio. Of course high temperatures in our cities are more dangerous for some people than others. My next guest is an advocate for some of the most vulnerable. Tracy Heffernan, is a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario and she's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

TRACY HEFFERNAN: Hello.

IR: Which Canadians are most vulnerable to the impacts of heat waves?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: As one of the guests mentioned earlier, the most vulnerable populations are frail elderly, children, people with chronic disease. And when you combine that with poverty and inadequate housing and then a heat wave, you have a potentially lethal combination.

IR: And what needs to be done to protect them?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: Well if we look at Toronto what we know is that people who are homeowners, about 93 percent have access to air conditioning. With renters, that's about 73 percent. And when we ask, so who is that 30 percent of renters who do not have access? What we know is that includes about 500,000 renters across Toronto. Most of them are living in aging housing stock, the high rises that were built many years ago. And in housing stock that even if they had access to air conditioning and that can be a complicated question when it comes to landlords and tenants. Even if they had that access, they're in buildings that have such poor insulation, and poor ventilation, inadequate windows. That it's highly expensive for tenants to actually have air conditioning in their unit.

IR: So what responsibility does the federal government have here?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: You know it's interesting, because we wouldn't be having this conversation if we were talking about cold and access to heat. So the federal government. I'm going to talk about the three levels of government and their responsibilities and also within that I'm going to speak to stopgap solutions, but also longer term.

IR: Let's start with the federal government. What responsibility do you think they have?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: So recently in November 2017 the federal government announced that they would be launching a National Housing Strategy. This is excellent news for housing across the country. The government used to be involved in housing, but hasn't been for about 25 years. Both the federal and provincial government stepped out of the game of housing so to speak. And the crisis in homelessness and affordable housing that we see today is a direct result of that. So what the government needs to do, they need to legislate the right to housing. Which they've promised they will do within this year. But more than that they need to actually back up their promises around housing with adequate funding, so that we can ensure that everyone has access to adequate housing in Canada. An earlier guest was speaking about how we need to look at the cost of this within a broader spectrum. So we need to look at health costs, we need to look at social equity, and often that doesn't come into play when these considerations are made people think well that's way too expensive. How can we possibly ensure that people have access to adequate housing? But if we look at Toronto for instance in order to provide a shelter bed it costs three thousand dollars a month. So we are in a mode of crisis management and we really need to move beyond that and look down the road and think about what we need for our population. In Canada, we are so far behind many European countries with respect to the provision of adequate housing. We rely on 96 percent of the population is in private either home ownership or private rental housing. We have 4 percent social housing. Compare that with Europe where there is an average of between 25 to 40 percent social housing. This would go a long way obviously towards addressing this crisis. But also ensuring that people, when it comes to a heat wave that they're actually living in a home where they can live and thrive and where it's not attached that privilege of living and thriving in a home is not attached to their bank account.

IR: So that's the federal government responsibility. And how about municipal and provincial levels?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: So on the provincial level, this would also be true at the federal level. They could be providing funding whether in terms of low interest loans or actual funding, so that this aging housing stock can be retrofitted and so that people actually have live in an apartment that has adequate ventilation, decent windows, etc. The province also needs to make a commitment, which they did a few months ago. They said that they would match the federal funds in order to build more affordable housing and provide housing benefits. So the province needs to act on that and they need to follow through on that. We haven't seen the province do that for many many years. At the municipal level, what we really need is leadership around these issues. We have a smaller tax base. There are things that the City of Toronto could be doing with that tax base in terms of the provision of adequate housing. But they need to take some leadership on that and ensure that the social housing that they're building is actually affordable, because currently many of those units are not. They're not at a percentage of income. They're out a percentage of some of the market rent.

IR: And briefly I want to get to this before we have to let you go. The numbers have been part of the headlines, and in Quebec and Ontario categorise heat related deaths differently. Can you briefly tell me how they make that distinction and what approach reflects the dangers more accurately?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: I think hands down the Quebec approach reflects the dangers more accurately. And it's so important to be collecting those numbers and to be doing it in that broad base.

IR: And how are they doing it?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: So they have a much broader definition with respect to heat related deaths. In Ontario, the coroner will only look at, can we draw a direct line between the heat and someone's death? Whereas in Quebec they're going to look at issues like chronic disease, frail elderly, children, in order to determine whether heat was a factor in someone's death. These numbers are critical because without them we can't actually build proper policy.

IR: So having that sense of the danger in more real time you think will create more of an awareness and more of an urgency?

TRACY HEFFERNAN: Absolutely.

IR: Okay. Thank you Tracy we'll leave it there.

TRACY HEFFERNAN: Thank you very much.

IR: Tracy Heffernan, is a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. She was with me in our Toronto studio. Coming up in our next half hour. Another installment of the new CBC original podcast Mic Drop. By teens for teens, but a great lesson for all. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Mic Drop: Here’s why The Current is giving a voice to Canadian youth

IR: Hello I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. We're doing things a little differently on Friday's this summer. We're giving this part of the show over to teenagers. Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber, our colleagues in Montréal created and produced a podcast called Mic Drop. It's about teens and their real life struggles. And Mic Drop doesn't hold back. The podcast gives teens a little privacy, using only their first names or in some cases pseudonyms. That way, they can really open up about their lives. So here are some more excerpts from the CBC original podcast, Mic Drop. And a warning, some of the language in this episode might be offensive to some people.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's like a huge thing that happened leaving all those girls.

VOICE 2: You don't have to be friends with people that you don't like or people you're not comfortable with.

VOICE 3: It really did feel like there was a huge weight on my shoulders, that was never going to go away.

[Music]

VOICE 4: This is Mic Drop.

VOICE 5: Mic Drop.

VOICE 6: It's about us.

VOICE 7: Teens and our stories and what we've been through.

VOICE 8: What we are still going through.

VOICE 9: Without any adult interruption.

VOICE 10: Testing.

VOICE 11: Testing.

VOICE 12: Mic will drop in five, four, three, two.

VOICE 13: Drop the mic.

VOICE 14: In this episode, we're talking about finding our comfort zones.

GABE: Okay I'm Gabe. I'm 15. It was just recently a couple months ago my moods got really bad and sometimes like you even just wake up and it's, oh I don't want to do anything today. Or you wake up you're like yeah, but then the second someone says hi to you you're like oh, really today is going to suck. Someone texts you constantly and you leave your phone for five minutes, but you start getting texts over and over and over again and by the time you get back to your phone you got 45 texts from the same person. And I have to read these but I'm not going to, so I'm going to ignore the person and they're going to get mad at me. When my parents said, you just got to completely disconnect. That's not helpful. If I completely disconnected so many more people would text me over and over and over again by the time I go back and I saw the stuff that I missed, I would have probably had a complete anxiety attack and broken down. Then it gets to a certain point where you're just sad and you're crying and then you don't even cry anymore. You just want to lie down and want nothing to do with anybody. I've dealt with it through dance. It was one time I was at dance rehearsal and everybody else seemed so stressed out about memorizing the choreography. They are thinking about, oh no what move next! Oh no what move next! And I was just flowing and my dad was watching through the window and my dad said "Gabe I don't know what it is but you seem so upset lately. And in that class you smiled. I haven't seen that from you in like months." When my dad told me that, that's when I realized. Wow! Dance makes me happy. So I did something about it. Just outside my room. In the basement. To the left, there's a big open spot. So I'd come home after school, after a bad day, and I'd just blast music and dance for hours at a time.

[Music]

GABE: That's slow, but it is doable. Let me see which one I have on here.

[Switching through songs]

GABE: Yes! That's definitely the one. So you listen to the music and let your body flow with the music. Just let your body follow it. Dancing blocks everything from the outside world, out. Just because I dance an hour every time I got home it would make my day so much better. My twin brother always screams at me. He goes to the stairs and he's just yelling "Turn off the music! It sucks! You're probably terrible at dancing anyways. So stop trying.".

TRISTAN: Hey I'm Tristan. I'm mostly the one that doesn't like the music because I'm either watching videos or I'm playing video games and it gets really annoying.

GABE: Really really annoying. I mean I can be annoying to him, but he is annoying to me. And so it's back and forth constantly, until one of us loses. Like everything he wants to talk about, I don't want to talk about and everything I want to talk about, he doesn't want anything to do.

TRISTAN: He pretty much summed it up perfectly. We are total opposites. Being a twin sucks, I'm not going to lie. Most people think because we look alike we are exactly alike personality wise, but they couldn't be any further from the truth. I don't really talk to my family about my problems. I'm afraid my mom is going to like overreact or my dad is going to not understand because he's not the best with that kind of stuff. I never ever mentioned it to my twin because he tends to use stuff against me, so I don't tell him anything. The entire wheelchair basketball community is like family to me. The team, we're always there for each other. Any problems we have, they are like super understanding. And it's just really nice to have people like that. I love to play sports and I love to be very active. I can hang out with people that are nice. Play something that I love and it gives me a distraction for a little bit. Even if it's five minutes, it's a distraction. When I'm feeling really crappy up on myself. I mean it happens to everybody. And then you got to add on the fact that I'm in a wheelchair and I've been through quite a lot of stuff.

[Basketball dribbling]

TRISTAN: You start to realize things that you don't realize when you're a kid. Like when I was a kid, in my head it wasn't registered that "Hey I'm going to be stuck in this thing for the rest of my life and I'm never going to be able to walk." I didn't think of that, now that I'm 15 I'm aware of all these things. I'm aware of all the times I've had surgeries. I'm aware of all the problems I have. Like trying to be popular or trying to dress nice and then you got the piles of homework, you've got the couples and all that stuff and it's like it sucks to see them because it's like you're single and would stress you out even more. So yeah, it's just very stressful. But I mean eventually it's going to end. I usually get all my energy. All my anger out on the court here during practice. It feels good. It's not my first time scoring, so obviously the first time is best but since I am small it happens maybe once a game where I have an opportunity. So when I get the opportunity and I do actually end up scoring. It feels amazing.

[Music]

SARA: I'm Sara. And that's my friend Emily. Today, we're in Emily's kitchen. We just ordered pizza so we're just hanging out and we like to hang out at least once a week after school or on the weekends just to really enjoy ourselves you know and not have to worry about everything else that's happening.

[Doorbell rings]

VOICE 1: What kind is it?

VOICE 2: It's cheese.

VOICE 1: Oh my favorite.

VOICE 2: Then the fries. Gotta have the fries.

VOICE 1: Oh I got a text. Look. Oh yeah.

VOICE 2:Don't answer that.

VOICE 1: Okay I'll just tell them I'm busy.

VOICE 2: Yeah that's what I would do. Don't really want to talk to them.

VOICE 1: I feel like I'd be like so much more stressed right now if we were still with like that group of 20 girls, because I feel like when we were with them it was always kind of stressful about what they were saying about us or something like that. But now it's just like we get one less thing to worry about.

VOICE 2: Yeah like obviously we're still stressed but we always want to. I find it's a good environment now. Like before I'd always worry like if was hanging out with the same person I'd worry that everyone else would be like "oh why are they hanging out together?".

VOICE 1: Yeah exactly.

VOICE 2: Why isn't she hanging out with all of us?

VOICE 1: And like if you would post like one picture anywhere, people would be like "oh my gosh they're hanging out without me like do they hate me?" And like even if other people would hang out without me. I would think that, I'd be like why are they hanging out without me?

VOICE 2: So we had a group chat on Snapchat with a bunch of people in it. The big group started in grade 7 and we're now in Grade 9. And at first I really enjoyed it because I was like "Wow! I have so many friends you know?"

VOICE 1: I think that being in a group chat really makes you feel wanted in a way. You feel like you always have people there for you. And whenever you have a problem or anything, if you're not with the person at that time, you can still talk to them.

[Music]

VOICE 1: At the beginning I thought that these were my best friends and that they'd be my best friends through all of high school. I cared for each and every one of them. And then at the end of grade 8 kind of going into Grade 9 things started to change within that group. And one of my friends Katherine had pointed out that these people, they weren't the nicest people. These people would say things behind everyone's back, like about my best friends.

VOICE 2: We started hearing more rumors that people didn't like us in the group and rumors about us and other people just not wanting to be friends with us.

VOICE 1: The worst thing for me was just the fact that they would hang out without us and make sure that we knew they were hanging out without us.

VOICE 2: They still posted things about it and they still kind of showed off that they were hanging out without us.

VOICE 1: And they would kind of rub it in my face. That's the biggest problem I had.

VOICE 2: Well the first thing we did was, we decided to stop eating lunch with them. So that was a good way to kind of avoid them the first few weeks. Even though we weren't eating lunch with them at school. I stayed in the group chat and I kind of stayed in the background because I still wanted to know what they were doing and how their lives were going. That was the big thing, I didn't want to miss out. Katherine convinced me kind of you know these people are toxic. You don't want to be associating with them online, if you're not even associating with them in person. So I kind of agreed with that and I said okay this is the big cut off. We're leaving the group chat and that's that.

[Laughter and indistinct chatter]

VOICE 1: After I left the chat I kind of just felt relieved. Usually I'd probably think like "Oh they're going to hate me. They're going to say things." But at that point I didn't really care what they thought anymore.

VOICE 2: Once you leave it you don't receive any messages. It just disappears. It's kind of I guess, like a symbol. For like the chat disappears, just like those people in your lives you know. Well now I feel comfortable and we have like our new friends. Our group we have a group chat on Snapchat.

VOICE 1: We're pretty much in contact constantly. And we talk to each other from the point school ends, till we go to bed. We say good night every night. And we're constantly talking about things. And whenever someone's like "okay I'm going to go to bed now." You turn your phone off. If they're turning their phone off they just say "Goodnight. I love you guys." With a bunch of hearts or something. And then they leave. And then there is three of us left. We still talk and then oh someone else is saying goodnight. And they say goodnight and they leave. And then slowly like everyone just has said goodnight to each other. I don't know just saying that goodnight. Knowing people are like thinking of you before they go to bed I guess, I know it just feels good.

VOICE 2: It took a long time to get here, but I'm happy where I am and being in my comfort zone and knowing my boundaries it really helps me be kind of a happier person.

SARA: This is Sara. One last thing. You don't have to be friends with people that you don't like or people you're not comfortable with. You can make your own decisions like the first step is just like working up the courage. But once you do, trust me it will be worth it.

[Music]

JAY: Hi. This is Jay. And I'm a 17 year old artist. I have Haitian parents. They are immigrants. And when they came into Canada, they assumed that being an architect, lawyer, or a doctor or whatsoever is what was necessary to be happy in life. And when I came up to them with aspect of music, they told me you shouldn't do music because it's not going to bring you anywhere in life. And for me, music is like the best thing in the world. So like I'm a producer. I'm a rapper. I'm a songwriter. I just love how my creativity is just, it just blows.

[Music]

JAY: My mom doesn't really like rap, because it's contrary to the nature of God. So yeah after my first track happened. I showed to my mom and she wasn't disappointed, but she wasn't happy either. You know she was like "Alright. It's good. It's not glorifying God." My parents do not understand my vision. Like I have a white canvas and it's up to me to decide how I'm supposed to paint it. And if I want to be an artist in the future, then that's what I will be. And I'm letting no one stop me.

[Music]

JAY: I had a choice between two rappers name. I had Enigma and Kamino. Kamino comes from a video game Star Wars. It's a planet. So I had Kamino or Enigma and I made people vote. And at the end Kamino won. I was like yes I'm so happy with Kamino too. So yeah that's just my rapper name, Kamino.

[Music]

JAY: It's the kind of music where I don't need to curse to prove something. When one of my friend's told me, that if you curse is just waste of words. So you know you can always find something else to replace and to be honest I didn't like that idea. So I used to write curse words like basically every single line and then I realize, nah this is, this is not me. And then I started rapping with facts inside of them. With actual content. With no curse word. And once I like wrote those down. My mind went like overboard. It couldn't stop. It couldn't stop building more raps. I first when I start rapping my friend's like "Yo you know you should do a track like this. You know you could do a track. Like talk about money or something or whatever." But I don't have the money. Why am I going to rap about "Oh I have a 1000Ks in my bank account." When I have barely a hundred. So I want to talk about facts and I want to talk about things that the kids can hear, like the younger kids like they can hear, and be like "Dude I want to be just like that guy." I want to rap about things that are important. I talk about how you know you don't always have the support you need. So that's why you got to push yourself to the limits. My dad, he doesn't support me or my music, but he lets me explore. Which I find great you know. Because I know with my dad, I can make my music and when he hears that he's like "Dude yo why your beats bumping so hard? Like it's lit. Fire you know." I just love it. Like he speaks Creole. So he's like "Oh that beat is so fire." And I'm like "Yeah thanks dad." So yeah, I really love my dad and I love my mom too. She'll come around eventually. If you put the effort into it and just be focused and don't give up, then yeah you're going to get somewhere. This is Kamino. Peace out people.

[Music]

VOICE 1: It's really hard to find an apartment in Toronto. Like people don't want a 17 year old living in their house, because they have all these stereotypes of like "Oh they're just going to party all the time. They're going to mess up my house. They're going to do this do that." After I got kicked out, didn't have like a co-signer or I didn't have like a guarantor or anything like that. So getting on welfare that was like a big deal. Like the system is really hard to work through, because they have so many people on it. And like I didn't have any ID. And I still don't have any ID or anything like that. Usually when you're on welfare you need your parents signatures and stuff, but I couldn't get those signatures. It was really nerve wracking, because I was like, I don't know what to do if I don't get this. I have nothing. Like I'm on the street. But like I was really lucky to have a co-worker who is like really helpful for me and she like made sure I had like money to pay for everything. One day they were like okay it's good. The money will be in your account next month. I was like holy shit. Thank you. Getting my life in order, without having any help is just like hard. There's so many changes living on your own. Coming home to your parents every night and then, coming home to nobody. Now I come home and I'm like I have pets like. I have a bunny, a dog, a mouse, a snake. But it's just hard when you don't have like another person that you know genuinely cares about how your day went. Now I come home and it's like nobody gives a shit what I did today. My mom was always like "Get up! Go to school. Do this. Do this. Get your stuff done." And now it's like I don't have anyone on my back, always like telling me I need to do this. I need to do that. So it's like I procrastinate a lot. And like I need to get over that, because that's adulthood. That's one of the things I have to learn. I just have to stop pushing things aside and just like do them, but at the same time and you think I need to give myself some slack and remind myself that I'm 17. Honestly I think the hardest thing is waking up in time for school. Because my mom was my alarm clock. So now I just have to wake myself up. Ever since I got kicked out of my house, my feeling of family is coming to school every day and being with my friends.

[Indistinct chatter].

VOICE 1: I go to Oasis Skateboard Factory. An alternative school. If I was going to just a regular school, I probably would have just dropped out.

VOICE 2: It's like an art studio-meets classroom for kids that had trouble going to school before. We make skateboards and we build brands. Just get us into like business aspects and learn stuff that you're going to be using in the real world.

VOICE 1: We're those kids. That's why I like it, because we're always like the grunge kids. The kicked out kids. The skater kids. What I love is like we're all part of like the skate crew and like everyone just chills. It's just a big happy family. Makoto is my best friend. We just like to make eachother happy. We don't like to talk about sad stuff, because when we're with each other’s it's kind of like, good times. It's just like really cool to know that there's still people that care about you, even when like the people who are supposed to do that aren't there. After school we get coffee. We go to the skate park. Like I don't know whatever we do. Like we are always hanging out every day, on the weekends. Are you ready Makoto? I'm going to pass the mic to Makoto now.

[Indistinct chatter].

MAKOTO: Hi I'm Makoto and I'm 16 years old. I was out of school for two years. It was a real rough time for me. I was so used to just failing. I can't do anything right. It was getting to the point where I was giving up before I was trying. I've got something to say about pushing through and skateboarding. Something I learned is like, I'm going to fail ten thousand times, before I land the thing that I want to land. And I'm going to get angry and pissed off and upset, but that's okay because if you have a community of people that will work with you. They'll help you get back up.

[Music]

VOICE: Mic Drop is produced in Montréal by Shari Okeke and Carrie Haber. Jeff Shane is our associate producer and the show is mixed and edited by Crystal Duhane. We'd love to hear from you micdrop@cbc.ca. Follow us on Instagram @CBCmicdrop. You can also find us at CBC.ca/micdrop. If you like what you're hearing, we'd really really appreciate it if you'll leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

IR: Those are excerpts from the CBC original podcast Mic Drop. We'll link to the podcast on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and you can hear more of Mic Drop next Friday on the summer edition of The Current. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for q. Canadian actor Sandra Oh is on the show. After our discussion of hot summers in the city and heat waves to come. Let's end the show today on some music. This is The Lovin' Spoonful's classic Summer in the City as covered by B.B. King. I'm Ioanna Roumeliotis. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music]

Friday July 13, 2018 Full Transcript

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